Fang was dying, but he didn't care. He'd always know he'd be the last one, the last of the flock. Somehow, he'd held off death to take care of them, until the end of the world, but now they were gone. Fang was dying, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
As he sank to his knees in the rubble, it occurred to him that he didn't even know how it had started. He supposed someone had said something careless to someone else, so someone else had dropped a couple bombs on a few thousand innocent people. And it had all exploded from there. Literally. During Fang's short school career, his history teacher had wondered if the earth could survive another world war. Turns out it couldn't, and Max wasn't around to save it anymore.
The dust and debris seemed to be drowning him, and his breaths came is short, agonized gasps. Black fog had settled around the edges of his vision, and Fang wondered passively if he was losing his eyesight. Blindness would be welcome at this point. For all of Iggy's troubles, he hadn't seen the things that would scar Fang for the rest of his life, however long or short that was going to be. Blood gushing through thin blond hair, glassy eyes staring through him in death, the sickly gray shad of Max's sunken cheeks during the last days.
Fang lay still for a while; he no longer cared to notice the time passing. It was silent except for the sputtering sound of his own breathing. It was as though he was the only person left in the world. Maybe he was. It doesn't matter, he reminded himself. Nothing matters. Nothing. Nothing…
It suddenly occurred to Fang that he was cold. He remembered Max shivering, clutching at her arms in a fruitless effort to stay warm. Her mind had wandered near the end, but she had made him promise one thing, one thing that had kept Fang here until the very end. The end of the world. To the smoking ruins and the charred wood, the blackened metal, burning bare skin.
He wondered how much longer Fate was going to keep him here, how much longer it cared to torture him. He had fulfilled his promise, his purpose. The ones who had anchored him to this world had left him. There was nothing left.
Alone in the ruins of his world, Fang closed his eyes and let go.
Author's Note: Okay, so it's short. Not sure what I'm going to do with this yet. I might go back to what led up to this point, and make this chaptered. Or it could just be a one shot. Let me know what you think.
