Title: Everything You Ever
Genre: Drama
Rating: T
Summary: Guilt bleeds red. And when a brand new day arises, he'll wear it with pride.
AN: Just a thought about why he switched to a red outfit. Also, how do you work the Beta stuff on this site, if you don't mind me asking?
A thousand little things…
Anything and everything, great and small, was composed of just that—a thousand little things. The world was made up of atoms, particles, elements, nuclei. People, memories, buildings, huts, poverty. A moment was made from laughs, whispers, sighs, thoughts, feelings, wishes…
Regrets.
A thousand little things. He had been undone by one moment, one helpless minute, which really in retrospective, had been made up of 60 seconds, which each had their own 1,000 milliseconds. He hadn't known it then, but as his enemy turned his own weapon against him with the casual will to use it, Billy had been undone by 60,000 little things.
A helpless moment that had erased a thousand different memories of red hair, a gentle smile, and eyes that were drowning in their own compassionate suffering. Even in her last breaths, her hopes fell away from her lips, the same lips he had once hoped and dreamed would wrap around his name. Her last hope had been misplaced—or rightly placed, he wasn't sure anymore—into a by-gone hero. A hero who couldn't, didn't, wouldn't save her, but animosity meant nothing—he couldn't save her either.
Her body had been weightless in his arms, so light and non-existent that his heart was crushed by the burden of it.
It was only after he left, uncontested by police and hero alike, and left for his – home? Could he call it a home anymore? Wasn't a home someplace where one felt like they belonged, like they were loved and needed? – lab, since that was all that was left.
He didn't bother taking his inventions out of the homeless shelter, Penny's home; what would it matter? He just blinked and suddenly found himself sitting in front of his computer screen, memories blank as to the means, memories laboring for breath as his world collapsed. There had been nothing he could have done, but in his mind, Billy had 60,000 little instants where something could have changed, something he could have done to make things right, to make things to how they were, to make it all not be happening.
Slowly, Billy removed the goggles from his forehead, hating the way the metal bit into his flesh, hating that its tinted surfaces still reflected his aching image. Carefully he placed them on the table after blankly staring at the reflection.
Then not-so-slowly, he removed a glove, then its mate.
The pain was heavy inside of him, the guilt permanently embedding itself into his blood and all he saw was red.
The pain, the guilt, the anger—Billy clenched his teeth and shot up from the seat.
This isn't happening! This isn't what's supposed to happen!
His blood was hot in his body, seizing his limbs like puppetry, and he tossed the chair aside, a bestial growl trapped behind his gnashing teeth, a despairing yell constricted in his throat.
His hands, aimless at first, ached to go for his own throat, but instead flailed until they reached the buttons to his coat. A strangled cry leaked from his whitened lips as he tore the fabric away from his body, listening with sickened pleasure as each button shot away and fell to the hard floor of his lab.
He almost tossed the infernal thing aside when something caught his eye.
His eyes, resenting hating wishing aching regretting loving, slowly fell on the pristine white of his coat, and against all logic, he suddenly hoped that he hadn't seen what he had seen. Maybe, he thought, if it wasn't there, he could pretend that this all hadn't happened. Maybe he could convince himself that he was indeed a mad scientist and that Penny really was okay and all he needed was for someone to tell him he was sick.
If it wasn't there, Billy could survive.
Carefully and with his blood sharply cooling down into ice in his still-burning body, his hands caught the edges of the fabric and stretched it out in front of his eyes.
But there it was.
Absolutely unavoidable.
His body, his bones, grew instantly weary, and Billy came undone by one single little thing: a bloodstain.
The guilt was unavoidable now, and the truth of it brought him to his knees. The power that he once wanted to put into different hands – his and hers – meant nothing, and as he gathered the white coat to his chest, he marveled at how little that mattered to him. The stain – her blood – was still so red and fresh and new.
As he looked at the imperfection on his costume, as his heart crested and pummeled into the tides of his emotions, a stray, drifting thought whispered, "Nothing will ever get this stain out."
And this froze him for a moment, for 60 seconds and 60,000 milliseconds. Then, without humor, without sorrow, without anything, Billy laughed deep from his core until its shook his stomach with muscles that he never remembered using before. He laughed at how utterly lost he was, how lost he always would be, for even still, his mind belonged to only Penny, Penny who he wished to give the world so they could fix the wrongs that had befallen them both, Penny who he had known almost on first glance was the same as him, Penny who he had wired his mind around laundry for. Always Penny, but nevermore.
