awickedtime | End of Days

End of Days

Enough is enough.

He's been in a black temper for days, since his conversation with the priest. He wakes up on a Sunday, the day dedicated to the worship of the false god, detirmined to have his way. Either Sabrina will reign at his side willingly, or he'll force her to, one way or another.

The bar is easy enough to find. It's underground, down a narrow set of stairs and then it's burnished wood and copper and soft light. It reminds him a lot of Gray's place in Greendale and, as such, seems like a perfect place to set up his throne.

The bartender puts up a small fight. There's a bullet wound that stings for a second before he heals it, leaving behind the faintest of silver scars on Nick Scratch's skin. He takes the man apart a piece at a time, buries his hands in viscera until his nails are grimed with blood. The man tastes sweet in all his pain and terror.

He stops hiding. He broadcasts his presence far and wide.
Let his daughter come.

It's time that they spoke face to face, with everything out in the open. It's time that this came to an end.

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Sleep has been hard to come by for days and days now, but Sabrina wakes up on Sunday with something burning in her veins.

It's Him.

She's not called or compelled; she thinks she understands that they are too far down this path for it. The being that would be her father and her king unfurls himself darkly against the morning light, and she can taste blood.

The group is small, and she thinks it's for the best.

He has every reason to underestimate them, and when they reach the club, she's grateful for the writhing mess of magic and Darkness that reaches for her, blood and terror and rage that covers her own machinations.

She can't cover them, but she can draw his fury, and when Sabrina strides forward, the door banging open, she knows she commands the room like a queen.

"My Lord," she spits in the kind of sneer only a teenage girl can manage. "Are we done playing games?"

"Sabrina," he sneers, looking up for the ruin of the corpse he'd been desecrating, hands and face streaked with blood. With Nick Scratch's colouring and the lines of his face, he looks like nothing so much as a wolf, right then.

"It would appear we are," he says. "Time for a conversation, daughter mine."

Her stomach turns at the sight of the blood-- not so much because of the feral look, but because she knows what it will do to Nick himself. She's done this enough now that she knows she can't falter, and so she pushes those thoughts and feelings aside.

She meets the Dark Lord's eyes with her chin held high.

"I'm ready to talk," she says. "You know what I want, I'm sure."

"I'm assuming you want assurances that you can have Nicholas Scratch back in one piece," he says, scratching Nick's jaw with bloody fingers. "Which is assuming that there'll be anything left of him once I'm done. He's screaming in here, you know."

"You get nothing from me without him," Sabrina fires back, practically spitting the words. "You will keep him in one piece or I will bring this place down on your head. There are far more powerful beings here than either of us. I'm doing you a favor right now, coming myself."

Playing at being docile had worked once, but that's long gone in her now.

"Nick," she says, clear and strong, "do not give up on me. It's going to be okay."

"You think he can hear you?" Spits Lucifer, his lip curling in a sneer. "I've got him locked away so deep that all he can hear of the throb of his own heart." He comes around the bar and sits down, studying her. "But I'll humour you. What are you proposing, Sabrina?"

"I believe in him," Sabrina says, without faltering. She inhales a bit sharply as Lucifer draws near, and forces herself to push the breath back out. "Whether he knows I'm here or not."

She clasps her hands in front of her. There's no golden cloth or crown this time, no masks but the one he wears.

"If you give me back Nick, if you give me the people I love, I'm yours. We can make another Book of the Beast. I'll become the new High Priestess of the Church of Night. We'll find a way to either give you a different host, or your own angelic form. Just promise me the people I love are safe, that they're mine.

"What a pointless thing," he says. "You just weaken yourself, you know. You could be glorious, Sabrina, if only you weren't a slave to your bleeding, mortal heart." He sniffs. "But it is tempting. This is a soft world. We could carve it into something."

"I am what you made me," she answers.

