Love Runs Out

[Yugikun]

Alex was dead.

((Jeremy Frasier, continued from Miss Atomic Bomb))

He'd heard that a couple minutes ago. On the announcements. He'd woken up a couple minutes before they happened and he'd heard the crackling of the speakers once again and he'd sat down, figuring that it'd be best if he stayed still for these like how he stayed still the previous times they'd come on. Sat on the desk in the centre of the room he was in. Listened quietly as the person up top spoke off about how more of his classmates were dead. It was surprisingly okay. Isabel was dead, which meant another threat was gone. The others weren't people Jeremy cared about. His thoughts had shifted to other things, namely the place he was in. Had he been in here before? Was this the place he'd heard that first announcement in? He wasn't sure.

But then the person up top said his name, and the sense of deja vu he had felt back at the rooftop came back in full force.

Alex was dead.

The boy that Jeremy had spent over a day being with - the boy who had taught him that he couldn't just take the people here at face value - was gone.

Dead.

A face that he'd never see again.

The room had been empty. Silent for everything except for his thoughts. Considerations. Words going round and round and just repeating themselves over and over again.

The point was, he just had to speed up.

Keep moving.

No more distractions.

No more considerations.

1. Have fun, above all else.
2. Get to Emma. As soon as possible.
3. Find Serena. Make sure she's safe.
4. Figure out what the fuck to do with Alex.
5. Find Al. Say hi.
6. Find Clarice. Apologise for earlier.
7. Figure out who else should be on this list. Retroactively add them.
8. Find Josh's corpse. Give last respects, for what they're worth to him.
9. Find Jasmine. Figure out what happens when you get there.
10. Find Caedyn, get closure in that area, if you can.
11. Pursue hopeless venture of survival, if above conditions have been fulfilled.

Focus on the people already on there. Forget about everyone else, for the time being.

Good plan?

Yeah.

Good plan.

There was one thing he had to do first, though. A camera on the wall. A face now looking up at it.

"So, uh. Mom? Dad?"

Something he'd been thinking about for the past few days. Nothing big. Nothing noteworthy.

Still something he had to do, though.

"I'm... not sure if you're watching this or not. You probably aren't, but, like, I may as well try saying this, right? In case you like, are, and stuff."

He scratched his head. Took a couple seconds doing so.

"Point is, regardless of whether you're watching or not... I'm sorry."

He paused. Breathed.

"For... being a shithead, I mean. I... probably said some bad things back then. Probably thought of some worse things back then."

He stopped talking, for a few seconds.

He wasn't sure what to say.

"It's, uh, hard to say why I was. Sorta hard to totally remember things from back then. I guess it was because... I dunno. I disagreed. You said some things and I thought some other things and those things really didn't go well together. I wanted to defend myself, we both thought we were in the right, and..."

One last pause.

"Point is, I'm sorry. If that's worth anything to you, then I'll take that, I guess."

Silence filled the room again.

[Emprexx Plush]

Silence, replaced by slow, exaggerated clapping.

((Caedyn Miller crushcrushcrush))

Caedyn rounded the corner into the room with her gun in her hand and a smirk on her face. "That was, like, really moving Jerebear. You shoulda been the one in theater." It wasn't entirely mocking. She honestly didn't think he had the kind of emotional depth in him to even care about apologizing to his parents over whatever dumb bullshit he did. It wasn't a good apology, but it was something, y'know? So snaps for him.

He was still a squeamish little guy though. He'd picked the only room left up here that didn't have somebody smeared on the walls. Was he apologizing because he was planning to change that? Wow. That'd be fucking dark. Not exactly a surprising way for him to go out, though.

Caedyn strode in to sit on the closest chair to the door and kick her feet up on the table. The gun sat in her lap as she eyed him, never dropping that coy smirk. "What's got you all guilty, sugar?" She hadn't called him that since the break-up. Actually, she wasn't sure she'd called anyone that since the break up. It was a generic enough pet name that it should have come up at some point, but it wasn't ringing a bell. It'd be cute if they weren't such a disaster.

[Yugikun]

Silence. That was, until he had heard the applause coming from the door, and until he heard once again the person whose voice he had loathed all through his past years.

"Oh. It's you."

