The States

all these sorrows I have seen

It ends with two dead nations, but only one of them gets back up.

Sometimes, Tim wishes for the closure of a body to bury. A childish need for reassurance that they boogeyman is really dead. Later, he's glad there isn't one. He has nightmares were they bury Jackson and he claws his way back out.

They're trapped by their own senses of loyalty. Not to Jackson, their sovereign nation, but to each other.

To leave is to abandon another to Jackson's resulting rage.

So they stay.

Jackson drains every drop of alcohol in the house. He breaks open Austin's locked medical box so he can drink the alcohol he'd kept for disinfectant and pain relief too.

Jackson's hand tightens around his neck, and Tim gasps for air and Jackson slants his mouth over his.

The only person Tim's ever kissed is Kendall, and hysterically, the only thing that Tim can think about is how Jackson isn't good at this.

He tastes like alcohol and he bites Tim's lip harshly.

If he had air left in his lungs he would sob. This isn't real, Tim thinks. This can't be real.

His head feels like it's exploding. Tim's died an awful lot, but he's never been strangled before.

His vision has spots.

Tim gasps for breath, hands closing protectively over his throat.

Kendall would have known what to do, but Tim just bled.

"No offense, Ginny, but you weren't there at the end."

No, Ginny had been long gone before the end. She hadn't been there when Jackson had thrown a liquor bottle at Flora and gashed her face and her hand all to hell. When he'd slammed Austin into the wall until his head left a bloody dent, thrown Scarlett through the glass front of a cabinet when she'd tried to stop him, laughing when she pleaded for him to stop.