Ethan Mars sat at a bar. He had called an ambulance first and they concluded that Shaun would somehow survive, and Norman Jayden was currently at an appointment with Ethan's therapist.
"I think we need to try again." said Ethan to journalist Madison Paige and lieutenant Carter Blake, both of who sat next to him.
"Tell me about it." Blake rolled his eyes. "Jayden isn't with me and because of that someone-"
"Shhh!" Madison hissed, cutting him off. "Shut up! Do you want this story to get removed for breaking the fourth wall and somehow seeming 'interactive'?!" She scoffed and took a sip of her drink before adding, "By the way, I think this attempt didn't go so well only because Jayden didn't end up with me."
"Fucking asswaffle!" Blake shouted, changing his line a little.
"Christ, you two! That's not what I mean!" Ethan yelled. "Norman... He tried to drown Shaun."
Both of them stopped arguing and looked at Ethan, who was looking down in shame.
"He tried to drown him... and he put a green origami cow on him... and then he ran downstairs and told me that he didn't remember doing it and that he was so sorry. He cried..."
"Where's Jayden now?" Blake asked casually.
"He's at an appointment with my psychologist."
"Pfft! Mars, your psychologist's a fucking asshole! He won't be able to help Jayden one bit!"
"Is that so?" Ethan grumbled sarcastically.
"Jayden's too far gone, Mars."
"Well then, we need to try again."
Madison put her drink down. "Isn't this getting out of hand? I'm sure we can make this work!"
"Madison, Norman nearly killed my son!" Ethan argued.
"What if we don't get a third chance? What if we kill ourselves or whatever, and we stay dead for good? What would happen to Jayden? More important yet, what would happen to Shaun?"
"When did this bitch suddenly become logical?" Blake asked no one in particular.
Ethan rubbed his own head. "I suppose..." He responded to Madison, sort of.
"We have to stay alive."
"Fine."
"And we have to have babies."
Ethan threw his own drink away. "Fuck's sakes..."
Norman Jayden sat on the chair in front of to Ethan Mars' psychologist.
"Norman, I just want to perform a simple test on you to see how well you remember things. Is that okay?"
Jayden timidly nodded. "Yes..."
The psychologist revealed Jayden's ARI. "What do you think when you see these glasses?"
Jayden narrowed his eyes. "I think y'pickpocketed me."
"What do you think when you see these glasses?" He asked again.
Jayden sighed. "I... I think that I cherish those glasses. Please be ca'eful with them."
"Why do you cherish these glasses, Norman? They are, after all, just a pair of sunglasses."
"They a'en't just sunglasses, doctah."
"What do you mean by that?"
Jayden shivered. "I remembah thin's about those glasses... yes, they're called ARI. I remembah thin's about the ARI glasses that unnerve me..."
"Like what, for example?"
"It's a lon' story, and I can't remembah all of it."
"What do you remember?"
"... I remembah a... a forest. A forest full of birch trees, or somethin'... All of the leaves are orange, and the ground is covahed with dead leaves. I'm boxed in a wooden fence standing on a plank of wood whenevah I'm the'e."
"Interesting... Do you remember anything else?"
"A-.. I remembah a man."
"A man?"
"This old man, pa'haps in his early 50s. He looks like a butlah of some sort. I... I feel like I know him somehow, like I've seen him outside of the ARI... but I dunno how."
The psychologist gently put the glasses down and straightened himself in his chair with a deep breath. "Norman, I'd like to try hypnotism on you. That way you can tell me about the memories your brain is repressing."
Jayden shrugged. "I... I guess it's worth a shot."
When the hypnotism finally kicked into effect, Jayden was 32 again. He was currently assigned to a case involving a string of murders occurring in a small town located in West Virginia. He sighed, feeling tense; he and his current partner, a female lieutenant, had picked up who Norman assumed to be the culprit, and were about to interrogate her.
The only part of this case that made Jayden overwhelmingly nervous was the fact that his father had taken up a job in this town, and he hadn't heard from him in a while; there had always been a bit of a distance between them, but Jayden had a bad feeling about something.
