Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“That's the safehouse up ahead.”

McJones pointed ahead, to a huge house looming in the distance and looking oddly lopsided. The whole thing, and especially the long winding cobblestone road leading to it, gave Luke a strange feeling. Something between fear and deja vu with a twinge of sadness. That house looked familiar- too familiar to be a coincidence.

Lucah voiced his suspicions before he could, though. “Did you guys build this place?”, she asked McJones.

A solemn nod. “Yeah. Mostly me and Austin and Dean, but Barry and Jeff have done a lot too.”

That melancholy feeling started to creep up Luke’s back and leave a tight, cold feeling in his throat. So they were heading to a place built in part by the three people he had watched die, were they?

“Are you positive this is a good idea?”, Luke questioned in vain hope.

“This place should be safe,” McJones explained calmly. “That's why it's called a safehouse.”

Lucah chuckled a bit. “Nice one. But, how do you know it hasn't been taken over by goblins or something since you left?”

A shrug. “I mean, it’s been safe every time we’ve stayed here in the past,” McJones assured them. “Plus, we had friends here that should have kept it secure.”

“What kind of friends?”, Luke questioned. “The deadly weapon kind or the human person who you can have dinner with kind?”

“Human person.”

Luke let out a relieved sigh. “Good- I’m sick and tired for fighting for a moment to breathe.” Not to mention a house with just McJones and Lucah in it would have felt too empty...

“I mean, we might have to fight a little,” McJones mused. “Just, not as much.”

“Well, we’ve fought enough for at least four lifetimes…”, Lucah muttered. “Even still, I can't stay long.”

McJones looked curious. “Oh? Why not?”

“Well, I mean for one, there are some people that probably ought to know Jon is dead,” she started with an uneasy look. “And-”

She stopped as she noticed the strange expression McJones assumed when she said this. “What?”

“Did nobody tell you?”, he questioned.

“Tell me… what?”

A deep sigh. “Clearly not,” McJones muttered. “But, well…”

He trailed off as he reached the front door of the huge house. Up close, it was obvious the whole place was haphazardly strung together, more than likely built by several people over a long period of time. The front was brick, but there were sections of stone and about every color of wood known to man slapped on. Seemed Jeff’s aesthetic sensibilities hadn’t been well enforced in this place, save for some well kept rose bushes in the yard.

Another sigh from McJones. “Well, we’re here. I’m not sure who’s here, but-”

“Oh come on!”, Lucah interrupted. “Go back to what you were gonna say before! What did nobody tell me!”

Despite opening his mouth to explain, McJones got cut off by the door being flung open and nearly hitting him in the face. “You’re back!”, a voice suddenly exclaimed.

Luke recognized the voice instantly, despite having not heard it in… gosh, when was the last time he’d seen Jared? He looked just the same as ever- same blue shirt, same hairstyle, same bright smile- but with the addition of what looked like some pretty bad burns on his arms.

“Oh, Jared,” McJones greeted almost disinterestedly. “Is Barry back yet? I need to have a word with him.”

Jared scoffed. “A ‘nice to see you’ would have worked too, you know.”

“It’s nice to see you, Jared,” he amended. “Now, is Barry back or not?”

An almost devious smile crossed Jared’s face as he pushed past McJones and instead greeted Luke with a sudden hug. It felt comforting after everything to be hugged by an old friend again. “It’s great to see you, Luke!”

“Nice to see you too,” Luke greeted. “God, it's been ages! How have you been?”

Shrugging, Jared answered with a simple “eh”.

“I mean,” he went on. “It's always lonely when everyone’s gone, but I haven't died, so that's a plus.”

That cold feeling in Luke’s throat returned. God, he was going to have to tell Jared, wasn't he? Tell him that his friends wouldn't be coming back home…

But before he could find the words for it, Lucah pushed him aside and offered her hand to Jared. “Nice to meet you! Pretty much everyone calls me Lucah, so you can too.”

Jared shook her hand with a nod. “Lucah, I've heard a lot about you. Nice to finally meet you.”

“Damn, well, there goes my good first impression!”, Lucah joked. “Tim got to you first, huh?”

