"All the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as water. And that's the tragedy of living."
T.L. Martin, Dancing in the Dark
FOURTY TWO
IT FELT ODDLY SENTIMENTAL to say my last words to Banshee. He truly had the gift of metamorphosis, because he had somehow been able to slither under my skin, into my veins and weave his way into my every thought in a matter of days. It had completely blindsided me, so much so that I wondered if it were even real. Thinking about it proved futile. It didn't smooth any wrinkles in my brain, it just made them into spirals, thoughts turning in and in and in on themselves forever.
It was the sole reason why I didn't say a word of protest when Banshee took the several steps he needed to reach me, grabbed my hand between his calloused fingertips and whispered—"Don't be frightened."
Now that I knew his motives, my fear had begun to thaw into something softer, something a little less maniacal. "I'm not." I confessed. "Not anymore."
And then he smiled, a small boyish smile that I had never had the dismay of seeing. His hair had fallen into his eyes, shielding the intensity of his gaze. Something had changed in the way he looked at me. It wasn't inherently romantic, just grazing the surface of affection.
The beast was finally going to be put to rest.
"It's a little anti-climactic, don't you think?"
"What is?" I muttered, my hand still in his. I felt a little unwise, grateful that the security cameras couldn't witness the humanity of this moment.
"Dying."
I blanched. "Oh."
"A small part of me expected more. I had thought my departure would be a little more exciting." He shook his head as though he was disappointed at his own naivety. "But that's the thing about death, isn't it? It's quiet. No crowds. No sirens. No commotion. No ones speaking a new language of crisis. It's just you."
"Sounds lonely."
"It is. Death is the loneliest act of all."
"Yours is." I reminded him, pulling my hand out of his grasp and taking a cautious step back. It was a little comical but in that moment, I didn't want his misfortune to slip through his touch and into me. "You died ten years ago."
I watched as he flexed his empty hand, shoving it into the pocket of his orange scrubs. He mulled over my words for a moment, before retreating back to the centre table. The distance was welcoming.
He leaned against it, and looked up at the bare ceiling. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
His every movement was so deliberate, I could watch him for hours. "If a man dies and no one knew he was alive, did he ever live?"
"Oh but Aria, you knew." He muttered, eyes readjusting to focus on mine. There it was again. The abrupt effect of his careless gaze. "You know me."
"The families of your victims know you too." I hissed.
His smile was mild in the face of my ardour. "But you cared."
I didn't respond because even if it were true, what did it matter when I wanted him to die? The darkness that surrounded him was shrouding any sympathy I could feel for him. After all, he felt no remorse. Time and time again, he told me with actions and words that he was a monster. If he lived, he would only feed off the fear of others, or detach himself from his guilt until he could no longer feel again.
I frowned. I wanted him to feel.
When he realised I was no longer going to respond to him, he sagged against the table. It creaked under the weight of all the emotions he had suppressed in his lifetime.
Finally, in defeat, he asked. "Will you miss me?"
It was so small, I barely heard it.
My eyes widened at the tenderness of his question. Did he actually care? Or was this just another ploy to test me? I thought about it for a moment, careful to not show him how much his question had shocked me.
I sighed. I waited for my heart to soften. I waited for my forgiveness to extend to him. I waited for noise from within.
A whisper?
A breath?
A sigh?
In the end, there was nothing.
"No." I muttered back.
The silence afterwards was heavy, and filled with grief.
Banshee's jaw ticked and tightened at my confession, and his eyes screwed shut. I had never truly been able to read him but even a blind man would know that whatever hope that had sparked within him had dwindled into darkness. Before my very eyes, Banshee had become a shell of a man. It annoyed me. A mastermind of mixed signals and juxtapositions. I wanted to ask 'What did you want me to say?' but I knew I didn't care for the answer.
Minutes ago, he had told me that the empathetic look in my eyes irked him. Now, it seemed he had come to realise that my indifference towards him was more troubling.
It was pity that made me question.
"Do you think we might meet again?" I asked.
His head snapped up and I was rewarded with a raised brow and the crooked upturn of his mouth. His ardent eyes shifted in surprise.
My fingers wrung behind me, pressed against the metal doors that led to my exit. Was it reasonable to pity demons? I didn't know but I couldn't stand the desolation on his face so I gave in. "Maybe under better circumstances?"
At that, Banshee tilted his head to the side, studying me. Then he chuckled as though knowing my question was merely pretence. "Impossible. I'm going to burn in Hell for infinity."
"Infinity?"
He nodded.
