Work Text:
Forgiveness is a slimy thing, squelching like tar under fingertips. Elusive and viscous a few miles away, it glints with the light of a crescent moon; half-formed, half-glowing, half-dark. It slithers deep inside the cavity of a throat, and it sticks and it sticks until it’s retched back up again. It cannot be grasped, nor commanded or contained.
It’s terrifying to reach for in the first place.
Forgiveness is the heartbeat of a boy drenched in blood; the cold stone chest of the girl he’s coated in. It’s the press of a button on a colourful bright pad, the smashing of glass as a beast is set free, the hand that offers to pull you up when you blink the liquid out of your eyes, the hand that retracts when it remembers it’s stained forever scarlet.
You don’t quite understand, when you first wake up. This isn’t how things were supposed to go. This isn’t right at all.
You’re inside of a lab; it’s tall and it’s cold; you’ve been here forever and a half. You’re half-formed, half-glowing, half-dark, with fuzzy white spores on your skin and a cold, cold prison you drift endlessly within. Your eyes stay shut, for they burn when they open, and you’re tired, tired, tired. You miss your sister. It’s as though your stolen body’s been severed in half.
You’re inside of a lab; it’s tall and it’s dark; you’ve been here forever, and now you’re breathing air. Shattered shards of glass cut into your palms when you make to sit up, and your shirt is already torn– you’re in tatters. You swipe a knuckle across your face, feel the memories ebb back like oxygen, and you look up to the face of your sister.
Your sister is not there.
You’re surprised, of course, at those dark, dark eyes. Dark and tearful, you note, surprised. You expected unwavering blue, brilliant and bright, a film of tears turning the waterline red. There’s red, so much red, it’s everywhere–
But there is no blue.
You look for it and see the crumpled headless corpse of the man who made you a monster; half-formed, half-glowing, half-dark. The lights are like a siren as they glance off of his endless blood. He’s dead.
Good, you think, and you have not the energy to be angry. Bitter exhaustion crawls its way up your chest, sticks in your throat as a lump, a hitching gasp– and you breathe out. Good. There is no forgiveness there.
Your arms hurt, distantly; they throb with the stabs of a recent needle prod. You’re chock full of chemicals, stuffed to the brim like a pantry, and it feels as though when you breathe out, bubbles and fumes will slide past your lips. Your head is heavy and your limbs don’t fit and your skin itches like it belongs to someone else– and he’s dead. Dead and gone and stolen, dead upon the floor.
Good.
There is no blue here, but you can see yellow. Sparse and suffocated, it fights the staining red sea, the torrential current that tries to seize the sunlight. Yellow like sunshine, yellow like sickness. It’s sticky and damp with crimson and tears.
It’s your saviour.
There is no blue.
You don’t quite understand, when you first wake up. This isn’t how things were supposed to go. This isn’t right at all.
But they have, and it is, and curiosity got you killed so you retreat into silence and wait out the storm, even as you burn and you burn and you burn. Dread is the ice water leftover in your lungs and anger is the brittle edge that cuts into you like a scalpel, but you follow up the ladder like a good victim would and you pine for a sister who is home.
He will not explain, tight-lipped and tearful. He saw his father die. That, you know, your heart heavy as a pebble by the pond, would reduce anyone to tears. You cannot forgive that man, not after all he’s done. You do not want to. He does not deserve it.
At first, though– at first, you don’t quite understand. You think Jerome has nothing to need forgiveness– not from you, nor for this. Not when you witness the two-boy funeral with hollow eyes that feel like gloating; not when you look at the corpse he made and you think good.
At first, you don’t quite understand. You think Jerome has done you right. You think this is selflessness. You think he is a saviour.
You do not want him to be your saviour.
You almost slip down the ladder, it’s far, far, far. Was it this long before, when your muscles did not tremble and shudder? It’s impossible to recall. You still feel like you’re floating; you will until you see her.
And then–
And then, before the hatch opens–
Only then, once you’ve licked at your wounds and the smog has somewhat cleared, do you ask.
You look Jerome in those dark and tearful eyes, and you ask him a question.
Where’s Lily?
Jerome does not lie to you.
You know he is not lying.
And in the span of a second, your entire world– half-formed, half-glowing, half dark– crumples into nothing.
There’s a roaring in your ears and a blaze inside your something, your innards, your very core– and suddenly it’s everywhere, it’s all you can smell, it’s red red red and it’s everywhere. You choke and you scream and you’re crying, dark and tearful, and you’re standing in a void at the end of the universe.
He does not fight back.
That makes it so much worse.
You cling to her body, once you fumble up the ladder, your hands already slick with that mystery liquid, your prison, your vat, and then it’s dripping onto blue as you hover over her in shock. And your hands move without you and your throat is raw with noise, and you have not spoken in forever and a half but she never will again. And she is cooling, she is cold, she is warm and bright and gone; half-formed, half-glowing, half-dark.
She is dead.
There are three people inside of the principal’s office, and none of them own the space. The son, the specimen, the sacrifice. You press your ear to her chest and hear nothing, you rock with her– for her or for you, you do not care– and you think– you think about the impossibility of forgiveness.
Jerome has never held a gun; has never felt its weight upon his palm. Neither have you.
The pistols stand inside of their polished glass case, beckoning in a flash of steely silver light.
(There’s shattered glass on the floor when you try to sit up, your bones are jelly and your bones are wrong, your clothes are in tatters but none of it matters, not when you’ll get to see her.)
They’re behind the desk, behind the rug, behind her corpse.
(It would be so easy.)
It would be so easy.
The glass stays intact.
You burn with rage and it is frayed at the edges. Incandescent, it tears your insides to smithereens, reduces you to nothing and nothing and somehow even less, because what are you if only half of that which was an inseparable whole? You hate him. You hate him and you hate him and she’s dead, and you’ll be angrier later but right now you can only cry because the second you move, she’s gone.
She looked for you. They killed her because she looked for you. You’re out because she looked for you, and now there’s nothing left.
She’s gone.
Forgiveness is a jagged thing, piercing and swinging like a blade at your throat. Noisy and pointed above your head, it taunts with nonsense and beauty and a high ground no-one else can see. It burns with the light of a blood red moon; half-formed, half-glowing, half-dark. It slithers behind the teeth and it tastes of poison, so you spit so viciously that it flies to sizzle on the floor. It cannot be grasped, nor commanded or contained.
You’ll never forgive the man who made you a monster. The man who owns the office. The man who holds the gun.
You cannot forgive yourself.
How could you ever forgive him?