It's been pretty fluffy round these parts lately, so here's some angst.
Thank you all for reading and reviewing and following and favoriting. And to Spring of Darkness: I would've sent you a PM but yours is disabled, so thanks for your review and for liking my everybody but especially Clint.
Everything was tinged with blue. He moved slowly, like running through syrup. He wasn't in control of his actions. He was a puppet, a pawn, a tool. His consciousness screamed in the depths of his mind; he knew exactly what was happening, he knew he was, for the first time, committing murder, murder after murder, enough for a just system to put him to death. But there was no just system. There would be no relatively quick death from a needle. He wouldn't even be allowed to kill himself to escape the horror of what he'd done. He would go on dangling at the end of the strings until he dripped with blood, and nothing short of immolation would cleanse him of his guilt, and though he hung above the fire it would never touch him.
It was freezing, and he couldn't move. And he saw his whole life unfold before him: saw his parents suffer and die wracked with coughs, saw a weak boy become what they called a hero, saw his best friend drop screaming into the canyon, saw the water rush up again and take him under. And after that he saw the life he'd never gotten to live, and the deaths he'd been spared the first time around, and was just as powerless to prevent them. Then he saw the same thing over again but with his new friends starring, and they died and died and he kept watching, motionless and awake and alone and cold.
Once the monster was unleashed there was no stopping it. It was worse than any other time, because this time there was no threat, no enemy; there was just pure, blind rage. It was determined, inasmuch as a dumb beast could be determined, to destroy everything in its path. He thought it would stop when he saw the familiar flash of red, but it ripped the red to shreds fiercely, without malice. He knew he couldn't stop it, and didn't try; he gave in to the inevitable devastation, hoping weakly that it would stop soon. But this time his conscious mind sank deeper and deeper, slipping away, until he was left without any thought. He was the monster—there was only the monster left—he would continue to tear apart the world mindlessly without anything to stop him.
He was falling, clawing at the air for something to stop him, weak and powerless. He had failed his family and his friends; he knew they would suffer without him, without his strength to aid them. From somewhere far above his mother was calling for him, begging him to return and take up his father's place; his brother was pleading for his help, as he had done when he woke scared in the night when they were children; and he was still falling, further and further away from them, their voices ringing clear in his ears. He flailed and fought to right himself, as if he could somehow pull himself up by will alone. If anything he fell faster, never reaching an end or a bottom, but watching the stars fade and go out as he passed until he was falling through utter darkness, through a void that throbbed with all the pain he'd caused.
He didn't understand. They tried again and again to explain, but he couldn't grasp it, and it was important that he understand. They were counting on him; people would die if he couldn't solve this problem. He knew that he should understand. He knew it should be easy. But he just couldn't figure it out, though everything in him, every cell demanded that he get it. In the dark of a cavern he remembered knowing things. He remembered the ease with which he once calculated. He remembered taking it for granted that he could see into the hearts of machines and know how they worked. He remembered writing code practically in his sleep, creating the most complex, sophisticated programs. Remembering all that made it so much worse when he couldn't do it anymore, and for his failure innocent people, people he knew, people he loved died in front of him, one after the other.
Her body did terrible things as he pleaded beneath her. His cries meant nothing; they only made her work harder to hurt him more. She took her time, making it last, enjoying his desperation, savoring it. She wasn't just killing him: she was taking him apart, little by little, destroying him, taking out everything that meant something to them: breaking every bone in his hands, gouging out his eyes, saying things that she didn't mean—could never mean—with such ease and conviction that he had no choice to believe. When he finally stopped fighting and gave up, the disgusting mess of her handiwork that had once been her teammate, her friend, she snapped his neck. His last breath was her name and she realized that she felt nothing, no pity or pain or compassion, and that scared her most of all.
He was crumpled in a heap, and all of her planning and worrying hadn't been able to save him. She felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, and she struggled to breathe. She couldn't, though, and she knew it was hopeless, but she kept trying, heaving and sucking in uselessly as tears streamed down her face. The others were there, trying to help, trying to comfort her, but it was no good, and she gasped and gasped. Her brain told her she couldn't live with no oxygen, no air, that she would die soon, and she accepted it, but it didn't happen. She kept shuddering and wheezing and seeing him slam into the concrete, hearing the crunch of metal and bone, and every moment felt like that impact, every second was the color of his blood and she wanted to stop trying to breathe and die but she just couldn't.
There were no stars in the sky above her. Night after night she sat staring, but there was only darkness. She slept during the days and woke at dusk to search, but it didn't change; there was no moon waxing or waning overhead, there were no planets or stars twinkling through the atmosphere. There was only an empty dome of sky, rimmed by the orange glow of city lights. The blankness was terrifying. If there was nothing in the sky, then everything she'd worked for was gone. There was nothing to look for, nothing to wait for, nothing to live for. And yet she couldn't give up, she couldn't quit; she had to continue watching, just in case there was a chance or hope or something somewhere out there. So she started walking out across the desert at night, searching the skies for a cure to the numb dread that filled her every moment.
They apologized and she collapsed, nothing left to hold her up. All of them were gone, all at once. She would stand up again. She would go on. But nothing would ever be the same. It was like all of the color had been leached out of the world; everything was flat, dull, grey. If she had never known them, if they had never existed, it would be better, easier. But she knew exactly what was missing at every moment. She knew what words were not being said, she knew what smiles and laughs were absent. She heard voices all the time and it was worse than being crazy because they were real, and she wanted to hear them. And she knew that one day it would fade, the pain and the memories alike, and light and color would seep back in, and she would want to smile again, and on that day, having rebuilt the world and saved herself in their honor, she would join them.