From my shaky-shakin' hands
Billy’s been acting… weird.
Tommy would know. He’s the authority on Billy acting weird. And the authority on Billy overall. Billy is- if anyone knows his brother, it’s him. And it’s more than their shared soul, it’s- Billy is all he has. All he’ll ever have.
His twin is… everything, to him.
So yeah. He notices pretty quickly when Billy starts acting off.
It’s not hard to figure out what started it.
His brother is sitting at his usual hiding spot when Tommy finds him, pouring over one of the books they’d stolen- liberated, if he wanted to pretend to feel good about his life (he doesn’t) -from the Avengers Mansion, the creased pages flickering in the firelight as Billy’s magic-blackened fingers trail across the words.
“Thought I’d find you here,” he says mildly, sending a few pebbles tumbling off the edge of the cliff as he drops down beside his twin, kicking his legs out over the precipice. It’s a far fall, but he’s never been worried.
He trusts his brother to catch him. Even if things go wrong.
You can see most of Hell, from here. Billy seems to enjoy that fact. To Tommy it just feels… suffocating.
There’s nowhere to run to, in this place. At least the surface has that. Even if there isn’t much else good about it.
“Where else would I be?” is Billy’s distracted reply, a quick glance all he earns before his twin buries his nose back in the book, his grip on the pages tight enough to crease.
“Anywhere, I suppose,” Tommy muses, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “Like, technically speaking.”
Billy’s anger flares- he can feel it, in their bond. “Except I can’t be, now can I?”
Hell burns hot, as he looks out over it, a wasteland of pain and suffering. It’s funny- he’s always called it home, but it’s just as much a punishment to him as it is the souls below.
It’s only fair, though. He and Billy were…
If there’s anywhere they belong, it's here. They don’t deserve more than that.
That’s what Mephisto says, at least. Whether Tommy believes it doesn’t much matter.
“What’s the book about?” he asks, eager for a topic change as he tucks a leg beneath him, letting his other leg swing, heel bouncing against the rock face and sending more dusty shards to the fires below them.
Billy hesitates, trailing his fingers down the edge of the cover. “It’s, um. F- Father didn’t let me keep most of the books on magic, he says it’s dangerous for me to…” Billy trails off, brushing his curls back with one hand. “Um. It’s mostly diagrams, actually. Engineering and design jargon. For like, technology that the Avengers use. Used. I don’t know.” He worries his chapped lip between his teeth, adding, “I’m not entirely sure why a witch would have diagrams about robotic synthezoids, but it’s sorta interesting.” A pause, then a shrug. “I don’t have much else to do, anyway.”
Tommy tucks a leg against his chest, letting his chin rest on his knee as he squints at the book, scanning over the diagrams that Billy’d mentioned. “If it’s just like, prototype diagrams and stuff, actually binding it in a fuckin’ book feels a bit… egotistical, don’t you think?”
Billy blinks, his brother’s surprise at the question twisting through his mind, before his twin laughs slightly, setting the book in his lap. “Er- yeah, I guess it is. I mean- it is important as far as technological advancements go- I think -so it’s not entirely uncalled for, maybe, but…”
He rolls his eyes, crossing his legs beneath him and leaning forward, elbows digging into his thighs. “Still a bit of an overinflated ego move.” He pauses, glancing at Billy. “Uh, speaking of the surface- the last mission, I mean, cause’a the book ‘n all-”
“Get to the point, Tommy,” his brother says lightly, closing the book crisply and resting it on the rocks beside him as he turns to Tommy. “What is it?”
Tommy lets himself fall back, onto the bare rock. The cavernous ceiling is far above them, even here, hidden in smoke and darkness, but it’s there. No way out of Hell.
None he’s found, at least.
“On the surface,” he says slowly, letting his gaze dart across his brother, “what happened?”
Billy is still, very still as he draws his cloak around him, the firelight dancing across the torn fabric. “Which part?” he asks evenly, but Tommy can feel the apprehension slipping into their bond, his twisting and churning emotions seeping through.
You tell me, Tommy thinks sharply, but he just props himself up on his elbows, the lava rock digging into his skin. It’ll probably bruise. He doesn’t care. “See, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I don’t actually know.” He traces patterns into the soot on the rock beneath him, snippets of runes he remembers Billy writing blue into existence. “Something about that mission threw you off, and there was only one moment I wasn’t there for.”
Billy’s shoulders hunch, a tight line of tension, and he grinds the toe of his boot into the rock, dim light bouncing off the metal there. “He didn’t- I didn’t get hurt. If that’s what you were… I’m fine.”
Billy’s words… feel like the truth, at least, which is good because even if Tommy hadn’t been scared about that, it wasn’t…
Mephisto takes his anger out on them, sometimes- too much -and Tommy has seen his brother hurt more than he ever wants. He’s glad this wasn’t another thing he failed to protect his twin from.
“Good to hear,” he says curtly, letting the knowledge wash over him as he sits up, shifting closer to his brother. “So what did happen, then?”
Confusion floods his tongue- Billy’s, not his, and he can taste the gratitude, the fear lacing his twin’s response. “That’s… the thing, Tom, he- he didn’t hurt me.” Billy swallows, pale throat bobbing in the smudged shadows, and he adds, “He didn’t try to. Hurt me, that is.”
And now the confusion twisting through his mind is his own, too, unsure and heavy. “What?”
“He didn’t try to hurt me,” Billy repeats, his voice muffled by his cloak, eyes barely visible over the edge of it. “He barely even tried to stop me. He-” Billy pauses. “He seemed more… worried, about me, than he was… yeah.”
“That isn’t,” he tries, but for once the words don’t come out. “We’re- why would anyone…”
Everyone wants to hurt them. They’re forgotten souls who were bad from the start, wrongness built into their existence. They serve Mephisto, are his sons, his will extended- why would anyone on Earth not see that? Not feel the wrongness of their being, attack them for the impurity of their existence?
Why would that boy have told his ally- his friend -to stop? That they weren’t going to hurt them?
“Weird, isn’t it?” Billy mumbles, exhaustion creeping into his voice, and Tommy stands, a rapid motion as he pulls his brother up too.
“We need to speak to Father.”
Billy’s eyes widen, his grip on Tommy’s arm tightening. “What? No, we can’t-”
“We need,” he says, without letting his brother’s thoughts spiral, “to have him give us a new mission.”
That catches Billy off guard, mouth moving wordlessly before he steadies himself, digging his teeth into his lip. “Why?”
“Because we need to go back to New York,” Tommy says simply. “We’re finding that hero.”
“And then?”
…and then, maybe, he can figure out how to use that. Whatever goodness that boy had seen in them. Maybe they don’t have to be trapped souls.
Maybe he can get them free.