((Hel Fury continued From my heart will be blacker than your eyes when i'm through with you))

He was still breathing.

Abe and Hel had been watching him in shifts for hours. There was romantic glamour in declaring they'd never leave his side, but they all had to sleep sometime. Abe took shifts with them watching over him. He'd been up a time or two since they got here.

Hel didn't want to think about what he'd said.

There wasn't much they were good for when it came to medicine. Their dad had told stories every now and then, tried to show them a couple things. Hel'd paid attention but in the way you pay attention to someone because you're interested in them, not what they're doing. They couldn't tell you what to do about blood loss any more than they could explain how to safely mount a hard drive, or dish out Civil War trivia. Right about now was probably the time they were supposed to think something like oh, if I ever make it back home I promise i'll listen better or something, and there could be some truth to that. Couldn't do anything about that now though. Hel did the few things they knew how to manage; tore a sleeve off one of their shirts and turned it into a compress for his forehead. Checked his breathing and his pulse every now and again. Looked over his bandages to make sure the bleeding hadn't started again. Sang.

Baby, you're the highlight of my lowlife,
Take a shitty day and make it alright, yeah, alright~

They sang a little something for him off and on each shift. Whatever came to mind that second, fragments mostly but he wouldn't mind. It was a way of saying they were still here that didn't ask anything from him. He'd dropped into sleep hours ago and hadn't stirred since, so maybe it helped him rest. If he was still listening, maybe it would bring him home. When he moved or made a noise in his sleep, Hel would get real still. They'd watch his lidded eyes, and when they didn't open they'd get closer to him. Lay a hand on his chest and lean in to whisper "Axe, can you hear me?"

He hadn't said anything yet, but he was still breathing.

((Axel wasn’t getting any better.))

Sure, there hadn’t been like, any reason to think Axel would get better, but, c’mon man, it was Axel, if you had to rate the top five most indestructible motherfuckers in their class he’d definitely be on there! He obviously wasn’t a brick shithouse like the Carter boys, but he was scrappy, y’know? Like, no matter how many times you knocked him down, he’d just hop back up and wipe the blood off his face and look real cool until he opened his mouth and said some real dumbass shit.

That’s what Abe had always thought about him, at least, but, well. He’d gotten knocked down, and he wasn’t getting back up again, hoss. He shoulda fucking shot Lorenzo when he had the chance. It was hard to tell how much damage the bastard had actually done - it’s not like Axel would’ve been miraculously okay if they’d been able to patch up his hand right away, like, that was a lot of blood they weren’t gonna be able to get back into his body. But. But, but, but. Lorenzo hadn’t fuckin’ helped matters, had he? Starting shit over, what, literally nothing? Maybe he was starting to understand what’d kept Axel going, those sludge-brained days after Andy’d died.

Hey, he just thought of something funny that definitely wasn’t a desperate attempt to distract himself from Axel’s, y’know, doing what he was doing! Andy had a lotta weird baggage about Forrest, and he’d died, in a forest, from a single forest unit, that is to say, a tree branch through the eye, and boy wasn’t that an interesting coincidence? Haha that was so unfunny that he felt his soul shriveling by one entire soul unit, that is to say, times he’d thought to himself ‘wow Abe you’re kind of a shitbag, huh’?

Speaking of weird baggage.

Maybe the thing that scared Abe the most about this whole… everything… was that kiss. Like, Axel fuckin’ adored Hel, anyone who spent five seconds around the two of ‘em could see it and Abe’d spent the better part of six days exclusively hanging out with them, for a given value of hanging out, but like, he’d known them in the Before Times so that didn’t count for much he guessed, but. The point was. Axel wasn’t the sorta dude to consciously cheat on them, even if it was only a kiss.

He hadn’t even said anything. Not before, not after. Just a kiss, then boom, back to sleep, though sleep was a pretty kind word for it.

Abe wondered if Axel had been dreaming about him. Maybe that’s all it was, a dream, just the sorta regular everyday dream you had when you’d bled out like half your blood and you only woke up for thirty-second intervals, so he totally forgot that he was dating Hel, which was a normal thing to forget, and definitely not indicative of major brain death damage.

