Chapter Text
Sunny woke up crying.
It was the first time he had cried in four years. He thought he had forgotten how.
He had forgotten so many things over the course of his time spent alone. Some things purposefully, others incidentally.
The realization wracked his mind with grief – full-body shaking sobs pulled at his lungs, leaving him without breath.
It wasn’t how he had killed his sister. It wasn’t even how he had covered it up, no matter how horrible that had been.
He had lied so much. To his parents. To his friends. To himself.
Sunny had wrapped himself in falsehood so deeply that he started to believe it.
He convinced himself that he didn’t remember the truth. He had painted over the memory of Mari with pathetic desperation and cowardice. Had tainted her image with an unexplained tragedy. They would never be able to think of her the same way again.
He came to a decision before he had even awoken.
This has to stop.
He has to fix this.
No matter what comes after.
Steadying his breath, Sunny wiped the tears from his eyes and was finally met by the sight of an unfamiliar ceiling.
Or rather, tried to wipe his eyes.
His right eye seemed to be covered by something, no light coming through regardless of how many times he tried to blink. He thought he was blinking, at least. It was difficult to tell given that the only real feeling he had was a dull, stabbing pain that ran through his eye and back, pushing deeper into his skull than he was comfortable picturing. It felt as if Basil had forgotten to take out the shears from Sunny’s face after their fight.
Their fight.
The memories clicked into place all at once. Basil had stabbed him in the eye. Kel, Hero, and Aubrey must have found them – taken him to the hospital. That’s what this ceiling was – a hospital room.
His hands flew to his face, feeling for what was – or wasn’t – still there.
Thin fingers crept along his cheeks, running up until they met the soft resistance of cloth bandages. Sunny nervously traced the wrapping around himself, scarcely able to feel his own hands making contact with his head. Completing a full circle, he came back around to his covered eye.
Had he really lost it? There was no small amount of anxiousness in the thought. The idea of losing an eye scared him to no end. Such a permanent change, something that would affect him every day for the rest of his life. But he would be surprised if anything was left after what happened. The memory alone made him wince in pain.
Gingerly, his fingers made contact with the large padded bandage that covered whatever may remain of his eye. Gently prodding, as if trying to touch a butterfly’s wings, he tested the surface. Soft, slow pressure that generated no response. He pressed slightly harder, and was met with an equal amount of numbness. Finally, he pushed his fingers as hard as he was willing, not wanting to possibly damage it further.
Nothing.
His eye was gone.
Sunny’s arms went limp against his face as tears once again formed in the corner of his remaining eye.
It’s okay, he consoled himself. It’s just one eye. You aren’t blind or anything. It could have been worse.
You deserve worse.
Taking in a shaky breath, he resolved himself to finally address the room around him. Slowly pushing himself up to a sitting position, he fully took in his surroundings for the first time.
What he saw surprised him. Thankfully, he had the small hospital room to himself, but oddly he was surrounded by an assortment of flowers. Had Basil done this? How long had he been unconscious?
Lifting the covers of the hospital bed, he inspected himself.
Clothed in nothing but a hospital gown, he could see just how thin he had become over the past four years. Somehow though, Basil still seemed thinner. Sunny only had a mental image to go off of at the moment, but Basil, true to his nature, always seemed near impossibly wiry – a frail-looking body with stick-thin limbs that gave him the impression of a freshly sprouted sapling, one bad storm away from being torn apart.
His arms sported more unfortunate reminders of Basil. Covered in yet more bandages, Sunny could feel the gashes from where he had thrown up his hands in an attempt to defend himself.
A brief once-over of his hands ensured that he had not somehow lost a finger in that exchange.
Small victories.
Slowly swinging his legs out from the bed, Sunny tested his balance. The tile was cold under his feet and most of his body was sore, but he could stand. Slower still, he took small steps around the room, inspecting the flowers that had been placed wherever there was space.
Turning to the flowers nearest to him, he picked up a small card.
“Sending a little get-well sunshine your way. We miss you, Sunny.” From Kel and Hero’s family… and Aubrey.