A bit of a laugh, and Jared quickly assured her that Tim had only said good things about her while McJones huffed. “Can you please tell me where Barry is?”

Both Lucah and Jared cast McJones an annoyed glare, but Jared turned towards him and gave him something resembling an answer. “Hell if I know- I mean, he's been gone longer than you have!”

The sigh McJones let out made it abundantly clear this wasn't at all what he wanted to hear. “Well, that's just great. I take it the others aren't back yet either?”

“I mean, they've been in and out,” Jared remarked. “Should be back pretty soon.”

McJones pushed past him and into the house. “I'll go see for myself,” he resolved.

Okay, now Luke was just confused. He'd been sure Jared was talking about having company over but then what was McJones going to look at?

“Hey, come back here!”, Lucah called after him. “You never told me what you were gonna say!”

“What was he gonna say?”, Jared questioned. “I overheard part of it, but I didn't really get what you were talking about.”

Luke sighed. “That's the point- he was saying that Lucah should have known something and never said what it was.”

“Oh?” Jared sounded significantly more interested. “What were you talking about before, then?”

A thoughtful hum followed Lucah’s train of thought back. “Oh…” Her voice lost its normal bounce and her face fell as she seemed to remember all over again what all she'd lost. “I was telling him that I needed to go tell the guys that Jon’s dead.”

Jared looked at her for a minute before shaking her head. “God, I thought Dean would have learned his lesson from last time…”

“Last time?”, Luke repeated. “What do you mean, la-”

A sudden noise and a figure appearing behind Jared cut him off.

As Jared turned towards the figure, Luke started to wonder where he'd seen the guy before. He looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't put a name to the disheveled black hair and the sickly looking face. And, as he staggered forward, noticeably shaking a bit, the only thing Luke could think was that he was someone who shouldn't have been looking that frail.

“Who are they?”, the sickly guy asked with a voice hoarse from disuse.

Lucah answered his question with one of her own. “Who are you?”

“He’s ‘last time’,” Jared deadpanned. “The reason Dean should know better than to not make sure his friends know all about death.”

The sick guy laughed a bit. “Dean didn't tell them either?”, he questioned. “You're kidding.”

As Luke stood stunned, the guy came forward and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, the name’s Ray.”

“Ray?”, Luke repeated without thinking. His mouth was working faster than his brain as he tried to remember who Ray was. Wait… “BrownMan?”

A nod. Ray smirked like he'd thought of a fantastic joke. “And I'm guessing you're Luke Yungtown and Reese Lucahjin?”

Lucah burst into a laughter fit. “Oh my god- and that’s Lucah Lucahjin to you, mister.”

Ray shook her hand as well. “Alright, then. Nice to meet you, Lucah. Or should I call you Ms. Jin?”

“What, you want me to call you Mr. Man?”, she retorted.

Luke smiled a bit as they went back and forth. It was nice to see Lucah happy even after all that had happened. He tried to smile too, but the more he was in that house, the more everything sank in. He’d never hear Jeff’s voice again. Never see Dean’s smile. Never follow up on what was about to happen on the roof with Peebs.

“Wait, what do we not know about death?”, Luke asked again.

The mood changed, with Ray looking away and Jared sighing deeply. “Well, for one, it’s cheap,” Jared stated matter-of-factly.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”, Lucah questioned.

McJones chose that moment to re-enter the room, and Luke wanted to rip his hair out. Were they going to be interrupted every time they were about to find out what was going on?

“Oh, McAsshat’s here too,” Ray said almost fondly. “How are things going?”

“Nothing’s changed much,” McJones said almost defeatedly. “He’s back, though.”

Great, more cryptic talk… “Who’s back?”, Luke questioned.

Jared, Ray, and McJones looked between each other, sudden panic creeping up on each of their faces. “Please don’t be too mad,” McJones begged. “I know we should have told you, but things kept coming up, and what really matters is that everyone’s fine, right?”

“No, everyone is not fine!”, Lucah objected. “Jon is dead! Dean is dead! Everyone is dead and most certainly. Not. Fine.”

A sudden voice that made Luke feel sick came from the distance. “Who’s dead?”

