You Started, You're Finishing

#1

There was wind.

There was wind.

A body fell, once again, from the pinnacle to the pit. From wind to glass. From the top of the cruise ship right down to the bottom of the ocean, body flailing through the air all the way. It was like… that one photo of the 9/11 victim. Taken as a snapshot, taken out of context, it… maybe looked graceful. Like they were in control. Like it was the choice they wanted to make. But it wasn’t. It was just the only choice they had. Better to die quickly in the air than burn up and suffocate in the building. Better to die on your own terms rather than add to somebody else’s number. Better to pretend you’re a still image, perfectly in control of your fall, rather than a flailing mess, spinning through the air, realizing that these are the last moments of your life but not being able to get through the panic or the idea that these might be your last thoughts or anything other than the wind-

And the wind-

And the wind-

Then, finally, glass.

Cold.

Dark.

Blank.

You stay.

You stay.

You stay.

Then slowly, finally, you began to sink.

#2

“Who are you?”

#3

hey remember this gimmick

#4

don't worry I'm not using it again after this post

#5

But you can’t stay under. Not for long. It all stops feeling as cold as life and just kind of fucking cold. The pain emerges all over your body like reverb, and you realize that it hasn’t had enough yet to become comfortable. Or numb. Your lungs run out of air, and in that moment you realize you actually kind of don’t really wanna drown. So your body twitches. Your arms kick. One moment, you were graceful. Still. In control of how it all ended. The next, you squint your eyes in the smoke, you see the closest thing you can equate to light, and you move towards it. You don’t know what it even is, but you go there anyway. It’s not a choice. It’s between death and something else. When the one thing you know is that you’re going to die if you don’t move, you have to try. Even if you think whatever’s in the light is going to kill you anyway, you have to try. There’s no other option. No other way but forward. Time moves, smoke burns, and your lungs run out, whether you like it or not.

So you go to the light. You reach the surface. You see what could maybe be the indentations of a ladder in your blurred vision and your body paddles over to it. You hold it. Stay there. Hang on. There’s nothing to hook your feet into, right now, but that’s whatever. You can stay here. For however long you want. Until everybody up there dies in the smoke. Until you bleed out from all the injuries you never got the chance to heal. Until you finish your long goodbye, staying alive way longer than you ever should’ve. In so many words, all you can do is stay here. Fade out. Filler, in other words. Staying long past your welcome. You had a cause, initially, but now…

Now you’re here.

All by yourself.

Nothing but your tinnitus. The churning waves. The roar of the flames, endless, like someone had pressed the pedal down on it.

Nothing but you. And your thoughts. Just like it’d always been before you were taken away.

So who are you?

Really?

#6

“I mean. Hard question to answer, sorry. Appreciated that you’re dumping all this on me.

“You’d be expecting too much of me to like, be able to make some profound insight that makes everything that’s happened make sense. You’ve been trying to do it for like, the past several days. What can I say that you haven’t already said to yourself?

“And why am I showing up now, anyways? You’ve already gotten everyone else to weigh in and most of them were, like. Cooler than me. I was irrelevant before you even got on this island.

“Like, who the fuck am I compared to badass head honcho Fisk? Or unkillable Akeno. Or totally out of our league Alyssa.

“And yes I did have a crush on her, you were right on that call out. I also wanted to be her, of course, but I dunno if you had smelled that one out about me yet. It’s not like we hung out that much in the last year before 66.”

#7

Well, you’re fickle. You’re pretty sure that’s a personality trait, at least. You’re a creature of impulse: you do things in the moment because your mind just tells you to. You never look before you leap. And when you do, and when you realize that it’s a leap to your death, you always just do it anyway. They’re like fixations. Little bits of providentialism. The path had already been laid out for you and there was no point trying to fight it. You’d always do something stupid. Something you’d always regret. Something that’d stay in your memories, in the 3 AM moments, something you were going to have to reckon with for a long, long time.

…And you’re a wallflower. And you’re also a dreamer. Because maybe one day you’ll be all beyond this. You’re going to be somewhere, in the future, and everything’s going to be okay. You’ll have people by your side. People who get you. Who like you. Who make counting your numbered days maybe worth something. You’ll be charismatic, and smart, and maybe someone people would actually like to talk to. Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t know how. You’ve always had your mouth closed for you when you couldn’t keep it that way so now you just keep it that way. Never open it. You sit there, and you listen to everybody talk, and you never actually join in because what they like is impenetrable to you know you don’t need this. You can just go to your little place and focus on what really matters. The future. That little place in the world where you’ll be and where you won’t have to worry about this ever again. Everything’s going to solve itself. You’ll be in your twenties, and you’ll be happy, you’ll be going places, and you’ll maybe actually know how to talk to people, and it’ll be great.