Sunny’s breath caught in his throat. His friends had left him flowers. They still didn’t know what he had done.
Of course they didn’t, how could they? He had barely come to accept it himself. He had done the unthinkable, and then did worse still to cover it up.
He had ruined the lives of everyone he cared about and then hid himself away, taking the truth with him.
They had been left to suffer for far too long. He couldn’t undo what had already happened, but he won’t drag it out a second longer. He had to tell them. They deserved to know.
He sucked in a breath and steeled himself for what comes next. Whatever happens, he trusts them. Whatever they choose, he will accept it.
It seems word traveled fast through Faraway – there was a flower from almost everyone in town. The thought that they all might find out what he did to Mari made him feel sick.
Pushing the feeling aside, he found there was also a not-insignificant feeling of genuine gratefulness for all the flowers. Sunny had maybe gotten a little overexcited upon leaving his house for the first time in years, and as a result he ended up talking to more people in the span of three days than he had in possibly his entire life up to this point.
Of course, “talking” was perhaps overstating things a bit. Sunny’s actual conversations consisted mostly of nodding or shaking his head, sometimes pointing when necessary. It was rather impressive how far he got without actually speaking aloud to anyone. The soreness in his legs each night he went to bed was something he had worn with pride. Steps taken outside of his comfort zone, tangible progress burning his muscles. It was almost embarrassing how easily it came to him after so long. But it was never the thought of talking to strangers that had kept him inside for all that time.
Sunny eyed the door. The light pouring in from the windows meant it had to be mid-day outside. Was someone waiting for him?
Stepping into the hallway, it was eerily quiet for a hospital. Perhaps it was just a slow day?
Or maybe this is where they put all the comatose patients.
An upsetting thought.
The flowers were still fresh, so surely he couldn’t have been asleep for too long. A day maybe? No, then they wouldn’t have had time to get him all those flowers in the first place. A month was too long, so perhaps a week. That sounded like a safe guess.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sunny saw a small group of people running down the hallway.
Wait, was that Hero?
No, if it had been his friends, they would have called out to him. And on top of that, Hero would never run in a hospital unless it was an emergency – and it was far too quiet for there to be an emergency.
Approaching the intersection where he had seen the group, Sunny looked down the way they had gone. The hallway had only one exit on that end. A set of double doors with a small sign labeled “Roof Access”.
Images ran through his mind.
The metallic click of the stairs as he climbed. The bare concrete beneath his feet. The smell of fresh air so high up. The wind pushing his hair into his face. A half-step forward.
The sounds of distant chatter snapped Sunny out of his thoughts, shaking his head.
I’ve already made my choice.
He turned, and headed down the path the group had originally come from.
The closer he got to the source of the chatter, the more confidently he felt that it was the sound of his friends. Were his friends here after all? But why were they here instead of waiting for him?
Turning the corner, Sunny saw Basil standing in front of one of the hospital rooms.
And then he was gone.
Sunny blinked and rubbed lightly at his good eye.
What happened? That was Basil he saw, wasn’t it?
Cautiously, Sunny reached out to open the door.
This… wouldn’t be the first time he confused his own thoughts and reality. Maybe his injuries had made his condition worse, somehow.
Gently stepping through the door, Sunny’s heart rate quickened.
There they were.
Kel, Aubrey, and Hero stood around the unconscious form of Basil, lying on a hospital bed.
He hadn’t considered that Basil would be in the hospital too. Comparatively, Sunny had barely done anything to him in their fight. Why had Sunny woken up first?
Regardless, he was relieved to see them all. Even as nervousness rose in his throat, he was still happy to see his friends. To know they were okay.
Standing in front of him now, they seemed to almost glow.
This was going to be so much harder than he could have imagined.
Hero stood silently over the body of yet another of his childhood friends.
No. That was wrong, Basil isn’t dead – he isn’t. Being in a coma isn’t a guaranteed death sentence. Hero knew that.
It didn’t make him feel any better though.