Axel’d tasted like copper. Abe’d been too surprised to push him away at first, but, well, that kiss had lasted a pretty long time, so at some point in there he’d made the conscious decision to let it happen, so maybe that made him a real piece of shit, enjoying a kiss from his Probably Literally Dying bro while Hel slept like five feet away, thinking of what could’ve been, thinking of all the time between the present and the back of Axel’s truck, under the stars, and maybe it just wasn’t meant to be, Hel was like 10x a better person than Abe was, anyway, but even when you disregarded that, there could’ve been something to fill out that space, anything was better than months of silence, because even though they didn’t know they were going to literally the end of their lives back then, their lives together were still ending, y’know, and if Abe had ended the school year without talking to Axel, maybe they never would’ve talked again, and that’d be pretty fucking sad, right?

He wished that they could’ve spent more time together, back then. He wished that they had more time together, now, and maybe Axel’d hang in there for a while longer, but he wasn’t gonna get better, because if he was ever gonna get better it already would’ve happened, so this was really just an extended wake, right?

It occurred to Abe that maybe he should've been thinking of Forrest more, but. Well, he hadn't had any reason to worry about his girlfriend, right, except for the broken arm and like everything about her, but, she hadn't been on the announcements, so she'd continue not being on there forever, and Axel was right there in front of him, so forgive him for missing the Forrest for the lumberjacks? Okay, that was a very bad very top-tier layered joke, you see, Axel's name was kind of like Axe, and axes cut down trees, and so on, it was really funny, right, and also Axel was dying. He was dying.

Abe decided he wouldn’t try to rob Hel when it was finally time to skedaddle. He owed them that much, after they’d shared this vigil. It said a lot about him that it’d actually been a decision, huh?

“How’s he looking, boss,” he asked for the sake of breaking the silence, already knowing the answer.

And you know that accidents can happen, it's okay, we all fall off the wagon sometimes~

They thought the sound of their voice hitting songs they'd sung together might bring him back. That didn't mean they were naive enough to believe he was going to be okay though. Axe wasn't in great shape before, they were going to say before they met up but who were they kidding? He wasn't in great shape when they left DC. It'd be kinda tough to say he was in great shape before they left home. Way he was, he was always nursing some kind of injury. It'd been what, three or four weeks since they'd broke his nose? That was barely healed. Who could say what other trouble he'd gotten into along the way? Axel didn't complain when he was hurt and he didn't swap the stories with Hel. There were plenty of people he'd been with who'd have their pants halfway off before he finished describing the first punch, but they weren't one of them. Hearing about his fights just worried them. So how'd he handle that worry? Well they couldn't worry if he didn't say anything, could they?

You can lead him to the ambulance, but you cannot make him live~

He wasn't that slick. The way he got fucked up was hard to hide and half the time or more Andy was right there somewhere. There wasn't much secret between them and Andy, even when it was probably in their best interests. If Axe hadn't crawled through their window that night he'd have been the first to know about Kara, and he was the first to know about Axe despite Hel being pretty sure Andy might show up at his house and drag him on to the lawn for another beating. It was crazy how much they loved and feared each other at the same time, or maybe that was some poetic bullshit, they couldn't say for sure that Axe feared anything about Andy. Andy was afraid of him though, at least when it came to hooking up with anyone he halfway cared about. Hel and Andy had had, mmm, they wanted to call them conversations. Keep the bad emotions out of it. They were arguments though, in person, over the phone, in text, every place they could have it out they did. Axel didn't do commitment. If Hel expected anything different from him they were asking to get hurt, and if he hurt them Andy was gonna have to kill him. They knew the whole deal. That's probably why they held back the first time they hooked up. Hel wanted so, so bad for it to be real. It was easy to believe until he fell asleep. The lyrics didn't leave their lips then or now but they added now: all alone their blood ran thin and doubt came. Doubt came in. They didn't text Andy that night. They didn't bring it up with Axel the next morning. They weren't even there when he woke up. Better to cut it off there right? They could let go. No one needed to get hurt.

Well how could I not have guessed, she would fall in love with the first boy she kissed in a casket?~

Andy was gone now, and the bitch of it was they didn't know what he would make of this. How pathetic was that? The most important person in their life gone barely twenty-four hours, and already his voice was dimming in the back of their head. The temptation to make guesses sure was there, how proud he'd be that they stood up, how pissed he'd be at Lorenzo and maybe even more at Axel for fucking around, they could hear the tones. It would be interpretation though. They'd left him. Hel had left Andy to die alone and didn't so much as pay him the courtesy of seeing his body. They didn't deserve to know what he'd think of them anymore. Which brought them back to Axel, and what was probably a selfish desire to see him open his eyes again. He was going. They kept telling themself that. They'd been repeating it in vaguer terms almost the entire time they'd been here. All they asked for every time he sat up was that they'd get to see him one more time. A few more brief seconds of life. It wasn't so much of a bargain to ask for, was it? They added up though. Every time just one more time, over and over again until it stopped working. If nobody on a cosmic scale noticed, they could keep him alive forever like this. The vibration of his song under theirs would never fade.

