Brother, You Won't Walk It Alone.

It was a flat tire, this time, not a swerve into a tree.

They had been on a back country road for going on eight hours, and Danny, freshly out of a BetterMed, pilled with antibiotics and clammy with sweat, but gaining more and more strength as he slept... and still, his knotted brow worried Dion, who wondered where in the dreamtime his partner was.

Wasn't that the biggest sticking point between them?, Dion asked himself, bitterly. Danny had such frightful dreams and dark, brooding periods of incommunicable radio silence that it sometimes felt like he was deliberately sabotaging things. It was one of the frustrations he had expressed to Michelle, when she had worked for his non-profit.

He sighed, a little. The stretch of green pines running past him was a blur. But he had to reflect, he really missed Michelle. She had had it harder than many people he'd known in this life, and they had never gotten much chance to click beyond his acknowledging her keen, whip-smart acumen for handling business finance; Some would despair at such a capable personality as hers toiling for so long under a shadow. But Michelle had put in her two weeks, right after Christmas, just before his and Danny's life had become infinitely more complicated. The tournament, the World title run... all of it had made his partner start acting out more.

He was watching the green trees blur past, and just feeling enough of the highway hypnosis to start feeling sleepy himself, when he felt the car lurch and heard the burst -

Danny, for his part, was slumbering, dreaming... in two places at once, frankly. There was a part of him that felt like he was walking down a long, wavering, dreamlike hallway, and he was stepping towards a door, an opening into light, and he could faintly hear the crescendo of a crowd chanting for him...

And he stopped, because he swore that he saw her, passing by his shoulder. And he'd been here before... but this time, something in him called for him to wait, to turn around...

And then there was a part of him that was trudging, barefoot up a rocky, country road, mud spattering his black jeans, only a vest covering him against a cutting wind, spattering rain, and he felt more than saw the two figures from his fevre dreams walking beside him... And he wanted to turn back, there, too...

And that was when he felt the car lurch, and heard the burst -

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost, they used to say. All because of a nail.

Dion, tiredness long forgotten as the rental suddenly fishtailed, bit out a little curse and brought the car to a stop with a jerk. Danny sat bolt-upright in the seat, blinking. "What the - "

"Daniel, you alright?"

"Dion, what the fuck, man," he groaned, "Guy gets out of BetterMed with a raging fever and dehydration and you nearly run him off the road."

Dion scoffs a little, straightening his coat lapels, "Okay, dick, it was clearly an accident..." He glanced at the front left tire, rapidly deflating, and groaned... "Check the trunk, I don't know if the rental has a spare..."

"Why the fuck wouldn't it?" Danny snarled, his bristly, adversarial demeanor asserting itself, but he dutifully checked, grunting as he shoved panels aside, before finally letting out a growl at finding it's spot vacant. No spare. He threw up his hands, mouth forming a thin line, and glaring over at Dionysus.

"So, what, do you wanna walk it to the next rest stop?", Danny said, throwing out his arms, "where in the hell are we, except somewhere in the hick-ass South?"

"You're being really rude and unpleasant, I hope you know."

"Oh, well, I'm sorry, maybe it's that I just got out of urgent care and my fucking head is killing me... maybe it's because we're taking this road trip to see your uncle in the big house when we should be training for Evolution - "

"Those two things are kind of counter to each other, unless you want to train from a sickbed -"

"Maybe I've been running ragged ever since Turmoil, ever since Havoc, ever since this past year and sometimes it feels like we have little-to-nothing to show for it... like it doesn't fucking matter what we do... the "current owner on cocaine", always in motion, every event has to be BIGGER hype of Action Wrestling means that we just get swept aside, and we scarcely even get to take a moment to breathe and cherish our wins before we get fucking beaten and bloodied down, and maybe I'm so tired."

Dion listens to his partner's entire exhaustive, blistering rant with a straight face, eyebrows raising a little more with each line, before nodding. "You done?"

Danny sighs, shouldering into his leather jacket, despite the sweltering heat. "Let's just walk," and, despite the fatigue, despite him being noticeably wearing down, he leads the way in front of Dion, marching defiantly.

Trees were giving way to an open field, as the road began to turn more rural. In spite of it all, it turned out to be a nice day, Dion mused to himself. But something ahead of them made Danny stop.

"No..." his voice was small, faraway.

"What?" Dion squinted, looking from him to the road ahead, "...what??"

"No!!" Danny was frothing now, and he flung Dion's restraining arm off him, and pointed fervently in front of him. Dionysus, confused, looked from him to the road in front of him, not seeing the issue with an old, country turnpike with farms and fields in the middle of nowhere, and, at the center of it all, was a fourway stop. A crossroads. Danny snatched his arm away from Dionysus, snarling vehemently, almost feverishly, and swearing under his breath. He started to walk away, back the way he'd come. "Danny... talk to me, man, what is going on with you??"

Danny whirled on him, pointing his finger like the barrel of a gun, and he jabbed it in the direction of the weathered old route sign, shading the grass behind it. "It's happening again!! Don't you see it? That's the - that's the crossroads, that's where this all started! I - I passed over those... twenty-one years ago, and I wished that I could make something of myself... and I found myself shaking hands with the devil... and he told me he could help me get anywhere I wanted to be for five years and - and -"

Dionysus, slowly coming to, if not understanding, then at least some cognizance, softens his confused stance. He lets Danny talk, and vent. "And it was true. It all came true... that's why I've been feeling so off."

