All Fall Down
Lady Macbeth.
There she was, just a corpse lying on the ground. It wasn't Leila anymore – the soul of his love had departed from this body, and she was nowhere to be found. Only this mass of flesh and blood and clothing and steel that had once been part of her remained, and he could feel no sorrow for that. Why couldn't he cry? Why couldn't he? He wanted to cry, wanted all the grief and horror and loss to gush from the hurt in his heart. But he was frozen: couldn't melt those feelings, couldn't lose them in the tears that weren't there. What was wrong with him? She was his betrothed, for Elimine's sake, his betrothed! So why was he standing there with no expression?
He should be doing something now. What was it? Matthew tried to focus through the mist in his head that was madness, telling him this was all wrong, all wrong… Ah. Burying her. That was what he should do. Stupid. He had no shovel. Should have brought one from Badon. Gasps of laughter burst from his throat then. Brought a shovel with him, on the off-chance that he would be burying his own girlfriend? How would he have known? He would have to cut the earth with his sword, because he hadn't - Wait, wait. This was wrong. It shouldn't be happening this way. How could he be laughing, when he was so clearly standing next to…next to…Matthew gagged, but he was still laughing and it suddenly sounded like a death rattle…had she made that noise as she – No! He mustn't think about that. He couldn't think about that. He should concentrate on digging.
Scuff! His dagger bit into the soil.
Scuff! Scuff! Matthew could tell exactly how she had been killed – evaluating wounds had been part of his training. Her attacker would have come up behind her, knives positioned like so, and would have then struck fast, too fast to dodge, and then the blood…the blood…
It was rising up in his vision now; he could see her face as she died, but he hadn't been there, couldn't have. He looked down at the floor, but it was spinning and twisting away from him when he tried to keep his balance, and then he was falling. Where was the ground? He should have hit it by now, but it wasn't there anymore, and all that was left was the blood: the blood, and the nightmare he couldn't dispel.