Hey, you guys! I am back with another fanfic! PS. I have changed my username to SerpentineWizrad12!Please read and reveiw!
The night was young. The wind was fresh. The streets were vacant. The buildings were bare. Everything was a bone-dry skeleton of what used to be a happy, sunny city. The smoke filled the entire sky with a musty, choking haze that suffocated all of the life that had not already escaped its warm, musty clutches. I could practically smell the death and torture in the area.
My feet were bare and my clothes were thin. It was supposed to be winter. Snow was supposed to have covered the ground by now. My torn and battered feet were supposed to be frost bitten and blue, not burnt and red, just as my soul was supposed to be lively and happy, not sad, melancholy, and monochromic. So why had it come to this, with a burnt and twisted town with a pitch black afternoon and a night so monstrous that it ate what happiness had once been within me, when all I had wanted was a snowy yard in which I could slide down in trash can lids like the tears rolled down my dusted face?
All because of the match. That single misplaced stick of dried pinewood that had come so close to the wax, but had instead set the city a light. My family, who I had to watch burn as I ran, shouting to me to save them, to come back, to help. But I would never forget the pain and guilt that I felt that night, as I darted into nothingness, wearing nothing but a torn up tee shirt and some ragged old jeans I had found in my dresser. That match had burned them it had destroyed everyone and everything I had known and held dear to my heart. It had given me such a sense of sadness and pain that my heart was torn apart and left in my hunched chest to bleed and die.
So now, as I walk through my former home and life, I stop to watch as a fragment of burnt paper blows past my field of vision. It flows through the wind just as I had on the day of the fire. It jumps through the air, clueless and confused, unable to know exactly where it will land. It just keeps up its pace, knowing that it will end up somewhere, even it that somewhere it right back where it all started. The place that it would have told it's self to never return to, to leave and forget about everything. To start a new, hopefully better life.
I step further into this miserable heap of twisted, tangled bars and beams, this skeleton of death and misery. I don't want to. Really, I don't! It is the last thing I want to do on earth right now! The ghosts of all of those I have killed still haunt me by the thousands. Even if it was involuntary, I know that they would hate me for all of eternity if they had somehow managed to escape. I must be the only one left alive. The only one to share the guilt with. That nagging guilt that ceases to leave my body, killing me with my every move. It has made a home inside of me, a permanent home that won't be replaced.
Tears trickle down my rough and burnt cheeks as I take a couple more steps into me foretold death spot. Why did it have to be me? Why did it have to be me to be left alone in this sorry body of sadness and depression? Did I not have enough of those things to begin with? What shred of happiness and comfort I may have possessed left my body as I walked right on top of I am sure was a bone. A bone of one of my unfortunate victims.
Tears flood my eyes and form puddles around the skeleton.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" I fall to my knees (right on top of the skeleton's chest) and repeat these words ten times over, growing softer and softer each time.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" My voice reaches almost a whisper before another one springs in.
"What for?" The voice startles me and I jump about three feet into the air, landing with a menacing crack on top of the same skeleton's skull. Who ever this person was they must be really unfortunate to have been killed two times over by the same person.
I dart my eyes around, but only find fog and smoke circling around me in every direction. My focus is drawn to a white (well, white and mud stained) sneaker. It seems to have no owner. It just sits there, staring back at me with two eyes of dried mud and decay. Maybe I was just hearing things. Maybe I had finally gone crazy and was only imagining it when a girl around my same age came into full view, giving the sneaker an owner. Yes, I was certainly now just some insane murderer who had involuntarily killed thousands on innocent lives, young and old, for I was the only one in this town. Everyone was dead. I have killed them all.
The girl steps in closer. Her hair is blonde, but looks brown with all of the dirt it has captured. Her skin, very pale under the misty moonlight, had a certain glow to it that makes me think that I might have not actually gone insane. Maybe, just maybe, she actually was real. I might not have killed everyone after all.
She reaches a gloved hand towards me. The glove is white, but has the fingers cut out of it, showing me five cut up and scarred fingers, they have bits of flesh that have been burnt beyond repair. Great now I have to grab the hand of a girl who I have injured. I would rather just commit suicide and get it all over with. I would rather just go and be free, living in wherever death takes me, wrapping its caring and lovely arms around my needy body, taking me to a world in which I can finally feel at peace and at rest.
But, just like all things in my horrible life, death retreats from my calls and carries its self away, leaving me in the presence of one of my more fortunate victims to most likely just kill me herself.
I stare at her hand for a moment and watch as my tears wash away the mud that coated those tender fingers for god knows how long.
She smiles down at my trembling figure. Wow. She must be quite a friendly person to actually smile at the one who ruined her life. But than a thought strikes me. She does not know that it was me who killed her family, or that it was me who caused such a terrible fate upon her.
"Come on, don't be shy. There is nothing to worry about!" She Sais this last sentence with a cutting ease that makes me cringe both with pain for how much of a lie she is telling, and with jealousy for how natural she can make it sound.
What choices do I have in this situation? It is to not take her hand, run away, and make this kind girl's life even more shameful, or to place my hand in hers, grip tight, and make my life ten times more painful. At least for the second option I won't be alone anymore.
Two minutes pass. She still has her burnt red hand stretched out to me. I begin to panic. More tears come streaming into her hand and I begin to cry even harder, to plead with my soul to make my life normal again. To take back what I had started. There is only one way to do this.
Regretfully, I smash my hand into hers, making the shallow puddle of tears that have formed in the palm go splashing down like the rain that should have but never came on that mournful day of flames. I want her to leave. I want her to go and never return. I want to never see her face again. But what I wish most, and hope with all of my heart, is that I can find more people. More that I might not have slaughtered in that brutal fight to the death with fire and city, the one that fire won with a victorious yelp and stomp of glee. Maybe, just possibly, there are more. Maybe I am not so alone after all.
Getting to my feet is like bending two-foot thick poles together. My bleeding knees ache with stiffness and discomfort. My shaky legs can barely hold the treacherous weight of my shabby, bruised body that hold so much fear and shame from the year passed. I leave my head faced downward, so that the girl in front of me cannot see my tear stained cheeks and red eyes. These are the eyes that have seen so much. So much that they should not have seen. So much that my own mind begins to play tricks on them. They are also the eyes of which many tears have been shed. I watch the sad little droplets fall to the ground, making small puddles around my bare and bleeding feet. They mix with some of the fresher blood and roll off of my feet with great speed, as though they, too, can't stand me. I watch as they form one big opaque red puddle.
Moving my foot over the puddle, I smash down, making the puddle go everywhere. Just like my thoughts. Scattered. Not knowing what to think or what should happen next.
I slowly and regretfully turn my tear-filled gaze to the girl. She is still smiling. Her emerald eyes glare into mine like two big crystals. Pure and free of worry, filled with beauty and grace. I know that I can trust her, but how am I going to. All I have done to her is injure her and give her those red and pealing fingers.
"What is your name?" she asks. "Mine is Maka." She has a happy ring in her voice. If only She knew how hard it was for me to speak right now. How hard it is to force out those two blasted words. It never was easy and never will be easy again.
"Um… it's… Crona." My voice is near a whisper. I cannot make it go any louder than that. It feels awkward. All she has done to me is be kind and make me feel at home, when all I have done is take her home away.
"That is a lovely name! Now come on, Crona. I have some people for you to meet!" And with that, she drags me into the smoke filled streets.