Danny turned away from Dionysus, "Twenty-one years ago, I bargained away my soul for a brief glimmer of capricious fame even though I was told that once my time was over I'd never get it again, and now look at me. Look at how I can't hold on to shit, Dion. Things keep falling. It's happening, just like Jason predicted."

Danny, angrily, turned back the way he was going, keeping his distance. "You stay away from me, Dion. I fucking mean it. I'm poison. I'm a bitter, blackhearted, fucked-up narcissist who really would sell his soul just for five years of playing to big crowds, and you don't want any part of being around me. I mean it! Get the fuck away from me! Right now!"

Dion bit his lip, looked off across the field, then at Danny. There was some, instinctual part of him, even that didn't know the diagnosis of the encephalitis that had literally been cooking his friend's brain to a feverish boiling point that was causing his fevre dreams, yet still understood some of the subtext inherent in where Danny went; where the darker parts of his mind sometimes took him. He sighed, and inched closer to Danny.

"Do you see him right now?"

"No," lied Danny, because the answer was yes, over Dion's shoulder, grinning like Mephistopheles, was a gigantic figure clad in black leathers, shoulder propped against the post and cocked on one leg. Jason welcomed him, holding his arms out for an embrace. And he felt his head, clammy from the sweat and he wiped at it, blinking, but then, jaw working, he turned his furious eyes to Dion, to stave off madness.

"I can't speak for my journey in this, Danny, because it's been different in how it's affected my development... but when you talk about how you feel like you're cursed because of this deal you made twenty-one years ago... when you, yourself, talk about how you're living through this curse because you failed and let things fall apart... you're not understanding a pivotal part of this journey, or why we're doing this."

Pointedly trying not to look at the grinning, capering devil over Dion's shoulder, invisible to all the world except Danny... Danny swallowed a big gulp. His upper lip was sweaty, and he felt a wave of weakness so much that he felt he might faint... but he fixed his eyes on Dion.

"I'm poison," he reiterated. "I pushed people away, until they got hurt... god, Alec. Michelle... they're gone."

"It happens. It's a part of life. Some people leave your side during parts of the journey. But I know that the lessons they taught you can resonate with you, if you look at what they teach you. Or the love they've given you."

Danny snorted, but there was something in that that stuck with him. Bitterly, he looked away, not at Dion, but not at Jason behind him, either. "I'm just... tired," he admitted, with all that entailed. "I feel like I've cursed our Tag run, too, bringing you down with it."

"Hey, look at me..." Dion snapped, impatiently for the first time, "You did not curse us. We've been Tag Team champions for a record number of 288 fucking days, Daniel. And you know what, we're going to lose them at some point. But holding on to the Tag titles is never, and has never been what we're about." This made Danny cock an eyebrow at him, but he continued, "We did this as a team. We pushed each other to be better than we were going in. I want you to look at yourself, and tell me, you don't, at the end of the day, feel like you're not a better man than you were in May of 2021, because that's a damn lie."

Dion turned, gesturing back at the car, "Yes, our goal was to improve the Tag division, and we did that. But Daniel, the goal was always for the two of us, who brought out the absolute worst in each other when we fought... to bring out the best in each other when we stood beside each other.

Danny tilted his head at him, "So what did you get out of this?"

Dion just grinned at him, as if he didn't know, he was never going to guess. "Just - we're talking about you, now, and this belief you have that every single step you take plays into this curse idea. You have a complicated legacy, nobody can deny that. But what steps you took to redeem it, that's what's important."

"Tell him," Jason whispered, his tongue actually coming forth forked like a serpent in the god damn garden... Jason was over Danny's shoulder, whispering sibilantly in his ear. He'd stiffened suddenly, feeling the dark presence. "Tell him, Danny... tell him just what thoughts lay in your secret heart. How it sickened you to lose to an unworthy peon such as Johnny Bacchus and how you want, nothing more, than to take your crowbar out, and paint the canvas with his blood. Tell him..."

He squeezed his eyes shut. Jason was still chattering in his ear, but he could also hear Dion. - "Just admit it, Danny... admit how rotten, and evil, and shitty you are inside... admit it..."

- "Just think about it, Danny... think about what we've done, together..."

He opened his eyes, looking to Dion. Dion pointed back, towards this crossroads, which was not deep in the Mississippi Delta, but just a simple rural farmland. Jason wasn't there. It was all an affect in his mind. "That road sign, that crossroad, isn't the one you passed twenty-one years ago... because you aren't travelling the same road anymore, man. Look... at the end of the day, all that matters is that you are able to look at yourself honestly. And maybe you can see you've improved, and maybe you can't. But this is the entire point of the Vanguard, Danny... you aren't walking down this road alone, brother. And maybe that's the only way to get over this crossroads of yours."

Danny, gaining more strength, looked up at Dion, and Dion, eyebrows raised, held out his hand. Danny clasped it.

The two of them walked towards the road again, hoping to make it to town.

Jason's voice still sounded in Danny's ear, over his shoulder, and Danny looked back over his shoulder... "Tell him, hero..." the demon hissed, "Tell him he's wrong, and I was right all along... Tell him, or else, he'll just have to see... when you show your true colors... when you let the Beast out of it's cage, unleash the anger and petulant, stilted rage you harbor deep inside that your career never took off the way you wanted... because you are still cursed... because you are still weak... because you are who you are, and there's nothing you can do about it..."

"Tell him..."

"Tell him..."

Danny took in a deep breath in... but he looked over at Dion, and the two, side by side, passed by the weathered, old, country route sign, and walked over the crossroads to the other side without incident.