Survival Of The Fittest

July, 2008

St. Paul, Minnesota

"I'm sick of this. I didn't want this, and you're not gonna have the self-satisfaction of acting better than me. I've got my own problems now."

"Who's acting?"

In a dark bedroom, a fist flew at a mirror.

It didn't shatter, of course. Brendan wasn't strong enough for that even on his best days, let alone months after they stopped coming to pass. But an almighty echo reverberated throughout the house and Brendan clutched his fist to his chest in a frothing brew of pain and anger.

He heard footsteps from the stairs. His parents. He collapsed to the carpet beneath his window, a position he had yet to vacate in lieu of his bed for as long as he'd been back in St. Paul.

"I'm FINE... just fine. Everything's... fine."

He repeated his assertion unconvincingly, his pain-free hand holding its twin to his body as it throbbed. The steps stopped. He felt a seize in his throat as he tried to keep his cool. The steps from outside the door continued again, but in the opposite direction.

They'd taken him for his word.

What a fucking joke.

They must not have watched him on the island. They'd know what his word was worth then.

Pained guttural gasps forced their way through Brendan's throat as he sat beneath the bedroom window, nursing his knuckles, in the exact same position he'd found himself in every night since he'd been back. The only thing missing was the Regina Spektor playing in the background.

He couldn't sleep on the bed. Every time he tried he had dreams. Dreams of when a blue-haired girl stood over him with a metal baseball bat removing his teeth. Dreams of when he turned the flashlight on and he was wading through the remains of a boy who'd been dead a week. Even worse, he'd have dreams of lying in the lap of his boyfriend for hours upon end. And of course the dreams would end and he'd return to reality and he'd vomit on the carpet or piss his bed like a broken housecat. So he sat there every night, trying to retain a semblance of sleep and sanity through his music. But all it would take was a word or a phrase or a verse and it would all come crashing down.

Tonight he had no music to face. Literally, but not figuratively.

Because Kimberly Nguyen had taken him from his recovery and destroyed him. She told him how little of value he was to the human race like she was better than him.

Which she wasn't.

Brendan knew what he was worth as a human being, and after everything he'd done he was still better than her. They weren't equals. She had no ivory tower to sit on. She who acted like over the phone she wanted to talk about Erik because she was there instead of him, and even though he should have known better he went there anyway to have her berate him for stuff he couldn't control. How fucking dare she do that. How. Fucking. Dare.

As the pain subsided, he looked into his wardrobe. He saw his old jumper, something he wore out through the winter months. The more he looked at it, the more it suddenly painted a different picture.

Brendan made his way to his feet. He felt the chill behind him and the curtains graced his shoulders. His eyes remained trained to his old black jumper.

He walked through the laundry and stains coating his bedroom floor to his wardrobe, to the solitary black jumper. The more he looked at it, the less he saw it. It was no longer a jumper he'd had since he was 15 years old, something of warmth and protection from the Minnesota cold.

It was the taunting stature of someone who shouldn't be here.

"No... no no no... nonononononononononononoNO."

Brendan's murmurs became whispers and his whispers became screams as he yelled at what was no longer an old black jumper but instead a girl who shouldn't be here.

"You shouldn't be here."

His voice returned to its natural volume.

That's right. She shouldn't.

"You shouldn't have come back."

His voice was losing control once more.

"He should have."

Brendan's hands started shaking uncontrollably.

"Erik should be here."

His breath became ragged and his voice returned to its shout.

"ERIK. SHOULD BE HERE."

"NOT YOU."

He felt the ascending steps outside the door through his own touch of the carpet.

"ERIK SHOULD BE HERE INSTEAD OF YOU."

"YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE."

"ERIK DESERVED TO LIVE."

"NOT."

"YOU."

April, 2012

Fremantle, Australia

In spite of all his remonstrance with society's gender roles, he still wanted to organise a great day for Miranda.

He originally wanted to do something more out of the box. Make something peculiar but spectacular, something she'd remember. He'd thought about it for weeks, tried calling friends and employers for ideas, but as the date grew closer and the planning time shrunk he quickly realized he was going to have to think up something good for their Leather year. It was pure Cotton this time, unfortunately.

"Tell me where we're going, c'mon," Miranda said, as the Uber turned another corner. She swayed slightly more than usual, possibly due to the fact she didn't know the turn was coming, on account of the blindfold. Brendan smirked. This was the third time she'd asked on this trip alone. She was becoming a backseat beggar.

"What's the point of an anniversary surprise then? Should I start running these by your assistant?" Brendan asked, before a soft laugh.

"Careful, I married you because of your looks, not your sense of humour, don't get too cocky," Miranda replied, as the Uber eventually came to a stop. He bid the driver farewell, took Miranda by the arm, and led her through the parade of cars to the location of their second year anniversary.

As they reached the door, Brendan clasped the handle, twisted, and tried to immediately bolt for the familiar sound of the bell by the corner, only for it to tinkle pathetically under his fingers. Miranda's mouth slightly gaped open, although Brendan guided her quickly through the door before she could voice her thoughts. The married couple quickly stepped inside, Brendan closing the door behind them, before unclasping the velcro at the back of her blindfold and letting her see.

"SURPRISE!"

An entire studio of people announced the familiar surprise party phrase as Miranda began to see again. Before her stood a room of people, including their friends, Miranda's friends, Brendan's friends, and various others including Miranda's employers, who made sense on two fronts, given Miranda treated them much like her own absent family, and this was their studio that they'd closed for the afternoon.

It wasn't much. Hell, it was probably more suited to a birthday than a second anniversary party. But Miranda smiled anyways and kissed her husband.

"This is great, Ben."

*

The music started up not long after the couple arrived. An unholy mix of speed metal and synthwave, which was from Miranda's own personal collection back when she had tried her hand at it during her high school years. It was loud enough to have many of the guests wondering what it was, but not loud enough to drown out their conversation starters. There was food, there was alcohol flowing freely, an esky lying beneath a bolted down bed already drowning its tins, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Although Brendan's face wasn't exactly showing it.

Sure, he'd spoken to many of the guests he'd invited, sure he was putting up with glib jibes from Miranda's friends about kitchens and the loss of Brendan's manhood or something (as though they had no idea he'd spent a good year of his life in Fremantle sucking cock while Miranda tasted various women's lipstick), and sure he'd done the rounds and retrieved a plastic sack of ice from one of the eskies hidden in an outside car, and it was all normal and routine and just like normal guys who were 21 and Australian and had a missus and was settling down and probably had a kid on the way soon all acted. And sure Brendan was 21 and Australian and had a "missus" and was "settling down" whatever that meant and whenever they decided to get careless there would probably be a kid because of that but there was no escaping the feeling that everything he did felt like he was pretending to be a well-adjusted adult who did everything expected of him rather than being an actual well-adjusted adult who was doing what they normally did.

