Everyone else was expendable.

It was odd how much that didn’t hurt now. All he felt was a faint, distant sting, quickly swallowed by apathy. Creeping numbness. He wanted to laugh. If he’d known that was going to happen, he’d have let himself go days ago.

Funny, though, how he had managed to hold out until the kid showed up, all big dark eyes and knowing sympathy. Because Sean had known, before any of them. Sean had been there before.

Scott. Jesse. He had spent too many nights staring at the ceiling, sickened by the parallels. He used to be able to rationalize them away. Jess was too smart for that, too young for that, too strong for that. No monsters under the bed, flashlight in the dark of the basement. Maybe not.

The light was dying.

He wanted to throw something at the wall just to hear it break. It had been years he’d wanted that kind of destruction, aimless and childish and petty. He recognized it now, like an old and pissed off lover, clawing restlessly just behind his eyes. His skin felt too tight.

No. No, couldn’t go back there, shouldn’t, because there was no one to pull him back this time. He had changed. He had too much to lose. Jesse wouldn’t want-

The pain came back in a hot, prickling rush, blood to a limb that had fallen asleep. Swallowing against it, he rose to his feet. Of their own will, his hands reached, closing around the lamp on the endtable. It was a nice lamp, expensive and pretty and hollow inside.

It made a satisfying noise when it hit the wall and shattered.

He stood over the wreckage for a long moment before he realized that he was shivering. Wrapping his arms around himself, false warmth at best, he nudged the pieces of what had been beautiful once with his toe of his boot. He wondered, idly, what it would feel like to run his fingers through the shards. He could only feel one hurt at a time. Pain outside would stop the pain pulsing inside. It was simple, really. Addictive. Everything was fucking addictive.

The endtable sounded even better hitting the wall than the lamp had. Almost as good as the folding chair. Better than the bench. He took silent inventory as he tore the ordered beauty of the room apart with a mechanical intensity that should have scared him. That hadn’t stopped him before.

He wasn’t sure, afterwards, how he ended up on the floor. All that he knew was that he ran out of things to destroy before he ran out of fury.

Yeah. It was always like that.