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The city skyline looks far brighter against the navy of the night than usual.
It could be the sudden drop of adrenaline, his blood-soaked sleeves, or maybe it's just his brain fucking with him again. It's getting hard to tell these days. He debates on lighting one of his last cigarettes but opts against it, not even having the spirit to smoke away his stress.
With all that he's seen, felt and endured, it's as though his legs disconnected from his body as soon as he sat down, cementing him onto the cold balcony floor.
Simon's legs tiredly dangle through the metal bars, his arms quiver with the exertion of keeping him propped up.
The corpse of another one of those goddamned monsters sits no more than 10 feet away from him, but he pays it no mind.
He inhales for longer than he needs to and for reasons he can't place (or doesn't want to get into), his eyes start to water. The unshed tears disappear from his eyes as he wills them away.
He knows crying will make him feel even worse.
There's a deep ache in his bones. A never-ending fatigue that threatens to consume him whole with every passing day. Apart from the physical wounds and cramps, a drowsiness that has refused to leave for ten consecutive years persists tonight as well. He despises that he’s used to it. It’s established itself as the new normal without him even realizing it.
He takes another long breath and his eyes defocus slowly. A pitiful attempt at unclenching and relaxing his body leaves him gritting his teeth. Gentle but piercing gusts of wind cause shivers in his form and it almost makes him want to go back inside. Almost.
The moon, despite being partially covered by wispy grey clouds, shines brightly over all of Stockholm. It's silver rays make the tall, brooding buildings of the city look the tiniest bit less intimidating, and it brings a sort of serenity into Simon's chest.
He’s grown up here. Has been seeing these buildings for as long as he can remember. He’s wandered amongst them at ungodly hours of the night more times than he can count, has injected substance after substance up his veins and then slit them for good measure.
The city he’s come to hate for putting him in those situations now clearly hates him back.
The streets look as empty as they usually would at this hour, but they’ve never looked so outright barren.
No lights on in any apartment in his line of sight as far as he could make them out.
No sounds other than the occasional howl of the wind.
No characteristic clangs of metal, yelling, laughing or music that would be a usual occurrence for these parts of town.
He's completely and utterly alone. No human other than him, stretching on for miles.
The thought causes a small smile to stretch across his face, but then quickly turn into a frown. It would be a dream come true if it wasn't so.. eerie.
There's foreign dried blood on his left palm, and his own on his right, but on freezing nights like these where you're free to scream out all your troubles to the moon, it hardly matters.
The blood sits dry and cracked, flaking off bit by bit every time he flexes his hand, tugging and pulling on his skin. At first it brought him pleasure, but now he’s numb to it. With another small stretch of his hand, he decides that he hates it.
Minutes or hours have passed since he decided to sit down and take a breather, it's impossible to tell. Simon knows there will be more monstrosities waiting for him just outside the door. More seemingly brainless creatures that want to tear him limb to limb as their sole objective. More unspeakable terrors waiting to strike him, to beat him bloody until he can barely move, forced to search his bag in panic, scrambling to feel the cool glass of a syringe.
A close call on the third floor left him limping down the stairs to the apartments beneath, almost tripping over his own feet, struggling to even swing open the hall door.
He barely managed to get into one of the cleared out rooms, dragging his feet to the open balcony.
He just needs to take a break, clear his thoughts.
Perhaps it was a mistake, because Simon knows better than anyone that when his thoughts are clear, they are also honest.
He doesn't want to go back out there.
He doesn't want to have to kill anymore, doesn't want to have to shoot morphine up his veins every hour just to feel like shit again not 10 minutes later, doesn't want to have to go through all this bullshit just to survive. Living has gone from something he did because he had to, to something he does out of spite.
Another deep breath and he's managed to stop those thoughts before they turned even uglier. He's come way too far to die a pitiful death to gravity or his old, dirty switchblade. Bleeding out slowly on the filthy asphalt beneath is something he refuses to think about again. Years ago, a twisted fantasy, present day - an embarrassing, far-away idea. Not tonight. He'd rather go down fighting than take the easy way out like a coward (or at least he tries to convince himself of that).
The sky's colors slowly shift from dark blue to pink and yellow. This gives him a vague idea of how long he's been sitting here, but it all seems too unreal. Soft coral-colored rays of sunlight pleasantly caress his face. The light immediately snaps him out of his thoughts-turned trainwreck.
A final deep breath of the new day's morning air and he pushes himself off the cold concrete, having to rely on the freezing metal railing to steady himself.
Dusting his clothes off and stretching to the best of his abilities, Simon looks to the skyline of this stifling, yet freeing city a final time and thinks,
'Maybe things will be okay. I have to at least give myself a chance.'