Work Text:
This is it. It is the day everything is going to change.
You look at yourself in the mirror for a second longer. You meet your own eyes with a hardened stare, searching for something in them. You don’t know what, exactly.
Unsatisfied, you break away, having found nothing but your own reflection.
The warmth of your bedroom clings to your skin as you leave, providing the last amounts of familiar comfort before bracing the world. Come back, the heat says, come back and sleep. It promises the soft bliss of darkness and dreams.
You shiver, and ignore it.
The bus is neither empty nor overly full this late in the evening. It is perfectly moderate, perfectly average. Its capacity does nothing for the way it seems to hit every bump and jostle its passengers into each other. The air is heavy with mutual discomfort. Your fingers grip the bar and you tolerate it, but just barely.
Your stop arrives in due time. You exit gratefully, taking the moment of quiet to breathe deeply. Your hands are shaking.
The roads in this particular part of town are unfamiliar to you, yet you don’t hesitate when you step forward. You feel like something is drawing you where you need to go. Fate, with red strings, a puppet master performing a shadow play.
Your breath doesn’t catch when you see him. Your gaze does not waver, and your heart does not trip. You are perfectly moderate.
He sees you from inside. He looks afraid. He is wound up in his own strings, and he is choking.
He opens the door enough to reveal his head and the right side of his body. His shirt looks soft.
“It’s late,” he starts, and it sounds like he doesn’t know if he wants it to be a question or not. You fix him with the same shrewd glare you fixed yourself with before you left.
When you don’t say anything, he clears his throat. “Y/N?” This, at least, is a committed inquiry. He asks your name and he is really asking a hundred things.
You climb up the front steps, and he seems to take this as an answer to one of his dozen unspoken questions. He cracks the door open further. You squeeze past him.
The half-kitchen in his apartment is well-stocked, because he does not do the shopping. You notice the singular fridge magnet, the way the silverware is organized, and the three knives in the block lined up diagonally. These are because of him.
“Do you need something?” he finally says, still standing by the front. His hands are in front of him, fidgeting with the fabric of his shorts. “I just… Usually you’re around Rose… She’s not here. She hasn’t been here.”
At this, he turns his head to look at the wall.
“I know,” you say, “and I know why.”
He startles, facing you once more. The surprise of hearing your voice is quickly replaced by… something. “Oh,” he says quietly.
You study him again. Shame, you decide. Guilt and shame.
You find the grip of a knife, and pull it out without looking. He eyes it warily.
Your hands are shaking. They tremble, even when you tighten your hold. They quaver, and even still, the blade finds its home buried into his chest. You don’t remember crossing the distance.
With your focus so trained on the spot where knife digs into skin, you notice that for a split second it doesn’t appear as though it’s going to start bleeding. The paper puppetry shredded without consequence. Then red begins to leech through the fabric of his shirt.
He laughs, once, short and clipped and entirely disconnected. You’re not sure he is even aware he did it.
“Why?” he asks.
You slide the knife out. You’re fascinated by how easily it gives, by the way blood spurts out thickly in its absence. He gasps, weakly, falling to the floor. The scrim cut, and the blood-strings with them.
You lean over his crumpled form. “Retribution,” you say, and plunge the steak knife through him again and again and again until the body that used to be Aiden McKenna stops twitching.
You set the knife in the sink and run hot water on it until it is clean. Your hands are red-raw from scrubbing soap on them.
The bus is neither empty nor overly full this late in the evening. It is perfectly moderate, perfectly average. Its capacity does nothing for the way it seems to hit every bump and jostle its passengers into each other. The air is heavy with mutual discomfort. Your fingers grip the bar and you tolerate it.
You shiver when you enter your home. Your bedroom is cool and stale.
When you look in the mirror, searching, you find what you had been looking for.
Satisfaction.