Authors Notes – Hey! Okay, I realize that I said two weeks for chapter four, and it's been like a month, so I'm really, really sorry. I was busy. Actually, no I wasn't, I just had writer's block. And ALSO: this is no longer the last chapter! There'll be one more after this, because I had this sudden urge to add two more flashbacks to the story. This chapter is really short, about four pages, which is sad because it took me a whole month to write it…You'll get some insight into the old lady that Pietro mentioned in chapter two, but you won't exactly find out until chapter five. Also, this chapter might not make much sense. See, my method of writing was to write a sentence, get up, go away for several hours, come back, write a paragraph, and come back the next day, etc. So…enjoy!

Chapter Four ~ Our Sun's Descent

A warm sun washed across Pietro's exposed cheeks, temporarily overpowering the frigidity that rested upon the air. He strode toward his car – a generic silver Taurus stained by the dirt and salt that accompanied winter months – and reached for the door handle, his mind on nothing else except getting home to his apartment. It was nearing five o'clock, and after Tony's departure nearly two hours ago, he had toiled diligently over a towering stack of paperwork before suddenly deciding to split. He had needed a break. This was unusual, because he usually didn't leave work until after seven. After all, it wasn't like he had a family that was expecting him, or a girlfriend, or even a friend –

Pietro stopped, half-bent over and his hand still resting upon the door handle. He wondered just when in his life he had stopped having friends. Somehow, he had never noticed it.

He straightened up, whitish plumes of breath dangling gently before his lips, and frowned into the darkening parking lot. Strangely, the iciness of the air no longer stung his cheeks and the dying rays of sunlight no longer evoked warmth. He briefly wondered why it didn't bother him – the lack of human contact besides at work – just why he wasn't more surprised. Maybe he had semiconsciously known all along, like those people that wake up after a twenty-year coma and know what happened yesterday and the day before and everything. He wondered if he was like them, in some respects: drifting uneasily through a deathlike reverie, hearing but not knowing everything that was happening to him, and only realizing it when he was ripped from the coma and suddenly flooded by a deluge of knowledge.

Maybe this was an epiphany – this tiny electric shock of comprehension that nibbled at his system, not causing any damage but irritating him enough to make him stop in his tracks and recognize it's presence. Maybe this was reality deciphered for his clumsy lips, maybe this was a cryptic unraveled.

Maybe you're just a dumbass, he thought before he could stop himself. He quickly reminded himself that he was a thirty-something unmarried man that worked for money and lived for pleasure. And here he was, talking like the teenager that he no longer was, that he would never be.

But it was difficult to break a habit that had been taking place for over eighteen years of his life, so arduous to not when he had heard it so many times from lips that decayed in homely graves with no epithets. How old would they be now, if they were still alive? Freddy would be thirty-three. Todd – Todd would be thirty-one. And Lance? What about that dark-eyed, satirical-tongued old man in a teenager's body? How old would he be now, if he had not slit his own throat nearly ten years ago in the Bayville Penitentiary's showers? A hundred or maybe even more – his physicality would be that of a young man's, but his insides…his insides would be a million years old. How could anyone survive with such a vast age weighing down on them like Lance's had?

Pietro shivered as a dry wind raked its knifelike fingers through his feathery hair, and he drew his coat tightly about him. His feet started moving away from the security of his car and out toward the parking lot exit. Had it been only fourteen years ago that he had walked this same path of existence? Had it been only fourteen years ago that he had left the refuge of familiarity to return to something impalpable, something fraudulently optimistic? He had stepped these exact footsteps before: shivering, bracing himself, squaring his shoulders and bravely heading into his doom. Or was it? Had it ever been his doom? Had it simply been a grotesque phantasm fabricated by his own lingering mentality? Was it still? What was the difference?

The difference was that he lacked the passion of his teenage years. He lacked the tears. Why could he no longer cry? Why could his heart never ache anymore, why could his throat never tighten with the detained emotion that had driven him for so many years anymore?

Because it was just another long walk home, that was all. Just another long walk home.

