mythomagically-delicious:

TAZ Episode 69: The Day of Story and Song AU where Merle calls John through one of his Bond Rolls.

–

“I call… John!”

The form before him shimmers and ripples but in the end stays the same as it had been, as instead a portal opens up before him, and he sees the form of his friend. The man he’d met and talked with for some thirty-odd years, who always killed him at the end of the day. The man he’d embraced not so long ago as he was destroyed by the entity he’d encouraged and created.

“Merle–I never expected. That is to say, what do you need me to do?”

“Is that your question?” 

John smiles with only half his mouth, but a chuckle escapes nonetheless. His suit is hanging from him in shreds and his face still has colored streaks of light pulsing through it, but his smile is genuine.

“I need you to motivate that big Shadow Not-John over there to break apart, or maybe do the orbs. Think you can handle that?”

John surveys the scene. “Is that your question?” he asks, the smile still in place as he turns, chess pieces materializing in the air next to him. The Black King and the White Knight. He ignites them with that familiar black fire, and throws them forward, capturing two of the remaining orbs.

The shadow creature screams as they are destroyed, and John turns back to Merle, the smile still faintly there, though his eyes betrayed his fear. “I’m glad I was finally able to reciprocate your help, Merle. Thought it will never be enough, will it? After all the destruction I’ve caused?”

He starts floating back, but Merle catches his hand for just a moment before John disappears.

“Hey, if it helps, I forgive ya, John"

“Why?” John questions, his grip already slipping even as Merle clutches tighter.

“That’s what friends are for,” Merle smiles and lets go, watching John’s face spasm in response, his next words unknown and lost as the portal swallows him up.

–

They don’t talk about the moment on the Starblaster when Merle is brought to the beach. He sits beside John, as informal as he’s ever seen him, digging his toes into the sand, staring out at the sunset as the ocean laps at the shore. 

Merle sets his hand atop of John’s where it rests on the sand, and together they sit in silence as the ocean recedes and the sun falls slowly away. 

The room they spent countless cycles in, with the pale orange light of a sun ever holding at twilight, never allowed to set and begin a new day, was gone now. Now they were on the ever-changing landscape of the beach. Never the same view, never the same sunset, never the same spray rising from the ocean and foaming on the waves. 

John turned his hand around to hold Merle’s back, and they sat in silence, shoulders brushing slightly, as the moment stretched. 

Once the sun disappeared under the horizon, so did John. He was left alone in the dim evening for a moment longer, missing the feeling of his friend’s fingers cradling his own, missing the wasted opportunity and waste of a man who hadn’t been satisfied with his life until it was over. He let out a sigh as he laid back in the sand, and soon a bright light returned him to the Starblaster as if nothing had ever happened.

Perhaps nothing had. But in days to come he’d sit out on the beach and watch the sunset and remember his friend.  He wasn’t a man that lived with regrets or stayed stuck in the past, but sometimes he would sit out there and let himself wish, just that once, for what could have been.