Sam

"What's wrong?" she asked, tapping his cheek when his attention drifted to bring him back to the present. "Did you have a seizure? Does it hurt?"

"No," Will chuckled darkly. "No, I don't think so. I just…"

She realized then that there were tears trickling down his face, and he wasn't just breathing weird; he was silently sobbing, curled up like a wounded animal, shoulders twitching.

Sam was struck dumb; found that she couldn't move at all. Will never cried. Maybe her memory was shot to hell at this point, but she couldn't recall a single time where he had shed a tear. It looked strange on him; unreal, somehow. Like two things that just shouldn't mix.

"Oh, god," she breathed. Snapping out of her stupor, she hauled Will free from his vomit and got his limp body wrapped in her arms; flopped onto her back with him on top and kicked off the floor with her heels until she bumped up against a wall. Gently rocking him, she stroked his half-buzzed, half-shaggy head.

"I can't do this," he whispered. "I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't…"

"What's wrong, Will?" she asked, her own voice cracking with how incredibly sad he sounded. "Talk to me. I'm here. You're okay."

"They all hate me."

She hugged him tighter. "Not everyone. The rest will change their minds. I'll make sure of it. I won't ever let anyone get away with picking on you—you know that."

"That's… not what I mean."

"Huh?"

"The hate is good. I can… understand it. Stepping into my boogeyman suit in the morning is as easy as putting on a shirt. It's familiar. But, Sam…" He slowly turned to face her, lip all twisted, silent tears spilling out of his one unseeing eye. "I can't be anyone's hero. I can't do this. You have to take her off my hands. Please."

"I-I don't understand…" Sam stuttered out.

"For whatever reason, that little girl looks up to me. There's just no way I can meet that kind of expectation. If she looks at me too close, she'll see all the filth covering my soul. I can't let my darkness transfer onto her."

"Stop talking nonsense like that. You've always been my hero."

Will snorted. "That's not exactly an endorsement. You're easy to fool."

"C'mon—I'm a better judge of character than you give me credit for. And you're a better man than you think you are."

"No. I'm worse than you could imagine."

"Why's that?"

"You really wanna know?"

"Of course. I want to know everything."

Will went quiet, seemingly deep in thought. He held something up to look at, and Sam peeked over his shoulder to find that it was the withered dandelion Sunny had given him.

"I can't actually see it, you know," he mused in a thin, hollow voice. "Not really, anyway. It just looks like a… dull smudge. A negative space left by the half-forgotten memory of a flower." He rolled it between two fingers, holding it right up against his dull eye as though desperately trying to gain some glimpse of it that way. He gave up, letting his hand drop with a heavy sigh and flicking the flower away. "I lied to you, back then."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, running her fingers through his hair.

"I told you I hate killing."

"Yeah."

"Well, that's not completely true. It does bother me—sometimes. When I have to kill someone who doesn't really deserve it. But sometimes…" He hesitated, and rubbed at his stitched-up sad eye with a shaky knuckle. "...I enjoy it."

"Why?"

Will didn't turn his head, but she could tell by the way his body stiffened that he was looking at her closely. Watching her for any sign of rejection.

"Maybe it's best illustrated with a story," he said after a while. "Do you mind?"

"No."

"Okay." He took a deep breath, only a tiny hint of weepy shakiness left. "It was during the fires. There were… Do you know about the Omen Bearers? Did anyone tell you about them?"

"Nyx told me a little… I'm not sure I completely get it, but I think I understand the basics at least. They're our enemies, right?"

"Good, and yes. There were active groups of Omen fighters operating in the city during Brimstone's rampage. I was trying to figure out what they were after, so I ambushed one of their squads and killed all but one to interrogate the survivor.

"I promised the guy I'd let him live if he told me about their objectives. Only I was lying. This isn't so strange—it would be a pointless liability to leave that kind of loose end around instead of snipping it. But…" He worked his tongue around in his mouth like he tasted something foul. "...it bothers me how much I liked seeing him in pain. I didn't just finish him off, the way I should have. I stuck him like a pig and watched him bleed out while I hurled petty insults.

