Ian could see the woman through the empty shell of the car in front of him—he had a clear shot. He raised his shotgun and lined the sights up with her chest. She had her own gun half raised, looking around, searching for him but unable to spot him among the vehicle carcasses and low-hanging fog.

"Ian," he heard a voice beside him. "Don't shoot her. You don't have to kill anyone…." It was Anthony. Of course.

"I'm not trying to kill her," he replied quietly, then pulled the trigger.

The woman dropped immediately and Ian heard echoing voices in his head, as though from far away and long ago….

"Did I…did I kill her?" His own voice, sounding terrified.

The answer. "Probably. Honestly, I'm not going to check."

His first kill….

He heard movement behind him and felt a hand roughly grab his shoulder. Panicked, he spun around and fired twice on the man there.

Then he froze.

Shaking.

In the darkness and the fog, he hadn't seen the face of the man he'd just shot.

His gaze slowly lowered to where the man now lay, on his back with his arms splayed to either side, his shirt stained black with the rush of thick blood from his chest.

Anthony.

"No!" Ian repeated the word, over and over again, as he knelt beside his dying friend. Anthony's eyes held only terror and betrayal.

"How…could you…?"

Ian sat bolt upright in his bed, gasping for breath. It was all a dream, he realized. Just his imagination.

Fucking imagination.

He forced his breathing to return to normal, though his heart was still thumping heavily and quickly in his chest. Damn nightmares. They came almost every night now—he should be used to them, honestly.

It was another mutated combination of the first time he ever killed someone and something else. The something else was the wild card—and was what would determine the horror level of the nightmare. At this point, Ian was used to reliving his first kill. He saw it about every night, with the same woman, the same thought of 'I won't kill her,' the same way she would collapse on the ground.

It was always around 5:00 in the morning that Ian Hecox loathed himself the most.

He slumped back onto his pillows, sighing. What had happened to his life?

To his surprise, he heard the faucet water turn on in the bathroom down the hall. Ian frowned. Why was Anthony up?

He sat up again, figuring he might as well find out what Anthony was doing, since it probably would be another half hour till he fell asleep again anyway.

He opened his bedroom door at about the same time Anthony turned the water off. It was dark in the hallway, since neither of them had turned on lights, and Ian could only see Anthony's vague silhouette against the light color of the wall behind him.

"What are you doing up?" they said at the same time.

"I can't sleep," Anthony admitted, his voice slightly husky from tiredness.

"Me neither," Ian sighed. "It's the fucking nightmares again." He hadn't really told Anthony about his sleeping troubles recently, but he knew Anthony could tell most of the time when Ian woke up in the morning with bloodshot eyes or the like.

"Sorry," Anthony said. "I've been….I've been getting them too."

Of course, Ian realized belatedly. Anthony was still—quite strongly—suffering from the effects of his first murder. Of course he was up in the middle of the night. Of course he was getting nightmares now.

"How are you…with that?" Ian asked cautiously.

"Fine," Anthony said curtly, his attitude changing in an instant as he turned away.

Ian sighed and considered just going back to bed, but he knew he couldn't with the knowledge that Anthony was feeling like this. "Anthony, if you need to talk about it, you probably should."

"I don't need to talk about it," Anthony said, his tone still stiff. "Or hell, maybe I do. I don't know. I have no idea what to do with myself or how to feel." By the time he'd finished talking, his voice had lost its edge—instead he sounded bitter and helpless.

"I'm sorry, Anthony," Ian said, unsure of what he could do to help his friend. What had Ian done when he was getting over killing someone? Just…tried to shut his emotions down, really. And maybe drank a little more than he should have. Plus Anthony had always been there when Ian needed him, though he recalled trying hard not to need him. Or at least to pretend he didn't.

In an unexpected display of emotion, Anthony thrust his fist at the wall next to him, making Ian jump as the loud pounding noise echoed through the empty darkness. Anthony pressed his forehead against the wall and put the palm of his left hand up against it as well, his body tight with anger and despair. He tilted his head slightly toward Ian, though Ian was fairly certain his dark gaze was directed at the ground.

