Trigger Warning: Suicide, self-harm, depression, injury, death

Remington's cue to run out onto the stage came and went, and he stayed where he was, feeling overdressed and unprepared. His head wasn't with his band or the song he was supposed to start singing in less than half a minute, but with the train and the busy main road and the bloody wrists of Oliver. 

The headache he had woken with had only worsened, the invisible sight of his classmate dying becoming so vivid and real that he couldn't stand still, couldn't keep himself from taking steps back each time the scene started over again. 

He could feel the wind from the train as it rushed past, could hear the screech and the thudding of his heart and the horrible, horrible silence that came after. He could hear too much. He had to make himself deaf to it, but he didn't know how. 

Andy was just a few metres from him, glanced from the stage to the singer, frowned, caught Sebastian's eye, shook his head in a desperate I don't know what's going on either look. He took a cautionary step towards Remington and tried to make the younger look at him, but even staring straight ahead, his eyes were glassed over and deserted. Wherever he was, it wasn't in that venue with those people. 

He put his hand on Remington's shoulder and Remington flinched hard, finally made eye contact, blinked like he had to remind himself that what he was seeing was real. "You should be on stage," Andy said, not unkindly. 

Remington blinked again. His skin seemed then to be vampiric, pale and dull and deeply shadowed. He took a small step backwards. 

"This is your job, Remington. If you don't feel well, that's okay, but you need to tell us." 

Returning to the place behind his eyes, Remington paid no attention, just took another step back after a few more seconds. 

"Seriously, what's going on? You've been acting so strange the past twenty-four-hours. I'm worried about you. Do you need a break? You know, we can organise a break, it's not uncommon. You just-you have to say something. No one can read your mind." 

Remington jerked at contact that wasn't made. 

Andy observed him with furrowed eyebrows. Taking a chance, he reached for Remington's hand, grazed his fingers down his wrist, sharply pulled away. There, just beneath his fingers, were small but unmistakeable ridges that he knew were cuts, and though he so wished he could believe it was some sort of accident, he knew better than to kid himself in such a way. "Remington," he started mournfully. "We all care about you and want to help. Please, you're never going to-"  

Abandoning the scene, Remington walked past the man and onto the stage. His brothers sent him glares and head shakes and he didn't sing, didn't open his mouth once, didn't even pick up the microphone. 

Andy could barely make himself return to his dressing room to finish preparing for his show. He felt suddenly quite sick and wanted to run onto the stage and pull Remington back, wanted to hug him and tell him everything was okay, wanted to be able to help but didn't have any idea how. He felt like this was somehow his fault, that he'd pushed them into something which they weren't ready for. They were only a small band and had barely toured before, had barely played to anybody, it wasn't a surprise that they were finding it difficult to adjust. 

Still, why Remington wasn't talking, Andy couldn't understand. It was important, he knew well, to voice any issues, to repeat things until it was easier to say, to not have shame for being anxious or homesick or just sad. 

Again, Palaye were booed off the stage, and before anyone could catch him, Remington had left the building and was back in Andy's bus, sitting in the bathroom watching the same train over and over and over, the repetition and guilt making him dizzy and hazy and desperate for any kind of pain. 

This event, it was all he was now. The train and the boy and the suicides and the fire, it was all he had, and yet, it was over. It had been years. He wasn't that teenager anymore, that school didn't even exist after the fire that had burned it to ashes. Everything that had made him and destroyed him and taught him and controlled him, it was all gone.

All the rules that he had followed so fearfully, the games he had risked his life for, the people he had pretended to like and not like, none of that was important now. 

It was like he didn't exist anymore.