Survival Of The Fittest

There was a frog in his throat; keeping him company as he weaved and moved from rock to tree and back again. Michael had liked frogs, he remembered, though his late friend had cared about animals and amphibians and creatures of all sorts. What was it that he liked to wax poetic about? It was jellyfish; what was the scientific name again?

Ctenophores?

Yeah, that sounded right. It sounded about as right as this whole thing felt wrong. Shame that the time for worrying about right and wrong had ended. The right thing to do would have been to let bygones be bygones, clap Diego on the back and tell him that there was nothing wrong with trying to survive, even if it was at the expense of anyone and everyone else. That was instinct, that was human nature. Hell, it wasn't even human nature. That was just nature. Survival of the Fittest — the strong or the capable survived and thrived while the weak died out. It happened in the animal kingdom, it happened under the seas and it sure as hell happened here.

As Morgan followed Diego up the winding path and haphazardly aimed a gunshot in the boy's general direction, he knew that It was time to find out what kind of inner strength he truly had.

((Morgan Dragosavich continued from And Now Those Days Are Over and We Are All Ghosts))

Darting behind a large bush that lined the path, Morgan waited for the report of more shots to follow. Neither boy was doing much in the way of aiming, the gunshots almost more of a declaration of war than an actual attempt to injure. It wasn't that he would have been upset had one of his shots found flesh and felled Henry's murderer, but the absence of a hit meant that his conscience could still remain somewhat clean. It was such a bizarre dichotomy in his mind. He wanted Diego dead; that was the goal, the only true motivation that he had for getting through the next hours, but a large part of him still disapproved of it all. It was as though the spectre of his father's disapproval had entered his mind, all of the way from Chattanooga and was hovering over him, damning his every move.

You'd have thought that a man who believed his son to be unable to accept or take responsibility for his actions would have appreciated the quest for vengeance, but Morgan knew that Radko Dragosavich likely wouldn't have seen it with anything but disdain — and for what? He'd made a stupid mistake when he was a kid. He'd been reckless and his mother had been hurt. It had taken years to forgive himself for that, and here he was actively trying to hurt someone else. It was too much of a contradiction, too much to waste any time thinking about now, especially while bullets flew around him.

"What the hell, man," he called out. Morgan had been occasionally yelling ahead to Diego, who'd done the intelligent thing and said nothing as he'd fled his pursuer. It was very 'action film-esque', but the mix of rage and sadness for all of this wasn't exactly enhancing his decision-making abilities. "Is all of this fucking easy for you?"

It wasn't, likely. But as he darted from the bush towards a tree that wound up the path, he decided that Diego's feelings, while likely valid and as complex as his own, didn't matter a lick right now.

Henry's killer needed to pay.

((Diego Larrosa continues from And Now Those Days Are Over and We Are All Ghosts))

Something gripped Diego’s chest tightly as the forest thinned, as the trees exposed him to the world. He remembered, all of a sudden, where he was headed.

Metaphors could be made out of anything, if you tried hard enough. And sometimes, even if you weren’t trying at all, they found you. There were metaphors to be found in the sheer drop-off, a few dozen yards from him, that abruptly marked the boundary between the land they were on and the ocean. There were metaphors to be found in the wide, unending ocean that found Diego once more. There were metaphors to be found in the presence of Dane and Mike’s corpses, the first bodies that Diego had been responsible for making, the first ghosts to cling to him.

Their eyes had long ago been pecked out by the various fauna that roamed this island, but there were also metaphors to be found in their absences as they stared at him, dark, abyss-like.

Diego darted behind a tree as gunshots fired, back completely exposed to the outside world. Beyond here was the treeline, there would be no more cover. He and Morgan would have no choice but to face each other, out on the edge.

You’re just running scared.

This would have happened anyways if he’d chosen to run deeper into the forest. Either he or Morgan would have run out of energy, and that wasn’t a wager he’d been willing to make. Diego still had his own life in mind, Morgan had seemed to throw even that way for Henry. He hadn’t intended to get himself cornered at the cliffs, but it was what it was.

Being cornered just meant there was only one way for him to approach.

You’re just running scared.