Caedyn Miller was a person who didn't need to be explained. The facts and memories in that area kept coming back probably every day since the incident. To recap: Jeremy had noticed a goth girl in the year below him during the last year of middle school. He'd begun to notice this girl in a very romantic way. Unlike all of the other girls he had crushes on since first grade, though, for whatever reason he had decided to actually act on his feelings and ask her out. She'd accepted. Soon they began dating. Soon Jeremy realised that she was actually sort of a terrible person to be around. Soon she became too much, even for him. Soon, he left. Her, and middle school.

He thought that that would have been the end of it. He thought that that would have been the last he'd ever have to think of her.

He thought wrong.

He hadn't recognised her, initially, when she'd shown up during the Future Students day. She'd changed her style. Her hair. He just assumed she was from a different middle school, as she came up to him.

But then she'd spoken and that voice he had tried to forget came back and then it began all over again. And it was worse, this time. She'd come back with a vengeance, apparently. Everywhere he went. Every class he had, she seemed to be there. The nickname she'd called him once or twice before then became all he was known for by strangers. People who didn't know better. People who didn't know what it meant. And it had made him mad, what she was doing. He had tried to ignore her, he had tried to pretend she wasn't there every time she showed up, but it never worked. She was always able to say something. She was always able to bring that thorn into his side. She was always able to bring back those memories.

But that was back then.

Maybe things had changed, now.

Maybe the two of them could be civil, for once.

Well.

Maybe not.

Still worth a shot, though.

"Nothing, really. I just figured that, given where I am and what's just happened, I may as well get my things out now while I know I've still got time to. Death island, and all. The end might be just around the corner, or some pseudo-fatalist stuff like that."

A pause. He tapped his hand on the desk he was sitting on.

"But regardless of that, how are you holding up?"

[Emprexx Plush]

Nothing, really.

Oh, not much.

Not anything, I guess.

Nothing interesting.

It was like a response to one of her texts back when they were dating. There was never really anything going on with him. Nothing was bothering him. He wasn't up to anything. Maybe her memory was exaggerating things, but it seemed like every time she'd tried to honestly engage with him, he'd clammed up like this despite the fact that there was clearly something going on.

So when she asked him now, it came with a certain venom and no belief that he'd actually be honest with her. As vague as he was being, Jeremy was talking about some sort of specific incident with his parents. The way he talked made that much obvious. But he didn't want to share that with her despite the fact that now he was expecting her to chatter on about her days on the island. Had he not been paying attention to the announcements? He knew she'd like, killed a girl, yeah? He was being pretty casual about the whole thing.

Well fine. She could pretend like there was nothing wrong too. "Okay I guess. Just spending lots of time with Jazzy."

[Yugikun]

"Wait, you've been with Jasmine?"

Shit, that was a surprise. A pleasant one, as well. He knew that it should have been a given - Jasmine was Caedyn's bitch, of course they'd cling to each other wherever they went - but it was still a surprise. A fact that had correlated in his mind back then but not now. Something he knew he'd thought of before but not in a way that had mattered now. Regardless, it was still good. Meant that finding Jasmine would be pretty easy now. Meant that - once he'd sorted out his feelings with her, for what she'd done - he could probably find where Josh was. Go to his corpse. Give his last words. He hadn't really prepared them, but he figured he could get them out pretty easily.

And then he'd have three out of seven, right there. After five or six or seven or however many days of fruitlessness, he finally had something.

Shit, things were finally looking up for him.

Well.

Maybe.

Caedyn was still in front of him.

And given that she'd killed, and given who she was, there stood a chance of her maybe trying to make sure he didn't get out of here. He knew he had his gun, he knew that he could shoot her if he needed to, but he didn't really want to. He'd told Ben that he'd try to do as he'd requested. He knew that just killing people randomly was not the way to get people to like him, here.

And there was something in his head. Little guy on his shoulder. Telling him that maybe, just maybe, he still held a little bit of sentimentality for the goth girl in the year below.

...It'd be simple, really. All he needed to do was kiss her ass. Feed her ego. Maybe give her a bit more of what the story actually was.

And he knew the perfect thing to say in that regard.

"Sorry if I'm, like, acting hasty or acting weird or anything, it's just that she's actually one of the people I've been looking for."

A quick pause.

"You were one of them, too."

[Emprexx Plush]

He was looking for them. Caedyn didn't think for a second it was because he was worried about either of them. Nah, Jerebear didn't have any nice reason to care about what happened to them. There was only one reason you looked for some like her, like Jazzy, in a place like this.

