We did it fellas.
{trigger warning: death, blood, guts, panic attack, mention of murder, dissociation}

The Ferris wheel stopped once they made it to the very top, the basket teetering back and forth slowly.

Josh stares straight ahead the entire time, afraid of looking back at Tyler. He didn't know how he would react. Should he arrest him? Should he have just left him on the Ferris wheel alone?

It didn't matter now, because there he was, riding a damn Ferris wheel with one of the most dangerous and intelligent serial killers he'd ever known.

Tyler was still hunched over his seat, one hand pressed against his stomach and the other gripping the metal bar pressed to his legs. His breathing was quick and shallow, just like when he would have panic attacks.

As much as Josh didn't want to care, he did. "Are you hurt?" He finally asked, as if he didn't already know he was who the cop shot.

"Why do you care?"

Josh snorted. "Believe me, babe, I'm trying not to."

Tyler looked up at him for the first time since the wheel began to move, his eyes empty and cold. He smiled creepily, and slowly removed his hand.

Immediately, blood began to spill from the gaping wound on his side. It looked as if he'd been shredded by an animal. Bits of meat hung from strings of his flesh, a dark pulsing red cavern where his stomach was meant to be. Josh could see his intestines on the verge of spilling out.

"Oh, god," he moaned, bile rising in the back of his throat. Josh clamped his mouth shut with one hand for fear of throwing up and forced his eyes back on the horizon. "What the hell- how?"

Tyler chuckled, shuddering in pain as he pressed both hand over the wound. "The cop sure did put up a fight. Evisceration- the act of stabbing so deeply and widely that your own guts come out."

"You know that's what I did to Brendon? I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until I couldn't even move anymore. Until his insides were out. And I liked it too." His voice dropped. "Maybe that's where it all went wrong."

Josh looked back, only looking at his face. "Ty-"

He interrupted Josh, which was good because he didn't know how to respond to that. "I know what I am, Josh. I tried to tell myself for so long that it wasn't wrong, just so I could believe I was something I wasn't. This wasn't murder, it was justice."

Tyler leaned his head back, a trickle of blood making its way from his lips down his neck. "But now I know what I am. I'm a killer, just like Brendon. Just like all the other bastards you put away."

"We," Josh corrected, finally understanding why Tyler asked him to be there. He was dying. "We both put them away. We all did."

The Ferris wheel gave a metallic groan and began its descend to the ground far, far below them. Josh could see cop cars zipping through the amusement park at full speed.

Tyler must've seen seen them too, because he let himself uncurl and fall back into the seat, smiling at the sunrise almost serenely. "I killed an FBI agent and left his kids orphans. I know how these things end, Josh. I've seen my fair share of tragedies. This will end either with me in handcuffs or me dead, and I already have one foot in the grave."

"I can get you help," Josh said, insistent. He shouldn't care. He should just let Tyler die, but he couldn't, because it was still Tyler.

As the sirens filled the silence, Tyler held a bloody hand out towards Josh. He had a blissful look on his face, and Josh realized that he'd already made peace with his own death.

"I know I don't deserve it, but can I have just one last kiss?" He asked in a gentle voice.

Josh paused for a moment, but took Tyler's hand anyways. The Ferris wheel carts were small enough that they could hug without having to strain themselves. He leaned in close, letting his fingers trace up Tyler's arm and find its resting place on the back of his neck.

He kissed Tyler softly, hesitantly, like he was made of glass instead of stone. Josh tried to convey every emotion he felt in that single, long kiss. Every feeling that had been building, growing, spilling over, finally released. Rage, joy, betrayal, yearning, love, and overwhelming fear.

Josh tried to put almost four years of fondness and loyalty into his fingertips that grazed the back of Tyler's neck. He needed to tell Tyler that he was a murderer, that he'd betrayed and tricked them and that he could never learn to trust him again.

Yet he also needed to tell him that no matter what the outcome was, if he lived or died, if he was killed or he took his own life, if he fought the monsters or became one himself, that one thing would always be certain.

Josh would always love him. 

When they parted, Tyler rested his head against Josh's shoulder, weakly lacing their fingers together and resting their intertwined hands in his lap. He raised the hand pressed against his side to caress Josh's face. Every touch felt like fire, burning them both to the ground.

Josh had to look up at the sky, seeing no moon, no stars, just to stop himself from crying. But he did anyways. Hot tears slipped from the corners of his eyes down his cheeks, and he exhaled slowly so he didn't completely lose it.

He mourned for the Tyler he held before Brendon killed him. He mourned for the lives he'd cut short, Dallon's included. But most importantly, he mourned the love of his life, who he could feel slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.

