#probably not the best idea to post a noah os a few hours before the ilitw finale

[musicallisto]

☠ Boy Meets Evil (Noah Marshall)

Still crying because of ILITW. Forever crying because of ILITW. Inspired by this BTS song (a bop, 10/10 would recommend).

word count: 4500+ words

summary: A sneak peek into Noah’s thoughts, feelings and memories throughout all of his life and the most important events he’s faced. An agonizing descent into the depths of a tortured, screaming mind, playing hide and seek with sanity and fragments of a destroyed yesteryear.

warnings: Used my F!MC Devon for this, but there’s no romance. Basically only angst, when will I write fluff; mentions of death, crying, depression, therapy, blood and mental health issues.

“Good morning, Noah. How are you?”

He doesn’t respond. Why would he? What can he say? How can he put into words the inflexible void that has taken the place of his heart in his chest, of his brain in his skull? How can he answer? How can he express all the poisonous tears, all the skipped meals, all the insomnias, all the ringing laughter echoing through the walls of his ears as if she were still here, right behind him?

The old man seems to notice his uneasiness and his reluctance to answer, and doesn’t insist. He observes the fragile-looking, worn out little boy, shyly swinging his legs back and forth on the padded chair too big for him and trying his best to avoid all eye contact with the doctor. There’s something dreadfully harrowing in seeing this brown-eyed ragdoll, with tear-stained cheeks and trembling fingers. He has no doubt Noah must have been a lively, cheerful little boy, now only reduced to a shell of his former self.

“You look a little thinner than the last time I saw you. Have you been eating? Do you want a cookie, perhaps?”

“No.”

The psychologist wistfully sighs, but reaches out to grab a cookie from the packet and delicately place it on the desk, almost creating an invisible barrier between him and his patient. Patient. The word itself seems so sad to the old man, and infuriating to Noah. Under all the layers of numbness, all the cotton filling up the great blankness of his chest, he knows he hates being called a patient, because that implies he is sick, and he knows he is not. He is fine. He just has to let the news sink in. He just has to understand his sister is not coming back and wait for time to do its healing. That’s what adults say, don’t they?

Then why does it sound so fake?

“Have you tried to write down your thoughts, as I advised you?” the doctor asks with a soft smile he wants to be as welcoming as possible.

“Yeah.”

“And what did you think of it?” he rebids, a twinkle of hopefulness buried deep under his professionalism.

“It sucks. Writing about how depressed I am only made me even more depressed.”

Noah’s tone is perfectly neutral, and he still isn’t looking directly at the psychologist, as if he wished nothing more than to be anyplace else than in that office.

“It is only one part of the process,” he calmly explains. “What matters most is not the thoughts. It’s what you choose to do with them. You can let them possess you. Have the last word. Overpower you. Or, you can overcome them. Burn the journal where you wrote them, for example. You could let the spiral blow you away. But wouldn’t it feel nicer to blow the spiral away?”

“Yeah. I guess. But that’s not gonna bring Jane back,” he spits in a murmur after a few seconds of silence.

“Nothing will ever bring Jane back, and we both know it. She has left this world, but she has not left your mind, nor your thoughts. She has not left your heart, and never will. Noah, I don’t want you to stop thinking about your sister, to forget her, to move on as if nothing happened. I want you to combine your sister with good memories instead of bad ones. You’re a clever boy, I know you underst-”

“You weren’t there,” he suddenly rises, his voice sharp and eyes sharper, terrifyingly sharp for an eight-year-old boy. “You weren’t there when she was lifted off the ground by that thing and when it broke her neck and she fell to the ground and wh-”

“Please, Noah, there was no thing, it was an accident, just a regrettable accid-”

“It wasn’t an accident! She was murdered! By that thing - whatever it is!”

“You’re still confused and it’s perfectly norm-”

“I KNOW WHAT I SAW!” he yells.

“Noah,” the old man gently states, barely above a whisper, contrasting with the furious, uneven breathing of the little boy in front of him. “Noah, I know you’re still scared, but-”

“I’m not scared,” the brown-haired kid hisses through gritted teeth.

The mere mention of those three little words are enough to provoke violent nausea in his stomach; he shakily grasps the cookie and takes a mouthful of it. If he closes his eyes and gnashes his teeth hard enough, he can imagine everything is under control and he is tearing apart the shadow murderer with his own teeth.

