Chapter Text
How far is the point of no return for a person? How much do you need to do before there is genuinely no turning back? No undoing what has been done. Nothing to come back from.
Riker assumed he’d crossed a few already. Less of a singular point and more like checkpoints that block you from returning. Each one building itself up like a wall, forcing you to just keep digging deeper and deeper. And you could always stop digging, of course, that was the normal thing to do. But the walls were still up there.
And you’d never see the sun again.
So Riker just kept digging.
Got himself sent away. Watched the town disappear through the car window while his father sat beside him, silent, like Riker wasn’t even there. Only even coming because it was required for registration that a parent sign the forms. They just both watched out the car window as Brightsview faded away into the ocean.
Towards Saint Julius Martins Academy.
Even the name felt like a joke. A place people pretended was respectable, so long as they didn’t look too closely at who ended up there. All problem kids and rejects from parents who didn’t want them. Riker, of course, was both. So he fit in well enough.
People didn’t necessarily avoid him. That actually would’ve been easier to deal with. Instead, they hovered at a distance. Talked him up like he was some golden ticket out. Laughed when he said something that could be vaguely construed as a joke. But they never really got close. Stayed a foot away in case he decided to bite, he supposed.
Whatever.
Not a single useless freak in this place mattered anyway. Not one. Skipping class wasn’t even rebellion for him anymore. It was just a routine. The halls during lessons were better. Better to sit out in the quiet hall than pretend to care about some genuine trash lecture from some ancient nun. If he had to deal with being swatted on the wrist with a ruler one more time, he was sure he would end up breaking one across the old lady's face.
The thought made him smile just a bit.
Riker leaned back against the stone wall near the science wing, the afternoon sun filtering through the tall stained glass windows. It reflected a rather pretty purple and red light onto the whole place, warming it in a way he’d never find anywhere else. A teacher’s voice carried faintly through a closed door, muffled into something distant and useless. Decent enough white noise.
Closing his eyes, Riker sighed contentedly. There was a reason this was his chosen nap hallway.
“Shouldn’t you be in class?”
The voice came from above him, slightly feminine and flat but bothersome regardless. Not deep enough to be an adult, that was for sure. He exhaled from his nose slowly, deliberately.
“Fuck off.”
Riker waited a moment, brows twitching as the sound of silence resonated through the hall.
He hadn’t heard her walk away…but he hadn’t heard her walk up either, to be fair. It disturbed him a bit. Riker popped open one eye and craned his neck up to look at the strangely quiet distraction from his nap.
Looming over him, closer than he had expected, was a girl.
He knew this girl. Had a couple of classes with her here and there. Blonde hair fell forward over her face as she stared down at him. It hid most of her as it fell to her waist.
When he’d seen her before, he had assumed she was just run-of-the-mill strange. Some quiet kid from a well-off family who got sent here so they wouldn’t have to deal with their weirdo daughter. Someone teachers described as a “pleasure to have in class”, which always just meant that they shut the fuck up.
He had always just figured she was some gentle flower child. Long blonde hair and shy like a rabbit. Real Disney princess type, whose animals followed wherever she went.
But up close, she didn’t look like that.
She looked… off.
Tired, maybe. But not the normal kind. Her eyes looked sunken. Old beyond her years. Her uniform sat slightly off on her shoulders, just a little too big. Maybe purposefully? And there was something wrong in the way she stood, like she wasn’t fully settled into herself. Maybe like she was stitched or molded together rather than actually being a person. Her hair uneven and unbrushed, curling into ratted knots closer to the bottom. Like she didn’t take care of it.
Riker frowned, trying to push away the pit in his stomach that formed when he looked at her. “What do you want?”
“You’re Riker.”
The way she said it wasn’t a question.
He gave a dry, humorless huff in response. “No shit.”
She paused. Simply watching him for a second with her hands collapsed behind her back. Those sunken eyes stayed on him for a long second. It made the hair on Riker’s neck stand up.
“I know who your father is.”
Her voice was raspy, almost inpatient, quiet. There was something like a shaky laugh to it. All things that reasonably should’ve set him off. But they weren’t the thing that did it.
“Oh yeah?” he exclaimed with a huff, pushing himself off the wall and onto his feet. “You and everyone else.”
She didn’t react to the tone. Didn’t shrink back or double down. Just… watched him. Which felt so much worse.
“What? You gonna tell me how great he is?” Riker went on, words already picking up speed. Maybe it wasn’t fair to go off on this weird kid, but he’d been through it before. Knew all the stops. So he continued, “Gonna tell me how lucky I am!? Go ahead! I’m waiting.”
“I didn’t say that.”
She was quiet. Flat as earlier, but a little surprised. Maybe a little offended even.
Riker let out a short laugh, throwing an arm up in annoyance. “You didn’t have to.”
She tilted her head slightly, like she was trying to see him better through her own hair. “You…dislike him?”
Riker barked out a laugh, “You’re kidding, right?”
She didn’t answer.
He shook his head, pacing once before turning back to her, agitation already building up as it had a habit of doing for him. “You don’t know him. I doubt you actually even care about him. What- your parents put you up to this?!”
“My mother is dead.”
Riker paused mid-rant, confusion and a bit of disgust clear on his face. He stopped for a good ten seconds.