"The part that bothers me the most, though, is that it really doesn't. Whenever I think about it, I can only feel sort of warm inside. What I've realized is that some kills disturb me, but killing itself doesn't. The act of it. At worst, it's just work. At best, it's… satisfying. It's the same feeling as finally swatting a mosquito that's been buzzing around your head for hours. There's no guilt—it's the mosquito's fault for being annoying—a filthy, disgusting pest—and the world is only made better by having one less of its kind in it.

"I'm performing an important service by ridding the world of vermin, and I'm good at it. So why shouldn't that feel nice?"

Sam fussed with his hair a little more while she turned his words over in her head. "I understand," she said at last.

Will's body stiffened even more. "What's that supposed to mean?"

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

She shrugged. "It means I get it. I know the feeling you're talking about. Punishing someone who's done wrong. Making someone else feel as bad as you do. Just plain taking your frustration out on someone. That kind of thing."

"Yeah."

"It's a scary feeling, isn't it? That rage. So easy to get wrapped up in."

Will got quiet. Then, reluctantly: "Yeah."

"That's one of the reasons why I feel like such a coward compared to you," Sam admitted, happy that she didn't have to look him in the eye right then. "I couldn't handle that feeling anymore, so I just keep running away from it. But you… you have to deal with it every day—you have to toe the line without getting lost in it. You get dealt a handful of lesser evils and try to cobble together a greater good from it—no matter how much it hurts you—without complaining or expecting praise or shifting the blame.

"The reason why you judge yourself so harshly is because you take your role seriously. Every time you have to make a hard choice, you force yourself to remember, and to look directly at the consequences. You don't give yourself an easy way out.

"Even though my heart breaks when I hear about it, because you don't deserve to carry that kind of weight, I also think it makes you incredibly brave. More brave than I could ever be. The fact that you spend so much time thinking about the morality of your actions and trying to make sure you're doing the right thing tells me that you couldn't possibly be a bad person."

"That's—"

"Shut your self-deprecating mouth! The sensible one is talking now." She hugged Will a little tighter, and pressed her nose against the side of his neck to get the smell of him, the slightly musky male smell that made her skin tingle and her nipples stiffen. "There was a time when the feelings you describe—the anger, the bitterness, the sadistic pleasure—was all my life consisted of. You showed me a way out of that, and now I can never go back.

"I could never be the kind of person who kills someone else. Not because I'm better than you, but because I'm more cowardly. I can't stand the thought of facing my own reflection as a killer. I can't trust that I'd be able to rein myself in if I started down that path.

"But you do." She gave his neck a soft kiss, then another. "Every day, you stare down the darkness that hides in your heart—the same darkness that everyone has, whether they'll admit it or not—and you let it out just as much as you need to; pull it back exactly before it becomes too much." She let her arms migrate down, hands caressing his chest, feeling the hard, lean muscle through his shirt. "You'd take the whole world's darkness into yourself. For me. For your friends. Even for the people who hate you, who don't understand, who will never deserve your sacrifice.

"I understand that all the death weighs on you, and I understand why. I can't carry it all for you. I wish I could—I really do—but I just don't have that kind of strength. But at least know this. Even if the whole world hates you, you have one person who loves you. Even if they all stand against you, you have one person watching your back. Even if all they see is the blood on your hands, you have one person who sees your sacrifice."

She kissed him again, harder this time. "I love you, Will. So much. And I'm so glad that Sunny has you to look up to. I can only hope that she'll be able to inherit your strength."

Will's breathing quickened. Quietly, he grasped one of her forearms with both hands, the right one weak and trembling. She thought he was about to push her away, but instead he just tightened his grip and pulled her arm tighter about himself as though serving as a shield against the world.

"It hurts," he whimpered. Suddenly, she realized how fragile he felt up against her. "Please stop saying these things. I can't afford to believe it. It hurts too much. If I let it in, I'll shatter. I'll become… useless."

"That's the thing you fear the most, isn't it? To not be useful?"

He hesitated. Then, in a strangled voice: "Yes."

"You don't need to be perfect all the time, Will. Not with me. I might not be strong enough to carry your burdens, but I am strong enough to hold you up whenever you need it. So stop holding everything in and just let yourself be useless for a while. I promise it won't ruin you."

