SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

"God damn it."

Ami turned away. She buried her one hand in her hair, hit her forehead with the other.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

She started shaking her head. Her eyes darted, staring straight at the same camera from earlier. The gun hit the back of her shoe but Ami did not turn again.

She killed Sara. She killed Maynard. And she had to kill Joachim. That was three people. She could justify Maynard, maybe, but not Sara and certainly not Joachim.

She did not want to consider winning. She knew that ever since she woke up on an abandoned street a week prior

But she did not want to lose, either. She realized that she pulled the trigger for the first time.

Ami... Ami didn't know. She didn't know.

So she stood there, shaking her head.

"Pick it up."

Joachim's eyes bored into Ami as his fingers tensed around the knife. She wasn't going to walk away. He wouldn't let her. One of them was going to die.

That was the nature of the game.

"You won. Pick it up."

He was supposed to lose. He was always supposed to lose. This was how it was meant to be.

"Yeah."

Ami turned back to Joachim, shot him a sad look.

"I guess you're right."

Slowly, she picked the gun up with her right hand. Everything else went quiet, save for her breath and her own sputtering heart.

This wasn't like Maynard.

She had a choice.

She wasn't leaving the quad with clean hands. Ami spent her entire life keeping them clean.

She had to finish what she started. She owed that to Joachim.



"Do you - " Ami coughed. "Any last words. Do you have any last words?"

Ami did not want to burden herself. She made that mistake with Sara and Maynard.

Joachim sighed and rested back against the tree. His eyes kept watching her as she slowly picked the gun up.

As she turned back to him with a face weathered by the inevitability of the situation. It seemed she finally understood.

He didn't shut his eyes yet. He couldn't. She might still have second thoughts. He would keep watching her until the barrel came up and he could stare into it. Until her finger squeezed around the trigger, and her stance hardened. Until there was no turning back, and he was finally out of...

"Ami," he mumbled out softly, "what has a face but never cries?"

Then, he could shut his eyes.

"... What has a face..." Ami blinked. "Is that a riddle?"

He was using his final words to ask her a riddle. Was he serious? He sounded pretty serious. Ami wasn't sure anymore. But it was his final words.

"What has a face but doesn't cry?"

She stared down at the gun in her right hand. She tapped her foot against the ground and canted her head in thought. She took a minute to think. What has no face but never cries? In the time that it took for her to think of an answer, Ami almost forgot that she was supposed to kill Joachim. Almost. Enough to be funny.

"A... cork?" Ami winced.

In some ways, their guesses had been equally poor. He couldn't imagine the face of a cork, but there might be some nuance he was missing. It didn't matter. Simply a reminder of better, clearer moments.

He shook his head, clearing the memory away. "Not important," he whispered. "You won. Do it."

Please.

Ami frowned. She remembered. She really didn't want to remember but Joachim wasn't having any of it.

"Sorry."

And that was that. Ami brought the gun back up and pointed it straight at him, one-handed, though she was close enough that it did not matter.

Mr. Danya asked her, simply, 'Could you kill your best friend?' Joachim was no friend of hers. But she had an answer, all the same. All that mattered was whether it would be enough.

When Ami Flynn shot Joachim, she didn't do it for him. She didn't do it for Sara. She didn't do it for her family, for power, for religion. She pulled that trigger for herself and no one else.

For a moment, he wondered if it would really end. Would Ami really go through with it? Would the gun really fire? Or would it jam? Would the bullet be a dud? Would he have to get up once again, and leave another body in his wake? Would he win?

Then the muzzle flashed.

The sharp crack that filled the air matched the brief spike of pain in his chest.

It started to get dark.

In those last, few moments, his fingers traced across the grass and laced through Paris's cold, dead hand.

He wanted to hate him. He wanted to be glad he was dead. He wanted to take back every second he'd lost chasing the intangible dreams of this madman.

Still, as the last spark of life tapered out in Joachim Lovelace, he couldn't help but feel a brief taste of that compulsion that had drawn them together. In that final moment, there was no Ami. There was no game. There was no island. Just the two of them, side by side.

Just us. As it should be.

B014, JOACHIM LOVELACE: DECEASED

30 STUDENTS REMAINING

Joachim wasn't Maynard. He was close, though, closer than she wanted to admit.

So when it was all over, Ami took her shirt out of his lap. She covered his face, letting it sit in such a way that it would not fly away if another gust of wind came through.

Then she finally crossed the street.

(Ami Flynn continued in Layabout.)