The two remaining members of their group stood beside him. Kel and Aubrey. Though you wouldn’t know it was the same Aubrey from all those years ago at a glance.
Kel was telling half-hearted jokes in an attempt to keep the silence at bay, but there was no laughter – not even from Kel himself. Aubrey would occasionally respond, just to keep Kel talking, but it could hardly be called a conversation.
Hero wanted to tell himself it was okay – that he had made it this time. He had gotten both boys to the hospital – alive. He had even managed to pull them both from the lake within hours of returning to his hometown. This time, he was there when it mattered most.
But he wasn’t, was he?
No, when it actually mattered most, he was away at college. When it mattered most, he wasn’t there to help his friends deal with an impossible tragedy. When it mattered most, he was sobbing into his pillow for a year, hurling abuse at his own brother for daring to worry about him. When it mattered most, he was nowhere to be found. Always too late.
And now two boys he considered to be just as much his brothers as Kel might never wake up.
Three days. Maybe four, depending on how you count.
They had already been comatose for a full day longer than Hero had seen them awake.
Just two days together in the last four years.
Maybe he was cursed. For years nothing had really changed - things hadn’t really gotten better it seemed, but they hadn’t gotten worse either. Not until Hero was back.
He had tried to make things feel like they used to – to slip back into his role as the mediator of the group. Keeping things from boiling over, making sure everyone is alright. He really had tried so hard for them.
Maybe this was the best he could do.
Whimpered words from Kel passed through his head. Not the Kel standing in front of him now, but the Kel from three nights ago – stained with both tears and blood, only one of which belonged to him.
It didn’t do any good to think the night through again – he had already done it so many times he lost count. But he couldn’t stop himself either.
Quietly, Hero let the scene replay in his head once more.
Aubrey had shaken him awake in the middle of the night. Bleary eyed and shrouded in darkness, Hero couldn’t see the worry on her face – but he could hear it clear as day in her voice.
“Hero. Hero!”
He blurted out a mumbled acknowledgement in response, not fully awake but wanting to give Aubrey his full attention as best he could.
“Hero, Sunny’s not here. I think- I think something’s wrong.” Aubrey whispered, fighting back the fear that was creeping into her voice.
Even after so many years apart, she couldn’t help but worry about Sunny the moment he was out of sight. It was cute, but it was also interrupting his sleep.
“Aubrey, he probably went to the- “
A scream rang out through the house, high-pitched and dripping with pain. It was a voice Hero had never heard before.
Adrenaline shot cold through his veins, every last vestige of sleep forgotten in an instant.
Shooting up from under his blanket, he shouted, “Wake Kel up!” as he was already halfway through the hall door.
A resounding thud reverberated through the floor as he moved. His heart pounded so hard that he was surprised he could even hear the panicked mutterings behind him that meant Kel had woken up. He was even more surprised to hear the sound of Basil’s muffled voice through the bedroom door.
“…Sunny? SUNNY?”
Hero burst through the door, only to be met with a sight somehow worse than he had feared.
Sunny laid in a heap on the floor, moonlight from the window reflecting off the dark red pool that was growing around him by the second. Standing above him, cast in shadow, was Basil – holding a pair of bloodied gardening shears that glinted in the light.
“Hero?” Basil’s eyes were frighteningly bright amidst the darkness, thrown open so wide Hero thought they might burst. “N-NO! I-I-I WASN’T-“
Panic-stricken, Basil fell to the floor beside Sunny, face down in a growing puddle of his friend’s blood.
“BASIL!”
A shrill voice rang out from behind Hero, shocking him loose from his stunned state. He spun around, face to face with both Kel and Aubrey.
“NO! Don’t look!” Hero pleaded with them, trying to block the door as much as he could – but it was too late.
“O-oh God. Sunny?”
What does he do? What is he supposed to do? He wasn’t ready for something like this, not again. There was nothing he-
Hero turned around once again in realization. It’s not too late. Not yet. He can fix it this time. He had been studying exactly what to do. The panic had just forced it out of him for a moment - a moment that he couldn’t spare to lose.