When he sees her approaching, frantically looking for a seat in the crowded gymnasium, he knows he can no longer run from her and turn his back on what has happened years before. He’s always known it would be inevitable, that he would have to deal with this dreaded conversation, the apprehended reminiscence he has feared for ten years. He thought it would be easier to avoid the memories, the false condolences and the pitiful, hypocritical gazes thrown at his direction, if he completely shut her out of his life, if he completely shut them all out of his life. It’s the hardest decision he has had to make, and not a day goes by that he doesn’t feel remorseful, that he doesn’t wish he could come up to her and talk to her about anything, anything stupid, really; about that amazing book he read last week and he’s sure she would love, or the dog he saw in that garden and reminded him of her adoration of canine furballs, or the ridiculous amount of homework Mr. Cooper has been giving them all throughout last year. But it’s impossible, and what ends up completely destroying him is how sorry she looks when she turns to him with a pleading look in her chocolate eyes. How sorry she looks to be begging to sit next to the broken, twisted weirdo that used to be her best friend, her partner in crime.

“Hey, Noah. Do you mind if I…?”

“Knock yourself out,” he exhales and she sits next to him.

He never would have imagined these would be the first words he would tell his childhood best friend after spending all of those years purposefully avoiding her.

She doesn’t seem to feel the excruciating tension between the two of them as she engages a simple conversation with him, as if they had been friends forever, as if they didn’t have to catch up years of silence. He lets out the most aching sigh of his life and continues the casual discussion with Devon, trying not to show the convulsion of his palms. She’s talking about Lucas, and he responds with one of his infamous sarcastic remarks; he’s well aware he’s biased, he shouldn’t be so bitter and especially not to those who have done nothing wrong, but when Lucas’s cheerful voice rings in his ears, his patched-up heart fills with disgust and resentfulness. Does he even remember? Does he even remember him? Does he even remember Jane? How can he look so popular, so untroubled, so carefree… happy?

And that’s when he hears it.

He hears it and by the looks of it, he’s not the only one.

The voice. The voice he has had nightmares of, the voice he’s heard every single night of his life, distorted and crooked, creaking like a rusty door struggling to open, barely audible, right in the crook of his ear and something that desperately feels like a frozen breathing on his neck. And deep down, deep, deep down, something oddly familiar, something strangely recognizable and almost… dear?

“Everyone… plays… together…”

His heart skips a beat and his breath hitches in his throat. He refuses to believe it. He must be hallucinating. He must be dreaming. He must have fallen asleep during Lucas’s speech. It must be some twisted joke, some immature prank pulled on him, a back-to-school thing. It can’t be. He can’t be. 

Unable to move any muscle, he looks at all his former best friends oh so slowly. And that’s how he knows he’s not hallucinating.

Devon’s dilated pupils, staring at the door but not seeing anything, ghostly tears stuck in her eyes; Ava’s trembling chin and lips, as if she were on the verge of tears; Stacy’s white knuckles, her unnatural shivering and gripping her pompoms; Lily’s parted lips, achromic cheeks, wide-open eyes, a drop of sweat running down her temple; Andy’s too rapid blinking and his nervous glances all around, especially behind him as if he were afraid of something over his shoulder; Lucas’s clamming hands and his unusual gulping.

They have all heard it.

They all know what it means.

And before Noah can even breathe properly again, before he can even swallow down the nervous ball of saliva caught on his tongue, his very own voice rings in his ears as if he were talking to himself.

Are you scared now, Noah?

For the first time, his habitual reflex, his automatic response - I’m not scared! - sounds fake, because he’s not telling anyone. He’s telling himself.

The streets are remarkably cold, or maybe it’s his sick mind playing yet another trick on him, altering his perception of reality. It wouldn’t be the first time, and he’s getting pretty tired of it. Ten years with a tangled mind is starting to get on his last nerve.

He can’t believe his mother. How can she tell him those things every day of his life, repeatedly without ever growing tired of mentally abusing him, of destroying the very last remainings of his psychological stability? Does she even believe them? Why does she always apologize, bow her head in silence and look up at him with pleading eyes, a deer in the headlights, begging his pardon as if he weren’t her biggest mistake? As if he weren’t nothing but a waste of space? Why does he believe her every time, hopes she will change for the best, that it is the last time that same old argument will break out, that he will finally be able to take a walk with her and buy her this necklace she’s been discreetly eyeing for a while - why does he keep on longing for a chimera, a cloudy fool’s paradise?

