Finishing Last.
It seemed that, for everything that had happened between them - for everything that had fallen apart, Harri still cared enough to not let him get his brains eaten. That was some cold comfort at least.
But he still felt miserable, like there was a heavy weight resting on his shoulders, pressing him down. He could feel it like a physical presence, like something he really was carrying with him and he didn't know when it would ease up, when he could put this burden down - or what was waiting for him afterwards. All he knew was, he was miserable right now.
The truth was, he wasn't sure at what point it was that he had stopped thinking about Harri.
Things had been so bitter at the end, he had been so angry, the falling apart of their relationship had been both terrifyingly quick and agonisingly slow - so that it almost came as a relief once she had actually gone. They both knew it was coming, they both knew their marriage was dead - Harri actually walking out the door was just her switching off the life support.
And everything had been such a mess for him at the time that his grief over losing her was mixed up with anger and shame and bitterness and a nasty hangover. Harri was just a part of what he had lost - he had lost everything, his whole life, his humanity - and teasing out the separate strands of his misery would have been too difficult to do, and something he had no interest in doing. So he had just felt everything at once - and at the same time, processed nothing.
But for a long while after she was gone, she was still in his head. She was still in his head when he stole his first car, she was still in his head when he let all those demons die. He could not pinpoint the last time he had thought about her, the last time he had conjured up an imaginary version of her to disapprove of how he was living. He could not pinpoint the exact moment he had let himself forget that he had once been a human man, and that that human man had been happy and had had a wife who loved him.
Perhaps he had thought he had just moved on. That time healed all wounds and he was over it. Perhaps he had thought, as he got his life back on track, that he was ready for this new life - that Harri would not be a part of - and that was a positive step forward, how it was supposed to be. Perhaps he had thought he had finally forgotten.
But he hadn't forgotten, he had only repressed - and all it had taken was for her to reappear, standing in his doorway, for it all to come flooding back. Every last bit of it. The good and the bad - and to relive it all. Especially the bad.
He had spoken to her - after that disastrous Bachelor Party, after her wedding was cancelled. And even though he was very definitely the victim here, he still felt guilty - that he had robbed Harri of this second chance at happiness, that she had walked away (again) from the man she loved because of him.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
The worst was the revelation that Harri hadn't left because of the demon, she had left because of him.
He remembered so clearly now, so it was like living it again, just how angry he had been - all the time. How he wouldn't leave the house, he had been too afraid too, how he had spent day after day, week after week drinking himself into oblivion … and he remembered how, in the beginning, she had tried to talk to him. How she had spent hours on the computer out in their tiny office space in the hallway, researching and finding things out - looking for ways to help him.
He remembered how - at first - she would sit beside him and take him by the hand and try to tell him everything she had learned. But he wouldn't listen. That was the truth of it - he wouldn't listen. He was too angry to listen. And he took that anger out on her.
He hated what he was so much that he had assumed that she must hate him too. That she must be afraid and disgusted - just like he was. He had thought that her kind words were nothing but pity, and that had made him even angrier.
He should have realised she was speaking the truth - he had been her husband, he should have known her well enough to know she wouldn't lie to him, wouldn't pity him. He should have known her well enough to realise that of course she found this whole new world rich and interesting, that she really did want to find out more. She was an academic, after all - she had an enquiring mind.
He was just too lost in his own self pity to remember who she was, and how much she loved him. It was his forgetting that which drove her away.
And that was what hurt the most, what was really weighing him down and making his chest feel tight with unhappiness - with grief and missed opportunities and the loss that was all he had left. He had spent all these years thinking Harri had left him because she didn't love him, and it was only now that he found out that she had left him because she did love him - and couldn't stay around and watch him suffer and punish himself. She had meant it in her letter when she said she couldn't stay there and watch him self-destruct.
No wonder she had not said anything before she walked out the door, though he remembered her looking at him, opening her mouth as if she wanted to speak … but there had just been too much to say. Just too much raw emotion and pain, her feelings were too complicated - there was nothing she could say to him to sum it all up, so she had said nothing. It was easier to just leave the note.
But through the prism of his own bitterness, he had interpreted her silence as her ceasing to care, and finally admitting it. He saw only her disappointment and disgust, and never realised that was him projecting his own feelings and seeing them reflected back at him. It was only now he realised she had had feelings of her own, and they were entirely different to those he had ascribed to her.
It was only now that he found out that the end of their marriage was not inevitable, that he could have done something to stop her leaving, he could have convinced her to stay - or gone after her and won her back … if he had just been strong enough to be the man she had married. But he had been too weak, and he had let her go, and he had blamed everything but himself for all he had lost.
It was only now that he realised that his life had spiralled so badly out of control because he let it. It wasn't the demon in him, it wasn't fate - it was him. He had let himself fall, he had given into self pity and self loathing and anger and let himself believe that he was nothing but a passenger in his own life, a feather on the wind being buffeted about by the cruel winds of a universe which hated him, hapless in the face of his own destiny. And, in letting himself believe it was all out of his control, he had done just ... so much stupid stuff. Things he could never put right. Things he was still paying for … that little girl… her little, pink shoe...
He had told himself a story, to make the pain easier, told himself that he was a monster and that monsters can't help themselves. They hurt and damage and destroy because that is their nature, that was his nature - he couldn't fight it. And now, on seeing Harri again, he learned that it was never the monster in him that had done all this wrong, but the man. They were one and the same - and all that pain and hurt he had caused, that was him … all him. There was no one else. And - yes - he could have stopped it. Could have stopped himself.
Having Harri come back into his life, suddenly and out of the blue, was painful enough by itself - but having to rewrite the history of the past four years, to look back on his life with fresh eyes and take responsibility for it all, that was crippling. The guilt and the shame, always so close to the surface with him anyway, had become overwhelming and he was wallowing in it - drowning - and not sure how to fight his way back out.
But if he'd learned anything - it was that he would have to fight it - because if he gave in to the pain, if he let himself fall again, then this time he would know there was no one to blame but himself.
But it hurt so much.
He switched the computer off, and slunk to the sofa - where he lay down and wrapped his arms tightly around himself, whether looking for comfort or just trying to contain the misery he wasn't sure.
He could feel himself falling - could feel the great black void opening up ready to swallow him - and he did not believe for a moment he had the strength to break back through to the surface, to rebuild again - not when it meant rebuilding his image of himself. Finally taking responsibility for the very worst of himself.
It would take a miracle to pull him back from this brink, to make him feel that he wasn't a failure, a total loser, wasn't deserving of falling into the abyss and just letting nature take its course - however that ended. It would take a miracle to make him feel like he was worthy of anything better… and miracles did not happen to Doyle.
He heard the office door creak open - and turned his head to look.
Cordelia was walking towards him, her biggest, brightest smile fixed firmly in place: 'Hey, Doyle…'