In front of his sister.
The first bullet hits him in the back with a sound that turns my stomach inside out. His body arches mid-run, and he falters, but doesn’t stop.
The second rips through him a heartbeat later. Higher this time. I see the way it knocks the breath from his lungs, the sudden stutter in his steps.
And then the third.
The third is the one that brings him down.
He crashes forward, knees hitting the ground hard just in front of Kym, a strangled sound leaving his mouth.
She catches him before he falls and makes a sound I’ve never heard from her before, something raw. Animal. Terrified. The kind of sound that lives somewhere deep in the chest, in the ribs.
There’s blood everywhere, soaking through Will’s shirt, smearing across Kym’s arms, her dress, her chest. And I watch as her hands scramble for something—pressure, grip, anything to stop it.
“No, no, no,” she whispers, catching him before he falls all the way, her hands under his arms, her knees scraping against the stones as she pulls him into her lap. “Will, no! Why would you do that?!”
He blinks at her, blood pooling at the corner of his mouth. “You’re my sister.”
Kym’s breath catches. Her fingers press harder, trembling. “I haven’t been your sister for a long time.”
But he just smiles. Soft, lopsided. A little dazed. “Doesn’t matter what you call it. You’re in my head, Kym. Always were. Always will be. Hey,” he murmurs after a pause, eyes fluttering open. “You’re not… crying, are you?” Kym shakes her head, furiously, even as tears streak down her cheeks. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” she chokes. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t want you to—”
“I did,” he cuts in, and his voice is quieter now, thinner. “Don’t you get it? I’d do it again.”
His head lolls slightly, eyes fluttering.
“Will—no—no, stay with me—stay with me—” Kym shakes her head, pressing harder, her hands slipping in blood. “Please don’t leave me again…”
Her sob shatters in her chest. “I can’t—please, Will, I can’t do this.”
His lips twitch faintly, blood glistening at the corner of his mouth. “Yes, you can. So do it. Live, Kym. Live for both of us.”
“I can’t! Not without you!” Kym’s voice breaks like glass, torn from her throat with so much pain it doesn’t even sound like her anymore. “Not in that house.”
At that, something flickers in Will’s face.
A shift. Like something internal has twisted the wrong way. Like a string somewhere has snapped.
His eyes widen in something like devastation as his lips part. “But I thought it—”
“It never ended, Will.” Kym cuts him off quietly.
His face stays that way—his eyes wide, his mouth half-open, the look of horror forever stamped into him like ink into paper, or one last photograph left behind in the dark.
And that’s when I know.
The boy I once knew, the one who terrified me, the one I hated, the one who despite everything, I had come to see as a friend—is gone.
Will is gone.
And it is unbearable, watching someone turn into a body.
Watching a brother turn into a memory.
Watching a friend smile for the very last time.
