No matter how quickly it may seem to happen --

Destruction is a process.

Destruction goes on all around you, everywhere, all the time. Things are ending and beginning and ending, and while some people think that nothing may end or die that has once had a place in Time --

Bullshit, he says, and his laugh is a roar.

Why he laughs --

Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you laugh if you were the process? Everything's moving and flowing, and you're beginning and ending at the same time. Everything is in flux. Everything.

Even you.

Especially you.

And maybe he's a little bit crazy, and maybe he's saner than sane, but mostly what he is is a traveler. What's to be reveled in is the process. It's about the journey, and not the destination.

(The destination is the Eldest Sister.)

The journey happens whether he's there to oversee it or not. So he might as well take the journey, over and over, putting his footprint on all the worlds there are, moving in and out of the stars here and there, thither and yon, because nothing stops. It's all a process. And while he's not going to go on forever --

Almost forever (he thinks; not like he's had a look in the Book) is good enough.

I'm a man of means, by no means:
King of the road.

Oh, he knows every engineer on every train, and all of their children, and all of their names, and Destruction's children (because he has them, and not all of them are his children in the same sense as Kitty Pryde) -- he knows them very well indeed, because they know the process better than anybody else. They comprehend it, whether they want to or not, and mostly they don't.

Suzi Darley.

The moment it happens, he knows --

Because for her, it really is a process. Turnover. That's the point at which the selyn in her system drops below the halfway point. Need for selyn is going to start to become all-encompassing.

It's systemic, it's biological, it's a process.




In an apple orchard in Maine, his head lifts, and

(But the door won't come back, I'm terrified, I have twenty three days of selyn left, and I don't want to die.)

he puts down the bushel basket he's carrying.

Destruction cracks his knuckles, rolls his neck around (and the vertebrae make gunshot sounds), and picks up his basket again and keeps moving.

She's one of his children, and she doesn't want to die.

But everything goes to the Eldest Sister in the end, when the process is done.

Everything.

Even him.

Even you.



Process that.

"Hey, little brother."

"How is she?"

"Well. I'm here." Her eyes are always a little sad, even when she's smiling, but he thinks, or would like to think, that they're a little sadder now.

"I claim her. If she dies, I claim her."

Death shrugs. "Not really up to you, is it?"

"Desire did it, with Marguerite."

"That's different."

"She's mine more than anyone else has ever been mine before. How is it different?"

"Just is."

"Goddamn you, Teleute, you cryptic fucking bitch."

And then he's gone, just in time to miss Kitty sticking her tongue out, and her eyes flaring, and Death grinning, and leaving.

---

His sister holds him, and drags her hooked ring across her thighs. Rats run across his back, and it is somehow comforting.

---

"Cheer up."

Butterflies land on his face like a thousand kisses.

"I'm a fucking awful father, Del."

"Well, yes. You're a decent brother, though."

"Am not."

"Oh, get over yourself."

"What?"

"Grow up."

"What?"

"I did."

---

"My dear brother, I haven't felt this much pull from you in... oh, it must be since you last saw Ishtar. Interesting."

"What are you doing here?"

"You called me," Desire says, amused.

"I don't want you here."

"Ah, but you want something."

They're walking down a sidewalk, the red-haired giant and his slim sibling, and though their pace is leisurely, they have no difficulty keeping up with the racing, wailing police cars.

"Yes," he says finally.

"Then do it."

"I shouldn't."

"How long has it been since you last did something because you wanted to?"

"I... don't know."

"Well, I do. It's been since the last time you and Ishtar fucked."

"Stop it."

"Oh, would you rather I say 'made love'?"

"Stop it."

"I've missed you." It's as gentle as Desire ever is, though its sincerity is no more certain than ever.

---

(Four)

The first one thrashes in his bed until the mask over his mouth and nose shifts. He suffocates.

---

(Three)

The second hangs himself, though how he got the belt, and how he tied it to the grating, and how he got high enough to do it as there's no furniture in the room, and how his neck broke in that particular way as it's entirely the wrong angle, all remain mysteries.

---

(Two)

The third is dismembered, limb by bloody fucking limb.

Starting with his fingers.

---

(One)

The fourth

(Went out the barrel of a gun)

fights

(Primitive, but catharic)

and Destruction could kill him with a touch, but it's strength against strength, speed against speed, wits against wits

(Like daughter, like father)

and this one is strong and fast and smart.

But not strong or fast or smart enough.

He dies when a fist to the nose shoves a spike of bone into his brain, though the punctured lung

(Life's not fair, except when it is)

would have killed him a bit later, and the internal bleeding a bit after that.

---

He watches from the corner of her room, and they don't notice him unless he wants them to, which he doesn't.

(And all that I can say is that she's all I want and all that I live for)