friedkinasty:

i have many obscure john ships… here, have one of them.

38:
“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” 

The beach, the sunset and Merle all disappear, and there is only white void. John stands, and has a look around. The formless, shapeless white seems to stretch on forever, and the only objects there besides him are numerous colorful disks floating about. They’re planes, John realizes. A silly impulse wants him to grab one and pop it in his mouth, but he doesn’t.

Then something… shifts, something changes, and John is no longer alone in the void. Across from him, a Presence has manifested. It’s hard to see, white against white, impossible to see, John reckons, for a normal human. But John isn’t a normal human, so he can make out a person-shaped outline, if he squints.

Besides, he’s felt this Presence before, a long, long time ago.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says. His bitterness barely carries in this void.

“You remember me.” The Presence sounds pleased.

John shrugs. He had forgotten. It’s just now coming back to him that his vendetta was against a person, this person, and not just the abstract concept of eternity. Sinking into the mass of the Hunger, becoming one with trillions of others, merging and forgoing his own individuality, most of his personal memories had faded, leaving only his discontent behind. Now, in death, he’s a person again, and he remembers.

“Why are all these planes here?” he asks.

The Presence explains it to him. Apparently they’ve had the same talk with Merle and his friends a short while ago. They’ve given the Presence a name, Jeff but also Andrew… Jeffandrew.

“That’s ridiculous,” John says. The Presence didn’t have a name when he first met them, and they were disguised as a human then. John now again remembers taking the Presence home. How the Presence told him he was “one of the most interesting stories here… your world’s gone so bad, but you’re still good, you’re still bright…” Well, he was different then.

He remembers how the Presence showed him eternity. How they shushed him when he screamed, stroked his hair when he cried, held him in his catatonia. Turns out mortal humans weren’t and aren’t meant to view the fullness of space and time all at once.

It was meant to be a favor.

“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” Jeffandrew asks. They reach out two glistening, astral non-hands and cradle John’s face in them. It feels… good. Like being close to the Light of Creation again. John’s still craving it even now; he almost huddles closer. “You’ve been thinking about meeting me again.”

“Oh, yes.” The way John imagined this would go is very different from the reality of the situation. Ideally, he’d have all his powers from the Hunger – ideally he’d have grown so powerful as to rip reality to shreds and expose the cruel, capricious creator who made this universe and then abandoned it to rot. Now he’s just a dead human, brought here by Jeffandrew’s will.

He squints again to get a good look at the barely visible outline of a person before him, then he swings and punches where the jaw would be.

His fist connects with something, and Jeffandrew reels back, their non-hands flying up to their non-face. “That was uncalled for,” they say.

“It’s the least I could do.” John shakes the life back into his hand and grimaces. He’d thought this would be some sort of hugely cathartic moment, but it isn’t. After everything that happened, this… just isn’t really what he wants anymore.

“That was for making the universe shitty,” he says nonetheless, and Jeffandrew chuckles.

“Still full of rage, huh?” they ask. “You’re still my favorite anyway.”

John bites his lips. Damn. That shouldn’t make him blush after all these eons.

“John, listen,” Jeffandrew continues, “I have an offer to make.”

Jeffandrew suddenly has an object in their hands, an object that John’s way too familiar with: they’re holding the Light of Creation.

“Gimme it.” The words are out of John’s mouth before he can stop them. His whole body clamors loudly with craving. He’s needed this for so long.

Jeffandrew clutches it a little tighter. “I will give you it,” they say, to John’s considerable surprise, “but not to use like you did. John, come with me, and I’ll show you how the Light is meant to be used. Come with me and join my people and make stuff with us. I know you can do it. I watched you make your little pet project, I watched you tear through my planar systems… you definitely have it in you to create and destroy like one of us.”

John holds a breath that, being dead, he doesn’t need to take. He furtively looks around the void for a clue that this is a prank. He was expecting some kind of punishment to happen after death, not… this. “I don’t… why are you offering me this?”

Jeffandrew shrugs their astral non-shoulders. “Honestly, it’s a matter of pride at this point. I mean, you called my planar systems badly constructed. You called me cruel, aloof, merciless and a dozen other things. I really just want to give you this Light and see you do better.”

“Oh?” A challenge. That’s more like it.

“And my people totally don’t have a bet going on how you’ll do.”

“Is that so.” John straightens his back. Well, he’s dead. He has nowhere else to go. It sounds like an enormous responsibility, telling his own stories, creating his own planar systems, but isn’t this, in a way, the kind of thing he always wanted? A chance to get to do better? “Fine, lead the way, Jeff…andrew.”

Jeffandrew tucks the Light under their non-arm and extends the other non-hand to John. “Great, let’s go then. I have so much to show you.”