You pushed open the doors to the police station, ignoring the looks of astonishment and fear that were shot your way. You ignored the memorial that was set up in the office near the left hand corner of the building, the way the photograph of Hank seemed to stare back at your empty gaze, his eyes taunting you, urging you to track down his killer, the one who had killed him without a thought of flicker of emotion towards the human life that they had ended, the decades worth of stories that were ended at the blade of a single knife.

"(Y/n)!" A police officer stood up from where she had been sitting and you recognized her as Donna. "Where have you been? There's patrols that are combing the entire city looking for you and the - " Her tongue halted the rest of her speech, not wanting to admit the fact that there was a living skeleton wandering about the streets of New York City in the dark and the cold of night, claiming lives of humans on a mere whim, possessing powers that humans themselves could never dare dream of.

Unless one had the right amount of determination, but that was another tale for another time.

"But where the hell have you been? How did you get back here? We got reports that the scientists had been slaughtered and that you were taken from your hospital room. The only sign that there had been a struggle was Hank's body lying on the ground - " She couldn't bring herself to speak anymore, looking over at the memorial that stood out as a harsh contrast, the painful reminder that no matter how many times the human race tried to shove away their nightmares, tried to hide away the bad things of life, they were always there, always screaming and begging to be heard no matter how much you tried to look away.

Because no one wanted to pay attention to the fact that dozens were slaughtered by gun violence, that hundreds of people were raped and traumitised every day. Those were the bad things about life, the stuff that humans didn't want to have to think about. Sure, it became a big deal when there was a large mass shooting. The public would debate about it, realise that society had been hiding the bad for far too long and it was time to do something about it. But ultimately the wheel would turn and the hope of progress would flicker out from existence, no trace that it had ever been there at all.

The same was with Hank's memorial, you reflected. No matter how much you mourned or grieved for the loss of your friend, the ugly truth remained that in a few day's time, the memorial would be cleaned up so that a new and fresh face could take over where the ghost of the former had once been, burying once more the horrors and tragedies of society in the dark, locking the bodies and corpses wronged by injustice far behind so that no one had to look at them and remember just how wrong the whole system was.

"I escaped," you replied, surprised that you were lying, feeling even worse still when Hank's photograph continued to stare at you, his eyes unblinking, judging you all the while as if to taunt you for daring to pursue and chase after his killer on your own, to help out the very creature that had killed him in the first place. "I managed to run away when the skeleton had his back turned, though I don't know if he knows where I am."

"You poor thing," Donna mumbled and pulled you into a genuine hug. She looked over her shoulder. "Update the status report and file that captive has been found, suspect still remains at large." She eventually pulled away from you. "There must be so much you want to talk about, it must have been so hard for you."

"Yeah," you fumbled with your coat pockets nervously, approaching the real reason why you had decided to even show your face here at all. "While I was out, where there any more murders that we think were linked to the case?"

Donna cocked an eyebrow before turning around, opening a vanilla folder that contained several photos. You could make out blurred security tape footage of Dust from the locations where he had previously been sited. "No, nothing since Hank's death," she muttered, her voice unnaturally tight. "Suspect must be lying low since he knows we're onto him, but I wouldn't put it past my doubt that he wouldn't strike again. The bastard is too sick in the head to stop now, he probably won't rest until the whole of humanity is wiped from the map."

Your jaw clenched, disturbed by how accurate that statement was. "But," Donna closed the folder and set it on the table. "What are you doing back here?" Her brown eyes seemed to pick apart your gaze as if she could discern your every thought and feeling from just the way you looked at her.

You opened your mouth and find yourself wanting to tell her everything. How a part of you understood Dust in a way that others couldn't, the way that your mind had once been twisted and saw the world as he did, where every human was a foul wretch of a disease that was killing this planet and was better off eradicated. You wanted to tell her how you saw yourself in Dust, saw how you had once been, lost in your insanity and had managed to hold through, cling onto the sliver of a rope and pull yourself to freedom and how you were determined to give the skeleton the same opportunity. Because despite all the evidence that suggested he had truly lost his mind, you were certain, clinging on to the whisper of a ghost of a rumour that the former comedian was still alive somewhere in there, fighting constantly against the storm inside his mind,

You wanted to tell her that you had come here to see if Dust had committed any more murders since he had left you in the world of dark and cold, how relieved you were that he had not done such a thing since Hank's death, that perhaps your words were still resonating with him, that he was still fighting to maintain the small grip he had on sanity.

But you could not, for even you knew that any human would not be able to understand your reasoning, why you were so determined to help out a demented skeleton that was hellbent on destroying humanity, lost within the folds of his insanity. It was hard to make others understand insanity, what it could do to a person and how there was a chance to recover when they had never been in the position themselves.

Instead, you found your tongue continuing to spill lies as if this was a second nature. "I have to help," you insisted, hoping that you were convincing enough. "The last few days of my life were absolute hell. There were times when I thought that I was losing myself, that my mind was going to slip and I was going to wake up like him, tormented in insanity and hellbent on killing everything around me. But I escaped, I got freedom when so many others didn't have that chance. And I want to make sure that it never happens again. I want to stop this."

