Chapter Text
The blood was everywhere.
Thick and warm, insatiable in its hunger, it slowly devoured the submarine. The Iron Lung was full of it, sick, rotting, decaying. It had been decaying for some time already, but these were its final moments, and the rusty hull sang and cried in a desperate eulogy to the starless sky.
Inside the Iron Lung, the Convict was dying.
He wasn’t sure for how long, though. It felt as if he had been dying for quite a long time already. For his entire life, maybe. Maybe he had always been dead, and this was just another circle of Hell. Maybe the world ended when the stars disappeared, and all this was an endless nightmare with no way of escaping it. The Convict was no stranger to nightmares, but it was one thing to know he could wake up any second and realise it was a dream, and another to know that it was real and forever.
He wanted to die. He wanted this fucking nightmare to end.
The Monster made another horrible shriek and sank her teeth deeper into the hull of the submarine. The blood boiled and bubbled around the Convict’s body. There was no part of him that wasn’t aching, that wasn’t pure and agonizing pain, sharp and bright as a gunshot. The spot where his arm had once been was throbbing, hot blood splashing into the rest that was flooding the Iron Lung.
He was the one to bring his own demise closer. He couldn’t fucking wait to.
“Come on, you asshole!” the Convict screamed, as the hull desperately screeched, drowning his voice in an abomination of an unhallowed choir. “What are you waiting for?! Just kill me!”
He noticed that he was crying when a hot tear burned a cut on his cheek. It was nothing in comparison to the acute pain that was his body, and yet the Convict was surprised by that. Was he scared? What was there to be scared of? Death would be the end of everything. Another jolt, another scream – and it would finally be over. He would be free. Nobody was coming for him, anyway – there was no-one to come. Everyone was dead. They were all dead, and he was still alive, and it wasn’t fair.
Or was it?
OH, BUTCHER, the voices howled. NO OCEAN WOULD BE ENOUGH TO HOLD THE BLOOD THAT YOU HAVE SPILLED. MURDERER, MURDERER, MURDERER. NO LIGHT, NO PEACE, NO LIFE FOR THE CURSED ONE.
Maybe he deserved it, after all. Maybe this was his redemption, his final absolution. Maybe no prayer could redeem his sins, and no God would look at him with mercy and forgive him.
There was no grace for someone like him.
The Convict growled, a wounded animal calling to the skies for help. But there was no sky. There were no stars. There was no hope. There was only hot blood and endless pain and loud screams of a creature that was no longer human. Everything hurt. His eyes still burned with tears, and he closed them. The backs of his eyelids were deep-red.
How much longer was he to suffer?
All of a sudden, the Convict thought of his mother. He didn’t want to, as if he could accidentally stain her with the filth that was all over him and around him and inside him, and yet he couldn't help it. The Convict had never known stars, but he knew his mother, and that was more than enough. She was the light he carried deep and safe in the embrace of his ribs – after all, the stars kept shining even after death. She was everything good he had ever had and known. Despite himself, the Convict thought of her warm gentle hands cupping his face, of her dry lips kissing his forehead, of her kind brown eyes with slight wrinkles at the edges, of the way she called his name, Simon, stretching the syllables like his name was a toffy, sweet and small.
He had a name once. It struck him. In another life, long, long time ago, before he was the Convict, before he was the Butcher. Back when his hands weren’t stained with blood, back when he was kinder, softer – his name was Simon. His mother gave him that name. The Convict let out a hoarse exhale. How could he have lost it? The thing his mother had given him, had chosen lovingly and bestowed upon him? How could he? How could he be willing to lose his life, as well – the other thing his mother had gifted him?
She would have wanted me to live, the Convict suddenly thought. She wanted me to live.
The Iron Lung shrieked and shrank around him, his final prison, his metal cage, his tight coffin, his lonely grave. The Monster’s teeth were close, filthy and hungry for more flesh. The voices screamed in the Convict’s ears, all dead, all desperate, screamed for the Convict to surrender, to give himself up to her who was everything and nothing, who was light and darkness, who was life and death, TO DIE, TO DIE, TO DIE.
