Sleet in June

[Slam]

Lizzie couldn’t stop herself from crying softly as the conversation unfolded. She still wanted to run, still wanted to get out of there with Morgan and forget Michael ever existed, but her heart was breaking in sympathy with Morgan’s.

She didn’t like Michael. She didn’t like him when he’d decided to start killing people, and she didn’t like him when Morgan had decided to try and save him no matter how crazy it was. She still didn’t like him.

But this was the saddest conversation she’d ever seen in her too-short life.

She slipped her hand around Morgan’s, squeezing it. She didn’t know what else to do.

[Kermit]

Michael had never really wanted to be a marine biologist. 'Marine biologist' was just the stock answer he gave because the real answer would make people worried and sad, and that would make him feel guilty. He was good at marine biology, so he told people he wanted to be a marine biologist, and they assumed he wasn't lying. Truth was, Michael Froese's dream was to be an entry in Wikipedia's list of unidentified decedents. The only thing left behind from a life that had never done wrong and never done right was an enigma.

Secrets were what made people people.

He wasn't high. He was pretty sure he wasn't high. He couldn't remember. He didn't feel like he was high. Lizzie was crying. She was holding Morgan's hand. 'Who else would have known what a ctenophore even is,' Morgan said. Michael remembered who else would have known. She had no eyes. Her face was torn off in patches. He could see her bones. He accidentally tore all the skin on her arm off, and when he threw the skin into the sea, it felt like tossing a banana peel into the compost. Even before the island she'd always been the only person he hadn't ever tried to ditch or leave or abandon. He'd fallen in love with the mystery she'd left behind — with the secrets she'd taken with her. Morgan was still talking. Michael blinked. Morgan wanted Michael to justify himself. Morgan said Michael was lying to himself. Morgan said Michael knew it. Morgan was crying. Michael didn't know why he was crying. He stared for a few seconds. He inhaled sharply through his nose. His heart was beating really really fast. His mouth was chewing on itself. Morgan didn't get to make that call. Morgan didn't get to define him.

The reason depended on who he was dealing with, usually.

He felt his breathing slow. Unconsciously, his facial expression softened. Closed his eyes.

A light exhalation. Voice choppy; manic.

"No, it's - Morgan, it's just -" he shrugged. Opened his eyes. "I dunno. It's not about - I can't - I think I told Erika or Quinn or - it doesn't -"

He took another step back. The gun went back up. Face hardened.

"It's - this is who I'm supposed to be. This is what I am. This is where I fit in."

[Cactus]

Michael Froese died right then and there.

As he looked at his friend — former, it would have seemed, and tried to find some way to reach him, it was the eyes that gave it away. His eyes were wild, scared, confused. When he closed them and then opened them all over again, there was nothing behind them. It was as though the terrible battle between good and evil had been waged within Michael's soul, and good had lost.

The gun went back up again, only confirming it for him.

It was pathetic. For such a smart guy, Morgan couldn't believe that Michael believed any of the bullshit that he'd been selling himself — or him — at all. It hurt to think that all of the many hours spent with someone that he considered a genuinely close friend, he had terribly misjudged the strength of his character. Through it all, he had thought that Michael's intellectual abilities would have propped him up and buffered him against the horrors. Instead, they only made him more of a target, more of a victim. But as he listened to Michael stammer his words out, he wasn't sure whether or not Michael was trying to convince the two of them — or himself.

"Liar," he whispered through gritted teeth.

Tears silently ran down Morgan's face as he was struck by the sadness of it all. There was no real battle going on for anyone's soul, he knew that. There was only pain and cowardice, empty words from someone who was wallowing in their own self-pity just waiting to die. Someone who was willing to take everyone with them, because a four paragraph Wikipedia entry was better than being just another part of a table.

How could he have been so stupid?

Lizzie had grabbed his hand at some point; the poor girl was obviously terrified, but Morgan knew she was probably a little angry with him, too. Their chances of survival decreased exponentially every second they were around Michael, and hell — she'd even said that to him. But for whatever reason, Morgan had been obsessed with finding his friend and rescuing him from the murderous downward spiral that Survival of the Fittest was crafting for him.

