within the chaos of his mind (and the screaming of his fellow horsemen echoing around in his skull), it was dylan’s words that forced him to focus. a command – he could follow orders. when everything was going wrong, he could follow orders. they hadn’t bothered to take their phones, as pleased as they had been with pulling them aboard their plane. it wasn’t supposed to have mattered if they had, but…
he folded himself into the passenger seat of the car, staring at the screen, finding a room for dylan and himself in a hotel on the other side of town, for no reason other than the need for distance from tressler and mabry. he set the navigation and placed the device on the dash where dylan could see it, before finally sitting still.
as soon as he stopped moving, it felt as though a WEIGHT settled over his body. the air itself seemed to solidify, weighing him down, pressing him into his seat – dragging in and out of his lungs like it was acid. he didn’t speak, didn’t move, simply stared straight ahead – maybe dylan needed the silence, too.
his thoughts turned to henley, in that moment. she’d left, and as much as he had blamed her before, she’d saved her own life. he wished, now, that they had all followed – that the group known as the horsemen had dissolved, that dylan had given this up, that everything…all of them…were alive, still. he could handle losing the family he’d found if he knew they were at least all alive.
it was the only thing he had to say, quietly, on impulse. somehow, it seemed the RIGHT thing to say. whether it was dylan’s fault or not, he couldn’t even concentrate on in that moment. he couldn’t think far enough to assign blame, although he knew himself well enough to understand that it would fall on his own shoulders. it would, regardless of what dylan said, or thought. he should have seen this coming. he should have known.
it was only in the silence inside the car --- interrupted only by the occasional ‘ bling! ’ of the phone’s navigation --- that the shock that had kept dylan in its hold for so long wore off enough for him to properly become aware of in how much pain he was. some of the bruising he’d gotten on the ship hadn’t even properly come to the surface of his skin before being struck again, and until this point, the fear and the emotional grief had kept him from realising how much injuries he’d sustained on the plane ( a vague, blurred memory of jack fight too resurfaced and he made a mental note for himself to check the shape jack was in too once they’d arrived ). slowly, he came to realise his head was hurting, and let one hand off the steering wheel to touch where he must’ve hit it against the floor of the plane, only to notice something that required more attention from him.
his hand was shaking. for a moment, it did not occur to him what could’ve happened that caused his hands to tremble without him noticing... then it all came crashing down at once: i am currently involved in a hostage situation, i just watched almost all of the people closest to me die, i died a day ago... putting a cause to the pain of the injuries turned their effect from sobering to deafening, and dylan almost considered putting on a radio that would surely feel inappropriate to them both just to stop himself from finding the silence peaceful while there was still no guarantee any of them would make it out of this alive ( they have to, they have to, they have to... ).
“ jack, DON’T---... ” the quiet plea, the face turned away in shame, in response to jack’s words lingered unfinished as dylan tried to find a suitable ending for it that wouldn’t be followed with insistence from jack’s side. it felt like his fault. he knew for a fact that there were a hundred ways this tragedy could've ended before it began, and all of started with him swallowing his pride and telling them to lead quiet lives without any of this... or never bringing them together at all. in one version grief-struck mind found another person at whom to be mad: there was a part of him that blamed dannyfor this, for no other reason than coming to his rescue when every single sign in the universe had been telling him this is when he should die. the horsemen would still be safe and together if he’d drowned, the tresslers would have gotten what they most wanted. “ please don’t say that. ” still, whether he admitted it or not, he was relieved jack wasn’t filled with hatred towards him for all of this, but he could not bear to hear that right now when he had yet to earn that forgiveness.
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