Beautiful Loser
Where you gonna fall?
Word Count; 1,247
He stumbles into the street, waving his hands and a car slows.
If he wasn’t dying, he would have cursed at the way he’d rushed in to the situation, all instinct and no rational thought. He’d been tracking the small coven of vampires for weeks now, had traced their every move undiscovered. Hunting had become something of an obsession since he had left Mystic Falls, one that he had made his full career. If he was honest with himself, it had been the coping mechanism for Missy leaving so abruptly again. He had accepted that he had been the one to irrevocably damage their relationship, not once, but twice. The first when he had left home, and the second when he had threatened and almost shot her best friend. But he had never expected her to one day be gone again.
Raised voices echo around him as he collapses, unable to stand on his own two feet.
To the extent of his knowledge she had been well when she left, hadn’t perished again on her way elsewhere. She had simply vanished, and there was a surprising void that he would not have expected. He had attempted to stay in Mystic, at the very least for Ethan and Bryce. But the truth had been glaringly obvious, and he had known he would never be able to fill the shoes Missy had left. The relationship he had with them hadn’t been close since he’d left the first time, and he couldn’t blame them for it. Any reasoning he would have had to stay would have been selfish and manipulative, and so he had left. It had been easier and more difficult all at once, and Tony had left a part of himself in Mystic this time around that he would not be able to retrieve again.
He can hear sirens in the distance, resists the urge to laugh.
He’d managed to keep in contact with Thayer through the years, Rachel in turn as the two had become a couple. Whenever he heard from the older Hayes it was always from a new location but with the same sound in his voice; happiness. It always brought him a sense of bittersweet relief that at least one person he’d known had found something better out in the world they’d all found themselves in. Recently they’d fallen out of contact but last Tony had heard, Thayer was enjoying the simplicity of his life and preparing to start his family. Rachel had given birth to a girl, something Tony had heard through the grapevine. A child, one to raised by two of the best people Tony had known. It seemed appropriate. They had found their happiness. It was more than Tony could say for himself.
Paramedics load him onto a stretcher, offer their words of comfort that are supposed to mean something. They ask if he has family, someone they can call. He says no.
He’d made his way through the world, doing what he could and helping where he was needed. But the hunter life had taken it’s toll on Tony, and he had begun to fall apart. His instant reaction was to delve that much deeper into hunting, and the warning signs had all been there in just how reckless he had become, how careless with his life. The issues he tried to bury under the grueling life he led were easier to ignore when he was occupied, but nights that he remained awake too late were when the demons that haunted his mind came to play.
The ambulance moves quickly toward the hospital, fighting against time to get John Doe the attention he needs.
At the end of the day, Tony’s guilt stretched out like an ocean that he could not swim across, one he could drown in. The mistakes he had made when it came to his family were things that had weighed heavier on his conscience, and he had lost his only kin because of his judgements. The answer to too many thoughts became the open road, the women who moved into his bed for a night and left with no questions, the booze he never seemed to run out of. It became living in the daily grind and not changing the schedule. But the more time went on, the cockier he became until the self-assuredness was nearly tangible. It was false.
The breaths of the man on the stretcher begin to slow, his heart beating irregularly.
It was why he had failed with the coven, why he had taunted instead of paying proper attention. Had he used his skills in the right way, he would have made it out of there in good condition. But he had not, and as he lay there, he was dying. All for nothing. The smile that twisted his lips was a bitter one, and as Tony closed his eyes and swallowed the lump in his throat, his mind flashed to the room he was now staying in. It was funny, he thought that one was supposed to have their life flash before their eyes. Instead he saw everything the way he had left it that morning, bed made, lamp off. It was with a sickening realization that he came to understand that he was staring at his life, never ending hotel rooms and skipping town as soon as he could. A flash of white blinded him, but it was okay. Tony didn’t open his eyes again.
The body on the stretcher jerked before falling completely motionless, the heart monitor beeping one steady line. Even as the EMT begins CPR, the body that once held Antony Cunningham begins to grow cold. He is already gone.
Tony’s afterlife wasn’t pearly gates or castles on a cloud. There was no man to weigh his guilts and tell him whether he was worthy of entering or being turned away. No. Instead, Tony found himself standing outside of his childhood home, the lights turned on inside. He could see through the windows, and was stunned into silence at the vision of his parents talking and laughing. His hands clenched suddenly, and a sharp pain alerted Tony to an item in the palm of his hand. Lifting it up and opening it, he recognized the necklace he had left with his sister all those years ago. A sensation of peace fell over him, one that he didn’t understand but knew he wasn’t meant to. Instead he lifted the necklace and placed around his neck, a soft smile warming his features as it settled against his chest. Glancing back at the home, he noticed that his parents were standing on the front steps, watching. Lifting an arm to beckon him forward, his mother waited patiently with a smile on her face. A sigh of relief escaped Tony’s lips and he slowly made his way forward. After years of loneliness and desolation, Antony Cunningham had found peace. There, with his family in whatever afterlife he’d been thrown into, he was finally home.
A sheet is pulled over the stretcher, a body disposed of in a morgue. With no goodbyes, Antony disappears from the world, another supernatural casualty.