not ready to say goodbye {alistair one!shot}

I've been dying for a while now. It's a beautiful kind of realization, that my time is almost up. I'm but a ghost of what I once was. The confidence I had so painstakingly sewn to my lips fell away with the mere swipe of a blade. I became nothing as soon as I killed that boy. I withered, like flowers during the winter, I became something no one could ever want, let alone love. And the attention I craved became second rate to a much more potent addiction. 

I don't really remember the moment I started to crave pain. It just became a sort of sick urge. Perhaps it was during the long weeks following my transformation into a murderer, when mother had to sew my hand together because I had pressed a blade so deeply into my palm that she could not stop the bleeding. I even pulled the stitches away, untied the thick black chord and tried to feel it sliding between my skin but soon I was drenched in my own blood and mother's palm was across my cheek and she was screaming but I didn't feel a thing. I looked at her with the eyes of a dead man and she sewed me up again, wrapping my hand in gauze this time so that I could not get to the stitches. But I didn't try to pull them out again. 

Father's beatings became more frequent. He was angry at my emptiness. Angry that I did not scream when he raised his fist, nor did I flinch or mutter anything but a soft please until he stained my skin black and blue. They knew I was going mad. I think I did too. I felt something deep inside me snapping, piece by piece. I didn't care. I didn't care about anything for a long while. I had gutted myself with the knife just as I had gutted that boy. There was nothing left. And I didn't care one bit.

The muscle I had stacked upon my limbs was gone within weeks. I refused the meals they pushed through my door, refused to move when they tried to inspect my body. I didn't speak to men in white coats they hired to fix me. I simply allowed the hours to melt into days and days into weeks and weeks into months. 

Mother once got so frustrated she forced a disgusting mixture down my throat and threw me onto the bed. She screamed for hours, words that I do not remember. I just stared at the wall and I tried not to think of the boy I had killed. The one with the light hair and soft eyes who touched my back in such a gentle way that I knew he was a better man than I could ever hope to be. He's dead now.

I often wonder if he had a mom and a dad. If he had brothers and sisters who cried when he did not return home. When they couldn't even find the body because father hired peacekeepers to hide his decaying corpse. I wonder if he could have saved the world. I wonder if he was meant to be a doctor who cured horrible diseases or a superhero who would save starving children. 

But it doesn't matter if he was to grow up to be the scum of the Earth, because he was still better than I would ever be. 

I am worthless. A coward. Unwanted. Unloved.

And I can't feel a damn thing most of the time. The world is dark. The world is cold and ugly and without light. 

At least my world is. 

The world I have created in my room, with bloodstained sheets and tear stained cheeks. And I'm sure I would have died long ago if I didn't know my parents would hate me even more for giving in. 

I just can't stand to watch the hatred boil within their gaze over the emaciated corpse that was once their son. 

But when I look in the mirror, when I run my hands along a face that has twisted and transformed into something disgusting, I cannot help but think how much better I would look in peaceful death. No nightmares. Absolute nothing. I wouldn't have to hear his screams when I closed my eyes. I wouldn't have to feel my nails against my forearm as I peeled away layers of skin because the sharp stinging and the trailing of blood off skin was better than the constant headache that was slowly cracking my skull in half.

It's almost ironic, that being a murderer has turned me into this mess because I will almost certainly kill again.

But this time, the victim will be someone much, much easier to forget. In fact I won't feel anything at all, after I take his life. 

No one will miss him. Not his mother or his father, not his brothers who sneer at him across the table those rare moments he leaves a room he has locked himself within. I don't think much of anyone will care when he stops showing up to training altogether. He hasn't a friend in the world. He doesn't deserve them after all. 

There is not a person in the world I hate more than the man I am planning to kill. 

I've thought about leaving a note, explaining why I've chosen to kill him and thanking his parents for putting up with him for so long, but I've decided it wouldn't matter to them. I think it will be a relief when their son is gone. I think they will be better off without him. 

He's a monster after all. 

I won't feel bad about killing this one. He is already horribly marred. Nails raking across his thighs and arms, dark red streaks remaining hidden behind long sleeves when the silence of his room becomes too loud and he sneaks out of the house to walk the street.

I often visit the alley, these rare adventures. It's washed clean of the blood and sick that once stained it. But he lingers there. Like a shadow. I can hear his screams and sometimes I try to help him. I allow white flowers to gleam in the darkness, setting them beside the wall he once clung to. And when he asks for my help I do not scream I him. I fall to my knees and I beg for a forgiveness I do not deserve, allowing him to stick the knife through my neck a thousand times over because that is what I deserve.

It'll all be over soon. That is the only comfort I can find within desolate days when my only company is my own cowardice. When I go to the training center I sit and I watch, eye swollen from father's last embrace and limbs aching from my own punishment. I like to watch people, they are such beautiful things. Emotion playing upon their lips like a harp's string, creating beautiful melodies. I don't feel human anymore. I am too empty to be as beautiful as they. I think that I am merely an unfortunate mistake that has blended in with perfection for many, many years.

And it took only one mistake to make my mind snap, snap, snap. Piece by brittle piece. And as much as I adore the pain, I want it all to be over. I can't take much more. Even a monster must reach his breaking point. 

I've been dying for a while now.