Title: I love you but I have chosen darkness
Chapter 3: I'm looking forward to joining you, finally
by: Jessica12
Note: Title is a song by Nine inch nails.
Cullen's POV
You had never been afraid of dying.
The concept of dying had always been present in your life.
Death had walked beside you for so long that you had gotten used to its presence.
It had taken the once close to you one by one.
When it finally came for your wife and son you were incapable to stop it.
Afterwards, when death had come and gone you held them in your arms and you prayed it would come for you.
But it didn't.
So you did what you had to do to try to follow your wife and son.
You tried to end it all.
But something kept you tied to this world.
It refused to let you go.
But you knew that eventually, death would come even for you.
As it does for all of us.
It was just a matter of time.
So you bide your time.
While you searched for the one responsible for bringing death to your door.
But that search would eventually lead you only further down into darkness.
And now you were standing on the brink of death.
You had finally arrived.
You were not scared.
You refused to show fear.
It was what you wanted after all.
To end it all.
To finally stop that engulfing and ever burning pain inside.
The only thing you hated was that you didn't get to choose your end.
That choice had been taken away by your own actions.
You had been on a mission to make them pay for the things they had taken from you.
It was justice after all.
At least that what was you told yourself.
It kept you moving forward.
It kept you breathing in and out.
But in the end, it all came to an end
You hadn't expected it to come to this.
When you had imagined your end it was always something else.
It was an end worthy of the battles you had fought.
An end that made the blood you had spilled and the destruction you had caused justified.
But the battles you fought and the life you had spilled had all been in vain.
There was no justice to be had for the likes of you.
So in a way, this was a fitting end for the person you had become.
You were a murderer.
You saw that now.
At the start of this, you managed to close your eyes to that fact.
You saw yourself as some kind of dark angel bringing justice to a dark world.
You were ridding the world of bad men.
The men that had taken everything from you.
When you pulled the trigger and send them on their way you never once felt bad.
They had all paid the price for the pain that they had caused you.
For the lives they had taken.
But in the end, you had taken a life of a man that was innocent.
His face haunted you.
It was etched into your mind.
When you closed your eyes you saw the look in the man's eyes when he knew that he was dying.
You saw desperation there and fear.
You had held his life in your hands and you had made the choice to take it away.
And for that, you would die.
As you stood there surrounded by thick walls and bars a part of you accepted that fact.
At least that was what you told yourself.
They came for you in the afternoon when the sun still was high in the sky.
As they put the hood over your head and put the shackles on you told yourself that you were ready.
You were ready to die well.
With your head held high.
You would not beg.
You would not beg any man for your life.
But that day you got a choice.
To stay or go.
To give up or fight.
You told yourself afterward when the choice was made and the deal was struck that you had made the right decision.
And that fear had nothing to do with it.
But as you stepped off the train the next day and walked through the camp a little voice whispered inside that you were a coward.
A better man would have let go and faced down his demons.
You were not a good man.
As you stood and watched the sunset over the camp you convinced yourself that that was exactly what this world needed right now.
A bad man with blood on his hands.
End