This constantly invading train of thought followed him to the back of the studio to what would have been best described as a courtyard but more accurately described as a square hole with a toilet block. He stood there, looking up to the sun dipping out of sight, holding a can of vodka soda, trying to psyche himself back into the studio but had no luck. He took a sip, no more luck. He started gulping down a cascade of the stuff, none of the courage describe in colloquialism coming to him, and suddenly there was no more vodka. Brendan placed the can on the small brick ledge and sighed.

The music momentarily heightened as the door opened, with Miranda in its wake.

"Hey you," she said, before swooping up for a kiss, "People're asking about the host, need me to tell them something?"

"Nah it's fine, it's…" Brendan went silent, before making the familiar head gesture for what he went through often at parties.

"Connections? Or Reload?"

"Reload."

"Gotcha," Miranda leaned over and grabbed the empty vodka can, haphazardly chucking it towards the bin at the door. It landed on the rim before bouncing back in. She turned back to her husband.

"Need some space? ‘Cause if not, I'm not needed in there."

"It's all good, just need some time collect, y'know?

"Right, hence the Reload and all," she replied, referring to the term they'd used for two things: a gay party that once existed in Perth they'd attended several times over the past two to three years, and code for when Brendan needed time to collect his energy back again so he wasn't drained.

Miranda sat on the ledge next to Brendan, snaking her arm around his.

"Anything else?" Miranda asked, leaning on Brendan's shoulder.

"Just the usual stuff, y'know. Those little nagging feelings I have at the back of my mind that are wondering whether all my friends really like me or are playing some huge extended practical joke on me or something."

"Oh yeah, that's another thing - the marriage is off, I never liked you. Even though I gave up Gregory for Harris, it was just all part of the long con."

Brendan chuckled. There were times he did occasionally think that, but today was not one of them, even with Miranda's sarcastic quip at his own expense.

"Nah, I know you're for real. You married into a family of redheads, nobody does that unless they're in it for the haul."

"What'd you call me?" Miranda added, without even missing a beat. Brendan laughed.

"I'm the haul, remember? You're just the ass."

"Oh bite me."

"Okay!"

Brendan wrapped his arms around Miranda's waist and swung her in front of him. She let out a delighted shriek before grabbing onto Brendan's arms to stop herself from falling over. He playfully lifted her up from the ground and buried his face in her neck, which elicited another shriek on her behalf. He quickly lowered her back down to the raised brick platform and stopped to look into her deep blue eyes.

"I love you, Miranda Gregory, you know that?"

She smiled again. God he loved her smile.

"And I love you too, Benjamin Harris."

They kissed again, but there was definitely more to the kiss this time. Miranda could feel it just as much as Brendan could, but rather than continuing in the direction they both seemed to be going, she slipped out of Brendan's grasp and headed towards the door back to the studio.

"You know, I think I need a few more minutes before I go back-" Brendan started, before realizing Miranda had taken a key from her skinny jeans pocket and had inserted it into the door handle, glancing at the barred tinted windows of the back of the studio in the process.

"I think you do too."

They both smiled, before returning to the kiss on the platform. Miranda's jeans became unzipped as Brendan's shirt became unbuttoned, and this would continue for quite some time until there was almost nothing between them.

Miranda's hands ran down Brendan's back, along one mural of ink, before tracing it to the other. In all the times they'd shed their clothes together, she'd never once asked about his tattoos, or at the very least she'd never pried more than the answers she gave him. He'd told her it was from school - he had a list of names down the back of his ribcage, and along the other one he had a collage of faces. They were young, probably no older than him. He mentioned there were friends who changed him, but even though they were married and the actions of that warm Fremantle night would complicate things further inside an already complicated marriage with a complicated foundation, she'd never heard the real reason why he'd chosen to put them there.

Especially in a place with so much pain.

February, 2010

Modern Ink

The one thing that nobody ever told Brendan before he set out to get this done - tattoos on the ribs? A fucking pain.

He still had several lines to go, but he wanted to punch his artist in the mouth. She was old - 45 years and American. Still had an accent, though not one he recognized. Brendan hadn't bothered to ask where she came from, because he'd feel like an idiot for not knowing. There was a bunch of other things he could be considered an idiot for, but somehow this one simple thing was utmost right now.

As Brendan lay prone, he looked towards the doorway of the studio when the tinkling of the bell above the door entered his thoughts. From that moment on, he changed his expression. When the studio was empty of everyone except the professionals, he was fine with showing his pain and protesting it loudly. They'd probably seen worse come through here, there had to be a reason there was a lot of buckets hanging around.

But in spite of his life, Brendan was still anxious about what people thought of him. Fremantle only had thirty thousand people in it, and knowing his odds one of his many acquaintances would walk through the doorway and he'd become self-conscious and cagey and completely at odds with how he presented himself and then everything would just fall apart.

Nobody he recognized was at the doorway, though. A woman. Long black hair, shapely, tattoos poking out from her sleeveless shirt through her shoulderblades, the kind of woman who looked like she'd sprung from the pages of the Suicide Girls only with a quizzical expression on her face instead of a sensual one. She was looking at the newest frame on the wall, a display of the latest masterpiece the other artist in the studio had completed, which encompassed an entire arm and most of the stomach. Her expression morphed from quizzical to impressed.

Now that he knew she wasn't anybody he knew, he could return to his normal vegetative state of pain.

Brendan bit down on the folded cloth between his hands.

*

"So you know the drill, right?"

"Of course, Janeane, but tell me again anyway."

His side wrapped in plastic, Brendan handed over several yellow bills and waited for his change and care instructions written down on paper.

"Did you really go to your ribs for your first tat'?"

Brendan glanced to the side to see the woman from before sitting with a magazine perched in her lap.

"That takes balls, man, I reckon that's gotta be the most painful spot on the body to get it done. Except for like the dick or something, but y'know."

He flickered a smile towards the new woman now making conversation with him.

"Yeah, yeah I guess I did."

She let out a laugh.

"Man, what's so important you need to get it right the fuck on the ribs?"

"Oh, just some names. Important people, y'know."

"Yeah, I thought I saw a ‘mum' there."

Brendan politely laughed. He was slightly uncomfortable now. Time to make up an excuse.

"Alright well-"

"Ben, here's your change."

"Oh, thanks Janeane, anyways-" he turned back to the new girl, "Guess I gotta go now, see you… around then."

He headed towards the door, but upon hearing no response from the woman who started the conversation in the first place, he turned back around. She was still staring at him. Her look of inquisitiveness had returned.

March, 2010

Connections Nightclub

Brendan was never a fan of clubs, especially ones that catered towards his demographic, but tonight he was feeling especially good about it for some reason.

He stood at the bar awkwardly, in his black shirt, black skinny jeans and impeccably barbered hair, waiting for the round of drinks he ordered on behalf of his friends. The bar staff got paid hourly, though, so he was in for a long wait. He drummed his fingers on the counter as other customers with less cumbersome workloads got served, and he sighed.

