Shit, let's be melodramatic. Dumb kids being dumb. Written for the prompt 'Beginnings'.

A Fool's Errand

Here's how it starts: your hands are clammy with blood, drying like candy against the skin and there is a dead man beside your feet. But this is nothing new. You've done this before, several times over and it's only to be expected of the murderer child of a killer bloodline.

But sometimes you don't think you're ready for this. It's easy, easy, all too easy, but something feels like it's missing. Not that you have time to think. You have to run because you've always been running and now is no different. And maybe if you're good, at letting your fingers sink deep into flesh, at bleeding they to stain the hard ground, you'll get a smile.

And it will be close, but not quite what you're looking for.

Here's how it doesn't end: you turn to walk away on an empty stretch of road and he chases you down, not because he needs you just as much, though perhaps he does, but because you're his friend and that may well be the most important thing in the universe at this moment. He laughs with you under the sunset and right now you're young and the future doesn't matter because you have all the time in the world.

Here's how it ends: he tells you to leave and your feet stay firm on the tile floor, the tread of your sneakers still as you process everything. The body on the floor, not dead because you're so used to dead that you hardly process corpses from the ground, the broken form of a mother you have never had, not really, his eyes you can't see.

But you know all his expression by heart or you should. But maybe you don't really know anything about Gon just as you don't really know anything about nature after having been locked away for years. The outside is strange and beautiful and unsheltered and unlimited and it is Gon in, full even if it's barely a sliver of his whole.

It's dangerous and if you were any less you think you might have killed him in your sleep. But you're so much more than that now.

Except so is Gon and at this very moment you have no clue what to do.

Here's what doesn't happen: you stay by his side and pick up the pieces. You decided you don't care if he throws you away because you're his and he can do that. You just want to help him. You approach the mother who isn't and help him. The look on Gon's face is lost as you turn back but you can't understand it so you don't.

You can't understand it, so you don't and just approach him like you would a friend and not a wild animal. Because he's all you have and if you lose him here you might not ever get him back. And that scares you the most.

Maybe he pushes you away this time, sends you crashing into the wall because you don't fight him and you never could have. But maybe he understands and this is a future where things you right. You will never know.

Here's what really happens: you leave and there are no tears in your eyes because you can't remember how to cry. You can feel the world crashing down, but since when have you been able to care about the state of the universe. But if you can be of use to him then that is your goal.

And you won't break because you're stronger than that by far. But you've never felt this before and it feels like you might just snap in two.

But your feet step in accordance to rules and guidelines and you will make him succeed because he is all that you are.

Here's how it continues: there is infinite blue sky and your hand in his as you lay side by side, and for now that's enough.

(It has to be.)

Here's how it all falls apart: his hand in yours is black and hot hot hot, like the summer sun, like fire and burning and you're used to dying but you'll never be able to get used to this, him lying here frail and limp and weak. It stirs something in your heart that is dark and cold and your breath catches. You ignore it.

But you turn away because for once staying will accomplish nothing and you're good enough to know just what's at stake.

You turn away because you can't bear to see him like this and it's your fault. You wonder if things would have been different, had you done them differently. If you could have changes anything at all.

But soon you might just get another chance, and what you are going to do may just (will) kill you but anything would be worth it for that.

You love him after all. Even if you think there aren't really words that don't trivialize it.

For now, though, you turn your eyes away and make a wish.

(You can name your emotions because you're a fool and always have been. But they don't matter because you don't matter and you never have.)

Here's how it really starts: you slide up beside up him and grin and he smiles back at you, just like the sun through trees, wild and feral and alive, and you think maybe you want to stick around. Just for as long at this tunnel.

It's silly, but for some reason you expect a miracle.