It was then that I looked at him, saw the panic turned to relief as he met the barrel.
“No!” I screamed at the same time the gun went off.
At the same time blood covered Gage’s chest, a crimson rose blossoming before my very eyes. His heart bleeding from the inside out.
In all the movies, time slowed at those moments. Gave the doomed heroine and hero the chance to say their goodbyes in a lingering glance, where a lifetime was contained. Gave them a moment to communicate all the pain and love into it.
But this wasn’t the movies.
And I wasn’t a heroine.
Gage surely wasn’t a hero.
So time didn’t slow—it snapped into a cold, loud, agonizing blur, where the glance wasn’t lingering, and a lifetime wasn’t contained. It was snatched away in the most violent way possible.
The gun in Jade’s hand was still smoking, and she was looking at it in vague wonder and surprise that only existed on the face of someone who’d broken from themselves and couldn’t quite figure out anything from the pieces.
Then, as blood spurted hideously from Gage’s mouth, she smiled in a cold and lucid realization.
“I exploded your heart,” she said, voice brimming with glee.
My binds gave way.
Another thing that happened in movies: the struggling captive broke free of their shackles just in time to save themselves, save the world.
I didn’t save myself.
Or the world.
Both were lost to me already.
But I launched myself at Jade anyway, my fingernails sinking into the flesh of her cheek, grotesquely tearing away at the skin.
She let out a shrill and garbled scream, but it was too late. I’d taken her down with the weight of my body, heavier now with the weight of my sorrow.
Dead weight.
I itched to tear her apart with my bare hands so her skin and blood and bone crusted under my fingernails, so her death sank into my skin.
But there wasn’t time for that. Not when the whole world laid dying beside us.
So I reached for the gun in her flailing hand, even with my ruined shoulder that had popped when I wrenched myself free from my ropes. It was laughable how easy it was to get it off her. But she wasn’t fighting now. What was the point? She’d gotten her wish.
This was the ending that no one told you about. The one where the villain won.
I held the gun level, hot from her grip, cold from the grave she’d called upon with it.
I didn’t hesitate to jam it against her temple and squeeze. The resounding bang was loud, maybe. My ears were filled with a low and painful roar, so I didn’t much notice. It did go off though, her body going limp as blood, brains, and pieces of her skull splattered over my face.
I didn’t even pause, didn’t let go of the gun, just scrambled over her body, crawling through the growing pool of Gage’s blood to get to him. It was sticky and warm, but when I gathered him in my arms, he was so cold.
All of his warmth was seeping out onto the floor.
All of his life.
His eyes were staring at me, blank and glassy, and I was taken back ten years, assaulted with the very same stare I’d received from my brother. From the other half of me.
I shook uncontrollably, certain I was looking into the grave again. That another part of me was being torn, ripped, clawed out of me.
But he blinked, slowly, and purposefully, in such a way that it seemed like an effort to wrench his eyelids back up.
Tears ran through the flesh and bone on my face. “You’re not dying,” I told him. I ordered him.
His mouth quirked up. “You know I like it when you’re bossy,” he croaked, spluttering.
Warm blood sprayed on my face once more.
He wasn’t paralyzed anymore, no longer in the clutches of whatever Jade had plunged into his body. It was draining out of him. Like his life.
“You’re not leaving me,” I hissed. “You promised.”
As if moving through sand, he slowly raised his arm into the air until he cupped my face. “I’ll find you, Will,” he coughed. “I promise I’ll find you.”
He made a horrible hacking sound in his throat, the rattling of his failing lungs cutting through my eardrums like blunt knives.
Then his eyes flickered, exploded with light.
Then they didn’t.
Then everything left them.
And he just stared at me.
I blinked, hoping it was a trick of the light. The absence behind that stare. I pretended I hadn’t noticed Gage’s weight depress into me. That the blood on the floor was warmer than his body.
“You can’t do this,” I whispered to Gage’s lifeless face, rocking him gently, as if such a tender motion might counteract the violence of before. “You can’t do this!” I screamed. But not to Gage—to the air, to whoever was in charge of this torture chamber that was the world. “You can’t take another thing away from me! You fucking can’t! You cannot take him.” I squeezed Gage harder, my arms protesting, the bones of my ruined shoulder grinding together in what I was sure should’ve been agony. “I won’t let you take him!” I screamed with the last of my voice before that too gave up on me.