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He has always been surrounded by people that had to endure pain.
His earliest memories are of his mother crying, and the sound of his father’s fists as he beat her just because he could.
She had to endure much more than he ever will, and even though he doesn’t think she’d be proud of him, he wishes she’d have been able to see the kind of man he became.
But no, he doesn’t, because it would hurt her, she would be so sad to see that her beautiful baby boy has turned into a weapon, a frozen fist clenched around his ragged heart, an emotionless face with eyes harder and sharper than even diamonds. He doesn’t sing anymore, and of all the terrible things he’s done, he thinks that that would be what would disappoint her the most about who he has become.
In his weakest moments, he hopes that she can see him. He hopes that she knows that no one will ever hurt him or anyone he loves again, hopes that she knows how sorry he is that he couldn’t be this strong when she was still alive.
He wishes he’d have been able to fix it for her. He wishes they had been able to leave, and that he had killed his father before it was too late. In his darkest hours, he allows himself to think of the past, allows himself to think about what might have been. It’s all he thought about while he was strapped to that chair.
He knows pain and suffering, it has been the only constant throughout his whole life.
Felix was a bright spot in his life, and meeting him was the greatest moment of his life thus far, but even Felix, as bright and happy as he always seemed, was not untouched by pain.
They grew up together, picking pockets and honing their thieving skills. Felix knows every lie he has ever told, Felix knows what happened in his house when he and his father were alone.
The only thing that Felix doesn’t know, something that he will never tell him, is that he’s the one who killed him. He thinks that that might be the last straw, and he wouldn’t be able to survive alone if Felix decided to leave him.
These are the deepest darkest parts of him, the innate human need to love and be loved, to want to rip open his chest and crack his skull and give his heart and mind to someone else, just so he doesn’t have to be alone. To have someone else carry the weight of his secrets with him. This is his innermost selfish desire. In a way, it makes perfect sense that he’s not human after all.
His cluster knows everything about him. They know him. They know his thoughts, his hopes, his fears, every single bad thing he’s done and why he did it, if there was a reason at all.
And they don’t hate him for it.
Many of them have also had to endure. They have had to endure grief, pain, loss, guilt, loneliness, anger, shame. They have all felt his pain, and each other’s, and it has only made them that much stronger. They fought for him. Even knowing everything he’s done, knowing everything he thinks, knowing who he is, they fought for him.
They love him.
He’s so full of emotions as Lito hugs him and says this, and he looks over and sees that Sun is crying. She knows intrinsically how he feels right now, because they are very much alike. She knows exactly how he feels, and he isn’t crying, but the frozen fist clenched hard around his heart loosens its grip in a way that he thinks, feels exactly like how it would feel to finally cry. The weight is gone. He feels like he could fly. It’s glorious, he could live in this feeling forever.
The love, gratitude, and hope he feels is magnified by his love for them and the fact that he can feel their love for him mirrored back sevenfold. He is full to the brim with so many emotions that he hasn’t felt in years, he feels the way Lito loves Hernando and Dani, how much Nomi loves Amanita and Bug, how much Will and Riley love each other, how much Sun loves Mun, how much Capheus loves Zakia and how happy he is to be here with all of them. He feels how much Kala loves him, and it’s so much it’s enough to take his breath away. If he were capable of crying, he’d be sobbing with joy right now. This is unconditional love, this is what a family should be. He will never forget this.
He has never been shot. None of them have.
He has experienced pain some people cannot even imagine, and they have all experienced the pain he did, the pain of being tortured, but none of them have ever experienced anything like this.
Torture is different. Torture is deliberate and calculated, but it is always a means to an end. It is for information, or maybe just to make a point, but you know it will end eventually.
They have never experienced anything this sharp and intentional, an acute pain that burrows deep and then outward like a fire, spreading through the body as fast as the blood leaves it, and he’s in shock.
As soon as he feels it he puts his hand on his stomach, right under his chest, and recoils. They all do. They don’t know what has happened or who it has happened to.
It’s Wolfgang, it’s Sun, it’s Will, it’s Riley, it’s Kala.
There is blood on her hand when it comes out from under her shirt. Her face has gone pale from pain and blood loss. She sways where she stands.
He expects his hand to be bloody as well when he pulls it away from his stomach, but it’s not. Because it’s not his pain that he’s feeling. It’s not his body that’s in shock, it’s not his lungs that are suddenly straining for air.
Kala loses her grip on the gun, and as it falls to the floor she starts to walk forward.
