Chapter Text
Phil stares in shock at the knife protruding from his stomach, gasping for air. He collapses to his knees, and Dan abandons all thoughts of his own safety.
"Phil!" he screams, running towards the older boy.
"Duck!" PJ commands. Dan does so, and a bullet goes whizzing over his head. The room is slick with blood, and Dan is coated in the stuff, but he doesn't care.
All that matters is reaching Phil, stopping the blood that pools and mingles with the blood of other equally greyed out people. Phil doesn't deserve to die.
None of these people do, no matter how horrible the things they've done during their life are.
"Hey, hey," Dan whispers, smoothing Phil's dark hair from his face. Phil grips his hand tightly, gasping and wheezing.
"Dan," he moans. Dan shushes him, leaning forward and kissing him. Phil's lips fall open, and he lets Dan kiss him slowly. He must know this is goodbye, because the kiss is slow and longing and loving and there's a sense of urgency to it- like, even though Dan is right here, he already misses him.
"Phil, you're not allowed to die," Dan whispers. Phil laughs weakly, cupping Dan's cheek. Dan can feel the blood on his skin, sticky against his cheek as it congeals.
"I don't think it's my choice, Daniel," he replies quietly. "There's someone up there, and they're the one running the show. They've decided it's time for my portion of the story to end. You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story." He draws in a shaky breath, his blue eyes glazing over as they fill with tears.
"Phil," Dan breathes, his voice catching on the single syllable. "I forgive you." Phil smiles gently, as Dan grips his hand and squeezes appreciatively.
"I love you," Phil mouths. His body goes limp, his eyes stay halfway open as his head falls to the side. His hand stays against Dan's face, glued there with blood.
"No," Dan whispers. Louder. "No." He screams it. "No!"
"Dan, get down!" Dan screams in pain as the bullet rips through the skin of his shoulder, the force sending him falling forward.
"Fuck," he breathes, ripping off a strip of fabric from his shirt and applying to to the wound. It hurts like hell, but he can't die.
He can't he can't he can't.
Not when Phil just died to keep him alive.
Dan stands, whirling around. The room is coated in blood.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
The future is never set in stone, though, and the choices made by each of the people in this room manipulated the image he had so gotten used to.
He made the mistake of assuming what he saw would be how it would go.
That mistake cost so many people their lives.
Nothing is ever the same. No one remains the same person for more than an instant. Everything is in the past aside from the instant it happens.
That's terrifying, because if no one stays the same, then who is Dan now?
He can't let himself think about that now. If he survives, then he can regret the decisions he's made for the rest of his life.
On the bright side, the rest of his life doesn't look to be much longer.
Dan fires blindly, panic and grief making it hard to focus. He can't see who's friend or foe, but is there really a difference anymore?
No. There never was.
And then he sees Chris collapse, sees PJ rush to his side. He sees Chris' lips move, sees his head fall to the side. He sees PJ wipe tears from his eyes, sees PJ stand with a sense of purpose. He sees PJ shoot.
He feels the barrel of a gun against his head.
Dan turns slowly, his russet eyes meeting Jacob's blue ones. The blond's stance is unwavering. He is truly prepared to kill.
He truly believes it's for the greater good.
Well, Dan isn't sure he can shatter that illusion.
"I gave you a chance, Daniel," Jacob says. "Because of you, a number of good men and women died today. You fought to protect the one you love. You never stopped to think that maybe we were doing to the same."
"What are you talking about?" Dan asks, never moving. If he's still, maybe Jacob won't shoot.
"You really think we like hurting people?" Jacob asks. "We don't. We're not cold hearted. We do things because we have no other choice, no other option. Because if we don't, we die.
"For those of us who do not hold our own lives in high regard, our families die."
"Who?" Dan questions quietly.
"I have a sister," Jacob explains. "She could die at the moment I choose to leave this job. She has a daughter, a husband. She's expecting a second child. They don't even know if it's a boy or girl yet. I can't let her die."
"So you'll kill me instead," Dan realises, "because I have no one."
"I'm sorry," Jacob says, and there's genuine emotion in his voice, tears sliding down his pale face. "I never wanted it to come to this, Dan. I tried so hard to be a good person, but I've always fallen short. We all will always fall short of what we want." He gestures to the group of people around them, the bodies littering the floor, the people coated in blood, the people wounded. "How despicable we must seem to you, but it was never that simple."
"Nothing is ever that simple," Dan replies, and he sways, slightly dizzy from blood loss.
"I treated you horribly and there's no excuse," Jacob continues. "I played the role of bad guy because it was the one I was handed."
"You could trade it in," Dan pleads. "You could change."
"If only it were that simple," Jacob sighs. He tightens his grip on the gun. "Good bye, Daniel Howell. May you always be the better man.
"The moral high ground is yours."
He pulls the trigger.
There's a second of unimaginable pain as Dan's skull shatters and his brain explodes and his heart is no longer told to beat and his lungs lose air.
And then nothing.
There's nothing and everything, but mostly nothing.
---
You count the dead.
1. Daniel Howell.
2. Philip Lester.
3. Christopher Kendall.
4. John Marlee.
5. Brandon Collins.
6. Lillian Jones.
7. Manuel Grant.
8. Dolores Kalee.
9. Dmitri Johns.
10. Charlie Carroll.
11. Sasha Lovelis.
12. Adam Joseph.
13. Tyler Aston.
You realise you knew almost none of them. Nothing about their lives, their families. You only knew what they'd done.
Suffered beautifully. Will never be beautified.
You are just the same, you know. You will die. No one will know anything about you. They will only know what you've done.
Your own mortality is a real issue. You feel the blood trailing down your leg, staining your clothes. You slide down onto the floor.
You thought you were the one thing in life you could control, but you were always under someone- or something- else.
"There's someone up there, and they're the one running the show. They've decided it's time for my portion of the story to end. You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story."
This is where the whole story ends, you realise. You may be the bad guy, but you're bad for the right reasons. Similarly, you're good for the wrong reasons at times to.
You add yourself to the list of the dead.
14. Jacob Kellerman.
You did it. You did what you were commanded to do by a force greater than yourself. You were controlled by an author who forced you to do as they so wished. Because the story was never about Dan, or Phil, or Chris, or PJ, or Dorthy, or yourself.
It was the product of an imagination, a creation of a person who so wanted to escape their own world. They created a world where they could control it all, because they could not control the one they were in.
You were manipulated, misguided and confused, and you will pay for that with your life.
You are paying for it.
You were.
That's what death does. It shifts from the present to the past. Changes is to was. Erases the blurred lines of morality.
The details become fuzzy, always. The story will be told, but no one will tell it perfectly.
You resign yourself to death, let the end come. You let the story wrap up cleanly. No cliffhangers, no loose ties.
However, death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.