ooc: Written for no other reason than to be god damn pathetically angsty. I know there’s a lot of fun and enjoyment made at seeing Katelynn Foster being pestered, bullied, and even in fights with the bad guys in this world like Hot Flash, Psycho Delic, and even Vice a little. But today whilst writing in another story I felt that, if worse come to worse, if push came to shove… this is what Jack would do.

Warning for suicide.

He felt as though the weight of the world had suddenly crashed down on top of him.

The blue skinned man had been delivering one of his last paintings that day, oblivious to the reason why the sky just didn’t appear as bright as it normally did. He had kissed Katelynn goodbye that morning, wishing her a good day at work, and done about his usual thing. He had painted the mornings away, heard her leave, and called out ‘I love you’ as he always did.

Jack hummed to himself as he walked down the steps of the apartment complex, unknowing why the world suddenly felt empty. Did that make sense? Maybe he was coming down with something. He glanced at his watch, and frowned at the time it displayed. Three ten already?

Just then, his phone rang.

It wasn’t a phone call he had wanted.

Something had happened.

He had to go to the morgue.

Face grey blue, Jack had been lead down a hallway smelling of chemicals by a man in a suit. Another two walked with them. They were talking about something, something he couldn’t rightly hear or listen to. They said there’d been an ‘incident’ involving Hot Flash and Psycho Delic. That somebody he might know had been caught up in it, and they had to have him come in and identify the body.

Jack had never done something like this before and the dread that filled him with every step told him that it was bad. Very, very, very bad. It was the reason why the sky had felt grey. Why the world felt suddenly so big. He had hesitated outside the doors, suddenly not wanting to go in. But the men insisted, and fighting his gut instinct, Jack was shown inside.

There was a table in the middle of a room covered in a big white sheet. The body looked petite, small… familiar.

“No.” Jack heard his voice say, long before the sheet was even pulled back by the coroner who stood there in his white coat. “No.” he said again, lifting his hands to his face as the blanket was pulled back despite his protests and he saw something that tore his heart from his chest, threw it to the ground, and stamped it into oblivion.

It was Katelynn.

They had burned her.

“NOAUGH!” Jack rushed forward, grabbed desperately at her through the sheets, tears already rushing down his face in fat ugly drops and even his nose was already leaking over his lips. “KATELYNN NO GOD PLEASE NO!” his voice was shaking with nothing but pure, total anguish. This couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be happening. This was nothing more than a horrible, ugly dream brought on by stress and fear. For so long they had been trying to keep away from the villains who had made a sport of picking on the young woman.

He’d tried so hard to be brave. He’d trained and studied how to fight, to give him better confidence, and yet now what had it done? She was gone. She was dead.

She was dead.

How horrible her last seconds of life must have been. How she must have screamed and cried but neither of them had listened to her had they? Jack could all but hear her pleas in his mind, begging, crying his name and then nothing but screams that wouldn’t stop. Jack sobbed, he wailed, as he clung to her, knees hitting the floor as he bent over her, grasping at her shoulders, trying to will her back to life by his love for her, by his anguish and his heart breaking and soul tearing into a million unfix-able pieces.

He became aware of hands touching him, trying to either console or remove him from her but he screamed. “DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T TOUCH HER!” his voice was no longer his own, it was nothing but an outlet for his pain, his grief, his loss, and it shook his body to its core at how raw he sounded. How horrible. “God no, no, no!” he begged again, “Katelynn no…!”

He’d been set to propose to her. The promise he’d made so long ago to her, when she had been so upset and shaken by being taken by Psycho that first time to do that interview in the sewers. How he had promised that, one day, he would ask her to marry him. She would be his wife, they would be safe, they would be happy, they would move out of the city to the house he grew up in and be far from all the evil that Metro City had. He just needed a few more jobs, a few more and he could afford it all for her.

All for nothing. All for loss.

His soul reason of doing anything now lay dead, mutilated, her beautiful face burned.

