CLASS:
THE FAULT IN OUR SCARS
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
(Contains spoilers for CLASS 1X08 "The Lost")
Ram looked at April's new form and pondered to himself what she might be thinking at this present time.
Putting himself in her shoes, his first consideration was just why they were staring,
She had only just come alive in so many ways, at a time where all around her friends were fated to die. She had been running, afraid to fall, at least fall as hard and as fast as Ram.
Perhaps that's why they were staring.
Perhaps that's why Ram's face was contorted, awash with pain and anguish, with a look in his eyes that reflected horror and contempt.
But contempt for what?
Why were they staring?
Ram figured she was in denial from the way she seemed to lack the sense to stare at her own hands and feet.
She could feel the sulphur rising out of the back of her neck; feel the molten warmth on her hands. Still she would not see the obvious. She would not answer the question of why they were all staring.
If she soon came to realize what she'd become, what Charlie had done to her in a bid to prevent further bloodshed across Coal Hill, across the planet, would she stare back at him the same way? With kindness? With love?
Would she do so for him, but not anyone else?
This would be a true test of April's character...her kindly soul burdened by an unkind and unjust alien body, her link severed to her old one. Dead to the world, but alive in the realm of shadow.
Sitting high on a throne.
But it was an empty one. As empty as the Cabinet of Souls.
The Shadow Kin world was gone now, whatever horrors she could preside over were atoms scattered across this ancient and yet ever youthful universe, they were now the stuff of legend, they would scare children, but they would no longer scar them.
Ram allowed himself a smile, a brief one. He owed this day at least one. For he may never smile again.
He had lost his dad, Tanya had lost her mother, and April had lost herself
They were all left forever scarred, their innocence forever lost.
So many people on this planet lose their innocence through a wasted evening spent getting drunk, inappropriately putting the moves on a female friend, or crashing their parent's car, or something so common and natural to human nature.
That was the fault in their scars.
This was nothing natural about this.
Even coping with death in the normal fashion was outside of their reach.
This would break them, it would try it's hardest to.
That's what scarred him, and that's what scared him.
And that's where the fault lay.
So she calls now, asking why they stare, asking the question she dare not answer just with her own eyesight, her own perspective.
She called for an answer.
The question he posed next, assuming he was her, was...would he?
Ram had come in an instant the moment she said 'I love you'.
Love knows no boundaries, no bodies, only souls matter.
Would he save hers? Or would he scar it?
A tale, perhaps, for another time.
For now, for him, for her, possibly for Tanya, the healing process needed to begin, and begin fast.
For now, they would graduate early, to the next stage of life
For now, Class was out.