I'm begging you to keep haunting me~

Abe's voice gave them a jolt. After the first couple of times they'd traded shifts, they stopped expecting him to come back. Sure he and Axe were friends, but they both had to know where this was going. Abe had other people to look out for, gods collected he probably hadn't seen Forrest at all this entire time. He had to really care about Axe to be sticking around this long. Made them feel kinda shitty about how little time they'd spent together outside of groups, there was probably some more meaningful stuff they should be laying down right now. Hel looked up at him with a weak smile and brushed Axel's hair back from his forehead. "He's looked worse."

Most of their fragments had been sung during the night. It was getting hard to speak without their voice cracking, crying all night would do that to you. Other than checking in on him they hadn't said much the last couple of hours, had to save that strength. They wanted to sing for him one more time. Just one more. Nothing out there watching them could rightfully deny them one more.

Brains were weird about sleep. Like Axel had to have an alarm set on weekdays or else he wouldn't get to school before lunch, but half the time he woke up when his alarm would have woken him anyway on the weekends, which felt like an unfair trick his body was playing on him when he'd been up until like 3 AM grinding on League or whatever. You'd think waking up with a pounding headache and that full-body, bone-deep exhaustion that came with getting like a solid three-and-a-half hours of sleep would be enough of a sign that he should probably not have gotten up, but nah. He was stuck here now, in the holy-shit-why-am-I-awake zone, at least for a few minutes. He'd fall back asleep, eventually, inevitably, and then annoyance would give way to relief. And then he'd hover in that space for a few minutes before he'd fall back down into the void for as many more hours as his body would let him.

It was like that. It was nothing like that. He didn't know. He didn't remember.

The pounding headache was there. The exhaustion, too, but a different kind of exhaustion, a familiar kind that he still couldn't nail down. He'd been dreaming. Some days when he dreamt too hard he'd be tired in the morning, like his dumbass brain saw him going into battle on horseback in his sleep and was like "hey that's a tiring thing that we did, time to be tired about it," but he always remembered those dreams. All he had was flashes, bits that didn't fit together. Darkness. The taste of copper. The voice of an angel he couldn't quite hear.

He could go back to sleep, soon. Just a few minutes more, stuck here. The relief didn't come, just yet.

Probably because he still didn't know where here was.

It was sunny, at least, that much he could tell through his screwed-shut eyelids. It was hot. It hurt, "it" here meaning "basically everything", but it was just kind of like that sometimes, so that didn't really fill in any pieces. He felt weirdly... light, if that was the word for it. Hollow, maybe. Like the wind might blow him away, if it wanted to. And he didn't know what that meant, either, but it was probably fine.

He felt something touch his forehead, and he let his eyelids crack open, just a bit.

Too bright. A face, hovering above him. He knew the face.

The corners of his mouth twitched upward. He thought to say something, but it was nice enough to just look at them, for the moment. His mouth felt so dry, anyway. It could wait.

Abe nodded to Hel, smiled a bit, more out of appreciation of the, like, solidarity between them than the joke itself, they both knew what was up, and it fucking sucked, and they were just gonna lie back and forth to make each other feel better until Axel finally died. God, ‘finally’, like he almost wanted it to happen now, like he’d already given up, because yeah, he’d already given up, and the two clowns in the bird-shit-room were probably the worst hospice providers around, and all he could really hope was that Axel wasn’t like locked in excruciating pain or anything, lingering on past his prime with no hope or joy,

and oh look Axel’s eyes were open. He should’ve been happier about that.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” he said casually, like a liar, like Axel was waking up on the couch at two in the afternoon after a weed night, like the sun was streaming in through the windows and framing his sleepy face nicely and Abe was dressed with a cup of coffee in his hand so he got to act all superior even though he’d only woken up thirty minutes ago.

How long would this patch of consciousness last? Would this be the last time? Was he even still there? Hel got first dibs at his last conversations, whatever the case.