He can’t believe his friends either. He can’t believe their selfishness, their egocentrism, their lack of consideration for him. Do they only talk to him because they pity him, because he’s that lonely, brooding and grieving teenager, cloistered and mistreated? Even Devon! He thought- he thought that out of all of them, he at least really meant something to Devon.

And of course, he hates being alone and the streets are so empty without a true friend to walk them down with, it’s probably the reason why he suddenly feels colder and lonelier than ever.

He’s starting to regret storming off and leaving his mother on his own so abruptly, but he’d be damned if he admitted it out loud. He’s starting to regret storming off and leaving his friends on their own so abruptly at Britney’s party, but his hubris is one of the few things he treasures and can’t crack. He wishes he could stop being hostile at his friends for having progressed in ten years, but he’s so stuck in his own grief, his mother’s endless screaming and insulting, his own venenous spiral of thoughts that he can’t help expecting all the others to mourn Jane with him. How could they play that stupid game in front of him, how could they not be outraged after Britney’s proposal, how could Devon, out of them all, accept to condescend to do such childish idiocy? Especially given how harmful she knows it is for him, for her, for all of them? It feels as if they have spat on his little sister’s grave, so many years later, and their perjury is a hard pill to swallow for Noah.

Especially Devon’s.

Devon. The most egotistical of them all, and the one he cares about most.

He doesn’t realize his absent-minded footsteps are leading him to the gray road and gray sky crossing through the woods.

“Sick of this...,” he mumbles angrily, kicking a pebble out of his way, watching it with some sort of immature triumph when it disappears in the shrubs. “It wasn’t my fault... It wasn’t! Stupid b-”

A twig snaps somewhere behind him. He freezes, heart racing. If he were in his normal state, he would not be anxious and would have ignored the noise, especially in the middle of a forest, but a bizarre and disagreeable impression of being observed won’t leave him alone since he’s entered the forest by mistake. Like a pair of predator eyes are staring at him from behind, piercing his neck just like the destructive fangs of a snake...

“It’s just a squirrel, Noah. Just a squirrel...,” he half-heartedly whispers to himself, trying to stabilize the furious galloping of his heart.

What can it be, if it’s not a squirrel in the middle of the woods? It can only be a squirrel, right?

His heart a shriveled animal cradled in his throat, he uneasily turns towards the source of the sound... and comes face to face to the unmistakable ghostly silhouette of the charcoal creature, standing at the edge of the trees.

“Noah.”

Its whisper is solemn yet jittery, as if the thing were uncertain of what to say, of how to approach the teenager. He, on the other hand, knows exactly what reaction to adopt. He yells and runs. Runs as fast as he can, his heart a pounding drum, a roaring thunder, and when he looks over his shoulder... Redfield has barely moved. Noah comes to a dead stop.

“...wait...”

And suddenly, Noah is not scared. His fear vanishes as soon as the spectral voice reaches his ears, and he firmly marches forward, blood boiling in anger. His fright has been replaced by pure hatred, indignation, and his insatiable thirst for vengeance. All his life, he’s been running away, and he’s tired of it.

“What... What do you want? Huh? What do you want?!”

“Noah... Don’t be sad...”

“What the hell?! Are... are you comforting me?!”

“... not your fault...”

His ire doesn’t die down. It can’t dry up anymore. He’s been bottling it up for far too much time. His words come out harsh, breathless, raw, bloody, lethal. He can’t control anything anymore; he’s done controlling, he’s done biting back his distress.

“Yeah, no kidding! It’s YOURS! All of this is YOUR FAULT! You killed my sister! Or don’t you remember?! JANE! Her name was Jane, you bastard! And you MURDERED her!”

And when Redfield, looking almost sorry, shakes his head and points at his chest, murmuring a barely audible “no... Jane is here...”, Noah swears his heart skips a beat, but he’s so used to being lied to that he will surely not accept any glint of hope, especially not from his sister’s murderer.

“What... what are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘Jane is here’? Here where?!”

As Redfield is about to answer, a ray of sun cuts through the canopy and burns his shadowy figure, making him wince and withdraw more profoundly into the woods. Noah stretches his arm, motioning him to stop, almost wanting to grab him, to learn something, anything. Now that the monster has mentioned Jane, he can’t leave without his crucial knowledge.

