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The trial was a confusing blur of pain.
Nathan remembers it mostly in snapshots, like photographs. He wonders if they match the courtroom sketches. He stared at the artist sometimes, when it was too hard to look at what was actually going on. A few times, the artist looked back to him, and immediately started sketching his face. He wondered if he was a good model. He'd been a good model before.
It seemed it was more Jefferson's trial than his. He was more of an afterthought, judged in the trail of what Jefferson had done, not quite living up to him even in his atrocity. He should have been happy that he wasn't blamed more.
Kate Marsh testified. Max Caulfield testified. They both looked noble doing it. They did not faulter, did not look away. Kate's voice broke when she spoke of what he'd done to her, but only for a moment. Max's eyes were empty for a bit when she spoke of what he'd done to Chloe, but only for a moment.
His testimony was broken and empty the whole time through. He broke into sobs twice during the trial, which he wasn't particularly proud of, and couldn't help but blabbering on until he was redirected to the actual question. During it all he tried not to meet Mark's eyes, to avoid his piercing gaze. To avoid any gaze, really, except that of his lawyer. The best lawyer his father could've bought, really, but even he couldn't make Nathan look like a saint. Everyone in the courtroom knew him for guilty, he could feel their stares on every inch of him, exposed to their judgement. He hated being looked at. They made him go through it all in chronological order - every girl from the first time he'd been a part of it. Name upon name upon name and the memory of blank faces and twisted bodies. The jury cringed everytime he called them "subjects" and talked about Jefferson's "work". He couldn't quite get the sickening lingo off his tongue.
David Madsen testified. He'd been following Nathan around, and was one of Chloe's guardians, meaning he got to talk even though he had very little evidence to speak of. This was the angriest he'd ever seen Madsen, without surprise, and unlike the others Madsen seemed to want to blame Nathan only, caring very little what Mark had done in comparison. His testimony came to memory in shots of him almost shouting, cries of "he's the one who shot her" and "he killed my daughter", seemingly forgetting that Chloe wasn't his daughter and wouldn't have wanted him to call her so either. His lawyer tried to speak of "mental illness" and "abuse" and "not fully responsible for one's action", but Madsen would hear none of it, "don't care" and "doesn't matter" and "he deserved it too". When he stepped back, Nathan's ears rung.
They hadn't really needed Nathan's testimony to prove Mark was guilty, but they still wanted him to tell everything. It wasn't enough to say that yes, he'd participated and yes, he'd shot Chloe and yes, he'd killed Rachel, he also had to talk about how and why and when and what again and again, purging details from his exhausted mind, never seeming to give enough to content them. They thought he was lying, he realized when someone in the jury scoffed as he mentioned being unconscious for the third time. They thought he'd done worse than what he said. They thought he'd raped them, and he felt sick as the notion hit him.
Surprisingly, and ironically, Mark's confession was what saved him.
He confirmed everything Nathan had said, blank faced and patient, lecturing them like he'd lectured his students, and Nathan had listened patiently, tediously, as he always had when he tried to understand how Mark thought, how he liked things and how to make him like him, when he struggled to understand him and never managed it.
"I consider my work to be revolutionary", Mark said at one point. "Adding a male model to my compositions gave them a contrast that I couldn't get with just girls", he said another time. "I could only highlight their chastity if there was a couple in the picture, which is why I needed Mr. Prescott." Nathan's lawyer asked "was Nathan willing to participate?" and Mark shook his head, calmly, with almost a smile. "He was not", he said. "The semi-conscious model is always the most honest. I couldn't break my theme by having him awake. It only looked good if they were both out of it, both unaware and innocent."
Thanks to Mark both confirming everything he said, making him out to be more of a victim than he really felt he was, and disgusting the jury considerably more than Nathan did, somehow, he wasn't condemned as he thought he would be. They called him "irresponsible for his actions" - in need of help, in need of appropriate care, they said. He didn't understand. He did all this while on meds, so what could care do? How was he irresponsible? But he didn't complain, because, unfair as it might be, he didn't really want to be punished. He didn't want to go to prison, where he knew what will happen to him. He didn't want to be a criminal. He'd rather be sick.