"I guess you found me," she said absently with a look towards the ceiling. Before her eyes met his again her gun was up and aimed at his chest. "So why're you looking?"

Her finger was wrapped around the trigger. Fucking asshole. Did he think he was smarter than her? Like she wouldn't get what he was up to? If he'd got the drop on her instead of the other way around they probably wouldn't even be talking. Was he friends with Bridgette? Or Josh? Had someone been telling stories about her and Oskar? There were all sorts of possibilities, but none of them really mattered. Her mocking smirk had turned cold and hateful. Jeremy wasn't a plaything anymore. He was a threat.

"Talk. Fast. And don't lie."

[Yugikun]

Well.

This wasn't ideal.

The pistol was in front of him point blank. The gun was pointed at his chest. One shot and it'd be over. Just a simple movement on Caedyn's part would mean that he wouldn't be leaving this room alive. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all. There were so many things he still had to do and if he died here then he wouldn't be able to do them and no no no he couldn't die here he had to do something he had to save himself. Focus. Think. He was here. He was on a table, and there was a gun on him. Did she win her gun? He vaguely remembered hearing that she'd won the competition the day before he won it. That meant she'd killed. That meant she'd probably be okay with doing it again. That meant she wasn't going to flake. That meant he wasn't going to get out that way.

Which left going with the demands she'd asked of him.

Talk fast.

Don't lie.

Take a breath.

Close your eyes.

Then:

"I've been following a list. Things to do and people to meet before it all ends for me since I figured that I probably won't be surviving this. The people on the list are as follows: Emma Luz, Serena Waters, Alessio Rigano, Clarice Halwood, Joshua Bracewell, Jasmine Reed, and you. Jasmine was on there because she killed Josh. I wanna ask her why it happened. Figure out what happened from there. You're on there for closure reasons. I wanted to talk to you about the... thing, that happened. Wasn't really something I wanted to get up to do but if you appeared there wasn't really a reason not to."

A pause. Another breath taken.

"You happy with that?"

[Emprexx Plush]

Shouldn't take that bait. Should not take that bait. He was trying to bury the lead like a jump. He'd mentioned Jazzy and he'd mentioned Josh so she had all the proof she need to just shoot him and move the fuck on. He was going to hurt her. There was no doubt about that. Why should she bother figuring out what he meant about that thing, it was an obvious ploy to grab her attention and she didn't care about it.

She didn't care about him.

"Thing? You're going to have to be a little more specific there, sugar."

Fuck.

This was fine.

She could still shoot him later.

She was just covering her bases.

Yeah.

[Yugikun]

...

...She.

She didn't know what he was talking about?

This was...

This was awkward.

He didn't think he needed to explain why. He was pretty sure the situation explained itself pretty well. Caedyn had a gun on him. Caedyn - the creeping, lurking terror who made his social life a living hell the moment she emerged - was the person who held all the power over whether he lived another fleeting moment of ten minutes or so or whether he died right here. You could see what the issue was with that pretty quickly, Jeremy imagined. It was a situation which he didn't have a lot of control over. He wanted to live. He wanted to get out of this room. He knew that, but he couldn't act upon it. Caedyn was the one with the gun. His was on the desk besides him. He'd have to move to get it. That meant he couldn't do anything like what he'd done with Ben.

So that meant he had to just go along with Caedyn's demands, and hope that that produced a way out for him.

There was a thing he was talking about. She didn't know what the thing was.

As thus: he had to explain what the thing was.

"Y'know, the thing. Back in... middle school. The... relationship. I wanted to talk about that."

He couldn't even say that he could look down through the barrel, or anything like that. It was pointed at his chest; he was trying to look at her eyes. The very thing that could end his life was something that he could barely even see.

He didn't know if that was supposed to be something relieving or something that made this that, that much worse.

"Like, couple's counselling, or something like that. Figure out what went wrong. Get closure, or something like that."

[Emprexx Plush]

Her free hand gave him a dismissive wave. "Yeah, yeah, I get that. That doesn't answer my question though. You're gonna have to be more specific."

It was strange, talking like this. Usually she was more animated, but she felt restrained by the gun at his chest. It couldn't move. He might find a way out if she did that, and that wasn't happening. No matter what else went down, Jeremy didn't leave this room. Once again she was reminded that she should just shoot him, but this was bothering her. Did he really not get what happened between them? All this time she figured he'd been avoiding her because he was ashamed. But now...

"Oh my god."