Something else wet landed by the bloodstain, and though he already knew what it was, it still took him a moment to register that tears were still falling against the contours of his face.
Slowly – so as not to ruin this one thing of Penny's that he could claim as his – his hand brushed against his cheek, then the other, surreally wiping away the moisture as if he was moving through water.
Then, just as carefully, he lowered his wet fingertips to the stain, hovering over it, wondering why it suddenly seemed so important to touch it.
Wondering why he suddenly felt possessive of it.
The thought made him cringe, and he withdrew his hand.
Billy continued to stare at his coat, stained in blood, in guilt, for a thousand more moments. His mind was blank, his body unmoving, and his eyes not really seeing anything.
It wasn't until a flash of red hair passed his imagining gaze, that he blinked himself back into reality, red hair falling into place to be forever a spot on his uniform. Unsure of why, his finger itched to touch his guilt again, but this time, he didn't have the heart to deny himself, to deny the villain in him from claiming his first success, his first burden.
After all, his hands were already stained, soaked.
Then quite to his surprise, the world opened up, and Billy was looking down into an abyss of his own making. What should he do? What was there to do?
What now?
Would Dr. Horrible continue? Would he perish? Would he keep trying to create an empire even without Penny there to share it with? Would that honor or spit on her memory?
What now?
His body was shaking. Billy finally let go of his death-grip on the fabric – of his only possession of Penny's – and buried his haunted face into his hands.
But immediately, he pulled away and stared in horror at the abrupt blood-coated hands that chilled his face with the wetness. His bones began to tremble within his skin, and his lips moved to words that could never express the sudden sublime terror that seized him. He could feel the crimson liquid on his face where his once-dry hands touched; he could see the blood drip from his fingertips, and yet it didn't fall onto the ground.
Every drip, however, cascaded from his palms, which fell like tears from his face, and fell and colored the white lab coat like a drop of watercolor paint on damp paper. It was a readied canvas, bleeding itself into redness, and even as it was happening, Billy knew that if he blinked it would disappear.
He couldn't tear his gaze away.
He didn't understand it, but he knew that he had to see this, this illusion from his own mind, to see his guilt, his burden, his legacy. He had to see his future, to hear Penny's final words.
"Billy… Is that you…?"
And yet, just as the final threads were bleeding, dying, he shut his eyes, closed himself from the world, from his remorse and growing madness.
His heavy breaths and gentle moans raked his body, and Billy counted a thousand small things. One dream, one hope, one freeze ray, one petition, one mistake, one uniform, one burden, one way.
Billy knew that the papers would say he killed her, and he wasn't sure if they would be right or not. He knew that the ELE would accept him as consequence.
Softly, Billy laughed.
His outfit was ruined – Billy was ruined - ; he had nothing to wear for the induction.
His laughter gradually sounded like tears.
He couldn't wear white anymore, not after so much had changed. He had always been a romantic at heart – "Killing's not elegant or creative; it's not my style" – and Penny's laughter danced behind her red hair, her blood, behind red curtain that had fallen and closed.
Yes, Dr. Horrible thought, red was the perfect color. How could he have ever thought otherwise?
Billy's guilt bled red, and tomorrow, Dr. Horrible would wear it proudly.
His weeping folded into itself until it was laughter once again, and with newfound strength, Dr. Horrible lifted himself from his pathetic position on the laboratory floor. He straightened himself out as he buried his guilt deep within his chest. Billy, guilt, the two were synonymous, he thought as he proudly buried the two deep within.
With a soft, victorious smile, he reached for the pair of forgotten goggles on the computer desk and stared at his dark reflection within them. A dark, blackened version of himself smirked back at him. His face still wore despair, but though he wore it well, the smirk suited him best, he thought.
And black. Red and black suited him well, Dr. Horrible decided.
A thousand little things undid Billy, and a thousand little more things created Dr. Horrible in his place.
With careless care, he placed the goggles back onto his face, prepared for the world, since the world was now powerless, for what could it take from a man who now had nothing to lose?
Strange how much power there was in being alone.
- Fin -