It wasn't for lack of trying.
It wasn't because he had slacked off, or because he didn't invest every waking moment in the chance that he would succeed.
It wasn't that… It just couldn't be done.
No matter how many times he ran through his calculations, he came to the unavoidable, inevitable... horrible conclusion that no, no matter how much he might wish it, it is impossible. The laws of nature do not shift for anybody; bend they might, but alter they cannot. And the laws of nature say that dead people stay dead. They don't change. Things like that don't happen.
Not for him.
Night after sleepless night, buried in his work, tinkering with inventions, scribbling equations furiously on the huge whiteboard adorning one wall; lesser people might have collapsed from exhaustion… Not he. Not when there was so much riding on this chance to become human again. It drove him. There was naught but sound and fury, tirelessly attacking this problem of monumental importance. Nothing else mattered.
Occasionally, his seemingly endless energy would abruptly cease, and he would collapse. It was during these pseudo-calms that he would be tended to: Made to eat and drink, be washed, and, if he was lucky, lapse into unconsciousness, where he was not vulnerable to himself; where he could not force his body to work further, further pushing the bounds of what a human body could physically accomplish.
These periods of induced sleep could not truly be called "blessed", however; while the body rested, the mind was tormented. Dreams of that fateful day, when his inventions failed, when his nerve failed, and when the world he wanted lay at his feet, bleeding on his otherwise immaculately-kept white boots. Faces would surround him, mocking him, imploring him, until he would run, run away from the voices that would never cease. Without fail, he would snap open his eyes, gasping for breath, his entire body covered with sweat.
He returns to work.
The cycle repeats.
Again.
And again.
He justifies it all. There is no other way, he says. If I stop my work, then he will win. He cannot win. If he wins then I am dead.
No one hears him. No one would; no one ever had reason to be with him during these stages of manic obsession. Even his assistant stayed well clear of him; unless he saw him collapsed on the closed-circuit monitor he had secretly installed to keep tabs on his increasingly deranged boss. Then he scurried in, attended to his employer, and scurried out before the ravings began anew.
Though, if he listened to them, he might discern their meaning.
The mutterings that refer not to any external threat, but instead to the most powerful enemy he could face.
Absorbed in his work, he can hang on. Given purpose, he can hold out against the enveloping darkness. No longer does he go out to meetings; for these he must put on his façade, and each time the mask goes on it becomes a little more difficult to remove, and it leaves a little bit behind. The red coat and black accessories, worn so proudly when he was still numb, lay in the corner, stiff from disuse. As much as possible, he avoids even looking at the physical representation of everything he ever—
*bzzzt bzzzt*
He glances at the oversized armchair, whereupon lies an antiquated cell phone.
*bzzzt bzzzt*
No doubt, another message from his former idol, summoning him to another session of utter inconsequence.
*bzzzt bzzzt*
Enough, he thinks. There is no time for such trivialities. I must save myself.
*bzzzt bzzzt*
He returns to his work.
*bzzzt bzzzt*
It is useless. He cannot concentrate with such a distraction. Removing himself from the workbench, he opens the door to the laboratory and allows natural light to fall upon his face for the first time in months. His assistant excitedly runs up to him… and then just as quickly backs away upon seeing his face. This is not a time for celebration, it says.
Donning his nondescript shirt and hoodie, he exits the apartment. It is late evening; the final rays of sun are retreating over the horizon. Even the sun is slipping away from me, he muses. Even that's slipping away.
Almost as like a dream, he glides through the city, noticing no one, noticed by no one. Passing by the laundromat he used to cherish, he feels nothing, sparing not even a glance for the old Coin Wash.
Navigating foliage, negotiating paths, crossing bridges, he notices not the location whence he spied on his target not once but twice: Once to observe her interaction with his nemesis, to fully experience hatred for quite possibly the first time; and once to obtain what to him represented a certain proof: Proof that she was not some figment of his increasingly fragmented mind, but a real person.
You are soft, he hears in his head. She is gone, and you are weak.
Shut up, he replies.
Once, he almost pauses his twilight pilgrimage. His pace slows, his head turns an infinitesimal fraction of a radian, and out of the corner of his eye he gives the briefest of glances to the building that caused him to lose everything he ever—
No. He can't ruminate for too long. He must press forward. He turns away from the building and enters the cemetery.
The leaves crunch under his heavy footfalls as he makes his way through the maze of headstones. For once, his head is completely quiet; no voices, no music, just him and the graveyard.
He hates it. Forced to confront reality.
But he has reached his final destination.
He stops. He turns.
He lasts for exactly one second before he slumps to the ground.
He's not sure how long he stays there, crumpled in front of her headstone, the memorial to her existence. The seconds slip away as he mourns; the seconds turn into minutes. The minutes turn into hours. Motionless he sits. Like a statue.
Vaguely, from a distance, he registers a drop of rain. And another. And another. Soon, he is inundated in pellets of wetness. Thousands upon thousands of drop of rain. They formed rivulets on his back, his hair, his face, mixing with the tears that finally came, at first in drops but now ran freely, flowing down his face and his chin and finally dropping to the ground. A few shoots of grass were there to receive them, happily drinking up his tears, so that they could grow, oblivious to the sorrow and despair of the being above.
Eventually, the clouds part; the rains depart. With their break comes the first ray of sunlight, peeking over the horizon. He turns his head to face the sun.
He rises.
It's a brand new day, he thinks to himself. Turning one last time to face the subject of his nightlong vigil, he whispers to the ground:
"I'm sorry."
He almost turns to leave, when another thought strikes him. He rests his eyes again at the plot of land.
"I… I love you."
Five minutes later he is gone. An early-bird passerby catches a glimpse of the tail of a hoodie rounding a corner. A flock of birds is unceremoniously disturbed from their morning gathering.
A door slams.
Billy is gone. Doctor Horrible is back.
And he doesn't feel a thing.