He supposed this was what normal people did. Especially those of his "lifestyle", as the opposition were calling it these days. Went out to the clubs, had lots of fancy dirty drinks, and regretted it the next morning. He'd been doing it for almost a year now, but it still felt foreign to him. Like he was stepping where he didn't belong, where he only pretended he did. Was probably too much to ask for an LGBT coffee shop or gaming night on the edge of the world, huh?

Brendan felt his hand wander to his right ribs. It was itching. They were technically supposed to stop now, especially since it had already been a few weeks, but it persisted. He held the shirt against where the bruises had already healed, and grimaced while resisting the urge to scrape it off.

"You should probably see a doctor if it's still healing, y'know."

The 20-year-old was already on his way to rolling his eyes before realizing he recognized the voice. He spun around on his heels to come face to face with a familiar face.

"Oh. Hey you."

"Hey you to you too."

It was the woman from Modern Ink. Same hair, same tats creeping out, but looking like she was dressed to impress a gaggle of lesbians rather than treating it like any casual Thursday.

"Small world, huh?" she asked, bringing her drink to the smile on her face. Brendan's face matched her own. He barely had any close friends in the area, yet somehow he'd stumbled upon the exact same woman twice in a month in two different cities. Small didn't begin to cover it.

"I'll say - how'd your, uh, tat go?"

"Oh, you mean from…" the woman asked, pointing off in no particular direction, "Oh I wasn't getting a tat there, I was applying for a job. Apprenticeship or internship or something, y'know."

"Ah, okay wow, cool stuff. How'd that go?"

"Well Janeane didn't like me, so."

"Ah. Bummer."

"All good, I got a slot at a new place back in Fremantle, all worked out in the end."

"Well that's good, at least you got what you wanted in the end."

"Yeah."

An awkward silence followed. The other woman took a drink from her drink, before extending her hand.

"I'm Miranda, by the way."

Brendan took her hand in his own.

"Ben. So what brings you here?"

"Oh, this is my regular joint. I've been coming here for years, even when I was underage. You?"

"Here with a bunch of friends for one of their anniversaries. I'm getting their drinks now, actually, they should be here any moment."

"How long you been waiting?"

"I dunno, like 5 minutes?"

"Hah, good luck with that. Better settle in for the long haul."

He sighed.

"Guess so, then."

More awkard silence. This time, Brendan filled the gap.

"Wait, so how come we never noticed each other in here before? I've been coming here for almost a year now."

"I probably just didn't notice you."

"...right. So what made tonight different?"

"Well duh, I remembered you from Modern Ink. Not every time you see a first timer getting a shitload of ink jammed into their ribs. Kinda makes you think about who'd be willing to subject themselves to that much pain"

"Right, right."

Brendan looked towards the bar staff again, still concerned with other patrons.

"Just have some of mine," Miranda said, shoving the large straw in Brendan's face. He could already smell the drink from feet away, now he could experience it up close and personal. It smelt like petrol and citrus. He sipped anyway.

"God damn, do you just drink straight from the hose at a petrol station?"

She laughed.

The conversation continued for a while like that. They talked. Life, home, school (both still young enough where one could bring it up in conversation acceptably), if they'd been out of the country - while they waited for the drinks to come, they ran the gamut of everything they could talk about at a club's bar at 11pm. Brendan noticed as the conversation dragged on they they were slowly tipping closer and closer together, even if they didn't realize they were moving. Brendan was talking about his time spent as a teenage activist when Miranda grabbed his wrist.

"You know Ben, I don't think these drinks are coming."

Brendan blinked, looking down at her hand upon his.

"So I'm going to the bathroom, if you'd like to join me."

Brendan's eyes grew wide.

"Uhhhh…wh-wha-"

"Oh come on, you've been staring down my tits for half the time we've been talking here."

"Wait, what? No, no I was looking at your drink."

"Right, and I'm Sophie Monk."

"No for real, I've been looking at it thinking how the fuck you can drink something that's technically a fire hazard."

There was a pause. Brendan felt the grip release from his wrist. The expression on Miranda's face had died.

"Oh. Oh. Shit, sorry, sorry bout that, I thought-"

"No no, it's fine, it's fine, it's-"

He paused.

He thought.

He looked back in the general direction of his friend's table.

He looked around once more for the barstaff and the drinks

He looked back at Miranda.

"Which bathroom?"

*

Her watch gave a loud bang against the wall of the stall as Miranda devoured Brendan's neck. Her hands were gripped on top of the opposite walls, his holding her body vertical as their pelvises connected, free of the clothing in between.

They were silent. It technically wasn't frowned upon to have sex in the Connections bathroom, but Brendan didn't want to take chances. They'd only been in the stall for five minutes yet it felt like an eternity. Not the bad kind of eternity, but the kind you could get used to if you were trapped there, like limbo. Brendan had had his own experiences with that kind of reality, and though this didn't compare in any other way, he wouldn't mind it.

A gasp escaped Brendan's lips, but Miranda removed one of her hands from the top of the stall, throwing him off balance, to put it over his mouth. She shook her head. Brendan's eyes narrowed suspiciously, before nodding, and regaining his balance.

Brendan knew he could return to the bar and the drinks still wouldn't be there. He could have gone off, joined STAR like he knew he should have almost two years ago, and the drinks would still not have been made, and all of his friends would still be sitting in the bar waiting for him to come back with them. Nathan would still be there. Mitchell would still be there. Shaun as well would still be

THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP

He felt the power of the hammering fist through Miranda's body from the wall behind, and she did too. They froze in place. Her heel dug into the back of Brendan's leg as she tried to regain her footing, detaching herself in all ways from him in the process. Miranda pulled up her underwear. Brendan retrieved his jeans from the floor and buttoned them.

"Shit, shitshitshitshit-"

He opened the lock on the door of the stall and pulled the door open, coming face to face with his three friends. Nathan and Mitchell were emotionless, staring at him with contempt, but Shaun's face betrayed no such regard. The anger was palpable.

"Shit."

Shaun turned on his feet and stormed out of the bathroom. Brendan checked to make sure his fly was done up, looked back at the scene left behind, with Nathan and Mitchell standing in the hall of the grotty club bathroom and Miranda awkwardly hovering inside, and ran after Shaun.

"Wait, wait, wait, Shaun just-"

He hurriedly followed him across the club, passing by the dance floor, what remained of their belongings at the table, and eventually the bar, where a stack of close to twelve drinks waited unaccompanied.

*

"Shaun, Shaun just lis-"

"On our FUCKING six month anniversary Ben, really?"

The bouncer glanced to the side after checking a young blonde's ID, where Brendan had his hands approaching his boyfriend.

"Look, I'm sorry okay, it just… it won't-"

"It won't what, Ben, happen again? Because you've already used that one."

There was a pause as they both looked at the people remaining in the line. Some of them went back to their own conversations, or at least pretended to, while the rest kept watching.

