"Step away from the bomb, Saeran."
Light pours in from the basement door as you head down the stairs to confront him.
Saeran doesn't bother to look up from his bomb. He continues to work as you seemingly appear from the dead to speak to him. The last time he saw you... there had been a noose around your neck and your feet were dangling but you were alive? He should have known how crafty you were. "This little thing? I'd hardly call this a bomb, (name). This is just to trigger the packs of thermals upstairs in the gym. Those are bombs. How silly of you to assume it would all be down here."
You hold your breath.
"People are gonna see the ashes of this damn place and they're gonna think 'there's a school that self-destructed not because society doesn't care but because that school was society'. The only place where people like Rika and Jaehee can get along is in Heaven!" He cackled, continuing to tinker with his trigger until he was sufficiently satisfied with himself.
You clench your fists. "I wish your Mom hadn't been so awful. I wish you had someone so much kinder in your life. I wish your Dad were good! I wish the grown-ups understood this!" You shout at him. "I wish we had met before they convinced you that life is nothing but war!"
Can't the two of you just be seventeen?
Can't you stop this and never look back?
Can't you just be happy with life?
It all comes burning to the surface as you tell him how you feel. "I wish you'd come with me!"
He stands to his feet and looks back at you with dark, cold eyes. He seems unbothered by your wants right now. Saeran is too hellbent on destroying it all. He has never looked so sure of himself. "I wish I had more TNT!" He hissed.
That's when you run at him with everything you have.
An endless dance of fists and kicks and jabs and fighting!
It's a struggle.
It's an endless struggle.
The trigger has less than a minute until it destroys it all.
You.
Him.
The gym.
If you don't manage to stop him then he's going to blow this place any high. All of your friends, classmates, innocent people caught in the crossfire, they're going to die if you can't stop him. This monster that had been created out of spite and angry, the fire that you naively fueled as the dangerous games continued to play out in front of you.
Ever since you met him, this wildly bad boy who transferred to your school, you couldn't get those mint eyes out of your head.
But now, those eyes haunt you.
He knocks you down -
You push him back -
There is no end in sight.
And in the midst of the struggle, he drops the gun he had been holding and you kick it away from him.
You stare at it and he stares at you.
Quickly, breathing hard, you dart forward and scramble for the gun and manage to grab it before he can stop you.
He's going to stop you -
He's going to stop you!
Do something!
Do something!
Panicked, you fire the gun at him.
The sound reverberates throughout the room and all is silent other than the ticking of the bomb he's cultivated.
"You... shot me." Saeran manages to say, shocked by the action as you are. He stares at you with wide eyes, and crumbles to the ground, either from the shot itself or from the pain he's feeling from the wound. You aren't sure and you can't stomach to look at him any longer.
The bomb is ticking... ticking... ticking.
There's no time to think.
This bomb trigger needs to come undone before it blows the gym to pieces and chunks of concrete. Nobody deserves to die because of this. You've seen shit like this in movies, you defuse the wires with the shred of hope that pulling these things apart and away from each other will stop it and with bated breath, the numbers stop ticking, and you feel relief pour into your lungs.
It's done.
It's finally done.
The war is over.
With trembling legs and aching limbs, you get out of that room and get away, as far away from the building as you can manage to reach. Everyone would be safe now, his bomb broken -
His dirty deed stopped by a bullet wound in his chest.
The sunlight is bright this afternoon and all you can see is the blue overhead with a couple of clouds. You had seen a sky like this once before and it had been on the first morning that you had met him.
There's a this against the concrete behind you and you turn around, eyes wide as you see him standing.
You stared at him with pain in your eyes.
The expression on his face is just as sorrowful, and remorseful. Saeran clutched his side where the bullet had landed and tries to hide the blood that escapes from his lip by wiping it away but you both know he can't hide this. You stand there, unsure of what to do or what to say to the man that you loved but who had lost his way.
He wasn't dead.
Silly of you to think one wound would destroy him. But he now looks as if he's resided himself to defeat.
"Saeran." You whisper, longing for that long forgotten now.
When he smiled at you, and when you saw something in that wicked grin that made you want to learn more about him. But when he smiles at you now, it's like he's trying to say goodbye.
"(Name)," he says your name and your heart aches.
"I am damaged, far too damaged," he begins to say to you. "But I see now that you're not beyond repair. You... You were always right. You should stick around here and make things better... (name), 'cause you beat me fair and square."
That's when you notice underneath his coat is one of the bombs he had hidden. Your eyes widen and he frowns, knowingly.
You want to stop him.
He raises his hand to stop you from doing such a thing. "Please... Please stand back now," he says, and you can only take one step back. He's the one with the bomb strapped to him that could make him go at any second. "Little further... I don't know what this thing will do."
You can only listen to his words in the fear that he might take the blow even sooner if you try to stop him. "Oh my God, Saeran."
He begins to raise his hand, the trigger in the palm of his hand. "Hope you'll miss me... I wish you would have kissed me one more time. Then you'd know just how much I worshiped you."
He looks at the trigger. "I'll trade my life for yours."
"Please, you can't!" You plead with him.
"And once I disappear from this world," he trails off, quiet.
You can feel tears beginning to well up on in your eyes. "Wait, hold on... don't do this!"
Saeran takes in a breath, "You can clean up the mess down here, (name) if anyone deserves a chance in this messed up world... it's you."
That's when he presses the trigger and the cruel countdown clock begins to tick away second by second as you can only stare at him, helplessly. He's going to die. He's really going to die.
"Our love is God,"
You remember the way you felt when you first saw him.
"Our love is God,"
The way he shared with you some of his pain and how badly he wanted his hurt to go away.
"Our love is God,"
You took a chance on him... you pulled him into a kiss without even second guessing yourself and that's when it all began to go downhill.
"Our love is God,"
A despicable game of life and death ensues. You learn your mistakes and you regret everything. You wish he had never been hurt. You wish his life had been so much better. You wish that you had met in a better life.
"Our love is God."
Saeran stares at you one final time.
He knows he doesn't deserve forgiveness but you forgive him.
The time hits zero.
You strangle out a sob as you begin to weep. "Say Hi to God."
An explosion rattles the Earth around you.
He's gone.
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
Y'know, you can have some really good pain when you do Heathers x Mystic Messenger. I'm nearly tempted to do my own story-length Heathers AU but I don't know how many people would be into that.