He had been naive; he had been stubborn, but above all else, Morgan Dragosavich had been an idiot, and that idiot had likely gotten the both of them killed.

As he stared into the barrel of the gun, Morgan gently leaned back against his girlfriend, feeling the warmth of her body on his. They were a week into this nightmare, but her energy continued to keep him going.

Keep them going.

His eyes widened. Of course.

Lizzie would have objected to his next course of action vehemently, but of course — Morgan never was one for plans. He squeezed her hand, but his words were for all three of them.

"I'm so sorry."

With only so much as a sniffle, Morgan shoved Lizzie backwards, and launched himself forward at the shell that had once been his best friend, not even bothering to wipe the tears away.

[Slam]

Lizzie fell backwards, in what felt like slow motion. Morgan charged forwards, the truth finally seeming to hit home, as the distance between them grew further. She landed with a harsh thud, the dirt staining her already filfthy trousers.

She watched wide-eyed, shaking as the garden shears in one hand pressed back, while the other hand had lost Morgan and had only rough ground to feel.

There was no time to think. She could only react with the base monkey brain instincts that had been conditioned to survive in such a situation. It screamed at her: "Run! Run!", in its primitive chemical tongue, as her legs threatened to take control and send her barreling to safety.

But if she did that, the distance between her and Morgan would grow even more.

She whimpered, trembling uselessly, as the scene unfolded.

[Kermit]

Michael flicked the safety on as he saw Morgan's body preparing to charge. Made sure he had a good grip on the gun. Morgan was a fucking idiot who didn't understand that if he and Lizzie just fucked off, everybody in this situation would benefit. Morgan then pushed Lizzie to the ground, which was fucked up, because Lizzie was holding a stabby thing, and that's how people fell on knives, Michael was pretty sure. If there was one person here who needed saving, it was Morgan. Was it sexist that Morgan thought he needed to save Lizzie? Michael didn't know. Michael'd killed only women. He was pretty sure it was an accident that he'd only killed women. He really hoped nobody watching thought he was sexist. Sexism was a bad look and it was weird and neckbeardy and he didn't want people to think he was a neckbeard. He wanted people to think he was whatever the opposite of a neckbeard was. At least, in the present moment, he did. He definitely hadn't taken any ADD meds this morning. Kill three people chosen randomly. Roughly a 1/8 chance that they'd all be women. It wasn't exactly 1/8, because non-binary people also existed, and they didn't fit into either category, hence the 'non-binary', and he didn't actually know how many people in a random sampling would be non-binary, though even if he did know, doing that hypothetical calculation in his head seemed scary, so, like... shit, well, murder wasn't the only way sexism could be expressed, and, like, maybe it was internalized and like, oh fuck, he totally had a weird Beryl pathos, and -

Morgan collided with Michael, Michael collided with the wall, and the two boys both collided with the floor.

Brain reboot. Autopilot? Autopilot. There was still a gun in his hand. The safety was maybe on. He was maybe dying? Did Morgan have a knife? Morgan was on top of him, relatively. Michael needed to do something! Michael decided. Do what comes naturally, is what he decided. He wasn't sure if he could breathe. Clumsily, blindly, arms wrapped around Morgan's torso. Pulled him down or maybe pulled himself up. Held tight. Michael's throat hurt. Michael was crying. No. He wasn't crying. He was bawling. He didn't know what to do. He was - he wanted - he wanted to not be here and he wanted to not be a spree killer and he wanted to change himself for the better without actually having to change and he wanted and he wanted and he didn't know what to do except press his face against the fabric of Morgan's shirt and scream into his shoulder.

So that's what he did.

[Cactus]

If he were being honest with himself, Morgan hadn't really thought that far ahead. After taking a look at the condition of his erstwhile friend, he'd sort of just guessed that he would lunge at Michael and distract him enough to let Lizzie go away, likely taking a few bullets in the head or chest as a result. Instead though, in the split-second before he collided with Michael, he heard a click. It wasn't the click of a gunshot, though. Gunshots didn't click.

Safeties did, though.