Rushing to Sunny’s side, Hero turned the bloody boy over to look at his face. Instead, his eyes met an angry gash where Sunny’s own eye should be, blood streaming out at a heart-stopping pace.
Had Basil done this? What the hell had happened to his friends?
Stop. Ask questions later.
He couldn’t risk losing focus.
“Go get Polly!” he shouted at the pair still frozen in the doorway. Neither moved.
“KEL! GO GET POLLY!” picking one of them by name seemed to snap the both of them out of it. Kel sprinted off as fast as his long legs could carry him, while Aubrey moved into the bedroom, dropping down to examine the boy cradled in Hero’s arms.
“DON’T!” he shouted reflexively as he pulled Sunny’s head to his chest, hiding the gushing wound from Aubrey’s sight.
“Get me a blanket – or a towel! Something to stop the bleeding!”
Aubrey shoved herself back up to her feet and ripped a small blanket off of Basil’s bed.
Practically tearing it from her hands, Hero began to wrap it around Sunny’s head and applied pressure over the eye.
It was soaked through in mere moments.
“Basil?”
A hoarse whisper pulled Hero’s focus to the door once more. Polly stood in the hallway, with a painfully familiar expression on her face.
“Oh, Basil!” she sobbed as she fell to her knees beside the boy. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” She gripped Basil’s arm tightly as she cried.
“W-we need to get to the hospital,” Hero’s voice cracked. He was losing what little composure he had managed to hold so far.
Searching the room, he saw Kel once again. He must have come in after Polly.
“Kel, grab Basil and follow me – Polly you need to drive us to the hospital, okay?” Polly nodded through her sobs and quickly left to get her keys.
“Come on,” Hero stood, cradling Sunny. God, he was so painfully light. It felt like he was still twelve.
“Kel, support his head with your arm,” Hero continued to issue orders, if only to keep himself talking instead of thinking. “Aubrey, get the door.”
There was only a flutter of pink in Hero’s vision as she turned and ran for the front door.
In seconds they were outside and loading the lifeless bodies of their friends into Polly’s car.
No. Not lifeless, not dead – not yet.
You can fix this. You can make it this time.
“Kel, you’ll have to hold Basil in the front. Aubrey, help me get Sunny in the back.”
They all followed his instructions without hesitation, muttering despondently as Polly started the engine. Basil fell limply against Kel’s shoulder and Sunny was laid out across the legs of both Hero and Aubrey, growing colder by the second as Polly sped out onto the street.
The late-night nature of their emergency proved to be a small mercy, as the streets were devoid of any obstacles to slow their desperate drive. The road thundered beneath the over-crowded car, Polly not even glancing at the signs warning of the local speed limit as they flew past.
Hero just has to keep them alive until they make it to the hospital.
The hopeless whimpers of the others were growing louder in his ears.
“Why does this keep happening to us?”
He had studied for this.
“I’m sorry - Please wake up, I’m so sorry.”
He just- just had to focus.
“Why am I so useless?”
Just needed them all to-
“SHUT UP!”
An amount of force had entered Hero’s voice that only Kel had known he was even capable of. In an instant, he switched to an apologetic, pleading tone.
“Please… I- I need to think.”
The rumbling of the tires shook his chest, making it feel even tighter than it already was.
He was still holding the blanket to Sunny’s eye, but his heart fell to his stomach as he realized he had yet to actually check on the other boy.
Stupid. Going to get him killed.
“Kel, how’s Basil? Is he breathing? Bleeding?”
Polly stifled a cry at his words.
“…He’s breathing. A-and bleeding. Not a lot though.”
Not compared to Sunny.
“Okay. Okay, good. Where is he bleeding from?”
“Um… his face- his nose. And his lip, I think.”
Probably just hit it when he fell. Thank God.
“That’s fine, just tilt his head forward. Don’t let it pool down his throat – keep him breathing.”
“…Yeah. Yeah, okay. I can do that.” Kel's voice shook with uncertainty.
