Friday's arrival is swift, as is Ty's final shift at RiseX Solutions.
'The only mercy I can provide is to allow you to continue working until the end of the week and collect your final paycheck. The repairs for my desk will be deducted from that. On Friday, have all of your belongings removed and your ID badge returned to me.'
Ty sighs, heavy eyes stuck on the burning-bright monitor displaying the final email he'll sent as RiseX staff.
One last click off his mouse and he's unemployed, at least until Madame Buffant sends him an official contract to sign.
Click.
He sighs again.
His tired eyes drift across the bleak copy-and-paste office cubicle. Grey eyes fall on his one personal item in the space; a picture frame with Eve's messy white hair and brilliant gummy smile behind the protective glass.
He picks it up, his rough fingers trailing over the radiant child. He can almost hear her bubbly giggle as he does so.
'We'll be fine, Eve. You'll be fine. Our Carnelian story doesn't end here.'
He clutches the picture tight and rises stiffly from his seat.
'Time to give my employee badge back to Hartley.'
Leaving his cubicle, he walks away from three years of his life.
"Hey."
A deep voice causes Ty to halt halfway to Hartley's office.
He turns on his heels and immediately freezes, wishing he hadn't stopped.
In a cubicle just like his own, Renzo sits back in his chair with one long leg lazily crossed over the other to make a figure four. The only other person he wanted to avoid, Dominique, is by his side, propped up on his desk. With the way she's casually leaning down towards Renzo, the top of her blue blouse was more... exposed than usual. No, it looked a bit undone; thin blue laces flowing down like her curly brown hair.
Ty's face reddens without his permission.
Renzo's auburn eyes narrow with a sly smirk on his lips.
"Signing off, kid?"
A vague sense of dread immediately follows.
"Yeah."
"Yeah?"
Renzo's head tilts to the side, ruffled red hair scrunching against the mesh back of his chair.
"Try not to slack off and lie at your next job."
Ty's eye twitches.
Renzo leans forward, clasping his hands together in his lap.
"Right, yeah, while looking for a new job... I guess you should hope Hartley doesn't go around blabbering about the real you."
Ty's scarred fingers dig into the picture frame held tight in his hands.
'Madame Buffant wouldn't... pull out, right?'
Renzo's eyes fall to his white-knuckled grip on the photograph.
"That's your sister? She's cute. Poor girl, huh? Such an angel doesn't deserve to be stuck with a dirty berserker like you."
Ty's body twitches.
Renzo crosses his arms, leaning back into his office chair. His eyes darken, his tone testing and low.
"Hartley told me she was sick. But I'm here thinking, whether she lives or she dies, she'll lose being stuck with someone like you."
Words surge through Ty's mind like an opened floodgate.
'I'm going to be a good person for you, Eve. I promise. I'll be a good person for you.'
'M-m-monster.'
'They ain't full 'o air, Ty. An' that stance you's had, it was perfect. Just what the hell-'
'YOU ARE A BLACKWELL, SON. WE DON'T HAVE HEARTS, WE HAVE FISTS.'
Crack.
The glass casing over Eve's picture cracked under his grip. He immediately catches himself, coming back to reality, and loosens his grip.
Renzo leans forward again and traces thoughtless curves on Dominique's thigh.
"Hartley said it too, you know, after you blew a fucking fuse and snapped his desk. He's worried to leave suck a weak little girl in the violent hands of her brother."
His hand creeps up her dress pants. A moan escapes Dominique's throat, and she quickly covers her mouth.
"He's thinking of calling child services."
Renzo's fingers trail across her pant's stitching.
"Aren't you scared for the kid's sake, too, Domi?"
Dominique's face was flushed a rosy pink, and her eyes gave away that she was far too trained on Renzo's hand to be paying attention to their conversation.
"Yes."
Renzo smiles.
"My girlfriend has such a kind heart."
Ty's face flares in red hot embarrassment and anger.
