Misery
"Do it John! Just Do it! Pull the trigger and put me out of my fucking misery!"
Sobbing, Rogue dropped to her knees and buried her face in her arms, hiding the mascara-streaked and tear-filled face that replaced the usually lively and friendly one. The face that once had given him the smiles he needed to at least coast to the next day without a hitch, the face that he adored for so obscenely long even though she didn't belong to him. He knew the voices in her mind mentally berated her actions, shouting that they were weak. He always knew what those voices said to her, not that she ever told him; or anyone else for that matter. She preferred to be silent about her own suffering and immerse herself in others, to forget that she had the voices of murderers, rapists, and wife-beaters locked inside her mind, throwing themselves at the doors to her brain. Her whole body shook with pent up emotions that eviscerated her soul.
John stood there, watching this. He'd come here to kill her, torture her for making him feel these things. These things no one had ever made him undergo; sentiments pushing their normally constrained boundaries. He joined the Brotherhood, he was a soldier, he wasn't meant for attachments of any kind and he still couldn't let her go. He didn't want to want her, be ended up doing it anyway. With the gun in his hand he was determined to end her interference in his life, they had been close friends but that was over now, they had to move on. But he couldn't. Couldn't move on, because that friendship had meant so much to him. The effect it had was, still is overpowering in every sense of the word.
Standing there looking at the disheartened and emotionally shattered girl, he couldn't do it. Couldn't end her life because of something tugging at the back of his brain, it was far too strong and human to be ignored. The rough edges of his own inner voice cut him deep, so deep it would never be seen by another human. He felt the tears of frustration and anger brim near his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. He had never cried, not for anyone or anything. And certainly never for someone he should hate. He would never show this part to her. No one else had ever seen it and no one ever will. It was the promise he had made when he hightailed it out of that godforsaken orphanage. When he left that place, it was like leaving hell. But only to enter a new one.
He let his hand slide down on an angle slowly, almost painstakingly. His arm shook from the inner battle that had erupted in the dormant gaps in his mind. The fantastic horrors few ever even came close to experiencing. And without warning he took a step nearer to Rogue, then another and another, until he was a mere foot from her disheveled from.
The gun in his hand dropped to the side and a bullet when off in the opposite direction with a loud crrraaackkk, hitting a trash can a few seconds later.Following the gun, John fell hard to his knees and looked off to the side almost embarrassed that he had used such a weapon that humanity had created. The same humanity he swore to destroy because of their hypocrisy and intolerance.
Abruptly he wrapped his long arms around the trembling form of Rogue as her tears left spots on his shirt. Little teardrops full of sorrow and pain and suicidal thoughts, encompassing themselves around a girl with a battered book of a life. He didn't say anything, but gripped her tightly against him. And though he'd never show it, he was ashamed, and emotion he had almost never felt in his life, because he had done terrible things to her and all she ever did was love him too much to let him go. He was reluctant to even believe that she loved him as much as she said, after all no one even had and the difficulty of accepting that was overwhelming.
He noticed her muscles go slack and only assumed that she had fallen asleep, ignorant of the sensations that she had caused to erupt within his body and mind. She didn't know the things men would do for her, to her. Her naivety was nearly unbearable. But he knew she was no child, there were things in her past that countered the nine circles of hell tenfold.
Confusion entrapped John's mind as all the memories of when they had been friends, flooded into his mind; her telling him about her dark past and him telling her about his past, lying on the bed just talking and joking around. Thinking back, they had never really thought about what those hours together meant to one another and by the time they did it was far too late. Too late to salvage anything that would constitute as a normal relationship or even friendship. He made his choice, and she made hers and they were sadly at opposite sides of the spectrum, destined to never meet.
Exasperated with the thoughts, John interrupted them by lifting Rogue into his arms, carrying her bridal-style to his jeep. He laid her down in the backseat, and closed the door, lighting up a cigarette with his favorite Zippo. Casting glances at the girl in his backseat, occasionally daring to touch her, daring for this not to be real. He stood there in the darkness, praying for the end of this tunnel of confusion and sorrow and everything that followed them and dragged them down. And for a new morning, a new slate for him and Rogue to start on to appear…