The combination of the two of them hitting both the wall and the ground in quick succession momentarily knocked the wind out of Morgan and gave Michael the advantage. In a mild panic, Morgan gasped for his breath and meekly tried to break away as the other boy's thin arms grasped around him. He couldn't get away, he still couldn't breathe, and all he could hear was Michael burying his face into his chest and—

Screaming?

This wasn't a cry of fury or a battle cry, but it was a noise that was filled with tortured anguish. Suddenly, it all made sense. Michael hadn't mentally died here at all. This was just what happened in Survival of the Fittest. All of those kids whose names were whispered in passing conversation, all of the people with kill counts to their name who were glossed over in the history books — everyone who didn't know any better had just assumed that they had all had something actually wrong with them. That deep down inside, there had been an evil seed, just waiting to come out. It was probably what the terrorists were hoping that people would think, trying to blame everything on nature and believing that this was just the natural order.

But the sound that Michael made as he hugged him and screamed — Jesus, it was a hug, wasn't it — this was the sound of someone who was trapped; who had no way out of where they were. Morgan had always known it all along, Michael wasn't a bad guy. But between his fear, his stress, teenaged hormones and pure stupid luck, his friend had found himself a killer. It was evident that he'd been trying to lean into it.

Morgan knew better. He did now, at least. Michael wasn't going to shoot him. He was trying to ward him away, not for his own safety, but because he needed to believe that he was a stone-cold killer, that he was capable of all of it. It wasn't out of a lack of sanity, it was just the opposite. Michael was trying to hold on to something that would keep him going; keep him from eating the barrel of his gun outright.

It all made sense, and he felt shame. First, he'd dragged Lizzie along on this stupid quest to try and save his friend, and now he'd selfishly stayed here, trying to self-sacrifice to the one person that Michael wasn't about to shoot. Some fucking boyfriend, some fucking friend he was. All he'd been doing was thinking of himself and what would make him feel better. The realization made him sick, and so he did the only thing he could think of.

Reaching his own arms out, he grabbed Michael and hugged him tighter, putting his own head down too. A moment ago, they'd been engaged in mortal combat, once more they were two friends, accepting the other's terror. His eyes were sore from all of the crying.

"I'm scared too," he whispered once the scream subsided, "I don't like who this place is making me into. I don't think I can protect her. Or you. Or anyone. I'm not ready to die."

There it was. He felt helpless, yet oddly, saying the words made him feel a bit better. Morgan was all out of things to say, and so all he could do was hug his friend tighter.

[Shiola]

Henry wasn’t close enough to catch what was being said between the two of them. Only the end of it. His heart had been racing ever since he heard the sounds of a struggle, and he found himself feeling slightly out of breath as he spoke. He knew his and Aurelien’s sudden appearance might be off-putting, and so only found himself offering a greeting. Even just saying something so basic, it was hard to hide how heartbroken the sight of all of this made him.

“Hey there.”

There were points earlier in this conversation, maybe they should’ve intervened. It was hard to tell when they were listening from the other side of a wall, trying to make out exactly what was going on and exactly what was being said. Trying to figure out where they could step into a scuffle and not have it end up with someone shot dead.

Once was enough.

((Henry Sparks continued from Our Mutual Fiend))

As glad as he was to see Morgan and Lizzie again, seemingly in one piece, Michael’s presence meant there was little time to rejoice. Henry saw firsthand where he had begun, and the announcements in the intervening days made it clear where his path had led. It was hard to imagine finding a way to convince him to stop doing what he’d been doing but if there was no talking Michael down - then this wasn’t going to end well for him. Henry hoped, perhaps in vain, that his own name crossing the list on the announcements would lend his words some credibility. He didn’t look forward to explaining that to Morgan and Lizzie.

Stepping towards the boys, he kept his wits about him. Catherine’s corpse was reminder enough of what the stakes of misapprehending the situation could be. Michael wasn’t well; there was a gun somewhere here, and who knew what else. It was too easy for something to go terribly wrong. Henry kept his weapon out, though not pointed in anyone’s direction. Its appearance was all he needed right now. Aurelien wouldn’t be far behind, though their trials and tribulations that morning had made some of his limitations painfully clear. Henry hoped between the four of them, they might be able to keep Michael from hurting anyone else.

