A/N: Usually I'm not a gamer, but I was so impressed with Heavy Rain, I couldn't fight the urge to write something about it. I hope you enjoy...
Title: Elysium
Character POV: Norman Jayden, (Carter Blake,) and the serial killer
Rating: T (for the moment)
Disclaimer: I don't own Heavy Rain or any of its characters
*****Spoilers: This story takes place after the completion of the game if you've managed to keep everyone alive until the bitter end, but accidentally pulled the trigger in the enthused Nathaniel Williams' apartment during his interrogation.
Summary: A letter from the dead drags Norman Jayden back to Philadelphia, PA, but between Triptocaine withdrawal and Blake's witticism, he'll be surprised if he comes out of this with his sanity intact.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
—The sound of rain water rapping on the windowpane, the first few tears of the impending storm as it descended from the heaven. It would wet the many shrivelled, yellow lawns of Boston, Massachusetts, but it wouldn't be nearly enough to quench the summer's thirst.
It was almost always humid in Boston. Not this year, though. The city was parched after three months without rain, desiccated and generally miserable with the sudden change in climate. Nothing was green, just sickly and withered, waiting for winter when the snow would wipe the canvas clear to make way for another summer, a better summer, one which was humid enough to feel in your bones. Boston wanted to be born anew. It liked the rain.
Staring out his living room window, Norman felt oddly at peace.
His return to duty in Washington had been brief before he buckled and requested a short leave to return home, to take a little time off in order to sort out his life before jumping back into the fray. They hadn't hesitated to give it to him either, not Norman Jayden, FBI profiler and poster boy of the bureau since the closing of the Origami Killer case. Scott Shelby was six feet under and Shaun Mars was safe with his father, a fairy tale ending in the public's opinion and a job-well-done in the bureau's.
Turning to the door, Norman shrugged on his raincoat and snatched his umbrella and leather gloves off the closet shelf, pulling himself together before venturing out of the sanctuary of his apartment into the bedlam that was the world.
Slowly, gradually, he'd been weaning off Triptocaine over the course of the last few months, indulging only when needed, a few hours after utilizing the ARI, as was its proper use, before settling down somewhere quiet where he could focus and compose himself. Quitting was out of the question. Tripto and the ARI came hand in hand, something the bureau made sure he understood before signing up as a test subject for their newest toy. Sleek and effective—that's all that mattered to them, all that they wanted to hear about their machine. They warned him, briefly, that there would be side effects, probably a headache or two, nothing he couldn't cure with a hot bath and a good night's rest. No painkillers were permitted, of course, or alcohol or caffeine—no over-the-counter drugs or prescriptions or sedatives, unless he was scheduled for surgery (in which case he would have to hold off on Triptocaine and the ARI for at least a week prior to the operation), or unless he was dying (in which case Triptocaine would be the least of anybody's problems). Triptocaine was absolutely necessary for the wellbeing of the ARI users to counteract the concomitant hallucinations and to help with the stress—and later (the bureau regretted to admit) to prevent the ARI users from surrendering to insanity.
Before getting wind of the first Tripto-related death in the bureau, Norman tried to stop cold turkey. He was robbing himself with Triptocaine—wanted it out of his life completely. That, of course, was before he saw the virtual tanks ambling across his desk, rolling back and forth, cannons aimed at silent enemies that were visible only to themselves. He'd seen other things since that time, old case files hanging open in the air, brief glimpses of the barren desert of Mars, a ball bouncing in the corner—things which prompted him to find a happy medium with Triptocaine and the ARI before he either died or found himself committed to a mental institution.
Even so, the hallucinations were still there—fewer, but still there. Like now, as he climbed down the apartment stairs, watching as a virtual, blue ball bounced up and down merrily on the landing between the third and second floor.
Norman slowed to a halt. Watched. Waited. When nothing particularly interesting or spectacular happened, he resumed his descent and tried to pretend he hadn't seen anything at all. It was easier this way. It was the only way to cope.
Then the ball smashed the stairwell window.
Turning on the spot, halfway down the next set of stairs, he glanced at the landing where the ball once bounced, invisible now, to find that it had left nothing in its wake. The window was still intact, not a scratch or crack. For all it cared, there was never a ball to begin with...
Cautiously, he made his way back up to the landing and felt his vision blur momentarily as he began to panic. The hallucinations had never manifested themselves in such a way before, and if they continued to develop aggressively he would have to tell the bureau and return to Washington for a psychological evaluation. Not that he had much of a choice anyway. Norman's name was gold in the eyes of media—they would be forced to remove him immediately from sight, stow him away in a padded room and pretend he was off on one mission or another in the good, old name of America. That would be the end of him.
Norman didn't quite fancy the idea of spending the remainder of his life in an asylum. He was a young overachiever, an enthusiast and a man dedicated to the wellbeing of the law abiding (and not-so-law-abiding) citizens of the country. He had too much life left to live. Now was not the time to lose it.
He stood there idly for a second and contemplated how difficult it would be to escape a mental institution (which really all depended on how things progressed and how dangerous his superiors figured him to be when he was in a state of duress), before something else occurred to him. He darted up the stairs, unlocked his apartment door and stepped inside to find his living room rug covered in shards of glass and rain water.
For the moment, he ignored said glass and rain water and instead crouched down carefully to pick up the rock sitting meekly on the floor beside his armchair. Carefully, he untied the rope ravelled around the stone and relieved it of the message in its possession.
Unfolding the letter, he glanced briefly at the 'Dear Mr. Norman Jayden', skimming the words to see if he could recognize the handwriting, before moving on to the body of the message:
The dead cannot testify.
Ribbon on the wrist
Save yourself.
God bless,
Nathaniel Williams
He felt his blood run cold, the evening chill corkscrewing down his spine. Slowly, he straightened himself up and stepped over the glass to place the wet letter on the desk in the corner. Then he picked up the phone and made a call to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, all the while hoping his nerves wouldn't win the best of him and cave into the little voice in the back of his mind, the one asking him if now would be a good time to take some Triptocaine.
No, now was not a good time for Triptocaine. Nathaniel Williams was dead. Norman shot him. End of story.
At least, it should've been.
A/N: There will be speech in the next chapter. I promise.