act ten: the final act

The darkness that seemed to surround Dominic Pericolo was far from just a blanket-- it was a plastic bag held firm around his head, suffocating him and leaving him squirming in place, completely helpless. He was floating through the darkness with eyes wide open, seeing nothing surrounding him yet somehow clearly perceiving himself just fine.

"Where... where am I?" he asked in a whisper to no-one in particular, as if any set of ears but his own were listening in for the words escaping his lips. He tried to sit upright, but with nothing to push off of he instead found himself flailing in the nothingness, confused and terrified of what was happening.

"Don't struggle, Dominic... you're exactly where you need to be."

The voice was familiar to him. It was as strong as it was soothing, and it triggered a reaction deep within Dominic that brought a crashing wave of comfort rolling through his veins. Gradually he began to pull himself up, not exactly knowing how but understanding that, even in the darkness... he was managing to do such a thing. The voice had came from just a few feet ahead of him and, as he managed to rise... Dominic realized where the comfort had came from in the first place.

Angelo Pericolo... his father. Somehow, in the darkness that surrounded them... his father had found him in his suffering. Dominic glanced down, his focus shifting to his feet, to the crimson staining the boots that adorned them. He felt a cold chill of guilt shoot down his spine as the events of the past quickly invaded his memories, the corpse of Chris Champion crudely adorned in a general's outfit leading them all to the front of his mind.

As difficult as it was for Dominic to first stand within the darkness... it required little effort at all for him to slowly sink down to his knees. Grasping at his head, he began to mutter to himself, desperately wishing to push those thoughts of death and murder out from his mind. Somehow, his father's footsteps echoed in the dark... the elder Pericolo making his way before his broken son, a look of sympathy set in his features.

"Dominic... it was just a nightmare, okay? You're dealing with something in you that you've been running from for a very, very long time, and it's starting to tear you apart."

The muttering ceased with Angelo's words, Dominic's eyes frantically looking through the darkness, for anything he could perceive as reality to hold firm to. He had known for far too long, since long before their first encounter against each other yet again... that despite the bold front he'd put on for the world, for his family and for his friends...

... he had been gradually going insane all along.

"Dad, I... what's... what's happening... to me?!"

Dominic closed his eyes. His soul was burning deep inside, but not the determined burn that he had always been so accustomed to... no, he was feeling a deep pain from this burn. It creapt through his every twitching muscle, every fiber of his being set aflame from within. Lifting his head up to face his father, Dominic's tormented eyes gazed into his father's own, set in determination as they gazed back at him.

So many questions... of why things happened as they did throughout life, of how these things could break through his defenses, of all the pain he was forced to go through now... Dominic had never learned how to cope with a shattered dream, he'd only learned how to run away from it all. To run... just as he had accused Champion, the man who stood to face death itself with a bold front and a desire to see his life's end be the best it could be.

Dominic Pericolo accused his best friend of running... when Dominic Pericolo was himself running right beside him.

"Christ, I'm such a hypocrite..." the young Pericolo muttered to himself, pushing his hair from his eyes, "I never... I never thought it would be like this, dad, I... I thought we..."

"You wanted the success of your heroes to transfer on into your own life, Dominic. The Wandering Samurai who saved a tortured world, the young Christian boy who slew the raging Philistine, the proud leader of Capital City protecting its citizens from the evil of the world... you wanted to have a story like theirs, Dominic..."

Confusion had set in... the writer within Dominic Pericolo knew well that this was all nothing more than a dream, for standing behind his father were the faces of all the characters he had crafted over time. With a sigh, Angelo then turned... he turned to face those proud men, those heroes Dominic had spent so long creating.

"The king, that proud King Pericolo who would risk his life for his people...you've completely drowned yourself out by the visage of these people, Dominic. These stories, these metaphors... you've tried to cast them out before, but they're your greatest shelter, that safety blanket you can cling to when your dreams come crashing down."

These were unusually harsh words to hear from his own father, a man who had built him up into who he was throughout his entire life. Angelo had always been the strong encouragement Dominic needed to succeed... the teacher who passed all his knowledge on to his students with a sense of eagerness and excitement to see where they would take it all. Yet, now... Angelo seemed to be a different kind-of teacher.