Then, perhaps with their numbers, they could achieve something greater. He had to remind himself to temper his optimism, and to focus on what was in front of them right now. Even if Morgan had been able to temporarily mollify Michael, Henry had seen too much in the last few days to trust the consistency of anyone’s mental state.

It was an ugly thing to have to remind himself: everyone was fucked up here, one way or another.

At least to start with, the sight of friends might help them all see more than just where this was all going to end, and the worst they’d do before it did. To hear Michael screaming and to look and to see the look on Morgan and Lizzie’s faces - it wasn’t easy to stay strong, or to present strength. He still tried his best.

This wasn’t some physical problem. Anything tangible was just a matter of working out concepts, and then managing every little hiccup that came in translating solutions into reality. Improvising. Gathering new information, and adapting to it. Tactics weren’t all that different; in a way, just fighting off the terrorists’ proxies was a much more straightforward task than trying to mend frayed psyches.

Especially when his own was starting to give.

Plan around outmaneuvering and killing someone, in the event that talking them out of murdering other people goes sideways. That’s what this place makes us into. No one could be okay with that; it’s okay to not be okay with that.

In the end, maybe it didn’t matter if he was good at it, so much as he was here and had to try. This was more than anyone could bear alone.

Henry exchanged a sympathetic look with Lizzie.

I won’t let him pull you two apart, he wanted to say.

Then back to Morgan.

Where does this have to go, he wanted to ask.

Michael’s face was still buried in Morgan’s shoulder.

“Hey, Michael? It’s Henry. Been a while. I’m uh, glad I found you guys.”

Henry really was. Yet he’d still asked Aurelien to stay at a safe distance, at least until he knew where things were headed. It hadn’t made him feel all that great at first, but seeing his friends in the state they were in - the cost was too high to not think tactically.

[Pippi]

((Aurelien Valter continued from Our Mutual Fiend))

Michael had a lot of explaining to do.

He’d been on the announcements now, what, two, maybe even three times? Aurelien hadn’t been keeping proper track of them. But as soon as your name landed on there more than once, and both times it was for following orders? Then you became a suspect. Then everything you said and did had to be taken with a grain of salt.

Like the scene in front of him. Sure, Michael was clinging to Morgan like he’d vanish forever if he ever let go, face buried into the other boy’s shoulder. Any trouble that might have been brewing, from what he and Henry had heard through the wall earlier, seemed to have simmered down for the moment.

But there was still a corpse lying at their feet. He was standing far enough back that he couldn’t quite identify them, but he could tell it was a girl, and Michael’s most recent kill had been a girl, and if you put two and two together…

There were a few factors on Michael’s side, of course. The last time Aurelien had rushed in on people standing over a body, he’d wildly misjudged the situation. There was always a chance that he’d done the same again here. And there was Morgan, Morgan holding Michael close, like a scared and lost teenager rather than a multi-time killer, and neither Lizzie nor Henry seemed like they were about to interrupt proceedings.

But even taking all of that into consideration, Aurelien didn’t think he’d have been able to stop himself from shooting Michael in the head if he’d been alone.

It was yet another thing to be grateful to Henry for, and he supposed was a prime example of why the other boy was doing the talking, and he was standing way back, arms hanging loosely by his sides, fingers tightly wrapped around the gun. He watched the scene in front of him, waiting to see the reaction to Henry’s words, expression stoney and unmoving. Once again, he knew his role, and he was happy to follow it if it meant their encounters went off without a hitch. Henry was the thinker and the talker. Aurelien was the doer. He hoped his presence, and the gun in his hand, would be enough to prevent anybody from trying anything stupid.

But if it wasn’t, then the huge hunk of metal he’d lugged all the way from the infirmary to here, leaning against the wall like it was propping the whole building up, surely would be.

[Slam]

Lizzie couldn’t understand what she was seeing. She should’ve been relieved, because Morgan wasn’t being killed right in front of her and Michael wasn’t moving on to then finish her off. She should’ve been happy, because it looked like Morgan’s efforts had paid off and Michael had been brought out of his murder madness.

