:.epilogue.:
Start the song in the media. It's Don't Go by Bring Me The Horizon featuring Lights.
Three weeks after the funeral, Jenna is driving to a hospital in uptown Ohio. Mark called her earlier and told her that he wanted to show her something. It had been the first time she talked to him since the trial, and honestly, Jenna thought that after what had happened there, Mark would never speak to her again.
"Mr. Joseph, on any normal occasion, court would be adjourned and I would take a few days to deliberate. However, in this case, that isn't necessary. You have been found guilty on four counts of first degree murder. You will serve four concurrent life terms with a chance of parole."
Jenna stands in shock as her client's fate is read aloud. She lost. They lost. Immediately, she put her hand near Tyler's, but he pulls away. "Ty..." she whispers softly, but the 25 year old just shakes his head.
"The jury is thanked and excused. Court is adjourned."
Jenna can't even make her limbs react when Tyler is taken by guards, presumably to Belle Reve. She just stands there, time floating around her. All the days they had spent together trying to make Tyler's freedom a reality... it meant nothing. It had counted for nothing. Wentz makes his way to Jenna.
"You had to see this coming. You simply weren't prepared, and he simply wasn't innocent," the man says, smoothing his tie flat down his chest.
"Actually, I didn't see it coming," Jenna says quietly, her voice sounding distant and light. Peter only laughs at her, shaking his head and leaving the courtroom. Jenna wipes at her eyes. She doesn't really know why, there are no tears coming out. Maybe it's because she should be crying. She takes in a deep breath, then makes her exit. She can hear a number of footsteps around her, but she's more concerned about the-
"Dr. Black! Did you know this was going to happen?"
"How does it feel to have defended a convicted murderer?"
"Jenna, do you think it was rigged?"
Lights flashed as paparazzi pushed microphones and cameras into her face. Jenna sighed, trying her best to ignore them all. Soon, their questions shifted, the paparazzi pushing past her to approach whoever had just exited the courthouse.
"Mark, how do you feel about the ruling?"
"Dr. Eshleman, why wasn't he proven insane?"
"What more could you have done?"
Jenna keeps walking to her car, not at all ready to face Mark. But when she gets in her vehicle, she hears the click of the passenger door opening, watching Mark slip himself inside. They both remain silent for a few moments, until Mark finally speaks.
"This is your fault."
His words hang heavily in the air for a while. He's right, Jenna can admit it. She doesn't need him to keep talking, but of course, he does.
"If you had let me tell them the truth, he'd be fine. If you hadn't left out information and left Zack up there without a freaking response, Tyler would be fine right now!"
"Don't you try to blame this on me! You could have told them the truth up there, you chose not to!"
Mark rolled his eyes. "Yeah, tell them the truth and then what? Leave you even more unprepared than you already were. Jesus, we've been working on this defense for months and you couldn't get it right, imagine what would have happened if I had went on something like that on a minute's notice! I was trying to help you because I thought that you could make this work. But you couldn't. You might as well have done nothing."
Tears well up in Jenna's eyes over the harsh words that Mark utter. "I tried my best, Tyler knows that. Josh knows too."
Mark laughs abrasively, his deductive reasoning enabling him to not need Jenna to fill him in on the newly found first name of Tyler's 'friend'. "Your best try landed them a 25 to life. Great job, J." He opened the door, climbing out the car without another word. Jenna didn't dare let the tears spill, instead, she started driving toward the place she so needed to be - Belle Reve. She needed to be sure that Tyler understood that she had tried her best.
The guards didn't allow Jenna to go see Tyler that day. It was only hours later that she was informed of his suicide. The funeral was held the next weekend. She had showed up, clad in all black. Zack and Mark were sitting together, and at the sound of her heels against the floor, Zack turned to see her. The second he saw her face, he only shook her head. That was enough to let Jenna know that she wasn't welcome there. She could understand why. She had taken away the last piece of family that Zack had left. She didn't stay at the service - she had too much respect for Tyler and for herself to do that. And now, three weeks later, she's seeing Mark again. Nerves are getting the best of her as she drives towards the hospital. Mark sounded dry over the phone when he had called her. His voice lacked the warmness that she once knew so well... but that was the problem, wasn't it? Their history had ended up being the ultimate reason why Tyler had ended up convicted, why Tyler had ended up dead.
