Ó̸̤̺̯̀͛c̷̩̼͂̋̀ť̸͎̯̯̓̒o̸̤͙̅b̸̳͔͕̅e̷̟͎͐͊͘?̸̱̼̭͗̓̅ ̷̙̳̟̎̈́?̷͈̥̖̆́̂?̷͕̃͘ ̶͇̋̕͠?̶̺̑͆͌?̶̣̈̑̀?̵̗̓͛͝?̵͇̣͊́̑

This is a supernova behind Nathan's eyes, a soul-rending earthquake of the highest magnitude, a tidal wave of bloodthirsty madness washing over everything he knows. It's his sanity torn to pieces, a forcible shutdown of his cognitive systems, his humanity shoved into the deepest recesses of his soul. It's clawing his way up a cliff slippery with the blood of those he loves and sliding down continuously, so far down and further away from control over his body with every agonizing second.

This is the closest he has ever been to Hell.

Nathan stands on the roof of a haunted island, the Doctor watching with satisfaction while he traps Jamie in his iron grip. He stands on the deck of a yacht, a storm of ashes raging around him and his other dead tormentor. His consciousness is divided, split right in half.

The Doctor overrides his will, his thoughts and emotions—has banished them from his brain and locked them in this most horrid part of his subconscious. But his awareness of what's going on in the real world isn't completely gone.

He hears Jamie's desperate, shocked pleas for him to snap out of it and let her go. Feels her every fruitless attempt to break free from his hold. The lavender of her hair, his strong hands digging into her shoulders, and the blinking city lights of Venice all flash before his eyes. He understands far too well the Doctor could cut him off from this as well. Sever his last connection to reality mercilessly.

It just doesn't want to. It wants him to suffer. To witness what it will make his body do to the person he loves most. To watch, but not to act—helpless and unable to stop it.

Only on this yacht does he have some power left.

"Your lady friend is the most troublesome, irritating woman I've ever met. We have no use for her," the devil standing on the deck with him rasps. "She said jumping was faster than taking the stairs. Will she withstand pavement as well as water?"

Nathan turns to face the creature so fast it could give him whiplash. He's looking at Derek, looking at the Doctor, looking at a horrific amalgamation of both—magic and venom fighting for ultimate authority over his being in a single form, colliding explosively like atoms.

There's still a hole in Derek's head where Nathan put a bullet in it, but he wears a robe as black as his charred skin. The one eye staring Nathan down belongs to a revenant rather than his old boss.

The new Derek stands amidst the storm of ashes like none of its turmoil bothers him. He grins a smile full of crooked, sharp yellow teeth. It triggers a rage in Nathan unlike any other.

"Let me out of here," he roars. He barely hears his voice over the howling of the wind, the violent waves and Jamie's ever-increasing panic. "Now."

Doctor Derek tsks, unimpressed. "Never."

Next time you see Derek, Jamie said, you kick his ass before he kicks yours.

Nathan refuses to wait for this demon to release him of its own accord. He'll have lost everything worth caring about by the time it does.

If there's any way out of this predicament, it's by taking back control.

Nathan snarls and rushes at Derek like an enraged bull hyped on the pills he sold for years. Plants a fist into a rotting cheek so hard his knuckles would shatter in the physical realm.

His real hands are still on Jamie, trapping her, pushing her closer and closer to the ledge. In flashes, he can see they move at a terrifyingly slow yet steady pace—the Doctor will draw this out for as long as it can. The senses of Nathan's zombified body pick up on the revenant's domineering presence close behind them, but his pain receptors fail him. Jamie's attempts to kick at his legs inbetween struggling and digging her heels in have no effect whatsoever.

Nathan's body is an empty shell, a mindless drone of flesh and blood.

Nothing short of death will stop it now.

The sheer force of Nathan's punch sends his enemy to the ground. The creature falls on its stomach, lays there cackling through a mouthful of ashes. Nathan doesn't waste another second and pounces.

Stab me, he would tell Jamie outside if he could, stab me stab me do whatever you can to keep me from killing you. She still clutches a stake, sharpened and poised to pierce undead hearts.

She could sink it into one of his arteries. The inevitable blood loss might give her a fighting chance.

But she won't, damn her—Nathan knows this for a fact. He'd be killed, slaughtered like cattle, guaranteed. Jamie would rather take a deadly fall than keep on living with his blood on her hands, his life on her conscience, no matter how doomed he may already be. Because she had this foolish audacity to love him and now she can't destroy him without also destroying herself.

If she loves you, she'll die.

No. No. Nathan's fingers grab at Doctor Derek's hair, scalp, exposed brain matter in blind fury. The demon keeps cackling, further fraying his nerves. With all his might, Nathan slams its face into the wooden deck. Lifts it back up and slams it down again.