Sabrina takes a small, apprehensive step toward him. "I'm half-mortal because you need me to be half-mortal. A bleeding, mortal heart is the price we pay." She lifts her chin again. "How do I know he's safe?"

He tilts his head, dark eyes narrowing as he studies her.

"You want me to let you speak to him."

"I've already seen him carried off to Hell," Sabrina answers. "You've already said he might not last much longer. I'm not going to make a deal without knowing I get what I want. I saw what you did to Lilith, too, and that won't be me. I need more than a promise."

He rolls her eyes at her, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, but then those same eyes roll back in Nick Scratch's head.

The sound that comes out of Nick's mouth is soft and broken.

"Spellman?" He asks, voice raw like he's been shouting, screaming, for days. "Sabrina...who's...who's blood is this?"

He can roll his eyes all he wants--if he gives her the opening she needs, she'll take it plus a thousand more.

"Nick," she says, eyes hot and swimming with tears, moving forward the few steps to kiss him soundly. "Nick, I love you. Do you understand? No matter what it's going to seem like, I'm not giving up on you."

Her right hand has already gone to her hip, the small of her back.

"Nick, I love you," she repeats, and as her hand arcs toward his left side, the Lance of Longinus loses its glamour. "I'm so sorry," she gasps, feeling the Holy Lance suddenly burning into her hands, feeling it push through his flesh.

The spear slides into his side and there's a white hot pain and his knees go hot, go liquid and he goes down, onto his knees first and onto his side and all he can think is that he doesn't want to die, he doesn't want to die, he doesn't...

His eyes roll back in his head again and a violent shiver goes through him.

Sabrina has told herself that she won't cry as this happens. She can't afford to cry, because she has to make sure everything happens as it's supposed to happen.

She lets go of the spear as he drops, though for a sick second she's afraid it's stuck to her hand. Sliding down next to him, she forces his chin up so she can see his eyes, needing to see when it happens.

His eyelashes flutter and he swallows convulsively. Every light in the bar flickers and goes out for a split second. Suddenly, the air is heavy with the scent of brimstone.

"Sabrina," he mumbles and then he's slipping, again, down into the dark.

He finds himself crudely ejected from the crucible of Scratch's skull and, for a moment, he is without form altogether. It takes a moment, costs him a lot of effort, to assume his angelic form. He surveys the scene in the bar for a moment.

"Stupid girl," he says. "Now you'll lose him for certain."

Without clear knowledge of what's possible for Lucifer, Marcus knows he's walking into a dangerous situation. Dan is here with him, because a part of Marcus feels like there's something there, something between them on which he can draw strength, but he stays out in the truck while Marcus goes in. He's keeping the engine running, prepared for them to run if they need to, and from the sight of Nick bleeding, Marcus thinks they'll need to.

But right now he and Sabrina need to focus on Lucifer. Stepping forward and into the light, Marcus brandishes the crucifix given to him by Mother Bernadette, holding it up as the weapon it is.

He expects mockery, but it's not as if he hasn't heard it all before and so he begins, "I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every Satanic power, every spectre from hell, and all your fell companions; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Begone and stay far from this creature of God. For it is He who commands you, He who flung you headlong from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell."

He might be no common demon to be bound, but the words do have power, and, in turn, have their effect. His head swoons, like he's under the influence of strong liquor. He shakse it off.

"You think this is the first time I've been meddled with, priest?" he says, spitting the word like the foulest curse. "You think I haven't disposed of the likes of you before? I am no petty spectre. You're going to have to try harder than that."

Sabrina's dazed for a moment or two, and she knows it.

She thinks she might be forgiven, considering that she's covered in Nick's blood, the Devil before her and furious with her as ever, her hand aching from contact with the Lance, and Marcus's words rippling through her.

She can see, so close to her, Rosie and Charlie rushing to tend to Nick, and she feels like her heart might as well tear from her chest to stay there. But in this moment, Sabrina is not a healing, protective force.