He spoke quietly. "When does this go away, Ian? I know it has to."

Though Anthony hadn't specified, Ian knew what he was talking about. The feeling. That miserable self-hatred.

"It's only been five days, Anthony. It's still going to be on your mind for at least another month. I'm sorry," he repeated. He knew his honesty was brutal, but he couldn't lie to Anthony about this.

"I just—I hate it," Anthony said, the volume of his voice raising in his anger. "That man, whoever he was, didn't need to die. And the others? We shot a lot of people—there's no way all of them made it."

"They could have," he replied weakly. Then he said with much more firmness, "Stop doing this to yourself, Anthony." He put a hand on the taller man's shoulder. "You're only making it worse."

"I don't care," Anthony snapped, turning abruptly and shoving Ian off of him. "I don't care about me. I'm not feeling sorry for myself—I did enough of that a few days ago. I'm thinking about that man's family. What if he had a wife, Ian? What about any of those people? They were working for a shitty cause, but that doesn't mean they deserved to be shot. People are just people in the end."

Ian closed his eyes tightly and sucked in a deep breath. He'd tried to avoid thoughts like these crossing his mind, but here Anthony was, pointing them all out. Why did Anthony have to make things harder for Ian, too?

He didn't know where the anger came from, but it rushed in like water from a half-blocked hose and suddenly he had to let it go.

His eyes flicked open and trained on Anthony. He took a threatening step forward and hurled his words directly at Anthony's shadowed face. "You've killed one person, Anthony," he spat. "I've killed five. Five fucking people who didn't deserve to die. Am I over it? No, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about that. I have to live every single fucking day of my life with the knowledge that I've murdered five people—do you think that's easy? Can you finally see that it isn't?" He paused only to take a breath. "In case you haven't gotten it, I have my own shit to deal with. I don't want to have to deal with yours."

Anthony's expression flickered between anger and sympathetic hurt. All the mental walls and masks he usually had up were gone now—by the time his expression settled onto hurt, his eyes could have been those of a tortured puppy.

Anthony backed away from Ian a few steps, back toward his room. "I'm sorry," he said faintly as he turned away, darkness shielding his face from Ian. "I'm sorry, Ian. I didn't—I wasn't trying to—" He shook his head and went into his room once more, pushing the door shut behind him.

Ian sank to the floor and put his face in his hands. He would have to make things worse, wouldn't he? Anthony was already feeling like shit, and of course Ian had to put more guilt on top of that. What a terrible excuse for a friend.

How selfish could he be? Sure, he had killed more people than Anthony had, and he was painfully aware of it every day, but Anthony's incident was more recent, not to mention the fact that Anthony was more emotionally sensitive than Ian.

Ian sighed and stood up, wearily rubbing his face with one hand. He had two options now. He could go back to bed and hope Anthony would forgive him in the morning—which was tempting—or he could go apologize and try to make it up now before it became more awkward tomorrow.

He stepped to Anthony's door and knocked lightly before entering. "Anthony?"

He could see the outline of Anthony's body sitting on the bed with his head hung. He looked up when Ian spoke and replied softly, "Yeah?"

"Um…I'm a dickhead."

Anthony exhaled a quick breath, maybe in faux amusement. "I know. But I—"

"Well, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so harsh. I just—I'm not going to try to justify myself. But I just got pissed. Sorry I'm such an asshole."

Anthony dropped back onto his bed, sighing. "I didn't want to make anything harder for you, Ian. I just feel the need to try to understand why the hell I feel like this, and sometimes—sometimes I think about it too hard. It's okay for you to snap sometimes, Ian—I'll get over it." He paused and cast Ian a side glance. "But you probably should be sorry."

Ian smiled a bit and stepped farther into the room, his foot brushing past something on the floor. Looking down, he made out a dark, vaguely L-shaped object. A pistol.