But it didn’t make sense.

She sat there, trembling slack jawed, as she watched the two embrace. She couldn’t just go from ‘Michael is a bastard who is going to get us both killed’ to ‘Michael is actually just a sad guy who needs a hug’ in a heartbeat like that, not when he’d been pointing a gun at her seconds before, and there was a dead body that he’d taken ownership of right freaking there.

Henry’s approach only startled her further. If she had been just a little bit twitchier, just a little bit on edge and a bit more terrified for her life, she might’ve grabbed the shears and driven them right into his leg. He pulled some kind of ‘sorry you had to see that’ face at her, as if she’d just caught sight of Morgan spilling a coke on himself or making a really awkward joke, rather than having to believe her brains were about to be spilled all over the wall in a presumably awkward manner. Fuck off, Henry.

But she kept her mouth shut, swallowing the emotions. She was starting to get control of herself again, and she took that chance to say nothing. If Henry wanted to take ownership for what happened next, and that didn't involve someone having to die, then she was in a pretty good mood to let that happen.

[Kermit]

Screaming was nice. Felt nice. So Michael kept going until there was no air. Kept going for a little bit after there was no air. Morgan said some words, and Michael listened. 'It's okay. What matters is you're just trying the best you can under the circumstances,' he wanted to say, but did not say, because he was a coward, and because this was a place where he couldn't even try, and also he was currently physically unable to speak. He'd stopped crying, he was pretty sure. Morgan's shirt smelled kinda funky. Someone else said something. It wasn't Lizzie, unless Lizzie had suddenly gained to ability to speak in Henry's voice. Henry said some more stuff, like that he was Henry, and that he was 'glad to see you guys,' which was something Michael knew was at least half a lie.

He'd been wondering when Henry would show up again.

He pulled his face away from Morgan's shoulder. Wide eyes did a cursory scan of the room. Henry didn't look too glad. Looked tired. 'Don't worry about me, I can't lose myself here. Not when there's so much to do,' Henry'd said, back on the night everything started being real.

Lizzie hadn't fallen on the stabby things, which was good, probably. She looked a bit grumpy.

Also there was someone who hadn't shown up before. Aurelien Valter. Didn't run in Michael's social circles. French. No, Luxembourgioesie or whatever. Michael remembered, because one time he'd made fun of Luxembourg for being Luxembourg (though it was no Lichtenstein), and someone had been all like 'You know, Aurelien's from Luxembourg,' and Michael had said 'More like Luxemnerd.'

Anyways, Aurelien didn't look like he was doing great; when Michael looked into his eyes, he could tell. Something was burning him up from inside. Definitely the opposite of glad about seeing Michael. Michael nodded in acknowledgement. It was weird; he already felt a kind of comradeship with him. Sympathy, maybe.

"If y'all are gonna shoot me, don't do it with Morgan here. Got the safety on. I won't fight you," he muttered.

He let his muscles relax, and as he let go of Morgan, he felt his back press against the ground. His eyes closed.

"I think I killed her because she said to shoot straight."

[Cactus]

A voice broke through and replied to him; though it wasn't Michael's voice, and it wasn't Lizzie's voice.

Come to think of it, they weren't really replying to what he'd said, either. Instead, it was a pretty standard greeting, one that on most days wouldn't have meant a damn thing. Except that today wasn't most days, and the voice was actually more familiar to Morgan than he realized at fir—

"Holy shit, Henry!"

Morgan looked up, still keeping his hand on his friend's back. Perhaps it was his way of trying to stop people from shooting his friend — the multiple time killer — where he sat. It was as though he were trying to hold Michael here, in a moment of lucidity, in a moment of sanity. Trying to hold the guy whom he'd chummed around the garage with, the guy whom he'd dragged to prom. For this moment, he was still that guy, and here was yet another one of his friends.

The rocketman.

Spaceboy.