"So, Jayden," His partner asked casually. "You're sure it's her?"
"Who else could it be?" He responded coolly. "She's got the right personality, fits the profile nicely, and the geo-localization is a pahfect fit too."
"Right..." She sounded skeptical, which made Jayden furrow his brow in her direction.
"What, y'don't believe me?" He stood to show some form of male dominance in his height.
"It's not that, Normie." She rubbed her index finger against the underside of his chin, purring her pet name for him and making him feel uncomfortable. "Let's talk to her, hmm?"
"Yes... Let's."
The two of them walked into the interrogation room together. The girl in the chair in front of them looked mad from exhaustion and boredom.
"Ms. Stewaht? I'm Nahman Jayden, FB-"
"Don't fucking play Mr. Nice Cop with me, you worthless piece of trash." She snarled.
Jayden whistled. "Maybe you'd bettah handle this..." He said to his female partner, who only smirked.
"Why, Jayden? You seem to be doing just fine." She snickered.
Jayden sighed again and put his hands gently on the desk in front of the culprit. "Ms. Stewaht, I'm awa'e that y'admitted t'havin' been a-"
"Did you love your family, Mr. Jayden?"
"Excuse me?"
"I know more about you than you think. I know that your mother died when you were a teenager, and you grew distant with your father."
"How do ya know that?" Jayden backed up a bit.
"I'm sure she has connections, Normie." His partner yawned.
He looked at her, coming to a conclusion he hadn't thought of before.
"To be honest, I was jealous of your relationship with your father, Mr. Jayden." The culprit said, attracting his attention again.
"What...?"
"My father never loved me. I was never very close to him at all. He abused me. I think your father should have listened a little closer during that last phone call he got from his beloved son, though."
"What the hell a'e y'talkin' about? I... I haven't called him in a long time."
She shook her head solemnly. "Too bad. You wouldn't believe how easy it is, though," she put a hand over her mouth and stared at him. "... t'fake yer voice, mistah Jayden."
Jayden started to panic a little. She did sound a little bit like him when she did that. "Wh-what did y'do to my dad...?"
"I asked him if I, or rather, you could visit him. I went to his house to meet up there... and he wasn't pleased to see me. He called me a lunatic. I made him mine."
"Yer lyin'... Yer a LYIN'...!" Jayden couldn't finish his insult, instead more focused on getting out of that small, dull room; he suddenly felt somewhat claustrophobic, and also feeling as if the culprit had awoken something deep within him that had been long since subdued.
'Dad... I need to check on my dad. He'd bettah be okay... or I sweah t'God, I'll... I'll...!'
Jayden felt woozy all of the sudden and he stumbled, nearly causing a small scene. He shook his head as clear as it could be and ran out, jumping into his car and starting to drive towards the house he recalled his father staying in.
When he got there, he found that the door was unlocked and he started to tremble. Slowly, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"D-dad...? Dad, it's me..." He walked shakily into the house, noticing that everything seemed to be in order.
That is, until he reached the upstairs bathroom.
Upon opening the door and stepping inside hastefully, he slipped on something and smacked his head against the door pretty hard.
"Aaaaggh...! Fuuuck!" He held his head and curled onto his side. He opened his eyes and noticed now that his whole suit had been covered by something red. He sat up quickly.
'This... Th-th-this is blood...! I'm covahed in blood! !' He started to freak out a little more when he noticed that the whole room was bloody, especially the bathtub, which was filled with trash bags covered in the red liquid.
Jayden's heart started to race as he slowly crawled over and opened one of the bags. He immediately regretted it as he basically flung himself away, beginning to scream hysterically.
"DAAAAD! NOOOOOO!" He wailed. He kept screaming and crying against the furthest wall from the bathtub until he found that his hand had at some point pulled out the tube of Triptocaine from his pocket. "Huh...?"
He was only supposed to take very small doses of the drug after using his ARI... but it did seem to make him feel good, from what he could tell.
'It... It might make me feel less depressed. I might kill myself right he'e and now if I don't...' Jayden's lower lip trembled from fear and sadness. 'It's my fault! But why? Why did she go aftah my fatha'? Why me?!'
