Final Truth

Chapter 62: You Can't Save Me

Cassia's point of view:

Red eyes bore into me.

Red eyes that don't belong on his face.

Red eyes that reflect madness and animalistic intentions as their wearer holds my friend far too tightly.

"Peter..." I begin, forcing my voice to betray no fear as I try to make it soothing and gentle. "We're here to help you; no one needs to get hurt. Please, just let her go."

But he continues to keep Susan in his clutches, and I find myself terrified by his unpredictability. This is not my friend; this is someone damaged, broken, rebuilt entirely into a stranger, and I'm left with few options to handle the situation.

"Peter, please, listen to me. We want to help," I try again, tone riding a thin line between calm and desperate.

"The time for help passed a long time ago," he muses indifferently, and Susan makes a strangled sort of cry muffled by his hand over her mouth. "You can't save me."

"I can," I push. "I know you better than you now know yourself. I know what they've done to you. Please, just let me try."

But he only smirks, resting his chin atop Susan's head in a sick sort of hug while he slightly sways back and forth, almost as if they were slow dancing.

She tries to fight against him, squirming and thrashing now in an attempt to shake him off, and I find myself rushing forward to help her before Peter outright growls and moves his hand from her mouth to her throat.

"Don't," He warns, squeezing her around her neck for a moment to show me that he means it.

"Please, she hasn't done anything," I plead, terrified of losing someone else. "This isn't you, this was never you! Come back to us!"

"Has it ever occurred to you..." He trails off, still clutching at Susan's throat, "that I don't care? I've had my life stripped away and everyone I thought that cared has turned against me. If you were ever my friend, you never would've let Henley bring me here in the first place. If Julia ever loved me, she wouldn't have been the one to destroy me."

"Julia? What are you talking about?" I ask.

He drops his hand from Susan's neck and returns it to cover her mouth, evidently deciding that I'm not going to come closer as he begins to elaborate.

"Picture the one you love...yes, him, that boy, I see him in your eyes...picture a situation where your health and well being depends on his actions, your life or your death directly falls on his shoulders as you trust him to do what's best for the both of you, only to have him put himself first. To fight back against his oppressors without thinking of the repercussions it will have on you, to bring upon you every torment possible whether he meant to or not. To have him fail you, to have him be the catalyst for people to rip your mind apart and then build you back into a monster. That's what Julia did to me."

And I'm shaking my head the entire time because none of it's true, because he believes in a lie, because the old part of himself truly is dead if he can say such things.

"I didn't expect you to understand," he says in a tone that hides disappointment. "How could you? How could either one of you? You weren't here to stop it."

"We're here now," I urge. "And I promise...you don't want to do this. Just let her go. Keep talking to me."

I'm pleading, begging with everything in me like never before. I sound weak and desperate, but at this point I'd sooner drop to his feet and beg for mercy than let him go through with this. Anything to get that look of terror off of Susan's face, and anything to get that look of bloodlust out of his eyes.