There was a saying Hel thought about a lot when they were running games. They weren't sure where it originally came from, but in their head they'd picked it up from Austin Walker, or maybe Jack de Quidt talking about how Austin ran tables. The exact words weren't coming to them any clearer, there were years filled with hundreds of hours of content between when they'd heard them and now. It went something like this though: Failure doesn't always mean fucking up what you were trying to do. Sometimes failure is the horrified realization when you get exactly what you thought you wanted and it blew up in your face.

Hel hadn't noticed Axel was awake until Abe spoke. He was so still. Without their hand to his chest they couldn't swear to you that his heart was still beating. A dozen of these moments of consciousness could have came and passed while they held him and they never would have known unless their eyes were on him. How many times had they bowed their head to try and stop the tears only for him to be staring at them past their closed eyes? They had begged anything that would listen to grant them one more moment with him and thought they were clever enough to cheat whatever answered. One more. Just one more. As if there was not a record of their intent written into the underpinnings of every request. That if there was anything with the power to wash him up on their shore again it could not hear the way they schemed against it. Hel swore with their fingers crossed behind their backs like a toddler insisting they'd had no snack and were just as shocked when the powers that be noticed the crumbs around their mouth. Yet it worked. Their wish was granted.

He was trying. They could tell he was trying so goddamn hard to look them in the eye and smile, just like they could tell it was putting him in a lot of pain. Not just the smiling. Existing. He'd been dragged back into this shitty fucking place where his body was collapsing on him for one more smile, just like they'd asked, and they had no idea how many others he'd suffered through when they weren't looking. Over and over they begged to see him. They forced him to come back here and feel this agony all over again.

But he smiled.

The wonderful fucking idiot smiled.

It tore Hel apart.

They tried to return the gesture, their fingers still running through his hair in that same soft pattern. No, not the same. They were more apprehensive now. Every stroke came a little slower, a little more distant, like the slightest pressure at their fingertips could shatter his skull to pieces. "Hey tiger. Is there, is there anything you need?"

Hel had hurt him so badly. There were three things left that they could do. The first was to listen, to do anything he wanted. All that cut through the haze mattered, they'd make it happen somehow. The second was to prepare a new plea. One for him, not for them, that would bring him the peace he deserved. More than fragment and pure of their clumsy attempts to rig fate through grief. Like so many thoughts in the last few hours it immediately brought them to a song. Axe wasn't the kind of guy who cried at songs, that was more their job, but there was this one that got him every single time they hit the bridge.

It may feel like God went north
And left you to be
But all you need to know
Is you have everything you need
It's just a blink of an eye
Until the next time we meet
I'll hold you 'til the end
I'll hold you 'til you're free~

and they had to bite their lip to keep from belting the chorus that should have been their prayer for him hours ago

if you won't save him, please just take him away~

because he was awake, and he deserved more than their tears for all they'd put him through. Their last song had to do more than correct Hel's sins against gods who only listened to fuck them in the ass.

Hey, another face he knew. Axel squinted through the sunshine at Abe, that Abe, the one he hadn't talked to in months, maybe over a year, now, the one he'd fucked things up with forever because he couldn't keep his lips off his, because he'd taken a stupid chance that was never going to work out, because he'd maybe been in love or something. That Abe. He looked different and also exactly the same. He wanted to wave nonchalantly or something, because if he spoke he might break whatever spell was at work, but he couldn't move his arms. He didn't feel like thinking about that too much.

"Yo."

Abe didn't blow away with the wind. That was something.

Hel's voice turned his eyes back. And it sounded familiar, which, of course it did, he knew Hel's voice better than he knew anyone's but his own, but familiar in some other way, like something pushed into a corner in his brain he couldn't quite dig out. And he didn't feel like thinking about that too much, either. It was just Hel. They were just themselves, always.

He glanced around, didn't see anyone else. Andy'd round out the group pretty well, if he could stop him and Abe from killing each other, which like, in retrospect, was the other thing that had gone wrong in the whole Abe scenario? Like did he have to worry about Andy being mad about this now? It had been a year and all, and Andy had his own girlfriend, so it could maybe be fine now, and they could all, like, mutually tolerate each other. At least.

He'd wanted to do this big summer road trip, Deadbeats only. Hadn't really made the plans cause doing stuff before the last fucking second was for losers and also cause wherever Hel wanted to go he'd always follow. Just "get in my truck and point me where to go", y'know? That sort of vibe. Abe could come too, maybe. Probably not? But maybe. It'd be nice.

One more big party, until... whatever came next. Didn't think about it too much. The future would be whatever it'd be.