Soon, Jenna is walking into the hospital. Her heels still make a loud noise against the ground, but her walk has lost the confidence that it once radiated. The last month has taken a lot out of her. She sits on a bench outside, texting Mark to ask him where to go. She knows that hospital Wifi is awful and doesn't want to risk being lost for longer than she needs to be. Mark texts her back quickly, a simple 16-00. He was even dry through texts. Jenna realizes that she's ruined the one relationship that she thought she would be able to depend on forever.
Jenna steps onto the elevator, reading the buttons and deciding that the 00 floor was probably her best bet. After the car lowers and she is on the basement level, she makes her way through a dark hallway until she finds 16-00. The locked door is heavy and is made of a material that seems like it could be bulletproof. Jenna knocks, shifting from foot to foot while she waits for the door to be opened. After what felt like hours, the door finally opened. Jenna stepped into the freezing cold room as Lyndsey Gunnulfsen began to scream at her.
"How could you do that? Do you realize that you killed him? That you killed both of them? You're a filthy liar, Jenna." The attorney says nothing to the judge until after she's completely done.
"Why are you here?" she asks.
"He touched her, Jenna," Mark deadpans. "Josh interacted with her. And you got him killed."
Jenna looks down at the ground. "Is this why you invited me here? To make me feel more guilty than I already do?"
"No," calls out a voice from a different part of the room. From the darkness comes Alex from the Belle Reve asylum. He sits on a metal stool. "We found something."
"In Japan," Mark says, "there was a kid. 25 years old. He lived in a facility for the gifted and talented... a facility for the supernatural. He was just like Tyler. On the same day that Tyler killed himself, at the exact moment that he started cutting himself, a gash split in the Japanese kid's arm. It was unexplainable. The kid died, but the doctors in Japan kept his body on ice to observe it. Jenna, do you know what the kid's name was?" She shakes her head slowly.
Lyndsey chimes in, her voice coming out somewhat bitter. "Joshua. Joshua William Dun. And the voice in his head was named Tyler."
"When we found out," Alex says, "we got in contact with the Japanese doctors immediately. They sent us Joshua's body. Unfortunately, the Belle Reve officials weren't cooperating with us. It took us so long to receive Tyler's body that it's unsalvageable. But we were able to cut open his brain and take many of Joshua's cells, which were miraculously still alive, out of it. We then transported those cells into his body, his Japanese body. If it all worked out well, the Josh that interacted with Lynn will be the Josh that now inhabits this body."
"That Josh hates me," Jenna whispers.
Lyndsey snorts. "Yeah? And whose fault is that?"
Jenna ignores the sly remarks and turns to Alex, the only person in the room who she isn't uncomfortable with. "So... Tyler..."
Alex nods. "Tyler is dead."
Jenna draws in a sharp breath. "Where's Josh?"
Mark stands now. "Right here." He moves to a dark corner of the room, pulling the hospital bed into the light. Lying there is a man with fading green hair, numerous tattoos, and a nasty gash up his left forearm. "We did the transfer three days ago, so he should be waking up anytime now."
The four of them sat around the unconscious man, staring at him and waiting for him to wake up. After a few minutes pass, his eyes flutter.
"Is he waking up?" Jenna asks nervously.
"His eyes just do that sometimes," Lyndsey replies with just as much nervous anticipation in her voice.
"He doesn't look very Japanese," Jenna says to ebb the tension.
Again, Lynn replies. "He's mostly European. He speaks good Japanese though, or at least, the Japanese version of him did."
Jenna nods. "I'm sorry."
Lynn picks up Josh's left hand, still looking at him as she answers Jenna. "That changes nothing. You're a horrible person for what you did and I hope you rot in Hell for it," she says easily. It's at these words that Josh's eyes open.
:.:
When I wake up, I first notice two things. The first is that my arms are cold. The second is that Jenna is staring me in my eyes.
"Tell her to get away from me," I say, looking around for Tyler and instead seeing Alex, Mark, and... Lyndsey. Am I dreaming? It's then that I see the gash on my arm and I realize what happened. Tyler is gone. "How can you see me?"
"We'll explain that later," Alex says.
I shake my head. "You'll explain it now. Where's Tyler? Why am I alive without him?"
"Tyler's dead, Josh, you know that," Jenna says quietly, not meeting Josh's eyes.