~Fourteen Years Before~

Pietro shivered unwillingly and rubbed his arms briskly, watching his breath condense as it entered the cold air and disperse into ghostly wisps. Thick wet snow fell heavily upon the fatigued city – not the light, airy kind of snow that made you want to throw your maturity to the sidewalk and go build a snowman – but the gray, sludgy kind that clumped on the sidewalk, soaking your shoes and pants and completely depriving you of warmth in your toes. He hated that kind of snow.

I hate you…he gazed at a happy couple giggling and flirting as they walked down the sidewalk. The girl had fiery red hair and emerald green eyes, and the guy had rich copper hair and an insouciant white smile. Both wore thick, fuzzy scarves and wool hats, and the boy had his arm about the girl's slender waist. Pietro's gaze deepened into a hateful expression, and after a moment, the girl sensed his attention and looked at him, her bright green eyes widening in surprise as she took in the malevolence burning in his icy ones. Whispering hurriedly to her boyfriend, they took off down the street in a sudden rush. Pietro shook his head and walked on, trying to ignore the jangling Christmas music that spurted from the red and green lit street shops. He hated this time of year.

He thought of what it would be like to spend the holidays with Blake, his forty-something neighbor with the bristly chin and the terrible speech-impediment. He had been the one that had clued him in about Lance's whereabouts. Not that those had turned out to be of much use, though. The man was nice enough, if not a little abrasive in personality. He'd let Pietro house with him for almost two weeks now, because the former Brotherhood's home was government property now. Pietro hated having to depend on him, and he hated the way that the grimy middle-aged man pitied him. He'd always hated those two feelings; they were associated with helplessness, and if there was anything that he would never allow himself to be, it was helpless.

But you are…a part of his brain reminded him gleefully, clearly delighted that it had discovered yet one more incident in which the smart-mouthed speed demon was wrong. You're a helpless, helpless, helpless bastard. Not a single penny for you…look where all of your fast-talking and boasting got you in the end…

Nowhere. Pietro shook his head and shoved his fists into his pockets, something mysteriously wet and acrid blurring the edges of his vision. Oh, God. Not this. Not again. Not over nothing. He quickened his steps and concentrated on the slushy sidewalk below him, not lifting his gaze until he reached the crumbling yellow split-level that he'd lived in for the past two weeks. Won't be helpless. He shoved open the peeling door, not bothering to wipe the grayish snow from his shoes. The strong reek of moldy laundry and cheap cigarette smoke dangled in the foul air, permeating his nostrils with their familiar yet unfamiliar hostility. His family didn't smoke. Not cigarettes. Not anything. He moved numbly toward the kitchen cabinets, not bothering to see if Blake was home or not. Not that he cared, but the older man probably wasn't because he worked evenings.

Won't be helpless. Pietro's hand rested upon the greasy knob of the cabinet, pulling it open and fishing through the messy pile within. After a moment, he withdrew a handful of various pharmaceuticals, his thin fingers quivering slightly. Almost robotically, as if this was what he was planning all along, he twisted the caps to each orange bottle and dumped all of the contents into his palm. One of the pills – it was white, and he thought that it said Advil on it in miniscule red letters – slipped between his fingers and fell to the floor, clattering loudly as it hit the linoleum. He ignored it, but couldn't help but note the symbolic significance that could go behind it's falling to the floor…