"Until the end of time and more. Until there is nothing and everything. Until existence has no meaning. I will keep burning forever." He said, looking down at his worn shoes. He sounded solemn. "It's what I deserve."
I had no frame of reference for what infinity looked like. I would never understand it because our perception of time always has a beginning and end. The concept of a never-ending cycle penetrates all forms of terror. It was nauseating to think of.
Did Banshee deserve that? Did anyone? I tried to envision the pain of infinite suffering. It defied imagination, seduced it and defeated it.
I shook my head.
"You said you didn't believe in Hell."
At that, he grinned. One that was grand in both width and menace. "I'm a mad man, Aria. I have no concrete thought."
"You're not mad." I tucked a stray braid back into the bun I had tied before I slept. "You're evil. There's a difference."
The old Aria would have quivered from the truth but there was a certain form of helplessness that I felt that made me feel untouchable. Every single person in my life had wrestled into my heart, stomped on my heart and left me for dead.
My fear of Banshee had crumbled to ashes.
"You once told me that you trusted me." He muttered, almost to himself. "It was the first time in my life that someone had said that to me. When I went back to my cell, I had thought about it for so long that I believed I hated you for it." Those beautifully tragic eyes drifted up to mine. "But I guess I was wrong."
My heart quickened a little. I was unable to tear my gaze from his ardent eyes.
"I'm grateful for it." He confessed. "I needed it."
I realised then that this was the closest he had ever been to sounding human.
"Thank you." He whispered.
It was my turn to look away because this was too much. Rather than respond, I decided to distance myself from his affection and play at his own game. "Did you really spare Frank?"
He noticed exactly what I was doing.
"Did I spare Frank?" Banshee's temper flashed through his face at my change of subject. "I haven't lied to you, Aria." He scrubbed a hand across his face in frustration. "You don't need to change the subject because of some false sense of righteousness. I'm dying today, the least you can do is talk to me like I'm a normal man."
My words faltered at my lips. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologise." He said quickly, as if it were a revolting thing to do.
When I looked back at him, he was watching me. There was a shadow in his gaze, a look that stunned me momentarily. Something fleeting. Something that looked similar to regret. Something that resembled pain.
"So this is it." I muttered, feeling relief to be freed from him.
"I guess it is." He chuckled. "It was fun, no?"
"Fun? Nicholas, my life has been completely destroyed." Of course it was fun for him. He had nothing to look back on and nothing to look forward to. To society, he was completely useless.
He shook his head. "You're alive, Aria. Cherish that."
"So you do know the value of life." I scoffed.
Banshee paused, letting my words pass through him. Then he shrugged, deciding to be honest. "Of course, but it doesn't matter to me. To you, it seems to carry all the weight in the world."
I stayed silent. It was true. I wanted to love despite all the odds stacked against me. I had no solution to saving my own life or the life of Frank's. My life was in the hands of someone who wanted me dead. Hope was a dwindling thing. Yet, it was there.
He broke the silence with no remorse.
"Do you really believe you're innocent?"
My eyes widened. "What are you saying?"
"Do you think you deserve to live?"
It was like he read my mind. My eyes were open to him. I thought about his question for a moment. I had taken the life of my mother and Diana had told me I had killed my father. What made me worthy of redemption?
I sighed, desolate. "Maybe."
"Did you really do it?"
"What?"
"Murder them."
I physically recoiled as though his words were living things. Since the day of my heinous actions, I found it difficult to talk about it — avoiding therapy and seeking to repress my traumatic feelings. Today, though, it was me and a dying man. No shame lived here.
I took a deep breath to steady my beating heart.
Banshee narrowed his eyes at me, cheeks hollowing as he pursed his lips. I knew he was reading my every action like a book. He muttered, several pitches lower. "Do you remember how it felt?"
"For my mom. Yes."
I felt the tears before they rolled down my cheeks. I didn't want to be like him. I didn't want to be a murderer. I didn't want to talk about this. My emotions were ragged and disoriented as were my memories. Defensive as ever, I spoke. "She was dying."
"So you didn't kill her, you saved her?"
My breath faltered. "Nicholas..."
"An angel of mercy."
I looked up immediately and noticed him smiling. This time, there was nothing malicious hidden in his lips. It felt strangely comforting.
He took a step closer to me, his cuffed hands gestured towards the space between us. "You never told me who the other was."
"My dad..."
"Oh."
"I don't remember it. Diana told me."
"You trust her?"
"Yes-!" I froze. The words spilled out of me as if it were instinctive. I couldn't help my heart. It wasn't easy to switch off the love you've had for someone in a second, even if they set you alight and left you for dead. It was abusive. It was toxic. I shook my head. "No. I shouldn't. She brought me here."
