Work Text:
Aubrey was looking at her reflection, it had been such a long week, so many things changing around her... Away from anyone else, she found peace in a place that brought her nostalgia, a memory of a better time.
The green leaves and tulip petals floated in the water, creeper leaves and flowers grew all over the old statue she and her friend used to jump from.
She looked back down at her moving legs, still waving back and forth close to the water, hanging from the bridge.
A beautiful place to be remembered as such.
When suddenly, she heard the rumbling of bushes and cracking of branches, and from the woods came an old friend of hers, the tall, enthusiastic, annoying boy named Kel.
-"Aubrey!"
He called out to her. She simply looked over her shoulder, and then back at the landscape, as interesting as a book.
Kel approached her, proving his recent scratches to be meaningless.
He stood behind her and called her name again, quieter this time.
"Aubrey"
-"What do you want?"
Aubrey responded, still looking away.
Kel's smile went down a bit, but he still made sure to stay happy, even in a moment like that.
-"Nothing... I just felt like coming here and ran into you"
-"Hmph"
Kel sat down next to her and appreciated the view as well. Aubrey didn't care, she was way beyond hating Kel for no reason, if anything, avoiding him would only lead to more annoyance. She didn't care about his existence, she still tried to picture herself alone.
Kel, unable to stay in the awkward silence the place granted, tried to start a small talk.
-"Tough week... Huh..."
Aubrey didn't answer.
"You know after Sunny told us..."
Aubrey turned to him and gave him a murderous glare.
"... You know"
-"Say it"
Aubrey egged him on.
-"I... I don't think..."
-"He killed Mari. After he told us he killed Mari"
Kel looked away and rubbed a recent scratch on his arm.
-"Right, after he told us that"
Aubrey looked away again.
"Hero... I think he's shutting himself in his room... Kind of funny, you know it already happened once, when Mari died"
-"... He's not okay, is he?"
-"I think he's learned from last time, he's still in shock, but he's getting better!"
Aubrey sighed.
-"Best wishes then"
-"Thanks..."
They both stared back at the lake. Aubrey saw the same place to look at herself in, a mirror filled with memories of her past friendships. Kel's memories were fuzzy and sweet, he remembered splattering water all around him, throwing fountains against his friends as a game, diving and floating while staring at the blue sky.
"He says he's planning to apologize to Sunny, for the whole..."
-"For charging at him in place?"
Hero's memory hurt him.
"Yeah..."
-"He shouldn't. Sunny had it coming"
Kel didn't say anything.
"After lying to us for so long... If not for him, I would have been the one to punch him in the face"
-"Hey now! That's not-"
-"Nice, Kel?"
Aubrey cynically smiled at him.
"Is it not nice if I want to stick it into a fucking murderer?"
-"Sunny isn't a murderer!"
Aubrey got up and clenched her fists.
-"He isn't? Why did Mari die then? Did she happen to slip next to the stairs? Is that what Sunny told us?"
Kel got up as well, with a worried look on his face.
-"Listen, Hero and I have discussed it for a while now, and we figured out Sunny didn't tell us the truth for a good reason"
-"Yes, it's called being a coward"
Kel frowned.
-"Look at it from Sunny's side! He accidentally killed his own sister! Just what kind of feeling do you think that would leave him with?"
Aubrey's eye twitched, and she looked into the way out through the bushes.
-"I don't care"
-"Of course you don't... Look, I had Hero to talk this over, if you need someone to talk to..."
-"I don't, I have a lot of things figured out, and one of them is I never want to see Sunny again"
She pointed at him.
"And what can you tell me about Basil, huh? You probably think he's innocent too, don't you?"
-"He-..."
Kel looked around as if trying to find something to reply with. He saw the green-filled statue and remembered Sunny's forced fall.
"He was just a kid, he didn't know what to do"
-"A kid wouldn't carry around the corpse of a loved one as if it was nothing, Kel."
She looked down on the grass.
"They could have done so many things about it, but they didn't, that's why I hate them"
She turned around again. She picked up her bat from the grass and readied herself to leave.
Kel's fists clenched.
-"Like when you almost let Basil drown?"
Aubrey stopped.
-"...What?"
Kel looked at her back from afar.
