Part of Scott's ending here really helps detail something that everyone tip-toes around and no one wants to say. The idea that sometimes everything's fucked and no happy outcomes can emerge gets right at the heart of a massive ordeal a lot of us have seen with manipulative abusers.
Not everyone can be saved.
We have countless narratives surrounding us in every form of media and in our own lives all reinforcing the concept of a redemptive arc for abusive people. And put simply, that's not always a realistic option, for myriad reasons. From everything that has come out about this entire situation there some very consistent and immutable statements that can be made. Alec corroded everyone in his orbit, especially those closest and most willing to offer him help. Dozens of people attempted to help him as an individual and each appears to have absorbed untold long-term ramifications from it. And by all accounts, even when Alec seemed to be better he was simply deflecting, opting instead to choose a new target unaware of what he could do to them.
At what point does an individual's extreme response merit more sympathy than the relatively less severe but still unimaginable pain they visited up so many?
Sometimes there is no redemption coming.
I'll offer an anecdote. My grandfather was a pretty terrible person. He was manipulative to everyone around him and very few people saw him for who he really was. I kept my distance as much as I could but my grandmother still had to live with him, and he made sure to lob verbal abuse, gaslighting, and other means against her whenever he could. I saw him casually throw a knife at her because she had just brought him dinner and he didn't like something she said.
When he suffered a stroke a couple years ago she and I spent 5 months doing everything for him no matter how terrible he was. We handled the dozen or so medications he took per day, got his diet in order to handle his diabetes, tried like hell to get him to do his exercises, installed new handrails and such throughout the house, drove him to social events and doctor's visits. We did what you do for a person. And he was making amazing progress, at least physically. Mentally, though, he stayed a real bastard.
And the best way for him to win an argument was to tell my grandmother he should just blow his brains out. Didn't like that he couldn't have ice cream or wine every day? "I oughta just blow my brains out." Didn't like that he legally could not drive as an 83-year-old stroke victim? "I oughta just blow my brains out." He weaponized suicide threats.
And then one morning he shot his head off. The last thing he ever said to her was, "You'll be sorry."
He was clearly a mentally unwell man. I think, in hindsight, he always was. But to a certain degree he was a vortex. If you got close enough to help him he'd simply drag you down with him. Rest assured, there was no way to help him without harming others.