Banshee said nothing in response to that. I knew that he knew this information already. Before I could protest, he took another step. "Aria." He walked up to me. "You're nothing like me."
His words felt like sand on sand.
I ignored them. "How's it going to be?"
"Electric chair."
I gasped. "Isn't that illegal?"
He rose a brow as though I were stupid. Of course no one gave a shit how he died. His life, to them, was akin to a stain on the road.
"When?" I asked, instead.
"When this is over."
"And you really aren't scared?" I whispered, terrified at the thought of death.
"No." He smiled. "Are you scared for me?"
"No." I shook my head.
We stared at each other for a moment.
It felt like the end of the greatest, saddest show about the most miserable and hopeless people. The two of us, so different, yet so alike.
"I've never known another person closely. In all my life, you've been the only person I've felt." He tapped his orange scrubs just below his breast pocket. "Here."
I let his words sink in and felt the weight of something dreadful sit on my chest, suffocating me. If Banshee saw something in me, surely I was a monster too like him. Was that really true?
No! I felt remorse and guilt. I didn't wish to continue taking lives. Maybe we were alike, but I wasn't a monster because I felt things. Now, he says he felt me. The simple fact that he could feel was eye-opening because it told a simple story.
Although he had done heinous things in the course of his life, the man standing before me wasn't a monster. What he was was much worse.
He could feel.
I gasped.
"Nicholas." I whispered. "You feel."
It was as though he knew something had slipped in his gaze because when he opened his eyes again, there was nothing within them. It remained flat and dark.
He didn't say anything, as though knowing that the path I was about to take him on was not going to be an easy one. Talk to me like I'm a normal man — okay Nicholas, I will, but only because you are a normal man.
I held his gaze.
"Whenever you're cruel, I see you as Banshee. The image of everything evil within you. The monster in the fairytales, with every sin you've ever committed dangling around you like a noose." I muttered, taking a bold step forward in his direction. "But sometimes, very rare moments, you become Nicholas, and you remind me that you are in fact human."
He stiffened.
"You said you haven't lied to me today but that in itself is a lie." Banshee seemed to hold his breath, but I was the one who couldn't breathe. "You said you're a monster."
"Aria..." He whispered, his eyes a vision of torment. Whatever barrier that held back his emotions was cracking and I could see the way in which they overwhelmed him. It was both troubling and satisfying to see him come to terms with it.
'He would be blinded and gagged by all the guilt and anger that he had suppressed for decades. He would choke — and then he would beat himself up for thinking about it.'
I ignored his wary expression.
"It would only be easier on you if you were the monster you claim to be, but that's just another excuse." I shook my head. "You're a man and you have a heart that works. You feel things. Yet, you made the decision to do the revolting things you did. Everything you did, is on you. It was your fault. You have no one to blame. You killed those people. You, the man. Not Banshee, the monster. Because Banshee doesn't exist."
I pointed a finger at him.
"But you, Nicholas are real, and you're human."
Even if his eyes held a form of purgatory that I had never seen before, I knew this was what he needed to hear.
"You're about to die, Nicholas." Gingerly, I lifted a hand to push a lock of hair away from his eyes so I could see the full effect of my words.
He sucked in a breath.
"Take some fucking responsibility." I breathed, in finality.
Once the words fled my lips, I heard a knock from the door behind me and nearly jumped out of my skin. Hank's voices pierced through our bubble. "Thirty seconds."
We had been so consumed with each other that I had forgotten my predicament. The agony I felt earlier slowly made its way down my spine once again, situating itself in a place that made my heart rate speed up and my stomach cramp.
Banshee, on the other hand, was frozen in a special kind of Hell. The kind that I believed was best suited for a man who didn't fear the Devil. The kind I knew he didn't want to embrace. The kind that he was wholly unprepared for. The kind that he had never truly accepted.
The kind where you felt everything all at once.
I saw when the realisation of my words dawned in his hardened eyes, in the way he breathed, in the way he stood. Everything about him was screaming in suffering but there was not a single sound.
In that moment, my untouchable man was a vision of weakness.
I wanted to smile at my small victory, but it didn't feel good. It just felt.
In a distance, I could hear the lock of the door and knew this was the final goodbye. So, I did the unexpected and leaned up on my tippy-toes, reached forward and kissed him on the cheek.
"This is the hell you deserve." My voice was breathless. "Goodbye."
And when he didn't respond, I didn't even care.
AN: happy new year (?)