Title: No Happy Endings
Character: Dr. Horrible
Rating: PG
Word Count: 351
Summary: After the end of Act 3, Billy's been having trouble sleeping.
Note: This is like Best Laid Plans - I've already posted it in horrible_fic I just want everything to be in the same place.

The nights were the worst.

During the day the darkness in his chest shrank down to a small knot of pain, a black hole where his heart used to be. It engulfed all emotion and feeling, rendering him completely numb. It changed the world around him too – once-bright colours were now shades of grey, the clear blue sky was perpetually painted black.

He could live with that.

But at night, the black hole in his chest expanded, so much he was scared it would swallow him up and he had to wrap his arms around himself to keep from falling apart. The knot of pain grew uncontrollably, crawling up his throat, stealing his words. Not that he had anyone to speak to. Not now. What was the use of blogging when his hopes and dreams had been snuffed out as surely as if they had been peppered with shrapnel, not her?

It hurt to even think her name.

But what hurt more, so much more, so much he thought he would die from the pain, was to think of her last moments. In a way they were his last moments, his last moments of sanity. The words she said – the last words she would ever say – that finally ripped his beaten, bruised and breaking heart in two.

“It’s okay. Captain Hammer will save us.”

“Captain Hammer will save us.”

“Captain Hammer”

Every night those words reverberated around his skull, chasing away any chance of sleep until the weak light of dawn began to trickle through his window. Not that sleep was better; it certainly wasn’t the blissful oblivion he wished for. Instead, during the few hours of fitful sleep he managed in the wee hours of the morning, he was plagued by nightmares of that day. It was as if her face, her expression as the light left her eyes, was tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.  Every night he relived those last minutes, before jerking awake, sheets tangled around his legs, his body shaking violently, his mouth open in a silent scream.

Yes, the nights were definitely the worst.