Chapter Text
Twenty years. Twenty years of your life, gone, by word of the jury, the judge's executive decision. Your senior year. Gone. Your first car. Gone. Your childish dream of becoming a master prankster, hunting ghosts, ever evading the wicked batterwitch, dissipated. Your future in school, your love life, the majority of your young adult life stripped away. Gone as fast as your father, his death unfairly blamed on you, evidence deliberately tampered with to point suspicions at the victim's only family. Whoever had done it, the criminal that managed to take a man's life with no motive, then go as far as to blame the victim's son, destroyed the life of an innocent sixteen year old boy.
Now, you, John Egbert, face the blame for your father's murder, and will spend a time longer than the sum of your life to make up for it. You've been wronged by the system, wrong by a stranger, yet, you can't help the guilt that settles over your cloud of mourning and depression. "I'm so, so very proud of you, son." Your father's loving praise floods over you, piercing your heart in the worst of ways. You'll never truly be able to make him proud, now. He's gone, and you may as well be.