"Nah," he said, cause Hel'd asked a question, and he'd left them hanging for a solid ten seconds there. "Cigarette, maybe." Not like he wasn't craving a smoke half the time, but it felt worse than usual. Maybe just because his head hurt so bad. Would be good to take the edge off.

There were some other things that would've been good to have. Some painkillers, some water, some breakfast, but any of those things would make Hel get up and get them, and if he was gonna fall back asleep in a minute anyway he wanted to do it with them still stroking his hair. It felt right. Peaceful, almost. Their hand felt warm on his skin.

He swore it had been real hot out a second ago.

"Where." He paused. It was a real fucking effort to get words out. "Where are we?"

This really wasn’t Abe’s scene. Not in like an ‘aw man these vibes are rancid’ type way, just. He wasn’t needed there. He didn’t need to be there. Anything he said would just distract Axel away from Hel for a few more precious moments, and that time didn’t belong to him, y’know? Maybe he wanted to steal it away anyways, hoard every little moment that was left like a fucking dragon, but, he just had to see the look on Hel’s face to know he didn’t have the right.

He didn’t need to be there. He could’ve seen the writing on the wall, slipped away during the night, gotten right along with the rest of his life without sticking around to watch one of his best friends die, but, y’know, he absolutely couldn’t have done that. Abe pretty obviously wasn’t a man with many standards, but the thought of Hel waking up alone, in the middle of the night, with no one there except a delirious Axel, that was some rough shit, y’know? You didn’t do that to someone who’d held a bastard at gunpoint for you.

And maybe he’d been a fuckin’ idiot who, even now, after coming to terms with Axel’s death like ten times by this point, maybe he was still thinking what if it wasn’t that bad, what if he just needed a good night’s sleep, what if he’s gonna smile and stand up and be okay again,’ and other nauseating shit like that, like seriously how delusional could you get, haha?

He’d started clenching his fist without noticing it, and his fingernails had been needing a bit of a trim even before he’d gotten kidnapped, so, it kinda hurt, which was good because it gave him a thing to focus on for a moment that wasn’t thinking.

Just a moment, though, ‘cause Axel turned to look at him, strained to look at him, said ‘yo’ like he was glad to see him. Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was all he’d get. Abe couldn’t look at him in the eyes anymore. His palms hurt.

And then, well, Axel had to go and fucking remind them all how far gone he was, huh? Maybe he was happier this way, not knowing that he was having the worst day of his life, but that didn’t exactly make it easier for anyone else, huh? No way to get any fucking closure when your loved one’s brain had a couple dozen dents in it, huh? Abe coulda left and Axel never would’ve known the difference.

But, again. He couldn’t have left. Not this time.

He shared a glance with Hel. “Just a camping trip, bro.”

Hel and Abe were on the same page. That was something, at least. Axel didn't need to know what was going on. Take away the obvious strain it was putting on him just to talk and the situation was almost a blessing. Not many people were gonna go out here quietly with friends at their sides and no memory of the hell they'd been through. Next to that the pain might not be so bad. Axel knew how to handle pain. He was practically an addict for it, they'd been through all this already.

The questions probably weren't gonna stop though, not until he closed his eyes again. He was confused, looking for direction. If they stayed too vague there was a chance he'd trigger something. "Take it easy babe," they whispered, "you had a wild night." Hel couldn't find it in them to lie as easily as Abe had. To be honest they couldn't remember the last time, if any time, they'd straight up lied to Axel's face. Plenty of omission, sure, but that didn't take anything but their natural instinct to clam up. They weren't going to make the last things they said to him some bullshit just to make him go away. They could tell a certain kind of truth and give him the purpose he needed. "We're headed home though. Should be there by the time you wake up, if you wanna sleep it off. I've gotta take care of some stuff though, so I'm gonna be a little late. Could you do something for me?"

When five becomes four, and four becomes one~

Hel tried to hold the smile, but even with it tears were starting to form in their eyes. "When you see Andy just, just let him know not to worry about me and...and I'll catch up with y'all as soon as I can."

Wild night. Yeah. Would have to be, huh?

Axel kept on digging through his memories. Abe was still a blind spot, Abe had popped back into his life with their relationship apparently fully reformed like whatever Greek god it was that had popped out of Zeus's head and that was just kinda gonna have to be that. Hel, though. Hel had been a constant as far back in his life as he cared to think about, by his side for the best moments and the worst. Hand held in hand even when that wasn't allowed to mean anything. He could track that, figure out where the gap was. Right? Like, camping? How the fuck had they landed on camping?

