A/N: I don't have the time or patience to write out the full descent into madness I imagine Billy must go through after Act 3, but this little blurb just begged to be written. It's short and stream of consciousness, but I hope you like it. Reviews are always appreciated.
Red
Penny once told me that even in the darkness, every color could be found. She was wrong. There's only one color in the darkness, and it's red. Red is everywhere. My labcoat, my hands, behind the lenses of my eyes. Its the only thing I see these days. Its the only thing that I feel. It's all that I have left of her.
It's not just Penny's blood that covers me. All of my own blood is on the outside now too. The rest of me is drained. Like a foot getting pins and needles from having the circulation cut off, every morning I get up and drag me with me; a numb, tingling, static filled lump of useless skin.
I thought I was evil before? I know I am now. I am a sociopath, I'm sick, and it's my own damn fault. I wanted the world to burn; scarlet flames casting light to eradicate the world's shadows! I wanted to be the one to feed and stoke the fire, to build a new world from the ashes of the old one! I was a fool. Nothing of worth can be built using ashes. They'd just slip through the cracks between my fingers - just like the blood. Just like all of my chances.
I'm older now - so much older - and I'm wiser. I've already struck the match, the fire can't be undone. All I can do now is try to burn the world down with me.
And this, this desire is truly what's evil in me. I never understood that before. Evil isn't about changing the world. It isn't about caring what happens and fixing society. It's about apathy. It's about setting more fires just because you can. About mercilessly slaughtering innocent victim after innocent victim, just to see if maybe this time someone will bleed blue. No one ever does. They all remind me of Penny.
Irony must be as cruel as I've become; Penny is all that is left in this world without her. Her and her red. Her red hair and red lips and her red gaping wounds that I made (I made) all the time all around me. Every last hellfire lit, a red roadside flare, burning for her (help me, help me). Can she see them in heaven? I hope not.
She wouldn't like what I've done, who I've become in her absence.
The truth is that it's hard not to paint the town red. Not when I'm walking around covered in it.