You will pay for what you've done.

But there's not enough blood in his veins to repay for every atrocity. There's no way he can repent for his sins, not before his death, not before the world ends. There's just too much.

The pistol shakes in his hand, and Jeb Batchelder wonders why he is not afraid.

Only you can set things right.

The last of his friends has been dead for - how many years? Were they ever really friends, or only colleagues, men thrown together by necessity? Not that it would change anything. But he has to wonder.

There's a blurry veil over his memories now - his past has been replaced, erased, by something else, and it's hard to see the things he actually lived - but this part he remembers; his old friend in a hospital bed, his face gaunt and pale, his eyes blazing with anger.

"I have to give you a message," he had said - his voice steady, and - and even then, there was that almost-spiritual sense of purpose radiating from him like the heat of a forest fire -

"I have to give you a message. I don't have much time, so listen," and his hand was cold where the thin fingers wrapped around Jeb's wrist.

(There is so little warmth in the world these days.)

"All right," he had said, because time had been so much more plentiful then, and he had time to give to his friend even to the last, "I'm listening."

"I suppose you'll think me mad," he said calmly. "Perhaps you already do. But this is a dying world, so it doesn't matter whether you do or don't." His fingers tightened on Jeb's wrist. "Listen to me. I - I don't know if you'll understand now, but you will. You can still fix this."

"Fix what?" he said, his other hand tight on the rail of the bed.

"You'll know." And he looked impossibly sad. "I won't be there to help you, but you'll know."

"Don't say that," Jeb said, the words sounding false even as he spoke. "Just - let me call someone, we'll get you started on some better pain medication -"

"No." And there was the Roland ter Borcht he had known; his anger, his determination. "You'll listen."

"All right," he said. "I'll listen."

The flicker of a smile on his thin face. "Yes, you will. You always do. Now, you'll need some of my papers, and my briefcase is locked..."

And they had talked, and he had watched his friend fading while a certainty grew in his heart that he had finally seen the moment that Roland lost the last of himself to that black and hungry madness that coiled in his head. And he had written down what Roland told him, if only to placate him, in the hope that he would stop talking, would - would stop looking at Jeb like that, with something between sorrow and affection.

"There. That's the last of it." The hint of another smile. "Of course in the end it all comes back to blood. It always does with you. I think you'll be able to proceed from there on your own."

"All right, I've listened," Jeb said, and made to get up. "Now I'll just go get the nurse -"

"No." His hand clamped down tighter on Jeb's wrist. "You haven't been listening at all."

"Yes, I have," and there had been a sudden acid rise of fear in his throat, the realization that this was the last person in the world he could call a friend, "I have been listening, what more do you want?"

"Well," he said, "I'd like for you to sit for a little longer and hear what I have to say. There are - a couple of requests I'd like to make."

"Fine."

He let go of Jeb's hand and watched as Jeb sat back in the plastic chair. "It's been such a long time," he said. "You can't imagine how long it's been. I've worked so hard for this. Spent half my career in and out of libraries, chasing shadows..." He sighed. "I'm asking you to go through with this, no matter the cost. I suppose it makes me a coward, that I won't - be there to help. But you will have to carry this weight on your own."

The fluorescent lights buzzed at the edge of hearing, and outside he heard a footstep on the tile. There was so much silence in the world lately.

"That's the first thing." He folded his hands on top of the sheet, faded from many washings. "The second is this. You have done me so many favors, and this is the last one - I ask you for a death." He paused. "My own, this time. There's - no way I can tell you why, not now, you might understand once you've read my papers, but." He looked up and caught Jeb's eyes.

"I've had a long time to think this over," he said. "This is the best death I can choose." He saw the hesitance as Jeb prepared to go for the door and laughed. "Oh, don't bother. You might stop this one, but I'm afraid this is one situation you can't manipulate. You can give me this, or I'll find another way to do it. This is, I'm afraid, the best option for both of us. I'm so sorry to put you on the spot, Jeb," he said.

And it was easy, as it had always been easy, to give in. "All right."