He couldn't be saying that. No, that was too thick, too Jeremy even for him.

"Do you really not have any idea why I broke up with you?"

[Yugikun]

"No, I don't."

There was a tone of disbelief in her voice. There was a hint that she wasn't taking him seriously. There was a feeling that she was going to burst into laughter at any moment. That wasn't a good thing. It meant that he was that much further away from getting to her. It meant that he wasn't close to disarming this situation at all. It meant that it was still very likely that he was going to get shot here. That wasn't good. That wasn't ideal. He knew that he was contradicting himself by thinking that and he knew that he was betraying the platform he stood on but he wanted to live. At least long enough to get out of here. He didn't want to die. Not here, not now, and not to her, of all people.

Jeremy Frasier was going to die on his island. He knew that. He'd said it so many times, at this point. 0% chance of winning the game.

But he sure as hell wasn't going to die to fucking Caedyn, of all people.

So he had to get himself out of this situation.

Talk fast.

Don't lie.

Figure out that opening and take it for all it was worth.

There was a moment of silence, after he'd said what he'd said. That probably wasn't good. He needed to elaborate. Fast.

"To be honest, my memory told me that I was the one who broke it off, so I guess I'm missing something here. Enlighten me, if you may."

[Emprexx Plush]

She almost shot him right there. Not for any strategic or defensive reason. Just satisfying her anger. He was so wound up on "closure" and yet either he didn't remember or never even knew why they were such a mess in the first place.

" 'kay. Happy to. Let's start with this: we dated for what, two months? Tell me one thing about myself that the entire school doesn't know. Just one."

It was written all over the way he was approaching it. 'That thing.' 'The relationship.' 'Getting closure.' It was all so vague and clinical. Like he didn't want to own up to anything. It wasn't his, it wasn't hers, and it certainly wasn't theirs. It just was. And from the way he acted when they were together, sure, that seemed like a pretty accurate way to describe it. That was the problem.

There was a part of Caedyn that could be reasonable. She hadn't been angry with Jeremy about their past in a long, long time 'cuz she figured all the messiness was just them being stupid middle schoolers who didn't know how to deal. It only seemed logical to think he'd finally grown the hell up and cringed looking back on himself. But he didn't. Whatever closure he was seeking seemed to sit squarely on her being the one in the wrong.

Asshole. She should have shot him before he opened his mouth. That wasn't going to stop her from seeing this through.

[Yugikun]

Oh.

So.

They were playing a question game, weren't they?

This wasn't really how Jeremy was expecting this to go and this wasn't really how Jeremy wanted this to go but if that was how this was going then he could play ball. Admittedly, the question got him a little bit. There were two seconds or so spent desperately trying to think of an answer that he initially thought he didn't have. That didn't last for long, though. He got his answer fairly quickly. He got himself past the point she was trying to make in less than five seconds. If he'd counted before, that might have been a record. If he cared at all, it might have been a point actually worth saying.

He didn't, though. He had his answer, and that was all he needed.

"Puzzles. You're into puzzles. Have been since pre k. Next."

She could try him all she wanted, but she wasn't going to get him. Not here. Not now.

[Emprexx Plush]

If she had both hands free she would have slow clapped. "Wow. You went with the thing I met my next girlfriend doing. At school. Where everyone could see us. A lot. You really got me there, I'm an open book to you."

Her finger tightened on the trigger for just a second. Maybe he figured she'd be amused, but she wasn't laughing. It was just making her more angry. "That's it. That right there. You don't know anything about me, 'cuz you never cared. We were just a thing," she echoed bitterly.

"The stupidest thing is I don't care anymore either! I don't think about you when you're not around. I haven't thought about our relationship in forever. You treated me like a boring, ugly piece of shit, but I adulted up and got the fuck over it! And now you, you wanna stand here and tell me that you want closure?"

The gun was shaking a little now. So was her finger. Even she wasn't sure if she might pull the trigger any second now. The cracks in her voice and hysterical way she blew up might undercut her point about adulting up, but no, no, fuck that. She was the reasonable one. At least she tried back then, pushing his precious fucking boundaries just to get him to treat her like a person, let alone his girlfriend. What had he done, exactly?

[Yugikun]

And once again, silence filled the room.

Until:

"I mean, the whole point of this was for you to get over your issues, so, uh..."

A pause.

He looked into her eyes.

"You could shoot me if that would make you happy."