He couldn't, though. There was too much missing. Not in the same way as there was with Abe, cause the vibe was there when the memories were lost, he knew, without needing his brain to rustle up any evidence, that Hel had been there all along. Even when the gaps in things he could say for certain were weeks or months long. He knew the sun was hot and the sky was blue and he'd loved Hel as long as he could remember and maybe he should be concerned about everything he was missing but hey, he was tired, he had a headache, he was trying to keep grains of sand from falling through his fingers when the ocean was right there in front of him. Figuring shit out first thing in the morning wasn't exactly one of his strong points, anyway. Fuck, was it anyone's?

Camping. They were camping. They were going home. God, he hoped he hadn't driven. This would be a killer headache to try to navigate his truck through. Wait, Hel said he could sleep it off, so they hadn't taken his car, probably. That was good. There was something kinda magic, in a lame way, about falling asleep somewhere and waking up at home. Reminded of things buried deep. Like he could see his parents' faces, if he leaned in far enough. But, y'know, he probably shouldn't? Weird time to be getting all sentimental.

He shivered. Maybe a blanket, if he ended up asking for something after all. Or just his jacket. Always seemed like it was warm enough for anything.

"'Course, babe," he said, and his voice sounded wrong, like it was being dragged across his tongue, or maybe it was his hearing that was wrong, or maybe just something inside his head, hey, whatever, sometimes mornings were like that. Sometimes mornings were wrong. It was fine.

"Shoulda come with us. Woulda been nice. Four of us. I think."

Or maybe Andy'd gone home early. That felt more right. He didn't know why.

Hel's eyes looked wet.

"Kitten," he frowned, and it hurt in a few different ways, "you okay?"

Axel was going home. Goddammit, did Hel have to phrase it like that? Even with Abe’s broken nose, he had a lot of practice at keeping a straight face and also being out of touch with his emotions, so hopefully Axel wouldn’t realize anything was up, ‘cause he was feeling a little burning sadness at the corner of his eyes? Abe couldn’t really blame Hel for trying to get an inch of closure, even if they had to lay it on real thick in the context of their lie, but.

Jesus. Literal Jesus, this time. If Heaven or whatever was real, and if Abe fucked up and wound up there and found out that they hadn’t laid out the whole goddamn VIP treatment for his boy (and also Hel and Andy he supposed) he was going to have blasphemous words with something.

See, there he was, redirecting his restless bad emotions at some vague metaphysical bullshit, ‘cause he still had the luxury of doing that, because he still had his brain? The irony of the whole thing was, now that he thought about it, Axel would’ve fucking despised the idea of just fading away, not knowing what the fuck was going on, not being able to fight, not having anything he could punch the shit out of. Luckily for absolutely everyone he was too far gone to realize how far gone he was, luckily, for, everyone.

His voice was getting weaker and it had started off pretty bad.

“Everything’s fine, it’s just, me and Andy, y’know how it is, ruined the mood a little, it’s alright, you don’t gotta worry,” Abe said, ruining the mood a little. He didn’t know why he spoke up - the question had been pretty clearly directed at Hel, and now wasn’t the time to remind him of stupid drama that didn’t matter anymore, because everyone was dead, but. He just wanted to say something more to Axel, no matter how inane it was. Anything he said could be his last words to him, anything Axel said could easily be his last words, too, and Abe deserved a share of them, right, obviously not as much as Hel, but, he was here too, right?

He was paying real close attention to Axel’s face, trying to soak in every moment before it was over, but, like, did he really want to remember this? This wasn’t the Axel he’d loved, he didn’t want his sickly face living in his head along with Beryl and Andy, but, this was important too, because his life was ending way too fucking soon, and Abe couldn’t just pretend that he hadn’t been there for the end of it.

When Abe got back home, after everything, after he went through all his fucking facebook and snapchat memories and his discord logs that had been pretty fucking sparse for the past months, after he’d exhausted every memory of normalcy the two of them had shared, would he ever be so desperate to see Axel’s face again, like, a new image of Axel’s face, would he ever look up the camera footage?

He couldn’t think about that any longer. Physically couldn’t, because if he did, well, he’d remember that there were cameras everywhere, and that somewhere in the world, there were bastards laughing their asses off at this. Three stupid teenagers in a room, thinking they were alone, thinking they were the whole world, like they were all each other had, but they were so exposed, every split-second flash of pain of their faces would live on for as long as the internet, so, probably as fucking long as humanity had left, and he couldn’t think about that any longer, ‘cause maybe the implications sucked even more than his current status, which was already pretty bad?