"You won't have to do much," he said quietly. "I don't have too long after this anyway, but I'd like to be comfortable for the last little while. You'll have to bring me the things, but all I'd like you to do is sit with me. Can you do that?"

"I can."

Of course in the end it all comes back to blood.

"What's left?" he says. "What more have I to give?"

You have lost so much, Jeb Batchelder, but there is always more to lose. And there's no cruelty in that voice; if anything there's a disinterested kind of gentleness.

"A life for a life," he says, and his voice shakes, even though it's - it's just what Roland said he would need to say, when he came this far, when he stood where he's standing. (How did he know?)

There's a laugh that shakes the nothing all around him. One life, for a universe of possibility. You have sacrificed so many on the altar of your ego. Who will you sacrifice next?

He is silent - the notes don't say what exactly he'll need to say next, there's just a scrawled Good luck and his friend's sloppy signature below - and the voice continues, trying to goad him into, into something -

You sacrificed your daughter's childhood. You took your son's life from him. You let your friends die for nothing. And now you stand before me at the end of the world, and you propose a sacrifice? You know nothing of sacrifice.

And the words are suddenly there on his tongue, and he can almost feel a spectral hand in his - all his ghosts have followed him here, but they're no longer angry with him and it's strange to not have that haunting him -

"I would sacrifice myself," he says.

Well, now. Nothing changes, he sees no movement, but he has the sense that all the attention of something great and ancient has focused on him, a needle-point on his heart. You have not offered this before. You have stood here before me, but you have never offered your own heart.

"I - I must not have known what I know now," he says, and the words feel both true and false as they leave his lips. The air in this place is thick with potential, and with every word he speaks sparks sizzle over his exposed skin, dancing over the knuckles. "I would make amends for what I've done. If I can."

There is always the possibility of forgiveness. But you must offer up before you can receive. Are you sure this is your choice?

"I'm not sure exactly what it means," he admits. "Can I ask that?"

You are more clever than you think you are. Yes. You may ask.

His mouth is dry, and he swallows around a lump in his throat. "Then I ask what exactly this will mean."

It will hurt you. There will be a great deal of pain. The sacrifice is meaningless without suffering.

He thinks of the pain in Roland's eyes. Of all the others he's watched die. Of how few he gave the mercy of death to. Of how cruel a man he has been.

"I'm not afraid of pain," he says.

Very well. You will not be the only one who dies.

"How -" He stops and reconsiders. "I'm offering - I'm offering to sacrifice myself. No one else needs to suffer for what I've done. Not now."

You will be the only one who dies. You stand at the center of many possible worlds. There are as many versions of you as there are stars in the sky, and you stand here in place of all of them. Your friend understood this, how you are one man and many at once.

"And I'm - if I do this, all of us die? All of me?" It's hard to wrap his mind around the idea, but he is standing in chaos space at the moment, talking to something that may or may not be a god. The realm of possibility has changed its dimensions since he last considered it.

Yes. And no.

"How does that work?"

All that you are will be destroyed. But out of the remains I will allow one of you to survive. On him will fall the burden you now bear, to make right your wrongs.

"Will that - will that be me?"

No.

He sighs with relief. "Good. What do I need to do?"

The easiest thing - finish what you began. And then - then you may rest.

"I'll do it," he says, and things break apart.

It's - an endless scattering of deaths, and he sees them all happening to him at once, feels them all happening to him at once -

It's accident or illness, it's natural disaster, it's murder, it's murder, it's murder, it's all those he has wronged getting their revenge, and again and again he finds that it's his own hand giving the killing blow, his hand that wields the razor, his hand that pulls the trigger, over and over, suicides quick and suicides protracted -

And in the end it's a solid, human hand in his, it's not being alone despite all that he's done, it's the warmth of blood, it's forgiveness at last, it's turning aside the apocalypse by himself -

It's something he had almost forgotten; the love of a friend, as he comes to the end.

I'll make

All that I believe

I'll set myself free -

- It's an artificial nocturne,

An outsider's escape for a broken heart.

- "Artificial Nocturne", Metric.