Donna continued to stare at you, as if she knew that you were hiding the truth and she was determined to search for it. At last she relented: "That you're right about. You're always welcome back here (Y/n) and we'll be the first to let you know if we catch wind of the skeleton."

But you would not be welcome here, you were certain of that. For the experiences, the hell that you had been through for the last few weeks had shaped you into a completely new person. The (Y/n) that had once worked inside these walls as an intern had died amongst the bodies of those who had perished during the convenience store hostage crisis, smoldered in the fire and ash.

A new person walked your body. They looked and talked the same, but the mind was different, carved and altered in such a way that it alienated you from the rest of humanity. For the torture had left an irreversible mark on you, changed your world view in such a way that you never did think that you could fit anywhere. Because no matter how much you recovered, no matter how many pills you swallowed and tried to convince yourself that you had squeezed into society's mold of normal, the trauma and the experiences of your past were still a part of you no matter how much you tried to deny it.

Like Hank, like all the other tragedies and sorrows of the world, you could push them away and forget about them for as long as you wanted, but the souls of the dead and damned were still floating around, screaming and wailing to be heard by deaf ears. Your scars were always there, they would always follow you and continue to shape who you are as a person no matter how much you wanted to admit that you had recovered, that you had managed to hack away the twisted parts of yourself.

And this made you different from the others, why you would never truly be welcome here in this police station or anywhere else. Because the others around you realized this, knew that there was still a part of your mind that lingered, twisted and tormented from pain and suffering that could snap and retaliate at the slightest indication. To them you were a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.

Because that was how society worked, how everything in this world worked. Society functions on a hierarchy of the self-proclaimed normality, those who raise their heads high and claim to be the strongest, the fit. And those who are not considered to be normal, those who might have a little more weight on their shoulders than anyone else and have to work twice as hard to keep up, they are rejected, thrown aside like they meant nothing.

Sometimes, you thought to yourself, it is often hard to tell who has more humanity, the monsters or the humans.

You watched as the police officers labored about, each absorbed in the task they were working on. This was the working class, the lucky bunch that had made it through the test that proved they were normal, that they fit into the Barbie-sized mold like the rest of the peers. And the ones that were considered to not fit in, they were thrown aside, sometimes behind bars and sometimes into mental hospitals where their minds were drugged and stimulated so that they could be forced into the same mold that everyone was supposed to pass through, the mold that said they were normal and not an outcast.

That was normal in society. Go to school, get a job, get a spouse and have kids. Work the land and raise the family and then die satisfied. Wasn't it ironic how many always asked how school was, how your job was doing, but no one ever asked you if you were happy?

No, you did not belong here, no matter how many times Donna and the others tried to insist that you were one of them. But you could see it in their eyes, the way they seemed to make sure that they were always a little farther from you than they were with the others, how their hands always seemed to twitch towards the hilt of your gun whenever you made a movement like you were some dangerous animal that would lash out at the slightest sound.

I get it, you thought as you slipped out the door having collected all the information you needed. I'm different now, I'm not the same as I was a few weeks ago. I don't fit into the mold, what makes someone normal. Throw me into the reject pile, cast me aside like all the other deemed failures.

But wasn't there benefits to not being normal, to not fitting inside that mold? Shouldn't there be pride in rising above the rest and shouting in triumph that you were not like the rest of the world, that your own differences from others made you so much more unique, made you stand out in a sea of a thousand. Perhaps it was best to encourage differences, to allow individualities to flourish rather than stamping out anything different. That it was okay for girls to play video games and boys to play with dolls.

It was just a thought.

You knew where to go now and a part of you suspected that Dust had meant for you to come all this time, that somehow you would survive the world of darkness and make it back to the land of the living.

For the comedian had not claimed a life which meant he was hiding out, evading the wandering gaze of seven billion humans with trained eyes capable of spotting differences. Your feet guided you throughout the streets of New York City, taking in all the small details around you.

You noticed the homeless man on the street. He hadn't fit into the mold of normality, cast aside because of his differences and yet that made him more important all the same. You watched as he sat in an alleyway, leaning against a brick wall as his fingers plucked out a sad tune on his rundown guitar, reflecting perhaps much of the injustices that had been thrown his way. And while others may have viewed him as a waste of space, there was so much potential, so much life inside him, so much hidden talent that was often overlooked in favour of those that were bland, able to be shoved into the working class and not care about the world around them.

You walked through alleyways and the ruined parts of the outer city, taking in the unique people around you. Most would have strayed from this part of town, called it bad because this was where all the rejects lived, those who had been thrown out by society because they never passed the mold. But to you this was the part of the city where true individuality thrived.

You stopped outside the entrance to the apartment complex, where it had all began, where your mind had been stripped away and you had been crafted into something knew, where scars had been impressed upon your mind that would never really go away no matter how much you tried to convince yourself otherwise.

With a heavy sigh, you pushed open the door to the complex. Here it was much lighter than before, as if there was a brief note of hope and opportunity where none had existed before. And standing not far from the entrance, who looked rather annoyed that you had taken so long was the comedian.

You wondered what face he wore.