You remember when everything was different. You remember life before the war. You remember these things because you're the only one left. You lived through two wars and watched the children of you best friend's children's children go off to school. You fell in love once in your long lifetime, but it was a long time ago, and didn't last very long. You look back now at your long, hard life, and you cannot help but smile to yourself and think 'it was worth the pain I felt. It was worth it all.' And it was in the end because you, you alone, a broken old man with nothing left but memories of life long past, were blessed to have the best friends in the world. Friends that went down in history and a friendship that would one day save the world. You were only 15 when the first war broke out and you were approximately 23 when it ended finally, but you could tell it started long before then, you were, after all, there when it happened.
You can't believe it was that long ago. You look back that far and realize how strange and scary the world seemed then, and how now, at such and old age; you wish you had the kind of energy it took for you to do the things you did. You saved many lives in that first war, you know? You saved even more in the second. You were an unseen hero to so many and you didn't see it until the war was over and the tallies were marked- the good came out on top. You lost a lot in both of the wars- family, friends, colleges, enemies even- but in the end you gained more than anything- you gained freedom.
You sit in a chair, in your living room, in a house that once belonged to your parents, and you watch as the leaves once more turn red, and you smile. You see a little girl with red hair jump into the leaves that are raked into a pile and your smile wider than it was. You look at the man that sits across from you, looking so much like his father and grandfather before him, and the small boy that sits in his lap, listening to your stories with a look of pure awe and amazement at the many things you did and you wonder 'why was I the only one left? Why was I the one chosen to survive? To tell the stories of the wars and the stories of days before the darkness fell before our heroes all disappeared into legend. Why is it me?' The only thing is, you know the answer and you have for years. You knew it when your parents died when you were 19. You knew it when you're best friend married the love of his life in the middle of a war- the first war. You knew it when those friends first told you they were having a baby. But most of all you knew it when you realized you were the end of an era- the last member of a select few that never gave up. You may not have been born a hero; you may have lived your life in the shadow of those gone before their time. But now, as you sit surrounded by the family of your friends long dead and gone and the little family you have left, you know it better than you ever did- you weren't born to be a hero- even though you became one anyway, you were born to be… a legend.