The following days Jack neither ate, or slept. He was aware of people around him, voices of consolation, touches to his arms, embraces by people with wet faces but none of it seemed to clear in his mind. She was gone. The only thing on the planet who had made his life seem worth living was gone. She, who had taken his hand and led him from the darkness into the sunlight, to show him that the world was worth being a part of because she was in it.

How easily she had smiled for him. How sweetly she had kissed his lips. How tenderly her arms had wrapped around him, pulling him close. The touches to his hands, his shoulders, his head. The way her nose would scrunch up when she was really happy about something. The blush that spread over her face when she was embarrassed. Or that special blush when they knew the two of them were about to make love.

All of it was now pictures in his head. Memories he could never touch.

And his memory was like a safe.

It tortured him. How he would lay in their bed, without her warmth, without her presence, alone.

Sometimes he swore he felt her. Or the feeling that she had just left the room. He would rush after what he thought was her, only to realize he was alone. No, Katelynn wasn’t about to come walking through the door again. No, she wasn’t about to call him to ask him if he needed anything from the store. She would never laugh again at his attempts at humor. Katelynn couldn’t laugh at anything now. Her final moments had been nothing but anguish and pain and fear and he hadn’t been there.

Because he was a coward.

He had done his best to be there for her. Jack had always held her, comforted her, supported her, tried to give her strength that barely got himself through the worst days some times. But he’d tried. He’d tried so hard and it was all for naught. She’d been taken somewhere, somewhere beyond his touch, beyond his reach. His angel had become a true one, lost to him forever just like his sister.

Katelynn was gone.

And she was never coming back to him, no matter how much he cried, no matter how much he would scratch at his face and arms to try to do anything to keep his mind off of her but she was everywhere. He felt her everywhere and it was driving him insane.

He loved her. He longed for her.

And he despised those who had taken her.

But just as before, he could do nothing. He was just a man. A stupid blue skinned alien man who had thought he could make a difference in her life. Her life, which was now over.

He had spent the whole night with her casket before the funeral. Jack had simply laid there on the floor, hand touching the leg of the casket in a way he had often touched her arm as he used to sleep besides her but there was no warmth, there was no affection or love. It was nothing but the box holding her.

The funeral… the less said the better.

How long had it been now? How long had it been since life lost its meaning? A week? A month? Months? A year? Jack had lost touch with the word ‘time’ and what it meant. It as just another word. Like loss, love, death, living, happiness, joy. The only thing he did was sit in his apartment and paint. Again, and again, he painted the same face. In a wild variety of colors, Jack Maple painted Katelynn Foster.

She was in everything. Close ups, in the distance, abstract, blotch art, abstract… any and everything his paint brush touched she would appear. Always with her smile, the way she would hold her hands, and how long her hair had been. How Jack longed to run his fingers through her hair again, to see her nose scrunch up as she laughed, to feel her hands touch his neck as she would pull him in.

’I love you Jack. I’ll love you forever.’

But he couldn’t wait forever to see her again. Growing old, alone, without her just felt… pointless.

He stood in his apartment, surrounded by paintings of her. Katelynn face, beautiful, warm, rich, and forever beyond his finger tips. It was agony, standing here and yet it felt like Heaven at the same time. The man’s fingers were stained with paint, nicks and scratches from his tools, and his clothes stained. He wore a gold band on his left ring finger. A promise to her, even if she wasn’t here, she was all he’d known. She was all he’d ever know.

But the pain… it was too much now.

Jack was aware of the rain as he walked along the bridge that ran out of Metro City. How had he gotten here? Had he walked? He honestly couldn’t remember. The rain was thick and heavy, hitting against the back of his head, soaking the rest of him. But it was of little consequence. What did it matter if a lonely, blue man was wet? Nobody mattered. Nobody cared.

Leaning against the railing Jack stared out at the ocean through the thick rain that continued to rain down.

He climbed up onto the railing, gripping the lamp post besides him.

His fingers were still thick with paint, but the rain was making the colors run. They ran down the lamp post, pooling at the bottom.

Jack leaned his head back, and stared up at the rain, uncaring that it got into his eyes.

He shut them.

He jumped.

And gravity took over.

It was that far a drop he wasn’t even conscious when he hit the water.

They never found him.

End