Nightscream's dead.

I don't know what else I am supposed to say. Not that I haven't written an obituary before. I've had far more experience than should ever be needed. But it's different now.

I  barely knew Sam. We had been through so much together, but I rarely felt like I ever got past the surface. He kept everything close. His last name, his gender. These are both secret I'll keep for him (I'm only using He because he deserves far more than a pronoun as demeaning as It) and were really only mine because I forced them out of him one way or another. And those were the trivial things. I can't say anyone is qualified enough to really know anything about Sam.

Except that he deserved better.

I don't blame him for what happened. I can't blame him. I finally read some of his diary. Which starts normally enough, but ends up twisting as the guilt began to eat at him. The words start to slant, morph. Until it seems that an entirely different person is writing.

In a world where many of you are hunted and the others are by no means safe, I think we forget sometimes that the Monsters in the world aren't the only things we need fear. Our own minds are just as full of horror as what lays in the dark.

There are few things I know about Sam, but I know them well. I know he was clever, and steadfast. That he cared deeply about those close to him. And that only a great evil could take away his determination. And his amazing will to survive in even the worst of circumstances.

He deserved better.

He didn't get it.

And that is all our faults.

-David Banks