-"You did something similar to what Sunny did, had it not been for Hero, both Basil and Sunny would have drowned"
-"... And it was my fault, is what you're saying"
-"I'm saying the opposite"
He slowly walked towards her.
"You were pressed, and scared, just like Sunny"
-"...Stop"
Kel didn't stop.
-"You could have done something, but you chose not to"
-"STOP!"
Kel wasn't going to stop.
-"Something awful could have happened, but it wouldn't have been your fault"
-"SHUT UP!"
Kel stopped right behind her.
-"It's okay, Aubrey. We all have our accidents, we were lucky yours didn't end in a catastrophe"
Aubrey violently turned around.
-"SO YOU'LL WASH AWAY EVERYTHING WE'VE BEEN THROUGH? YOU'LL WASH AWAY MARI'S DEATH AS A HAPPY LITTLE ACCIDENT?!"
Kel kept a straight face.
-"Mari's death hurt us all, and I don't think Sunny nor Basil were spared from that. If anything they've been through the worst part"
Aubrey's eyes were tearing up.
-"THEY MURDERED HER!"
-"They didn't want to! No one wanted to! But it happened, and now we have to deal with it together!"
Aubrey's grip became stronger.
-"IT DIDN'T JUST "HAPPEN", KEL, IT WAS THEM!"
-"And because of that they have been through the worst"
Aubrey's anger made the best of her.
-"SHUT UP!"
~~~~~•~~~~~
-"This sucks! Why am I supposed to care about what some guy from 2000 years ago did?"
Hero giggled.
-"It's important to read our own history, Kel, there are lots of interesting things!"
Kel flipped around in his bed, reading his history book from different angles.
-"Yeah, but what is it supposed to be useful for anyways?!"
-"Well, there's this saying that I personally like a lot."
Hero closed his book, cleared his voice, and put on his best wisdom voice.
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it"
~~~~~•~~~~~
-"... Kel?"
With the sunset reflecting in the lake, and the wind moving the leaves and flowers, Aubrey stared at the floor.
"Uh... Kel?"
She gently took steps forward.
"Kel! Answer me! This isn't funny!"
She got down on her knees next to her friend and dropped her nail bat on the ground.
"KEL! SAY SOMETHING"
She began shaking him in place, grasping his numb head and moving it from side to side.
"KEL, STOP IT! YOU'RE NOT PROVING A THING"
She put his head back on the ground and looked at her own hands. They were red, as well as one side of her now broken nailbat.
"No... No, nono this isn't... KEL!"
She slapped his face gently a couple of times, careful not to make the damage worse.
"KEL! WAKE UP!"
She shook his body faster and faster as a pool of red formed underneath his head, sinking into the grass.
"OPEN YOUR EYES, OPEN THEM! SAY SOMETHING! DAMN IT!"
Her voice cracked, her eyes were damped. She wrapped her arms around her head.
"KEL! COME ON BUDDY! COME ON!!!"
Her mourning stopped when she heard more rumbling behind her.
-"Aubrey? Is that you?"
A distant voice called.
Aubrey felt her heart sink. She choked on her breath. She looked around for any solution she could possibly find until she gave up and covered her eyes.
The voice became clearer.
"Au...brey?"
Aubrey gasped and looked at her with her bloodstained face.
-"KIM!"
Kim's face of horror was indescribable.
-"Aubrey... What is... i-is that...?"
Aubrey looked back at Kel.
-"I... I didn't mean to, I just.. he..."
But she couldn't put it into words. She didn't know how to justify her actions or even process what she had done, so she caved in and fell to the ground, struggling to even sob.
As Aubrey curled up in a ball, Kim approached her. She stared at Kel for one second, then tried to comfort her friend.
-"It's... It's okay, we just have to... Take him to the hospital is all"
-"But what if they... What if..."
Aubrey kept sobbing.
Kim looked down in distress. She checked Kel's pulse...
Nothing.
-"He's..."
-"Kim?"
Kim didn't finish her sentence, instead, she turned around and grabbed Aubrey by her shoulders.
-"It's okay... Aubrey..."
She took off her glasses, making sure to make Aubrey look her in the eyes. Upon doing so, Aubrey felt a strange feeling of relief. She wasn't alone in this.
"I may know what to do."