You Will Be Found

I Am Damaged

I didn't plan on doing this, I planned to leave the original on an open vagueness. But then I listened to the rest of the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, as well as a couple of others, and got more ideas.

This was taking way too long to come out, so instead of this being the second part of two, it'll be the second part of three. Hopefully, that won't take as long to come out, what with me having written part of it already - and also, lockdown thanks to the coronavirus.

Yet again, we can play the same game we played the last chapter if you so choose - Hunt the Musical Easter Eggs, now with extra musicals and even more obscure references!

Ryan made his exit.

He would've been seen more easily if he hadn't chosen to wear all black that night, as if he was attending his own funeral already. It gave him the sense of blending into the background, melting into the shadows, just on the fringes of reality and the aether. The liminal space between "what was" and "next". Lost in the "in-between". He'd been slowly slipping away for the past several months, like a candle burning out before being forcibly snuffed out altogether.

Better to burn out than to fade away, right? Kurt Cobain said that in his letter. Sadly, it seemed Ryan didn't have that luxury, that choice. He'd tried for so long to keep burning. Even when he'd been a whole fire, out of control, a blaze that couldn't be tamed, at least he'd been burning. At least he'd been alive. Now, with his flame contained to a simple candle, he had been running low on wax for what felt like forever, only able to stay for brief flickers. What was the point of trying to keep himself going? There was simply no means to. The wax would run out completely, and then he'd disappear forever.

Then again, if he succeeded, then burning would be one way to describe his eventual fate.

Ryan turned his gaze towards the sky, at the stars. Through the thick, impenetrable isolation that cloaked him, they filled the darkness with order and light. Silent and sure, keeping watch on the whole world through the night. Burning so brightly that they could be seen from billions of miles away.

But what about all the stars that couldn't be seen? Those that burned just as brightly, maybe more so, and yet were never seen? They just flickered out, coming and going without anyone seeing that they were ever even here, simply because they happened to be too far away, or positioned in some spatiotemporal blind spot. That was their fate, through no fault of their own.

No one could see him now, just like those faraway stars. He could barely hear his own footsteps anymore. Even the normally obnoxious timbre of vehicles speeding down nearby seemingly bypassed him. It was quiet in his head. Like silence, but not really silent. Just a still sort of quiet, like the sound of your heart in your head.

His heart had been through a lot. After all that had happened, he could feel it was charred black, clogged with soot and grime, yet still beating, still soldiering on. Working too hard for him.

Ryan arrived at the bridge earlier than expected. He'd meant to leave later, but he'd felt so claustrophobic in that grim flat that he'd had to leave. He hadn't bothered to leave a note, not even for Chloe. She didn't get to know what he said. She had forfeited all rights to his heart.

He'd saved every letter she'd written him, over the years, until she'd finally torn their relationship apart. The night before, he had taken a lighter to the box and burned every single one to ashes. If she had erased him, he could erase her just as easily.

The fire had been the warmest thing he'd felt in weeks.

It was then that he caught sight of a plaque attached to the railings: