Survival Of The Fittest

and Benjamin Fields fell.

There was a brief moment of thought before the sound of fire rang out.

One moment where Jeremy had seen Ben looking at him. With his eyes. With his gun.

And one moment where Jeremy Frasier had felt very, very scared for his life.

The moment had passed. The trigger had been pulled. A sound had come out of his gun.

And then there was nothing but the ringing that remained.

His eyes were closed.

For a moment, he thought he was dead.

For a moment, he thought that that was the end.

But he felt the pressure of his eyelids. He felt himself breathing. He felt the throb of the bruises on his face. He felt the wind blow against him.

And slowly, he opened his eyes.

"Oh shit."

Benjamin Fields was on the ground. Bleeding. Clutching his stomach. His eyes were closed. His face was strained. He was in pain. Jeremy didn't know how it felt, but he knew that it would have hurt, at least. The Raging Bull was on the ground in front of Ben. The Jackhammer was in Jeremy's hands.

You didn't need a genius to figure out what had happened here.

Jeremy took his steps forward. Slowly. Surely. He was alive. He'd won. Part of him just realised that. Part of him hadn't yet. Part of him was walking towards Ben, slowly and surely because he was alive and he'd won and the fact hadn't quite ticked in his mind yet. The baseball bat had been dropped on the ground earlier. Jeremy picked it up without thinking as he moved closer to Ben.

There wasn't really anything to say about it. He was walking. The ringing was still there and it wasn't fading but Jeremy couldn't think about that. Ben was in front of him. Ben was bleeding. Ben was dying. He'd been torn to shreds in front of Jeremy and he was only just beginning to realise that.

His feet stopped. He reached Ben. The wind stopped. The air was empty. The only sound that filled the air were the breaths coming out of Ben's throat.

That was number two, now.

Junko Kurosawa. Benjamin Fields.

There was nothing else that Jeremy could say. He took his steps. Forward, and-

Ben was talking.

Telling him something.

Jeremy paused. Jeremy listened. Jeremy thought.

His gun hadn't been loaded.

That was the least important detail, but Ben's first realization. Jeremy had tricked him, Jeremy hadn't known, either way and either interpretation Ben had been doomed from the moment his brain had walked him right off this cliff and chosen him this hill to die on. No amount of flailing, hand-wringing, desperate ranting, no amount that could take it back.

Nor save him.

Nor redeem him.

He'd messed up. He'd messed up for the final time, and the price was the indescribable- no words needed or even possible- wrenching and clawing in his gut. He couldn't feel his legs. He could feel something had been shattered. He could feel pieces threaded through the meat of his innards, shards of something turned splinters turned agony so blinding he wasn't even sure if his eyes were open or closed. He could feel the dull imprint of concrete tile, a punch right to his face and shoulders and palms and he could feel it all at once and the worst part, the worst damn part was that he couldn't do anything. It was over. He'd failed, he'd lost. Jeremy was going to walk on, head held aloft and hands free to gun down whoever else Jeremy so pleased, and Ben couldn't argue, couldn't fight his way out, it was all he could do just to stand, just to draw a breath let alone draw a gun.

He tried. He tried so hard, he yelled and screamed at himself in deafening silence to move, to fight back, to somehow march his broken ass back to battle. Not one muscle obeyed him except for responding; calm, burning reminders that they were at once losing precious life blood and oxygen and shriveling away exponentially by the second. He couldn't stand. Couldn't even face his killer.

Coward.

Ben agonized over every breath, and every breath kindly stabbed him through the ribs for his trouble.

Loser.

He'd let everyone down.

Failure.

Hadn't even done a damn thing for any of them in the first place.

He tried and failed, once more, to make any part of himself shift. All he managed was to somehow drive the stubby fingers of his own fist deeper into the wound that was still freely bleeding despite his weak effort. All that he was and was worth was turning to red paste underneath him. Soon enough it'd be rust.

And all in all, that was Ben Fields.

He didn't even realize he'd started speaking, wild and uncontrollable breath punctuating each syllable at knife point, he didn't realize it at all, he only continued to fail, to die, to say:

"Jer-... Jer-... emy… I-"

"... You..."

He begged, honest to God, he begged.

"... P-... please… M-... My... "

"Stuff-... Bring-... t-to…"

Blood leaked.

"Pen-... Penel-... o- pe… Kiz-... Li-... Li...."

"Find-..."

He couldn't see.

"Tell-... tell them… I'm- I'm…"

"S- sorry-... I-... I-..."

"... Tried…"

That was a lie.

Ben pathetically drifted from this earth, unconscious but still consciously knowing it was a lie.

And Jeremy responded.

"I can't say I can do those things..."

The Raging Bull went into his pocket. The Baseball Bat moved into his left. The Jackhammer moved into his right.

The second bag went on his back.

"But I can try."

And then he took his steps, sending back a solitary wave as he disappeared from sight.

"Later."

((Jeremy Frasier, concluded in Love Runs Out))

"... quie…  momen...."

"... real action… Peterson…"

"... another victim... "

"... had the…"

Ben's struggling got him nothing, and nowhere, but a further six feet under.

"... played a game…"

"... she lost…"

But he kept trying, kept failing, kept trying, kept-

"... Tarquin was the next to go when William McKinley disemboweled him with a machete, unfortunately poor Will died not…"

That gave Ben pause, as if he had been making any progress in the first place to warrant the idea that he'd paused.

Will had died a hero. A man.

And Ben had died an incompetent...

He lay, hollow of blood as he felt.

None of them would ever see him again. Lucilly, Will, Travis, Mia, Nate, Matt, Cristo. Kizi, Lili, Raina, Penelope. They were going to a better place, a place Ben didn't belong, a place Ben hadn't earned.

He continued to struggle. To think, against all his own understanding, that he somehow had a chance. Ben couldn't feel his own body anymore. He was already a non-entity. He was the blood he'd spilt onto the roof of a building God couldn't have spared a second glance for, and he was drying away, evaporating away. Each freshly rotten attempt to will a part of himself to life… No pain. No sensation. Nothing at all.

He realized. Way too late, he realized.

Mom. Lana. They would only be seeing him one last time, they would only be seeing him to learn the horrible truth.  Ben had abandoned them. Ben had broken his promises. Ben had let them down.

The man of their home, the one Dad had trusted the rest of their lives with, had been reduced to an empty husk, and emptier words.

No. He was stronger than that.

He was not strong.

He was no hero.

He was no man.

He was not going to leave them like this.

He strained, strained harder than he had even thought possible, and he heard something strain until it broke. He could see again.

The cold sneer of the camera, glaring down at him. His vision blurred, but he could still see the taunt, the engaged red light. He didn't realize, not anymore, that he looked terrible, face inflamed into splotchy gory reds and blacks, hair clumped and ground like beef into bloody frothy paste, lips half eroded onto the concrete.

He didn't realize, especially, that he'd started to cry.

He would not go a second too soon. He would say everything he needed to say. Everything that mattered. He would be there one last time for his family, before it was all over and before Ben took his last bow and tumbled over his own ass and broke his own neck before the janitors unceremoniously swept him off stage. Each breath he took grew weaker. Quieter. Air was dripping and dribbling out of the corners of his mouth by the second. He noticed it, but he fought, he fought with all the power he hadn't been able to muster to protect, to save that beautifully dumbass class of the once loud and proud Cochise, he fought and he fought and he fought until he could draw first one agonizing breath, then the next. Then the next.

He just had to say something. Anything. A simple goodbye. He could do it.

He had to do it.

He had to be strong.

"...





"

But for the camera, he merely died as he'd lived.

Brain dead.

Dead eyed.

Nothing to say.