Darkness in the Light

[Slam]

((Nate Turner continued from 友達))

He was tired.

He hadn't stopped being tired for days, perhaps since it had all started, but he really felt it right then and there. It seemed like no matter what, he couldn't catch his breath.

He'd eventually made his way back down to the basement, after hiding out since his encounter in the library. Maybe he'd just gone there because it was familiar. Maybe he was too tired to head outside again, and just needed an excuse. Maybe he was just going crazy.

The lobotomy lab was familiar too. It was where he went before after someone tried to kill him, a fact that lit up within Nate's subconscious. Maybe he could spend another few hours crying behind some boxes, he thought, and would've smiled to himself were he still capable.

The smell of Caedyn's corpse might've stuck out at him, if he hadn't walked past that same smell countless times by then. It seemed every corridor, every room, had a dead body in it by now. 'Graveyard', or 'Morgue': they weren't even close to being the right words. He wasn't sure the right words even existed.

He crouched over the body of another face from the drama club. The hole in her head was the blatant full stop to the sentence of how she'd died. Streaked with blood, smelling of copper, it was all familiar.

Yet, this seemed fresher.

Caedyn was dead, clearly, but she didn't look like the other corpses. Apart from how colourless she was, she looked almost the same as before. Had she only died recently? Had he missed her by that much?

It was a disturbing thought, but he wasn't disturbed by it.

He wasn't sure why, and he wasn't glad that he wasn't, but it was the truth. Maybe seeing Nancy the day before had desensitised him, but in reality he'd probably been desensitised a while ago. Most of his friends had been dead for a long time.

He swallowed, the most expression he could muster. He tried to think, remember what had happened to Caedyn, but there were too many names by then. Who had killed who, who had gone crazy, it was all just one big blur, all residents of the same madhouse. Even if he had been able to recall how often her name had gone out, knew all the horrible things Caedyn had done to people, it might not have made a difference. In the end, no-one was the same anymore.

He sat down, a few feet from her body, and pulled his legs up to his chest. His eyes stayed dry, and he didn't even sob. He just sat there.

Nancy had died. Alvaro had died. Caedyn had died. Matt was killing, someone else tried to kill him, others were still killing the rest. There just couldn't have been that many of them still alive by then.

So what was next for him?

He'd told Clarice, with something almost resembling confidence, that he wanted to do some good. Even if it had only been a day since then, he'd done no such thing. The only living person he'd met had tried to kill him, without giving him a reason why. He'd only had one shot, and he'd blown it.

He hoped Clarice had found what she was looking for, at least.

Even if his encounter with Min-Jae had gone differently, if he'd actually been able to talk to him, he didn't know what would've happened. He'd thought, at least until yesterday, that talking to people might've been what he needed to do, to convince them that there was a better option than killing each other. He'd doubted himself, but he didn't think he'd really abandoned that line of thinking, not yet. When it all came down to it though, what was he supposed to say?

It seemed that no matter what he tried, offering peace to Alvaro, pleading with Matt, or saying that he wouldn't hurt the stranger, none of it worked. No matter what, nobody was listening.

Maybe no-one wanted to. Maybe everyone preferred it this way.

He buried his head in his knees, letting out a long exhale. Caedyn still lay lifelessly next to him.

[Slam]

Screams.

Nate looked up from his knees. Looked out the doorway. More screams. Looked back down.

They were still doing it. They were doing it right then, right down the hallway. He could go, try to intervene, try to stop them. He wanted to do some good, after all.

He didn't move. Kept his eyes shut, head down. He couldn't stop hearing the screams, couldn't shield his ears. He couldn't move.

If he went, if he tried to stop it, he wouldn't do anything. They wouldn't listen, no-one wanted to. They wouldn't stop, no-one wanted to. They might even try to kill him, they all wanted to.

It didn't matter what he did. He was dead, he knew he was dead, he was as dead as Caedyn and Nancy and Alvaro and Ben and everyone else. He thought he was ready for it, but then when he came close to it, when he'd almost been shot three times, he'd been so scared. He didn't want to die, he wasn't ready to die, but he was already dead.

He pressed his head down harder, as the massacre continued. There was nothing he could do to stop it, nothing he could do to help. He couldn't help anyone, couldn't help himself. He couldn't do any good, he wasn't fooling anybody. He'd lied to Clarice, plain and simple. He was just a miserable dead liar who couldn't put his money where his mouth was to save his life, or anyone else's.

Worthless.

That's what he was. He hadn't been killed yet when everyone else had, and there was absolutely no reason for it. That person dying down the hallway right at that moment deserved to live more than he did; for all Nate knew he might've at least been trying, doing something more than curling up in a ball and crying to himself. The person killing them deserved it more too. Even if what they were doing was horrible, was murder, they deserved to be alive when he didn't, because at least they were actually trying.

The screams had stopped.

He wasn't sure when, but the screams had been replaced with a silence that was somehow worse.

It was over.

He didn't move. Not yet.

He was worthless.

((Nate Turner continued in Talons))