There was the silence, the void. Not like his better half had known it, but it was there. A tranquillity, an emptiness. It wouldn't last long but didn't detract from the fact that it had been there. The cold underneath seeping into skin, not quite familiar, but it was as close as he could come before the end. Though, unbeknownst to him, the end wouldn't come today.

But how could it not, his goal was complete. His unheard promise paid in full. If only that mattered beyond his own satisfaction at seeing the work complete. But it wasn't enough, it never would be. Not in this emptiness. None of it matters when he wasn't around to live it. The only ease was brought in the knowing he had not been the only one affected by their recklessness and cruelty.

Even if there was a reason beyond, none of it would matter soon. Or more accurately, the meaning would be lost by the time he opens his eyes again. All that he had gained in the past years, 3500 days up to the exact hour, stripped and broken but now made anew.

Soon he would be found, sole survivor to a massacre. The discovery itself, unlikely, but this is the way. Many theories will circle on the contents leaked from that bunker, but only the whispers of the occurrence will reach beyond the border of the town. He will return where he came from, unbeknownst to the horrors and just who he had been tethered to for 3500 days. Forcibly, that will be corrected.

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He will make this new life steeped in memories of his old one, desperately trying to keep the things he's known, but a lot can change in the course of a decade, even the cells in his current form held nothing of what it once did.

He will remember this night, but not what lead up to it. He will only know what the reports say.

He'll remember how the red stained the walls, the look of sunken faces on people he could not place. He'd remember the details, the scratches, the vacant stares. He'd remember Sarah and how this was worse.

There will be those that suspect him. Missing for almost ten years, and he shows up on another massacre? There were bound to be whispers, but it was quickly drowned out by those who sympathized, the man has been through enough. He didn't escape that night unscathed. Both physically and beyond.

Exactly 1000 days after this day is what it would take to get back to the memory of who he had been on the good days after Sarah's death. The pain of losing was easier the second time round, it would seem. Still, something felt a little off, a little wrong, a little slanted. He would often mull it over, wonder why when he reminisced about Sarah, there was a pressure he couldn't quite put his finger on when Teddy remained the same.

But from an outside perspective, Nick received a new lease on life on this day. Some would call it a gift and others, a curse to be placed back into this life, but these are not for us to decide, it remains to be seen where Nick will set himself and whether he strays the path set out for him like he had done already once before.

This shall be done.