RedemptionMoon: Wow, I haven't posted in ages! I have a lot of time in my hands now especially since it's spring break! So I'm posting this second and last chapter to Car Crash. It's a little... abstract... and possibly depressing so I'm rather sure you guys wont like it as much as you liked the first chapter... but it's also a conclusion.
Car Crash was meant to be a stand-alone fic but many people demanded to know what happened next; so I guess I decided to put a definitive end to all things that happened.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed the first 'installation.' I hope you will be satisfied with this. :) As always, please leave a review; you don't know how much reviews delight me. (might even inspire me enough to write installations to my other fics or write other depressing one-shots LOL)
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† Aftermath of the Crash †
Every day was a struggle now.
Every moment was a thousand years meshed into tiny fragments people referred to as 'seconds.'
It was his fault. He had been the cause and he deserved the consequences.
He was damned - not by God nor by others... but by himself.
He was 'guilty' after all.
He damned himself for being who he was and for doing what he did... this was the reason why he endlessly punished himself.
He punished himself by looking at his victim in the eye every single day and feeling his pain and his hatred and his fear and his loathing.
Every day, he would go the hospital and sit by the bed; watching Ken Hidaka, the previous 4th member of WieB Kruez, wish him death with all hatred he could possibly muster until all his strength would give way to a dreamless slumber.
Every single day he wanted to die under that gaze. He wanted to shrivel up like dry leaves and disintegrate into the cold breeze... then again, that would just poison the air. He did not deserve such a dignified death. He did not want to poison the earth with his ashes. He deserved to burn in hellfire where the flames were so hot, no ashes could remain.
In a way, it was a sort of poetic justice. The person whom he had caused so much pain was now causing him an equal amount of agony.
Oh no, Ken never said a word. He'd just stare at him with those flaming eyes. In Ken's eyes, Schuldich found his hellfire.
But then it didn't help that Schuldich was telepathic; he heard every death wish, every curse, every muffled cry for murder.
He accepted it because he knew it was his fault.
So everyday, he would come to the hospital and feel the animosity from his unwitting and unintended victim; and he would curse himself and he would wish every other moment that he had not gone out that night and drowned himself in liquor.
† † †
Then one day... Ken just... stopped.
Gone were the anger, the hate and the intense loathing... it was just pain... and fear that existed.
And Schuldich found that this tortured him more than the hate could ever do.
Deeper and deeper, Ken sank into the recesses of his soul, immersing himself into the dark bowels of his mind until sunlight no longer existed and only his screaming agony echoed and shattered the silence.
The hellfire no longer existed in his eyes. His eyes were now twin abysses threatening to swallow the light they looked upon. There was an endless depth of nothing but misery... Ken had allowed his spirit to wander into the forest of nothingness, perhaps never to return again.
His body was alive, but there was no one there...
And all Schuldich could ever hear in the younger boy's mind was the sound of agony; the wailing of a tortured soul fleeing into destruction.
He could no longer help it... he could no longer restrain the guilt that threatened to engulf his very own life and his own soul.
For the first time and years... in the decades of his existence... he allowed the tendrils of his thoughts to take him, his soul into the mind of his victim; a victim he had caused much pain.
He was wrong. It had not been a forest after all.
A dark, gloomy plain stretched into forever in all directions... and Schuldich walked it all. He walked and walked, trying to find the source of the anguished keening... the miserable weeping.
Ken's mind was as dark as an endless night.
An eternity passed, he found himself standing at the edge of forever, looking down at an unfathomable cliff. There seemed to be nothing there; but it was where the pain came from.
He felt fear.
He felt reprehension.
He did not want to jump but guilt dictated that he must do so...
So he found himself falling and falling.
Another eternity passed. It seemed like time passed in forevers in Ken's mind. Was it always like this in such lost causes?
Finally he landed. He landed with such a powerful jolt that he was sure he felt the physical pain. He was bleeding all over. Pain reverberated from the inside to the outside and it was as if he couldn't think clearly...