The Convict sobbed. The pendant with the seed from the Last Tree cut into his wrist, life violently reminding him about itself.
And suddenly, it was clear.
The Convict didn’t want to die.
He wanted the pain to end, he wanted the voices to shut up, he wanted the blood to dry, but he did not want to die. His body hurt, every muscle and every bone screaming in pain, his fucking arm was gone, blood was everywhere, burning his skin, drowning him, and yet he was alive, and wasn’t that a miracle? He was breathing, he was aching, he was here, more present than ever, and, oh, he wanted to live. Was that so wrong? Was that so wrong to cling to the one free thing that he had ever received? Everything else had to be fought for, had to be earned – love, tenderness, kindness, friendship, everything was to be paid for. But life? Life was his, and his only, and if he was going to die, than it would at least be on his own terms.
The Monster must have felt the change in him, because the submarine trembled violently in her teeth, squealing like thousands of harrowing voices in the deepest pits of Hell.
NO LIFE FOR YOU, the Monster shrieked. NO LIFE FOR ANYONE. ONLY BLOOD. ONLY ETERNAL DARKNESS. ONLY PAIN.
“Fuck you!” the Convict spat out, rage burning bright in his chest. There was something happening to his body, he could feel his vertebra shifting, the blood mingling with his tears and eating away the skin on his face. He was changing. It didn't matter anymore. “I’m not giving up so easily!”
THERE IS NO WAY OUT. YOU'LL DIE HERE.
The Convict looked at the cracked pendant on his wrist. For a brief second he could hear the whisper of the green gentle leaves, could feel the firm bark of the treetrunk under his palm. He thought of his mother smiling at him. He could almost hear her calling him by his name.
It was almost over.
He clenched his remaining fist.
“Maybe,” he growled. He hurt. He was pain. He could feel the lack of oxygen tugging at his lungs, making his head swing. “But at least I'll take you with me.”
Through acute pain, red fog covering his eyes, the Convict felt something touch his wrist. He looked down. A small root was caressing his blood-smeared skin. A root of a tree. Soft, gentle. Alive.
The Monster laughed, more a howl than a laughter, loud and prolonged and horrendous.
SUCH ARROGANCE, BUTCHER. IT'LL BE THE END OF YOU. THE END OF HUMANITY.
The Convict snarled.
“Just as yours, you piece of shit.”
The Monster only laughed louder.
The root grew, wrapping itself around the Convict's wrist.
I see you, Life said.
I see you, the Convict thought.
He knew what was to happen.
It was fast. One moment the Iron Lung was full of blood, shrinking in the Monster’s hungry grin – and the next it was full of growing roots, a writhing, living mass protruding through the hull, piercing the Monster, life entagling death in a mortal embrace. The Monster screamed in a thousand voices, loud, so loud, the blood ocean started to boil.
STOP, the voices wailed, STOP, IT HURTS, IT HURTS, IT HURTS.
But life, when it came to surviving, was relentless. The Monster squirmed, her ugly body contorting, teeth breaking and eyes popping.
There was no way out.
In the Iron Lung, among the roots of a tree that was to never see the Sun, the Convict was dying. He didn't want to. But for one thing to live, another always had to die. Trees grew from soil, and soil was rot, and rot was the child of death. That was the ultimate circle of life.
The Convict was scared. He had been scared for a long time and had to be for a little while more until it was finally over. The Monster's dying screams rang in his ears, the hull of the submarine shrieked, the blood was all over him and inside him, everything hurt. He was nothing but pure agony.
His mother was calling him again. He felt her warm hands hover over his bloody skin, her breath in his tangled hair like a goodnight kiss.
When in trouble, she whispered, her voice echoing as the Convict started to lose consciousness, when you think it's over, my little leaf – pray. Just as I taught you.
He couldn't fold his hands. He had only one now. Still, he whispered, hoarse and ragged, as he felt his last breaths slipping away from him,
“Hail, Mary, full of grace–”
He didn't finish the prayer.
In the Iron Lung, full of blood and tree roots, the Convict was dead.