"You know Ben, I think I would have preferred it if it was my ex again. A guy, that's fine, I can handle that. But a fucking girl, really?"

"Shaun-"

"I try to fucking forgive you, Ben, even after everything, but you just… I don't even know. I don't know what the fuck's wrong with you, but it's like you're just…" Shaun sighed, pinching his nose, "It's like you're just trying to find every fucking way possible to self-destruct what we have. I've worked so hard to forgive you for all the shit you've done, and I've worked so fucking hard, believe me on that fucking bit, to help you through whatever the fuck you think you've been going through, but I… I just...I can't anymore."

Brendan had nothing to say to that. He stood there, defeated. He felt footsteps behind him as Nathan and Mitchell joined their friends on the curb.

"We're off."

The three of them, possessions in tow, walked towards the nearest taxi. Brendan was still standing there.

He'd never really put it to thought before. Shaun wasn't the first boyfriend he'd had since he came to the area, but he was now the latest in a pattern. Months would pass, once they began to see each other, he'd download Grindr or Gaydar and fuck a random, they'd find out and either forgive him or let him tank the relationship on his own terms. Fucking a girl, though, that was a new one. He swung that way, he knew that ever since he and Abby lost their virginities to each other almost 5 years ago now, but he hadn't really acted upon it in what had to be years, now.

Brendan crouched to the gutter. He felt numb, and he knew why, outside of the obvious.

It was coming again. The urge to run. From the moment he was dumped on that fucking island in the middle of the ocean in 2008 he'd been ruled by it. When panic set in, he'd bail. The beach, the hospital, the logging road, St. Paul, the Northern Rivers… it was a pattern, now.

Patterns were made to be kept.

He wasn't happy here, there was nobody here that made him happy. Shaun didn't make him happy, Daniel didn't make him happy, Jorge didn't make him happy, Anton didn't make him happy, none of those names without faces or faces without names made him happy or made him feel whole or filled the void inside of him that pulsated every day with a reminder of just how much his life had fucked up and fucked over and fucked off within the span of a week. He wanted to be happy. Be whole. Be content with how his life was going, like how he was content when he was in high school. Both high schools. But nothing happened. He waited, for years, and nothing happened.

Where would the next bus take him?

"So."

Brendan turned around. Miranda was there.

"So, Ben."

Brendan wanted to say something to her, but a pit was growing in this throat.

"May I?"

She gestured towards the gutter next to him. Brendan half-heartedly nodded, and Miranda made her way to the ground, right next to him. She crossed her legs.

"Boyfriend, huh?"

He nodded.

"Done this before, yeah?"

Once again, he nodded.

"But not with a girl, I take it?"

Brendan turned towards her.

"I don't need this right now, okay?"

"Look, I'm not going to pretend I'm at all happy about what just went down here, but… I gotta know, what drives a gay guy to cheat on his boyfriend with a girl he just met?"

"I'm not gay."

"Oh, right, welcome to the club then. Question stands, though."

"I think I'm self-destructing."

"Bit of an overstatement?"

"No, I think I am. I'm not happy here, I haven't been happy here in a long time, and I don't care about anyone anymore."

Miranda was silent, then laughed.

"What, what's so funny?"

"Ben, do you think anyone's happy here? Do you think if you ran up to twenty people on the street and asked them if they were happy, they'd all say yes? I'm not an apprentice because it makes me happy, I'm an apprentice because I'm doing what I need to do. If I wanted to be happy I'd go shack back up with my ex in Mandurah and we'd still be doing heroin. And it'd last about five minutes. You gotta fight for it."

"Fight for what?"

"Happiness. It's not just going to come to you, you need to work for it."

Brendan's eyes lay trapped in the gutter.

"I don't think I remember how."

More silence followed. Miranda sipped the drink she'd snuck by the bouncer to the curb.

"Well I guess you gotta find out then, don't you?"

Brendan didn't know how he was going to keep things going here, especially since he'd already made everything as bad as it could ever end up. Every bridge was burned. Every field was salted. Whenever he tried to end up in something resembling a functioning relationship, be it platonic or otherwise, he'd just ruin everything because he wasn't feeling up for the people anymore. He knew it would end in nothing but ruin, but it hadn't really hit him how badly ruin could destroy him until tonight.

Besides the tunes behind them, nothing broke the silence. Brendan looked at his companion in the gutter, idly swishing ice around in the glass, before extending his hand.

"Hi, I'm Ben, nice to meet you."

Miranda looked at his hand and arched a brow.

"...sorry?"

"Can you just humour me, please?"

"....alright."

"Hi, I'm Ben, nice to meet you."

"Hi Ben, I'm Miranda, it's a pleasure to know you."

July, 2012

Fremantle, Australia

Brendan woke up to messages in his email inbox.

The curious thing, however, was that it was from the email address he used in high school.

Of course, he only knew this because of the various amounts of precautions he'd taken to make sure nobody else got into it. It was a Hotmail address, so the chances of it being hacked by the time it was a year old were almost a certainty. And despite the fact he never used it, he didn't want anyone else to use it, especially since it was a connection to a part of his high school life he felt best left alone. So every few months he went and changed the passwords to something completely random, wrote it down in a book somewhere, then forgot about it until he needed that book again.

Today was password-changing day. He'd found the book, entered in the last password, ignored the prompt to add his phone number, and found out there were much more notifications than usual, all from Facebook. The occasional Facebook notification, he'd gotten used to that, especially for someone who was once in the public eye. But they were sparing, probably only 2 or 3 every six months.

This morning, there were 30. Alarmingly, they were from a wide array of people. And even more alarming, they'd all happened within the past 48 hours.

Brendan's left eyebrow cocked. 30 messages over the course of 2 days? On an account that was for all intents and purposes dead? He had no idea what was going on, but it needed checking out.

He was about to click on the button that opened his Facebook page, but footsteps echoed down the house's hallways, and Brendan instinctively closed the tab. He also instinctively moved the pointer to the history menu and erased everything from the past five minutes.

Miranda emerged from the hall to their bedroom, grey singlet stained and hair a frizzed mess. As he tabbed back to his own Facebook page, she came up behind him and wrapped her arms around him.

"Morning. Think you can drop me off at the pharmacy on the way to work this morning? I think I'm coming down with a bug or something."

"Better not be Hendra virus, we might have to take you behind the shed Old Yeller style."

"Lovely. Need anything while I'm there?"

"Doxylamine? They won't give me any more under my name so reckon you can do it under yours?"

"Sure thing. Anything from the back alley pharmacy?"

"Reckon you can score some White Widow?"

"You know one day you're gonna have to get it yourself, Ben."

"It's not becoming of bookkeepers to be caught in that part of town, remember?"

"Mmm. I'll grab a hundred from your wallet."

"Love you too."

As she wandered off to grab leftover pad thai for breakfast, Brendan's mind wandered back to the emails, which would probably be on his mind all day if he didn't check it now.

But regardless of the fact he was married to the woman he loved, he still had secrets to keep from her. And he couldn't foresee any circumstance in the future in which he'd need to divulge that part of his life.

*

Work that day was slow. It was probably the busiest non-chain electronics store in Fremantle, but that didn't mean slow days didn't exist, especially in the office.

So he was looking forward to getting home. There was a bill or two to be paid, but they could wait until later. The emails had been eating his curiosity alive while he was at work, bite by bite, and it was for the want of an office WiFi that blocked Facebook that he hadn't already found out what was going on.

Once he was in the door, and once he made sure Miranda wasn't home yet, he reopened his emails, his book still sitting on the desk by the loungeroom. Brendan scanned the first email, unable to really gleam anything from it, and clicked the link that sent him back to his old Facebook page.

He came to the security page. It wanted to know if it was really him, kind of like an old friend. Instead of an actual old friend, however, it held up pictures to make sure he could identify them as people who existed on his list of friends. He grimaced. All of the people they showed were still alive, a mix of friends from his first high school, Wade, and Chase. He identified them all, and he was finally led to his old Facebook page.

Brendan had never seen that many notifications in his life. Among the many friend requests, an assortment of what looked like either new accounts from old friends or fake accounts pretending to be old friends, and the global notifications, a mish-mash of game requests and posts on his wall, there was his messages.

Once again, 30 of them.

Swallowing, he clicked on the button, and followed it down to the menu that would display them all.

He first looked at the names. At first, they started out familiar - his aunt, the cousins that used to still speak to him after his ordeal in 2008, his mother. The further in they went, the more unfamiliar they became. They felt as though they were people he went to high school, but was never on speaking terms with. But the closer he came to the current hour, all the names became Greek to him, Who were these people? Why was a dead account getting messages as though it were alive and well?

Brendan looked at the opening lines of each message.

His family wanted him to come home, or rather they were asking them to contact his mother.

The names who bore some semblance to St. Paul were sending him links.

The others were insults. Some of them called him a faggot. Others, a coward.

It was confusing. The desire to know what was going on long since peaked, he opened the closest message to the mouse's pointer.

The message was long, from someone he had no mutual friends with. But there were question marks. There were long strings of grammatically incorrect sentences. But there seemed to be a repeated phrase.

v5.

His mouth stood slightly agape, his eyes opening with them, when he realized what these messages meant. Without missing a beat, he tabbed to an open Google page and watched the cursor dance across the box as he typed in the phrase he was certain was going to provide him with the answer he didn't want to hear:
And behold, the first page to pop up told him everything he didn't want to hear.

Only a few days ago, links had shown up on the deep web to a stream from an island, with all the kids of a missing flight on it. Many were given guns. Many were already dead. But all of them were wearing the familiar black line around their neck that meant only one thing to Brendan.

It was all he could do to not throw up on his desktop. He fell from the seat to the floor, bashing his joints into the wood as he struggled to breathe, as memories came flooding back from when he was 17 years old,
of shooters killing kids on beaches
of friends gathered around squirming bodies in the sand
of girls impaled in hospitals
of his own wounded leg gushing blood
of Erik holding him as he cried
of a crowd of people in a mansion looking at him as he gazed up at Liz Polanski
of the kid he wade through in the dark searching for a light
of the fading life beneath his fingers which he caused because he was scared and he couldn't see and
of the other boy holding a gun at his head telling him he didn't deserve to live
of holding the body of the band leader he once did lighting for
of resisting the urge to pull the trigger between his fingers
of lying bloodied on church linoleum as a girl with blue hair beat him in with a blunt weapon with the intent to end his life
of sitting on the edge of the hospital roof realizing that the boy he loved was gone forever while he lay in a fucking hospital bed with IV drips and food and a roommate
and if there had been any food in his stomach, if he hadn't of skipped lunch, it would have vacated itself as his belly turned rancid and a fist clenched his insides and pulled. Brendan was caught between one world and another as he lay on the floor of his house but every time he blinked or closed his eyes with every ragged toxic breath he could see the beach again and he could see everything and it was all happening at once. The entire history of the world was in his head as he struggled to breathe on the floor.

His limbs propelled him forward, collapsing as they did so. The bathroom was his destination, but every step felt an eternity, his sense of time was skewed as he could only think of his past, senses trapped in the scenario which should have lead to his death.

After somewhere between a minute and an hour, he made it to the shower, where he gripped the blue handle and turned. Jets of cold poured down on him, clothes and all. He grabbed the other handle with the hand not keeping him steady and turned as well, the gush fading from its icy cold to lukewarm.

Brendan hung his head under the water, taking long, deep breaths as he tried to get through the sensory overload. The water was no longer water, but pins raining down on him as he tried to remember what it was like to think. The tub was no longer a tub, but a coffin, smothering him as he tried to move even a little. But it was something.

He lay there, water pouring down on him, for what could have been forever.

However long it was, the warmness faded, replaced by cold.

By the time Miranda arrived home, Brendan had cleaned up. His soaking clothes were in the laundry basket, his internet history erased, new clothes adorning his body. He still didn't feel himself, but he felt human again.

He was still trying to process what v5 ultimately meant when Miranda walked through the door and kissed him on the cheek as he sat on the couch, watching a cartoon.

"Hey hun, I need to talk with you after dinner, that good?"

"...oh. Well, you can tell me now if you want."

"I...I think I need to think and come up with the words."

"Oh. Okay."

Brendan felt Miranda's eyes watching him as he continued staring at the screen, but she grabbed more pad thai from the fridge.

*

"So…"

Miranda sat Brendan down on the couch once they'd finished dinner. He'd thrown everything haphazardly into the dishwasher, like he was unfamiliar with the device he'd owned for over a year, and forgot several times where the sauces went and which shelf in the fridge the jugs went on.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing's wrong, it's just...I went to the doctor today."

"That sounds like something's wrong, what is it?"

"Like I said it's nothing wrong, it's just...something's happened."

"What?"

Miranda stared at the floor.

"Miranda, what-"

"I'm pregnant."

She hadn't met his gaze when the words came out of her mouth. But she didn't need to.

Brendan stared at his wife, watching her eventually bring her head to meet his gaze.

"...what?"

"The reason I went to the pharmacy today wasn't for medicine, it was to grab a pregnancy test. It came up positive, so I tried another one. That didn't work, so I forced myself into the GP and he gave me another test. And...yeah. I'm in my first trimester. The doctor's expecting around January."

Brendan continued to look at his wife, but for some reason he couldn't meet her eyes. The news took him by surprise, no doubt, and he still wasn't sure what to think about it, but it was more the disbelief of it all.

All his life he'd envisioned what having his own family would be like, and every time he thought of it, kids never entered the picture. The idea of him being a father was something so distant to him, so alien. Was he really someone that should be contributing to the gene pool? It was comical to think, sure, but then following that always came thoughts of whether or not he'd totally fuck up being a father. It seemed like something he'd do. He was barely functioning as an adult, constantly worrying about what people thought of him, so what use would he be raising someone else?

