A coldness blew through him, winter winds going so deep through the skin you could feel it in your bones. Yet all around him, everything was burning, moans and screams of his children, begging for help but unable to receive. Everyone is far past saving anymore. He turned, eyes as big as goose eggs, spotting his offender, mouth ready to shout, but all of the sound is gone! It seemed his voice bled out, welling up from the Chinese male's back and spilling out onto the ground, staining it the deepest crimson, yet so clear at the same time as dark, frightening.
He reached out, as if to say, 'Don't leave me here like this!' Instead, he is met with a boot, fresh bruises blossoming like flowers in the spring sun, across the wounded porcelain. Eyes looked back, so cold, so sad! Wordlessly, a message was conveyed, 'We are at War.' All those years, gone! Washed away in red. This time, not lucky.
Those eyes pierced his soul, to this day. Only tearing deeper into him as time went on, when he thought about it absentmindedly, suddenly craving that pungent drug that will wash that terrible memory from him for only a short while. It never goes away forever, however. It scars, deep and unforgiving.
This was war.
Almost as if just saying this were to make everything he was doing correct, spilling so much blood of children, wives, elderly. People who have done nothing wrong this time around, know nothing about the war, expect nothing to happen to their families directly besides the unsteady rise and fall of the prices for things and abilities to travel.
This is war.
Bodies lying silent, giving their lives to the land they lay coldly on, warmth seeping into the ground, staining it eerily red, as if from over head view you would see the symbol of that very land.
Mouths lay gaping, bodies naked and scarred, some not even recognizable amongst the rubbish and scars in the ground. His children weeping, lost family members laying in front of them. Dying at the hands of the boy he found in that forest so many years ago...
Some would wonder why he didn't hate him as much as he should have. Why he didn't attack him when he least expected it, claim revenge in a large scale as Alfred did. Those people do not understand the feeling of raising someone from the ground up. They do not understand the feeling of love between brothers, parents, sisters. They do not understand what it is like to give everything to one person.
They do not understand the joy and sorrow it all brings.
This is love.
Not necessarily the kind of love shared in marriage. The kind of love you feel for someone when you never want them to feel the anguish of the outside, keep them forever sheltered in your arms and finding yourself frightened when they learn of other things besides the two of you. Protections. Stability.
This doesn't exist in an environment of chaos.
And that was exactly what his memory of the event was. Chaos. Something he could no longer control, no matter how much he attempted to suppress it inside of himself so that it never breathed in the fresh air of frequent remembrance. Pushed so far back that there was no light, no life in that part of him. It was dark, numb, and void. this hole seems to be growing inside of him every single moment he continues his being, haunting him in an unexplainable fashion.
Marks were left.
The memory can never be forgotten, no matter how hard you try.