She's a sword, a violent rebel in the image of the fallen angel that's created her, and she's turning against him. Her whole body screams with the effort, but she's up and turning and holding out a hand.

"I've been thinking," she grits out. "Lilith existed before you found her and twisted her. We don't have to get our power from you. We've always had it."

Sabrina searches for Marcus's face and breathes out. He doesn't believe God, false or not, hates her. So she calls out too, remembering a different set of words.

"I call forth the witches from the shade. Those who came before us, and died, so that we might live. Visit us, sisters, intercede on our behalf! I call forth the powers of Lilith, of Aradia, of Morgan le Fay. Visit us, sisters, intercede on our behalf!"

Marcus's hand drops, finds Sabrina's, his fingers thread with hers to draw strength from one another. Mother Bernadette's crucifix is held between their palms and the rosary beads tangle around her fingers as well. Her choice of words inspires his next set of words, too, and he pulls his aspergillum from his pocket and uses it to fling holy water in Lucifer's direction.

"Not a priest, darling," he answers. "Just an exorcist."

Then he smiles, he actually grins, and shouts, "Saint Mary Magdalen, Saint Agatha, Saint Catherine, all holy virgins and widows, all holy saints of God, intercede for us." His hand tightens on Sabrina's, the other using the aspergillum to fling holy water in the sign of the cross. "I adjure you, ancient serpent, by the judge of the living and the dead, by your Creator, by the Creator of the whole universe, by Him who has the power to consign you to hell, to depart forthwith in fear."

The water stings where it splashes and Lucifer hisses, handsome face of his angelic form twisting into something ugly and brutal. He steps forward, towards the pair, driven by nothing so strong as the impulse to destroy the two of them, to destroy the pair of mortals crouched over Scratch's sprawled body, to render this whole place down into nothing but bones and ash.

"I am the Great Satan," he snaps. "Lord of Hell, and I will not..."

He drifts, in and out, the pain in his side keeping him close to the surface. Every breath is edged with the coppery tang of blood and he doesn't know if it's his own or someone else's anymore.

He doesn't want to die and he knows it. He knows that better than anything.

He doesn't want to die.

They'd stayed out of the way but ready, her and Charlie both, but when the moment comes it still almost takes Rosie by surprise. She sees Nick--no, Lucifer, no, Nick--crumple and fall just before the lights flicker, and then there's a stench in the air and she and Charlie are running, not away but towards, both of them going to their knees on a floor sticky with something Rosie forces herself to believe is nothing more than spilled drinks.

"Nick, don't you dare go anywhere," she murmurs as she opens her bookbag, packed with as many clean dishtowels as she could find in her apartment. The first one she presses to the wound soaks through immediately, and Rosie lets out a small, desperate sob before she can stop herself.

He hears her voice and leans towards it. He...things are confusing, a little, where Rosie is concerned but, right then, it's like she's a spark of light int he darkness. Right then, she's the only thing in the world that he's got the energy to pull towards.

"Rosie," he murmurs, adn then his breath comes in a sharp, harsh gasp when she presses against the wound in his side."

Even if she hadn't seen everything that's just happened, that he calls her Rosie and not Rosalind is all the confirmation she needs of Nick's return. She allows herself one brief moment of joy, smiling even as her eyes fill with tears, then sniffs hard and reaches for another clean cloth.

"I'm sorry, I know it hurts," she says, wincing along with him as she applies a steady, firm pressure to the wound. His blood is hot and slick beneath her palms, between her fingers, and Rosie's stomach lurches unpleasantly--but she doesn't dare let go. "We've got to...I have to try to slow the bleeding, before--" She looks up at Charlie, her face already gone pale and frightened. "We're here, we're...it'll be alright."

Charlie drops down onto his knees beside Nick and Rosie, shaking off the sick sense of fear that had taken hold of him when he'd watched Nick go down that hard. He leans in, his fingers overlapping with Rosie's to help her push down on the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding.

