AN: This is just the one-shot that every Degrassi writer has written. The rewrite of the Knife Scene in "All Falls Down".
Warnings:
Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi.
The Knife
It glints harshly in the dim light. It makes the whole thing seem unreal. Fitz couldn't have a knife. Not here. Not now. Not possible.
But he does. Definitely does. Right there. In his hand.
He's advancing now. Step, taunt, step. Words come tumbling out. Apologies and desperate pleas. Begging for life.
"Heard that before." and the words are cold. Harsh. Tired. Of this. Of him. Of fighting.
"This time I mean it." And, god, does he mean it. He never wanted this. He just wanted it to stop too. He just did it wrong. He tries to say this. To convince Fitz that this doesn't have to happen. But the words won't come out. Won't rush past trembling lips. He's shaking now, tremors that shudder through him. From the top of his head down his spine to the tips of his toes. Tears well in his emerald eyes, blur his vision, but refuse to fall.
Step, taunt, step. The knife glints. Heart thunders heavily in his chest. Lungs take in slight, fluttering breaths that do nothing to ease the frantic panic clawing into him. Step, taunt, step. Glint. Breathe.
The movement is lightning fast and serpentine smooth. A flash of light of the blade. A deep, penetrating pain that starts somewhere below the ribs and spreads like fire. Every breath burns like acid. Every. Single. Shallow. Breath.
The knife makes a sickening, sucking slurp as Fitz draws it out. It gleams crimson now, even as the police storm in shouting in what sounds like a foreign language unheard by man. Eli collapses, knees far too weak to hold his weight. Clare rushes to his side, eyes full of worry and shedding tears in his name. Her hand reaches out and touches him; Eli winces, breathes in more acidic air, coughs up blood. She pulls away quickly, apologies dancing in her eyes, hand stained red.
Crimson. Red. Raging fire. Burning acid.
Blood.
Fitz stabbed him. Stabbed. Him. Stabbed. With a knife. The knife that was in his hand. The knife now lying, discarded and gory, on the floor.
Is he going to die? Is. He. Going. To. Die?
He used to welcome the thought. Right after. After Julia. Right before. Before Clare.
But he doesn't want to die. He always thought he wouldn't care, but he does. He wants to live.
Desperately.
More shouts. More screams. Clare's sobbing, hands bloody and useless at her sides. The police are swarming him and Fitz. Even split. Fitz is being jerked around and away. Eli's lying still as death, a growing pool of his life spilling out all around him. There are hands roaming over him rather frantically. And hoarse screams that sound like "help him" and sound like Clare. More sirens. More flashing lights. More words that aren't making the slightest sense.
Paramedics. He recognizes the uniforms. The bag. The gurney. It's all for him. Because he's dying. Because Fitz stabbed him and he's dying.
It hurts when they touch him. Move him. Breathe near him. They're rushing around, trying to save him.
Eli wonders if he could tell them that he can't be saved. That this all some sort of twisted karma for getting Julia killed. He gets to die too. Right in front of his reason to live.
The irony.
Speckles of empty black and ruby red and sickly yellow spot his vision and he's dying and he doesn't want to go.
Darkness closes in around him. Death comes forward to embrace him.
And Eli doesn't want to die.
"We lost him!" a paramedic calls, hands out and waiting for the paddles. "Clear!"
The paddles slam down and send an electric current arcing through Eli's limp and suddenly lifeless body. Clare can't breathe. Can't even begin to imagine that Eli is gone.
"Clear!"
Eli's dead.
"Clear!"
Eli's dead.
"Clear!"
Eli's dead.
"Got him!"
And now he's not. He's lying on the gurney, so weak and helpless and dying, as they rush him from the school. And Clare's running with them because it's Eli and he's all alone without her.
Students and teachers are staring out the macabre scene with growing horror as the reality hits home.
Fitz had a knife. Here. And he used it.
And Eli is dying.
And nothing will ever make that okay.
They load him up into the ambulance and Clare wants to go to but knows she can't follow. Not with him there. She'll only be in the way. She'll only risk his life. She could kill him.
So she staggers to a stop and watches the flashing lights drive away and fade. Simpson is there in a flash, rushing kids home and putting his suit jacket over her shoulders while the police ask questions that she can't answer. Her parents are gone, out of town. Trying to fix their fractured marriage. But they're on their way now.
They'll get here too late though. They couldn't save her from this. This happened. This happened right in front of her. And she might have just watched her date kill her boyfriend.
And they can't make that better.
It's not okay.
It's not Fitz's first time in a cop-car. It's not the first time he's been under arrest. It's not the first time he's posed with that moronic card with his name written in large, block letters while they take his picture. It's not the first time a couple of police officers have thrown him roughly into a jail cell.
But it's the first time he's had blood on his hands.
Real, soaked to the bone, hands covered in crimson gloves, blood on his hands.
They'd taken photos of his hands like that. Evidence of his crime. His murder.
The one he'd never had any intention of actually committing.
He just wanted to scare Eli. To make him realize that sometimes it's not losing to make peace. That it's not weakness to admit that you can be weak. He just wanted to end this stupid feud. To call a cease fire, to make him surrender.
To stop the war.
To make it all stop. Just stop.
But something went wrong. Someone moved the wrong way.
And Eli's blood is on his hands.
It's a frightening, shocking, horrifying realization.
He stabbed Eli.
Stabbed. Him.
His blood on his hands.
Fitz turns and is sick. Violently. Until there's nothing left in his stomach.
The faucet water isn't strong enough. The crimson stain remains. It refuses to wash clean.
To cleanse him of the taint of his crimes.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows, abstractly, that the blood isn't there anymore. That's it's all in his head.
But he can still see it. Coating his hands. Ruby red and slick and sticky.
Eli's blood on his hands.
AN: And that's the end. I left Eli's ending ambiguous on purpose. If you want to think he died on the way to the hospital, he died. If you want him to live, he lives. I almost wrote a sequel, but then I decided that it works just fine like this. I might do the sequel if you guys really want one though...