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When ITrapped first met Chance, he wasn’t planning to kill him. He’s sure if he told that to anyone alive to hear it, they would call him a liar, but it was the truth.
His original plan had been simple. Get the guy a bit drunk, find the key, then leave to free Nate and Caleb before he was caught. A simple in-and-out mission that wouldn’t have taken much more than a night.
But it didn’t work.
Even under the influence, Chance had been tight-lipped. He had a way of turning the conversation to something ITrapped couldn’t redirect in a subtle manner. For all the words that spilled out of their mouth, none of them were useful to him. At the time, that was fine. Annoying, but fine.
ITrapped was a patient man, and there had been no real rush. While the Banlands weren’t pleasant, he knew his friends could handle themselves. Maybe they would take the time spent as a lesson to be more careful in the future. So, ITrapped remained calm and adapted. He came to the casino more often, spoke more with Chance, and altered his plan to be a bit more long term.
Even then, he hadn’t been planning to kill Chance.
Break his trust, knock him down a peg, leave his financial situation in shambles, sure, but not kill him. Yes, the man was annoying, and yes, he was a risk to both ITrapped and himself, but he had information and it was the kind the blonde couldn’t work without. Not to mention the difficulty it would be to kill him and get away with it. Theft was one thing, but murder, especially of someone like Chance, was almost laughable.
(And, no matter what the DarkHeart told him, he didn’t want to kill Chance. He had blood on his hands already, there was no need for more.)
So, for a while, he endured.
Then something changed.
Chance’s voice no longer grated on his ears, his stories no longer felt monotonous, his smirk didn’t cause irritation, his gambits felt endearing and most damningly, his jokes became amusing. Somewhere along the line, against all odds and even the barriers put in place when his friends were captured, ITrapped had gotten attached.
When he realized, he barely allowed himself a moment of shock before slamming his mental walls up. He forced himself to be distant, as distant as he could be when he was still trying to gather information, and kept away from the personal invitations Chance had taken to giving him when hosting events. He tried to become the ‘Ice Prince’ Nate had jokingly called him once, only accepting ‘hangouts’ where he could rifle through drawers and closets where the key may have been hidden.
This act didn’t work. Chance noticed, and although he didn’t stop trying to spend time with ITrapped, he became a lot less talkative. Months spent trying to loosen those lips were lost, and the attempt to emotionally distance himself didn’t even work. All it served to do was make him miserable.
So, he stopped trying. He accepted Chance’s invitations again, spoke up even when it wasn’t needed, and allowed himself to indulge in the boisterous affection the man gave freely. It didn’t matter if he got a little attached for now, once he and the others skipped town he would be forced to get over it anyway. It wasn’t like he would run into them again afterwards.
He found himself genuinely enjoying their company, but unfortunately he wasn’t making much progress on finding the key. Whenever he did find time to search for it, he would always be interrupted by one thing or another. It began to take long enough that he actually found himself feeling guilty.
Not guilty over leaving his friends for so long, that wasn’t new. But guilty over tricking Chance.
He couldn’t imagine why. Despite his unwilling attachment to the man, it didn’t change the fact that Chance represented practically everything ITrapped hated in the world. He was a nepo-baby who lived off his parents’ money and thought that made him special. He lived in ignorance of the way the world worked to the point where he had to be taught how to do basic things and he flaunted his wealth carelessly. There shouldn’t have been any guilt in ITrapped’s actions, it probably wouldn’t even hurt the man that much.
Maybe it was because of those drunken nights. Ones where the lights were turned low and the room smelled like expensive wine. The ones where Chance would hold him tightly and cry as he spoke about his parents. As he told ITrapped with those honest golden eyes that he was the first real friend he had. As he thanked him for being there when nobody else chose to be.
He moved past the guilt easily, falling into routine for a few months. He would wake up, get ready, talk to Chance, and then search for the key at every opportunity. It was nice to have some kind of structure after everything, even if it wasn’t as fun as before. Even if he fell asleep every night listening to the whispers of his selfishness.
Then, he got a call from an old acquaintance.
One who informed him of a murderer in the Banlands going after exploiters.
Suddenly, with the new deadline, ITrapped’s search was renewed with vigor. He spent every waking moment searching for the key, gathering information from anyone he could, and breaking into offices to get it. It was with this new method that he found a less… savory part of Chance’s casino.