And it’ll happen.

You’re in the woods, and it kinda sucks now, but soon you’ll be in the sun. Out of there. Free.

You know that. Everything’s been set in stone, you’ve only ever had the one path, so why not-

Why-

Man-

Man what the fuck are you even talking about?

#8

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry. Getting off track here, we’re not here to relive the past. Much as that’d probably be easier for you.”

“It’s comfy though. All the navel gazing. Just like old times, kinda deal I guess. Really. I… guess? I’m glad you’re still thinking about me. Probably too much, which, uh. Phrasing.”

“So I guess my first thought is, like, if you’d come to me after the fact and asked me to do a full critique on your island storyline. Like, remember back when those used to be a thing on TheRealSurvivors, before we all started posting on Discord and the long form critique thread format kind of died off? Well, first off you know I wouldn’t put enough effort into your story to do it justice.”

“Maybe like, half a page worth of GoogleDocs for SS01. Bullet points, shit formatted. You know how I used to roll.”

“I’d say…”

#9

Like, okay, so you’re bleeding out. You’re hanging on the ladder of a sinking ship for dear life, and so much of your body is underwater that there’s a chance you’re going to end up like Leo in Titanic and scarify yourself IRL, and you’re fucking doing this? Woe is me? Acting like none of this was because of shit you chose to do?

You chose this bed.

Maybe it’s time you actually make it.

So you reach your arm — the one that wasn’t full of holes — and you grasp your hand around one of the rungs higher up from you.

And then you take your other arm — the one that can’t really hold your weight anymore — and you pull it up, find a rung below your other arm.

And then you pull your body, up, up, out of the water. It’s so heavy now. Even- even considering how much weight you must’ve lost out here. Guess that’s what however many nights of jumping off cruise ships will do to you. You hoist your body up, your feet find a rung, and you stay there.

You breathe.

You breathe.

You look up, you see the flames provide an outline for where the top of the ship is, and in so many words, you’d say-

#10

“It makes more sense than you think it does. Like, from the outside looking in.”

“Yeah that makes a total one hundred percent sense, I know, I know. I’m in awe of my own genius. Alright, alright, hear me out.

“Like, in that way you always do where you’re more in your head hearing what you want me to say than actually hearing the content of my words. That’s totally valid and fine.”

“There’s a definite coming of age element to all of this. Like, in a lot of our character’s arcs- and, in real life, I guess- you don’t really get enough time to see the same sort of movement you have. All in the span of a couple of days.”

“Like, one thing when its words in a forum post sitting there inert, where the flow of time

isn’t really something

that can be intuited

unless, you know, the author makes it abundantly clear. But they could also mess it up. On accident or on purpose. Like when you’d write out narrative effects on purpose and I’d do it accidentally, that kinda thing. But in reality, you know, all the events you’ve suffered through have been compressed into…”

“Six days, huh? Longer versions really did start coming into vogue. Hope that doesn’t make you guys part of a trend.”

“Like, I know you’ve pretty much constantly had some sort of running narrative on people’s expectations for you, but I’m kind of wondering what specifically they’re going to say about you when it’s all said and done.”

“Did you luck into it? Backstabbing bitch? How’s the fanfic going to be? Will any of them, like, really be able to capture who you are, and who you’ve become?”

“Honestly that reminds me-

#11

You’d say you could do it. If you tried.

It’d… take a while, and it’d take enough effort that you’d pass out for a couple of minutes the moment you reached the top, but… but you could do it. You could climb the ladder. You could make it back up to the deck, supposing you really wanted to.

Do you even want to?

Why would you?

It’s kinda nice, here, on the ladder, the water… doing a little bit more than lapping under your feet. Nobody trying to shoot you, no people you have to try and shoot, just you. Your thoughts. The water. Your bleeding body. You could stay here, listen to the noise of the fire and the ocean and the ringing in your ears, and spend one last bit of time with the only person who ever really mattered before it all fades away. Think, and think, and think, until the moment where you don’t notice it stopping.

Sounded nice.

