Twenty-five years in this hellscape and his past had finally caught up with him. In the beginning, he did what he wanted to without giving a shit about the future because he had no hope left and no desire to play the hand he'd been dealt.
Living through his first attempt at taking himself off the board should have given him a foundation to build upon but instead it just made him more apathetic. He found people he liked, but he'd scarcely call them family. He even warmed a bed or two, but he never considered any of it with anything but brevity because he knew how quick and how efficiently the wick of life can burn out of somebody. He'd given into the cynicism because when the flame went out it couldn't be rekindled.
Until Ellie.
Ellie who, despite his many attempts to keep her at arms length found a way to the soft gooey center he kept buried under all that scar tissue.
Ellie, who, if given the chance he'd do it all over again for. Go against every promise he made, every credo he'd pretended to follow. He'd take every action or inaction every time to get them here, even with the teenage tension and the cold shoulder because deep down, since losing Sarah, she was the only person that really knew him and still wanted to know him warts and all.
And whatever Ellie had awakened in him by bridging that gap he'd left inside of himself to get hollowed out and cavernous had made him a better man. Against his own judgment.
Coming to the aid of people he never would have stopped to consider five years prior.
Her, therapy, and to some degree the belonging she brought him into by sheer domination of will.
And now? Now his come-uppance has arrived on a pale horse with a pretty face. A fledgling, not unlike Ellie herself and he's blinded by that and he lets her lead him and Dina to the final drop of the hammer.
She tells him to get up, and he can only hear every other word. His name. Her pleading. The dull roar of his heart beat, it's slow tick toward the unknown has him rooted to the ground.
The hole in his knee cap doesn't help, and despite that, he still tries, his palm flush into the floor but he doesn't have the strength in his bones or the breath in his lungs to pull it off.
It's not what he would've wanted for her, in a perfect world she never would've followed up and he could've had his own flame smothered while watching Jackson's fire surge on.
Worried. For her sake.
Her being here now, is somehow worse.
He's got nothing left, blood, bone, tissue, but his baby girl's there and that's enough to strengthen his resolve enough to curl his knuckles over her slender fingers, a pale comparison to their altercation that left him in stitches. The pressure he returns is a ghost of skin on skin, a barely there summation of what he has left to give. ]
pls excuse my lack of icons - cw: brief mention of suicide
Twenty-five years in this hellscape and his past had finally caught up with him. In the beginning, he did what he wanted to without giving a shit about the future because he had no hope left and no desire to play the hand he'd been dealt.
Living through his first attempt at taking himself off the board should have given him a foundation to build upon but instead it just made him more apathetic. He found people he liked, but he'd scarcely call them family. He even warmed a bed or two, but he never considered any of it with anything but brevity because he knew how quick and how efficiently the wick of life can burn out of somebody. He'd given into the cynicism because when the flame went out it couldn't be rekindled.
Until Ellie.
Ellie who, despite his many attempts to keep her at arms length found a way to the soft gooey center he kept buried under all that scar tissue.
Ellie, who, if given the chance he'd do it all over again for. Go against every promise he made, every credo he'd pretended to follow. He'd take every action or inaction every time to get them here, even with the teenage tension and the cold shoulder because deep down, since losing Sarah, she was the only person that really knew him and still wanted to know him warts and all.
And whatever Ellie had awakened in him by bridging that gap he'd left inside of himself to get hollowed out and cavernous had made him a better man. Against his own judgment.
Coming to the aid of people he never would have stopped to consider five years prior.
Her, therapy, and to some degree the belonging she brought him into by sheer domination of will.
And now? Now his come-uppance has arrived on a pale horse with a pretty face. A fledgling, not unlike Ellie herself and he's blinded by that and he lets her lead him and Dina to the final drop of the hammer.
She tells him to get up, and he can only hear every other word. His name. Her pleading. The dull roar of his heart beat, it's slow tick toward the unknown has him rooted to the ground.
The hole in his knee cap doesn't help, and despite that, he still tries, his palm flush into the floor but he doesn't have the strength in his bones or the breath in his lungs to pull it off.
It's not what he would've wanted for her, in a perfect world she never would've followed up and he could've had his own flame smothered while watching Jackson's fire surge on.
Worried. For her sake.
Her being here now, is somehow worse.
He's got nothing left, blood, bone, tissue, but his baby girl's there and that's enough to strengthen his resolve enough to curl his knuckles over her slender fingers, a pale comparison to their altercation that left him in stitches. The pressure he returns is a ghost of skin on skin, a barely there summation of what he has left to give. ]