Fic: Auspicious (Magnificent Seven)

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Title: Auspicious
Author: graculus
Fandom: Magnificent Seven
Rating: G
Characters: Ezra Standish
Warnings: None
Summary: There's a pattern, even if it takes him a while to see it's there.
Picture: here


9. & 8.

It stood to reason there had been other times. He hadn't been aware of them at the time – too young, no doubt – but there had to have been, if the pattern was to hold.

7.

The room was spinning, his skin was peeling off with the heat, a voice murmuring in his ear about how everything would be fine, he'd be fine, and he was sure it was all a lie. He couldn't feel this bad and everything be fine, that was an impossibility.

“Ezra?” The voice was insistent, louder now. “Can you hear me, sweetheart?”

Not Mother, then. Not that he'd expected it would be. Even if she was here, the thought she would attend a sickbed, sully herself with that kind of intimate labour, enough to make him choke out a laugh. Which would be fine, if he could stop once he started.

A hand was rubbing his back, strong arms pulling him from his bed to rest against someone's shoulder as he coughed himself out. From the corner of his eye he saw movement, sinuous black shapes that looked like the stray he'd been feeding scraps for the past week. If that stray had been blurred at the edges, eyes red-gold fire. If that stray numbered seven, all alike, slipping like shadows across the base of the wall.

Even as he tried to turn, eyes following them even when the hands holding him wouldn't allow him to move too far, they slipped away and he couldn't tell where or how they'd gone.

6.

His breath was a high whine, hand clutching his hip where the bullet had smashed through, fingers holding back blood, holding together muscle and skin even though it was probably a futile exercise.

Overhead, the sun sparkled through the leaves, the bright morning high over a killing ground he'd never expected to survive. Not when he'd seen so many of his brothers in arms fall before him, their butternut coats dark with mud and blood, limbs scattered like fallen branches.

This wasn't how he had always thought death might be. He'd imagined himself a patriarch, hope against hope that his mother's attitude towards a stable home wasn't heritable, growing old surrounded by family and friends. A home where he'd never be alone, get up one morning and not be sure where he'd lay his head that night. A pipe-dream, of course, but a comforting one.

They were circling him.

It was a distraction, something to focus on other than the pain, the insistent pulsing under his fingers telling him things could be even worse than he'd thought. Distraction was good.

They were six. Despite the brightness of the sunlight, they were darkness itself, slivers of ink-black night sliding through and between one another like they didn't really belong in this world. Which, of course, Ezra knew had to be the case.

Six, when last time he'd seen them their number had been seven. It was too much to hope, too much to believe that this was significant and yet...

“Here's another one.”

5.

Crouched in the scrape of mud he now called home, Ezra tried to think back to considering himself one of the lucky ones. He'd a limp now and his hip ached pretty much all the time but he was alive. Barely. If being in a place like this was considered living.

He'd seen them again, last night. Even the movement had been enough to tell him they were near; everything else bigger than a roach had been eaten by now, so they had to be a figment, something coming in from another world now the line between alive and dead was wearing thin.

He was down to five.

Five watchers in the darkness, eyes still burning and focussed on him alone. Were they waiting, staking their claim? If he was right, then he'd get out of this hell-hole, survive the worst the guards could throw at him. Walk away, hobble probably, and then what? Maybe it was better to think about the future, make plans for what he'd like to do, than give a moment's consideration to the horrors of his current situation?

That sounded like something to be going on with.

4.

For a while, every time he'd walked into a fire-fight, guns blazing around him, he'd expected to see them somewhere near. He hadn't seen them for a while. That, given his current unwillingly embraced profession, was something of a surprise.

Maybe he was complacent, trusting to the idea that he had so many chances at life left that he didn't really take as much care as he could. Certainly, that time he'd leapt onto the top of that wagon, bottle of whiskey in hand, he'd been sure he was all but invulnerable. Or at least, that whatever might come, he'd survive it relatively unscathed.

His hip twinged at that, a coincidence of course and the dampness of the weather, but also a warning? For all his ways, he'd never been a particularly superstitious man – happy to prey on the superstitions of others, of course, but not especially prone to such beliefs himself. Except for that one belief, a surety that he might well be born to hang, the way his mother had always said.

This time, it was an accident. He'd wanted to take the measure of his opponent – fisticuffs were something he preferred to engage in for as brief a period as possible, stumbled when dodging a blow. He felt the sudden pressure, then something entered his back, emerged by his belt. He looked down.

Four cats were circling his feet, looking up at him with eyes fixed on him alone, the sun at the centre of their universe.

“Ezra?” He couldn't look. “God, don't move!” He couldn't if he'd wanted to, even as the cats reminded him this wasn't how it was going to end, let him ignore the slight edge of panic in Nathan's voice and just stare at his unwanted visitors.