But then again, several years ago he never imagined his partner for life being a woman. Several years ago he thought he'd end up as a journalist, or a writer, instead of a bookkeeper. Life had a habit of adding surprises into the mix. There was no telling what he would feel in a few seconds, or minutes, when it really set in.

You know who I bet would really have loved a family?

Brendan's eyes flickered up to nobody.

Steven.

No.

Stacy.

No, nonononono-

Erik.

Brendan's breath became short as his thoughts intruded upon his life again.

All those people would have loved growing up and having families, I bet. Especially Erik.

No matter how much he tried to think of something else, the world expanded inside his head again as thought after thought invaded his subconscious.

Maybe if you'd have been a better protector Liz could have had a family, you think?

Brendan's mouth formed the word again.

Did you really think you could escape that part of your life again? Especially after putting them all on your own body?

Miranda's brow formed a line as she watched her husband saying something inaudible.

"Ben, is everything okay?"

Do you really think you've been forgiven, Brendan? Do you really think that's enough?

His chest began to heave. Miranda's look was of a mix of concern and frustration.

"Look, I know we hadn't really planned for this so far, but maybe it's a sign we should-"

Hell, do you really think that anything will be enough? Even when you no longer forgive yourself?

Brendan almost heaved again, but stopped himself. It was coming back again. The panic.

Are you even worth forgiving?

He stood up, stumbling towards the small table next to the couch, and grabbed his keys. Miranda was quick to follow.

"Ben, what are you-"

He turned to face his wife, panic in his every moment.

"I just-I just need to be-"

That was all he could make out before the sensory overload returned, but Brendan didn't go to the shower. Instead, he went to the door.

"Ben!"

The door slammed on its hinges as Brendan flung it open and powered down the path towards his car. He tried to insert the keys into the drivers side keyhole once, failed, and upon that failure, bolted down the street.

Miranda was halfway down the garden path when he ran.

"BEN? BEN!"

He didn't stop. He kept going as far as his legs could take him.

"BEN!"

May, 2011

“Hey, who’s the guy in this photo?”

Miranda had been his wife for only a few weeks before Brendan actually managed to ask about the photo on the mantle. He knew the origin of every other photo - her girlfriend from high school, her boyfriend from university, one of the previous tattoo shops she’d worked at for only a week until it went under and she had to find new work but she still appreciated everyone’s company anyway, it’d all been explained to him.

Except for one photo to the side. The girl was Miranda, he could tell that, but she couldn’t have been more than...what, ten years old? She was holding a soccer ball in one of those sickeningly vibrant uniforms he remembered being forced to wear when his parents made him take soccer at nine. The boy standing next to her was in a similar uniform, but different, less happy and more streamlined seriousness. They stood close, closer than strangers normally did.

A microwave beeped in the other room as Miranda started cooking the boxed noodles, but several seconds later she popped her head out from the kitchen.

“Which guy? Which photo?”

“The one at the end here - you’re about… ten I think? And he looks older. You look like you’re about to try out for junior socceroos.”

Miranda’s expression changed slightly when she got closer to where her husband stood. From quizzical to forlorn. Her mouth sat open slightly as she confirmed what she already knew Brendan was looking at.

“Oh. That’s my brother.”

Brendan’s eyebrows raised.

“Oh, I didn’t know you had a brother?”

“I… did.”

Brendan’s tongue caught in his throat. She’d chosen that word for a reason.

“It was back when we were living in Adelaide. I...god, I don’t even remember how old I was? Couldn’t have been more than 10. But everything was great, he was my best friend at the time, even though I annoyed him, y’know, like all sisters do at that age.”

“But then… he went on that school trip. It was his year’s annual trip to The Beachhouse, down in Glenelg. They arrived, they all had a good time, but then...he disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yeah. One minute he was with friends, the next he went to the bathroom, and then he never showed up again. Teachers called the police, few witnesses thought they saw someone hanging around who didn't belong, but he was gone.”

“...”

“Dad never recovered. He loved Nate so much, and he couldn’t cope with him not being in his life anymore. Turned to the grog, family fell apart, Mum took me and moved us back to her parents in Perth. Me, I don’t think I cried more in my life when I realized Nate was gone, and..."

Miranda didn't really seem to have a reaction, as though she'd told this story several times over. Brendan’s gut felt as though he’d been punted by the business end of a metal baseball bat.

“Anyways, I’m… just getting dinner ready. I’ll let you know when it’s done, kay?”

“Kay.”

Miranda retreated to the kitchen once more, while Brendan stood there, still looking at the photo of Nate. He looked happy, like he had no idea what was coming.

Just like a lot of the kids he went to school with, actually, whenever he checked out the St. Paul Memorial Website.

For some reason, Brendan was running his hand over his tattooed ribs. It still remained one of the more painful days of his life, but he felt he had to, so he could remember every name.

He’d remember Robert’s name, and Rashid’s name, and Neill’s name, and Roland’s name, and Mirabelle’s name, and Stacy’s name, and Dutchy’s real name, and Liz’s name, and Steven’s name, and Erik’s name. But for some reason now, as he looked at Nate’s photo, it didn’t feel enough.

What use were names? They were good when the person you wanted to talk about was still in this world. But names faded. What use were they when you could no longer picture who they referred to?

Dinner passed. The noodles passed. The talk about Miranda’s missing brother passed. But the names and the lack of faces they were matched with remained in Brendan’s mind, even after a long night of sleep. When he woke up, he was thinking of Stacy again. When he tried to sleep again, he woke up once more thinking of Mirabelle. But only he couldn’t see their faces anymore, just a vague outline of a person with a name.

The following morning, while Miranda was still asleep, Brendan walked into the home office and found the memorial website. After a few clicks, every photo had its own tab. Every photo that matched to a name he had injected into his ribs. He sat at the computer, looking at their faces, and absentmindedly picked up his phone.

Dialed a number.

Listened to the ringing.

The familiar American voice picked up.

“Hey Jeneane, it’s Ben here. Listen, I was wondering if you could help design something for me?”

July, 2012

His panic took him far. He didn’t stop until it was dark and until he could see the ocean. There was a part of him that expected the panic to stop once he got far enough away from his computer, but whatever small hope he had of that taking place was extinguished when nothing changed. He’d run from the news of his soon-to-be son, or at least that’s what it was as far as Miranda was concerned. He’d run from the realization that he’d not achieved forgiveness for all the wrong he’d done.

And, well, he’d run because it was pretty much in his blood at this point.

The boardwalk was deserted. Good. He couldn’t deal with people right now. Not in this state, his brain sending the sensation of pulsing beyond the limits of his skull as he sat trying to think. He was being bombarded with voices, voices he had long since forgotten about but were now swarming him and telling him his worth. If he focused hard he could have recognized them. One of them was hauntingly familiar, in such a terrible way.

go back to her
do it
why
stop
help her
help yourself
help him
walk off the pier

No, he wasn’t doing that. Not yet. Not now.

