A/N: My extended bout of writer's block is now officially over. I've had kind of a shitty month. Bipolar acting up, family splintering apart, relationship issues. But I won't bore you all. Dr. Horrible has been giving me ALL the feels lately so I had to let them out and this is the result. Enjoy?
Disclaimer: Billy won't ever be mine no matter how much I want to keep him and hold him and love him. :(
Listen Close
He wishes he were deaf. That he had the power to silence the city he'd finally won, at the most terrible cost. He hates noise, he hates people, he hates himself more than anything else.
Life goes on for them, but he's caught in a sickening limbo. It is't silent, but God, he wishes it were.
Thud.
Thud.
The noises won't stop. No matter how thoroughly he isolates himself, no matter how still he is, they make him crazy with grief and unprecedented anger, helpless as a child to do anything but ache.
Thud.
He finds the suffocating darkness to be no comfort. The lab coat hanging on a hook on the wall glows eerily white against the black of the room. Taunting him. Reminding him.
Thud.
Outside there are cars and trains and horns and traffic, the chatter of happy people, the trill of oblivious birds, the sound of laughter. How can anyone be laughing right now? They should be crying- not for him, for her. They buried her today and he couldn't force himself to watch, lingering at the back of the crowd with his hood up and his eyes down. Desperate to preserve her, he closes his eyes, imagines her there. He'd always had a vivid imagination but somehow he just can't conjure the precise curve of her smile.
Thud.
It's driving him mad. As if he weren't mad enough already. As if he hadn't endured more than he should ever have had to. Never much for God, him, but he still manages to feel betrayed. Irrationally angry at a deity he's never known, whose left him alone in his darkest hour.
Moist would call it poetic justice.
He hasn't spoken to Moist in weeks.
Thud-thud.
There's no justice in this. Even her last words leave a stale taste in his mouh- they weren't about him, weren't even for him, of course they weren't. What was he to her? The awkward, fumbling man at the Laundromat, always flirting and never making a move, too meek. He was nothing but a brief smudge on the life she should have had, deserved, a lot more than he does. Where is the justice when she has disappeared, still and pale beneath the earth, and he still fills his lungs?
Thud.
Every breath is one too many, adding and adding and adding to his stolen time.
Thud.
This wasn't worth it. This wasn't what he had envsioned at all- what he had so meticulously planned and fantasized.
Thud-thud.
But since when do any of his plans go through?
Thud-thud-thud.
If he tries hard enough he can almost feel her fingertips grazing the back of his hand, tilting his chin up. Even more faintly he can feel a phantom kiss, soft lips he'd never had the chance to touch. The ache in his bones when he opens his eyes is stronger than before, more profound, a sense of hopelessness making his limbs heavy and his dry eyes prickle.
He hates his imagination almost as much as he hates himself.
Thud...
Thud...
On the table before him, silver tools glimmer dangerously in the dark. They're only tools, innocent instruments but he hates them, too. He hates them for being there at his disposal, tinkering for hours on end, never leaving the lair until the freeze ray was finished. He'd been deranged, he is deranged, he shouldn't have these tools at his disposal but here they lie. Cold and ready. He could really hurt someone with these... They whisper gleefully at him, accusing him of crimes that he has yet to come to terms with and probably never will.
You killed her, they say.
He swallows. Audibly.
Thud.
The freeze ray itself lies limply in his lap, cradled to him like some deranged and deadly child that he's been nurturing for these past few weeks. He smoothes a thumb over it. Breathes. Thinks.
All he wants is to stop thinking. Peace, quiet. An end to this whirring cycle of guilt and despair.
Thud...
And then one last idea forms, slow and sickly from his overwrought mind. Mechanically, stiffly, he stands from the chair. He never bothered to change into his lab coat after the burial, not even for the blog. Who cares now if the mayor knows who he is? What can he do? Arrest him? Direct his whining nemesis to his apartment, to bruise and batter him and sneer like he's won some new victory? No one can exact a worse type of punishment than he has upon himself, that he deserves.
The freeze ray settles smoothly onto the tripod, whirring as it warms up. He steps back to stare into the gathering red light.
Thud... Thud... Thud...
His fingers twitch but he doesn't tremble. He has nothing to be afraid of anymore.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
That unbearable nose is louder, faster, blood rushing in his ears. Sweat beads on his brow in an empty sense of anticipation. Is this what it had been like, on her end of things? No. No, she hadn't been given this leisure, time to prepare. She had so much to live for. So much good left to do.
It hurts his eyes, but he can't look away.
Keep your head up, Billy buddy.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-
His final moments last the longest, taste the sharpest- all he can think about is the end. Maybe Penny will be waiting for him, clad in the wings that had surely been reserved for her long before they met.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD-
As the beam blinds him, sears his eybrows clean off, he has one last hollow smirk for the poor saps he's left behind to live their futile lives.
This plan, he thinks as he chokes on the agoizing wave of heat, is the only one he ever really carried out. It's fitting.
An unrecognizable form crumples to the ground. The room seems darker than before. Emptier. The coat watches silently, smugly, as though it had known all along the strife it would freeze ray powers down, red light fading to nothing.
Silence.
The world will just have to burn without him.