Axel. This was about Axel. No more distractions, no more averting his eyes.

They almost broke. The way his face twisted was part worry, part pain, and all their fault. Hel kept dragging this out and it had to be torture for him but that froze them up harder. If they opened their mouth to explain now they knew there wouldn't be words. Any shift in their expression and the tears would come. He'd know something was wrong if they said nothing though. Gods. They couldn't do this much right by him, not even this much, and thinking like that wasn't helping. It pushed them closer to the edge but they had no more control over their thoughts than the way their eyes watered up and both were about to come spilling out whether they wanted them or not until Abe pulled Axel's gaze away. Bought them some time. The two of them, they didn't have a plan. All through the night they'd barely spoke, the mood wasn't there for it. He was covering like a pro though. Fifteen seconds or so and they got their shit together. Their hand dug a little deeper in Axel's hair, and they forced out a real smile. "Abe's right, you got nothing to worry about tiger. We'll take it from here, just relax for me." Hel leaned over him and pressed their forehead to his. Let out a sigh. Kissed him slow. Took a deep breath.

They sang.

"If you get there before I do," It took force, half-sung and half-spoken.

"Don't give up on me." Too firm and the song would shatter. Too soft and they would.

"I'll meet you when my chores are through," steady on one line to the next, with rhythm of the woods helping them keep some kinda tempo.

"I don't know how long I'll be. But I'm not gonna let you down," They were so many promises they didn't know they could keep deep now, so what was another?

"Darling wait and see. And between now and then," The first sob came, " 'til I see you again." and it brought a tremble to their voice they couldn't shake.

"I'll be loving you." It could have been better.

"Love." He deserved better.

"Me." This was all they had.

They broke.

Axel’s eyes flicked back over to Abe.

He laughed.

It hurt, yeah, he expected that, he’d caught a weird throbbing in his side when he’d breathed too hard a moment ago and the pulsing in his skull seemed like it’d take any excuse to get worse, but. It felt good, too. There was this weird tension in the air, like a weighted blanket pressing on his chest, and probably it wasn’t a big deal, probably Andy and Abe had some dustup he wasn’t remembering, but still. If he could cut through the stillness just a bit. That was his job, right? Being the dumb asshole who said dumb asshole things. Made everyone else laugh. Hard to be clever right now, but hey. He’d cut himself a break.

“Same ol’ shit, huh,” he mumbled, he was smiling, still. It’d be kinda optimistic to go “don’t worry, I can fix it” when he literally didn’t know what the problem was, but he almost said it anyway. Like, the hard part of this equation, least from his selfish point of view, was talking to Abe again. Confronting the mistakes he’d made. Apologizing. That shit was hard, and honestly he felt kinda cheated out of some serious character growth points for having forgotten how he’d done it. Still, couldn’t complain about little gifts from past-Axel. He could figure out the rest when he got home.

“S’good to see you anyway, man.”

Probably he’d said that a bunch already. Probably it didn’t mean much. The words just kinda fell out of his mouth and Abe could make fun of him for him later and Axel would punch him on the shoulder and Abe would act like he’d broken his fucking arm.

Maybe nothing ever changed.

Back to Hel. Hel was smiling. That was better, hey, maybe laughing had done something. He should probably say something else but they said to relax, and then their lips were on his, and neither of them needed anything else.

They’d always run hotter than he did, but their skin felt like it might burn him. Not in a bad way. Not in a way where he wanted their hands anywhere but where they lay. It was just a little weird. That was all.

Relax, they said.

He did.

He closed his eyes

He listened.


He almost drifted away. He would never have forgiven himself, if he had, apologized a million times the moment he woke up. He’d sang for them a million times, every opportunity he had, every excuse he could make. Every new love song he learned, hey, babe, I picked up something the other day, you wanna hear?, like he didn’t learn it just for them. They sang together, all the time, band practice or “““band practice””” or just because. And maybe that was why he’d heard them sing on their own so little. He always wanted to join in, picked up their vibe a few lines deep. They knew each other’s harmonies too well.

The vibration of his song, under theirs.

He didn’t know this song, though. Didn’t know the words. It was all for them.

He listened.


“Hey,” he whispered. It wasn’t supposed to be a whisper. Just kinda came out that way.

“Hey. It’s okay.”

They were crying. He couldn’t see, but he could hear. His eyes stung, too. He squinted under closed eyelids, forcing tears down his face.