The gentle shuffle of fabric signaled that Kel had done so, silently holding Basil’s head in place against his chest – tanned hands wrapped in bright blonde curls.
Hero turned his attention back to the most serious problem. Sunny was bleeding horrifically.
His black vest was soaked through with blood, and now Hero’s own shirt wasn’t faring much better. Even with Hero holding a makeshift bandage in place, it was only a matter of time.
Aubrey had scarcely taken a breath since Hero’s outburst, just staring at the bloodied face of her friend with tears in her eyes.
“Aubrey, hold this in place for me.”
She looked at him fearfully.
“What?”
“Just keep pressure on his eye. I can’t check on him like this.”
Timidly, she lifted her hand towards Sunny’s face. Gripping the cloth as best she could, Hero carefully slipped his hand away, trading places without ever removing pressure from the gushing fountain beneath their hands.
Hero’s hand jumped from Sunny’s face to the side of his neck. There was a pulse, but it was predictably faint. Sunny’s skin was clammy, and had grown paler still.
His skin was so white it rivaled paper, with his dark hair knotted together in drying clumps - he looked like a porcelain doll that someone had poured paint on.
True panic was beginning to gnaw its way past Hero’s false veneer of calm.
He was going to be buried like this.
Monochrome from head to toe, skin so pale you couldn’t tell where it stopped and the edge of their burial clothes began. Colder than any living thing should ever be.
Face frozen with soft features that could almost trick you into thinking they’re asleep. If only you hadn’t seen them before the funeral.
If only you hadn’t found her hanging there.
Hero had stopped breathing entirely as tears finally welled up in his eyes for the first time that night. There was nothing more he could do. He could only wait for another friend to die, having just barely been too late.
Hero was going to watch Mari’s brother die in his arms.
“We’re here!”
Polly’s cry, fueled by a mix of desperation and relief, pulled Hero out of his thoughts – but just barely.
Looking up through half-formed tears, Hero could see the glowing sign of the hospital’s emergency entrance. Maybe.
Just maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Please.
In moments they had come to a screeching halt immediately outside the hospital doors. Hero gave a strangled command, but it wasn’t needed. No one was going to waste even a single second.
Aubrey pulled Hero out of the car, once again trading the cloth that was now stuck to Sunny’s face with his own blood, while Polly struggled to help Kel with Basil.
Barely even looking ahead of him, Hero sprinted through the automatic doors, dropping any last vestige of composure he might have still had.
“HELP! WE NEED HELP! PLEASE!” he shouted to a mostly empty waiting area. A nurse shot up from behind the desk, calling more nurses over as he ran. Hero was swarmed by people in medical dress, pulling him along. Things got blurry as Sunny was pulled from his grasp by no less than three people, one of whom took over holding the eye bandage in place.
Hero tried to follow them, but was held back by a nurse who was somehow even taller than he was.
“Please…”
They had waited there all night.
All four, soaked in blood and tears.
Not one of them spoke a word, not until the questions started.
Name, date of birth, medical history, legal guardians, and on and on and on.
Until the question that Hero knew was coming.
“What happened?”
A nurse holding a clipboard had taken a seat across from the four of them, filling out paperwork after deciding they all looked too shocked to do so themselves.
Hero looked at Polly, only to find her looking back at him. The two of them had answered most of the questions, providing information about Sunny and Basil respectively.
She didn’t have an answer.
I don’t know.
“An accident.”
It felt easy to lie after all that had happened. All emotion had been drained from his voice, leaving no hint as to whether or not he believed the words he spoke.
“An accident? What kind of accident?”
I don’t know.
“I don’t know. We only found them after.”
“Both of them?”
No.
“Yes.”
No one spoke up against him. They all sat, faces unflinching, unsure of the weight Hero’s words carried. They didn’t know what happened, that much was true at least.
Hero ignored the image of Basil’s garden shears that lingered behind his eyes.
It had to have been an accident. It must have been. What other reason could there be for what happened?