Slowly, his body moved the Triptocaine closer to his nostril.
'No, I... I shouldn't. I shouldn't take Tripto right now.'
'But they nevah said enehthin' about bein' able to develop any sorta... addiction or enehthin'... It'll cheer me up.'
Jayden shook his head. 'Goddahmmit, my fatha's dead he'e, and all I'm thinkin' about is doin' fuckin' drugs?! What the hell is wrong with me?!'
Still, he couldn't take his eyes off of the blue powder. It seemed to be beckoning to him.
'Oh, fuck it! Just take it and get it ovah with, I have t'tell someone about this!' Jayden didn't even realize that he hadn't been the one controlling his hand that whole time, even when his hand moved the tube again and his body snorted a ton of Triptocaine.
He felt like that thing that had awoken inside of him had been put immensely at ease, and that made him feel somewhat put at ease himself, despite still feeling horribly traumatized by his father's untimely murder.
The psychologist shook Norman Jayden frantically; Jayden had been telling him what his distant memories held when he'd started screaming bloody murder and looking as if he were fighting to escape from something, and now his nose had started to bleed on top of that. The screen displaying a reading of emotions that Norman was feeling for the psychologist showed that Jayden was completely horrified by something.
"Norman! Norman, when I count to three, you will snap out of it! One! Two! Three!"
Jayden jolted up, still seeming panicked as his memories readjusted themselves and things began registering in his mind. "The man in the ARI... My dad..." The off-duty FBI agent started to tremble, so he held himself.
The alarm on the psychologist's desk went off, yet he said nothing for a long while, too stunned to speak. When he finally did say something, it was, "... Norman, do you remember what you told me now?"
Jayden didn't respond. The screen read "APATHY" as Jayden's emotion.
"Norman?"
"I'd bettah be goin', doc... Thanks fer helpin' me to remember this." Jayden droned as he took off the headpiece and set it on the chair before getting up and walking out before the psychologist could think of anything else to say, leaving him to ponder over what he'd just seen.
Ethan Mars sat in his car outside of his psychologist's building, waiting for Norman Jayden.
Soon enough, Jayden stepped outside and walked over to the car, getting into the passenger seat.
"Christ, Norman, what happened to your nose?" Ethan asked, noticing that Jayden's nose had been bleeding.
"I'd ratha' not talk about it, Ethan."
"Okay..."
The two sat in silence for a bit.
"... I'm a horrible person, Ethan. I dunno how you could find it in y'to be nice t'me."
"What are you talking about, Norman? Sure, you... You tried to kill my son, but... Well, I mean, you didn't do it intentionally, so..."
Jayden shot Ethan a glare. "Yer actin' like me nearly drownin' yer son isn't a bit deal."
Ethan sighed quickly. "It is a big deal. It's just, you told me that you didn't remember? What, Norman, were you lying? Did you do it intentionally?"
"I..." Jayden spoke shamefully. "No, I... I truly don't remembah..."
"Then I can't really blame you, can I?"
"Y'have every right to blame me. I'm the one who woke up soaked in blood!"
Ethan looked at Jayden, confused. "What?"
Jayden clutched his head as he slammed it against the dashboard, causing Ethan to pull him back so he was sitting straight.
"What the hell are you doing, Norman? You're going to hurt yourself."
"Can't y'tell that's the point, Ethan?!" Jayden replied in a broken voice, forcing a smile. "I'm fuckin' sick of this! I don't deserve t'keep on livin'!"
"Don't say that, Norman! That's not true!"
Jayden shook his head, looking down at his knees. "It is... Y'should just let me go, Ethan."
"Why in the hell would I do that?" Ethan asked harshly, becoming annoyed by Jayden's pessimism.
"Can't y'judge my sanity for yerself? At this rate, it's only a mattah of time befo'e I hurt you, and I don't wanna do that...!"
"Norman, you're not going to hurt me."
"Y'can't be so su'e..."
Ethan gave up and sighed, starting the ignition, putting the car into drive, and driving back to his apartment.