Renzo briskly stands up, offering a hand for Dominique to join him.
"Let's go, Domi. Ty Walters needs to return his ID badge, and you're turning me on."
They're gone before Ty can formulate a single word in reply.
His feet feel as though they weigh ten tons as Renzo's words replay in his head while heading to Hartley's office.
And he gets to the office door far too soon.
Moving Eve's picture into one hand, he knocks with the other on the dark wood, knuckles aflame.
"Mr. Hartley, I've come to return my badge."
"Come in."
He pushes the door open, finding Hartley exactly as he had been the last time Ty saw him, when he was let go. Regal leather chair, the man in it with a classy dark blue suit, and the nighttime city shining through the window wall behind him. The only thing different is the desk he has his hands clasped upon; a slightly darker ebony but similar vintage design.
'Guess that's the one Renzo got him as a token of their friendship.'
Renzo's words burst back into his mind.
'Hartley said it too, you know, after you blew a fucking fuse and snapped his desk. He's worried to leave suck a weak little girl in the violent hands of her brother.'
His free hand balls into a fist.
'He's thinking of calling child services'
He clears his throat, nails digging into nail-shaped scars.
"Mr. Hartley, I- I'm sorry for lashing out last time and breaking your desk. But Renzo said-"
Ty stops himself.
'What's the point? He's not going to believe me.'
Hartley taps the desk slowly, the sound in step with the ticking gold-plated clock on the wall.
"Renzo? Yes. Did you know Renzo paid for this desk? He said you needed the money more than he did. I hope you're grateful. He's a good kid."
Another tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"And a good fit for my niece."
Ty freezes.
'N-'
"Niece?"
The man gives a curt nod.
"Dominique Perez is my sister's daughter."
Anger seizes control of Ty, turning him into a trembling fury. Then, only a moment later, he stills. A bitter taste of surrender fills his mouth.
'So I was doomed all along.'
Hartley wasn't tapping the desk anymore, leaving the ticking of the clock to grow louder in his ears.
'Hartley, Dominique, and Renzo. This place is full of favouritism, corruption, and lies.'
Tick.
'I never stood a chance.'
Tick.
Hartley's cold eyes find the picture frame in Ty's slumped hand.
Tick.
"Renzo and I have discussed our..."
Tick.
"...concerns towards your situation."
Tick.
Ty's hand twitches.
Tick.
Hartley's finger taps the ebony desk again. It's too loud.
Tick.
"I don't believe you're fit to take care of your sister."
CRACK.
Something broke.
What broke?
The desk?
No, the desk is fine. Ty now stands right in front of it, so he's sure.
Hartley's eyes, that's what broke.
They've always been cold, but now they're worse. They're empty.
'They're like fish eyes. Of the fish I descale. The fish I kill.'
'No, no, I didn't kill them.'
'They were already dead.'
'Already dead?'
'Who's dead?'
'Eve?'
'No, Barry?'
'No, no. It's Hartley.'
'Hartley's dead?'
'Since when?'
Bloody hands tremble as they reach for the man's face.
'When did his eyes get like this?'
Hartley's face, once full of various disapproving looks, is now still. His black eyes are empty, and dry mouth is slightly ajar. His expensive-suited body is slumped back against his cherry red leather seat, and there's not a single hint of resistance under Ty's touch.
"N-no, you're not-"
An image of Barry appears before his eyes. The old man's holding up a thick arm, and then drops it.
'Nobody's a killer, Ty. These maggots just got the lights knocked outta 'em good.'
Ty's hands scramble to the man's neck, smearing blood across it as he fumbles to find the pulse point below the slack jaw.
Nothing.
He presses down harder.
Nothing.
His hands clasp around the entirety of the throat, digging into the soft skin.
Then, clarity hits.
His vision sharpens, his eyes fixating on the sight of his hands, covered in blood, wrapped tightly around dead Hartley's throat.
His voice is foreign.