Helpless. He took a deep breath and tilted his head back, carefully pouring all of the tiny capsules into his mouth. They felt tasteless and plastic-y on his tongue, and he hated the foreign way that they throttled him as he swallowed several times to get them all down. For a while nothing happened, and he waited patiently for close to two minutes before the pain ignited. At first, it felt like his stomach was being tightly compacted between two iron hands, pushing anything within its glutinous depths up his esophagus and out of his mouth. It felt like his insides were being tossed out along with his lunch and breakfast and anything that he'd ever eaten in his entire life – it felt like his heart and his lungs were being ripped from his body and cruelly splattered against the dirty linoleum, that all that would be left in the end was an empty skin and a pair of too-pale, too-cold blue eyes. He choked on his own vomit and blood as it poured from his mouth as easily as water from a faucet, and his skin felt like it was on fire and his legs were rubber beneath him and he collapsed to the linoleum, hacking desperately, and his vision wavering between a screen of black and the frantically spinning kitchen. An animalistic half-scream fell from between his lips, and suddenly his eardrums were pounding with his own anguished cries to the world that surrounded him but didn't hear him. Through all of the pain, he wildly wondered if this was how it had been for Fred: screaming at the top of his lungs and dying before people, so many people, but all of them deaf to his pleas. He wondered if Lance had felt as alone as he felt right now, he wondered if Todd had been exploding from the inside out like he was, he wondered if anyone would care that he was going to die…

He wondered…God, he wondered why the hell everything hurt so bad and why the hell everything was so fucked-up and why the hell he felt so helpless when this was his chance to take control, to tell the world to fuck off before he went floating…

Right before he blacked out, he remembered someone – had it been his ninth grade guidance counselor? – matter-of-factly telling the class during some self-esteem campaign that those that committed suicide were the weak ones. He had staunchly agreed with her then in all of his overconfident idiocy, telling himself that people that put themselves in that position – that drowned in their own helplessness – were stupid and deserved to die if they weren't even going to try. Well, now…now, he thought differently. Now he knew what it was really like, now he knew just how real the pain was. Now he wasn't stupid. Now he wasn't helpless.

~ Present Time ~

Filmy rays of sparse sunlight slipped from the grasps of a blackening horizon, casting streaks of scarlet and violet across Pietro's thin frame. He shuffled along languidly, kicking up chunks of grayed snow with his feet as he trudged along the rumbling highway. It was lively with fleeting cars in the usual fervor of rush hour, and he was occasionally pelted by damp slush as they sped by him.

He grimaced as he felt wetness on the side of his face and in his hair, and reached up distastefully to wipe it away. He was really regretting his rash decision to walk home now. He had no idea just why he had been thinking so impetuously nearly twenty minutes ago, because that was not a usual characteristic of him. He was not a man of impulse, nor had he ever been. Well…

He shrugged off his own thoughts and concentrated on his reluctant footsteps. At the rate he was going, it was going to be a long five miles home. But then again, had it ever been short?

Blake had discovered him, unconscious on the floor of his kitchen, thirty minutes after the attempted suicide. He'd been taken to the hospital, had his stomach pumped, and released two days later. No questions asked. Let free to do whatever he wanted. Again. He'd hated the system then, because he'd wanted, he'd needed help so badly. He'd needed confinement from himself, his own tormented nature. He'd needed chain-link restraints on his wrists and ankles. He'd needed her.

And she'd come. They'd spoken once for thirty minutes, and he'd felt that she knew him better than anyone ever had in his entire life. They'd been strangers and family at the same time; he hadn't known anything about her, yet she'd known everything about him. Why was that? Why was her being shrouded by blackness and obscurity, while his soul was bared in bold red letters across his chest for all to see? But then, maybe it had just been her.

In any case, though, she'd come. She'd provided the sanctuary of confinement, of restraint, of herself. She'd been his devoted mother hen for exactly one week, and then she'd pushed him from her nest to fall. Or to fly. How could she have actually expected him to fly? He, with the wings scarred by fire; how could he have flown? Flown, and higher than any other?

Of course, he'd hated her for several years, just like he'd hated everyone that he'd loved for betraying him when he'd needed them most. For losing out. For dying. Why had everyone that he'd ever cared for defected, abandoned him, left him to rot? And yet, how had they rotted…and he flown?

He shivered as a taupe Sedan sped past him, splattering him with chunks of wet gray slush. A tiny sliver of orange light trembled on the horizon, its feeble rays falling back and dying as blackness overtook them. It looked as if it would be well past nightfall before he got home.

~Fourteen Years Before~

"So why'd you do it?" She asked quietly.

