Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Why would you do something like that?" she asked, and silence was his only answer.

Every day since he’d been imprisoned, she’d come and repeat the same question. He’d keep silent, and after a while, she would leave.

The date of the trial was approaching, but he refused to talk.

His mother hadn't even bothered visiting. She’d sent her personal assistant to tell him he's a disgrace. The incident would be a forever stain on her career, she’d said. This was the worst moment he could have committed such an atrocity—she was running for Senate, for crying out loud, and he’d singlehandedly shot down her chances! The personal assistant had also impersonally conveyed how his mother always knew he would turn out like this, but hoped he wouldn’t—and that was the last he’d heard from his family.

She was the only one he was seeing from his past life, for he had no friends, and his father was dead.

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If you asked her, she wouldn't be able to tell when she first noticed him.

Probably after he grew so tall in mere months, easily towering over all their classmates, even some teachers. Maybe even earlier—he was unfortunately conspicuous. Yet everyone avoided him ever since he’d come to their class, as it was common knowledge that creeps like him were best left alone. This did not prevent them to talk about him behind his back. There were rumors of him causing trouble in his previous school, falling down and digging a hole to hide in, after being at the top of the class. Rumors of fights, of night streets and danger—rumors that depicted him as Lucifer himself. She knew, of course, that those were mostly lies, but she couldn't shake off the feeling that at least the last one was true. He did have a certain smell of uncertainty around him, of uncharted territories and unanswered questions—so different than any other rich kid she’d met. For her, a girl from the foster system who’d changed so many families, it was weird not to be able to figure someone out on the first try.

So she hung out around him.

She sat at the same table during lunch, she was always near him in class, she volunteered to be in the same groups as he was, and yet she never got more than a simple sentence from him. Sure, he pulled his weight and did his work, and was one of the best project partners she could wish for, but other than that, he was an empty shell. Sometimes, she thought she could notice traces of anger in his movements—stiff and repressed, but there, itching under his skin. She did not understand it. Even after all that had happened to her, she never allowed rage to bloom inside her soul—she was as dark as a ray of sunshine.

Somewhere along the way, she fell for him. It was inevitable. It wasn’t the usual kind of love, though. It was more as if she found a stray cat and decided to take care of it. Yet unlike the strays she took in, he never opened up to her. This only made her love him more. She loved him like a curious child who fell in love with stories and myths, innocently and whole-heartedly, and without either of them noticing.

And then it happened.

One day, she got sick and didn’t come to school. She didn’t get sick often, but it was winter in North Dakota, and she was used to sun and all-year-round summer down in New Mexico. She stayed home for a while, sipping tea and clutching snotty tissues, and wondering if he even noticed that she wasn’t there as his shadow.

While she was gone, his anger finally started seeping out.

It didn't take long for it to set everything on fire.

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"It all happened so fast!" Finn said, shaking, when she first talked with him about it. "So fast..."

He broke down crying.

It felt too unreal to her, but she held her best friend in her arms, trying not to let him fall apart.

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Her first visit to Ben was not long after that.

"Why would you do something like that?" she asked him with tears in her eyes, and he was silent. "Why?"

She broke into sobs—and for the first time in a long while, his body showed something else than badly contained anger. His brows furrowed, his whole face softened. Yet he did not utter a word, and through her tears, she did not see how his expression changed.

She kept coming, demanding an answer. But he never said anything, and after the first day, the regret was only visible deep down in his eyes.

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She started gathering news as some kind of puzzle pieces about him. Interviews with his mother, classmates from the old school, parents and friends of the survivors; reports about his father; solemn think pieces by psychologists and profilers about the impact of American gun culture on misfit youth. Anything that was about him. But it did not help. She did not understand him.

It was then that she started doubting herself.

She tried convincing herself that she didn’t love him, never had—she’d just wanted to save him (or was it the other way around?). It didn’t work. It was nothing more than a feeble attempt to hide away something she saw as a monstrosity in her mind, itching under her skin.

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"Why did you do it? Was it because of your father?"

She changed the question, and he could not hide the flash of surprise on his face.

"It is! I knew it! Was it because your mother did not like what you grew into? Was that the reason you made so much trouble? Is it--"

"Shut up." His voice was low and trembling with something that barely resembled anger.

"Why? You refuse to talk to anyone! I just want to help you," she said, her voice rising in hope. She was fed up with his stubbornness, and his silence, and his mistakes and—

"I never asked for it! I never asked for any of it! I never wanted to be looked at by everyone! I just wanted peace and none of you will never ever fucking give it to me!” He suddenly stood up shouting. “Who are you to pry in my life like that? Who are you!?"

It took seconds for guards to run to him and pull him from the glass.

"You’re nothing!” he screamed, dragged away to the prison depths. “You have no place in this story! Just fucking leave me alone!"

She was left to stare at him with a blank expression and all blood drained from her face.

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"Why would you do something like that?" she asks herself, and does not have the courage to answer.

And even now she doesn’t know if she’s ever loved him, or he was just a personal project of hers, yet another soul she needed to save from the darkness.

"Why would you do something like that?" she asks, and silence is her only answer.