Desperation, very few knew the true extent of such a feeling. And even fewer survived it.
The thundering rattle of a trunk passing underneath the bridge hammered against his ears. The shaking of metal sounded out, muted. The hammering of the rain washed away the sound.
Washing away the blood from the arm he clawed at. His nails desperately scraped at the skin as he did everything he could to get it off him.
He could hear their laughter… there glee at his suffering. He felt a push.
The yelling of words screamed at him but he didn't listen, he couldn't.
Only one goal sounded through the desperation of the moment.
Survive.
As he felt another shove his foot slipped against the cold concrete beneath his shoes.
His body fell back.
And in that moment he couldn't feel anything.
It all stopped… it didn't matter. It was as if his panic had snapped, nothing was left behind but a bottomless emptiness like the air that he tumbled through. The lights above him glared and flared out. The tears and rain blurred his already terrible eyesight.
Then he felt it against his back. The cold metal of the railing and he could breathe again. He hadn't fallen off. He could almost laugh at the joy that he felt and he did. He laughed, he couldn't stop the choked sound from tearing between his lips.
The overwhelming happiness that he wasn't dead…
A sound finally cut through to his conscious as he looked up from where he was sitting. The drunken laughter now shocked voices of terror as they backed away from him. The sound of hooting laughter turned into screams of panic.
And then like an explosion he heard the start of the crash. A car had just veered… slamming into the pillar of the bridge. The four-lane each way highway beneath them became hell in just a moment. All it took was that one car to veer.
Then it was hit, and it rolled. And another couldn't stop in time. The rain, the low visibility. People coming home from the end of the celebrations they had been attending.
The tires screeched as they slid against the road.
The slamming of metal on metal.
The crashing ruckus of hell unfolding beneath him.
Finally, his mind cleared enough… the joy of living was drowned out by a sickening realization… the person who was pushing him.
Ben had fallen.
He had slipped over the railing when Andrew had slipped down against the floor. The man was dead. There was no way that he was surviving the sound.
But Andrew couldn't help but laugh. The splitting headache that he had always had recently just felt a bit more bearable. Ben was dead! The fucker deserved it!
GOD WHY WAS HE THINKING THAT!
He heard the crackling laughter in the air form into wretched sobs as he threw up. He couldn't stand it. He couldn't, he didn't know what to feel.
He felt everything, from guilt to glee. Remorse to relief… Ben was dead he could finally work his job in- No… he had killed him. He was going to be arrested, his dad was going to be so disappointed.
He was crying again, the tears washed away by the endless rain that just hammered down harder on his back as he curled over. Crying his heart out as he wept… he truly wept.
He should have just fallen. There was no hope. His dad was going to die… he was going to die. His life sucked. He should have fallen… he should have been the one to fall.
He knew how the story would happen, he attacked Ben and pushed him off the bridge. Everyone would see it as his fault like it always was… the authorities didn't care enough to look into it. He was never 'abused' he was just… it was… it was abuse. He was…
He was breaking- no. He was broken.
He had finally snapped. He didn't know what to do.
His already pathetic excuse of a life was over, he had nothing, no reason. He had killed people today. Not just Ben but all the drivers. He could see the red light flickering… it wasn't the lights. No, it was fire. He didn't know how long he cried.
But he cried until the sirens arrived, he cried after. He cried as he was cuffed. He cried. He wept.
He truly wept.
It was the day Andrew died… not killed as he wanted. But his body gave out, a heart attack. Pathetic as always.
His body had given out. Stricken by grief…
Few people felt true desperation… and even fewer survived…
---
Why was he seeing this? Why did he have to watch this? Why did he have to watch how he died. He didn't want to remember this. He didn't he hated it. Curled up beneath that cold tree his body shaken by the sobs that shook it.
The red threads wove down from the sky. The soul that was Andrew flaring, coiling. Twisting in anger… twisting in grief. Unending waves of emotion passed through the soul. The plant life withering and dying.
