iv. depression
Understanding mocks him from three steps ahead, turning on its heel and blowing raspberries until its face has gone vermillion while he strives and struggles to close the distance. Every moment of his life has been spent reaching for some sort of answer or another – why had he been dealt poor cards as a child; why could he never amount to the other children in school; why was the world eating itself while the culprits, every man, woman, and child, blinked in ignorance and blew it away like the seeds of a dandelion; why was he the only one who was strong enough to take the gun in his own hand and use it to right the wrongs that society was too blind to see itself? He'd thought he'd found it in the Doctor's powerful words, in Mary's ever knowing smile, but they took her from him in the winter and spit him out alone in the spring one thousand days later, and everything he'd thought he had learned from them regurgitates itself as another sugarcoated lie. There's revenge to be had in the seeking out and finding of his former employer, a hunt that has taken months and an unfortunate run-in with the law that almost had him back in the hands of that dreadful, dreadful hospital, but there are truths to be had in it as well. Truths that only the demagogue could possibly know. Puppet masters don't pull strings without drawing the greater picture in their mind, nor does a puppet dare to ask what those may be, but a dead woman was as good of a scissor to those ties as any, and if he's to live out the rest of his life in relative peace, he must know why the apocalypse struck him and no one else. Why was he chosen as the operation's central hitman? What was there to gain, if not only wealth, from the planned killings? Who was to blame for the nun's death: the boy with the gun in his hand? the chess player, buried by the foreground and frowning at his pawn's shift in loyalty? the victim herself, driven to desperation by grief and taking her life, for the first and last time, into her own hands?
Nikki buries them all, unanswered, along with what remains of a man he had once strove to be so much like.
The dawn carries with it more rain, the avenger (the murderer) trying and failing to recall the last time his city had blessed its citizens with a clear sky. For years, now, he had dreamed of this moment: dirt toppling over the frozen features of the older man's face, twisted into an expression he'd never worn during their work as directionless revolutionists. Joy, displeasure, listlessness, condescension. They'd all come and gone hundreds of times before. Fear, however, is the suit he'd never donned before; it is the one he wears last, and the one he wears best. Graves are meant for remembering, but the hole that has just been filled is meant to forget, and the living member of their distorted duo plunges the head of the shovel into the dirt one last time, vaguely musing that the clouds and the tears they cry may wash away the evidence as much as it will the memory from his mind. For years, now, he had dreamed of this moment and the clarity, the elation it would bring. His feet carry him back to the city, tired knees shuffling him thoughtlessly toward where he was supposed to start his life anew, and he, losing himself in the crowd of the early morning commutes, wonders: where is his clarity? where is his elation? He was supposed to have answers, but they never found his ears, and he was supposed to have closure, but his mind is demanding something that he has no answer to: And what now?
Time butterfly kisses his forehead as it passes with the speed of a jet, one day slipping so seamlessly into the next that he can't remember if today is a Thursday or a Sunday, if it's August or November. His feet stumble through the motions like those of a drunkard, mind buried in a haze he couldn't possibly describe with words, and through the general tumult of existence and the sleep he has not been getting in what seems like a decade, he can't even bring himself to be surprised when he catches sight of inky fabric in the crowd of faceless denizens, apparition of a face he once loved shimmering in the newborn hours of the day. Blue eyes lock onto green (air; there are no eyes to be seen), and he watches her through a near sightless gaze until she's swallowed whole by the zigzagging of strangers around them. There, then not, and then there again. It isn't the first time he has seen her ghostly image, her hollow eyes staring at him from above when restrained to the ward bed some long time ago, but he remembers what she had told him with each visit and finds dread settling in his heart. Sure enough, when he flees from her forming shape, she follows, tone mimicking that of warmth but lacking the convictions behind it. He sucks in panicked air, footsteps faster as they carry him away from people who don't even care to recognize that he exists, and her mocking words break the silence around them.
"Where are you now?" In life - where is he in life?
"Feeling small -" the blond says, but is interrupted.
