SHE'S GONE WHERE THE GOBLINS GO

Your blood, what matter is it made of?

you’re coming home with me

but what if he passed out but didn't get the chance to die? they save him and then take him straight into custody. i looked into it, and he'd almost certainly get a life sentence with the possibility of parole after at least 25 years (which, at his age, is basically life anyway)

so he's trapped there, basically forever, and Niall is gone. he's alive, and he can't do anything about it (because after the first attempt they do everything they can to stop him from killing himself) and Niall is gone. he spends years with that thought. there's nothing left to do except experience the fact that Niall is gone.

sometimes his mind tries to comfort him. he dreams, and for a moment he can almost believe it's just like the first time. Niall is somewhere out there, living his life. he just doesn't visit Ruben anymore, but he's somewhere in the world. maybe he forgets about Ruben altogether, but he's there. he's somewhere.

and sometimes, sometimes Ruben goes to sleep and finds himself in their childhood bedroom again. Niall is lying across him on the floor, laughing, the bright morning sunlight making his eyes look almost amber, and he looks at Ruben like he's the most important thing in the world. Ruben feels the happiness overflowing inside him, filling him to the very edges.

They bust the doors down a few minutes quicker. Ruben is sitting there, leaning on hay bales. Pale, bleeding, staring at nothing except Niall's corpse. When the police take him away, he doesn't resist. Doesn't answer. The only reason they know he's responsive is because he'll answer in grunts to their questions. Uninterested. Bored.

Alby testifies at Ruben's sentencing. Decades of buried rage and the fresh gaping wound gets him to spill everything. The fear Niall lived with every day, the nightmares, the psychosis. Ruben never defends himself.

Like I said, Ruben in the barn aftermath looked incapable of actively doing anything to harm himself, so he lives. Lives emptily, going through the motions of prison but doing nothing except smoke and stare out the window. Reads Niall's book with fresh eyes.

The case is a true crime obsession, naturally, and reporters start to flock. Eventually, Ruben lets one of them in. Niall has told their story, told Ruben's story. It's Ruben's turn to tell Niall's.

There's no hiding anymore, no cognitive dissonance. Ruben knows he turned into his father. He knows that he rutted against Niall while he murdered him. He looks back on their lives and understands, perhaps too harshly, what he did to Niall all their lives. Did Niall ever want Mona? Was he crying while Ruben made him fuck her? That time in the hospital, did Ruben rape another virginity from Niall then? Grinding on Niall's ass on the pavement. Jokingly grabbing Niall's dick but holding a little too long. Ruben had been infected and he spread it around. How can he know he didn't grope Niall when they were kids? He's a murderer, may as well be a rapist, a pedo, an incestuous bastard.

Fuck, who can blame Niall for wanting to get back at him?

Lori visits. Neither of them know why. They don't exactly talk. But they're the only family either of them has. When one of the reporters publishes the ungodly truth, or at least Ruben's version of it, she stares at Ruben through the glass with no anger, not even pity. She's just a lifeless husk, now.

So's he.

Years pass. Decades. Ruben gets a new visitor. It's laughable to think Niall and Mona could have kept up the ruse-- the kid's eyes are a deep, rich brown, and he's got Niall's ears and Niall's nose.

"I wanted to meet you," Baird says, fidgeting behind the glass. "Put a face to the monster in my head."

"You've got your father's eyes," Ruben answers.

Baird's face twists. "Tell me about him?"