Title: Found in the Ashes

Fandom: The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Rating: Teen and Up

Length: 1,567 words

Characters/Pairings: Billy/Goody

Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for the movie.

Author notes: Written for Challenge #169: Confession at fan_flashworks. Not betaed, because once again I was in a hurry to make it to the challenge deadline, so feel free to point out any issues. ;) Also, most of what I know of US Marines comes from Generation Kill so I apologize for any inaccuracies.

Summary: It’s the twenty-first century and Eric remembers.

He’s in Iraq when it happens. One moment he’s walking over the arid terrain, rifle held high, surveying his sector. The next one he’s crouched on the ground, head between his hands, convulsing under an onslaught of memories.

…rgeant is down! Shots fired did you hear shots fired?

His team, he thinks. They think he's been injured.

Blue uniformed soldiers falling into the mud. The image flashes in front of his eyes, their bodies superimposed to the ones of the hajis he killed.

No, not that word. Sam Chisolm taught him better. Billy too. Oh, god, Billy.

…Sergeant! Eric, goddamit can you hear me? I need a casevac now! I repeat, we need…

The voices.

His team, but not his team. His life, but not his life.

He screams.

They think it’s PTSD.

They’re not wrong (hell, some part of Eric is even glad to finally have a name for it), but that's not his problem right now.

He’s twenty-eight and his name is Eric Chase. Sergeant Eric Chase, US Marine corps, first recon.

He’d been forty-five when he’d died, when Goodnight died.

And he remembers everything.

He remembers being Goodnight Robicheaux, the Angel of Death.

He remembers the machine gun and falling to his death.

He remembers Billy.

Billy probably didn't make it either, he realizes. Eric wonders if the town did.

It's not an hallucination, he knows that much. This is not him going crazy.

He doesn't know how or why but he knows this is all real, his memories are too detailed, too extensive for it to be anything else.

Eric looks into the mirror, at the young man looking back at him, head and face completely shaved and a perfect row of white teeth, no gold-capped incisor.

So familiar yet unfamiliar all at once.

He’s hit by a sense of vertigo.

He takes a shaking breath, sits back on his cot.

He’s looking down at his legs covered in desert camo cargo pants, at the boots at his feet, but what he sees are Union soldiers dying one by one, falling down as Goodnight’s shot reaches them from high.

Part of himself can't help but idly wonder who ever thought sending boys into the field in bright blue uniforms could ever be a good idea.

In his ears there’s still the re-ta-ta-ta of the Gatling gun and Billy’s smile. I knew you’d come back.

Eric presses the palm of his hands against his temples as if to stop the memories from coming out, biting his lips against the pain he feels mounting inside.

They send him home. Medical discharge. He doesn’t press the issue. He’s had enough of pointless wars to last him a few lifetimes.

He gets out of the plane to children, wives and husbands holding welcome home signs and waving American flags. (What part of himself can't help still thinking of as Union flags.)

He shakes his head, redirects his gaze. His eyes travel over the people crowding the airport and end up fixing themselves on… Sam Chisolm.

It’s the same man Goodnight knew, the righteous man who saved him. He's missing the hat and the mustache but he’s still dressed all in black: black jeans and black v-neck sweater. No scars on his neck.

He’s bending down to take a little girl into his arms. A smiling woman follows at a more sedate pace, wheeling her luggage behind her, a toddler against her hip.

A father. A husband too, probably. Who would have thought?

Eric is tempted to just keep on walking and leave the man to his well-deserved happiness.

Just then, Chisolm raises his gaze. For a moment, they’re looking at each other and Eric can see a flash of recognition running through the other man’s eyes.

Oh. So he remembers too.

Eric removed his cap before boarding his flight so he just taps his imaginary hat in recognition.

Then, he hitches his satchel higher over his shoulder and walks toward the exit.

The man used to be a bounty hunter, the best one Eric (Goodnight) had ever met, he can well track down one US Marine if wants to.

He does. A week and a half later, they’re drinking coffee a few blocks down from Eric’s rundown apartment.

Sitting at the table, Eric is holding his cup into both of his hands, as if to warm them.

“Did we win”, he asks, voice low. Did we save them?

Sam nods.

