𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐓 𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐓⁰²ʰᵉᵐᵐⁱⁿᵍˢ

ㅤㅤㅤprologueㅤㅤㅤ──𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐃

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This all begins where everything went wrong.

The sun never promised to spare them from its heat that day, and so Asari felt its sickly burn on her skin and around them in the air that suddenly seemed so suffocating, compressing her stress and doubts into beads of sweat that then rolled down her temple.

The scene stood still, frozen under the summer heat, the hesitation of the cocked gun waiting to be shot idling in the air. Despite the influence, he wasn't sure why he wasn't pulling the trigger.

His insides ached at the control, the words that shaped his actions, words that weren't even his.

"Luke," Her wary voice called out to him, eyes brimming with beads of tears. "Please, put it down," She pleads, her voice breaking as she watched the young man slowly break away in front of her.

She spent half her life watching people become someone worse, but of all of them, she never imagined him to be one of them. She watched her father succumb to amber liquor, her mother to her father's living room wars, and her brother to the brunt of his foot.

Now, it was Luke.

When she thought she'd outran her past, it chased her down and snagged her ankles, dragging her back slowly but viciously.

And she could do nothing but watch.

"And why would you listen to her?" The man behind Luke spoke, gruff voice making her want to do the very worst. "I thought you said she was nobody," He walked up and stood by Luke, his olive green scarf bloodstained on the hem wound around his neck despite the heat.

With a simple look, his eyes challenged Luke to pull the trigger, finish the job, and move on. Move on. It was all anybody did there. After all, the land they owned and the mansion dubbed a sanctuary was a place for moving on and starting fresh. Your past was to be forgotten, your name the reminder of your mistakes.

Nobody stopped to mourn and relish in the idea that maybe sadness was the slower path to moving on instead of outright getting rid of the 'cause'. It was always the easier, though harsher, route.

"Then prove it," The man hissed at Luke's ear, like the serpent, with his own devil eyes and cocky smirk. He knew people won to gain some sense of achievement. They strived and worked to gain the winning hand, but he loved that he did it for sport.

In his land, there was no option for him but to win.

Something in her chest dropped at the man's words. When she thought she'd been built up by good people once again, that perhaps she'd found her second home, that maybe she had found herself - she was suddenly reduced to nobody.

Maybe it was the same nobody that ran away a hundred times, or the same nobody that her father pushed to the ground, but the thought of hearing Luke's voice say the words themselves was another weight on her shoulder in of itself.

Her eyes met his in fearful anticipation, her stare seeming to hold more agitation than his as he remained his aim at her chest.

Silent and unrested, the scene remained still. A slight breeze dared to pass once in a while, but other than that, it was only the laboured breathing of the girl that suggested there was some form of life.

Luke tipped back and forth that line and only he knew where he stood. He had life when he was with her, when she laughed, that made him believe he was funnier than what people said. Evergreen life and floral joy, the life he had when she told him he was someone beyond orders and what everyone wanted him to be.

But at the end of the day, when the dawn came and showed the sand crimson, when she was gone, he had to return to a job, to a home, to people that were like matches that lit their fires against his evergreen.

"So?" The man sighed. "Are you really hesitating to give up this red desert, that sanctuary, for some... girl?" He spat the last word as though it was bitter and ugly, as though it had somehow offended his entire being. Some girl. "Are you really throwing it all away?"

Luke's eyes strayed from her and onto the space beside her, the guilt that brewed in his chest for months feeling as though it was creeping out of his throat, puncturing his ribs, corrupting his mind.

He didn't want to be like his mother. He didn't want to be someone made of guilt and shame and everything he wished to do but never did. He didn't want to be a throw-away man like his father, a pretender, a man of thorns that pricked everyone he loved.

If he could be anything his parents weren't, he'd have spent his entire life repenting on the feet of the people they had wronged.

But he was their son, born and raised to inherit their red desert, their second child, their treasured gold. Born to inherit the dusty carmine sunsets and lavender candles, each poem from his mother and each journal from his father, and each sin they committed in the name of virtue.

His shoulders sank as he pursed his lips, pulling the trigger.

The bullet tore through the silence and momentarily deafened them all, the small but mighty weapon tearing through flesh and sinking itself onto the space between two ribs.

"I'm sorry,"

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so it begins
eeeee i'm so excited