Not anymore. He was putting in the work. Leaning into it. Putting in the work. Leaning into it.

Whatever happened, however it ended, it would end here.

He lowered the bag gradually onto the ground, lessened the weight on his back. Leaving Marceline’s gun behind was a risky move, but he had Ty’s gun with him. That would be enough, hopefully.

Morgan shouted something, there was a rush in Diego’s blood.

“The fuck do you mean easy? You don’t know shit. You don’t- you-”

Diego growled, turned around, and fired two more shots at the tree the voice had come from.

Bullets were also good at sending messages.

Well, that got his attention.

Of all the things that Morgan had been absently shouting at Diego as he scrambled from cover to cover, it was the most innocent one that had finally elicited a retort. Of course this wasn't easy for him — not a single person had seen an easy moment since they'd passed out on those buses, but he hadn't expected that to be his tipping point. Good; Morgan knew that if he could get under Diego's skin, maybe he'd make a mistake. Then he could take the advantage.

Lord, the advantage — then what? Then he'd put a bullet in his brain and spend the rest of his natural life trying not to see a monster whenever he passed by a reflection. Gee golly, he just couldn't wait.

"I've heard your name, I know—"

Morgan was interrupted by two more loud retorts from further up the path, so he tried to hit the deck as quickly as he could.

Not quickly enough.

The primal scream that left his lungs as something knocked him flat onto the ground was only matched by the icy intensity of the pressure that he felt on his shin. It didn't even really hurt — it was more that the fear that he'd been holding back since first firing his pistol rushed to the surface and exploded from his body as the realization hit him: Diego had shot him.

"FUCK— YOU FUCKING— GOD DAMMIT, FUCK!"

Eloquent, as usual.

Looking down at his pants, he saw that a slow red haze was starting to spread through his pant-leg, the entry-wound very visible and very ugly. It would be evident to Diego that he'd managed to score a hit; he needed to keep moving. The path was hitting its apex, the cliff was ahead and cover was going to be few and far between. Attempting to pull himself back to his feet, he bit his own lip and grimaced as pain shot up his left leg. Glancing ahead, he saw one more thick boulder that he could make a break for, but he was going to have to grin and bear whatever pain came his way.

"I know what you've been doing," Morgan tried again, his voice only barely masking the horror of his own fresh wound, "you haven't even tried not to play their game!"

The truth? Morgan had literally no idea; he was making shit up as he went along. Anything that would frustrate Diego and get him angry would be smart, the angrier he was, the less likely he was to pull out whatever explosive device he'd used to murder Henry and use it on him. Leaning out from the bush, he raised the Walther and fired several shots in Diego's general direction. After the third shot, he pushed off and limped his way over to the boulder, firing a few more times as he went. The likelihood of him hitting anything was impossibly low, but Diego didn't need to know that.

"What the hell is wrong with you, man? How do you even — how do you live with yourself?"

Morgan took a breath. His shin was starting to burn and he could feel his own blood dripping into his shoe.

Diego was leaned against the tree, facing away from Morgan, so he didn’t actually see the shot land. But he heard Morgan howling, cursing. A smile broke upon his lips, but it faltered for a moment. Was he actually enjoying this?

Yeah. Yeah, he was.

Shutting him up like that felt so satisfying. Leaning into it had never felt so good.

Mike had been impulse. Cam had been self-defense. Henry had been intentional. Morgan would be self-defense. After all, he'd fired the first shot. But he'd mean it too. He'd mean every shot, every bruise inflicted on him.

Morgan continued speaking, his attempt at some sort of comeback, and Diego gritted his teeth. Maybe Henry and Morgan really had been close friends. They both had that air of smugness about their words. They both spoke as if they knew shit about him.

He leaned out to shout back something, anything, but a few more bullets fired past him. Diego moved to hide back behind the tree, but one of the bullets grazed him in the left rib. His fingers pressed into the tree, he squeezed his eyes shut, said curses through clenched teeth.

There were footsteps, punctuated by more gunshots. He opened his eyes, looked down, saw a small but steady flow of blood from the side of his body. Morgan shouted more words, Diego was scared to look and see where they were coming from. He heard the question more directly from his left though, across the end of the path, around where the boulder was.