Or maybe he’s just going full crazy.

“Hey, no! Stop! What does that mean? Where is Jane?!”

His voice is uncontrollably trembling at this point and he does nothing to master it. He’s never felt so cold in his entire life, not even when his eyes fell on Jane’s dead body, twisted in a terrifying angle in that cave, so many years ago. He’s waiting for an answer, a secret, a gesture, not even a word, just a reaction.

He never gets it. Redfield vanishes from view, disappearing into the penumbra of the woods, leaving him shaking and alone in the middle of the road.

“What the hell? What the hell?!”

He knows it could be one of the hallucinations - he’s gotten quite a few when he was younger, immediately after Jane’s death, and although they completely left him when he was twelve, it’s still more plausible than what he thinks he understood from Redfield’s halting speech.

And yet...

For the first time in what feels like an eternity, for the first time in a decade, Noah feels something he had forgotten. Something that oddly enough doesn’t feel bittersweet on his tongue. Something that he hates, something that he’s taught himself to manipulate with the utmost precaution, for it is the most dangerous of feelings.

Hope.

And for the first time in a decade, deep down, very deep down, way deeper than he can reach, Noah is not scared.

The tip of the knife quivers against the small of Devon’s back, thrusting inside the folds of her dress. She’s shaking; he can feel her trembling right next to her, very well aware that if she makes the tiniest of brusque moves, he will not hesitate to assure his grasp on her, even if it means making blood run.

Actually, he will hesitate, but she doesn’t have to know that.

He doesn’t pay attention to the carving in the stone, just at his feet, to the new words that have replaced the name he’s known for so long. The wrong name he’s been using for the entity. He doesn’t pay attention to her name chiseled on the floor, fearing it could make his determination burst... he leads Devon downstairs, where he’s made sure all of the others are sat and waiting for him. It’s the last step, the very last step for the only solution there is... hopefully, the very last step before he can meet with his sister again.

“Noah, I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?!”

“Trust me, everything will make sense in a minute.”

“How can I trust you when you’re pointing a knife at me?!”

“Devon, please. Just walk.”

She doesn’t even sound as outraged as she was a few seconds before, as she should be, as he would be in her place, just terrified. And he’s never felt so guilty, an indestructible, nauseous blade ready to slit his throat if he dares to get sentimental. He doesn’t understand why she doesn’t hate him, or at least doesn’t act like it, and it’s probably because of the ferocious-looking cutlass pointed at her ribs anyway, but just for a moment, it’s enough for him to give him courage.

The dim lighting of the cavern quickly comes into view, and Noah shudders. Despite having been there many times since Jane’s death, there’s still something mystic and untouchable about this place, something he’s afraid of profaning. And when all the people he was happy to call his friends look up to him, invisibly tied to the glacial chairs, eyes burning with rage, incomprehension, and disgust, he knows - he knows there’s no turning back. Not anymore. He can’t back down because things will never be the same, however he exits the cavern.

Everything that follows up goes down in a blur. He can’t quite remember what happens in all details, maybe because of the darkness of the room or of his mind, but the burns against Stacy’s skin, the spiders crawling up Andy’s torso, Jane’s twisted smile and spectral claws tearing Dan’s last remainings of sanity, Devon’s screams, filled with fright, sobs and violence are forever branded on the blank canvas inside his mind. And he’s convulsing on his electric chair, and he’s cantillating the same spell over and over under his breath as if it could change anything as if it could change the situation. “Only way... It’s the only way... Only way... Only way...” And everything is a chaos of yelling, of crying and of laughter, the laughter of a ten-year-old ghost, eight-year-old child and a thousand-year-old animosity, until all of his friends are engulfed by the thousands of shining eyes in the dark of the cave.

Next thing he knows, he’s right before Devon’s pleading, terrified eyes, a knife above her head, ready to strike, ready to immolate his poor little lamb to the terrific laughter of a kid.

And she’s talking but he can’t hear her; the weight on his chest and the weight in his hand are far too much and far too loud. Her words come out muffled, as if she were captive underwater, unable to reach his heart, to cross through his reinforced concrete chest.

Until she cries out.

“Noah, please! There’s nothing left to save! You’re stronger than that... stronger than her!”

