Nick Carter sat on the bed in the room across the hall from where one of his best friends had been shot and he continued to cry. He wondered silently to himself if his tears would ever end... if he would ever be able to stop crying. And then he thought that it was good to cry because it meant that he was alive and crying was good because crying meant that you could still feel and he would certainly rather feel something than nothing because he would certainly rather be alive than dead.
The memories of the things he'd seen that morning replayed themselves continuously through his exhausted mind. He'd been downstairs in the hotel coffee shop when everything had happened... at least that's where he assumed he had been... this all still felt like a dream to him. He remembered getting up and he remembered going down in the elevator to the coffee shop and he remembered sitting down and drinking a nice strong cup of black coffee even though he hated coffee... because the conversation he'd had on the phone with his mother the night before had kept him up nearly the entire night worrying over the fact that in her mind he was still a 'nothing'. But that didn't seem to matter anymore. Not right now at least because his friend had been shot and his tour manager was dead.
He'd remembered sitting there drinking his coffee and chatting with the waitress who seemed nice enough even if she obviously knew who he was and was probably even a fan. She had tried her best not to show it and Nick had been grateful to her for that. He'd remembered nearly falling asleep sitting there alone at his table in the coffee shop that was pretty much empty at that time of the morning and he remembered thinking he should probably head back up to his room and try to get a few hours sleep before the busy day they had ahead of them.
Nick stared through his blurry eyes at the clock on the bedside stand. Not that his busy schedule seemed to matter to anyone, anymore. It didn't even seem to matter to these people that their friend was dying.
The last thing Nick had remembered before all of the chaos occured was clamboring wearily onto the elevator and punching the button for the 15th floor..
He rode up in silence and waited as the doors opened slowly on the 15th floor. And that was when he'd heard the screams... Brian's screams and Howie's screams. He hadn't heard Aj's screams... not a sound had come from him. He'd run towards the room but there were already too many people crowded around for him to see what was going on. People were screaming frantically for someone to call an ambulance and he'd all but panicked because he didn't understand what was happening.
And then it had happened.
That awful, blood curdling, ear piercing scream had started up down the hall and Nick had been the first to turn and run towards the sound because as it had come to happen he was the last in a line of people standing in the doorway of Brian and Aj's hotel room and he was the closest to the sound.
He'd run down the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him and she'd nearly collapsed into his arms as she flew from their hotel room. He recognized her immediately as Cynthia Claron... Jim's wife... Jim, their tour manager. She had struggled to find the words, to say anything at all to make him understand. He'd passed her off to another crew member, one he recognized behind him and had carefully opened the door to her hotel room. The sight before him had made him gasp and wretch and he'd had to turn away and run quickly from the room.
He would never in a million, billion years forget how awful that sight had been. How could anyone be so cruel? How could anyone do anything so horrible to another human being? He'd run into his own hotel room and spent the next fifteen minutes vomiting profusely as the police arrived and the paramedics arrived and they took Aj away and he still had not seen his brother. He still had no real idea what was going on. He just knew that if it was that bad... if God forbid what they had done to Aj was that bad...
He winced as his stomach lurched and the tears started flowing again. He couldn't think about that now.
He stared over at the burly female police officer again. Her name was Faith Yokus. He knew that now and she no longer seemed as angry or as harsh as she had when she first arrived. Perhaps it was the emotions that the young man continuously showed or perhaps on those numerous trips she'd taken from the room, she too had to view the scene of horror with her own eyes. Nick hated showing his emotions in front of anyone but right now he didn't care.
"Whoever did this..." Nick thought to himself as he silently wiped away more tears... "Whoever did this to my friend... to my manager... was an unfeeling bastard."
And because of those thoughts he knew that crying meant he felt something and he knew that feeling something was far better than feeling nothing at all. And so he allowed himself to cry... allowed himself to feel the pain... to be alive... to not be an unfeeling bastard.