Again. And again.

"Why." Smack. "Won't you." Smack. "Leave me the fuck alone?"

Doctor Derek laughs on, unbothered, just like the real Derek did before a bullet in the head shut him up forever—or so Nathan thought. He needs another goddamn headshot today, but life hasn't handed him a gun this time around. He only has fists, determination, and the faint hope this combination fares better in his subconscious than it did in the real world.

Despite the wind's howling and the ringing in his ears, he can still hear every word Jamie says. Her stressed rambling has been intensifying with each step closer to the ledge, outrage and curses turning to fearful pleas and merging with increasingly incoherent tangents.

Now, she settles for resignation. No amount of yelling or struggling has freed her yet and every sentence out of her mouth could become her last in the blink of an eye.

"Maybe I'm talking into the void, Nate, but I love you," she blurts. "I think I forgot to tell you that, but it seemed so obvious to me I guess I figured you just knew. I hope you did, anyway."

I knew, Nathan would have uttered if it wasn't for the pained cry slipping out of him. Doctor Derek is retaliating, mowing wildly with its claws, slashing through yet another shirt.

Its nails barely graze Nathan's flesh, but the slightest contact with his blackened scar lights a blazing inferno of hurt within his body.

Derek's kick in his last vivid nightmare was as harmful as a toddler's by comparison.

The pain stuns Nathan long enough for Doctor Derek to dig its claws into his abdomen. The creature rips through his skin with ease, bits of bloody scar tissue coming off like sheets of paper snatched from a tear-off calendar.

It hurts so bad Nathan forgets how to breathe.

"This isn't real," Doctor Derek whispers. "Your body is perfectly fine. But doesn't it feel otherwise?"

Nathan can't formulate a single coherent reply—he'd scream his lungs out if this anguish didn't paralyze him. He falls on his back, gasping for air, hands pressed to the most harrowing fake wound of his life as if it will somehow alleviate the pain. He stares up at a sky grey with clouds, feeling quartered and burned alive at once while he lays there unmoving. If he stayed like this until ashes buried his body whole, he wouldn't even mind.

He'd strangle himself with his own intestines if it saved him from this torture.

"Gino's mom predicted my future and the card I got was Death," Jamie continues, her speech fast and frantic. "Which isn't supposed to mean actual death, but change. Change I should stop resisting. Yesterday, I started thinking it was about you—that it meant I needed to stop fighting my feelings for you and just embrace them. But maybe that wasn't right and the card meant actual death after all, and maybe, maybe I just need to accept I'm going to die in this place, right?"

She won't die, can't die, not here not now not today. But Nathan can barely move while his body won't stop.

Doctor Derek rises to its feet, wobbly after Nathan's attempt at vicious attack. The creature circles him. It could use him for a doormat if it wanted.

"Why won't I leave you alone?" Its voice is a low hiss. Straightening, it makes its way to the yacht's railing. "How you fail to see your own potential sickens me."

The devil stands with its back turned to him now. Can't even be bothered to keep its eyes trained on this pathetic an enemy.

Nathan rolls onto his side, even though he's panting like a dog and it feels like falling straight into an electric fence. He has learned there's a lot can be done through sheer force of will. And his will to escape and live to speak of it has never been greater.

"You are young, strong and healthy." Doctor Derek fixes its gaze on a static horizon, still eerily calm through the raging storm and crashing waves. "And you are tainted by a peculiar and powerful force the likes of which I have never seen before. What would come out of experimenting on you, I wonder? Would you last much longer than my other toys?"

Nathan barely refrains from spewing all his disgust out in the open. He forces himself to stay quiet, slowly dragging himself forward across the deck. He'll kill this monster or die trying.

It has no right to claim his life for itself.

"But I'll stick with my first theory, anyway. I like it better," Jamie says. "I like the thought that you were part of my future if only for a little while. And I wish I'd remembered to tell you all of this before it was too late, but I thought we'd have more time, and it's– I just never wanted to believe forever could get cut so short."

Nathan will prolong it by any means necessary. He pushes himself to his feet, run-stumbling towards his target. He seizes the devil's arms, shoving it against the railing hard enough for all air to leave its lungs had it been a living, breathing human being.

For once, the surprise effect serves him well.

"I am built to last," he growls in the creature's ear. "And it's been ages since you were anybody at all. You've got nothing worth fighting for and none of this is real."

"How," his tormentor fumes, "are you still able to stand?"

"I'm better than you." Nathan steels himself, grip tightening. "And I deserve better than this."

Doctor Derek is the ghost of two men, both little more than frail sacks of decaying bones and dead flesh. Nathan is much stronger than this beast could ever be. He shoves it over the yacht's railing. Sends it plummeting, screeching in a flurry of black robes, into the savage sea below.

