This Is What It Feels Like To Fly
Summary: "This is what it feels like to fly," Cassidy thinks. And then he hits the ground.
Pairings: None
Rating: K
Ties in to: "Not Pictured"
Word Count: 522
Genres: Angst, Tragedy
Disclaimer: Don't. Own. Anything.
Cassidy looks at Veronica, sees the horror, the fear, the rage in her eyes. All emotions are warring for first place. All emotions are swirling in her teary eyes. The gun sways in her hand, wobbles unsteadily. She screams at him even as the other boy, someone he once said was a friend, begs her to put the (useless) weapon down. They don't know that the thing was never loaded.
He looks to the sky, to the now invisible remnants of the plane still hovering, and blinks. It means nothing more to him than an accomplished goal. A reached objective.
But then he looks to her again. He sees her emotional reaction to something he's done and inside, he breaks.
Not out of grief for her, not out of remorse for what he's done, but because she feels. Anything. Everything.
He killed her father and now she's sad. She's torn up. She's broken. And he knows that if the situation were reversed, he wouldn't be able to shed a tear. He wouldn't feel a thing.
That's when he finally sees it. His undoing.
He was raised this way. He was raised to be hollow, to be nothing. He was raised to be emotionless, to not care. He had to. To survive. But now it means he can't live.
He can't feel a thing. Not for her, not for the boy standing next to her, not for the girl he wanted to love. Not for anyone. Not for anything.
So he does the only thing he can do.
He walks to the ledge. He crawls up on to it. The cement of the ledge feels strangely solid under his feet.
He asks them, a hidden plea trapped inside the words, if there's any reason for him not to. He wishes there was, but knows there isn't.
He knows.
He looks down, sees the cold, quiet ground beneath him. It doesn't look so bad, he thinks. It will be over soon, he thinks.
He looks over at them one last time. They can't even get his name right. No one, it seemed, ever could. Maybe there was more reason to that then he'd ever thought. Before now. Before the end.
The end. The idea swirls madly in his mind, both tempting and haunting him. The end.
He smiles. The end. The end is near. The idea changes. Now it wants to comfort him.
He jumps. He hears a scream, someone yelling, but it's soon drowned out by the sound of the air rushing past his ears. The air that swallows him whole like nothing ever has. Like nothing ever will again.
The rushing air fills him, completes him. For the first time, for the last time, he feels whole.
This is what it feels like to fly, he thinks.
Crack.
And just like that, the ground replaces the air and swallows him whole.