How was he ever meant to cope with emotions like this? This feeling, this hate. This grief. He didn't know how to feel about it, he couldn't know. It had killed him, all of these emotions had killed him, pushed him to the limit as the tumour did its thing.
He didn't even know how to begin to figure them out…
Who even was he? Was he Nicklaus or Andrew?
Did it even matter?
What mattered?
No. He was stronger. He had thought that already. He was stronger than he used to be, he had things in this life.
"Do you really?" He heard, a voice sounding through the silence.
Head snapping up he looked at the figure before him. The frail body was clearly malnourished, his face gaunt. Eyes hollow and sunken, lacking hope. His hair was wet, drenched in rain that still plastered it to his face, the blonde locks wiry and unwashed.
His arms were covered in small burns from hot trays from the bakery from rushed jobs and a lack of self-care.
"Do you really have anything in this life? What have you done huh?" His voice was hollow and barely louder than a whisper as he sat down. Sitting down on the concrete of the sidewalk. The countless cars behind him upturned and tumbled into buildings. The flickering fires barely licked out of the windows and around the crumbled hoods.
"You didn't do anything but stay to yourself in your first years of this life. You didn't talk to others, you were an asshole when you did as well. Hell did you even see it as a life? Or were you just glad that you could have a cool power… because hell that is what it seemed like." The ghost of Andrew said.
"I… I just didn't want to interrupt what I knew-" Nick started to say.
"Oh don't say that bullshit to me…" His voice filled with unexpected venom. "The first thing you wanted to do was kill a major villain. The first thing that you wanted to do was get a cool quirk, you just wanted to be strong. Hell I'm surprised you didn't become a villain, if you remember what I did I can guarantee that you would… What did you see? A few flashes and my death and your already bent over in torment… and you think your stronger. You think I'm the pathetic one? I TRIED!" Andrew yelled, his voice sounding through the soul making the very foundation of their soul shake.
"You just saw this world as a story… you refused to try living again because you didn't want it to hurt. Whoever you are 'Nick' you're not me… no. I wanted a second chance at life. I was the one that asked for it. That accepted keeping my memories. I talked to it… not you. No, you just were already living in this fucking body." His words were filled with spite as he pointed at Nick with hate so real and deep in his eyes it flooded the soul in a dull red glow.
"You stole my second chance at life! A LIFE WHERE I COULD BE STRONG!" His voice was thick with unending rage. "You just sat to the side and watched things unfolding thinking it would be best to watch the world go by! And then some people made you see the world as real, and you started to change. But you still have no idea who you even are! You are not real! Wake up! Go back to that hell and let me live in this life! Let me LIVE… please!" His voice turned from enraged to truly desperate.
A cackling laughter soon filled the soul as Dabi walked into view. His appearance that when he had just woken up from his coma after three years. A younger version of him. Hair white and skin scared but not to the point it needed to be stapled to his body.
"Honestly I didn't know what I expected but this is interesting. And here you wanted to be a Hero Nicklaus? Just because you have power doesn't mean your strong… you are so pathetic."
As the form of Dabi faded into the blue flames that started to flicker from behind him Nick just looked back at Andrew. He didn't know what to say… he really didn't.
"Just give me the body Nicklaus… it's mine after all. And we both know it."
Shaking his head Nick slowly found his voice. A choked voice he barely recognized as his own slowly emerging. "No… No, this body is mine. And I do have goals. I want to help save the world that gave me a second chance. Your just a figment of my madness… of the sorrow that I hold. You're just as real as this whole place." Nick said as he waved his arm around.
"It's a reflection of who I am. And you are a part of it… a part that wants to come out… we are one and the same Andrew, ever since I woke up with you in my body and haven't felt… alive. I haven't felt real. Because neither of us were." His voice caught as emotions started to well up. This monster, this reflection of himself had stolen his life, his early life. His childhood. It had given him memories and minds before he should have had them.