“S’okay.”

“I got… gotta song for you.”

There was a song he’d been saving for prom. He could break it out a little early.

“Later, okay?”

He wanted to touch their face, he wanted to wipe their tears away, he wanted to kiss them again and again.


“Promise.”


Something was wrong, right? Something more than what he’d thought. He was forgetting something important.





“Love you.”








They could figure it out. They could do anything, together.

They had all the time in the world.









[B004] AXEL FONTAINE: DECEASED

Axel was happy to see him. Hell, he’d even laughed. Maybe that made everything worth it.

If Abe could trap that moment in a bottle - that sentiment, that laugh, well, the high wouldn’t last him for the rest of his life, but it’d get him through the worst of what was gonna come. But he couldn’t. Those few seconds were his, his and Axel’s, and they were over so quickly, already beginning the slow process of fading from his shitty brain. Even if he was desperate, later, trying to find this moment back at home, it wouldn’t be the same, he wouldn’t be locking eyes with Axel, an Axel that was talking to him, the him that existed with him,

and as Abe obsessed wasted his time obsessing over that, it was Hel’s turn to get his attention. The only thing left to do was try to fucking hold it together while they did their thing so their last moments with Axel weren’t soiled by him like lamely breaking down in the corner, which was kinda hard to avoid when they were singing to him, and also crying, but, like, Abe was cool and stoic so he didn’t cry, not at all, like seriously not at all, that was the truth, the repitition and denial was a symptom of how good an idea crying seemed like, because it seemed like a very good idea, but he didn’t do it, good job Abe, suppressing your emotions like that, what a champ, more like, chump, haha, any more hilarious wordplay from the peanut gallery, no? Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Hel finished. The room was so quiet that he could hear Axel, despite how faint his voice was. It felt wrong - nothing about Axel had ever been fuckin’ faint, y’know? But of course it felt wrong, nothing was ever gonna feel right again, or at least the closest thing to right they’d ever get on the island, the one precious evening when the four of them had camped out by the lake, an evening they should’ve savored so much more than they had.

Axel made his last promise, one he never knew he was gonna break. Turned out his last song had been for Abe, and neither of them had known it at the time. The thought made him perversely happy - he got to have something of his own, something more meaningful than a smile and a laugh. Axel would never know how much it’d meant to him, because even if they’d both lived for like another week there was literally no circumstance where Abe would’ve had the balls to tell him something that hideously sincere, and now the time for that had long since passed.

Axel’s last word, last love, was for Hel. Abe was only a little envious, which was more than the healthy amount, because priorities, but he was also very scattered, because he could actually, pinpoint Axel’s last words, he’d just heard them, because his eyes were closed, again, for the last time, sure he didn’t know that but he knew. ‘Love you.’ “Love you.’ ‘Love you.’ There it was, no more Axel. Maybe one day Abe’d be pathetic and lonely enough to close his eyes and pretend they’d been said to him, haha.

The three of them barely had a minute of silence to themselves.

It felt like a betrayal to take his eyes off Axel, to listen to the man that’d murdered them all, but, he had to. There was still one more person on the island he loved, and he didn’t for a moment consider whether he loved her more than he loved Axel, right then. Not for a moment.

Forrest was still alive. That was good. One of their resident slasher villains was dead, and that was also neato. Less competition. Each name read was less competition, and that meant every name read was a good thing, maybe one day he’d wake up and the announcements would be stuffed with fifty whole people and that’d be good, right? That’d be ideal.

Lorenzo. Lorenzo, Lorenzo, Lorenzo. Abe wasn’t the revenge kind of guy, he wasn’t gonna pull an Axel (jesus fucking christ Abe) when he learned that someone else had gotten to the guy who killed his best friend first, but. Fuck. If the man was gonna go out like a little bitch after all his shittalking, why’d he have to take Axel with him on the way out, huh? Why couldn’t he have just lost that fight, huh? Why couldn’t Abe have just shot him there on the spot, huh?

The last echoes of the announcements faded away. Only two of them were breathing.

“Is… is he…?” A question so unfair to ask that Abe couldn’t even finish it. Yes, Hel, is he dead yet? Is your boyfriend dead yet? C’mon, tell me, he’s dead, right? C’mon, don’t leave me hanging, c’moooooon.

Abe’d had the luxury of missing Axel’s last moments, not seeing the transition from a person to what used to be a person. Hel had been holding him. That was one thing he couldn’t envy.