He found rooms covered in blood and filled with dead bodies. He found rooms tainted by the stench of gunpowder and rot. He found rooms filled with people playing Russian Roulette.
He immediately eliminated that location as one where the key could be hidden. If the family didn’t trust it around the normal gamblers, he sincerely doubted they would around people desperate enough to risk their lives like that. He himself would have washed his hands of the sight and never entered the place again if it weren’t for one simple thing.
Chance.
Gone was all the joy ITrapped took from his stories, in its place was the familiar annoyance from their first encounter ten times stronger than before. Because now, every minute the gambler spoke was one where Ellernate and Caleb could have been murdered or worse, every second looking into his eyes better spent searching for the key. It didn’t help that the man seemed to have a sixth sense for when ITrapped was actually making progress, coming in at the most inconvenient times and forcing him to come up with a lie.
Of course, his first solution to this problem wasn’t the roulette. He hadn’t lost his sanity yet. But as the nights went on and the Darkheart went from an everyday nuisance to practically yelling in his ear, it offered its first good idea and ITrapped couldn’t help but think more on it.
It would be perfect wouldn’t it? If Chance were dead, he would be allowed to search freely with the excuse of mourning. He wouldn’t even have to worry about the murder charge if Chance did it himself, it probably wouldn’t be hard to convince him either given how easily he believed ITrapped’s other lies.
In truth, he wasn’t sure Chance even knew about the Russian Roulette with how much pride he took in the casino. He never once spoke bad about it, even saying how he practically grew up in it. ITrapped doubts he would be as proud of it if he knew about its dark underground. He was too good for that.
This estimate was proven correct when he finally brought the man and saw his expression become shocked. “Wow, I didn’t know this was here.” He had said, trying to cover up his obvious nerves with a signature smile. Then, when ITrapped convinced him to play, the smile faltered as Chance desperately tried to get him to admit he was somehow joking.
He wasn’t, and after he confirmed that Chance went along with it. It was almost *too* easy, a lie of it being ITrapped’s favorite game, a half-truth of stumbling upon the place when searching for him, all to get Chance to sit down at that chair and give the barrel a spin. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he felt hurt that those lies were believed.
But then, just when he thought he would finally be free, Chance won. And won. And won again. It got to the point where ITrapped began to wonder if the ‘Lady Luck’ he was always talking about was an actual deity that kept the odds in his favor. Then, the murders in the Banlands hit mainstream news, and ITrapped realized he had been going too slow once again.
After Chance won for a fourth time, ITrapped decided to take matters into his own hands.
He led the man into an alleyway with promises of a surprise. Not one near the casino, that would be too easy, not one near his apartment, that would be too suspicious, one near the woods. Far away from any prying eyes.
It had been snowing, that day. The powder covering treetops in the distance and picking up the grime of the nearby dumpster. Just when Chance had begun asking questions, ITrapped unsheathed his sword and embedded it in the man’s stomach. He violently yanked it out and with a cruel strained smirk taunted “Looks like Lady Luck isn’t on your side today.”
Chance said something in return, his last words before going limp against the wall, but ITrapped couldn’t hear it over the blood rushing in his ears.
…
The plan ended up working. Within hours of Chance’s death, ITrapped found the key and managed to get to the Banlands before the other was even declared missing. He expected it to be quick, had food, water, emergency medical supplies in case of the worst just to be prepared, but he still expected it to only take a few days at most.
It took a week to find his friends. It only took seconds for him to realize they were dead.
He was too late. When he got there, their bodies were cold and half of their bones were broken. There was no saving them, and when ITrapped came to that realization he sat there for an hour. His friends were gone. There would be no more laughing together over their stupid pranks, no more scheming for their next exploits, no more making stupid jokes at each other’s expense, nothing.
In that moment he hated many people. He hated the gambler for distracting him for so long. For keeping him from the key in the first place. He hated himself for getting distracted. For taking so long. He hated the admins for catching them instead of him. And most of all, he hated the murderer for taking his friends from him. For making him do all of this for nothing. For making him kill Chance for nothing.
