The world is crashing down around them, tearing at the seams and roaring and howling as the earth's crust tears; fury and pain and tears and wretched, pouring rain. It's a storm, a beautiful storm, and the creature, wicked as it is, thrashes to and fro in the midst of it. Bellum, he calls himself, a cursed and terrible alias that has been uttered by many behind closed doors; Bellum, a frightful taboo often accompanied by whimpers of fear and wide, unashamed eyes. Bellum, hardly more than a gargle in the back of the throat, but what a moan of pain, of utter pain, ripping, shouting, sobbing; Bellum.
And so now the world ends in one big tremor of an apocalyptic scale, the sky cracking open and letting out one final splintered screech. The terrible clap of thunder and lighting renders everyone else deaf and blind and furious; this is it, this is the end, the very end of everything and everyone and all that the sea captain can do is grin because damn it if it isn't beautiful.
"Glorious, isn't it?!" he shouts over the storm, and takes a swig from a bottle. The hero-boy is panicked and the she-pirate is solemn, but the captain is laughing and swinging his bottle and raising his eyes toward the sky.
And there beside him, the only source of light in this apocalypse, is the fairy; small and slender and stronger than a bull, more powerful than a cannon, louder than a foghorn and braver than any daredevil the sea captain's ever known. That fairy's like a little slice of hell cut right out for him, and she's perfect in the way that she's not perfect; perfect, if anything, for him in particular.
"We lost, Linebeck!" she's crying. "We lost- we couldn't do it- weren't strong enough- Bellum won-"
"Lost?!" Linebeck counters, and grins in disbelief. "Lost?! No, not that, never that! There's no winning or losing, not here, we merely screwed up! Look at it, Ciela, look at it!" He gestures out to the pandemonium surrounding them, and as waves slam into the sides of the raft and the sky comes crashing down with the rain, he grins again. Laughs. Drinks.
"We screwed up," she says forlornly.
"We screwed up together!" he replies, his tone euphoric. His voice cracks. "We screwed up, we screwed up, the world is ending and we screwed up and look at it, Ciela, look at it- magnificent, isn't it?! Magnificent, the end of the world is, a sight to see. I think I'm in love with it."
He doesn't listen to her cries of drunk and mad and all our fault. He hears only the roar of the waves and the wind and the broken, rumbling sky.
"We screwed up, Ciela, and I'm glad we screwed up! It's you and me, here at the end, just you and me, and you know what, Sparkles? I wouldn't have it any other way, by the gods, not any other way. No one else, just you and me and all of hell." He takes a swig of the bottle and ignores her lost and hopeless eyes.
"I'm glad we're dying together," he says joyously. "It's much better than dying alone."
And for a split second, Ciela's words falter and she realizes exactly why Linebeck is so happy. After years of going friendless, of having no family, of drifting from shore to shore with no one to trust and no one to love, he's not going to die alone, and here, a drunk old screw-up in the middle of the apocalypse, he knows that they're all going down together.
And then there's a final crack of thunder and hell is unleashed and the rapture is here; the world is ending, it's going, falling, spiraling; it's gone.
A very very very short drabble that struck me while I was brushing my teeth. My tooth-brushing ritual is very epic, as you can see.
No, but seriously. I wrote this in under 10 minutes. Since it's past midnight here and I'm tired as hell, please forgive me for writing this one. I know it doesn't make sense. I'm not sure that it's supposed to.
-Ctj