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And I know there's hope at the end of this rope
But it's long, long, long
And you're doing your best to hold on
The high road was made for the brave
And it's painfully long, long, long
And you're doing your best to go on
With one foot in the grave
Nobody gonna tell you how to behave
With one foot, one foot in the grave
-Shayfer James, One Foot In the Grave
The only way to let go is to make sure that the thing you are holding onto no longer lingers.
The only way to let go is by killing the part of yourself that clings onto the past. The part of you that sees ghosts everywhere you walk, the part of you that nearly destroyed yourself with alcohol and psuedo-retirement and the itch to do something, anything, to feel alive again.
So the gun goes off.
So the curtain closes.
So the story ends, and the hero walks off the stage, because this is the one way to let go. The one way to move on.
---
Except-
Owen wakes up on an American suburban sofa, posters of Elvis and photos of a young Curt Mega and an itty bitty brunette woman framed and hanging around the mantlepiece, a gun-shot shoulder bandaged up and propped up by a couple of frilly, crocheted pillows, all pastels and suburban-mother-crafted.
Owen’s in pain, but that’s normal. His nerves were crushed and shredded and sewn back together ages ago. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to not be in pain.
As a matter of fact, it’s the most familiar thing about this entire place.
Because it is certainly a strange thing to find Curt Mega sitting next to him.
“What the fuck is going on?” Owen demands, shrapnel in his voice, sharp and hot as the bits of bombs and building that shredded through him back in the day. “I’m supposed to be- you shot me- I should be dead-”
“Told you I was one step ahead of you,” Curt says, and there is something painful in the twist of his mouth, something that aches. “And sorry, but I grieved you once- I’m not grieving you again. I made the mistake of leaving you behind once before, and I’m not doing it again. I’m not losing my best friend again."
Curt smirks, and Owen hates it, because he once loved it more than he loved his own life, because Curt doesn’t get to be overconfident and arrogant when he failed so hard at keeping alive the lover he once promised the world to.
“You’re going to have to live, and I don’t give a shit if that’s gonna take all the effort in the world to put you back together, because I’m here for you.”
It’s a threat.
Owen doesn’t want to get better. He doesn’t want to heal. He doesn’t want to be put together. He wants to be broken, wants to stay angry and pissed off and a stitched-together shell of the man he once was, because it’s easier to be this way. It’s easier to hate Curt for what he did than to let Curt attempt to play god against a man that accepted the death of god the moment he was left for dead.
“I fucking tortured you. Killed over a thousand people. How could you possibly want to keep me around?”
In real life, men don’t come back from the dead. In real life, there is no Lazarus. There is no Frankenstein.
There is only the cruelty of man, and what they make of machines that will inevitably rule everything, breaking down the faith of those that came before-
Except Curt Mega is reaching forward and opening up his palms. In one hand, is his ID, usually kept hidden and tucked away in a safe when they’re on a mission, where it can never be found. In the other, a set of pills.
“The fuck is that for?” Owen asks.
“Proof that I mean this,” Curt says, “That I’m serious about you. About fixing what went wrong between us. The pills are painkillers, to help you heal from the gunshot- sorry about that, but I needed them to think that you were dead, so that you could make it out of there, rising like the hero of your favorite gothic novel-”
God. Lazarus. Frankenstein. Owen hates Curt Mega, for knowing Owen’s weaknesses after all of this time, for knowing the details of the little battered paperback novel that has been his only release in between jobs as the Deadliest Man Alive, continuing to operate on orders regardless of whether they came from M-I6 or Chimera. Either way, Owen was an extension of a greater leadership, still a tool to be used by whoever claimed his allegiance-
“And as for the ID…” Curt continues, and with a flick of the wrist, Curt turns around and chucks the ID into the fireplace.
And what the fuck.
“That’s your goddamn lifeline,” Owen says, because Curt’s entire life has always been about being a spy, all the heroism and the flash and the pomp and the adrenaline of keeping moving, keeping fighting, keeping solving, always the hero, never sedentary.
It’s why Curt ran after the banana.
It’s why Curt didn’t come back.
And yet-
“And you’re my goddamn life,” Curt says, “We’re both done answering to higher powers, don’t you think?”
There is something sparkling in Curt’s eyes, and Owen can’t tell if it’s tears or humor, faith or fanaticism. Maybe a bit of all of the above, Owen has to think.
And Owen still hates him. Still hates his ego, hates his bravery, hates the fact that after all these years, all of this war, all of this ache, Owen looks at the curve of Curt Mega’s mouth and thinks-
He’s still the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen, and I still want to put my tongue down his throat.
Sure, this time around, there might be a bit of an urge to strangle, and that will never go away, there will always be a pebble in Owen's shoe, a scar across his heart, a bit of shrapnel lodged too deep to ever forgive-
But for the first time in years, Owen looks at Curt Mega and some small, scared, brave part of his heart thinks that living, even with the blood, even with the bullet, even with the terrifying idea of domesticity, might be not the worst thing in the world, because he's going to be dragging Curt down with him. He's going to make Curt Mega collapse downward into the same hell as him, even if that hell is surrendering to the idea that they are both tired, that they are both retired, and they might need to pick up the burning wreckage of their lives together.
“Curt!” a shrill, high-pitched woman’s voice calls from the kitchen, “Is your friend staying for dinner?”
"If I have things right, mom," Curt says, "He's staying forever."
And it's terrifying, the idea of being kept, the idea of forever, especially after everything that Owen has been through over the past several years.
And yet-
Owen's fear is the sort of thing that he has lived with for so long. It has become an integral part of his very existence. Living is terrifying, because living means not dying, and death would be so much easier than life.
But the idea that he just might have forever here, with the man that he has spent so very long caught inside of his heart, the one piece of shrapnel that can never, ever be removed?
It might just make the terror worth it.
---
The curtain falls.
The credits play.
But Owen Carvour is once again denied a death, because once again someone refuses to let him go.
(And maybe, this time, Owen can be okay with that fact.)