For the Song Time Challenge
I knew they could follow me if they needed to.
There was a trail of blood tracing my steps through this wasteland of a city, through the rotten world of my birth. It wouldn't stop, flowing freely from my hand and leaking through my fingers that pressed against the wound in my shoulder. I stumbled, the blood loss finally settling in against my dying mind.
A warehouse caught my eye and I half-walked, half-fell in through its entrance, breathing heavily. My vision blurred as I walked, and as a result I tripped over stairs.
Too tired to go any further, I rolled onto my back and lay on the steps, panting. My eyes fluttered even as I began to question everything that had lead me to this. It wasn't fair. I was only trying to save those people… and then it became less of an act of goodwill and more of a game. It became a race to see who would win, but I figured out a long time ago that there is never a winner, not really. There can never be a winner in a game that involves lives, that takes your mind, heart, and soul and never gives them back.
Maybe it was a result of my fevered mind, or maybe it was real, but there were footsteps echoing through the warehouse, getting closer. I knew that they didn't belong to the Task Force or the SPK members, because these steps were slow and leisurely, uncaring how long it took to reach their destination. The stopped next to the body that I inhabited as if from a distance, and there was no sound for a long time save from my ragged breathing, but even that began to dissipate after a while.
Blearily opening my eyes, I saw a recognizable figure standing above me, and my heart gave a violent lurch. Tears, unbidden, sprang to my eyes, but even half dead I had control of my tear ducts, and they did not fall. My heart shuddered again, and my mouth moved as if to state the figure's name, but my vision darkened and my muscles relaxed.
There was no winner.
Justice was not something that could be accomplished through murder.
I get that now.