If only Henry had a rocket, he could blast them all away from here. Away from all of this, away from real life and terrorists and Danya and Catherine Zier's dead body and molotov cocktails and dead friends and many-eyed bears and all of it. They could escape, they could live their lives, and they could be the people that they were supposed to be. He and Lizzie could have a tumultuous college relationship where they'd fall out of touch after a few years of long distance dating, still friends but knowing that the distance was a problem. Michael could go and work with the animals, under the sea. He could join James Cameron on his many crazy adventures mapping the Marianas Trench. Perhaps Morgan himself would help cure some sort of disease, or at least make run some really cool experiments involving cleaner combustion systems, only sort of lamenting that time he'd dated a famous comedienne.

All of that could have happened.

In another life, maybe.

Another life.

Not this one.

Michael was a murderer.

Henry was a murderer.

Lizzie had held someone at shearpoint and threatened their life.

Morgan had beaten up Lucas Brady, because Lucas Brady had thought that Morgan was a victim. Lucas Brady was now nothing more than a corpse, sitting somewhere in some field or on some log, his head bashed in or whatever it was the terrorists had said.

But he wasn't a victim, was he?

Was he?

"Nobody needs to shoot anybody."

His voice was hollower than it had been when he'd seen Henry — it occurred to him that Henry wasn't alone, nor was he unarmed. Morgan knew Aurelien in passing, not enough to sit down and have lunch with him, but enough to have had a class or two with him. Aurelien and Dante had been dating.

Dante had died on the first day.

"No guys, you—" Michael had veered towards fatalism again, saying what sounded an awful lot like a confession to killing Catherine. Great. Lovely. Exactly what they needed. "Nobody needs to fucking shoot anybody, right? We're all, well, fuck. I don't know about anyone else, but I am glad to see my friends. All of you — my damn friends. Can't we all just, I don't know—"

He didn't know. How did he even finish that sentence?

Can't we all just — get along—

—survive—

—sit here for a minute—

—find a way out—

—pretend that it's all going to be okay—

—fight the terrorists—

—take a second?

So many things to say, and any of them probably would have been better than what he did say.

"—not?"

[Shiola]

Henry pressed on the side of his right temple, trying in vain to work out the tension that seemed to seep through his skin from the air around him.

Questions weighed on him; if he was woven from ideas and beliefs and flaws, he could almost see where everything was starting to fray.

The question of whether or not this broken kid was just lying, waiting for the right moment to sit up and ventilate the four of them.

The question of whether or not he or Aurelien really had much of an even approximation of the situation, given the difficult morning they’d both had and the simple fact that they were both in pretty precarious places mentally.

The question of exactly what had happened to Morgan and Lizzie in the last few days, and whether they were even capable of trusting anyone besides each other anymore. Whether he could ever earn it, or should even try.

One thing at a time.

Michael wasn’t himself, and wasn’t even doing a very good job of being somebody else. What was it he said the island was? Everyone’s personal metaphor? It didn’t sound any more like a solid read on what was going on in his head now than it had at the time.

That was the salient point, he supposed. There was no way to tell what was going on in his head. Michael was unpredictable, the only known quantity being the fact that he had a gun, and without one he wasn’t much of a physical threat even to Henry. There was no predicting what he’d do with it, what he wouldn’t do with it, or if there was even some deeper scheme going on here.

Only possibilities. Variables. Too many violent ones. No course of action was good, only better than the alternatives. The prevalence of lethal weapons made the cost of bad decisions and miscommunication far too high.

He shuffled the punt gun on its makeshift sling, so that it was across his back. Henry held up his hands, palms open. Though he tried his best to offer a friendly smile to Morgan, his eyes still betrayed a singular focus.

“I hope you’re right, Morgan. I’m… I’m really glad to see you guys, too. There shouldn’t be any need for us to fight each other. I know though that we’ve all been through a lot. We’ve lost people. Mike, I know you’ve - you’ve been through a lot. It’s not easy to think straight in all of this, with what’s happened. I know that firsthand, Aurelien, he knows that.”

Slowly, he reached to the rope holding the punt gun across his shoulder, and raised it above his head.

“I think until we have a chance to really sit down and try and help each other see this clearly, maybe we need to put the guns aside. Just to put some space between us and mistakes we might not be able to fix. I know you guys don’t know what happened with Marco, and even if I told you I wouldn’t expect you to trust or believe me, but I’m willing to remove that possibility for myself.”

