The Passion Of Iscariot; By Max Demian

[Gundham]

She didn't interrupt this time. It didn't feel right.

Aoin had loved Daniel. Daniel hadn't known, until they got here and it was far too late for literally anything to matter. And Amos, if the announcements had been any guide, had been in love with Aoin. Sounded like a horrible, screwed-up situation for all of them to be in. And it clearly hadn't ended well for anybody involved.

Daniel was beating himself up for things he hadn't known. Couldn't have known. She'd had vaguely similar feelings about Ash when the other girl had asked her out - wondering how in the world Ash had drawn that conclusion, what kind of signals she'd been giving off, what people had been saying about her, what they'd start saying now. Even though the reciprocation hadn't been there - wasn't ever going to be there - that feeling of "how on earth did I read this so wrong for so long?" had still knotted up her stomach for days afterwards. And that was a situation where there had been barely any fallout. Daniel's... that was light years beyond anything she knew.

Because, yeah. It wasn't your fault for not knowing what you didn't know. But that didn't change the feeling that you should have. That if you'd just been smarter or more perceptive or just a better person, that you'd have figured everything out before it was too late.

So she didn't say "It wasn't your fault," because it wouldn't have helped anything. He knew it wasn't his fault. But he'd feel like it was anyway.

She settled for a sympathetic nod, and an "Mmm," to encourage him to keep talking.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

"...and then..."

He kept breathing, and he kept speaking, even though every word felt like thorns against his throat, like bile spilling from his lips.

"...I said something I never should have, a-about Aion's dead brother..." The flow of words was interrupted by a choke. (A sob, if he was ready to accept that.) "And it set him off. Rightfully so- but he shoved me, I shoved him, and well. You heard the announcement. I think the rocks split his first-day head injury open, and worse this time."

This time, he let slip, "Amos and I tried to patch him up again but we couldn't." He spoke with no filter now, not even the ones that would have been a good idea in a confession. "I told Wendy not to follow me anymore, and... here I am, I guess. And Amos isn't. Aion isn't."

He unstuck his hand from his head, and it felt slick. He looked down, and saw a drop of water running down his palm.

[Gundham]

So there it was. He'd said something he shouldn't have. Said something that'd cross a line and start a fight. One bad decision in the heat of the moment, and it wound up killing Aion and Amos both.

It wasn't the same as what happened with the legion, but it was close. Same brushstrokes, but arranged to form a different picture.

Mistakes were made. People died. And it was easier to bear that guilt and shame alone. Juanita abandoned the legion, Daniel told Wendy to leave. She went to the hot springs, he went out here. Two lonely figures wandering in the snow, each weighted down by mistakes too big to fix or take back. When you were carrying that much, it was easy to want to just flop down and let the cold take you. Scarily easy.

She looked at Daniel, thinking about what he'd said. "Shouldn't," written over "can't." Like he thought that what happened with Aion and Amos would happen to her and Colm if he stuck around. Like he didn't even want to give himself the hope of things getting better. Juanita didn't feel that way. Hadn't let herself feel that way. Because she wasn't ready to die. She wasn't ready to give everything up or let anybody else win, and that was what kept her putting one foot in front of the other. In that moment, she wanted him to come with them. Because she didn't want to take a look at herself in Daniel's reflection and see what might happen if she ever stopped running long enough to let the guilt catch up to her.

"That's... That's a lot to be carrying, Daniel."

Juanita thought carefully, trying to find the words to reach out to him. The words that she might have wanted to hear. "I know you said you shouldn't come with us, but... I think you should. I... I'm not gonna tell you to buck up and feel better. What happened is... awful. It's not something anybody could just stuff down. But it happened, and... all you can do is admit it to yourself and try to be better next time. Otherwise that guilt is gonna destroy you."

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Daniel kept looking down, at his hand and the snow, as Juanita spoke. He let his hand fall to his side, and the gun in his other arm felt like it was getting heavier, like he was clinging to a ledge that he was slowly losing his grip on.

It felt like all this time, looking back, he was tip-toeing on the edge of a great pit. Yesterday, he finally slipped and fell all the rough way down to the bottom. Now that he was there, he looked up and saw only the deep dark shadows of the sheer cliff face, too dark, flat, and slippery to ever climb out of, and a pinprick of light at the top. It was just enough to know someone like Juanita, walking along that same ledge, could look down and see, and then tell herself or another, and that's why I'm scared of falling.

But Juanita already "fell", didn't she? Harder than Daniel, if her account, as slanted as it inevitably was, was anything to go by. Yet here she was, on the other side of confession booth, offering him something like a penance. And that was the point, wasn't it? There was no sin that was uncleansable, as long as you committed to the proper way of things after...