This is where he’d ended up. Scared and alone on the edge of the universe, considering anything to make the pain stop. Every moment he recognized a voice in his head, his stomach twisted.

What had gone wrong? It had been four years since the island, three since he vowed to leave his life behind in the hope that he wouldn’t have to think about the shame and the guilt that defined his very being, yet he was no better off than he was from the moment he stepped aboard the rescue boat. He’d been fine, all fine by himself, or at least that’s what he had to tell himself to get through the day. What more could he do? Everything he had tried accomplished nothing.

What hadn’t he done?

The sun was setting, and Brendan was cold. His arms were exposed to the night air, unlike the rest of him. He hated this. He hated everything. Second to heading back to the island or ending his life, he realized just how much he really did miss home. He missed his mother, his father, he missed his brother in the ground most of all. He didn’t think he could make his way without his family, and he just wanted to prove himself right.

Family.

Brendan’s breath stopped.

Of course.

*

It was nearing midnight. The lamps of the boardwalk had switched on hours ago, but Brendan was still on his phone, searching. Every so often he took a break from the scrolling and the tapping and switched back to the list he’d created, a list of names, most from memory but all matched with numbers.

This had to work. This had to do something.

It had occurred to Brendan at some point that he wasn’t the only one with a family who loved him. He should have thought of it before, but he’d always found it difficult to remember the lives of others from their own point of view. The ten people whose names and faces were permanently etched into his flesh, they had lives.

They had families.

They had dreams forever unrealized and unfulfilled. They had their lives snuffed on the island and although Brendan had not watched anyone’s tapes since he’d returned he knew if he’d just been around he could have made a difference. If he’d just stayed put instead of fleeing like a coward every time he was afraid of what he might have to do to help. In the months he’d been back in the Twin Cities, he’d not even thought of visiting them. He was afraid he’d just run again.

But he was done running. He had no energy left.

The list on his phone contained eleven numbers. Family names. Siblings. Parents. They all stood next to a long, long string of numbers, and Brendan pressed the first one.

The Hart Family. The family of the young girl with dyed hair who’d helped him as his leg lay open and gushed. The number confirmed, and he held the phone to his ear. He didn’t know what he’d say. He’d have to wing it.

If this was several years ago, someone might have answered. A sound might have reverberated and someone on the other end of the line might have picked up. Instead, he was greeted with three solid beeps and the phone hanging up on itself.

The number was disconnected.

He tried it again. Barron. Knew Erik. They were rich, they had to still be there, right?

Three beeps.

Hassan. Harun’s friend. The same thing.

When he went further and further down the list, ringing more and more numbers and getting the same three beeps in response, his stomach grew sicker and sicker. The closer he got to the bottom, the more responsible he was for a death, the less prepared he was to speak to a family member. He didn’t want to speak to Liz’s family because she should have gotten off the island for everything she’d done for his class, and sure enough nobody answered the call because it was a number long since dead.

Steven Hunt’s family should have been the easiest one of all. His family hated him for murdering their lost child as he lay scared in a cave trying to help Brendan. But he had multiple numbers for him and none of them worked.

He stared at the final two numbers on the list. One he didn’t want to press, the other he knew he needed to.

Brendan needed to speak to Erik’s family. Without even thinking about what he was going to say, he pressed the number.

His eyes widened as the three beeps didn’t appear, but instead the soft coo of a phone dial. His heart raced. He hadn’t even thought about what he was going to say, because he’d never even played a situation like this in his mind, at least since he’d abandoned his old life. But Erik’s family were kind people. He’d stayed with them a few times in the weeks leading up to the trip, just for a sleepover. They had to make it easy for him, right? They knew he’d lost almost as much as they had, right? They had to give him some form of closure, forgiveness, closure, anything. Anything to make the constant rushing in his head go away and for him to regain the strength to go back and speak to his wife.

Some people said that life was a cruel mistress. In this case, however, life was a vengeful cunt.

Because Brendan realized all too late that he’d dialled the wrong number.

Instead, he was greeted with a voice he’d known all too well, because it was one of the last things he’d thought of before he left the twin cities forever.

Kimberly Nguyen answered the phone.

"Hello."

Brendan’s fingers tensed up when he realized that between him and the voice that sent him to a breakdown four years ago was a microphone stretching two oceans. Of all the people whose number he had to accidentally press on, it was hers. She was supposed to be the last resort, but he never expected himself to willingly go through with it. A small part of him would have rather walked off the pier.

"Hello?"

Brendan blinked, finally fully registering what was going on. This was happening, whether he wanted it to or not.

“K-Kimberly?”

"Who is this?"

Kimberly must have known more than one Australian.

“It’s...it’s Brendan.”

"Oh."

The air hung dead for a moment, and an imaginary twist in Brendan’s gut told him to fill it with needless filler words.

“...from Bayview.”

"I know who you are. What do you want?"

Right, people called each other on phones on purpose.

“I was jus-I was...it-there was...I saw…”

The ever present panic in Brendan’s voice was trying to put together a clipped jigsaw sentence, each word leaving his mouth the moment it formed in his brain. He paused for a moment, before taking a breath, and continuing with his purpose.

“...you were right.”

"...what was I right about?"

Of course, that confrontation in the park that sent him into DEFCON 1 was just Tuesday to her, wasn’t it? A snippet of a Brendan of yesteryear would have remarked upon how little his life apparently meant, but if that voice ever existed in the first place it was drowned out by pressing issues and what was now forming into an attempt at...redemption? Reconciliation? Vengeance? Something was trying to happen.

Brendan was going to see it through, even if the script was still being written in his head without an outline.

“When you...when you told me I was an idiot for what I did. For...for abandoning my friends on the island, I...you were right.”

"Interesting. What's led to this stunning revelation?"

“...I’m gonna be a dad.”

"Oh."

He couldn’t tell what the weight of that word meant, but much like the words that would leave his mouth in the next five seconds or further, he could guess. In the best case scenario, there was a genuine momentary surprise followed by a wordless congratulations. In the worst, and in a situation he’d been through hours ago, her thoughts had shifted back to the dead boyfriend who died by her side.

Rather than ponder the implications, Brendan steamed forward.

“I just found out. And...and all I could think about was how I’m going to have a family. And Roland won’t, and Stacy won’t, and Dutchy won’t, and Liz won’t, and Steve-”

His voice became slightly hoarser at a mention of his biggest failure as a human.

“-Steven won’t, and Erik-”

A shakiness soon followed.

“-and I don’t know what to do.”

His breath was becoming harsher, exacerbated by what was already a stressful evening. But Brendan once again began speaking before the words had been shaped.

“...and I wanted to let them know, that I’m sorry, that I was a coward, that I was an idiot, that I’m still a coward and an idiot but I-I can’t.”

