Carefully bending his knees as he landed to keep the fall from punishing him too hard, Nick popped up quickly and took a closer look around now that he was over the fence. He wanted to keep his mind off the creepy, basketball-skin-looking freaks that were playing in the court as much as possible. It was like looking at a horror movie monster, and he was not a fan of staring at those kinds of things.
Urging the group to move as soon as both got over, Nick found himself somewhat confused by the new clutter around them. Personal belongings and luggage alongside maintenance and building materials was a strange combination. It seemed like this was just a dumping ground for whatever crap the guards didn’t want to lug around. And while it made sense to leave the prisoners’ stuff around (as fucked up as it was, he wasn’t expecting empathy from this place), one would imagine at least some kind of organization for the more vital supplies. Still, it wasn’t worth worrying too much about, as the three young men had bigger fish to fry.
Nick didn’t keep himself from searching through a pile for a moderately-sized hammer, however, just in case. “Couldn’t hurt to grab something just in case,” he commented, “fucking guards are all over the place.” Admittedly, this area had yet to bring them in contact with any more guards, but Nick had more meant the prison as a whole, and on that front he was absolutely correct, as they’d all seen earlier.
Getting back on track, Nick found himself more and more distracted by the growing piles of household amenities, which soon gave way to actual parts of houses. And as those remnants of people’s lives grew, so too did a strange, pulling sensation grow within him. It was almost like the feeling you get when you know you’re missing something and have only the vaguest idea of where it was, constantly tingling in the back of your head and pulling you to where you think it may be. Why this feeling was happening here, Nick couldn’t quite tell at first. Caelum’s comment broke him of the trance he’d fallen into, but once he was consciously thinking about it, the draw only became stronger.
“I…uh, yeah, no, I know.” Nick stumbled over his words. “But I…something’s…making me come here? I…I can’t explain it, but this is the right way. I…I just…know?” The feeling was confusing even to Nick, but the more he spoke, the surer he was. This
was the right way, just not the way to the exit. Why they needed a detour, or how he knew this with such certainty, he couldn’t explain, but he
knew it. “I don’t understand it, but…we have to go this way.” He just hoped Vincent and Caelum wouldn’t argue it.
It was a short while longer before the group came upon something that nearly made him sick. Nick’s stomach dropped when he saw the broken façade to a home peeking out from the piles of debris and junk all around.
“Oh. That would be why,” Nick unhelpfully uttered, frozen in place staring at what they’d just found. “It’s…my house.” That he still called it his despite not living there, not setting foot inside or seeing or even deigning to speak with its denizens was lost on Nick, so addled was his mind. Thoughtlessly, he stepped over the threshold, looking around at the barren walls, littered with empty picture frames and coated in a thin, uniform layer of dust. Dragging his finger along the wall picked up that dust, but when he looked back to it, he couldn’t find any evidence that he’d done so.
The feeling of wrongness in his gut refused to settle, but Nick pressed onwards. Something was here for him, and he needed to find it. He wasn’t paying attention to if Caelum and Vincent followed him, nor did he particularly care at this point. Whatever it was that was here, it couldn’t wait.
It was only a few seconds of walking, really, but Nick found himself in a small room, just a little too small, a little too cramped, when he found it.
He found himself.
He knew it.
Looking down at the small, emaciated boy sitting against the wall of the room, not quite in the corner but so close that it was hard to tell, Nick could tell that those dark, sunken eyes were his own, the oversized and baggy clothes the hand-me-downs that his mother, ever the frugal one, had foisted upon him despite his protests. A shoulder peeked out from the oversized, long out of style plaid shirt, marred by a few ugly, bright red scars alongside a few other paler, less distinct ones.
Nick let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, as his Shadow looked up at him.
“What? Come to hurt me like everybody else?” Nick’s heart, despite knowing what this thing was, ached in sympathy. With empathy for a past he tried to forget. “They never cared. Jason just did whatever he wanted.”
Ah, Jason, beloved Naval Lieutenant with a violent, angry past that he left behind and left Nick with the scars of. That…was what he remembered. What he chose to hold onto.
“Just leave. Just leave me alone.” The Shadow demanded. Nick sighed. He…wasn’t sure how this was supposed to happen. If what Dakota did was normal, if it was different for everybody, but Nick knew something had to happen here. If he could avoid a fight, he would.
“I know we just want to be left alone, but…it’s nice to have friends. People who care about you, and understand what it’s like.” Nick tried to start with diplomacy, but the look on the other Nick’s face told him he’d misspoken.
“Nobody
actually understands. You know that. I don’t know why you keep trying to lie to yourself and pretend like anybody actually gives a shit about you beyond a few cheap laughs.”
Holy shit kid, way to go right for the jugular, Nick thought with a frown. And the worst part was that Nick couldn’t find the words to reply.
Because he believed the same thing, didn’t he? It wasn’t even quite like what happened between Dakota and his Shadow. That was, in a nutshell, what Nick truly believed. He tried to hide it, tried to pretend otherwise, but Nick had felt alone for years, only maintaining what felt like superficial relationships until recently, and Jessica had gone and shattered any hope of somebody actually understanding him, actually caring and wanting to stick around once they saw what a broken mess of a human being he was.
As Nick struggled to disagree, to fight back against the crushing despair of existentialism and the isolation he endured, he felt a tear slide down his face before falling from his chin.
Yankee
TruthHurts
princess
Plank Sinatra