How do you withstand water, motherfucker?

Nathan steps back from the railing, dizzy and breathless. His pain recedes like the ebb of the tides. For the first time, he's alone on this ship, enjoying blessed silence save for the ongoing thundering of the sea. The wind stops tugging at his clothes, the storm dying down.

Ashes still fall from a sky devoid of stars. They drift down playfully, black flakes dancing in a pleasant breeze and nestling in his hair. They are soft, calm, peaceful—as gentle as winter's first fresh snow.

~~

October 20, 2023

Nathan blinks once, twice, and the yacht is gone. The dimmed lights of his neural pathways shine bright again, his senses returning to him. He stands on the roof of a ruined asylum on a cool October night, newly released from a revenant's dictatorial control. 

He's holding Jamie. They can't be more than five steps away from the ledge.

Soon, the Doctor will realise what happened. When it does, it may launch another attack on Nathan's psyche. Nathan doesn't know if he's physically and mentally strong enough to snap out of it a second time.

They have mere seconds at their disposal.

Jamie has completely stopped struggling. She's muttering what might be a quick prayer in Spanish, resigned to what she believes will be her fate. But she hasn't dropped her stake yet. Nathan says his own mental prayer, hoping to God she'll still be able to think fast and adapt as usual.

He brings her just a little closer to the ledge in order to keep up the ruse. Then leans forward so he can whisper in her ear.

"Don't panic. I'm going to shove you, but not off the roof. Kill it."

He counts to three in his head—the longest three seconds of his life. When he's done, he spins around and pushes Jamie away from him hard.

The Doctor's insistent hovering close will be its death.

Nathan watches with bated breath, the scene before him playing out in slow motion—he woke up and fell right into a new fever dream. In reality, everything happens lightning fast.

Jamie almost trips and falls, but picks herself up in the nick of time and makes a beeline for the Doctor. She may not excel in terms of physical strength, but she has speed, momentum, a deadly weapon and the sincerest intent to use it.

She buries her stake in the Doctor's chest. Sharp wood pierces the revenant's shriveled heart with a nauseating squelch.

The Doctor staggers forward. It claws at its torso, but can't muster the strength to pull the stake out. Jamie side-steps out of its trajectory fast, flicking droplets of black blood off her hands with unbridled disgust. Nathan stands motionless while the creature stumbles to him, as if, despite its approaching second death, it would like to take one last stab at making his life living hell.

Veronika said to try multiple killing methods in the book.

Nathan still has the knife he initially bought on him. Adrenaline and bloodlust still hype him up. When the Doctor enters his personal space, he grabs his knife with one hand, the revenant's remaining thin hairs in the other. Although he may have to attribute the ease to his venom high, the Doctor's head comes off with a mere two hard blade-to-neck chops.

Nathan tosses the head off the roof, desperate to be rid of it. What is left of the Doctor's body tumbles down. Breathing hard, paralyzed with shock, Nathan barely registers how much black blood now taints his own hands, skin and clothes.

The Doctor is finally gone for good.

Nathan can tell because his high dips into an abysmal low—a sudden crash of all his systems. He takes a few exceedingly difficult steps away from the ledge, vaguely aware he'd better not linger near it.

"Holy shit." Jamie is shaking, wide-eyed. "What the hell happened just now?"

Nathan would tell her everything he learned if formulating a coherent sentence wasn't so hard. His brain feels like it's melting, any sort of movement is a Herculean task, and he hears his heart beat slow—too slow— through a thick haze of fatigue.

"This is... no good," he wheezes. He sways on his feet so much he lowers himself to his knees. He can't fall hard if he's already on the ground. Not once in his life did he think he could ever feel so exhausted. So weak and so frail.

Perhaps this is what it's like to die.

"What do you mean?" Jamie's question comes out sharp in its frightened confusion. "Nathan, what do you mean?"

There's a lot to say, a lot to think, and not nearly enough time to speak it all into existence. Already his vision is blurring, black edges closing in, while his breathing slows to match his heartbeat.

Focusing his gaze on Jamie is nigh-impossible, but he does it, anyway. Just in case it's the very last time.

"Hey... Hey, Jamie... That future with you..."

If this is the end, it came too fast, but at least there is some semblance of peace. More than he would have had six months ago. So many years he pissed away, took for granted, wasted focusing all the wrong things, and it didn't matter because he didn't.

But he mattered—mattered for every second until the final one to come. He had parents who would have given him everything, for whom he would have done just the same, and he is here tonight, on this roof with the love of his life, having done something truly good. And all of existence could be meaningless, but not this. Never this.

It wasn't a half bad life to live.

"...I would've loved that. So fucking much."

His consciousness fades.