"Are you ready?"

"Always."

I entered the empty hallway. With every breath I drew, and every step I took, the more ambivalent I became about this decision. Maybe this isn't the way to go. Perhaps we could talk things out. Maybe it's not too late to change.

But I've already reached the door. When the clang of my boots sounded still, I knew I reached a point of no return. It's now or never. I either open this door and kill him, or run away, and be killed.

I heaved, and glancing at my pistol for the last time, I pushed the door open. The wild interiors of the room with rich hues and expensive furniture looked ugly and unsightly marred by the crimson marks painted on it. And I know who painted it that colour.

"So you've made up your mind," he says, his voice disturbingly calm. I stood silently, just staring at the back of his soot-coloured blazer that faced me.

He sighed, and the echo of his gun reloading wrenched my heart into deplorable pieces. The people lying lifelessly along this hall, who might have lived for ten more years if they hadn't had the rotten luck of working for the government, are least of my concern now. And I loathe myself for it.

I loathe how he's the one stealing my attention. I hate how I'm so selfish as to ignore all the people who have died at his hands and still wish for his happiness. I'm absurd, and I detest him for making me so.

He turns around. With an inscrutable expression, and his revolver, engraved with two golden wings on the sides of the barrel in his hand, he faces me. His white shirt is stained with streaks of blood and his blazer is undone.

He runs his hand through his raven hair and licks his lips before asking a rhetorical question, "Are you ready, babe?"

Of course, it's happening.

Both of us raise our guns at each other, with the hope it splits the other's brain. Whoever pulls the trigger first gets to leave this room.