Jeremy,

It’s taken me a long time to write this. And I’ve written it about a hundred times. Burned each one. You know I’ve always liked to play with fire. That was our favorite past-time wasn’t it, playing with fire? You were the match and I was the heat, destroying everything we touched.

I can’t believe it’s been a year already. Your side of the bed still has a dent in it the size of you. Still beats the cold metal I’m sure you’re sleeping on. How is it sleeping with one eye open? Questioning if you’ll make it to the next day or not. Now you’ll know how I felt for the first six months. Wondering if the people you crossed were going to show up. You know how many bribes I’ve had to give? Your shit’s gone, you know. Pawned or traded, just so I could survive.

I have so many questions and you’ve got so many secrets. They still whisper as I walk the street. Do you know what it feels like to hear whispers on the street? About how you used me? Cheated me? I have nothing left, Jeremy. You took it all with you when you chose that job. Weren’t there other jobs? Ones that wouldn’t have put our entire world at risk? You had to rob that bank? On that day? Didn’t you do recon? You should have known. You don’t just rob the biggest asset of the most influential family and expect to walk away. They dug up every piece of dirt on you, on me, on us. My reputation is ruined because of you.

I hope this letter finds you well. Well, actually, I hope it finds you in hell. It sure is lonely out here. I know it’s lonelier in there. Heard you’re finally in solitary. You’ll never learn though. They’ll always find you. I even paid them to find you. Thankfully, it was also enough to leave me alone this time. Hope you enjoy it because revenge tastes best when it’s cold.

And it’s freezing out, Jeremy.

I raised my eyebrows and gestured to the camera and its protruding microphone. David smiled quietly and replied in our old tap-code, a quick drumming on the table that even the guys in our unit never thought was more than a nervous tic we'd shared.

"No. Rob broke the mic." David tossed a nod to a tall, uncomfortably chipper man on the other side of the glass. The presumably-Rob fellow nodded back and tapped his lips with two fingers. "Go ahead," he drummed. "Try it."

I cleared my throat and tried to speak with intensity. "You son of a bitch, I'm glad you're cuffed because I'm going to kill you where you sit." I pushed my chair back as if to stand, my motion not matching my tone. A beat, two, three. No response. I stood anyway, just to make it less strange a sight. I stretched, then sat again. Now that the moment was here, I found I had a hard time speaking.

"It's okay," David said, in a quiet, even tone that was unfamiliar and disquieting coming from him. "I know why you're here. You can say it."

You can say it. How different this was, from the last time we'd spoken in a quiet room, when he'd asked me to join him. When he'd rebuffed every excuse, when he'd left me out of breath even though I'd barely said a word. And now here he was, the charisma still there but restrained, humming under the surface while he waited for me to speak. I took a deep breath.

"I don't think I can do this." He nodded, looking... Resigned? Accepting? I wasn't sure what to do with this new David. But at least it wasn't going to be a fight. "I still have the gear from the job. It's in a crate, in the back yard. I can go to the cops, I can tell them what I-"

"NO."

I stopped, sitting up in my chair. The look on David's face had gone from beatific resignation to a barely-contained snarl. He hadn't shouted; he hadn't moved at all, but his voice had been final.

"David. You know this isn't right. You didn't kill that man. You shouldn't be here. If I hadn't been shot you wouldn't be here."

"I would be here, with you. And you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't have been at that goddamn bank. You shouldn't have been in that hospital, you shouldn't be here visiting me now. You should be at home." His shoulders were still but tears were pouring down his face. Eyes that had locked with mine that night when he'd outlined the plan, that had stilled all objections, now couldn't seem to rise to look at me.

I traced the scars on my face. Three surgeries, six months in a coma. I'd learned to walk again pretty fast but they still wouldn't let me drive. And I liked asparagus now. "You didn't drag me to that bank. I needed the money. I came to you with a problem. You offered a solution."

"Do you know what a solution would have been? Just giving you the money. I had it. I would have been tight for a few months but Claire would have gotten her medicine. I could have given you the money and put off the bank job until the next quarter and done it with a full crew. A solution would have been helping you set up a Go Fund Me or whatever ended up paying for Claire's meds and your surgeries and Angie's bills while you were in a goddamn coma. A solution would have been telling you to go fuck yourself and letting you find your own way. But I wanted the glory days. I wanted you on board. I wanted to drag you down to my level. So I got you drunk and talked you into robbing a bank and a cowboy teller died and you almost died and now I'm here and that's exactly the way it should have ended. So keep your fucking mouth shut about what's right, you sanctimonious idiot."

Now he was crying. He was careful not to move much so they wouldn't think it was an emergency or something, or that he was dangerous. God knows they had to see tears on these cameras pretty often. I choked a little trying to respond. "David..."

There was a long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer, almost the way it used to be. "Are the girls okay?"

"That's not... Yeah, man, they're fine. That's not really the point. They're fine, but..." I trailed off. He finally looked up at me, saw my face, and nodded.

"That is the point. That's been the point since you got shot. It should have been the point when you showed up at my door." My hands were shaking on the table. No words, just the flickering stoccato of a man realizing that he's trapped outside his own cage. He kept talking. "Go home. Go home to your daughter, go home to your wife. When they're out getting ice cream or something, you dig up that gear and you burn it."

"I can't, David. I can't just pretend it didn't happen."