Why were his ears playing such cruel tricks on him? Dean’s voice had been snuffed out, never to be heard again! It just must have been the echo from down the hall making it sound like him, right?

But as someone approached, and Ray started to smile widely, Luke started to feel like it was the world playing tricks on him rather than his ears. After all, it only was a moment later that Dean Elazab was standing in front of them, wearing an anime t-shirt and pajama pants and looking very unlike a corpse skewered on spikes.

Dean smiled a bit as their eyes met. “Oh, you’re all back! So you guys beat the Wall of Flesh?”

Stunned silence. Luke couldn’t stop staring at the living breathing human being in front of him.

“What?” Dean looked around self consciously. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

Luke laughed a bit at the absurdity of it. He was shaking, tears welling up in his eyes. “But- but- I saw you die!”

Dean just shrugged. “That happens a lot.”

Chapter Text

Luke stared at Dean in disbelief. He couldn’t be alive and acting so casual about it! “Dean, people die once,” he pointed out. “How can you die a lot?”

Half the room- alright, literally everyone but himself and Lucah- stifled a laugh. “Luke, we’ve all died more times than we can count,” Jared assured him.

“How- how?”, Lucah stammered out. “That isn’t… that isn’t a thing people can do!”

“Well, you know what is a thing people can do?”, Ray questioned, pausing to yawn before answering himself. “Necromancy. That’s what.”

Necromancy. He said it like it was obvious. Like it was simple. Like it was something that made sense in the slightest. Luke was just left staring blankly between them all.

“You- you’re joking,” Lucah stammered out for him. “I mean, I really hope you aren’t joking, but you’re joking.”

McJones shook his head resolutely. “No. It’s kind of a long story, and I really wish Barry was here to explain it better.”

“Barry?”, Luke repeated. “Like, Razzadoop?”

Ray laughed. “Luke, we all have actual last names, you know.”

“And yet I get the feeling you’ll refer to him exclusively as Luke Yungtown from now on,” Lucah said with a mock sigh.

A nod of agreement. “Of course I will, Lucah Lucahjin,” Ray assured her.

“Can we please stop getting offtrack?”, Luke asked dejectedly, knowing the answer was no.

To his slight surprise, Dean gave an agreeing “please”, prompting McJones to cut Lucah off as she started to say something snarky.

“Well, Barry’s a necromancer. It’s that simple,” McJones stated like that was simple in the slightest.

A sigh- Luke felt he must have sighed more that day than the past month all put together. “Can you explain that. Please.”

“He brings people back from the dead and sometimes works with a weird... death... cult... thingy,” Dean eloquently explained. “Sometimes he runs off to do stuff for it, I think that’s where he is now.”

Jared gave a nod of agreement. “Yeah, he’s called a few times. Asked how Ray was doing.”

Dean’s face suddenly rearranged into a strange, soft sadness. “Right… How- how are you feeling?”, he asked, suddenly moving closer to Ray and leaning down slightly to look him intently in the eyes.

A little smile. “You still look awful,” he remarked, sounding a bit more cheerful and Dean-y suddenly.

“Well, that’s about how I feel,” Ray deadpanned. “Like absolute shit.”

And there went the cheerful Dean-y-ness. Dean’s hands curled into fists, and he looked near tears. “No… No, you should have been better by now!”

Before anyone could say anything else, McJones butted in. “It’s probably just complications with having been brought back by a different necromancer!”, he dismissed. “Barry brought you back instead of your old guy, that’s pretty normal for you to have come back a bit wrong, and the scars are a bit more lasting.”

“Scars?”, Luke repeated, his eyes darting to the strange burn marks on Jared’s arms. “You mean, like…”

Jared seemed to notice where he was looking and nodded, holding an arm up and pushing up his sleeve with the other to show off the burns. “Yeah, this is left over from my last death,” Jared remarked. “Got pushed into a pool of lava by a spider, wasn’t pretty but I’m pretty sure everyone was more upset about my diamond sword burning up with me to be honest.”

He laughed a bit after that last part, like it’d been meant as a joke. And it very well might have been- after all, the darting looks that Ray, McJones, and Dean gave made it very clear that wasn’t the case.