...no, no, the more Daniel thought about it the more he felt like something didn't fit here. Sin could, at once, be so deeply rooted that a single sin could spread from not just its original offenders, but to all of humanity in their wake. It could be so pervasive that only entire cities' destruction, or a flood of the world, would cleanse it. But after one sinless man died on the cross in an unjust and cruel way, all of that could be wiped clean from a person's soul, anything from theft to murder to-

(He wondered, for a moment, if his father had ever gone to the confession booth, Father forgive me, for I have sinned by hitting my wife. Maybe he never did, and like the original original sin, it was passed down. Maybe he did, and it did nothing because the idea that all sins could be forgiven was invented for the people who knew they were going to sin again, for all the people who'd been blood-splashed by the moral crime of the messiah's death and wanted to believe the all-loving would still love them. In this critical moment, Daniel lacked their audacity. What Daniel wanted was not forgiveness. He stared behind him at a blood-soaked trail that started long before he was even born, looked ahead and wished it would just end already.)

He shook his head, still not meeting Juanita's eyes. He blinked a few times, his vision beginning to blur. "I-I think..." he breathed in, and out, shakily as the shiver in his hands, and the cool start of another tear. "I think it already has."

[Gundham]

His admission changed something in the atmosphere. Even though Daniel was standing just a few feet away, the distance between them seemed to flex. He was looming larger, the background shrinking away. He hadn't moved, but he suddenly felt much too close.

Juanita took a half step back. Her eyes flicked to the gun, then slowly back up to him.

"What are you trying to tell me, Daniel? That you've... given up?"

In a way, she probably already knew the answer. He'd probably had it in mind since before they ever spotted him. She wanted to feel sorry for Daniel. To continue seeing herself in him, and throw a lifeline to him. Save him, so she'd know that she could be saved. But at this moment, all those wants were swirling in the snow dust at their their feet; all Juanita could see was the gun in his hand and the look in his eyes, and they didn't look like anything she had ever seen in herself. Or ever wanted to.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

What, did Juanita think he was going to open fire? That wouldn't have been a good idea for his purposes. Guns, especially this gun, were more unpredictable than the treacherous rocks and snow.

"It's not just Aion," he said, words wavering and swerving to avoid a block in his throat. Was he even making sense? "It's... most of my life, really, felt like- like waiting for me to become some kind of criminal, you know? And I have... haven't... never really made a good case for myself otherwise. N-not even at school."

The stains that tear left on his cheek felt ice cold against the air.

"So now I'm... just waiting for..."

(Amos' suicide meant in the end, Daniel could not throw himself at Amos' feet and tell him to take revenge. Maybe Amos wasn't the sort for that. Maybe he was and he just gave up before he could find out. That would have been a relief. That would have been penance. The fact that Daniel felt glad on some level to not face him again was more damning than anything else. It might have been even more damning than his actions. After all, the only thing preventing all the fallen angels from going back to heaven was their lack of repentance... was it? That's what he always heard.)

"For..."

(The only way you can step onto the proper path is by admitting you have a problem, said Genie. Step onto the path, fall into its embrace, and let your burdens be lifted. This is the only way - look across from you, Daniel. You know what she is running from, but what is she running to that's so worth it?)

He fell silent for a moment, then wiped the tears off his face.

"Juanita," he spoke softly, but steadily. "If I said I have given up, that I've been wandering around waiting for the cold to kill me, that maybe you should take my gun and finish this because I clearly can't- what do you say?"

[Gundham]

Juanita scanned his eyes, looking for some sort of trap, some hidden intention; if she agreed too quickly, maybe she'd fail some hidden test and he'd take that as grounds to shoot her. Paranoid? Yeah, kinda. But getting stabbed in the face by your ex will do that to you.

She pursed her lips and thought for a few moments, choosing her words carefully.

"If that's what you wanted... yeah, I would do it for you. But not because I'd agree that you deserve it. Because if I didn't, you'd freeze out here, and it would be the kindest thing I could do for you in the moment."

Was that the truth? It was a truth, certainly. Not the only one. There were lots of other becauses that went unsaid, and none of them were nearly as kindhearted as that one. Becauses like:

- Because it's a death game and you're offering me a free gun.

- Because if you don't want to live, it's better that your food and your weapon go to someone who does.

- Because I've already done it twice.

- Because the second you asked me that - the second I thought about killing you - my leg stopped hurting.

- ...Because you have to die, if I want to live.

Those reasons were selfish and callous, with logic colder than the air around them. She tried very hard not to let any of them show while she waited for his response.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

"Then take it." Daniel lightly tossed the gun, and it sunk into the snow between them. "You know what to do, just, eh... be warned that it might take a few tries. The bastard thing's finicky as hell."

His lip curled upward a bit at that, and stayed that way. It still didn't reach his eyes. The sprouts of tears were still there, for now.