"He's dead."
He stumbles backwards, away from the man and the desk, something crunching beneath his sneaker. He jolts back and falls to his knees at what he had stepped on; brilliant Eve.
Shards of glass and splintered wood scatter across the framed image of the heavenly white-haired child and her radiant smile.
He hunches over it, frantically gathering the glass and wooden shards into a pile, as if he could put them together again if they were all in the same place.
The blood on his hands sears across the fragments, and suddenly it looks like a bloody pile of human. It looks like a bloody pile of Eve.
"Did I kill you too?"
He coughs and vomits over the broken pile.
"R-Ren."
Ty whips his head over his shoulder, meeting Domonique's equally mortified eyes. Her face pales, and her beautiful brown eyes contort with an overwhelming fear unlike any he had seen in her when she saw him break Hartley's desk. This was different. This was staring into a nightmare, for both of them.
Renzo steps into the doorway beside her. His sharp eyes scan the room, first, to Ty. To the vomit on his chin, leading down to the pile on the ground. Then to a messy trail of blood leading past it, to Hartley's desk, and to Hartley himself. Hartley, who sits behind his new vintage desk, dead.
Renzo's voice is hard.
"Domi, call the cops."
Ty's body twists and trembles as he heaves for air in a hyperventilating panic.
All he sees is black.
All he hears are memories.
'Monster.'
'Eve... is going to live a long, beautiful life away from jerks like you. So I'm... not going to lower myself to working as a jerk like you. You almost killed Barry. I'll never be one of you.'
'Fuc-king monst-er.'
'They ain't full 'o air, Ty. An' that stance you's had, it was perfect. Just what the hell-'
'Nobody's a killer, Ty. These maggots just got the lights knocked outta 'em good.'
'Murderers. That's what yer so scared of, ain't it?'
'I'm going to be a good person for you, Eve. I promise. I'll be a good person for you. I'll never be a murderer.'
'Well… a good person is someone that is kind and compassionate. Someone that helps others when they're in need, and protects the things they love. An' what's a bad person? Murderers. Someone that hurts others, and takes what isn't theirs. Someone that kills things.'
Somewhere between being escorted out of Hartley's office by police and being processed in the nearest Northside police station, Ty wept profusely.
"I don't want to be a monster."
Deeper into the night, the tears, blood, and vomit dried.
He sits alone in a dark holding cell made of cold concrete and cement, and he can vaguely recall a police member telling him he'd stay here until prosecution. Propped up against the cool wall, his body sags forward, his broken hands in fists on his bent knees.
Desolate grey eyes are stuck on these hands as they clench tighter, skin breaking over knuckles, nails digging deeper into nail-shaped scars. The tightening of his skin makes the scars across the back of his hand more white and pronounced. He clenches tighter.
A blunt knife is stabbed into a blunt scar.
"Stop clenching, Tyron. When will you learn?"
His grey gaze shoots up at the man.
"Dad, I can't."
"Of course you can. It's you or him. Are you willing to die for him?"
His gaze darts to the horrible beast roaring and fighting beneath the chains. Then back to the man who's frowning at him.
His body trembles.
"D-dad."
"YOU ARE A BLACKWELL, SON. WE DON'T HAVE HEARTS, WE HAVE FISTS."
"Please, Dad!"
"GODDAMNIT, TYRON, YOU WIL-"
"Bruce."
A woman glides up.
"That's enough. Let me."
Her stunning white hair flows as if she were the Snow Queen herself. She turns to him and kneels on the ground, soft white fabric folding perfectly with her. She pats her thighs.
"Come, Ty."
He crawls over and rests his head in her lap. She strokes his short white hair and begins to sing in the most enchanting of voices.
"Poor white rabbit, regain your strength
Poor white rabbit, keep your heart at length
Poor white rabbit you must find your will
Poor white rabbit now go make your kill."
His gaze falls, sitting alone in his cold empty cell.