Sun is reeling on the floor, body tense as she gasps for air that will not fill her lungs, and she knows Mun is saying something to her, but she feels like she’s underwater. Nothing registers except pain and the fact that she needs oxygen. One moment she’s on the floor and the next she is Kala, there is blood dripping from her hand onto the floor, and then she’s back on the floor and Kala is back in the doorway.
She loses her balance. Lito and then Nomi crash into the doorframe, blood is dripping out of Riley’s hands.
Will and Capheus strain for breath as they step into the room, and then Kala is walking into the room.
Blood is dripping out of Wolfgang and Kala’s hands as they fall to the ground, and it’s Kala that hits the floor, but she doesn’t get up.
Her bloody hand falls limp on the ground beside her, and she doesn’t move again.
Wolfgang is still tense from the shock and pain, but he runs to her, stumbles into the doorway of the room and all but falls next to her prone body, which is still bleeding all over the floor.
He picks her up almost violently, caresses her face and speaks to her, tells her he loves her, waits for her to open her eyes and say it back, but it doesn’t happen. She’s not breathing.
Something deep inside of him cracks open, something he locked away so long ago that he forgot it even existed, and he begins to weep.
The part of him that weeps is his mother’s beautiful baby boy. The boy who loved to sing, who had the voice of an angel. The boy who loved his mother and believed with all his heart that he could set her free. The soft, innocent part of him that he locked away once he killed his father because the world is cruel and evil, and if anyone saw this part of him they would only exploit it and hurt him.
He kisses her face, her lips, runs his hands through her hair, and weeps. Tears are falling out of his eyes onto her face, and he doesn’t know how to stop it.
He hugs her body, and he doesn’t look up but he feels the cluster there with him. They kneel in a semicircle in reverence, and they are all crying.
Capheus and Nomi weep openly, their facial expressions saying that they cannot believe this has happened. Lito and Riley look on in teary eyed shock. Will cries silently like someone who has seen this happen to too many people, but his mouth is still open in pained shock. Sun cries silently, brow furrowed as she looks at Wolfgang clutching Kala’s body like a lifeline, like she can’t quite believe it.
Rajan runs in and then it’s just the three of them, he grabs her face and presses his forehead to hers. He says her name repeatedly, like a mantra, like if he believes enough she will open her eyes and say his name back to him.
Then Kala walks out from behind him, says, “Well, is anyone gonna do anything,” much too softly, and he thinks he’s imagined it, so he looks up at her with red rimmed eyes, face full of despair, and then she says, “Or are you going to just let me die in your arms?”
“You’re alive,” he says it like a prayer, and he doesn’t believe in God or any other religion, but he’s praying to the only thing he’s ever believed in. He’s praying to her.
He’s still in shock, fear and pain making him dumb, and she has to give him specific directions on how to save her own life. It’d be comical if he wasn’t so afraid, it’d be absolutely hilarious if he didn’t still feel the bullet wound, if the blood wasn’t still leaking out of her body like she’s a human faucet.
Rajan has the brilliant idea to use the taser on her, and she jolts to life with a huge gasping breath, and he can breathe again.
He smiles at her, holds her face like the precious thing it is, and kisses her, and it’s perfect. He loves her. He’s smiling at her with all his heart, all his soul, and he has never felt so relieved in his life.
“To think, I might have never kissed these lips again,” she says, and he can’t say anything. He can’t do anything except smile at her in awe.
He hasn’t cried in so long, he’d forgotten how it feels. He feels flayed open, his eyes are swollen and red, his face tight with dried tears.
He picks her up, ready to physically take her to the hospital, ready to forget about absolutely everything except for her well-being, and she reminds them of why they were there.
“We have to get Lila.” There has never been a doubt that she is one of the strongest people he knows, but her saying this just cements it in his mind. Her body is still weak, her heart has only just stuttered back to life, but she is only concerned for the rest of them, with finishing this for good. She is the most selfless person he knows, and he loves her so much.
A lot of things happen that day. They defeat Whispers, kill Lila, and then it’s over. It’s truly over, and they take her to the hospital.
Nomi and Amanita get married, and everything is wonderful and everyone is happy. He never knew a person could feel this way.
His own life has been full of pain and hatred. Feeling the happiness of the others, the emotions practically tangible, love and hope in the air around him as Nomi and Amanita say their vows, the feeling of the cluster and their family all being in the same place, it’s almost overwhelming. It's like he found the final piece of a puzzle that he's been working on his whole life, like it's finally been slotted into place. He’ll never get over this.
It’s like eating a chocolate cake that’s on the verge of being too sugary. It’s sweet and wonderful and rich and life-changing in a way nothing ever will be again.
It’s over. They won.
He is genuinely happy for the first time in as long as he can remember, and he is safe.