And that’s when the reinforced concrete chest cracks. That’s when his mouth dries and his eyes light up, finally watching Devon aghast in front of him instead of just seeing her, finally seeing the bloody knife prepared to cut through her stomach rather than just feeling it, seeing it’s a monster licking its lips in anticipation for the delicious meal it’s about to have instead of an inanimate object.

He is about to cause everything he’s been reproaching his friends for ten years. He is about to become a murderer for the second time, thinking he can kill his former crime with a new one.

And his heart bursts and his eyes are frozen and his mouth ajar when he drops the knife to his side, its jingling bouncing on the cold walls of the cavern.

“D-Devon... I’m... Oh my god... I’m so-so sorry... I’m...”

He can’t find the words. Suddenly, he is a traumatized eight-year-old sitting uncomfortably in front of an indiscreet therapist, forgetting his emotions and the words that come with them, unable to discern the difference in the explosion of colors, smells and tastes in the blazing fury that just escaped his heart.

He reaches out to her, hands and heart empty, to graze her, make sure she is here, she is real, that it is not one of the countless nightmares he’s had. She withdraws, of course, shriveling like a wounded prey, her eyes wandering back and forth between the knife and Noah’s horrified expression. And Noah’s never hated himself more than he does in this moment, with Devon practically hysterical in front of him, cradled against the cold side of the grotto and trying her best to disappear from his view.

“Devon... I didn’t mean to...”

His voice cracks. He knows very well no words could ever mend things, no words could ever stitch the injuries he’s unjustly caused to his best friend, in the cavern and every day of the past ten years.

No words can, but maybe one last gesture, one final move before turning off the lights and being put to sleep might.

“Devon, I’m so sorry... I must... I must redeem myself... All of this was my fault... I-”

“No,” she pleads, and his heart aches when he realizes she would still be willing to prevent him from sacrificing his life in spite of everything he has ever done to her, everything he has ever done to all of them and himself in the first place. “No, you- you can’t do that. I won’t let you...”

“I have to,” Noah assures, oddly calmer than he expected, as if he had accepted his fate, as if he had already relinquished. “It’s only fair. I have caused all of this...”

He turns to face Jane’s curious eyes, her head tilted to one side just like a cat who doesn’t understand what’s going on. He turns to his sister, or at least the shell of what she was and everything that’s left of her, turning his back to Devon and takes a deep breath. He wishes he could smile at the ghost, tell her everything is going to be okay, that he will take her place and repair all the bad he’s done, that she will finally be free and she will reunite with her mother again, but something inside of him doesn’t believe it.

“I have caused all of this and I will fix it,” he completes, his voice sharp and determined.

“No!” Devon screams; he hears her trying to get up, but she’s still weak and trembling, and he won’t let her intervene anyways. “No, I won’t let you take her place. I should be the one doing it, I sh-”

“You’ve already done more than enough. All this time...”

His voice is soft, silky - certainly not the one you would expect from an eighteen-year-old giving himself to the games of a demon.

“All this time, I blamed you for being the reason why everything fell apart in the first place. I should’ve realized sooner that you were the one who was keeping everything together.”

He steps forward. Devon doesn’t say anything; he hears her suffocating through her sobs, and he tries his best not to think about it, not to let the shrill cries weaken his determination. Even Jane is silent, her mouth slightly open, her devilish blue eyes piercing right through Noah’s soul. Is that it? Will she trade her place with her brother’s? Will they ever both know peace?

Noah carefully kneels in front of the monster. Suddenly, they are not a terrorized teenager and an ancestral demon anymore; they are a brother and sister that fate, time and pride have torn apart.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Noah, I’m scared,” is everything Jane’s ghost-like form is able to murmur, contrasting with all the horrors she has said and done in the past weeks.

“I know. I’m scared, too.”

It feels good not to lie, for once.

And Jane breaks down into sobs, and Noah engulfs her in her arms and it feels almost agreeable to be holding the mere concept of darkness in the vague silhouette of his sister for the first time in a decade. 

“Shh. It’s okay. Why don’t you rest now?” 

It’s not long until his own tears wet his cheeks too.

“Let me take over for a while.”

His words die out in the shadows that collapse against his whole body, swallowing him entirely.

And as the cave shakes and the rocks fall down, blocking the only pathway that leads to the exit and Devon and her friends shakily flee out of the crime scene, the secret is sealed with the entrance of the cave.

Behind the rocks lies the secret of the boy who met evil.