Øverturning the lies (a twenty one pilots fanfiction)

~Tyler~

"I told you I was going to take everything from you..."

That voice-

No.

No, please, not that voice. 

Fear shoots through him. 

Something's wrong. 

Something's definitely wrong. 

"Then why don't you go find out what?" 

The voice echoes through his head. 

It seems, it really does, like Nico is standing right there beside him, whispering in his ear and trying to manipulate him.

He can't trust anything the bishop tells him. He can't. 

But he's growing scared on his own. 

"Josh?" he whispers into the darkness. 

No response.

He calls his fren's name again. 

This time, though, he doesn't expect a reply. 

And he doesn't get one. 

"He's gone."

Shut up. 

He tries to push the voice away. 

"Child. He's-"

No. 

"Go see for yourself. You're already too late." 

No no no no no no-

"Go see for yourself, child. Your friend is gone."

He isn't aware of anything except his racing heart...

And his constant denial.

He doesn't even know how he manages to get there, doesn't remember walking there-

No. He does.

He's always had some kind of unconscious connection with his friend.

One he never understood, not fully.

One that he never will understand, now, because it's gone. 

...Josh is.

And that knowledge is what fueled him.

Knowledge and desperation. 

"I told you I was going to take everything from you," Nico says. 

Tyler turns around.

The bishop is really there. 

He doesn't know how.

But he is. 

"Oh, child," Nico says.

"You did this," Tyler says.

His words are nearly inaudible, jumbled by his tears are they are. 

But the bishop still hears them, understands them. 

"That's irrelevant," Nico says. "Whether or not I did...he's still gone." 

"Leave me alone," Tyler says, wiping his eyes.

He can't even muster the energy to be angry. 

He stares at Nico's red cloak, trying to make it disappear by sheer willpower. 

"You're not-this isn't real. It can't be..."

Nico touches his arm. 

Tyler shivers and pulls back, away from him.

"You don't know that. You don't know anything," Nico grabs his arm again and this time Tyler doesn't try to pull out of the bishop's grip. 

Can't. 

"You must hate me, child," Nico says sadly. "But it was necessary. Sooner or later he was going-"

"He was going to what?" Tyler asks. "He was my friend. I trusted him."

"I..." Nico tries to say something else. 

But he fades away, like he was never even here. 

Maybe he wasn't.

He honestly doesn't know. 

But he doesn't care.

Not when-

He swallows. 

And faces what he's been trying for so long to avoid. 

He starts to run, desperate for proof that this is some terrible, terrible lie.

"No," he says, sinking to his knees, not caring that, in seconds, they're completely soaked. "No, no, no..." 

"It was supposed to be you," Nico says, appearing completely out of nowhere again. 

"Get away from me!" Tyler yells. 

To his surprise, Nico does.

But he doesn't trust the bishop to stay gone for long.

He knows what he needs to do even as it eats away at him from the inside.

"You can't be dead," Tyler says, trying to convince himself. "You wouldn't leave...I need you. We need you."

He tries to wipe away those tears that keep forming, that won't stop.

Do it, he orders himself.

You have to do it.

So he does.

He leans forward, checking for a heartbeat that isn't there.