Dedicated to Demyrie, who inspired it; and Nu and Vasilli, who helped me write it.
-Never Meant-
It was never meant to end like this.
He wasn't that sort of person. At least, he had thought, he wasn't that sort of person.
The pen on the ground, the viscous fluid running around it, darkening the sides.
It was an image that would haunt him forever. Nothing was ever going to drive the splayed body from his mind. Not alcohol, not fighting, not driving, not anything. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it all over again. That damned pen, slick with drying blood.
He took another shot, downed it fast and threw the glass at the wall. No one looked up anymore, no one was willing to glance and maybe catch that half mad gaze.
He slumped over the bar, staring at his reflection. Empty blue eyes stared back, void of anything.
He hadn't really felt anything since the funeral. Watching that coffin going into the ground, he had stepped forwards, dropped his token and walked away.
He'd never gone back. He couldn't face it.
He needed something. Something that made him feel alive again. Something that made him feel like he hadn't murdered his best friend.
Abruptly he stood, shoving some notes over the bar to Tess. She took them silently, watching him as he turned and left the club.
He flipped out the jet board and hopped on, skimming through the streets. People leapt to the side, one slow, fat man didn't move fast enough and found himself clipped by the metal, screaming as the energy opened up his side.
"Move faster." He called back to the injured man. "Lose some Goddamn weight!"
Quickly, he moved through the town, neat metal pavement giving way to potholes you could lose a vehicle in. Still he pushed on, ignoring everything but the wind in his hair and the hum under his feet.
Finally, he found himself skimming over water and onto rafters. The door to the pumping station loomed ahead of him, spinning open.
Then.... then there was only the release of hot ichor on his hands and face as he slaughtered and kept slaughtering and could only see that body, splayed on the floor, cold, dead, the tears sticky dried on his pale face.
It wasn't meant to end like that.
He wasn't meant to take it like that.
It was meant to be a ruse. Shock him into doing something about it. Anything about it. Make him open his eyes and see....
But he didn't. He didn't see. Not what he was meant to. And he was dead.
Finally exhausted, he collapsed into the sand, among the bodies of his victims.
He propped himself up on a piece of scrap metal; he still remembered the day that Sig blew apart the tank that spat this ruin here, back when it was still the two of them.
Before he had fucked up
He stared at his hands. Killer's hands. He'd killed. He'd killed plenty of times. Not just metal heads. Not just Krimzon guard. He didn't find it amusing. He didn't find it anything. It just was.
Everything just was. Only his death was different. Because he'd been more at fault. He hadn't... it wasn't meant to....
He just wanted him to realise what was happening between them
It had been an innocent attempt to make him jealous. Planting a letter, 'accidentally' leaving it out, saying that he was going serious with her and would give up the renegade lifestyle for her. Waiting for it to be found.
God, if only.... he hadn't realised how damn fragile he was! He hadn't seemed fragile, not until he saw him, pale and dead, blue eyes blank, glassy and still filed with the pain of life.
He snarled angrily, leapt up and started kicking a corpse, watching more ooze run from the cooling flesh.
He wasn't meant to die! Not after everything they had gotten through.
He had come home, expecting ranting, raving, maybe desperate need.
He had found the body, sprawled in the living room, his letter in one hand, Torn's knife in the other. His note had merely said: "Be happy with her. I love you too much to go on without you. I'm sorry."
And then, everything had ceased to matter, and he was left as cold as his best friend's body.
He could feel nothing but his self hate and rage and it was all he deserved.
He might not have held the knife, but he had killed Jak.