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Sun burning up in the sky, Smoke banked on dying outside of the juke joint that he bet and lost their lives on. Free, for the last if not the first time; Annie and his baby holding out their hands to guide him across the veil.
But when Smoke shut his eyes surrounded by the corpses of white men, he woke up surrounded by the corpses of white men. Sun a little higher. Soft parts of the carcasses missing.
I can't live in this world without you is what he had told Stack's lifeless body, before it started moving again.
Turns out he can't die in it, either.
He lets Stack go, but of course he doesn't go all that far.
People in Mississippi know him; Smoke doesn't really want to be known. People in Chicago want to kill him, which is different, so Smoke goes back to Chicago.
The Irish turn up dead before Smoke settles down enough to cross paths with them. Anybody willing to talk to him pins it on the Italians, because the explanation is easy. Bad blood, or just bad information. When Smoke goes looking for the Italians—or puts himself in places where they can come looking for him—they get wiped out in the kind of bloody mess people won't even whisper about.
Then his baby brother is at his door, all cleaned-up in a new, European suit.
"Gonna invite me in?" Stack asks, smile glinting golden in the dark, because they're never not going to be in the dark. Not anymore.
Their mama gave them their names, while she was still alive to. Not Elijah or Elias, but smoke-stack, split down the middle like they were. One soul separated by a couple of minutes and into two bodies.
Smoke came into the world first—two minutes older still older—and that's how it was supposed to be for the rest of their lives. Smoke standing in the way of Stack and the hard thing. He'd taken care of their daddy while Stack was out cold; covered up the body; packed their bags. By the time Stack woke up, they just had to go. None of it was on him. Not a drop of blood.
He's always understood himself through him; what he had to do for him. Looking into Stack's face never felt like looking into a mirror—more like he knew what he looked like because he knew what Stack looked like. Now, sitting at opposite ends of this tiny-ass room—Smoke's going-stale mojo bag hanging on the outside of his clothes so Stack doesn't get any ideas—he can't hardly recognise himself.
Just looking at him, turning his head to the side, Stack's eyes gleam like the dying coals of a fire, no water and glowing long after you'd have wanted them to go out. The city they ran to together invites itself in with night sounds and smells outside the window, and so begins Stack's long task of sweet-talk.
"You really gonna make me grow older than my older brother?" Stack asks him, pleads with him, tries to trick him.
The devil in his brother's voice, but still his brother's voice. There's a stake held loosely in Smoke's hand, but he already couldn't use it once. He could kill their daddy, he could kill his wife, but teeth to his neck, he couldn't kill his baby brother.
Not even to save their soul.
"You ain't never gonna be older than me," Smoke says. "You're dead."
Stack keeps stopping by. People in bars keep muttering about blood and dead-moving bodies. Trouble keeps finding Smoke, and he looks for it when it doesn't. He tries not to worry about what Stack is doing—they've always been good at staying on their feet, and the only threat left for him is the rising sun.
For Smoke: no Irish, no Italians, no Klansmen in Chicago, but there are still people who've wronged him, and if there isn't, there are always people to wrong.
Stack finds him by the smell of his blood, Smoke is sure, bleeding out all over his shitty room above the bar. Permission once is enough, so one moment Smoke is propped up against the wall watching his wounds alone, and the next Stack is kneeling right next to him; knees in the blood like he's praying, if whatever Stack is can still pray.
"Smoke," Stack grits out, putting a clawed hand to the hole in Smoke's side, opposite of the scar Smoke was hoping would kill him that day in the sun. "You gotta stop with this fucking bullshit."
Smoke didn't die by the teeth of a vampire and he didn't die by the noose of a Klansman and Stack never would've brought himself to kill their daddy, so he's not about to kill him. Not even to save him; not if Smoke doesn't ask.
Not that Stack doesn't try.
The cold gets its hands on Smoke's body and right here is the devil speaking through his brother, whispering rapturous about fucking togetherness and unity and so much bullshit about belonging, until something changes, black creeping into Smoke's vision so he can't really see him, but he can hear him.
"I—I don't know a world without you, Elijah," his brother's voice cracks, desperation knocking on doors and begging to be let in. "Please, please don't do this. Please."
Smoke wasn't gonna justify, told himself he wasn't ever going to apologise, but speaks anyway. "I—can't," he chokes out, barely keeping his eyes open, seeing only two red lights in the dark. "I got—I got family waiting, Stack, I want, I want to—"
"Your family right here," Stack pleads the way he did as a kid; his hands covered in Smoke's blood the way it never was back then. "I've been right here."
And outside the sun sets, or maybe it rises—either way, the light doesn't reach them in here. Smoke thought that he'd see Annie. His daughter. Everybody that his love wasn't enough to save. He doesn't. In the dark, Stack slumps over his body and sobs.
Smoke wakes up in a body that feels dead, which means he isn't dead. Bandages wrap tight around his torso, stiff with dried blood, but he isn't dead.
He's in bed again, looking at the ceiling that has a sky behind it. "Thought you'd do it while I was out," he rasps with barely a voice, but he knows that the room isn't empty.
Stack appears at the bedside. The curtains are drawn, heat building with no light, but Smoke could've told it was daytime by the way Stack moves—wary, extra thoughtful, like the whole world is somewhere he doesn't belong. For the rest of forever, he won't belong anywhere.
"Couldn't put that on you," Stack says, sounding exhausted, from the sun outside these walls or from looking into Smoke's face; older now, so Stack must feel older, too.
It's all on me, Smoke thinks to say. I couldn't keep you safe, and then I couldn't kill you, so from the beginning to the never-end, it's gonna be on me. But looking up at his brother, the smell of blood smothering them, he thinks only that he can't keep putting this on him, either.
Two minutes between them. Life and death. Smoke is tired of separation. He's just tired.
He closes his fist around the mojo bag and snaps the leather cord around his neck, with all his strength flinging it across the room. Stack stares at him, red eyes lighting like a rolled cigarette, or like the fire Stack lit to burn the house down with their daddy in it; earning the names their mama gave them. In them, Smoke can still see himself. He just refused to look.
"This ain't gonna hurt," Stack says, stepping closer.
"Shut the fuck up, it's gonna hurt," Smoke bites out, and Stack laughs. "But if you can take it," he says, "then I can."