A/N: Just caught up a few hours ago and I'm still trying to process the last two episodes. In the meantime, here's a thing. Trigger warning for mention/implication of suicide. Reviews would be lovely.
There are moments in time when the image of a dead boy staring into you crops up behind your eyes and threatens to stay there forever. With a metal beam – cold, thin, and unforgettable – sticking him through, he stares, accusing you with flat eyes and final, shuddering breaths. Because it was you.
(You killed him.)
No amount of over-analysis or even justifiable reason will change that fact; Donovan is dead, and you're the reason why. That will be true until the day you die, and it will remain true long, long after.
His is not the first, nor the only, death that haunts you when your eyes are closed. You keep a list, tucked neatly away in your head, of everyone – starting with Allison. She was not the first to die because of you, nor was she the last, but she's the one that burned your insides the brightest.
When you really think about it, they're all your fault. Not just Allison. Not just Donovan. Everyone, every supernatural death since the summer before your freshman year – it all comes back to you.
It was you who dragged Scott out to the woods in the middle of the night when he should have been sleeping, when you should have been eating mac and cheese and watching late night reruns, waiting for your dad to come home. It was your decision, your fault that any of this ever started. Beacon Hills is a beacon of death because your stupid, rash fourteen year old self was far too curious for his own damn good.
Now your seventeen year old self is a killer, kept awake at night by all the lives that ended early by your hand, directly or not. There are moments when this consumes you.
And there are moments when your hands are just itching to get creative, to end just one more if it will mean saving the rest.
(Because if you think about it – if you just went ahead and dropped yourself, you'd never hurt anyone else ever again. You would be the last person you'd ever kill, and perhaps that would be your own saving grace.)
You dream of the day when you can finally destroy the cause of the deepest darkness you've ever seen, but in these moments right now, you are not allowed that luxury.
It's not the Dread Doctors or the chimeras or the urgent need to see this through that keep you from it.
Instead, it's the haunted face of your girlfriend as she tells you that she just can't take one more body. One more failure. It's her brown eyes, still edged with coyote blue, cast down at the floor, trying to hide the fear. The guilt, even though the blame is yours.
Malia Tate is your girlfriend, but you can feel yourself drifting away from her. That's your fault, too. But regardless of your distance, you love her. Far more than yourself, far more than you could ever put into words. And it is for that reason and that reason alone that you refuse to be that one more body. For her insides are far too lovely to burn like yours.
So you resign yourself to this. You step back, assess – and are not quite content with your place, but you are half-way willing to play your part. Although you try to prove otherwise, you are a killer. A fuckup to the fullest extent. But even so, you push forward. Even if you are slated, destined to fail.
You don't believe that saving people will erase your old sins, because your hands will never be clean. Not while you're alive. But you find that, until the day comes when you are free to stand up and finally walk away – it is a noble enough cause to fight for.