That was as good a summary of the night Kimberly was ever going to get from him at that point. He’d left out the finer details, like having lived under a fake name and history for over three years, or having gotten married and given his wife the wrong surname, or running from the same woman who was now the mother of his future child.

"Brendan, it's—I… If, if you could tell them, if they could hear you… what would you want them to say?"

“I..I just...I’d want to know if-”

It was a heavy question, yet Brendan had already began answering before he knew what he was going to say.

“-if I’ve done enough.”

That was the weight of it all, wasn’t it? At the end of the day, in the dead of the night, he was living a life in lieu of all these people who could have made it to the same place he had if he’d just done more, stopped running from danger, protected the people he’d needed to, just a little better. He was living in their place, and though he knew they weren’t watching over him, or looking out for him, in spite of their framing on the side of his ribs, if they all appeared to him right that second, the one thing he’d want to know is that he’d done enough living to make up for his failure to them.

It didn’t seem that Kimberly agreed, though, because there was a pause, followed by quiet laughter, tapering off after a few moments. Brendan didn’t have time to process the tick of anger building inside of him before Kimberly began speaking again.

"...can I ask you something kind of personal?"

“...sure.”

"Were you raised Christian?"

Brendan blinked. Whatever he was expecting Kimberly to say to him, it wasn’t that.

“...no, I...went to a Catholic school before Bayview, but...no.”

"Mm. It's—I ask because you have this, this very traditional idea of… well, I don't want to put words in your mouth."

The tick of anger spiked into a small amount of rage, because there was just something so condescending about what she was implying here. Again, he knew there was no afterlife, no friends looking down on him, no arbitrary moral calculator working out his time on earth, and yet here she was assuming the stupidest out of him.

Not that he had the chance to tell Kimberly that.

"Fuck it. It's, you know, you're wrong. About what redemption is.”

Brendan’s spike paused in time.

"Religion, culture, movies, whatever—they all teach the wrong thing. They say, oh, you do the right things, you do enough, and then it's okay. It's like the bad thing never happened, or it's paid off somehow. But that's bullshit.

"Redemption isn't a goal. It's a choice.

"It's a choice that you, you make it again and again. It's a choice to be better, to be the sort of person you should be. You wake up and you make that choice every day. Some days, you get it wrong. You fuck up. And that's okay. But next time, you try to do better, and you make the right choice again. There is no end. You don't hit some amount and then everyone forgives you for the bad things you did. Lots of people will never forgive you, or like you, and that's fine. That's their problem.

"The truth is, nobody else matters. If they hate you, or forgive you, or whatever, cool, fuck them. What matters is you. What matters is being the sort of person you can step back and look at and not hate yourself, choosing to be that person again and again until maybe someday you don't even have to think about it. And that's all that matters. That's all you can do."

At some point during what Kimberly was saying, Brendan had planted himself on the nearest boardwalk bench. He was expecting something else, based off of the one conversation he’d had with Kimberly in his life, something harsher.

But try as he wanted to, as much as he was resistant to the idea of being condescended to by someone who’d already driven him to an emotional breaking point in the past, at some strange undetermined point during the long, dedicated spiel from the other end of the world, her words were starting to make sense.

"...Brendan?"

Brendan blinked. His voice returned, sliding down the scale of normal.

“...yeah I’m still here, I just…”

There was a problem here that only Brendan had the steel to vocalize.

“...but what does that have to do with me?! Everything bad I did, everything I wanted, like, forgiveness for, was on that island; I can’t exactly go around every day and choose to save someone’s life from a murderer, or choose not to accidentally kill someone, or choose not to run away from-”

...

Oh.

Oh.

Suddenly, things began to make sense.

When Brendan had unleashed everything on Wade three years ago, he hadn’t realized until now he’d come to the wrong conclusion by the end of it. But, as it was, 19-year-old Brendan suffering from some form of PTSD that he had yet to deal with three years later wasn’t the kind to make decisions that 22-year-old Brendan would agree with. There was a part of him, a small tiny part that still existed no matter how much his name changed or how much he smoked or drank or cried in secret, that had failed to grasp the specifics of why he hadn’t changed, not really, no matter what he’d done.

Because when he made the decision to disappear off the face of the earth, to replace Brendan Wallace with Benjamin Harris in what was still some misguided attempt at paying tribute to two people he’d never met, he’d locked himself into the wrong choice, and ensured that, if Kimberly knew what she was talking about, if she knew how to make due with the weight of it all, he’d never be able to recover from it as it was.

“...fuuuuuuucking hell.”

He needed to stop running.

“Yeah, I, uh. I can see your point now. My life, uh, has been a bit different from yours since we got back.”

Understatement of the fucking millenia right there.

“So...looks like I’ve got some stuff to do tomorrow.”

A soft chuckle emerged from the phone.

"You weren't a different person then, you know. It's not some different world, as much as that might feel better. For most people, that's not really something they want to acknowledge. I find it liberating."

Kimberly probably had a point there, but Brendan was only paying attention by half. It’s not like he’d been sending her tabs on his life, but something about the sentiment just felt misguided.

Brendan snorted, albeit not as audibly as Kimberly had been for that entire phone call.

“Uh, yeah, I know you’re being metaphorical and all but, uh, I kinda am literally a different person from then. Well, legally, I guess not literally. I’ve got a lot of phone calls to make tomorrow. It’s...don’t ask.”

"Well… if that's true, it's not because of anything that was done to you. It's because of your choices. Own that."

Again, there was a grand point Kimberly had made through this phone call, but only once. Now, she was just getting preachy.

“...yeah, I know that Kimberly, I’m just-”

Brendan almost literally bit his tongue. He felt almost as though he was back in high school, bickering over semantics. Still, it wasn’t worth getting into it right now, when he had a lot to do in the coming days.

“...thanks, I guess.”

There were words to describe how he felt right now, yet Brendan couldn’t grasp their language.

"Good luck…whoever you are."

A somewhat amicable phonecall with Kimberly Nguyen had just reached its conclusion.

“Thanks. I’ll uh…”

She’d made her point. Now he had to make his.

“...you have a good life, Kimberly.”

"You too. Make the most of it."

As the phone screen blackened and Brendan looked up from the pavement towards the harbour, a strange sensation washed over him, like someone had just cracked a warm egg over his head and it was beginning to drip over every inch of skin. When he first heard Kimberly’s voice on that accidental phone call, he half expected the conversation to end with him smashing his phone into the ground, nothing answered, nothing gained from it.

But something had actually come of it, and even stranger, it seemed to make sense. It wasn’t the answer to all of his problems, but it was a start. If Kimberly was right, and he was going to achieve any sort of redemption for what he’d done, it started with moving forward. He hadn’t agreed with everything she’d said after that, but the foundation was a start.

And as he looked out at the muffled stars in a polluted sky, he knew what he had to do to get to that point.

Tonight, Benjamin Harris was going to have to disappear.

But someone else was going to have to take his place.