"If you go anywhere, she'll never forgive either of us, man," he says, shooting Rosie a look across Nick's sprawled form. "So hold on, okay?"

Charlie's hands join hers, and it helps--with the bleeding, with keeping her steady and focused on the task before them, with shutting out the noise of the fighting far too close by. She answers his look with one of her own, grateful and uncertain all at once.

"He's right," she says, looking back down at Nick. The expression on his face is terrible, agonized beneath the smears of blood and gore whose source she dares not think about, and Rosie bites back yet another sob. "You'll be doing us all a favor, staying right here. With us, for good." There's more to it for her, of course, deeper reasons than just avoiding Sabrina's ire; reasons it likely doesn't take magic or mind reading or anything more than just a look at her to figure out. She doesn't let herself think about those. Not right now.

Nick's eyelashes flutter and he opens his eyes. His lips move, and he stumbles his way through an incantation that he'd learned when he was young, still in the habit of skinning his knees and his palms. It doesn't stop the bleeding but it does slow it some, a sluggish seep, rather than a gush.

"It hurts," he mumbles.

"Just couldn't let us do this the mortal way, could you?" she says under her breath, seeing his lips start to move. There's no heat to it, just a soft, fond near-exasperation. That he'd done it at all feels like another point of proof that he was--again--who he was supposed to be. And it helps, more than it seems anything she or Charlie had managed to do. When she switches out the sodden cloth for another fresh one, the flow of the blood from his side looks slower and more clotted; as disgusting as it is, Rosie takes it all as a sign of hope.

"I know," she says, louder, when he slurs out those two words both edged in pain. "I'm sorry, I know it hurts, Nick, but it's...I think it's getting better." A lock of her hair falls in her face, and she unthinkingly reaches up to smooth it back, leaving a dark streak of blood along her forehead and another slicked through her hair. The feeling of it makes her shudder and her stomach flip again.

Charlie knows Rosie well enough to know that the exasperation in her tone is the same impulse as the relief that floods through him when Rosie switches the cloth and he sees that Nick's rate of bleeding has changed.

"You can cope with this," he says, quietly, his fingers still interlaced with Rosie's where they're pressed against Nick's wound. "All of the shit that Sabrina says you two survived back home? This is nothing."

"Goodness, yes," she says, looking at Charlie as he keeps encouraging Nick. "All of that was so much more than...than this. Didn't she say you fought a squid at one point? If you can do that, you can absolutely get through this."

Her back's to them, but she can hear Sabrina and Marcus shouting, fighting, trying to protect them all; her heart seizes for a moment in fear and hope and concern all at once.

"For...her father's..." His thoughts swim a little. Pain spikes through the sound and he squirms, breathless. "It's...it feels like it's...b-burning."

"I'm sorry," she says once more, the words sounding far too small and ineffectual for the situation they're in. She chances a look back at the fighting, over her shoulder; what she sees makes her eyes go wide in fright and she looks away, shaken. "That must be the...what Sabrina had to use, I think it was holy. To work properly, I think it needed to be."

Rosie lifts the cloth, just for a moment, checking his wound for some sign--of improvement or deterioration, she's not sure. It looks just as bad as it had before, and she presses the cloth to his side again.

He drags in a harsh breath through his nose, squirming away from the pain of it, the press of Rosie and Charlie's hands against his side.

"That..that'd do it," he says, his vision swimming, black spots dancing.

"Shh, stay still if you can, please," she says, pleading and soft and desperate. For all that the lance had inflicted its own pain, she's hurting him too in her attempts to help--pushing against his side, keeping her hands locked tight with Charlie's--and she swallows down another sob, hating herself for adding to his discomfort. If this doesn't work, if Sabrina turns her into something small and easily squashed for losing Nick and failing her, Rosie thinks she'll almost welcome it.

"Dan's still...he stayed with the truck, right?" she asks, blinking back tears as she looks over at Charlie. "I don't know if we move him, or...or wait, or...I don't know."

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End of Days

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