You heard, somewhere, that when people get old they stop fearing death. Allow it to happen. Let the oblivion, the idea that you’re not going to exist or think any more take you. It always seemed so… bizarre. Irrational. Inhuman, but now…

But now you kinda get it.

So why would you try and climb the ladder?

Why would you even want to?

It reminded you-

#12

a lot of how it worked back in the RP.”

“How you’d always get mad when people didn’t really see what you were going for. There’d be these moments in the Discord where someone would bring something up about… it’s happened like every version, so pick any one of your characters. They disliked this, or heck, they even liked this or that thing. The way you wrote this post, that made your character come off as… not what you had in mind.”

“Death of the author, all that. Whatever you intended to come off as, like say, when you were all in on being a mercy killer or whatever you were telling yourself at the time. Nobody except yourself sees that, right? You’re the only person who is able to see yourself in all four dimensions, and honestly, even memory is kind of easy to trick. The past gets hazy. The doubts you have might literally be because you only know yourself about as much as any rando who isn’t you.”

“Sorry, by the way. If you were looking for absolution, for a lightning bolt from heaven that’ll define who you are and what your path forward is, well. Not getting it from me. I’m not Fisk. There’s a reason we became friends randomly out of nowhere. We’re pretty similar people.”

“Yeah. It’d be comfortable to just do it like old times. You drown in the memories of the past, in the sights that get familiar until they’re mundane. The shape of the gun you stole from me, the smell of the clothes you’ve had to reuse, the sight of that same big ass dining hall place you’ve made so many cherished memories in.”

“It’ll linger, for sure.

#13

Of Akeno. Of the two of you, in the water. You’d already gotten your win condition. You’d made it out of that fight alive. All you would’ve needed to do was swim away. Find a ladder. Rest, fix up your eye, find Fisk, go to town. Akeno could have lived. She could have swum away too. You said it, right? When she was right about to kill you. How pointless it was. That you’d entered each other's lives, learned each other's names, and then all it meant was that one of you would kill the other. It was a… a relationship where the only memory was how it failed. A story where the only worth was in how it ended. It was stupid, pointless, for her to kill you. All it’d do was prove what… little was actually between you two.

But then you saw Akeno, floating in the water, and without a second thought you’d pulled the harpoon out of your eye and gutted her. Ripped her open.

You didn’t even… do anything after. You didn’t stay with her. You didn’t look her in the eyes. You couldn’t give her even the slightest goodbye. Not like you could, but still, all you did was swim away. Find your ladder. Start climbing.

Maybe there was a reason. Maybe it was revenge for Sofia. Maybe you wanted to prove you won the fight. Maybe it was because it was almost the final ten, she was the biggest threat left, and taking her out left you and Fisk and also maybe Mandy closer to victory than you would’ve been otherwise. Maybe not everything’s about your story. Maybe, for once, you wanted to make the smart decision. Maybe you never cared about it the way you said you did.

Maybe you just wanted to.

Wasn’t really much of a way to tell.

And maybe that was why you’d climbed up another rung. Felt the pain in your arm, your shoulder, your whole fucking body at this point. Felt it… not be enough. Not to stop you. If this was something you really wanted to do. You could climb. Make it up to the top. Hope that Anthony wasn’t just waiting for you the moment you got up there.

Do it just to do it.

Let impulse take the reins.

Hope somebody in your head is making the right decision.

And whatever the consequences were, whoever she hurt, whatever mistake she’d end up inevitably making, they’d… they’d linger, for sure.

#14

We call that PTSD.”

“You have these lingering thoughts of… like. Giving up. Staying in one room and never coming out, or honest to goodness just dropping dead on the spot. Thanatos lurks in the corridors of your mind, and the corridors of that mind, by the way, now dead ass resemble the ship, so thank you, TV sponsors of this season, for that.”

“Mood. I getcha. It’s still okay if you elect to do that, really. This is where I disagree with Fisk- like.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

#15

Memories that’d never truly leave your head. Things you said that’d undercut you whenever you felt like you’d maybe actually moved past them. Scenes, at 3 AM, that’d play in your head as your brain finally coaxed itself to go to sleep.

Memories that’d maybe stay, forever, if you climb. If you make it up. If you live. If you let go of the ending you’d chosen. If you contradicted yourself, once again, went far past the point where you were supposed to die and find yourself a zombie. A parasite. Something latching onto the story and dragging it down and never dying. Never going away, no matter how much the person watching the screen begged and prayed.

But honestly, like…

Who gave a fuck?

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