What was wrong with him?

He wanted to shout something back. Something about how he didn't know how he lived with himself. Something about how Henry wasn't living anymore. Eye for an eye kind of deal, salt in the wounds just made. But words were at a premium. He could only think so much, he could only say so much. It was hard to think in sentences. Henry had made him feel the same way, Henry had also left him speechless. He hated it.

Pulling the trigger didn’t require thinking. You just used a bit of force, and then it said more, did more than you ever could.

“FUCK OFF.”

He turned towards the boulder, fired back two more shots.

As two more bullets ricocheted off of his cover, Morgan continued to glance down at the blood that was now seeping out of a small hole that he hadn't noticed in the bottom of his shoe. It made sense; he hadn't taken them off for almost two weeks now outside of a few minutes each day. Like the rest of his clothes, they were battered, dirty and stank. He could now add 'stained with blood' to their descriptor. Thinking about the state of his wardrobe was a nice distraction, taking his mind off of the fact that he and Diego were shooting at one another. Once the gunfire stopped, Morgan waited for a second. After being told to fuck off, it didn't seem like the other boy was in much of a talking mood.

The hell with that.

"Is that what you told," Morgan hesitated for a moment as he racked his brain for the names of Diego's victims, "Henry, and— and Mike?!"

There was someone else, but it wasn't coming to mind, so Morgan just continued on. He wasn't one to stop and think before he spoke back home and it certainly wasn't time to start. Especially not when he was trying to antagonize the other boy.

"What kind of a psycho are you, anyway?" He glanced down at his own pistol. Outside of a clip he had in his pocket, he was rapidly running low on ammo. "Did you kill kittens as a kid or some shit? That's fucked up, man!"

Taking a second to peek out from behind the boulder, he leaned over and squeezed the trigger over and over, barely bothering to aim. He couldn't put any weight on his leg and he wasn't likely to get anything but a lucky shot from here, anyways. But if Diego thought that he was out of ammo, maybe he'd make a mistake.

Morgan likely would in his place.

Splinters of wood rained down on Diego, filled the damp air with sawdust. HIs hands ached from the recoil, the stinging on the side of his body dug into him more. His lungs struggled to take in air, his legs ached. He was so fucking tired. Diego fired back another shot but it wasn’t even close.

How many bullets had they fired at each other already? They spent their bullets like words, used their bullets like words, but they both had limited ammo. Who would run out first? He’d only used the gun once before this, to shut Henry up, but how many times had Ty and Lorenzo used it? How many times had Morgan used his gun?

The blood wouldn’t stop rushing in his head, too. Words could also feel like bullets under the right circumstances. Some part of him knew Morgan was trying to get a rise out of him, trying to make him lose control, but what he was saying was what Henry had said to him. The best lies were mixed with the truth. Some part of Morgan probably believed the bullshit he was saying, probably assumed by default that Diego had just done this for fun, wouldn’t even bother giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But if he wanted to play hurtful, Diego could play hurtful. He knew spite very well.

He projected his voice, made sure Morgan heard each and every word he said.

“God, you and Henry really were close, huh.”

He punctuated this with a sharp laugh, a bark, really.

“Both of you just love talking out of your asses, to be honest. Guess it doesn’t- guess it doesn’t matter if Henry has a mouth to speak with or not anymore, you know. Or a torso. Same difference.”

None of Morgan's bullets hit much of anything, that much was obvious by the shrill retorts that were fired back his way. Diego expended his own ammunition as well, of course, but the protection of the boulder was only good for so much. Sticks and stones — lead and gunpowder, really — could break his bones but words would cut deeply forever. That was how the saying went, right? Morgan's irritation flamed up at the same time as the pain in his fresh wound did. The things Diego was saying, if he believed them or not, it was very evident that his heart wasn't in it. This had turned into the same sort of pissing contest that one might have seen in the halls of George Hunter, complete with childish taunts and immature bravado.

The only difference now was that one of them was a multiple murderer and they were both holding actual weapons.

Just a minor detail, that.