Really, he... he seemed to be a different kind-of person all together.

"Dad, Chris is dying... this isn't about my ridiculous stories, it... it's about trying to save my best friend's life! I don't want to fight him, dad, I... I could kill him! I almost did last time, didn't you see?! I can't... I can't..."

In a flash, Dominic felt two strong hands gripping hard upon his shoulders, shaking him violently with eyes lit aflame staring back into his own. For a moment, a stunned sense of fear sparked across Dominic's spine as he stared into the raging eyes of his father, of a man he'd always relied on to keep him on a straight path.

"God DAMN it, Dominic, don't you talk about yourself that way! You were brought up better than that, who the HELL do you think you are to cast that kind-of judgment on yourself?! On Champion?!"

Angelo let loose his hold on Dominic's shoulders, standing sharply and glaring down at his child, Dominic keeping his own head lowered. Every word was truth... Dominic was casting a judgment on Champion's own strength, he was seeing the warrior he knew him to be as nothing but a weakened shell of his former self, but... damn it, wasn't that what Champion had become?! The venom was draining all the life from him, his body was crumbling to pieces...

"Champion's heart won't let him die yet, Dominic... you should know better than that by now."

Everything. Everything that had been plaguing Pericolo up until that moment... everything that had been holding him back from taking up his best effort to bring forth against his friend, just as he did all those months ago... it was all brought upon him from the moment he'd began forcing the possibility of disaster back out from his mind.

The moment Pericolo lost sight of the horrors that came natural with life, the moment he chose to focus only on the good things yet to come... was the moment Dominic Pericolo began to lose his mind. It was the moment he began to forget the things that mattered most, those gentle considerations of what may still come, so that one might prepare for anything at all.

Dominic Pericolo had been stockpiling money for his family to live off of, but he never made a plan for anything terrible happening in the end. He believed he could help save the NLCW. He believed he could finish his story with the company and continue on from there. He believed that his family would never have any problems together, that their children would be happy and perfect and... and that everything would turn out okay in the end.

That they would have their happily ever after.

The writer in Dominic should have recognized the cliche at work, he should have listened to the words spoken by those around him, yet... the child still left deep within Dominic's heart refused to hear them at all.

"One way or another, Dominic... you're going to have to face the things you've been running from. You blame yourself for the deaths of others, you blame yourself for not being able to protect your loved ones... you blame yourself for what's happening to Champion."

"Damn it, though, if I had just been there--"

"You wouldn't have made a damned difference, Dominic!"

Angelo's body seemed to morph before Dominic's eyes for a moment, as if for a split second he had grown younger again... his body structure changing to that of another man quite familiar to him. Even Angelo's voice changed momentarily, a sort-of snobbish confidence escaping with the spoken words. Dominic recognized the voice immediately as Champion's, but... just as quickly as the change was made, it was taken away yet again, Angelo back as he had been, his glare set upon his child.

"What..."

Reaching out a hand, Angelo looked down upon his son to lift him up to his feet once again. After a moment's hesitation, Dominic relented and reached out... and his father snagged him up to his feet in an instant, leaving Dominic unsteadily adjusting his balance on his feet. Shaking his head, Angelo began to speak once again.

"If you were there that night, Dominic, it would have just happened on another. There was a train wreck just waiting to happen at that time... there wasn't anything you could have done to stop it. You need to quit blaming yourself and move on... how do you expect to get anywhere when all you've been doing this whole time is running away from something, and not towards anything else?!"

Turning away from his son, Angelo Pericolo begins to walk off into the darkness, Dominic shaking his head to snap out of his own stupor and reaching a hand out, desperate to stop his father from leaving him there.

"Dad, wait! Don't--"

"This is on you now, Dominic... you have to break away from this. You have to face the people you've held some form of guilt or regret towards... and you have to let it go."

Turning towards his son now, Angelo Pericolo begins to fade to black... his last words slowly spoken through the darkness.

"You have to face them, Dominic..."