Maybe the fact that this gun failed the moment he tried to shoot Fitz dead for good was an act of God. Maybe he kinda hoped He would show more grace to Juanita, but that was pretty unlikely, wasn't it?

From one sinner to the next.

[Gundham]

Juanita reached down and picked up the gun. It was a weird shape. Her only experience with guns was in video games, and this one didn't look like anything she'd ever seen before. It was like an Uzi and a shotgun had a weird kid who inherited the strangest-looking traits of both. The thing was hefty, and shockingly cold from its time in the snow. It felt solid, chillingly real in its presence. She took a breath, then pressed the stock to her shoulder, approximating how she thought it was supposed to be held. Small granules of ice slipped through her fingers, but she kept her hands steady, holding it firm. Swallowed heavily.

She'd watched a cartoon with her brothers when she was a kid. Some weekly serial, about seafaring adventurers. It was old, and you could tell it was old because of how many people died in in it. The main character were always getting cut down in swordfights or swept overboard in storms, their agonizing deaths fully animated onscreen. You couldn't show that to kids nowadays. She didn't remember what it was called or any of the characters' names, just snatches of violence. But there was one scene she remembered in full. The crew had been exploring an island, and one crew member got his feet stuck in some black, swampy mud. He started to freak out and thrash, and within seconds he sank in up to his calves, then his knees. Another crewman waded towards him to pull him out, but he too found himself being sucked down. Nobody else stepped closer after that. They reached out with sticks and ropes, but it was no use. In the end they stood there, feet away, while the two doomed men sank. The show didn't cut away. You had to sit there and watch, just another member of the crew. You had to listen while the two of them cried and begged for help, while the screen showed close-ups of their agonized faces, until the mud finally flowed into their mouths and choked them out.

That scene had never left Juanita. It was etched in there permanently, along with her childhood telephone number and her times tables. You couldn't forget something that awful. She'd seen worse (and, honestly, done worse), but nothing hit her with the same gut-twisting horror that that scene did. What she found most awful about it was the second man, the guy who came in to help. The first guy just had rotten luck. But the second guy, he could have survived. If he had just stayed back like everybody else, he'd have been alive at the end of the episode. He hadn't done anything wrong. He had done the right thing, the heroic thing. And he'd been rewarded with a death that'd give a little kid nightmares for more than a decade. What happened to him was cruel, and unfair. It was scary to think that you could meet a fate like that, just for trying to help someone else.

Daniel was mired in guilt. He was in it up to his calves, and going down fast. Only a few feet away. On some level, some fundamentally human part of her wanted to reach out across the distance, to try and pull him back. She could drop the gun, give him a hug. She could tell him everything was going to be okay, that none of this was fault, and all of the other lies he needed to hear. But if she did that, then she'd get stuck too. She'd have to think about Eden and about Jack and about Donovan, about the hole in Crystal's hand and look on Colm's face when he heard that Betty was dead. She'd have to think about how angry she'd made Jezzie Stark, who was now on a killing spree. She'd have to think about how John's blood felt on her hands and what he'd said to her before he died. And then she'd be right there in the pit with Daniel, screaming while the blackness swallowed her from the ankles up.

She raised the gun and pointed it at his head. Headshots were the cleanest, the most efficient way of getting the job done. That's why they counted the most in video games. It'd be the fastest. The kindest. Assuming her aim was any good.

Juanita sighted down the barrel, and for just a second, her focus shifted, from the barrel to the target; and she made the mistake of looking into Daniel's eyes. No. Not like this. It didn't... didn't feel right.

The gun barrel rotated down a few inches, and just a tiny nudge to the left. Pointing straight at Daniel's shattered heart.

Juanita and Daniel had a lot in common. She could see herself in him, knew his guilt and shame as if they were her own. The only difference between them was that she hadn't let those feelings consume her. The mire hadn't pulled her down yet, and as long as she didn't falter or let her guard down, it never would. As she tightened her finger on the trigger, she looked at him and thought: There, but for the grace of God, go I.

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Daniel watched her, and Juanita picked it up without so much as a word, and took her aim. She was going places, that was for sure. Daniel wouldn't have wanted to follow her in any case. He had a lot of regrets, but one was not telling Juanita about the recoil before she pressed the stock to her shoulder. In all honesty, leaving her this gun of all firearms might be more of a cruelty than a mercy, but, y'know. A gun's a gun. The way she handled it, he doubted she would be a begging chooser.

He sometimes half-jokingly, half-deliriously considered the possibility that it might lead to his own downfall somehow, he was definitely thinking that way while Fitz was beating the shit out of him after the damn thing failed to fire. He'd been thinking about it in a more direct way, like this, since about five minutes ago. It wasn't exactly a handgun one could point at one's own head comfortably, after all. Another impulse. May this one be the holiest of them all.

