Chapter Text
“You killed yourself.”
It was strange, wasn’t it. How something like that could shake you to your core… without being surprising at all. Maybe it was just surprising that she said it, and she said it like it was such a tragedy, when… you know, it wasn’t that big a deal.
Those dark thoughts, those dull days rotting away inside the hotel… it wasn’t a big deal. It was just how it is, you know? Life had always been like this for Nathan; he’d always had one foot in the real world, and the other teetering over a soothing, suffocating, unending grey.
When the kids hugged goodbye, when Abbadon scurried off into the vents, when he felt the smile fade from his face as he hung up the phone--this greyness, this had been his lifelong companion. He didn’t know when it started following him, but it was such a loyal beast.
Killing himself, that sounded so harsh, so emotional, so… big. He didn’t kill himself, he just… it stopped making sense, you know? He didn’t remember the day he died, but he could remember so many days that were probably just like it: zoned out on the armchair, trying to make the hours pass, feeling so nothing he wasn’t even bored anymore, he was just… he was just. And the thought occurred to him time and time again, what are you doing, Nathan? What’s the point of all this?
Why don’t you just get it over with?
So, many, times. He must’ve felt a little better that day: he had the energy to find the pills, after all, and, well. That was that.
It wasn’t an exciting story. It wasn’t “You killed yourself,” it was… inevitable, you know? His whole life, it felt so inevitable, but you couldn’t say that.
(Hands on his phone, Kathy texting about Christmas plans, a weight in his chest as he thought about whether she’d want to run the hotel-)
You couldn’t say that. It’d end up exactly the way it was happening now.
“You killed yourself.”
Those misty eyes, those trembling hands. The grief in her voice that cut through you more than anything, because you meant so much to her and there was nothing you could do to stop that, nothing that wouldn’t make this a big deal to her, nothing that wouldn’t rip her heart out rip all their hearts out and those stupid connections stayed your hand so many times until you couldn’t TAKE IT ANYMORE AND THEN-
…
There was never supposed to be an ‘and then’. You chose to die over seeing that look on her face, but you're dead and here you are anyway, all of your broken edges laid bare, and you can’t stop her from seeing them, seeing you.
“You killed yourself.”
And it’s a big deal.
…
And then.