"Man, fuck you!" Staying quiet had been his thought, but as he ejected the magazine from the Walther and clumsily loaded the fresh one into it, he couldn't let that stand. "What do you know, anyway? Henry was a good guy, he had hopes and dreams and you just—"

He'd what? Diego had done something to Henry that had ended up in his friend being a splatter on the ground. All Morgan had heard were his final words. One final radio broadcast before everything had gone to hell.

The place that Diego was sure to travel, if one believed in that sort of thing.

"—you blew him up! What kind of a person fucking does that?"

Morgan's own voice was starting to rise in pitch, his hand quivering as he tried to compose his breath. The bullet that had struck him had obviously not exited his leg, and with every breath, he could feel the pain of each individual fragment that had undoubtedly scattered through his body. He wasn't going to fire any more bullets until he saw Diego's face with his own eyes. Maybe he'd think that Morgan ran out.

Maybe he'd walk away.

Maybe was nothing but a pleasant thought; he knew what was to come and it had nothing to do with maybe. He rephrased his question; irritated that Diego had bested him at his own game. His voice sounded unsteady; that was no lie. Morgan was scared shitless.

"What kind of a person does that make you?"

Someone with his own hopes and dreams.

Someone who was also just trying to live.

He’d tried explaining this to Henry. He hadn’t wanted to listen. Morgan didn’t seem willing to listen, so Diego simply wouldn’t say anything about it. It’d be wasted breath. No matter what he said, no matter how deep into his traumas Diego tried to dig, none of it meant anything to Henry. None of it would mean anything to Morgan. To him, he’d always be a monster.

And that was fine. He meant what he’d done to Henry. He meant what he’d done to Lorenzo.

Fucking lean into it.

But, Morgan deserved an explanation, at the very least, for what happened to his friend. Everyone deserved an explanation, some form of closure. So he’d give him one.

A few seconds of silence passed by the time Diego decided on what to say. His voice came out more natural this time, less projected. Matter-of-fact.

“Henry said things like that too. Talked about how I didn’t really deserve to make it off the island, to live.

“I’m... not sure if I deserve to live. But I know I want to live. I know I wanted to make sure of that.”

Blood began to stain the hem of Diego’s jeans, by the hip. This whole thing was seeming to stretch on a bit. And maybe that was Morgan’s intent. It had been a while since the last gunshot. Maybe words were all the weapons he had left.

Morgan still deserved an explanation, anyways. Diego continued.

“Henry died because of that walkie-talkie, actually. I was, am, by myself. He had allies on the other side of that walkie-talkie, you guys apparently. Guns aren’t really a sure shot, we both know that. Not at a far distance. A grenade launcher is.”

Light footsteps might have been heard beneath his speech.

“So. If you really want to know, I did it because I wanted to live. I did it because he was in my way.”

His last words were just a few feet from Morgan. They came off his mouth cuttingly, deliberately.

“I killed him because he deserved it.”

Diego began to raise his gun.

Morgan could feel the sweat dripping down his arm as his grip on the pistol only intensified. Diego kept talking, his voice getting louder and louder. The words had such malice behind them, they sounded wrong coming from his mouth. It was like hearing a toddler swear; it sounded wrong. He kept still, as long as he could — as much as it pained him not to retort. If ever he were to shut his damn mouth, now was that time.

As Diego's last words sent a shiver down Morgan's spine, he knew that it was time.

Wordlessly, he made his move.

The gun was gripped between both Diego’s hands. The safety flicked off, he laid a finger on the trigger. He turned.

There was no one behind the boulder.

Something clicked behind him.

"Drop it," Morgan's voice was pained but there was an absence of levity within it. He wasn't trying to needle anyone, there was no more antagonism. The Walther pointed directly at the back of Diego's head illustrated that point better than any.

Leg still burning, Morgan had still been incredibly fortunate that the boulder he was standing beside didn't happen to share the edge of a cliff face or an inaccessible bush. He'd moved slowly and left a spotty trail of blood in his wake, but the gamble had paid off; the scales of justice were tipping his way.

"I don't want to hear," he picked his way through the words as though he were learning them for the first time, "another word out of your mouth."

He leaned on the side of the boulder for support but his aim stayed steadier than he would have expected. Being moments away from committing a murder had never seemed so simple. How the hell had they gotten here?