"You can, and you will. You have to. Because I'm all good now. I'm at peace. I've got my books and my routines and my therapy. I know I should be here. I know I should have been here years ago." He leaned over the table, and that old glint in his eyes flared up, and for the first time in our lives I had the good sense to be scared of him. "But in a year? Two years? Five years? Eating this godawful fucking food and talking to these idiots and taking beatings from these prick guards?"

I swallowed. I nodded. I understood. But he had to make sure. He kept talking, and I saw him for what he was, finally let myself understand just who my best friend had been for as long as I could remember.

"You told me you had it. And where it was. And I know there's no way for anybody to know what really happened. But if you had the gear? And I could get out of here quicker by telling them where it was? Maybe even convince them it was you all along?"

A vein on his neck was pulsing and his teeth were gritted. His voice was a hiss. And then he suddenly seemed to realize what he was doing, what he was thinking, and he closed his eyes. His mouth moved slowly, silently; maybe he was praying. I know I was. The clock chimed and the door opened. A guard walked in and told me our time was up.

"It was good to see you." David didn't look at me as he said it. "Tell Angie and Claire I said hi. And get that landscaping taken care of. Your place is a mess." I just nodded.

The guard walked me out to my dad's waiting car. He looked at my face and didn't say a word as I got in. We were close to the house when I turned to him. "Hey Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I need a few hours to calm down after that. Think you could take the girls out to ice cream for me?"

I sat on the other side of the bars. It would be easy, so, so easy to just turn around and walk out. Pretend that I never came here. Unfortunately, I had not gotten where I was by doing the easy thing.

I took a deep breath, smelling that sterile, too-clean scent of a containment field. We’d actually had a conversation, once, about those. The smell drove me crazy. He hardly minded it.

Or maybe that was just a lie to make future me feel better about throwing him into permanent containment.

It hadn’t worked. I needed to know.

I stood, rapping on the clear bars. The sign for the guards. He couldn’t see me, but I could see him, a sad, raggled pile huddled in the corner, hardly moving. But now, as the one-way view field was dispelled, he could.

”Why.”

At the sound of my voice, his head shot up- and the hope in those eyes cut, like nothing else. But then it was stifled by the dullness of despair… and maybe that should’ve hurt more. It didn’t.

”Why did you do it.”

I could still remember the sting of betrayal, even after all these years. It festered, an infected wound that time could hardly touch. I could see his reasoning, now, as much as it pained me to admit it, even to myself. But it still hurt. Betrayal always does.

I lifted my chin, staring him down. In no way did I approve of his decision. In no way did I doubt that his imprisonment was for the best. What else would he do, if left to do what he wished? What other plans of mine would he ruin- plans that wouldn’t have needed to exist if it weren’t for him!

Fire smoldered in my gaze. I would have the truth out of him, at any cost. I needed to know why, lest my future plans go astray in such a manner. I needed to know.

”Why didn’t you kill me?”

“The paperwork’s been cleared. Are you sure you want to do it this way? This place does hold the worst of the worst.”

“All right, I’ll lead you to Matthew.”

We walked down the halls, accompanied by buzzers, as the control room opened the doors ahead of us. After what felt like seconds, we got to cell block B. I just have to go through a final door and up the stairs.

Once we got to Matthew’s cell, the guard stayed back. Matthew didn’t look at me as I walked into the cell.

“Nice bed you have there,” I said, “ it must be hard to enjoy the comfort since you can’t leave.”

Matthew didn’t say anything.

“People here still think of you as human; that’s more than what you gave the people you killed.”

Matthew still stayed silent.

“I thought I knew you. What happened to the person I loved?”

“I had to do it,” Matthew said.

“Life was perfect with you up until two years ago. I went to answer a knock on the front door and found a swat team in front of the house. That day I discovered that you were both a loving husband and a terrifying psychopath.

While I was on the sidewalk finding out what you did, the swat team searched the house for you. I was hoping, praying that you would be in the house.”

“Everything I did had a reason for it.”

“You’re here serving two dozen life sentences. You killed hundreds of people, and that’s the best you can say?! I’m surprised you survived on the streets long enough for the police to find you.”

“I never wanted to hurt you. You mean too much to me.”

“What about the lives you ended and the families you shattered? Or do you consider humanoids to have no value?”

“What are they worth to you?”

“I can’t assign a value to a single one of the lives you took. I was hoping that you would have changed and that I could move on from how you betrayed me. Maybe there is still some hope for you, or maybe there isn’t. But I can’t continue holding out hope.”

I left him there. The guard escorted me out of the prison and to the shuttle bus.

“I was hoping your visit would convince him to change,” the guard said.

“So did I,” I said before getting on the bus.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello there, thanks for reading this story. It was almost a redemption arc, alas Matthew is not willing to change. This story here is part of a larger multiverse that can be (if your interested in more from me) found at r/skye_the_Smart__write .

And if anyone here wants some extra information on what's happening in this story, here you go. This story is set in the city-state* of Atheridge, but doesn't directly reference it. Atheridge's prison system is based on the Norwegian style, but without the 21 year maximum sentence. The prison used in this story is the 'Atheridge Regional Penitentiary' and is home to the worst criminals in the Atheridge Multiverse.

*Technically Atheridge is a country, however in their home dimension they still consider themselves a city-state. Other dimensions are home to the Atheridge Territories. Sometimes the size of a few counties, occasionally multiple countries.

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