With a gentle thud, he let the punt gun drop to the ground.

“There’s one enemy here, and there’s people they work through. Nobody here has to be the bad guy. We’ve changed, yeah, but we’re still changing. If we can… just try and work together, remember who we used to be, I think there’s some good we can do here.”

Henry looked to Michael, trying to catch his gaze. Sympathetic, but still wary of the known unknown lying in front of him.

“How about it, Michael?”

[Kermit]

Michael slowly sat up and scooched his back against the wall. Emotionally drained. Generally tired. "Can't we all just, I don't know, not?" Morgan said. Catherine didn't get to 'just not'. Henry said some stuff like he was trying to talk down Adam Lanza or something. Michael was getting used to it.

"Please, just stop. Don't pretend like you killing Marco is the same as me killing Catherine," or Roxie. "Marco was killing people with a chainsaw; I know what you did was self-defense."

He poked at the inside of his lip with his tongue.

"The only justifiable thing I've done here was killing Camila. Euthanasia. I offered. She accepted."

He was holding the gun tighter than anything he'd ever held before; idly pointed at nowhere. It was the only thing in his life that had remained constant through the past week.

It was the only thing he had left to lose.

"I killed Catherine and Roxie just because," his body rocked back slightly in an approximation of a shrug. "I dunno. It was supposed to happen."

He glanced down at the ground.

"Y'know, by the way, Henry; Beryl came back," and back up to Henry. "Just thought I'd let you know, I guess."

He closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wall.

"I am who I am. I'm not who I was. You already know I'm not putting the gun on the ground."

[Pippi]

It could have all turned out okay.

It was so close to doing so, that was the most galling thing. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to take this any further than where it currently was. Henry was leading the charge, being as rational, and as calm as possible, dropping his shotgun to the floor, encouraging everybody to do the same and to keep things sane, Michael included. It was good to see. For a moment, after the announcements had dropped, he’d looked like he was on the verge of breaking down again. Justin had killed again, and Aurelien knew that the fact they’d let him go alive was eating Henry up inside. He hadn’t been sure whether a second speech would have had any effect, whether this second freak-out would have pushed his friend over the edge permanently.

He was made of steel, that boy. A stronger ally, Aurelien wasn’t sure he could find.

Morgan was doing his best too, even though his attempts at diplomacy were… Well… They weren’t quite as bad as Aurelien’s, to give the dude some credit. Ending a sentence the way he had wasn’t quite a Nobel Peace Prize winning speech. But he was on the same page as Henry. That was what mattered. And Lizzie… Lizzie looked as though she felt the same way Aurelien did, staring at Morgan and Michael’s embrace. But she was staying quiet, not intervening, letting peace play out.

Yeah. Everybody wanted this to end peacefully, it seemed.

Everybody except for Michael.

And unfortunately, he was the centrepiece of the entire thing. He was the hinge vote upon which Aurelien’s actions were decided. Aurelien’s role in this scene was clear, agreed upon by Henry and himself. He stood back. He waited. He hoped that the air cleared up and he could walk forwards and talk normally. He acted, if it didn’t.

Michael was refusing to put the gun down, talking so goddamn infuriatingly calmly about the things he’d done, the people he’d fucking killed. There was an aura of danger around Michael that he refused to diminish.

It was clear, to Aurelien, that it was time to act.

He walked forwards, three or four steps. His own gun was clutched in his hand, pointed at the floor, coiled and ready. The potential for it to be raised was evident. He didn’t move it though. Not yet. Henry and Morgan clearly, truly believed in Michael, that there was something within him that Aurelien wasn’t seeing. He could trust them. Trust in them. For a little longer, at least.

“Michael.”

Aurelien’s voice was low. Firm. He locked eyes with the other boy again.

“One more chance. Put the gun down, now.”

[Kermit]

He inhaled slowly, shakily, through his nose. Otherwise, he made no movements. Aurelien was staring him dead in the eyes. He stared back blankly, his pupils having long ago consumed the blue of his irises.

Shark eyes.

"I can't."