But I could see for miles, miles, miles

In the end the anger is directed--finally and completely and as it always should have been—inward.

He knows what he’s hearing before he’s even really conscious of it. He lies in his bed in the dark, that fucking wall so near his head, and it’s very faint but he can hear it and he knows its source. He knows those sounds.

It’s a distant memory now, but he knows what Neil sounds like when he comes.

He lies there in the dark and he feels fury roiling through him and transmuting into misery so deep it literally shakes him, wrenches at his muscles, and through it all he’s achingly, shamefully hard. He fists his hands in the sheets. Doesn’t drop them below his waist, where he wants them, because it would mean a few seconds of relief and he can’t allow himself that. This is torture, and it’s his torture, and he thinks that it’s exactly what he fucking deserves.

But all at once he thinks of Sam, all that weight on his shoulders, the way he doesn’t seem to want to let it go, and Neil’s hollow eyes. I don’t even know where to fuckin’ start.

And somewhere in that darkness something breaks open.

The next couple of days are a blur.

He isn’t drinking—at least, not much. But he also isn’t really home. Somewhere in there, he remembers staggering back and sleeping for a few fractured hours before he leaves again. He doesn’t want to see Neil. He’s not ready. Later he remembers the park at sunset, approaching the burn scar of the World Tree at last, making a long, slow circuit around still-charred ground. The ashes have been blown and washed away. He can still see that spike of green in the midst of all the death, small and defiant. He goes no closer. It’s enough to know that it’s still there, but it’s not his. It doesn’t need him.

This is about need. This is about needing.

It feels like time is twisting in on itself. It feels like some giant hand has hit rewind and he’s being swept along with the blur as everything loops backward. And at the same time he knows he has a choice. That he chose this. That there was never an excuse, that all of this has been his choice: Death and pain and evil, and once he chose something else, and now he can make that choice again.

So he stands at Neil’s door and knocks, and it’s firm but it’s not pounding. The terror feels burned out of him. So does the rage. What’s left is desire so intense it makes his hands shake. The desire is what’s done the burning.

When fighting and running are off the table, you give up. You surrender. You lay down your arms.