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It's been over for a long, long time.
To that city, loud and buzzing, iTrapped has said his farewells and ceased to exist. Holed up now in a small town under someone else's name, he tries to move on from those eight glimmering months.
Summer has fallen to winter, then back again, and to winter once more. It's been a year and a half since iTrapped went and screwed it all up, but he's still trudging through the park every night to avoid seeing their faces in his dreams.
He never got the key. He never freed his friends, he didn't leave with a cent of Chance's money, and he never found a way to fill that hole in his chest. Those eight months were nothing but failures, cemented and irreversible once he'd walked down that staircase and held that gun out to them. Or maybe it wasn't over until the sword had been plunged hilt-deep into their chest, and the pointy edges of the guard dug into their skin a little from how hard he'd pushed it into them. Maybe it was as soon as they'd met, or somewhere along the way when iTrapped began sleeping through the night in their bed rather than snooping around for a vault or a key.
Every step of the way was a chance to do things right. Every single time, he could have made a different choice. He could be with Chance, or he could have been with his friends, but here he is now, alone in a small park reminiscing and regretting as per routine.
He wipes the snow off a bench and sits. It's bright out despite the dead night, since it's so white tonight. Only a slight breeze stirs the stillness.
Snowflakes drift in and out of visibility through the light of a streetlamp. If he unfocuses his eyes, they blur into whispers of a refracting memory.
Two people, in a larger park than this one. They walk close, but keep their hands in their pockets. Unlike today, they walk with somewhere to be.
"Wow, it's cold. Hardly ever gets this heavy around here."
"Yeah, I know. It's not terrible, though. I don't mind it."
"Seriously? What, grow up somewhere miserable?"
"I guess I did, yeah. I kind of missed it, living around here. The snow here's so thin, and it barely hails or sleets, just rains all the time. This weather's like a little taste of home."
"Hey, promise me you'll show me around your hometown sometime?"
A smile. "You sure? You don't seem like you'd enjoy the climate."
"That's a yes, right?"
Another promise made. Another promise never made good on. Show me around your hometown. Let me meet your family. Tell me about your past someday. Let's get married in the future. Stay with me, please. They pile up higher and higher into a heap of broken garbage, broken trust.
Ah, no use putting a fancy metaphor on it. iTrapped regrets it. He regrets everything he did in those eight months. Everything, from their meeting to their mundane life together to the moment where it all ended. Could something have been different? Could everything have been different? Could he have kept a single promise if he tried?
It's too cold to cry. It's too late to regret everything like this. It's too late for wishes, and it's far too late for forgiveness. Chance would have forgiven him if they'd known the full truth, whether he deserved it or not. He should have told them while they were dying, if only to offer the both of them a little closure. He would have, were he not a coward.
Would have, should have, could have. It's the same train of thought that runs through his head every night, whether he sits in his apartment and lets it or tries to make the cold numb it out of his mind. Honestly, if it doesn't make a difference anyway, he should have just stayed home and wallowed in his misery a little warmer. That echoing husk of a place is at least too hollow for memories to cling to anything.
But it's easier to come out here. It's easier to go somewhere that still whispers of the time before it ended, the same way it's easier to quit medication by weaning yourself off. Though that analogy doesn't really work, since he's not making any effort to come here less or move on.
It's easier to do it this way.
And iTrapped has always taken the easy way out.
He leans against the bench, a faint dusting of snow already beginning to form over the area he'd brushed off. His hair, dirty from a lack of care, drops over his face in clumps. Maybe it's not used to being so neglected.
He used to be vain. Fussy over his hair and attire and his impression on others. He used to be egotistical and always confident in the future, in the notion that things would work out. He used to be cunning. He used to be greedy. And he used to be alive.
He's not sure he's anything anymore.
iTrapped isn't certain he's even a person at all now. Can he be a shell, if the outside has deteriorated as much as the inside? The definition of a ghost or a whisper, just barely who he once was, doesn't seem right either.
No, he isn't anything but a sigh in the drifting snow. A sigh of longing, or regret, and hardly anything more. What's the point in living like this?
"Stop that. How have you become so pathetic?"
Someone from a long time ago, with a straighter posture and more arrogance in his voice, flickers in the glow of the lamp. The light cascades into his silhouette.
"Come on. Up on your feet now. It's not over yet, so quit acting like it is. You're making me look bad."
"It is over," he says to the empty night. "It has been for a while."
"You've had a year and a half," it says back to him, "to realize that you're the one to live in their place. They're all gone because of you. Stop pretending you're one of them and live the life you abandoned them all for."
"But it's easier this way."
"All your regrets must be empty, then. I thought you had realized after losing everything that the easy way isn't always the best one. If you were given the chance—"
A memory flickers, of a smile meant for him. They cascade over each other, cutting themselves off—
An arm slung around his shoulder. The clink of a toast for a fake birthday. Quiet piano in a moment of vulnerability. Glimmering eyes, locked onto his own—
You're beautiful. I love you. Stay with me. I'm sorry.
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.
"Then act like it," comes the echo of the night.
iTrapped pushes himself off the bench and forces himself onto the path. His shoulders scatter the fractals of snowflakes under the lamp, and the silence is replaced with the crunch of resolute footfalls. He traces the footprints, shallower now that it's snowed on them, down to the parking lot and drives back to the place he'd fled.
It doesn't take him into the city. On the outskirts of the past, just outside the heart of his lament, is the plain old cemetery where Chance was buried. It's his first time here, since he didn't go to their funeral, but he finds his way to their grave just fine.
The air is heavier here. And maybe the snow, too. He crouches by the headstone and doesn't bother to read it.
It's been over a year. There aren't any flowers anymore. The world has moved on, and it has taken everybody with it except for iTrapped.
"Hey. I miss you," he says. "And I'm sorry."
The night is silent.
"I know I don't have any right to say that. I know it was me holding the sword, and I won't blame it on anything else. I thought I was in too deep, and I knew I had to fix it, and I just wanted to take the easy way out. I know that it had nothing to do with you, and… and you could have lived a happy life if I hadn't come into it, a—and I… and maybe it wouldn't have been happy, but you would have been here to hate it. It… I… I wanted to see them again, Chance. You were wonderful to me, truly, but it wasn't… It wasn't enough. And that's not your fault, because I… I am just that kind of person, and I don't think anything would have ever been enough for me. I wasn't… ever the victim. You… I… I took everything from you, and… and you just watched, with a smile on your face. I—I shouldn't have ever met you, and I'm sorry that you were ever so unlucky. You called me your lucky charm, but— but I— fuck."
The snow stills, the light steadies, and waits patiently for him to collect himself. He wants to stop now, to get up and go home or maybe just die, but he forces himself to finish through the knot in his throat.
"I just… You… I wanted to save someone. That's why I killed you. It… In the end, it was… it was to save my friends. But I never did that either, and so you died for nothing. Chance, I— You were… You were too good to me. To everyone. And I'm sorry it was me… to prove you wrong… and show you that there just isn't good in everyone. I… I wanted to believe it, I did, but… actions speak louder than words, don't they?"
iTrapped swallows. "They were the best eight months of my life, I'll admit. You were… the best thing to happen to me. I only wish I could have done the same for you. You didn't deserve me, Chance, but I guess it goes both ways. I'll regret you for the rest of my life, you know? I don't think I'll ever stop missing you."
"Is it because of the key?" the snow laughs.
"No, I don't know if too much would have changed even if you gave it to me. I'm sorry I ever happened to you. I can't say it enough."
"Cut that out. You're a good person, iTrapped, and I still believe that. You didn't pull anything over on me. I knew what I was gambling for from the start, so don't blame yourself for thinking you fooled a naïve little sheep into the butcher's hands, go on, and live, okay? Let's go for drinks in the next life."
"I… Hah. I really don't deserve that, but… In the next life, then. I'll cover the bill."
"Let's go for drinks in the next life."
Chance knows that promise is broken once it leaves their mouth. They won't make it to the next life.
But iTrapped had smiled when they'd said it, or at least that mirage of him under the snow, and that had been enough.