He shook his head in reply and buried his head in his arms, trying to block out the sharp clinking of sleet on the roof. It was brutal outside: the wind screamed hysterically and spit frozen rain upon the neighborhood through icicle-laced lips. Any fool that dared to venture outdoors in this weather would immediately become mutilated.

He shivered at the thought and his teeth started to chatter incessantly, even though the fire-lit room was warm bordering on stifling in temperature. Icy beads of perspiration germinated on his ashen skin and dripped onto the thick blanket that engulfed his too-thin body in its fleecy depths. He wished that he could just sink in and never emerge from the warmth, the safety of a manmade rectangle of fuzzy cloth.

"I – I hate myself."

His broken words hung, stale, in the sweltering heat. For several minutes neither spoke, and for a brief second he vapidly wondered if she had even heard him.

"I hate myself." He repeated helplessly, his splintery fingers toying with the hem of the bulky quilt. "I hate myself because – because – because I'm so – I'm so damn stupid. I'm so stupid…" He let out a quivering breath and hugged himself tightly, trying to protect himself from his own words as he continued. "I'm so stupid…I messed everything up. Lance – he was right. I – I am a selfish bastard. I – I – " He struggled to continue, but his lips were trembling too much for him to speak. "I mean – I mean…even – even when he told me everything that happened t-to him…even then – God, even then…I couldn't…I was so damn weak…" He swallowed, trying to bridle the torrent of emotions that were threatening to overtake him. His nose stung fiercely and he rubbed it with his sleeve, fumbling blindly for the right words. "I mean – I – I couldn't even admit that I was wr-wrong – I couldn't even admit that I was wrong the whole fucking time." The fire crackled and popped, and he didn't notice the weathered black hand resting gently on his shoulder as they twitched from the terrible strain of an eighteen year old boy going on thirty.

"Lance was right," he continued, his voice crumbling. "I – I was so selfish. I didn't care – I didn't care where – where – it counted. I was so – fu-fucking stupid…" He paused, squeezing his eyes shut. "I said I did and th-then – and then…I blamed him." He opened his eyes slowly, gazing dewily at his bare toe poking out from beneath the blanket. "I blamed him…I blamed him wh-when it wasn't even his fault – I – I made him hate me…" His eyes stung at the thought, and something wet and sticky nibbled its way down his cheek. He brushed it away and buried his face into the comforting heat of the fleece blanket. "And I walked away," he finished, his voice muffled and dangling upon a whisper. "I walked away – and I didn't even apologize…"

A heavy silence hung between them; the only sounds the popping of the fire and the rhythmical patter of sleet on the roof. Pietro's shoulders jerked erratically, struggling to contain a deluge of emotion, and he rocked back and forth silently for several minutes, his teeth chattering and perspiration trickling off of his chin. Outside, the wind howled and the house elicited a loud groan, threatening to splinter to bits any second. The chimney wailed in reply and the fire flickered succinctly, its copper-painted flames hungrily licking at the sooty brick walls.

A trembling sob bubbled upon Pietro's lips, flooding the air about him. Dry, hacking sobs: as if he was gasping for oxygen along with a defense from the terrible burden that rested upon his frail shoulders. "I never saw him again," he whispered, his voice taking on a high-pitched, child-like tone. "I never saw him again…I – I couldn't j-just step down from – from my fucking pedestal…for once – for once in m-my…my stupid life…and t-tell him I was sorry…or – or that I loved him – or anything." He trembled and sniffled loudly, ignoring the salty tears that streamed down his pale cheeks and dribbled off of his chin. "I – I mean – I ruined it…for us…I walked away…" He swallowed, as if trying to suppress the effervescing screams. "And th-the worst part is – is that I can't e-even go back…now…I can't even apologize now…I can't just- just step down…" He shivered again and tried to pull the blanket tighter around him, but his fingers were quivering too much to function right. He struggled with it for a moment before Ellen got up and did it for him, her knarled but comfortingly old hands patting it into place. She sat back down heavily, never removing her gaze from the helplessly fragile boy that sat on the floor, rocking back and forth for lack of knowing what else to do.