Diego hadn't moved, so he repeated himself.

"Drop it. I won't ask again."

He’d seen this in a few movies, this exact move. He was so dumb. He should’ve been more patient.

There was a deep pit in his stomach. His veins ran frigid. Icewater sluiced off his arms, his torso.

Dane’s corpse was just out of view. He couldn’t turn his head to look at him even if he wanted to, but he felt its eye sockets staring at him all the same.

If he tried to turn around, shoot the gun, Morgan would have more than enough time to react. If he followed, there was the barest hope that he’d just be robbed, deprived of a weapon, left to starve, same as Billy had.

He hated him. He hated him. He hated him he hated him he hated him.

Diego gulped. The gun dropped.

The gun clattered softly to the ground. Wow. Morgan hadn't actually expected him to drop it. For the very first time since he'd woken up on this hellish island, he found himself with the upper hand. He'd choose to conveniently forget the fact that he'd been shot for the time being. There was a lot that he was choosing to ignore right now. What would Lizzie think; how would Henry react to what he was doing? What would his parents think when presented with the image of their son holding someone at gunpoint with murderous intent?

Those questions didn't matter; the answers even less. His parents would be horrified at all of it, most of all the image of their son, dead on the ground with a bullet in his head. As for Henry and Lizzie? They wouldn't think much of anything.

They were dead; a fact that only reignited his fury.

"Henry was going to be an astronaut. That was his thing." He held the gun tightly, never wavering from Diego's head. "All of this, it— he couldn't see a way away from it. He couldn't bear to do what we're all expected to do. Even after he'd killed someone, it wrecked him. We were going after people, Blaise, Erika, Justin—"

His voice sounded hoarse, fatigued. Morgan barely even recognized it as his own.

"People like you." The vitriol was unbecoming. "You're wrong, man. Henry didn't deserve to die. He deserved to have a chance at a life. Nobody deserves to die. None of us. Not Henry, not me, not even you."

Diego hadn't moved since he'd dropped his gun. Morgan didn't want to take the risk of talking too long. He never had been much for speeches. His wound hadn't felt good when he'd been shot and it was feeling even worse as the seconds ticked away.

"That's the problem, man. You say all of that shit, and it's— well, it's obvious that you believe it." The hardness fell away from his voice for a moment. "Which is fucked up, by the way."

Morgan stood unsteadily, approximately six feet away from the smaller boy. He knew what had to be done. Right now he was a far cry from the kid who had awoken and screamed his lungs out, barely able to stand up. The kid who had gotten beaten up by Wyatt and pissed himself in fear. That kid was gone.

He couldn't let Diego turn around.

Those eyes would haunt him forever.

"It's why I can't let you keep going. I'm sorry."

He was, almost.

Morgan pulled the trigger, and the cliffside area was filled with a deafening silence.

Nothing happened.

He should’ve shot him. Or tried to, at least.

He should’ve turned around while he was in the middle of his own speech, at least tried to catch him off guard.

It was the exact same shit he’d heard from Henry. He didn’t get it. He said it himself: everyone deserved to live. So, everyone deserved to try to live, Diego included.

But none of that mattered anymore.

He’d been hoping to be robbed, actually. The last words Morgan said felt like hammers. The gray ocean beyond looked especially active this afternoon. Vengeful, as if he hadn’t tried his best to follow it, surpass it. He wanted another last sight, but that too didn’t matter.

There was an empty click.

A few seconds passed between the two, both of them needing time to absorb what had just happened.

Something between a sneer and a scowl appeared on Diego’s face.

He turned around and charged.

The gun jammed.

"The fuck—?"

At least, with Morgan's lack of firearm knowledge, that was the only thing he could think of. The safety was off, the magazine was in — so what else could it have been? It didn't matter. He slapped the side of the gun — as if that would have made a difference — and tried again. Pulled the trigger, again and again. The clicking noise taunted him. Seconds later, Diego's face did the same.

The boy charged, so in a panic, Morgan did the only thing he could think to do.

Instinctively, he reared back and flung the Walther P99 right at the onrushing Diego's face.