Save Him

Chapter 1

"It was like I said, Mark. Yeh should have listened, should have run away whilst yeh could...but no. Stubborn as ever." Mark's vision was swimming, hazy as tears filled his eyes with heart-breaking realisation. This was it.
He clung on to the wrists of the hands that were wrapped so firmly around his neck, immoveable and powerful, fighting utterly useless. Blood rushed in his ears, darkness poked at the edges of his vision, horrific and small, indecipherable noises barely audible from his throat fighting a losing battle for air. The one above him slowly leaned over, Jack's face-wait, no. Not Jack. Him, the other one who wore Jack's face. He hovered barely a few millimetres away from Mark's own face, cracking a grin so inhuman that Mark made one more pointless attempt to escape. "Say goodbye to Jack, now."
The world was fading fast, and it rushed to greet him, pulling him down with icy cold tendrils into the abyss. Mark's last thoughts trailed away, the last images of his best friend's blue eyes, boring into his with such grim satisfaction, shattering into oblivion. And he went willingly, the absolute crushing failure to save him perishing with him and one, final fleeting thought. 'Could I have stopped this?'

48 hours earlier.

Mark swore his nerves were frayed to their very ends, fiddling consistently with the pull string on his hoodie, not really listening to a single word of the music in his ears. His eyes had been fixed outside of the window of the plane since he had left LAX back in LA, his thoughts intrusive and haunted. He couldn't sleep on the flight over, of course he couldn't. How could he, knowing what he was flying to?
It had been three weeks, three torturous weeks, since Jack had fallen off the proverbial grid. His channel, all his social medias had gone dark, leaving the community in a fixed state of panic. Where was Jack? Why would he just abandon everything like that? It wasn't like him. Damn right it wasn't, which is why Mark had spent all his time and energy a week previously, attempting to contact the Irishman for 48 hours straight, near enough surviving on no more than two hours sleep and copious amounts of coffee. When Jack finally responded, in the form of a Skype message, Mark had immediately demanded a video chat. He would be damned if he was going to wait torturously long for each and every response to his many questions.
"Mark, I-" Jack had barely two words out before Mark launched into his tirade, little sleep, extreme worry and surviving on caffeine can do that to you. Little time to actually take a step back and examine the situation.
"Don't 'Mark' me! Where the hell have you been?! Do you have any idea how worried I've been? How worried we've all been?!" Mark yelled, barely registering the fact his neighbours would be none too happy with him and his nonsensical shouting at such late hours of the night. It was 30 seconds into his rant that Mark actually started to calm down, chest heaving, hands shaking. He was angry. But for the first time in that first minute of actually seeing Jack, he actually stopped to examine the man on the screen in front of him.
Jack looked bedraggled and on the verge of tears, eyes red and puffy from tears he had already cried. He looked paler than usual, his green hair messy and unkempt. He looked so hollow, so broken and so unlike the Jack that Mark had grown to know and love.
"Well I feel like a giant asshole," Mark grumbled, noting the way that Jack didn't even look up to meet Mark's eyes through the screen. "Jack, I-I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. I have just been so worried. Talk to me man, what happened to you? Where have you been?" Jack seemed reluctant to speak, his eyes looking anywhere but at Mark, hands wringing together just out of sight.
"I wanted to tell yeh." Jack replied quietly, his voice sounding so broken and raw, the lilt of his accent a little stronger than usual. "I wanted to, I-I just-" Jack's voice cracked, tears filled his eyes, spilling down his cheeks. Mark's heart broke for him. He watched as Jack looked up then, but not at him, not at the screen. He seemed to be looking at something, or someone, where Mark couldn't see. He seemed, scared?
"Jack? You're scaring me dude," Mark said seriously, watching as Jack turned back to actually look up at the screen.
"I'm sorry, I can't do this right now." Jack sniffed, reaching to close the chat.
"W-wait!! Jack, please don't leave. I want to help you, just please tell me what's going on." Mark pleaded, seeing Jack hovering, battling with some internal struggle to just run away from this conversation. "Or let me come to see you, so you don't have to go through whatever this is alone." Mark wasn't sure what compelled him to suggest this, but he watched as Jack visibly stiffened, still hovering between closing the chat and staying. It was an agonising two minutes before Jack moved, slowly placing his hand back into his lap, looking up but still barely meeting Mark's eyes.
"Okay." Jack replied quietly.
"Wait, really?" Mark responded hopefully, watching Jack just slowly nod. He really hadn't been expecting him to agree, actually ready to argue his case as to why Jack just had to let him whether he liked it or not. Realising Jack wasn't going to say any more, he stumbled over his words before he would change his mind. "O-okay! Great, I-I'll make arrangements, I'll get out there as soon as I can."

The resulting few days following had probably been the most exhausting of Mark's life, over preparing for his visit to the UK, working none stop so that no one would suspect his worried flee out of the country. Of course, he had spoken to Bob and Wade, who had helped immensely in keeping him together as he fretted over just getting to Jack.
"Just let us know if he's okay." Bob had said.
"Be there for him, and we will be there for both of you." Wade had encouraged, and that helped. So much. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted as he felt the bounce of the planes wheels hitting tarmac, his stomach flipping with anxious anticipation. This was it.