"And with Todd…God, it was all my fault…" His chin trembled, and he lifted his hand to his mouth and started to nibble on his fingertips, completely unaware of what he was doing. "I n-never even we-went to – to visit him…if I had – had just gone once…just put my family before myself…I was too scared. I – I didn't want to – to see what was g-going on with him…so I never – I never went. God…if I had – had just gone and seen – seen him once…just let hi-him know that I – I loved him and – and I was looking out for – for him…then maybe…he wouldn't h-have run away." He lifted his face heavenward, his eyes glistening with tears as he searched the apathetic ceiling for some sort of comfort. "He would have known that – that someone in the fucking world cared about – about him…that someone was wai-waiting for him…to get better." A faint metallic flavor flooded his tongue and he looked down, baffled, to see his fingers bleeding from his own teeth marks. "Oh – I'm – I'm sorry," he babbled as the blood dripped onto the blanket. "I'm – I'm really sorry. I di – "

"Shh…" Ellen whispered, getting to her feet and plodding to the kitchen, returning with a roll of gauze and medical tape. "It's all right." She gently took his white hands in her own black ones and wrapped his bleeding fingers in the coarse gauze, then secured it with the tape.

"Sorry," Pietro repeated, his eyes still wide with shock. "That's never happened before."

"Don't worry about it," she replied softly, sitting down again.

He smiled vaguely at her, blinking rapidly in tacit sadness. "Not that…not the – the blood…I meant that – I meant that I've never said sorry to anyone before." He smiled again: the sad, regretful smile of a young man that had seen too much, felt too much to be considered a boy anymore. "I never – never said it when it mattered…" The smile vanished from his face and was replaced by a blank, hollow-eyed expression. "It doesn't matter – it doesn't matter anymore…none of it…because I already ruined it." He stared at the fire, the fluttering red flames reflected in his eyes. "But God…I miss them…I want them back." His shoulders heaved in a silent sob, but his eyes remained locked on the fire. "Without them…w-without them, I feel so cold…" He shivered unwillingly. "I feel so cold inside, like – like my bones are frozen over a-and everything is…is covered in ice." A new wave of tears washed over him and he started to cry uncontrollably, his dry, racking sobs suspended in the air about him and his hands shaking wildly as he attempted to wipe away the brackish tears that flowed so smoothly from his eyes. "My insides are frozen," he sobbed, his head sinking into his lap by the weight of his own grief. "God…I'm so cold – and at – at the same time my skin's on fire…I'm burning a-and freezing and I – I can't feel anything anymore except h-how much it hurts to live…God, it hurts so bad…why – why won't it just stop?" His sobs were muffled by the thick comforter wrapped about his legs, and for several minutes, the only sounds in the room were his rasping sobs. The sleet had long since ceased to fall meticulously upon the roof, and the fire was momentarily silent in its blackened prismic pit. Everything was quiet but for the wrenching sobs coming from the blanket-cloaked boy, his breath coming in harsh gasps and his thin frame quivering and jerking with emotion. And long after he had died away, it was still deathly silent. Completely silent. Completely, utterly silent.

Then the fire belched forth a tremendous pop, puncturing the thread-like quiet, and both figures jumped. Suddenly the utter noiselessness seemed too loud for both of them: throbbing and pulsing like a human heartbeat inside their ears. Pietro picked up his head and brought his knees up to his chest, hugging them tightly with his arms. The sleet was picking up again, it's rhythmical tap-tapping steadily descending upon the roof. He sighed softly and licked his lips, tasting the bitter tang of salt on his tongue. Leaning forward slightly, he rested his chin on his knees and closed his eyes. "It's not worth it," he whispered into the clamor, his voice barely audible over the rapping sleet. "It's not worth it anymore."

Authors Notes – Yayyyy I'm SO GLAD I finished this chapter! It was torture! The real FINALE will be out in a week (I'm praying) I've already gotten part of it written! Go me! And REVIEW.