Tyler coughed against his chest, and Josh felt hot blood splatter on his shirt. "Josh. Can you... can you hold me?"

"Of course," Josh whispered, not being able to stop the tears from coming down. "I can't believe that I still can't bear to lose you." He didn't have the energy to laugh, so he let out a breathy chuckle, combing his hands through Tyler's blonde, blood-clumped hair.

"Do you think..." Tyler sounded far away. "Do you think everyone can change? Even me? Even a monster like..."

"Of course I do."

Tyler didn't response. His hand slipped from Josh's cheek, their locked fingers falling apart. Josh let out a whiny, unsteady breath, and squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, pressing his lips to Tyler's forehead.

The tears started to flow harder, faster. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but sit there and let the tears come.

The cart they'd been sitting reached the bottom, and Josh could see Jenna and Brad running towards him, yelling with no sound. Their lips moved, but Josh couldn't hear them.

The world had gone silent. No sirens, no voices, no nothing. Just Josh holding the mutilated body of his ex-fiancé: the man who murdered one of their own, the man who killed over 80 people, the man Josh took to the planetarium on their first date, the man he was going to marry.

"Don't leave me," he whispered, hugging Tyler's body as it leaned limply into his own. The officers struggled to raise the bars from their laps. "You bastard, don't leave me alone again."

—

Josh didn't remember anything after he was pulled out of the Ferris wheel. His memory was a blank slate, and maybe for good reason.

From what he gathered- everyone on his teams collectively agreed to not tell him what happened, and for good reason- Josh didn't let them take Tyler away at first. He screamed and kicked and fought and cried his way out of the carrier and to the floor where he clung to Tyler's body like a baby to its mother.

After being sedated with ten times the average, Jenna and Brad still had to pry him away from Tyler's body. Josh woke up in the hospital two hours later, restrained to the bed with handcuffs. He had no major injuries beside a dislocated shoulder. At least, no physical injuries.

No, all of the damage was internal. Josh started to have nightmares, Tyler falling in love with him then Josh losing him in so many different ways that he lost count at one point. He started dreaming of his family too, hearing his mother's screams of help, back in that closet with his little sisters.

The plane ride home a week later was eerie, as it was only Josh, Brad, and Jenna. The others had already gone home the day Josh was admitted in the hospital.

Josh stared at his hands as the plane took off, seeing flecks of dried blood still caked under his finger nails. He didn't feel anything- he couldn't sort out his thoughts and emotions enough to feel anything properly. Everything inside of him died with Tyler, even his coherent thinking.

"What're you thinking about?" Brad's voice directed Josh's gaze upward.

"I- I don't know," he replied honestly. "I can't... feel anything. I can't think, I can barely function. I don't know what's going on anymore.

Brad leaned into his chair and closed his eyes, the bags under them casting shadows so dark they looked like bruises. "That's understandable. You did just lose your fiancé."

"Yeah, but-" Josh picked at the bottoms of his nails, trying to get the dry blood out. "Tyler was a murderer. He killed dozens of people. He killed Dallon for fucks sake. Why do I still-" he stopped himself when his voice cracked, a tremor running through his bandaged hands.

"Why do you still love him?" Jenna finished from across the aisle.

Josh looked away, ashamed. "I want to hate him so badly. But I can't. He was so... I can't see him without seeing all the good things just-"

He clasped his hands together tightly, digging his nails into his skin so he could feel something, even it was pain. "It's all clumped together and I can't separate any of it into good and bad piles."

"That's okay. All of what you're feeling is okay." Jenna put her hands over Josh's. "I remember when Dallon lost Breezy. He was shattered, and it took him months, if not years, to put all the pieces back together the way they're supposed to go."

"So, what, I'm some kind of fucked up puzzle?"

"You're grieving, and grieving takes time," Brad said.

"But how can I grieve such a- a monster?"

"Because to you, that monster is still the man you loved, and still love." Jenna pulled his hands apart and tapped the golden engagement ring still on his ring finger. "You'll never be able to change that."

Josh spun the ring a few times. It gave him some comfort, but he didn't know why. "All this, over one stupid case," he muttered.

He started to laugh, with devolved into sobs pretty quickly. Jenna held him as he cried and cried and cried, and he fell asleep leaning against her. For the first time since Tyler went missing, since he came back different, since he started killing, since he died, Josh felt at peace.

It didn't last, because the nightmares still came and went, but they never stayed long.

{A Fracture In The Consciousness Completed: June 28, 2019}