"Can't live without it?" His mind jolts at the words, repeated from his days as an insane man when his guilty conscious had created the image of his greatest mistake before his very eyes. "It": the Doctor's death. Days, weeks, years spent pining over the demise of the one he'd believed to be to blame for all of this, and for so long, he'd honestly believed that he could not live so long as that man did just the same. Now – now he doesn't know. One is dead, so the other should be alive, but he certainly doesn't feel alive. Her question and the uncertainty it stirs in him tries to kick the foundation out from beneath him, his whole frame beginning to topple over as he catches the nearby wall with his arm and uses it to keep upright. This, she uses as another knife to the heart. "You call this your best?"
What does she want from him? If he agrees with her, verbalizes all of the self-hating storm that's been brewing in his mind since the day he was born, will she leave him be? Clinging to the idea, needing to be free of the ghost, he admits, "I made my life a mess." It doesn't work, though. Footsteps are silent when there are no feet to make contact with the ground, but he feels her draw closer with the prickle on the back of his neck, and when she speaks, it's louder than it was before.
"Everyone but you sees it."
"What a fool...!" he gasps, anger at himself fueled further by the words he'd heard from so many other people spoken from the mouth of the only one he'd ever let get to him.
"What are you going to do? Make more excuses?" she hisses, suddenly beside him, facade of sweetness melted into acrimony in its purest form. Everything he'd ever done was pin the blame on someone else, and she knows it. He knows it. Doctor X may have told him where to aim, but he was the one pulling the trigger. Mistake after mistake after mistake, and now, there is no one left alive to accuse for them. No one but himself. No one left alive but himself.
"... Why don't you tie it off?"
His heart stops.
Most all of this, he's heard before: the mockery, the belittling, the cruelty. It's always different, another batch of verbal poison to burn the former hitman's flesh for every visit, but they never varied in intensity, and she's never gone so far as to speak of – of this. He turns his head, the sight of "Mary" in his periphery becoming a full on gaze, and he wets his lips before seeking confirmation. "... Hang myself?" Lips tug upward, countenance erupting into a grin too malicious to be worn by the face of the sweet Sister Mary, and while he may be able to tell himself with a certainty that this is not her, that not one single part of the disappearing image is her, the seed planted in his mind still manages to sprout long after her silhouette dissolves into the lukewarm summer's air. (No one left alive to blame but himself – no one left alive to blame but himself.)
He buries his questions with what remains of the Doctor, but his mind (his heart) floods with more to take their place in the time that follow. What if this – all of this wandering, all of this uncertainty, all of this despair – never changes? He doesn't think he can live the rest of his life in a state between sleep and awareness, caught in a stage of predormitum that never advances into true rest. But what if he wasn't to blame? It wasn't as though he would have had any blood on his hands had he not been fooled by the Doctor, and it wasn't something he did to himself that shattered his mind some eighteen years ago, but Mary's death that had brought him down below even the scum of the streets. And they're – they're gone now, which means that he'll never have to kill, he'll never be labeled insane again. … But they've been gone for some time now, something tells him from the back of his thoughts, and things haven't improved. What if it never gets any better than this?
Nikki's knees buckle beneath him, unable to support the weight of his frame paired with one million tons of grief, and he buries his tear-soaked face in his hands as his back scrapes against the wall behind him. "Oh -" he chokes between sobs, all alone save for the gray blanket over the sky, the towering buildings around him, and the sound of his own pitiful noises echoed back at him in a symphony of worthlessness, "- what if I'm only insane...?"
Mmmmm, part four, and the longest one of them all. Not quite sure what to say about his one aside from the fact that that all of the dialogue here is taken from the lyrics of An Intentional Confrontation (and a bit of A Junkie's Blues at the end, just because I kind of like that song, oops) which will explain why some of it seems a little... well, not natural sounding, I guess? Actually, if I'm remembering right, all of the dialogue up until this point has been taken directly from the rock opera, as it will continue to do so until - well, I suppose you'll just have to wait for the final part in order to find out. ;D Also, I really, really wanted to write the Doctor into this part because hot darn, do I love the character interaction between these two. (Despite Mindcrime II's, uh... blatant flaws, there are a handful of good songs, and The Chase is definitely one of them.) Unfortunately, that would have led to a chapter at least twice as long as this already is, and seeing as it's already about twice as long as Bargaining, I figured that I'd just... shave that part off. And cry internally about it.
Anywho, that's all for now. The last part will be up... well, honestly, whenever I remember to/feel like putting it up. Hope you've enjoyed everything up until this point, and hope to see you for part five of five~!