ITrapped did eventually leave. He wasn’t strong enough to take their bodies, but he left behind the food he brought. Some of their favorites. When he found his way out, he saw the missing posters. Not all over the city, but most billboards and sign posts tucked in among dozens of others. Hundreds of copies holding those bright golden eyes to remind him of his crime.
Unfortunately Surprisingly, there was no manhunt for him, so he was clear from suspicion and free to move on with his life. He did get an invite for Chance’s makeshift funeral a few months later when his family lost hope, but he declined politely by making some excuse about a conflicting event.
It was for the best, he wouldn’t have been able to handle being surrounded by the tears.
For the next year, ITrapped didn’t think about it. He tried to go somewhere else from there, tried to resist the Darkheart’s voice getting louder, tried to ignore the ichor infecting his very blood as it climbed up his veins. After a particularly bad night, one that ended with him coughing up black bile, he chose to go and check on the body.
It was against his better judgment, but it was the anniversary of Chance’s death and his family still hadn’t managed to find him. It wasn’t like ITrapped hid the body, and it wasn’t in the middle of the forest, he was just curious as to how the man hadn’t been found yet when it’s family ran as big a monopoly as they did.
So, he went to the alley it would have been in.
As he came upon the right street, he was hit by a wave of déjà vu. Despite it being an entire year since he was anywhere close to this spot, he could almost hear the nervous voice of the gambler behind him. He could smell iron along the frost nipping his nose.
Despite the familiarity, once he turned the corner, he had to wonder if this was even the same alleyway. The dumpster was still there, covered in graffiti, so was the chipped brick wall. Upon closer inspection, he even found droplets of what he knew was blood. They weren’t red anymore, having turned a dark brown in the past months, and there were far less than there was when Chance was stabbed, but it was there. This was the right alleyway, but something was missing.
Chance’s body was gone.
“You know,” Chance murmured as he took another sip of whiskey. He was definitely drunk now, but it was a welcome feeling.
“I think if I had the chance to do it all over again,” he continued as an ache formed in his heart. He wasn’t stupid, he knew ITrapped had been using him. Not at first maybe, but when half of the time he ran into the guy it was in his own office he was bound to get suspicious.
“I would still choose him.” He admitted while staring off into the forest. Because as much as it hurt in the end, ITrapped was the first time Chance had truly felt seen. He was the first person to make him feel actually lucky, even if in the end that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Sheepishly, he turned to smile at Noob who held a beer in hand while leaning on the porch railing beside him.
“Sorry, that’s pretty pathetic isn’t it?” Because it was. To know that he had never been actually loved, to know the entire reason he was in this hell was because of ITrapped and to still say he would go along with him willingly was pathetic. Noob must think he’s insane.
It decided to be nice after the last round. He didn’t know why, but it gave them a few boxes of alcohol. The cheap kind, but better than the nothing they had before. The survivors celebrated, but it was late and most had kept it light so they wouldn’t have to go into tomorrow’s round with a hangover. By now, the only three still up were him and Noob who decided to go to the porch to relax.
Noob, who was now looking at him with sad eyes. “No, it isn’t.” They spoke softly, though with no less conviction. “It’s natural to want to see him again, even if he hurt you.” They took another sip of their drink, and Chance had to wonder how they weren’t wasted yet. The words still hit close to home for him. Somehow they always knew what to say.
His brows furrowed as he rested his head on his hand. “I just- I wish I knew what set him off, y’know?” He thought a lot about that day, but he could never figure out what caused the change. One moment they were having a normal day and the next he was being stabbed in an alleyway by the man he loved. Noob hummed.
“It could have been anything, but whatever it was, it wasn’t something in your control.” They responded intelligently, and he hated when they were right. If something set ITrapped off, it wouldn’t have been him. He had been making sure to be careful with his words even before he was asked to play Russian Roulette because of ITrapped’s growing eye bags. He didn’t want to annoy the man, but that clearly hadn’t worked.
“I know.” He admitted softly as his brows relaxed and he dropped his hand to rest on the railing. ITrapped was stressed for days before things had started to get bad. He wasn’t at fault for the man snapping, even if he could have been more helpful.
It wasn’t his fault.
He took another sip of his whiskey and shuffled closer to Noob as the two sat in peaceful silence.
That didn’t change his situation or what happened, but it wasn’t his fault.
For now, that was enough.