Work Text:
Sometimes, in moments like this, Edgar ruminated on Eric’s last thoughts.
Had it hurt when the bullet tore through him? Had he really felt it, had time to realize he was dying before the life left him? Had he been scared?
Was there really anything left?
For his part, Edgar had expected a board room, or maybe a team of lawyers waiting for them. People to pick them apart for hours, to sort out the particulars of everything, to try to squirm their way out of giving as much as the ransom entailed.
None of the violence on the video had seemed…really real.
He felt stupid, in retrospect, but more than that, an overwhelming sense of guilt.
They had just been starting out their lives–Die For Dethklok seemed to have a limitless potential for growth, and the future had seemed so bright.
They’d been 32 and 24.
Edgar felt old now, pushing 40 and watching lines become wrinkles set in his face, his hair shot through with more grey every year. While the Earth kept turning around him, Eric remained a memory frozen in time, caught between a child and a young man in his elder brother’s mind. Sometimes it was hard not to see the little boy that had mimicked his every action; Who had diligently recorded all of their “jam sessions” in the garage with the family video camera, who had stared at him in wonder the first time they listened to Metallica together.
The grief was easier some days than others. Today it felt like the tide might wash him out to sea.
Now he placed his hope and trust in the very men who had taken that away from him–Like it or not. It was hard to feel anything but pure bitterness and hatred when he looked into the face of Charles Ofdensen, hard to understand how someone could take a life so easily. Every person who had ever died, had ever suffered at the hands of Dethklok had been loved by someone. They had been born with innocence, and they had had hopes and dreams. They, too, had once been little boys with scraped knees playing at rockstar in the garage with their big brother.
Wretched, then, that all their fates were in the hands of these men. What had made them so special that they had attained godhood? And even so, were they not still to blame for mortal suffering?
What world did they live in that the had that right, and who did they think they were?
Questions without an answer. No way to go but forwards.
What could he do but live for those who could not?