Wake Up
Not him.
Wasn't he?
"Shit." He muttered as stared ahead, a furious pound radiating through his chest and down all the way to his toes. His eyes watered behind the lenses of his glasses, and he realized he was forgetting to blink. Quickly, he let his eyes close, and held them that way for a while. Glued down as the pressure of the moment thrust his will away, the hopes that maybe he'd open his eyes and see a different something.
Or maybe he wasn't so surprised to see what he was seeing after all.
But no, when he opened his eyes again, the mirror was still there. His reflection continued to glare back at him, his own fear and contortion ricocheting against the cool glass surface and flying back towards him.
But this was familiar. The fog rising up around his consciousness, the acidic guilt coursing through his veins. That one dream, months dimmed. That nightmare. But that was only that, a dream. This was too. This was just a dark, sadistic, maybe even cynical fraction of his mind.
He could expel the darkness. This was his dream. He was in control.
"Are you, Cascade?" Marc realized his eyes had fallen shut again, and he whipped them open, blinking around on the white on white, nondescript room. It was only him and a door, him and a mirror. No one else.
And the voice... the voice was his own.
He glanced back slowly at his reflection, and it sneered at him, no longer a reflection of his physical stature, but of something inside. Something deep and festering, something suppressed.
Standing in the unshadowed room was Marc.
Standing in the filtered mirror was Marcus Julius Anthony Cascade.
"Are you in control?" The voice picked up, the vile tone of him cutting through. Bitter. "Because I know you, Marc, I am you. I'm who you should have been."
"Should have been?"
"Should have, would have, does it matter? If you hadn't met her, you would have made a few different choices. But no." His eyebrows furrowed behind the glass, the sharp fury coloring his expression.
Marc stood his ground, balling his shuddering fists. His voice rang out with a bit more courage than before, but still the picture before him subdued the tone. "Isn't it better this way? Better that I made a better choice?"
"Choice? It wasn't your choice. And no, it isn't. Because I'm still there, Marc, I'm still in you." The threat of the disheveled, older him lingered for a moment before he elaborated, but the chill was enough for Marc to understand. "You won't get rid of me until you prove what you're capable of. You're capable of me. And until you get rid of that, I'll be waiting. And once you do get rid of me... then you'll just disappoint them all, won't you?"
Marc took a moment, breaking away from the mirror. Was he right? He'd seen that side of him when he'd gotten that letter back months ago, and almost left school. Almost snapped. But she'd been there, and she'd helped him. What if that wasn't enough the next time around? "Not better." He assented, shaking his head. "Not better at all."
The two sides stared off, Marc the defiant and Marcus the defied. Pressured and suppressed. Equally as disappointing when the core was revealed. Suddenly, he felt hollow. In the moment the dry ache began, the reflection relaxed. His point was across. In a moment, the darkness fled into the light of the room and Marc gasped awake, the last command of his counterpart still echoing through his mind.
"Wake up."