“Do- does it always leave scars?”, Lucah asked a bit hesitantly.

McJones shrugged. “Yeah, usually, but some are more annoying than others.”

“Yeah, like mine from this time shouldn’t be too bad!”, Dean exclaimed, raising his shirt up until it basically just covered his shoulders. “Let’s see… uh…”

Luke let out a little gasp as he saw the angry red scars all over his torso, right where the spikes had gouged into him.

Lucah covered her hand with her mouth. “Oh… Dean…”

A shrug. “Eh, I’ve had worse,” Dean assured them. “All I’ll have to really do is not sleep on my side for a while.”

“It’s the price you’ve gotta pay,” Jared remarked. “If you get blown to bits, it’s gonna hurt for a long-ass time, even if you’re not dead anymore.”

“Yeah, and it’s better than literally withering away and ending up all pasty and fragile,” Ray remarked with a cough to accentuate his condition.

Dean frowned and grabbed Ray’s hand. “Here, if we’re gonna be talking, you should sit down!”, he exclaimed, dragging him towards the couch and practically shoving him into it.

Ray rolled his eyes. “Dean, I’m really fine,” he insisted. “I feel shitty but I’m not like, super throwing up or fever or anything anymore.”

“Oh, so you’ve been in bed all day for the past two months just because?”, Jared questioned a bit smugly. “Nice to know.”

Luke was almost certain Ray flipped him off, despite the angle of the furniture blocking his exact movements.

Jared didn’t react to it if he had, and just joined him in the living room on one of the other couches. Lucah dragged Luke in there, in what he could only guess was an attempt to move the conversation’s location to somewhere more comfortable.

Sure enough, McJones and Dean followed suit, with Dean sitting just a bit too close to Ray and McJones sitting just a bit too far from Dean. And awkward silence ensued until Lucah chimed in to continue to conversation.

“So, question,” she started. “You said Barry revived Dean, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Dean affirmed, nodding.

“But he isn’t here,” Lucah pointed out. “He wouldn’t have known you were dead or have been able to bring you back, right?”

A shrug. “He’s brought me back from the dead like, more times than I can even count by now,” Dean explained. “His magic’s just sort of built into me by now. Whenever I die, his magic automatically makes me respawn here, even if he wasn’t with me or even if he’s dead at the time.”

“Who brings Barry back, then?”, Luke questioned. “Another necromancer?”

“I think he brings himself back?”, Jared provided, seeming entirely unsure of that answer. “I don’t get how it works, but it’s some sort of weird death magic thing.”

Suddenly snapping back into the conversation from staring out the window, Lucah frowned suddenly as she looked between Jared and Dean. “So… does he automatically bring everyone back?”, she asked.

McJones shook his head. “Really just me and Dean and Austin and Jeff,” he stated. “Oh, and Jared too, I think. Rest he has to do manually.”

Lucah’s face fell. “So… what, are we just gonna have to wait for him to come back to get Jon back?”

Everyone else’s faces fell too- save for Ray, who just seemed confused. Jon… Luke had really admired him. His death had been pretty crushing, no pun intended.

“Uh…” McJones cursed under his breath as he stood up. “I- honestly I have no idea if he can bring Jon back from where he is, but I'll ask.”

He glanced around the room until his eyes landed on a rotary-style telephone. “What’s the number again?”

“It’s written down like, right there,” Jared huffed.

As McJones sighed and started to mutter numbers under his breath, seemingly reading off from a scrap of paper on the desk, Luke noticed Lucah going over to stand next to him. Luke did the same, hoping he could get a chance to talk to Barry and ask a few questions.

He didn’t count on Barry not only taking ages to pick up, but not even being the one to pick up and leaving McJones annoyedly explaining to whoever did who he needed to talk to. It took what felt like an hour for Barry to finally actually get on the other end of the line, with a muffled “hello?” from the phone causing a sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank god,” McJones deadpanned. “Look, Barry, you remember Jon?”

A pregnant pause. “We swore to never to speak of him again,” Barry stated plainly.

“No, no! Not that Jon!”, McJones quickly corrected. “ProtonJon! Jon Wheeler! Guy who helped us try to fight the wall of flesh that time Satch fell down a hole and you and Dean died during that stupid race?”