“Then why ask at all?!”
A pause. She stared at him closely, her hands staying firmly behind her back.
“…Curious.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t be.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, jaw locking. “He’s not-” He cut himself off, then laughed again, rough and humorless. “You know what, no. Fine. You wanna know?”
Her eyes seemed to brighten ever so slightly. Though nothing else on her face changed.
“He’s a liar,” Riker hissed, the words coming even faster now, “That’s what he is. Everyone thinks he’s this great guy, like being mayor actually means something. Like he earned it. But you wanna know something?”
His expression twisted.
“He didn’t. And nobody else either notices or cares!”
If Riker wasn’t so angry, he might’ve noticed the ever-so-slight smile on her face. The light that glimmered into her eyes.
Satisfaction. Pure and plentiful if you knew where to look for it.
But distracted with himself, he continued, hands waving as he talked. Angry and irritated. He talked.
“He shakes hands, he smiles, he acts as if he cares about this place, about the people here or in town. It’s all fake! All of it! Literally all of it!”
She nodded slightly, leaning towards him more as he ranted.
“You ever notice how nobody questions him?” Riker went on, pacing again, faster this time. “People who do? Gone. God, the number of bodies in the harbor would fill a cemetery! But nobody cares!”
Silence.
He glanced at her, expecting something. A reaction. Doubt. Anything. She could call him crazy like the others he told. Or chastise him for making up lies.
Or tell him some sacrifice is necessary.
She could be like the ever-present voices in his head. The ones screaming now and bashing against his skull as punishment for speaking out.
But she didn’t. She just smiled through the mop of tangled blond hair.
“Do you think this is funny?” Riker sneered, glaring at her…. but there was a bit of fear there too.
He hadn’t noticed that she had gotten so close…less than arm's distance now. She stood there still as a statue. And the hallway fell silent again.
For a moment, the only sound was his breathing, just a little too fast, just a little too loud in the space she’d taken up.
Then, a small movement. He didn’t catch it at first. Just the shift of her arm, slow and deliberate, like it had been waiting for the right moment. Finally unfurling from its place behind her back.
Then the light caught on metal, and Riker’s focus snapped to it instantly.
Simple. Clean. The blade was thin and bright, catching the light in a way that looked almost delicate. His eyes traced the edge, the serration near the base, the subtle imperfections that proved it had been used before.
A hunting knife.
His thoughts stalled as his eyes froze on the blade. Enough time hadn’t passed for him to really register it yet, to be scared. To run or try to overpower her- he was certain he could. But for some reason, he stayed. Stayed within arm's reach.
“Do you hate him enough to kill him?”
Her voice was quiet. Almost gentle in a way.
For a second, Riker didn’t move. Didn’t speak. The world narrowed to just simply the space in between them.
The knife.
Her.
The question.
And of course, him.
Any sane individual would’ve run, slammed into the nearest classroom, and yelled for the teacher. Knocked the knife out of her hand. Called the cops. Anything besides this.
He looked at her. Really looked. Inched just a fraction closer.
And then even closer.
The light shifted just enough, and her hair fell back slightly, revealing more of her face reflected in that red-purple glow. For the first time, he could really see her.
And everything else… blurred. Ceased. Stopped.
She was beautiful.
Not soft. Not anything so easy. There was something sharp in it, something real, powerful almost. Like every piece of them had been put exactly where it was meant to be, and nothing about it was accidental. Not the mismatched and wrongly molded shape from earlier. Correct in a way that couldn’t be described with words.
But it was really their eyes that held him.
There was something in them that didn’t belong here. Something deep and burning and fixed somewhere far beyond just him. A feeling he had long since felt…but hers seemed to go just a step deeper.
It felt like looking at something that was deeply and utterly final. Like she already knew this was going to end. Seeing that certainty in her face…Riker wanted to know too.
She turned the knife, offering it to him, handle first. The serrated end teetered closely to her own palm in a way that Riker could’ve chosen to cut her if he wanted.
But he didn’t.
She stepped closer.
Close enough that the knife was just inches from his chest. Close enough that he could see the dark circles beneath her eyes, the slight tension in her grip, the curl of her lips as she smiled at him.
She had a wonderful smile.
Close enough that he really should have stepped back this time.
But he didn’t.
His pulse thudded in his ears, loud and uneven, but his thoughts felt… clear. Too clear. Like everything unnecessary had been stripped away, leaving only this. Only her. And his hand moved before he could stop it.
If he had even wanted to.
His fingers closed around the handle, brushing against hers for a brief, cold second. The contact sent something sharp and jolting up his arm, settling somewhere deep in his chest. Neither of them pulled away right away.
One of her fingers intertwined with his, looping their forefinger around his for just a second. Just enough.
“...Who…Who are you?”
More than her name. He knew that, he’d heard it before in class. But it was wrong. Saying it now felt wrong. Inappropriate in a way he couldn’t quite place.
She smiled. Friendly and bright. Real.
“Your new best friend.”
And in that moment, with the weight of the knife settling into his grip and her gaze still fixed on him like she was waiting to see what he’d become…Riker understood.
More than his anger, more than his father or his brother or anything else in that trashy city.
This.
This was the point of no return.