The sentences fell. Mark got life in prison, as everyone expected. What was once his main asset, his calm and easy talking, was what lost him. He showed no remorse, not even fear of the punishment. The jury despised him. Nathan realized now that they would have hated him, too, if he'd managed to keep his cool - that they only took pity on him because he sobbed uncontrollably in front of them. It made him feel a bit less humiliated. They sent him to a hospital.
Surprisingly enough, this was Nathan's first stay in anything resembling a mental ward. One would have expected him to have had previous visits, considering how monumentally fucked up he'd always been, but his father didn't want that kind of shit in their family. He wondered if Sean Prescott now wished he'd gotten his son internalized earlier - before he'd had time to get involved with a kidnapper and to murder someone.
Only someone, it turned out. Nathan did confess to killing Rachel, of course. He'd never remembered doing it, but he was drugged out of his mind at the time, and Jefferson told him that while he was high he'd accidentally overdosed her. During his confession, though, he said something quite different.
"Were you present when Rachel Amber was killed?", Nathan's lawyer asked.
"I was", Mark said, with a curt nod. "In fact, Mr Prescott is wrong as to who was responsible for her death. As one would expect, Nathan does not remember killing Rachel Amber because he was unconscious during that photoshoot. I needed a couple composition, you see, and Rachel and he fit perfectly for it. He did fit with most models, he just has the physique to match young girls, but I suspect their close bond is what made the photos all the more powerful. Rachel started to wake up and I administered a new dose, which ended up being too much for her to handle. I took both of them out in a junkyard for a few more photos and buried her there. I knew Nathan would want to break off our partnership if he knew I had accidentally killed his friend, not to mention he might not let me drug him anymore had he known I had accidentally overdosed someone, so of course I told him it was his fault."
"Why did you tell him that?", the lawyer asked, and Nathan thought Mark had just told him why, but he kept going.
"For several reasons. First, Nathan now believed himself to be a murderer. He was as guilty as I was, if not more, and he knew he would be blamed for everything if he tried to leave, so this ensured he remained handy. Rachel also had been one of Nathan's close friends. Thinking he had accidentally killed her meant he could no longer trust himself around friends and became isolated to protect them, which lowered the risk of him snitching on me to one of them. And, of course, by pretending to be disappointed in Nathan and no longer trust him, after making sure that he had no one to turn to but me, I was making him work for my trust again. As he was persuaded that he had failed me, Mr Prescott was only more eager to please me, which I found practical."
This was the second time Nathan crumbled into sobs.
They had to bodily examine him when he came to the hospital, to make sure he had nothing to hurt himself or others with. They took away his belt, because he might've tried to hang himself with it, even though he'd assured them he wasn't suicidal. He might have been, before, but Mark said during the trial that he'd been planning to dispose of him soon enough - he was becoming too troublesome - and, now, he only wanted to remain alive to spite Mark, to do what he hadn't wanted him to do. One of the nurses, the youngest one, kept trying to touch him, and she likely couldn't tell how much it hurt but he hated it, hated being touched. It made him cringe everytime she did.
He was assigned a room and a watching period of 72 hours in which he would not be allowed out of the room. He suspected it was not as long for people who had not just murdered someone, though everyone knew he hadn't meant to shoot her. Max Caulfield, surprisingly, had testified of that.
She'd been in the bathroom. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen or heard her, but then again, he wasn't paying much attention to anything at the time. She said she saw the altercation - that Price had pushed him back while his finger was on the trigger and that he'd shot by accident, which was the truth. He couldn't believe that little hipster shit Victoria always complained about had been the one to save his ass - he was sure his sentence would have been worse if it had not been for Mark revealing he hadn't killed Rachel, and Max confirming that Chloe's death had been an incident.
His father didn't come to visit him in the hospital. Not for the 72 hours he spent in observation, of course - no visitors allowed - and not after that either. He didn't hear from him the first week, and didn't try to either. It wasn't like he was obligated to come, as Nathan was a legal adult, and frankly, he didn't want to see him either. After that, he assumed his father just wouldn't try to meet him at all.
