victim// a salvis fanfiction

fifteen~ villain's guilt

hey!!!! this chapter has mentions of murder and death as well as grieving a loved one, watch out for the ***!!! there will be a summary at the end of the chapter :)))

~Sal Fisher~

***tw, murder, death, grieving***

Not a lot of people realize what it means to murder.

Not a lot of people realize the weight of it. It's something you see in shows and movies everyday. It's something you can joke about because it doesn't seem real. Even when you hear about it on the news, it just doesn't seem real.

But it is real.

It's horribly real.

And it was real when my mom died in front of me.

And now that I'm looking down at her grave, I can feel how real it is again.

Some things just feel so wrong that there's no way they can be true. It feels impossible that its allowed to happen. That someone is capable of doing it. That there isn't some God or force to stop it. That someone can just watch it happen.

That I could just watch it happen.

I sit down slowly next to her grave, my guilt swallows me whole. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have been with her that day. We should've gone home. I could have stopped it, we could have just gone home. Why didn't we go home?

We didn't go home because I didn't want to.

I lay my head against her gravestone, closing my eyes and holding back a sob. I shouldn't get to mourn her when it's my fault she's in the dirt.

"Dad said it was my fault." I feel the cold stone dig into my skin as I search for my salvation in her, in her death, at her grave. I search for a mother's approval. My mother's approval.

I never expected her to answer, but the silence in the air leaves a feeling of dread in my stomach.

"I don't know if what happened to you was my fault." I open my eyes and turn to look at the sky. "But I know what happened to everyone else was."

My gaze falls to the forest surrounding me, us. My mother wanted to be buried somewhere secluded after her death, she said she couldn't bare to see so many people sad, she'd rather see no one at all.

***tw for death, murder, grieving ends here***

I am alone in the dense forest on the outskirts of New Jersey, alone except for the corpse of my mother. Alone except for the thoughts of the people I loved.

Alone.

It's always been best this way.

***time skip***

"Sal Fisher!"

When I wake up I am immediately consumed by fear. The hoarse voices of the New Jersey Police Department fill my ears, my name calling to my attention. The barks of their search dogs ring in my head, loud and aggressive. Dangerous.

I stand slowly, my legs sore and my neck tight from the way I had fallen around my mother's grave. I clutch her gravestone, fingers digging in harshly to the cold stone. I'd be stupid not to know why they're here. I can only wonder if the search party is nation wide or centralized. I wonder if anyone is searching in Nockfell at all.

I wonder if anyone misses me at all.

I watch the light shine through the brush, dully illuminating the small circle of barren land with me and a gravestone at the center.