He turned, and saw a pair of dark eyes looking at him. Not really saw; it was too dark to see anything but himself and the blood; but in his mind's eye, he saw the twin abysses staring out at him.
He walked, dragged his battered bloody body forward to those abysses and he found a forlorn creature trapped in a cage of jagged rocks. Even in his own mind... Ken had no limbs. He was useless... even in this bleak made-up world.
It was then that Schuldich knew what he should do.
But fear tore him apart in all directions... was he willing...?
No... Schuldich was human too, and humanness also meant that he had a conscience... right now, his conscience was swallowing him whole.
Eternities, eternities, forevers of indecision...
The world in Ken's mind existed in eternities.
Slowly he neared; fearing the very same being he was approaching. He could feel Ken's sad, empty eyes just looking at him.
They were standing face to face now. Almost nose to nose.
" I'm so sorry." His mouth had opened but no words had come out. An invisible wind carried them away and spread their ashes into the darkness.
There was an unfathomable silence... and then...
Suddenly, tears fell from Ken's sightless eyes. So much salty tears like rain from the dark clouds above them that they could not see.
He could feel the warm drops spattering on his skin, his hair, his eyelashes.
Ken was crying. For the first time, he was crying for himself; for what he had lost and who he had left behind. All the pain and the regret came pouring out, wrapping Schuldich with their tiny dark strand until he felt like he was enclosed in a black cocoon.
He heard Ken's voice above the howling wind. "I'm... so... scared. I don't... want... to be alone..."
He found himself wrapping his bloody arms around Ken. The man who had become as black as a shadow... the boy who was as lost as a frail child.
He couldn't hear his own voice, but still he said. "Don't worry. I'm here." He now knew how it felt to embrace a shadow.
"No... please... take me away."
He knew what he had to do.
At the bottom of an abyss, there is nowhere to go.
They simply had to disappear.
It was hard; it took all his strength to be able to do what he had to do... it was also difficult because he, some part of himself, still wanted to leave... and live.
But this was his payment.
Dying would be his redemption.
So he snuffed out that little voice in his heart crying out that he wanted to leave, and he started to disappear... with Ken.
He had allowed himself to be engulfed in the darkness until there was nothing left. No pain, no fear, no regrets.
Their existences were being erased by a merciful God... one that mercifully allowed death.
Nothing remained but their eyes, staring at each other. His were green, and his were black in shadow.
Both pairs unblinking yet speaking volumes for entwined souls. One asking forgiveness, the other giving forgiveness.
And then, their eyes were extinguished as well... like candle lights never existing in the dark night.
Nothing existed anymore.
Not even the abyss.
† † †
"He's gone Crawford." Nagi turned from the bed, trying to blink out the gory sight.
Schuldich had suddenly started spurting blood a moment ago for no reason at all. It was as if every pore had tried to expel his lifeblood from his body.
He had been declared brain dead years ago... several years ago when he had almost accidentally killed Ken Hidaka.
According the nurse on shift at that time, one moment he was just sitting beside Ken, staring at his seemingly-empty body, then he too was slumped on the bed, unconscious... and never to wake up again.
Schwarz confined him in the same room as Siberian. They knew Schuldich's 'disappearance' had something to do with his victim... and they hoped against hope that Schuldich would come back from whatever ordeal he was facing in their virtual world.
They knew he had to deal with things in his own way... it was why they allowed his body to be hooked up to artificial life; to machines and contraptions that kept his body breathing and beating. Side by side, they lay, a sight to see.
Ken Hidaka, his legs no longer there; and Schuldich physically complete and yet also completely gone.
Years they waited.
They waited for his return.
To no avail.
In the ten years he had been confined there had been no word no whisper no indication of life
Schuldich was gone
Finally he was gone in body as well as mind...
...and the strangest thing was he had taken Ken with him
Eternity ended after all.