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"Why are we here?" I asked through gritted teeth as Vernon stepped through the doorway to the living room. He had brought me to the house, which was surprisingly unsurprising, though he had been silent through the journey.
He stood near the switch board, but didn't turn on the lights. I blinked a few times, trying to make out the outline of the furniture so I wouldn't bump into anything, then realized that I didn't need to.
"This is where your father died," he started, and my blood turned cold, then hot. Vernon stepped forward, and the side of his face was bathed in sudden moonlight. I pulled back my shoulders, trying to stand as steadily as possible, but he looked...stunning. The angles and planes of his face were sharper in the dim light, half obscure in the dark, half highlighted by moonlight. Unreal, beautiful, haunting. "And I know it hurts you to remember that, but you must. You need to stand here and remember it until you're over it."
My upper lip pulled back into a snarl. "Stop talking about him."
"You have to remember that he died for a reason, and that reason was to save you," he continued, taking another step, bringing his entire face into the glare of the moon. His eyes were intense, and I was suddenly aware of all his details—the intensity in his eyes, the coldness of his expression, the blood on his clothes. Someone else's blood. "You have to accept that he's gone. He's gone, and he's not coming back, nothing you do will make him come back—"
"Shut up." My hands were fists at my sides now, and I was standing as stiff as a board, willing myself not to move, because I didn't know what I would do if I let myself go.
"He's gone." Vernon was relentless, standing cold and dismissive, repeating the words over and over like a mantra he was trying to drill into my head. "He's gone. And if you keep going on this way, you'll be gone too."
"Shut up." I sniffled, the words sounding heavy and clumsy when I tried to speak around the block in my throat. "Asshole."
"I know what you're thinking," he said, taking another step, and I backed up. "That if you find the killer and put a knife in his back, it'll all be over. But it won't. You'll still have nightmares—you'll just learn to stop screaming when they wake you, and you'll still lose control every now and then. It won't stop. It will never stop."
"Who told you that?" I watched him warily as he moved, the dynamic between us like that of predator watching prey. Only between us, you couldn't tell who was which. "One of the people you killed because of me? Baekhyun? Lay?"
"Do you really think that I am who I am because of you?"
I stepped back as he stepped forward, his features blank with the same rage and coldness I hadn't seen on them since the night he had killed Lay. There was not a trace of emotion on his face other than an all-consuming anger, an anger that was as terrifying as it was fascinating, an anger that had never before been directed at me.
