Title: Fade to Black

Rating: R

Warnings: Death!fic, slight religious themes and slash.

Summary: It’s the end of the world. Apocalypse!fic, slash.

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The oceans are on fire.

The oceans are on fire and so are the people running past Thomas on the streets. He pulls Nathan closer to him and hurries on, heading towards nowhere at all.

He never thought the prophecies would be right. Never thought that the apocalypse, the end of the world, would come. Never thought that it would come down to this.

Never thought.

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They’re running, and then Nathan’s not, grabbing Thomas’s wrist and halting him. He points to the ground a few yards away, hand shaking, and when Thomas looks over he sees a man lying crumpled on the ground, fire to his left and the dead to his right and a horseman riding down right on top of him. Thomas can’t tell which one out of the four it is, and he doesn’t want to know. As he grabs Nathan’s arm and hurries him away, not even his hand on Nathan’s lower back, guiding him on, stops him from glancing back when the cries start. Thomas very carefully ignores the fact that that could be him, lying there, pleading.

Nobody stops to help.

Thomas didn’t think they would.

Thomas isn’t going to say that he knew that this was going to happen, because he obviously didn’t. If he had known he would have warned people. Told his family and Anthony and Nathan and Brittany. If he had known, then Anthony and Brittany wouldn’t be in bloody pieces scattered over the streets and in some hellbeast’s stomach.

He’s pretty sure that if he lives past tomorrow, or even tonight, he’ll always dream about this. Teeth and tails and wings and pounding hooves and Brittany’s comically surprised eyes and Anthony’s hoarse cries and Nathan’s horrified screams, barely heard over everybody else’s.

But he’s seen this before in dreams and he‘ll see it again, if he lives past tonight.

He almost sort-of hopes he doesn’t.

---

They’re ducking in an alley and Thomas can smell the sweet-sick stench of burning flesh, but it’s okay because he’s fixated on Nathan’s face and blocking everything else out. He’s wiping soot off Nathan’s face with the hem of his shirt and resettling his dirty hat and then Nathan’s eyes widen and he turns around, and his stomach flips and resettles.

Oh Jesus, he thinks, snatching Nathan’s hand up and running. But he can’t leave behind the image of that invincible army. Sunken, dead eyes and maggot-eaten, pale white flesh.

Behind him, he hears the screams start again.

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The concrete’s cold and hard and wet and red under Thomas’s knees. Nathan’s stretched out before him like a sacrifice to some angry god, breathing in huge, shuddery, wet gasps, each hitching breath causing more blood to gush out of his partially open mouth. Thomas’s trying to pull Nathan all the way onto his lap and get help at the same time. It takes a while for him to realize that the harsh, braying, pain-filled cry of the dammed is coming from him, and not some other dammed soul.

He’s screaming for help; cursing, pleading, crying so hard that the tear drops are mingling with the blood on Nathan’s body. He would be yanking on passerby’s pant-legs if his hands weren’t pressed over Nathan’s chest, trying to keep his life and blood and soul in.

Nobody stops to help them.

Thomas only realizes the irony in this the same time that he finally realizes that you don’t get a sword driven through your chest and live.

And by that time, Nathan’s already cold.

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Thomas’s stumbling and weaving like a drunk, and resettling Nathan’s baseball cap on his head. Surrounded by the dead and the already dying and the undead, he’s so alone. So cold.

All he can see is red.

He thinks that this might be punishment for all his sins.