That seemed to clear things up. “Oh, oh. That Jon! Yeah, he’s pretty cool, why?”

“He died again,” McJones explained. “We need you to bring him back.”

All Luke heard from the other end was a deep sigh that lasted way too long.

“...if you say you can’t do this, I’m pretty sure Lucah will personally throw you off a cliff,” McJones said, backed up by Lucah’s exclamation that she most definitely wouldn’t make it that painless.

“Is she there too?”, Barry questioned. “Well, she should help… I’ll need something of his or some connection to him to revive him.”

McJones turned away from the phone for a minute. “Lucah, you grabbed Jon’s beanie, right?”

She pulled it out of her bag, still a bit bloodstained. McJones gave a nod and put the phone’s receiver back to his mouth. “She has his beanie, that’ll work, right?”

“Yes, but I’ll still probably need to come there to help…”, Barry said almost defeatedly. “And right when I was about to reach a breakthrough with Ian…”

Ian? It couldn’t be… Luke was grabbing the phone receiver from McJones before he knew what he was doing. “Ian? Ian’s with you? As in, Brutalmoose Ian? Ian MacLeod?"

He added that last part exclusively because he saw Ray leaning over towards Dean to make a comment on his repeated usage of codenames instead of last names. 

Chapter Text

Barry took a moment to respond. “Uh, yes, that Ian.”

Ian was there! His Ian! He felt almost giddy before realizing that Ian was at some sort of Necromancy thing, which didn’t make sense. “What do you mean, breakthrough? Why is he there?”

A simple answer that shouldn’t have felt simple at all: “he’s learning necromancy.”

“Why? How?”

Luke kept stuttering out words that begged for answers before a distant voice interrupted that. “Ugh, just let me talk to him!”

That voice sounded so familiar… “Ian?”, Luke questioned a bit desperately.

“No, it’s the Spanish Inquisition,” a too familiar voice deadpanned.

Luke felt years of tension leave his body as his shoulders relaxed and a smile spread. God, he’d forgotten how it felt to talk to him. “It’s so good to hear your voice,” he almost sighed.

A strange moment of hesitation, and then Ian gave a dry laugh. “Don’t get all sappy on me, man,” he mockingly pleaded. “You know I can’t deal with that.”

He shook his head, as if Ian could see it. “Sorry, it’s just…” He trailed off. A flood of emotions came up all at once. A wistful joy and sense of security that made him sad with the fact it was gone, combined with a weird sense of fear.

“I’ve missed you,” Luke finally settled on. “I’ve missed Hidden Block…”

More hesitation. “Uh, well, I mean, it never really went anywhere,” Ian muttered. “We’re just all busy.”

“Yeah, but still, I miss it!” He missed fighting alongside his closest friends, not worrying about anything but protecting each other and making ends meet. It’d been heaven- a heaven he wasn’t even sure how he lost. “I haven’t seen you in ages or Caddy since he was sick and I don’t even remember when I last saw Jimmy or Wallid!”

A sudden gap of silence, like Ian was trying to think of what to say to that. “...yeah. I mean, I guess it’s not really a thing but it’s sort of a thing. You- you know what I mean.”

He didn’t have a clue what he meant. Changing the subject seemed a better idea. “Um, question: did you know Jeff doesn’t ever, y’know, stay dead?”

More dead silence. “...yeah? And neither do I.”

Well, he had an idea as to why, at least. “Necromancer powers?”

A sort of questioning, hesitant noise on the other line. “Well, and Barry that one time. He brought Caddy back once too, remember?”

“Wait, when?” Sometime after he got sick? No, it’d have to be before... “After the whole Ocean Monument thing?”, he guessed.

“Yeah, then.” He could almost hear Ian’s nod. Right before he got sick, then? Did he have something like Ray did?

But then… “Then you- you all knew about this?”, Luke stuttered out. “Literally all of you?”

Ian chuckled with great awkwardness. “I mean, I dunno about Jimmy and Wallid, so more like figuratively all of us.”

Luke frowned. “And none of you thought to tell me?”