“SUNNY!” Kel cried, not caring to watch his volume even in a hospital. His face was alight with relief.
Sunny?
Hero turned to look at the now-open door to Basil’s hospital room.
There he was.
Stood in the doorway, covered in so many bandages that he resembled his old Halloween mummy costume more than a hospital patient.
A full-body wave of relief washed over Hero, but was quickly replaced by new worries.
Sunny had been unconscious for three days. Even if he was awake, he should still be in bed, resting.
As if to prove his point, Sunny began to tremble ever so slightly, his hand still locked around the doorknob.
For a moment, his one visible eye had shown relief, but his face immediately tensed as if anticipating bad news. Sunny had always been stone-faced – even more so since he locked himself away – but Hero had plenty of practice interpreting Sunny’s subtle expressions. You could read him like a book if you knew what to look for – and right now his face was screaming with anxiety and trepidation.
Both Hero and Aubrey noted Sunny’s worry and their own faces wrinkled to reflect it. What was making him so nervous? Was it Basil? Hero supposed that was probably it. Whatever had happened between them was likely still fresh in Sunny’s mind – just as it was in Hero’s.
Sunny swallowed the lump in his throat, and took a short breath.
“I have to tell you something.”
His voice was a haggard whisper, weakened from years of disuse.
“I-“ his voice caught in his throat, even quieter than before.
“Sunny?” Hero whispered. This was the first time he had heard Sunny speak since he came back, and it was not a pleasant sound. It was obvious that he spoke as little as possible, if at all, for the past four years. A pang of guilt ran through his heart. He should have been there for Sunny, when he needed him most.
Sunny closed his eye and swallowed again. Taking a deeper breath, he prepared himself. They needed to hear this.
“I killed Mari.”
Cold silence rushed into the room, pressing down on everyone present.
Hero felt his face contort with even deeper worry and guilt. Had this been on Sunny’s mind the whole time? Why he had locked himself away? He blamed himself for Mari’s- for her death.
“S-Sunny…” Aubrey took her turn addressing the injured boy. “It’s not your-“
Sunny butted in, desperate to prevent Aubrey from finishing her sentence.
“It was an accident! No- not a suicide…” The words began to tumble out like the beginning of a landslide - a distant rumble telling of devastation to come, yet too late to stop it.
“We had a fight. I broke my violin. Mari was yelling at me. I couldn’t take it.”
All three of their faces twisted, any relief from seeing their friend awake was drained away and replaced with abject concern. What was he talking about? They all found her together, hadn’t they?
“I- I pushed her. And she fell. Down the stairs.” His sentences were getting shorter, his breathing shallow.
“Basil saw.” Tears were beginning to run down his face.
“We tried to wake her up! I tried!” Sunny was openly weeping now. “I was so scared.”
“And… B- Basil had an idea. To protect me.” The group’s panicked eyes flitted between the sobbing boy in front of them and the sleeping one between them. The air was so still that it seemed even he was holding his breath in his unaware state.
“We took her downstairs. Outside. And we- we…” Sunny’s voice had gotten quiet again, his sobbing replaced by unadulterated shame. Hero was cold. In the span of only a few moments he had jumped from relief, to concern, to shock, – to what could only be described as raw horror. He felt like he was being physically beaten with every word that came from Sunny’s mouth.
“We tied her up.” His voice was barely a whisper, yet it resonated in the silent room like shattering glass.
Time slowed. Sunny felt his heart stop. All he could see was the horrified, tearful looks on his friends faces as he brought four years of grief toppling down around them all. Four years built on a lie.
This moment would last forever. Yet one more scene that would burn itself into his brain, lingering behind every thought no matter how hard he might try to forget. Never able to unsee the look on the faces of these people who he had considered his family.
Hero lunged.
Horror replaced by rage, Hero closed the distance between himself and the tear-stained boy in an instant. His fist made contact with Sunny’s face with a deafening crack, sending Sunny sprawling to the floor. Behind him someone shouted his name. He couldn’t tell if it was Kel or Aubrey.