Sean Prescott had sat through the trial with a dumbfounded look on his face, occasionally turning to look at his son, as if seeking a confirmation that this really was true. Mark's testimony has brought a series of odd fidgeting in his father, Nathan noticed as he kept his eyes on him to avoid meeting Mark's.
"What was your relationship to Mr Prescott?", the lawyer asked.
"I suppose you could say I took place as Nathan's father figure. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Nathan was not comfortable in his familial environment and being spoiled half to death didn't hide the fact that he was intensely suffering from his father's treatment of him." Sean's hands grabbed at each other nervously as if he didn't know what to do with them. "Nathan opened up to me easily enough at the slightest show of care and told me about the mental and emotional abuse he was undergoing, though of course he did not use these specific terms to refer to it. With his father seemingly no longer caring for his well-being and constantly disappointed in him and an absentee mother that didn't seem concerned for him either, it seemed obvious he needed someone that could be proud of him again. Snatching the role was a matter of first come, first served." Sean's leg started shaking up and down seemingly uncontrollably.
"Did Mr Prescott offer to help you in your kidnappings?"
"No, of course not. He couldn't even known about them before I was certain he would follow along, I couldn't have him rat me out. I told him he had a talent in photography, which he clearly needed to hear, and that I thought working on some projects together would help him develop his potential. I introduced the idea of unconscious models first, before telling him that the models wouldn't need to be willing to be drugged. If you phrase it as "taking photos of drunk girls at parties", instead of "drugging and kidnapping teenagers", it's easier to make one accept the idea. Of course he expressed doubts when it came to actually doing it, but by then I had good enough a grip on him that he wouldn't have thought to refuse."
Sean Prescott look back and forth between Nathan, Mark, and the jury, again and again.
"You have admitted to drugging my client for photographs. Did you do anything else to him while he was unconscious?"
"Yes", said Mark crisply.
"Did you engage in sexual intercourse with Mr Prescott while he was unconscious?"
"Yes", said Mark again. Sean Prescott covered his mouth with his hands and slowly leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees defeatedly.
They allowed him out of his room after 72 hours, though he didn't want to go out of it. He was fine inside. The bright white walls were familiar and he was safe there, away from anyone and everyone, quiet. He was surprised to find that he liked the hospital. No one tried to hurt him there, nobody came into his room unless he said it was okay, nobody made him do things he didn't want to. He didn't expect any visitors. He expected to stay alone, and he was fine with it. But a visitor came anyway.
"Maxine Caulfield would like to come for a visit. As you are a legal adult, you're allowed to have visitors outside of your family. Do you want her to come?"
He'd hesitated. He wasn't so sure. But he agreed. What was the worst that could happen? If Caulfield tried to be a little shit, he could have her kicked out - and anyway, he doubted she would. She seemed to want to defend him at the trial, which he didn't quite understand.
"Man, I can't believe you're here", she said when she walked into his room. He was sitting in the bed, as he usually was. They'd let him have a pen and a notebook, as he wasn't allowed a camera, and he spent his time crudely sketching the room and the view from the window.
"I can't believe you're here", he retorted, as he wasn't too sure what she even meant.
"Everyone at school misses you", she said, flatly, because they both knew it was a lie. Maybe Victoria missed him. Maybe even Hayden - Hayden always seemed to see the best in everyone, even people like him. But the rest of the school had always hated him. He doubted they cared now just because Mark Jefferson had put his dirtied hands on him a few times too many. Nonetheless, he appreciated the effort she made to make him feel better, so he said "Thanks".
"I was planning to bring flowers, but apparently someone in this section is allergic so it's not allowed."
"It's fine", he said, though he kind of regretted it. He would have liked flowers so he could draw them.
"Victoria wants to come visit you, too." He wondered why Victoria wasn't here, then, and Max was instead. He never even knew her. Victoria was supposed to be his best friend. He supposed that wasn't the case anymore.
"I brought you chocolate", she kept going, and he nodded. It was a nice gesture, though he wouldn't eat the chocolate. He didn't eat anything unless they forced him to, which they did a lot. He didn't have his diet pills anymore, so the hunger was back, and sometimes he thought it would be better to eat as much as they wanted him to, before he remembered that he didn't want to do anything people wanted him to - that he needed what little control he still had over anything.
