I Listened to Heavy Rain OST- Redemption while writing this :(
Addiction
"I… I just need… to forget. That's all I want." Norman Jayden muttered to himself, having an internal conversation with the red-clad butler in his mind. He sat on his bed with his arms wrapped around his legs. While he was engaged in mentally sparring with himself, he grabbed his trembling wrist tight as a vice grip, trying to prevent himself from continuing; the tremoring hand held a vial full of Triptocaine and twitched convulsively as he gazed at it, feeling as if it was saying to him 'you need this'. "But sir, you've already taken two doses in the last ten minutes… surely this cannot be good for you-"
Jayden gripped the vial tighter, scowling in anger at it and at the man he perceived in his head. He needed this.
"I don't care! I just need to get through this… Just one more and I'll be fine." The butler gaped in shock, wide-eyed and replied hastily, worried that Norman would not listen to him in time. He outstretched his hand and interjected, "No, I advise against that, sir! If you take any more, I'm afraid you may—"
He NEEDED this.
Norman stared heatedly at the last remaining vial of Tripto in his junkie hand, then to the two empty vials scattered on the bed. He felt his nose bleeding out of one nostril, eyes bloodshot and painful; hell, his whole body hurt. Every organ, every bone, every muscle… not to mention his mind. Norman would rather destroy his aspiring FBI brain than to live with the memory of someone he—
No.
It was harder and harder to tell himself that, harder than anything else in the world to say no to cleansing his mind of the pain, much less dragging a splintered rake through it with Tripto.
And it was also hard to say "No, it's not my fault", "No, I didn't cause this", "No, I didn't let him die", but Norman believed the opposite anyway, running away like a little chicken shit and using drugs to destroy his brain so he wouldn't have to deal with it. He almost wanted those memories to just never have existed in the first place- it would be much less painful that way.
But Jayden didn't want this. At one time he didn't need it. But this time, this one case had done him in. He allowed himself to get too close to the victims, and one of them died.
It wasn't Shaun.
Jayden couldn't bear to stare longingly at the vial of the tantalizingly blue "forget-powder" anymore, and with an aggravated sigh he buried his head in his knees.
Did he really need this…?
Sometimes Jayden didn't even know the answer, himself.