He gasped in tearful breaths, raising his fist again to strike this thing that had lied to him. That had forced him to live through the most stressful night of his life not just once, but twice. That had stolen Mari from him, that dared to look him in the face after four years of nothing.
It should have drowned.
He should have let it drown when he found Kel and Aubrey by the lake.
Mari should have let it drown all those years ago.
“I’m sorry.” A voice came from the crumpled form at Hero’s feet.
Sunny turned to look up at Hero once more, tears still streaming down his face. “I’m so sorry. I loved her. I’m sorry.”
Hero’s mouth fell open, searching for words that weren’t there. Sunny was bleeding heavily from beneath his bandage, mirroring the tears from his working eye.
Hero sprinted out the door without a word.
Sunny had expected the punch, on some level. Knowing it was coming hadn’t made it hurt any less though.
Hero was tall, and though Kel might be the more athletic of the two, Hero was still comparably strong.
Strong enough to knock Sunny down in a single blow. To rattle his brain, make the scene swim in front of his eye.
But even with unsteady vision, Sunny could clearly see the expression on Hero’s face as he looked up.
Fear. Disgust. Hate.
Hero hated him. There was no doubt in his mind. It was the kind of expression that could only come from a place of deep, visceral revulsion.
And yet as Sunny met Hero’s eyes, the expression changed. Rage-fueled loathing cracked and fell away, revealing fear alone underneath.
Hero took a step back. And then sprinted out the door almost as quickly as he had leapt upon Sunny.
“…Hero?” Kel croaked.
Sunny turned to look at Kel. He seemed stunned – his face devoid of any of the cheerfulness that Sunny knew him by. It was an expression he had worn only once before.
“Hero?” Kel repeated, stumbling out the door after his brother. Not once did he turn towards the boy still lying on the floor.
Aubrey had reached out to stop him, but Kel was already gone. She was left standing alone, one hand on the door.
She turned to Sunny with a look on her face different from Hero’s. One that Sunny couldn’t decipher. Horror? Nausea? Hatred? He couldn’t tell.
Aubrey didn’t know either.
She left quickly - not running, but only just. Her rapid footsteps faded into the distance, leaving Sunny alone on the floor with only the unconscious body of his accomplice.
Sunny wiped his face and his hands came away warm and sticky. Looking down he saw they were coated in blood. He couldn’t feel it, but he must have ripped whatever stitching they had put on his eye.
Carefully pushing himself to his feet, as to not slip in his own blood, he slowly stumbled over to a chair and took a seat.
He tried to stop his crying.
You knew this would happen. They could never forgive you for what you’ve done. You gave up that chance the moment you decided to hide the fall.
Tears continued to pour out of him.
He knew this was a possibility. Knew that they would be angry – beyond angry about what he had done. He had resolved himself to accept whatever punishment they gave him, no matter what.
Yet some part had hoped, was desperately wanting everything to be okay. Praying that by confessing and asking for forgiveness, they would spare him. That they wouldn’t leave him alone. That they could all still be friends, even after everything.
It was stupid - HE was stupid. Of course this was how it would go. This is how it should be.
He did the right thing. That hadn’t changed. This had to happen, it was this or… nothing. There were no other options – not really.
He was still wiping his tears when there was a knock at the door.
“Is everything alright? I thought I heard- Oh my God!”
A woman – a nurse, it looked like – had opened the door and locked eyes with Sunny. His gaze wandered from her to the line of blood he had made walking to his seat. It seemed like he was bleeding more than he thought.
“Are-are you okay? Can you hear me?” The nurse came cautiously closer, and Sunny nodded in affirmation. “Alright, can you walk? We need to get you taken care of, and then you can tell me what happened, okay?” She stuck her hand out to Sunny.
He nodded again, slowly standing but not taking the nurse’s hand.
“Oh – okay, um – just come with me please.” She placed her hand on Sunny’s shoulder, quickly guiding him out of the room and down the hall, trailing careless red footsteps in his wake.