He looks younger up close, Eric thinks, like in the process he misplaced a few years too.

In the process of dying and being reborn, that is.

This can’t all be a coincidence. For both himself and Chisolm to have been brought back.

“And the others, are they-” He’s almost afraid to ask.

“They're here too,” Sam confirms. “I found almost all of them. Or rather… we found each other, like you and I did. Faraday, Horne, Vasquez, Red Harvest.”

His list is missing a name.

Billy’s. The one person Eric wishes to see again the most.

Sam knows it and he’s already moving forward, grabbing Eric’s arm.

“What we lost in the fire,” he calmly says, a promise in his eyes.

“We'll find in the ashes,” Eric finds himself finishing with a nod and an unsteady smile on his lips.

Time passes.

How do you search for someone when you don't know their name, or where in the whole world they may be living?

Hell, how do you do that when you don't even have a picture of them? Eric could get an identikit done, he guesses, but it probably wouldn't be much help in his search.

“Mother-fucking aliens,” Faraday’s outrage can be heard across the street, punctuated by the sound of his guns firing. “Can you believe it? What are we, the Avengers?!?”

Several creative insults in Spanish echo the man’s words.

A few yards to the left, Horne and Red Harvest are joining the fight with what seems like extreme relish.

Eric stares at the honest-to-god aliens crawling all over the city and can scarcely believe it either. Then again it’s not the strangest thing to have ever happened to him, is it?

It’s a bloody mess, that’s what it is. A relentless assault right in the middle of the city. Civilians trapped under collapsed buildings and crushed vehicles, people running around in panic, covered in dust and blood. Scenes from an apocalyptic movie.

Indeed, he and his comrades are not superheroes. Yet, a few blocks from Eric’s position, Sam is busy doing his best Captain America impression and rallying policemen and rescue workers alike in a counterattack.

Sam always had a knack for command. Hell, he’s probably the best commander officer he (either Goodnight or Eric) ever had.

Not that that's saying much.

And, superpowers or not, impossible odds is what they do, what they're good at.

So Eric raises his rifle and calmly takes aim, taking down those gray, long-legged sonsofbitches one after the other.

Then, a laser blast almost takes his head off, coming close enough it would have singed his beard if he still had one.

Eric twists around and watches the culprit fall to the ground, a knife protruding from his distorted ash-colored chest.

Heart in his throat, Eric identifies the trajectory of the throwing knife and turns to find… shining dark eyes and a half-lit cigarette trapped between smirking lips.

He let his hair grow, he stupidly thinks as he watches Billy’s black hair flow in the wind, no longer trapped by his customary hairpin.

Eric grins back.

It’s over. They won.

And, this time around, they’re all alive to celebrate. It makes for a nice change.

Yes, Eric thinks, saving Rose Creek with these men by his side has been the most remarkable thing he’s ever done. It stands to reason they were meant to do it again. To be heroes again.

Eric looks around, his eyes sweeping over the destruction surrounding them. The air is filled with debris and under the sunset light everything has taken on a bronze hue. It reminds him of riding out across the desert, golden brown skies over barren American canyons and wide Iraqi stony plains.

When he looks over to Billy, his body is a dark silhouette against the sun.

He takes a deep, fortifying breath, wishing he had thought of bringing whiskey instead.

“I’m sorry, mon cher,” he says.

“I won't ever leave you again,” he vows, thinking of the night he walked away on him, on his friends.

And: “l love you. I do. Never had the chance to tell you properly. Not that-” He stops himself.

“Not that-” He tries again, thinking better of it. “This doesn't have to mean-” This is a new life, he wants to say, and if you found someone else, found some happiness for yourself, like Chilsom did, I’d never…

But Billy is already moving forward, pressing his lips against Eric’s.

Against his tongue, Billy’s mouth carries the acrid tang of tobacco, for which Eric has since lost the taste for.

He doesn't care.

They stand like that, sharing a kiss for a seemingly endless moment, pressed against each other in the golden light, amid the rubble and chaos of the aftermath of the battle.

“I know, Goody,” Billy says a heartbeat later, detaching himself enough to speak, to smile. “I've always known.”

In the distance, Eric can hear his friends cheer.