Days, months, years… it didn't matter. This wasn't the first time he'd lost a partner, and no amount of time would be able to console him, because he would always lose a partner.
With every heavy second that passed, he felt as if his heart was being stretched thinner than an angel's hair, and he struggled to take those moments long passed in his memory and hold onto them as if he was still there, refreshing them, trying to keep time from obscuring them.
No amount of clock-ticking would let him forget that last smile behind the glass window he wished he could break. It was an image burned like a scar in his soul, and he both cherished and abhorred it. Oftentimes, he wished he could or would forget, and other times he was convinced that he would never trade any of his memories for anything, even to for the sake of healing, because he knew what it was like to lose them.
I couldn't do anything, he told himself.
That was worse than if there actually had been a way to save Piers. The fact of the matter was that Piers was doomed the moment they stepped into that facility, and there was no chance to help him, even if they had both got out. That feeling of helplessness and hopelessness was the hardest to accept. It was a harsh reality, but instead of retreating to booze this time, Chris had to respect and honor Piers' sacrifice, even if that meant suffering without solace.
And while his mind throbbed, his body felt as if it was beginning to refuse to bear the weight of air any more. He was exhausted, and after desperately trying to continue through the various campaigns he undertook as a Captain in the BSAA after Piers' death, eventually he couldn't continue.
So he stepped down from active duty and retired to a simple base Captain instead.
But through a thousand sleepless nights, he still laid there, unblinking, half between awakeness and dreaming, staring up with transfixed eyes at the shadows on the walls moving like ghosts above his head, intangible and unreachable. They swirled, floated, and fluttered in unfamiliar shapes with familiar faces, and oftentimes they skipped around the room like a scratched CD as if they were trying to get somewhere or finish something that had never quite got done, and were perpetually stuck replaying the same little tune.
When he tried to reach out to them with the shadow of his own hand, they would scuttle away together like those little fish one often sees in pet stores. Then, very hesitantly, they would return to their usual grotesque dances.
Every night, he watched them consume flickering blue light, while over and over again, he listened to their whispering song fragments,
you
you should have been the one
the one who
died.