It had filled him with so much trauma and anger… so much anguish. And the worst thing, it just wanted to live.
Mad laughter tore from the kneeling man's lips as he spoke between the cackles. "God you're not even convinced by your own words, are you! You're not! This main road! This one goal I have is mine. And that is to live! It has been driving me to stay festered here looking at this world that isn't mine for years! But it could be! JUST HAND IT OVER! IT'S MINE! IT'S MINE NOT YOURS!" The apparition screamed.
"NO! NO it's not… I'm sorry! OKAY! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I was born in a world you loved, in the fantasy you wanted to live in. I'm sorry I was given the chance that you always wanted. I'm sorry! Okay!" His voice was desperate, Nick didn't know what to think, there were so many swirling emotions here and he knew that he could only feel the tip of the iceberg.
"But this is my life! I'm sorry that YOU ruined the start of it. That You gave me what I shouldn't have. But you are a festering parasite! You are broken and I'm s0rry that I cannot save you. But you cannot be saved!" His words filled with guilt. Why did he have to wake up with this person in his soul? Why did it have to be him?
Just as Andrew thought the same. Why did troubles come to them?
Because troubles came to everyone… they just got the short straw, but someone had to? And someone out there had it worse than them. Much worse.
Andrew understandably had drowned in his troubles. But people didn't, some people stood strong despite all the abuse and a certain green-haired kid stood out to him.
Maybe that was what stories were for? The unrealistic hope that people want to have? To be lost in a fantasy to hide from the troubles for just a little longer. But those fantasy troubles were real for him now. Nick was real. He had been given these memories. He had them and he wouldn't get rid of them. No, he had been given a curse. A gift. He could save a world that he hadn't thought was real.
"I'm sorry," Nick said as tears started to run down his face as golden flames started to pour from his body. Pouring into the land around him. He knew that he didn't have quirks here. But he had will, he was in control of his soul. And so he burnt it, the fire coiling out of his body and drowning out the screams of the apparition before him.
The golden fire was as brilliant as the tree that he stood before. Turning he looked at it. His soul. He didn't know how to feel. But he knew he was real. Seeing his soul confirmed this for him. He was real, he was very very real. And he was finally ready to see that, he finally had no choice but to see that.
But he had to get rid of the part that was haunting him.
So he burnt it all. And as that golden fire billowed up the sides of the tree. Millions of threads and memories became engulfed in flame leaves of brilliant golden light bloomed at the end of the golden threads. The fire turned the red threads black as they stilled their desperate struggle.
Maybe Nick was killing a part of himself. He couldn't undo it though. But cremation was seen as a way to let the soul move on from what he understood. So he would give that to Andrew at least. He deserved that much, and if he was given another chance at life in another world? Well, maybe he would be able to smile…
Smiling a forced smile of his own Nick cried, it wasn't a desperate cry. No, it was mournful. In a soul he barely understood Nick let fire coil throughout his soulscape. An unending wave of golden flames poured from him and that golden tree. Turning cement and steel to ask. Even the rotting plants.
Everything burnt.
And when the fires finally died down nothing stood in their absence. Just a blank slate and a shit tone of ash. Ash piled into blank white dunes that a brilliant golden tree stood from. Fiery leaves flickering in a clear night sky. Thousands of stars littered the black sky through the branches.
It felt fitting. Maybe Nick would come to find the meaning of them soon but for now… he would just smile that smoke no longer filled the sky.
Turning around to the base of the tree he saw the small form of Toya looking up at him from the blue flames. Some things were still here, however. What he had come to deal with but had been distracted by the unexpected.
Crouching down in front of the form of Toya he didn't know what to say or do. Toya was probably just as broken as Andrew had been, maybe more or less so… but he just knew that he couldn't burn away this part of his soul.
Patting the white hair in front of him he said something he didn't even expect.
"Your fire has saved me at least…"
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I like this chapter... thanks for all the support so far!