Max didn't visit him again after that. He didn't blame her. Victoria never did come. He stayed in the calm and quiet for another six months before they decided he could go out.
They didn't release him from the hospital, of course. He still spent his nights there, and he had his appointments with his therapist, but he was allowed to go to class again. He didn't want to, of course. They said it was necessary to his healing process, not to mention his education. He would have a few classes only, brought to the school and back by a nurse, and watched by the teachers to make sure nothing happened to him.
*
They make him climb in a car and they drive him to the school. He says he doesn't want to go, again, but it's flat and doesn't have any bite, just like the teeth he grinds together as they stop in front of the school and the nurse brings him out of the car and into the school.
He can feel their eyes on him. He feels like he's being dragged around naked for all of them to see. They all know what happened at the trial, they all know who he is and what he's done. There's nowhere for him to hide, no one will support him.
Principal Wells "personally welcomes" him and tells him some bullshit about how he is a student like all others and should just worry about going through his classes, as if that kind of surreal idea has even a vague link to reality. He knows Wells hates him. Now, he wishes he hadn't been so cocky with him before.
His locker has been emptied. It shouldn't be a shock, but it is, to realize that no one expected him to ever be back. He puts his notebook in the locker, just so it feels like his again.
He doesn't even make it to his first class before he has to hole up in the boy's bathrooms to take a breather. Empty, thankfully. He goes in the first stall and sits on the toilet.
Graffiti all over the walls, as usual. This time, though, there's graffiti about him. There's always been graffiti like "kill the prescotts", but never much, and never with his first name in particular, as if the culprits were too afraid of getting busted by him. He suspects that, now that they expected him to be out of Blackwell forever, they just went wild.
"Nathan deserved it", curtly says a scribbled memento at his right. He stares, transfixed. So this is what everyone thinks of him here, truly. In the end, this is the public opinion, as his father would say. Nathan deserved it. The graffiti doesn't say what "it" is, so it just means everything. He deserves his father's cold hatred and burning rage. He deserves his mother and his sister too far away to care. He deserves the unconditional hatred of the entire school. He deserves every time Jefferson beat him up and lied to him, every flashing, blurry memory of being pushed on his stomach with his clothes slipping away. He deserves responsibility and he deserves hate.
He splashes some water onto his face before eventually heading to class.
Science it is, and he realizes as soon as he walks in that he would've preferred another class. In photography, with Mark, he used to sit in the far back, alone at his table. In science, he sits in the middle of the class, next to some nerd named Warren who won't stop trying to give him the right answers. He doesn't want to sit there anymore.
But he wasted his time in the bathroom, so he's the last one to walk into class. Everyone stares at him, even the teacher, as he goes to take a sit, and Warren moves slightly away from him. Nathan swallows a scowl.
He internally begs the teacher to not say anything. She obviously doesn't get it.
"Welcome back, Nathan", she says warmly, too warm, probably fake. "It's good to see you again, you look better."
Better than what? He isn't better. He still hates it here, he still hates himself, he still hates sitting next to Warren, he still isn't fine. She only says that because now he's not a criminal anymore.
He looks down at the desk and doesn't answer. Mercifully enough, she immediately gives up on him and starts her lecture.
He doodles in the corner of his notebook for half of the class. He doesn't want to focus on the teacher, to even look up; he knows he'll meet someone's eye as they turn to stare at him and he already despises the thought. He just wants for this class to end so he can leave - they only gave him one class to go to on the first day, to ease him back into it. He strains his eyes on the paper to keep from looking at anyone until they get a bit blurry.
A hand enters his field of vision and drops a crumpled note on his notebook.
"ARE YOU OKAY?", it says - in all caps, for some reason.
Nathan finally looks up to give Warren an incredulous glare.
"IM FUCKING DANDY", he answers in a similar manner on the back of the note, though where Warren's letters were small scribbles his are ridiculously large, which is partly because he's making fun of him, and also because he never had such good eyes and it's not easy for him to write small.
Warren doesn't look particularly offended by the response and rips another piece of his notebook to answer.
"YOU DONT LOOK SO GOOD ARE YOU COMING BACK TO THE DORMS?"