It might lead to Juanita's downfall, later down her road. It might decide to not fire at the right time, it might punch her in the shoulder at the wrong time, she might get shot or stabbed or whatever else while trying to shake a spent bullet out of the gun so she could reload it. Maybe she wasn't thinking ahead, maybe his warning about the gun's finickyness didn't reach the rational part of her brain. This too was probably an impulse, an uncalculated act. Daniel felt another twinge of regret pull his heart in yet another direction - was he causing another person to fall like he did? Was he pushing another person down this damned road in his stead?

There were layers underneath Juanita's words when she said it would be the kindest thing I could do for you in the moment. There were other reasons hiding below. He doubted she was that truly selfless, because he sure wasn't, and here they both were. Maybe it was another impulse to protect his bleeding conscience one last time, but he got the feeling, from the way Juanita averted her gaze from his eyes, glassy as though already dead, that she didn't like what she saw in them. Maybe it was her reflection.

He kept looking at her though, and... yeah. Daniel didn't like what he saw in the mirror either.

He had a lot of regrets still, when Juanita put her finger on the trigger. If he could talk to Cedar, he'd apologize for not being better while they were still a thing, for one. If he could talk to Aion, he'd beg for forgiveness even though he knew he shouldn't, what he should do was just say sorry like an actual adult for the petty, childish grudges he'd held and how he dealt with them.

Mostly though, if he could talk to his mom, say that if it was true that she thought of him as the extension of her suffering and of a truly evil man, and she only recently decided to give him a chance to grow into someone good, then... she was right the first time.

Lastly, if Juanita knew what he was thinking when he closed his eyes the moment before she fired, she'd probably be offended, worried, or something like that. Here was where they parted ways, and Daniel watched Juanita run, not quite after a prize that wasn't really, but away from him and all the other demons nipping at her heels, and he thought: There, but for the grace of God, go I.

His eyes were closed, but he was still looking at her, and the image of a would-be destiny in her staring eyes, with a bit of wisdom, a bit of madness, a bit of love, a bit of dire evil.

Like a bird's beak to its eggshell, the bullet smashed through his heart.



S062 - DECEASED

[Daniel Ozanne chose nothing but his own self. 63 students remain.]

[Gundham]

Juanita was dimly aware of the blast, and the fine red spray that plumed up out of Daniel's chest. Then the gun's brace cannoned into her shoulder like a runaway Mac truck. Her entire arm fizzed with white-hot sparks of pain and she let out a sharp cry. "Aaaaaggh!"

The gun's stock slipped from her numb fingers, and it was too heavy for her other hand to bear the weight. She let it drop into the snow. Gunsmoke, or maybe steam from where the hot barrel hit the snow, wafted from it.

She looked at Daniel, her eyes beading with tears of pain. He was dead, no doubt about it. The boy lay on his back, dead still. The blast had painted a cascading spray of red across the snow behind him, soaking it in in pink patches. Daniel's arms and legs were vaguely splayed out, giving the whole scene a very gorey snow angel vibe. His face, though, looked almost peaceful. He had chosen his fate, and he had accepted it in the end. And if he really was able to smile and feel at peace in that last moment, then, well... Juanita was happy for him. She hoped he'd found Heaven, or at least some kind of peace. She somehow doubted that her own passing would be anything like this.

Pinpricks of cold tingled on her face, and she wiped at it with her sleeve. It came way speckled with red smudges. Colm would be waiting for her, and if she showed up spattered with blood he'd understandably have question. But she could explain. Colm a reasonable guy. Maybe he'd even heard the gunshot and had turned back to see what had happened. She'd tell him the truth, regardless. He'd understand, surely. If he'd taken her other kills in stride, no way he'd lose his mind over this. This was... this one was justified. You could even go so far as to say it was the morally correct option.

What felt less right was snatching up the bag he'd dropped and scrounging through it for food and ammunition. That felt squirrely, like she robbing him of something. But she did it anyway. Daniel hadn't had any medical supplies left, but he did some food and water. And an awful lot of ammunition. He must not have fired the thing much. Given how badly it kicked back, she couldn't blame him. She was lucky she hadn't dislocated her shoulder with it. There was a manual too. She kept digging, looking for anything else that could be of use.

There'd be time for grieving later. She'd make her way to the research station, reconnect with Colm, and then sit down and take a load off. And then, in the quiet moments, all the guilt and shame would catch up with her. She'd hate herself, and she'd cry, and she'd feel like garbage. And then she'd get up in the morning and find another way to prove that feeling correct. But that was later. Here and now, the game continued.

((Even here-er and now-er than she thought, as it turns out. Juanita Reid continues elsewhere...))