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“I go where Mark goes,” a 7-year-old Cesar declares, clinging to his best friend’s hand as they take the long walk to church that morning. Their mothers trail behind them with fond amusement at their children.
“I go where you go,” Mark agrees, taking care to skip over the cracks in the concrete. Cesar stumbles to keep up with him and he slows down to match his pace so that they’re walking side by side.
“Pinky promise?”
Mark grins wide and links his smallest finger with his. “Promise,” he says.
—--
“Hey,” A 12-year-old Mark, still shaking oak leaves out of his tangled hair, motions to Cesar to follow him. “Can you walk home with me?”
Cesar picks a leaf that he missed from behind his ear. “Why?” He asks, although he isn’t opposed. Usually, Mark walks alone.
His best friend crosses his arms tight and turns his head all the way to the left. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he hurries to say, a note of defensiveness in his voice. “I just… I don’t…”
Mark is scared, Cesar notes with surprise. The way he holds his shoulders tightly makes it obvious.
“Of course I’ll walk with you,” he says, linking their first two fingers together. Mark blinks as if startled, before the fear gradually drains out of his posture.
Cesar doesn’t know what could scare his unflappable best friend, but he’s determined to protect him from it. He goes where Mark goes, after all.
—--
Mark calls him at 3:28 am, and Cesar picks up after the third ring.
“Cesar,” his friend gasps, shaky with panic. “Talk to me, say something please. Tell me you’re alive.”
“Hey,” Cesar hurries to sit up from his bed, fully alert after hearing the trembling fear in Mark’s voice. Definitely a nightmare, and a bad one at that. “I’m right here, Mark. I’m alive. It’s not real. I’m alive.”
There’s a breathless sigh on the other end of the phone.
“It’s 3:29,” Cesar continues, trying to ground him out of his panic. Mark sounds utterly disoriented, his breathing shallow and unsteady. “And the sky outside is clear. You are safe in your house. I am safe in my house. Whatever just happened was not real. Can you name me three things inside your room?”
There’s the sound of shuffling on the other end of the line before Mark’s sleep-bleary voice comes back. “Mug of cold tea,” he says, fighting to keep his breathing in check. “Crucifix. Friendship bracelet.”
“Good.” Cesar kicks away his blankets. Mark’s breathing has slowed to a more reasonable pace, but his voice remains shaky. “Do you want me to come over? That sounded bad.”
“Please,” and Mark’s voice breaks, his tone so quietly afraid that it makes Cesar’s lungs hurt. “I want to make sure you’re alive.”
“I’ll be there in 10.” He doesn’t even bother changing out of his sleeping clothes, already struggling to slip his sneakers on.
“Thank you.” His friend’s voice is soft but thick with relief. “Thank you.”
—--
Mark’s nightmares worsen tenfold after the broadcast shows, and Cesar’s stomach knots with guilt when he can’t come over to his house to comfort him. Stupid alternates. Stupid curfew.
He gives serious weight to the idea of going anyways. He has to go where Mark goes.
“Don’t,” Mark warns him, his voice still hoarse from crying. “Cesar, don’t.”
“But you need someone there,” he protests, his chest twisting from the sound of his friend’s panicked breaths. He’s already up, pacing restlessly. “I want to help.”
“You already help me just by picking up at this ridiculous hour.” There’s the scratching of Mark’s hair against the receiver, and then a long, wobbly sigh. “Don’t go. I don’t know what I would do if you got hurt.”
The guilt of worrying Mark outweighs the guilt of not being able to comfort him in person, just slightly, and Cesar lets out a conceding sigh. “I won’t,” he says softly, sitting back down on his bed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Mark taps three times against the receiver. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
—--
Cesar Torres is visiting Bythorne College for the weekend, nearly a two-hour drive away.
Cesar Torres is driving to the Mandela County Hospital. Mark Heathcliff picks up the phone.
—--
“Mark?” Cesar calls, knocking on his front door. His best friend has never been this late to church before. He hasn’t called recently, so maybe he’s been getting some actual sleep.
Jiggling the handle, he’s disturbed to find that it’s unlocked. Mark is always diligent about keeping his house barricaded. Maybe he’s sick? The lights in his house are all off; he might be having another migraine.
“Mark,” he says, worried, walking into his room without preamble. “Are you well? We’re–”
It’s like watching a star explode. The iron stench of blood hits him first, which is almost sharp enough to take his eyes off the supernova.
Mark is right there, bright as daylight and painted red, and suddenly everything, everything is wrong.
—--
There’s so much blood that they give him a closed-casket funeral. The coroner says the bullet wound is self-inflicted; that he had been dead for hours when Cesar found him.
Nobody came for him.
—--
Cesar didn’t come for him.
—--
Cesar left him behind.
—--
Cesar is rotting alive.
His vision is going white and he can barely stand up and it doesn’t even matter because his best friend is dead, Mark is fucking dead, he’s dead and gone and Cesar is never going to see him again and it’s all his fault.
You killed him.
He sinks his nails into his scalp to try and block the sound out.
You killed him.
It doesn’t do anything except make him bleed.
Six days of self-imposed isolation might just be driving him insane but he can’t stand anything else. The sun is bright and the flowers are blooming and Mark Heathcliff died screaming with a gun to his head. His best friend shot himself and the world is somehow still turning.
You killed him.
He can’t even tell the alternate to shut up anymore; he’s got no more voice left in his throat. He lost it about 4 days ago. The thing just stares at him from his window, through his closed blinds, eyes like white chapel glass blocking the light. He’s too tired to even be properly afraid. Screaming won’t do anything. Nobody will come for him.
You were his best friend.
He was, wasn’t he? That was what killed him.
Cesar’s face. Cesar’s voice. He wants to cut out his vocal cords.
He claws his hands across his cheeks, leaving scored lines cutting across his skin. His eyes are squeezed closed but he opens them again an instant later because all he can see is a hand, tight around the gun, the glassy blank stare, the blood–
He stops and retches, his entire body trembling, but nothing comes up.
He would want this.
The alternate in the window moves and light pools onto a spot in his bed, where his kitchen knife is tangled into his blanket. The blade is still half-stained, the covers surrounding it smeared from where Cesar had tried to wipe it clean. He stares at the dancing sunbeams with blank apathy.
Don’t you want to make him happy?
The metal seems to glow in the cold sunlight.
Doesn’t he want to make him happy? Isn’t that all he had ever wanted?
The handle is heavy in his hands, or maybe he’s just getting weaker. Sunlight colors bright stripes of light on the blade, highlighting the dark patches of Cesar’s blood in sharp contrast. He thinks he should be crying but all he feels is a dull sort of buzzing in his face. He had promised him, hadn’t he?
“You should’ve fuckin’ waited for me,” he murmurs, grazing the tip of the knife against his throat.
Cesar always goes where Mark goes.