Taking a deep breath, Ian launched into an explanation he barely got. “...alright, so you know how they say that if there’s an emergency, and a group of people needs to call for help, everyone’s gonna assume that someone else has already done it and it’ll never get done?”

“You… you all thought someone else told me?”, he paraphrased.

He could practically see Ian’s shrug. “Pretty much.”

Luke was about to ask more, but some indistinct but very loud voices somewhere on the other line cut him off.

“Shit,” Ian cursed under his breath. “You were talking to Barry about something important, right?”

Important didn’t really begin to cut it. “Yes.”

“I’ll have him call you back when this is over with,” Ian assured them before hanging up.

The dead noise that invaded the line made Luke feel empty, but he sighed and put the receiver up as both Lucah and McJones glared at the phone.

“Holy balls, could he have chosen a worse time?”, Lucah muttered angrily. “That was important!”

McJones flopped back down on the couch, on the complete opposite end as Ray. “Well, what can we do but wait?”

“He’d better actually work things out when he calls back,” Lucah huffed.

“It’s really no use to get all upset,” Dean said, leaning forward on his hands. “I mean, just wait for him to call back and he can bring Jon back!”

Lucah just nodded and fell silent, and a thought occurred to Luke that bothered him all over again.

“They all thought someone had told me about the death thing already,” he mused. “Seriously?”

Ray shrugged. “Well, to be fair, same thing happened with me. They figured since I definitely knew necromancy was a thing that I’d somehow know they wouldn’t be dead for good. Didn’t realize I wasn’t in the loop until I’d started panicking about killing Dean because, well…”

“You didn’t know I’d come back and thought you’d lost a friend for good and blamed yourself,” Dean finished dejectedly.

For whatever bitterness Dean held for that, Ray just seemed to shrug it off. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Wow,” Lucah deadpanned, clearly still not in the best of moods. “And you still didn’t think to tell me or Luke.”

Dean fell silent for a moment before blurting out a defense. “I would have looked stupid if you knew already!”

God, this was exhausting… “I- can I just like, go to bed?”, Luke asked.

“Aw, come on!”, Jared objected. “It’s not even that late!”

“I’m just…” He paused to yawn. “I’m done with today. I think I need some sleep to clear my head.”

McJones nodded in agreement as Jared just fell silent. “Alright, fair enough. You can use the room second to the right, usually Barry’s room but I don’t think he’d mind you borrowing it. And if you get hungry in the night, the kitchen’s over there.” McJones pointed just past the couch he was sitting on, towards a surprisingly well kept kitchen. “And Lucah, uh, I- do we have any more guest rooms?”

Jared shrugged. “She could use mine!”, he offered. After a moment, he added “and I can use Austin’s room.”

“He’s close to rematerializing,” McJones pointed out. “Chances are you’ll wake up next to him.”

A wicked smirk. “Not anything I’m unfamiliar with,” Jared assured him.

Lucah rolled her eyes. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll just sleep on the couch after a certain someone calls back.”

A mock annoyed huff from Jared. “Fine, suit yourself.”

Luke didn’t say anything else as he got up and headed down the hall. He was far too drained to even think about anything more. He just threw the door open and only paused as he saw the room.

He’d never known Barry well- really just a friend of a friend- but he’d thought he had a pretty good grasp on the guy. Quiet, clever, reliable. A pretty lowkey guy, and apparently a necromancer. His room, though, wasn’t at all what he would have expected.

It was fairly plain, that wasn’t odd, but the bits of decor it did have seemed oddly sweet. A few fabric flowers in a jar on the windowsill- all shades of purple and white- and a framed photo of a group of people next to it. He recognized almost everyone in the picture- Austin and McJones and Dean and Barry, of course, but Jirard was there too. But, there was another guy there he didn’t recognize at all, along with a figure that seemed to be scribbled out with a black marker.

That was about the only decoration, save for the bed. There were a few stuffed animals on the bed- a stuffed bear, a weird little hamburger-looking one, and what looked like some anime character. That guy with the pointy sunglasses, he’d seen him before but didn’t remember what he was from.

The bed looked really cozy, so he didn’t object to just sliding in and curling up. A strange scent, probably Barry’s, lured him to a quick sleep.