"You don't—"

"Shut up, you pretty little idiot. Cry on your girlfriend's chest, why don't you? Sorry there's not much to rest your head on, but it's the thought that counts, right?"

For once, he did as he was told; nestled weakly up against her. His quiet sobs, almost completely silent, made her want to hold him like a baby and never let go.

"You've been through a lot, haven't you?" she murmured, stroking his hair. "It's okay to feel bad about it, you know? Those awful things they were saying about you."

"They're right, though," he whispered. "It's my fault. My fault that the city burned. I tried to get clever and ended up having to kill the one person Brimstone trusted; ended up blowing my cover at the same time. I'm pretty sure that's why he went crazy the way he did. With everyone he thought was an ally dead or turned traitor, why wouldn't he view everyone who was left as an enemy?" He buried his face into her torso, and she could feel his features strain with emotion. "If I just hadn't gotten involved, none of it would have happened. I killed those people—or might as well have. Tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of lives. Gone because of me."

She tugged softly on his earlobe. "I'm not as stupid as you think, you know. Everything you did—it wasn't all for nothing. The city burning isn't on you—Brimstone did that, along with the enemies who worked to make it happen. Without you, he would still be in charge of Sheerhome. Without you, the city would be at war with the north by now. Without you fighting tooth and nail, Buck wouldn't have stood a chance at killing Brimstone."

"You're just trying to deflect the blame away from me. I dropped the ball. I made Brimstone lose it. Those are the facts."

Sam gave a loud snort. "Do you really have that high an opinion of yourself?"

Will stirred uncomfortably. "What?"

"Do you think you can see the future? Do you think that you can just snap your fingers and change reality into whatever you like?"

"Uh…"

"Because that's the only way whatever you're waffling about could make any kind of sense. You're not god, Will. And as much as you might like to think otherwise, you're not all-knowing, either. You did absolutely everything in your power to stop a disaster from happening, using all the knowledge you had at the time. Of course there are things you would do differently if you could go back; things that slipped through your fingers. None of that is your fault. You did everything you could—more than anyone else by a lot. There's plenty of blame to go around, but none of it can be laid at your feet." She gave him an emphatic squeeze, and whispered in his ear: "You might not have thrown the last punch, but you killed Brimstone. That makes you a hero by any standard. And I know you'd never believe that, so let me and Sunny believe it for you." She nibbled a little on his earlobe. "Face it, man—you've got a fan club. And you're not getting rid of us anytime soon."

Will didn't offer up any more protests after that. He cried silently a little while longer, and Sam was glad to her core that her words seemed to have reached him. That big idiot spent so much time brooding inside his shell, pretending nothing could get to him while in reality feeling every blow. She was glad that he had let her peek into the secret places he never showed anyone, if only just a little.

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 10!]

"Mmm!" Sam hummed. "I leveled up! I guess having to drag all those feelings out of you was just that much of a chore, huh?"

Will clicked his tongue sharply. "Very funny."

"Just kiddinggg."

"I know. In reality, it was probably just from the emotional stress of listening to me unload. I could see that counting as a form of 'labor'."

He started shifting. When it became clear that he was trying to get up, she rose to her feet with a low grunt at the ache of blood rushing back into her half-numb legs, and dragged Will along with her.

"That's excellent, though," he said, and limped over to his wall of shelves and cabinets and miscellaneous storage. Opening a drawer at thigh-height, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches, struck one up, inhaled deeply of the smoke, then let it out with a grateful sigh, leaned back against a workbench. His face was back to being hard and grim, any weakness wiped away so completely that she almost questioned if he had really been crying just a minute ago.

Cigarette pinched between his lips, face upturned, he said: "I'd never imagined that you'd get to Level 10 so quickly. We'll start discussing your specialization as soon as possible."

"Sounds good to me," Sam replied, grinning, and did some deep stretches to work the feeling back into her legs. "But first…" She bounced up straight again. Watching the side of his unreadable face closely, she said: "...would you mind telling me everything that happened while I was gone? Other people have told me a bit, but I want to hear it all from you."

"Sure," Will replied somberly, and took another hard drag off his cigarette, tapped ash into an empty stone pestle on the tabletop beside him. "I guess you've got that right."

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