A/N: Haven't seen the film in a while, but I couldn't get this out of my head. Sorry for any mistakes!

You are Jerome – Eugene, you're Eugene because he, he is Jerome Morrow now, isn't he?

(No, no, he's Vincent, he's – )

"Jerome," you whisper, and it's never felt right, has it? To say your own name, to see someone trying to hold it up like validation, like a key to somewhere far, far from here.

But he wears your name around his neck like a badge of honour, and you slick your hands across thin wheels and want to kick him for it but can't. So you move the only limbs you have left and you raise that bottle to your lips and you drink and drink and drink until you forget who you are and who you're not and the world brightens as it darkens now, doesn't it?

Jerome speaks. He says stop and why are you doing this and you're killing yourself and I need samples, Eugene and you're a disaster, did you know that? You look into those eyes that look like yours even though they shouldn't, that face that passes for yours even though it isn't, and you spit some dry remark or some witty comeback and he sighs in frustration.

You're killing yourself.

You know this.

And he's there, the new Jerome, with his perfect smile and his fucking dedication and that drive that you never really had. He works his fingers to the bone, works his bones down to ash, works that ash into smoke that twists in the wind all the way up to the sky he's so desperate to reach.

What do you do, Eugene?

You sit there.

You turn your blood into vodka and your tears into laughter. The bottle fits in your hands the way trophies should, but you're secretly just as proud of this. You're an escapee; you're no perfect genetic specimen with the perfect life and the perfect everything. You're a fucking disaster, everything your genes say you couldn't be, and that doesn't even hurt coming from the new (fake) Jerome.

He wears grey suits and white smiles, and he belongs in this world so much more than you do. You see that now. Success never did suit you. It looks heavenly on the new (real) Jerome.

(Fucking disaster.)

So go on, then. Do it.

Climb up into that furnace, haul your broken body into the flames and burn, you miserable little shit.

And when your blood begins to boil, when your skin starts to bubble and melt, when you're screaming in pain and praying for death...will you finally admit it then? That you love him? That you need him and you'd miss him and you love him, for fuck's sake, and you know he doesn't need you, nobody needs you, the world doesn't need you and why should Eugene stay around when Jerome is already reaching the stars?

Why should he get to go out in a blaze of glory without you?

You were always second best - silver medalist, the golden boy gone wrong - but you never thought you'd be second best at being you. And you never thought you would love the man who made you into something more - and, at the same time, made you into nothing.

You never thought you'd burn like this - from the inside out.