Nathan almost scoffs - but, well, he might as well not alienate the one person in the entire school willing to speak to him, even if it's some geek he never quite liked. He abandons the mocking handwriting.
"no. im in a hospital. im not going in the dorms until i prove i can handle myself." And, frankly, he doesn't really want to. He used to be respected, at least because he was rich and the leader of the Vortex Club, but now he knows his room will get trashed if he forgets to lock it and people will call him a faggot on his door slate. He remembers doing exactly that to Warren and wonders why the guy even wants to talk to him.
"OKAY IF YOU NEED HELP WITH WHAT YOU MISSED JUST TELL ME"
Nathan stares at the note for a moment before he just shakes his head and returns to his scribbling.
The rest of the hour passes without further interruption and as the bell rings, he shoves his notebook into his bag and gets up.
A hand grabs his wrist and he swallows the urge to scream.
Warren seems to immediately realize his mistake and lets go of him with an awkward look. Nathan does his best to keep a composed face.
"So, I know we haven't always been on the best of terms..." Yeah, Nathan thinks, because he spent his time bullying Warren. He doesn't know why the guy is now pretending it was some kind of fair rivalry. "But I mean, if you need help with schoolwork, or anything else, just tell me. I know we're not friends, but I've been stopping the guys from breaking into your room..."
"Do you expect me to thank you?", Nathan says with almost half of the bite he used to have, as if he still had the privilege to act superior. Warren still has the decency to look contrite, even though Nathan knows he's not even close to intimidating anymore.
"No, I don't mean that. I'm just saying I was there for the trial, uh, not in a weird way, I just wanted to know what happened, I know you've been through bad stuff."
The prosecutor said he wished to present photographic evidence of what Mark had done. They brought forth a projector. Nathan already knows what they'll show.
The jury gasps and murmurs as a large photo of Kate Marsh appears on the screen, her doped-out face pressed against the white floor. Nathan cringes. He barely remembers that session, he was mostly out of it too, but none of them feel good to look back to. He knows how hurt Kate has been.
That photo of Kate is what hits the hardest, and then he thinks he'll be alright because he's used to this, the shock of the first photo and then being resigned to it as Jefferson shows him more and more and more, and he watches with blank eyes as they show pictures of Lynn and Kayla and Ashley and Carol-Ann.
The photos of Rachel hit him like a fist to the gut. Photos of her alone, and then photos where he's there too, lying in uncomfortable poses against her or across her, some photos artistically posed with their hands or faces seeming to reach for each other, and others messy, looking almost like two dead bodies hastily dropped together.
But he'll be alright. He calms himself down and tries to ignore all of it and keep watching, silently.
They go through photos of Deanna and Lucy and Megan and all the others and he thinks this will be alright, this will be fine and he can tolerate this. Then they switch through a few more photos, and there he is. He sees himself on the screen, naked on the floor of the Dark Room and curled up in foetal position, eye half-opened, and this is the first time he breaks into sobs.
"I'm okay", he tells Warren, because there's nothing else to say. And, uncharacteristically, even though he just said he wouldn't: "Thanks."
Warren beams, way too happy for the occasion, and when Nathan walks out of the classroom the geek walks along with him. People are staring at them still, but it feels less infuriating than when they were only looking at him.
"I have to go to the parking lot", he tells Warren, since the guy has apparently decided he had permission to follow him around. This doesn't seem to shake him, as he just nods and keeps following.
They walk together up to the bathrooms, at which point Warren stops and, for some reason, even though he wasn't walking with him, Nathan feels compelled to stop as well.
"I gotta use the bathroom. I'll see you tomorrow, right?"
Nathan isn't certain he has classes with Graham tomorrow, but he still nods.
"Great! I'll see you then!"
He disappears into the bathroom and Nathan is left alone, somehow uncomfortably so. He muses over the odd conversation as he walks to the parking lot and finds the nurse waiting for him there, and he still ponders upon it as they drive back to the hospital.
He goes to school the next day and stops by the bathroom, into the same stall as yesterday, to take a breather. The graffiti saying "Nathan deserved it" is still there.
Under it, in obnoxious all caps, someone has written a response and underlined it three times.
"NO HE DIDNT."