"Well then why am I here, Jenna? I'm a figment of his imagination, he was crazy-"
"He wasn't crazy, Joshua," Mark explains, bitterness in his voice. "I wanted to tell you months ago. Tyler was never schizophrenic. He was enhanced; he was supernatural. You were trapped in his body, but now you're free. I would have told you," he cuts his eyes at Jenna, "but she seemed to have a better plan. If I had known it would end up like this, I wouldn't have listened to her. Forgive me."
I'm... I'm free? I'm real? I sit up, pulling the blanket from over me, and then stand. I stalk my way over to Jenna, loving the fear in her eyes as I draw ever closer. "I don't think you understand how much I want to kill you."
"Trust me," Lyndsey says, "I've thought about it. More than once." I turn my attention away from Jenna and to my love. For the first time, we can see each other. Everything feels less one sided now. "Nice to meet you," she says with a blush. "I - uh, I like the way our voice sounds. And your face. I like your face a lot."
I laugh, making my way to her and holding both of her hands. It's a beautiful thing to feel: her hands on mine. Not through mine, not me touching her hand. No. Her hands on mine. It feel like paradise. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him," I tell her.
Her eyes hammer into mine as she speaks slowly. "If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that I am very selfish. I don't have a problem saying it, either. I'm selfish. I'm sad that he's dead, I truly am. But his death gave me you. And as bad as I probably sound, I will never feel sorry about it."
She's selfish and angry. She's perfect.
I don't deserve her.
"So what now?" I ask Mark.
He shrugs. "I don't know."
"It doesn't feel the same without Tyler. I lived to ruin him. That was my only purpose for six years. And for the past few months, my life has revolved around helping him. I don't have a purpose without him. I don't really..." I trail off. Even with Lyndsey right in front of me, I feel unbearably alone. "Who am I if I'm not the voice inside Tyler's head?" The room goes silent, and it's not the good kind. It's the heavy kind, like everybody knows that I'm nothing. "You should have left me dead."
Alex's head snaps up. "People aren't born with purpose. Nowhere on me are you gonna find a frickin' sticker that says 'this kid is gonna save supernatural peoples' lives'. It doesn't work like that."
Lyndsey nods, her grip on my hands tightening. "You have a chance to live on your own. You can experience the world. And you can do it however you want to."
I swallow thickly. I don't believe her words fully yet; I know it'll take some time before I can fully comprehend everything that's happened. There's so much I want to be able to touch and feel, really feel, so many people I want to know... because the one person I ever really knew is dead. All these things that I want to experience... but I don't deserve to.
"I was the reason Tyler died. I killed him, hell, I killed his parents and his siblings. Lock me up, take me to Belle Reve. You said it yourself, Mark. I'm a psychopath. I shouldn't be out in society."
Lyndsey shakes her head, her hands dropping mine to fondle the sides of my face. "No, no, you don't mean that. You don't belong there."
I laugh humorlessly. "Oh, but I do. You should know, Judge."
"You haven't done anything that would put you in jail. I can't put you in a maximum security prison for being the scary voice in someone's head," Lyndsey says, irritation lacing her voice. I escape from her grip, moving towards Jenna once again.
"Yeah?" I take the woman by the throat, hearing a scream rip from her as I force her body flush against mine for easier access to her windpipe. "Is threatening her life enough, or do I actually have to snap her neck? Either one works for me."
"Why are you being like this?" Lyndsey asks sadly. No one makes any attempt to stop me, even as my hand snakes up to roughly pull Jenna's hair as my grip on her throat becomes dangerously tight.
"What did you expect?"
Jenna's fingernails scratch at my hand. She lets out an unintelligible croak as she loses the energy to stand.
"Joshua," Alex calls out, "stop! Let her go, okay. I'll take you to Belle Reve if that's what you want, just let her go."
"Swear. Swear on your life."
"I promise you."
:.:
I'm in the same room as I was in with Tyler. His blood is still splayed over the bars, the walls, and the floor. It reminds me every day of what I did to him.
I always told myself that if I ever had a chance to live my own life, I wouldn't waste it doing nothing. But now, I have no choice. I sit in a cell every day in place of someone whose life I took. I live his life because Tyler could not. And in living his life, I become everything that I hate.
I become everything Tyler ever was. And in doing this, in living his life, I find purpose.
Thank you.
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