As he bent down to pick it up, he said, "Not the best treatment of a firearm." He could feel that it wasn't loaded, of course, but he found it a little odd that it was on the floor of all places.

"I had it near my bed, like usual, but I—" He paused, scoffing. "But I haven't particularly wanted to be around those weapons lately. I must have thrown it at some point earlier when I got pissed."

"Yeah," Ian said, for lack of a better thing to say. He personally hadn't gone into much of a weapons denial after his first kill, but he could relate to it. Still….

He went over to where Anthony was still lying on his bed with one hand resting on his chest and the other palm-up on the sheets. As Ian sat down on the edge of the bed, he pressed the grip of the pistol into his friend's hand. "You have a talent, Anthony." He saw the dark-haired man's expression grow immediately bitter, but he kept talking. "I know you don't like it right now. You probably don't want to touch that rifle of yours ever again. But I'm not kidding—you're extraordinary. And think about it—I would be dead if it weren't for your ability. That seems like a vain thing to point out, but I know it can't mean nothing to you. Maybe at some point you can use this…differently than you have to now."

Anthony sat up and was silent for a few moments, staring down at the pistol in his hand. Eventually, he sighed and set it on the bookshelf on the wall next to his bed, still keeping his gaze mostly directed downward in contemplation and forlornness. "It does mean something to me, Ian."

He said it so quietly Ian almost hadn't caught the words. "What does?"

Anthony sighed again as though not wanting to repeat himself. "The fact that you're not dead, dumbass."

"Oh, well, yeah, I know."

Anthony's eyes—mere pools of darkness in the dim wash of lighting from the window—locked on to Ian's. "You're the only thing I have left. Hecox. You're like my brother."

Ian would have liked to say something either eloquent or at least humorous, but instead, he stuttered. "I—I know—knew that. It's—I—" He made a small sound of frustration before slowing down and trying again. "It's the same for me, Anthony. I hope you know that. 'Cause I know I don't…talk about how I feel much."

He could see the right side of Anthony's mouth curve upward into a smile. "Yeah, I really don't either these days. I try not to—" He sighed and the smile slipped from his features. "I've been trying not to think about how I feel lately. I've been too fucked up."

"You're gonna be okay, Anthony," Ian assured him. "I promise."

"I'll believe it when I start feeling normal again," Anthony said with a resigned, though not unhappy, expression.

Ian realized then how sad it was that his usually bright and optimistic friend had, within the last year, descended into a state where his pessimism was more common than the opposite. Anthony could still be optimistic, no doubt, but he and Ian were so busy all the time with things they weren't passionate about, and there was no one around to fuel any optimism. It was so utterly different than the life they led before.

"Well, dude," Ian said through a heavy exhale, "I'm going back to bed. I might actually manage to get some sleep, if I try. You?"

Anthony shrugged, setting himself back into a laying position on the bed. "I don't know. I only was asleep from about eleven-thirty to two. I might fall asleep just because I'm so fucking tired, but I don't know."

"Well, good luck," Ian said, standing up and putting a hand briefly on Anthony's arm. "Just try not to beat yourself up too much, okay? I know you do that from time to time, and it's especially bad now."

"Well it's pretty hard not to," Anthony said. "But…I'll just try to think about something else."

"That's what I'd do," Ian said, heading for the door. "And just—I'm sorry again. I can't believe I blew up at you like that."

Anthony smiled slightly. "It's okay, man. I've dealt with you for a long time. I can handle you losing your temper—it doesn't happen often."

"True," Ian admitted. "'Night, Anthony."

"You too," he replied, closing his eyes in an attempt at repose.

With that, Ian left the room, shutting the door with a gentle, thumping click behind him.

With any luck, they both would get at least another two hours of sleep. Then it would be a typical morning again—and eventually, Anthony would reset his 'normal' and they both would be able to live with what they had done.

As life goes. ●