Guilt

A casualty one shot. Loosely based around current story lines. Trigger warnings R*pe, mentions of attempted suicide, self harm. also if you get the reference ;)

He hadn't meant it, or rather he had but he no longer did. You see, in the heat of the moment, often, you say something and later on you think, I didn't mean that but at the time you did. This was the spot that our character was in.

Ethan Hardy had always considered himself a good person and when he caught himself behaving in a different manor, he began to worry. In the past, Ethan had experienced periods of low mood and suicidal tendencies, the doctors back then had said this was a teenage thing, it was not. Caleb Knight had been dead for coming up to a month and Ethan had gotten no further in accepting this. He knew this wasn't normal. Many parts of Ethan believed that his brother would walk through the door saying something about the girl he'd hooked up with the night before. This was not the case. Caleb Knight was dead.

At this point, Ethan still trekked to Cal's grave daily. Ethan would ask his brother for advice and though Ethan didn't believe in the divine, Cal's presence was undeniable. He was there. Telling Ethan to be more Cal. This would make Ethan smile, and touch the tattoo he'd gotten at Charlie's stag. He had meant to get it removed but since Cal passed he decided he'd keep the tattoo in memory of him.

The younger of the two brothers hadn't had a a worse time of it than his older brother as such, Cal was kicked out by their father but Ethan was bullied and abused by him. To find that they weren't even that mans, it made Ethan shiver. Ethan had done multiple things he had regretted but this day had been awful. He had not meant to do what he did. Outing someone like that, it just wasn't something he had thought he could do. He remembered how awful it was when his own father found out about his sexuality, what he did could never be justified but he didn't mean it. Not really.

He hadn't meant to hurt Micky, or Jez for that matter, particularly Jez. He knew neither of them had done anything wrong, he had only meant to upset Scott, get him to admit it. He briefly thought he wasn't a bad person but that slipped swiftly from his mind as he thought of all the bad things he had done. The time he'd told that teacher about the boy who touched his underaged best friend, which he'd thought was the right thing but had caused her to cease communication with him. He thought about letting his boyfriend walk home alone down the dark alley where he was mugged and suffered life threatening injuries. He thought about walking away from that girl in the straight who asked for help, who he thought was a fake, that turned up beaten half to death by her father a few days later. Then today outing someone so horrifically and then watching as the life drained from Scott. He felt like an awful human being. He was an awful human being. In some respects he was the worst type of person because he got away with everything.

Not this time. He could not get away with this again.

A small, glinting blade was turning in his hand. Its not like he wasn't going to think about this, he was going to really think about it. In a decisive manor, Ethan walked to the bathroom, he sat on the edge of the bath and turned the hot tap on, letting the bath fill to three quarters of the depth he wanted and then added cold so that he could get in. Ethan sat in the bath, fully clothed his shirt floating away from his body in the water but still occasionally brushed against his skin. His senses were on high alert, every site, sound and smell was amplified, it was overwhelming and heart breaking. He ran his fingers through his short, hair and took a shaky breath. His fingers felt disconnected from his body but he managed to type a simple message to both Charlie and Alicia, the only people that still mattered to him. He said: This is my final statement. I have nothing left. Soon, I will be with Cal. Thank you for your help with life but now I'm done.

He sent the messaged and sunk back into the bath sighing. He used the blade to make a short, deep incision in the upside of his arm. Feeling the relief instantly he continued to carve some words into his arm. He pulled back and read what he had written. The carving said: When you're falling in a forest and there's nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
When you're falling in a forest and there's nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
When you're falling in a forest and there's nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
When you're falling in a forest and there's nobody around
Do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?
Did I even make a sound?

It was obvious that Ethan had done this before and Ethan's arm was now completely covered in words and the blood from the words. He started working on his thighs pushing the blade as deep as he could, the blood was satisfying but not enough. He was so focused on the blood he didn't hear the front door get broken into. He was so overruled by guilt he didn't hear the bathroom door getting broken down, or feel Jez and Iain pull him out. He didn't register arriving at the ED or Connie and Charlie treating him in recess. The only thing he registered was Dylan who was trying to get involved, yelling about how he couldn't kill another one and then a hand holding his. He registered his beating heart and the stop of bleeding and he was left with a hand holding his and more guilt than before.

Cal's voice from when they were younger rang through his head: You kill yourself and I don't think I could forgive you.

A\n: that was awful but there it is.