Yup, Billy Talent.
And as the song promises, this IS depressing (if I wrote it right).
There's no lyrics.
He trudged through the ashes, each footfall encouraging little white clouds to swirl around his ankles. Twisted shapes loomed over him, glinting softly in what little sunlight managed to seep through the oppressing clouds.
He blinked as rain began to fall, leaving streaks on his soot-stained face. The drops pounded the ground, striking with loud reverberations on the metal scraps littering the area. Where the rain hit, fires hissed, and steam rose off the hot metal plates.
Hulking carcasses of battleships rose tall above the small gulley he walked in, an ashy strip ripped from the ground by a stray ship hitting the Terra at an angle. The ground was hot where he stepped.
Both sides had suffered losses, terrible, agonizing losses. Screams from both sides, Cyclonian and Sky Knight echoed in his ears. Flashes of faces, contorted in fear as they plummeted toward the Wastelands obstructed his vision. The smell of fear and burning metal assaulted his nose.
Now, there was only silence, only darkness, only smoke. No one was screaming now, the battlefield was as quiet as the graveyard it had become. No one stirred; no one was left to stir. His heart throbbed with the knowledge that he was alone.
Something cracked under his foot, and he looked down to see a chunk of glass fallen away from the window of a ruined ship. It was slick with black dust and rain water, but he could still see his reflection, distorted by the spider webbing crack in its surface.
His features were bruised, blood mixed with dirt caking one side of his face where it had leaked from a deep gash of his forehead. His fiery hair was dark and limp, matted, sticking to what skin it touched. The dislocated shoulder in the reflection kept the corresponding arm held at an awkward angle.
He walked on, limping, stumbling past the ersatz mirror because it was all he could do now.
There was nothing left; no friends, no family, no enemy.
No emotion, no pain.
Numb.
He'd take any amount of torture over this, spill his blood time and time again, until the streets were red and he was lost, if only he could reverse the last forty-eight hours. He didn't want anything more, and nothing less. He simply didn't want to be.
But his bitter, traitorous heart kept pumping. With each beat he could feel the life moving within his veins, like scorching hot oil, when there was nothing now in theirs. He was empty of all else. The burning oil didn't really hurt anymore either. He was separate. From soul, from pain, from heart. Like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz.
He walked on, climbing over the twisted scrap of airship without seeing it. He walked into the small forest approaching the Terra's edge, wasn't aware of the rain stopping.
Like the Tin Man who'd travelled to Oz he felt heavy, stiff-limbed, rusted. He moved sluggishly, tripped over a root twisting up from the dirt and fell flat.
He looked up and found himself staring at a little yellow flower inches from his nose. The tiny plant was covered in a light dusting of ash and metallic flakes, rusting in the light rain still dripping from the tree branches.
He stared for a moment, lost inside his head, before he raised one heavy arm and crushed it beneath his hand, just as everyone else had been crushed today.
He was too numb to realize just how much he wished someone would do the same to him. That someone would bind him, strap him down and beat him, whip him with chains, anything, he didn't care. He only wanted out of this terrible feeling of emptiness that had swallowed him whole. He rather feel pain than nothing at all. Agony would be better than this numbing misery.
And if giving in, if wishing torture upon himself made him the Lord of Cowards, then so be it, because Death was the Queen of Pain and today they had embraced.
The trees were thinning up ahead; it escaped his notice. He kept his eyes down, not because he was watching for roots, but because looking up took too much effort. The smell of burning metal was fading, replaced by the fresh scent of leaves cleaned by a summer shower. He trudged on, blind to the Atmos around him.
The Atmos.
They'd trusted him, put all their hopes and faith in him. The people had stood him up on a pedestal, made him out to be some great hero. But he had failed them, not that it really mattered in the end because he had done his job.
Now he was just the empty stand covered in cobwebs, with a clear circle empty of dust where the trophy had once stood. He was the outer shell that had once housed a hero's soul.
And as Atmos had trusted in him, so too had he trusted in them. He took orders from the Sky Knight Council, completed dangerous missions simply because he knew it was right and they had asked him to. Now he owed them nothing. He would take no more orders from men who sat in dusty buildings all day and sent innocent children to their deaths without so much as flinching.
He was their puppet no longer. He was here, in this graveyard with everyone else; forgotten, left to rust, to decay…all of them.
He reached the end of the forest, cleared the last of the trees. Dark clouds covered the sky as far as he could see, blocking out the sun. Suddenly his legs gave out and he collapsed, feet from the edge of the Terra.
He had no strength to get back up. Simply laid there, face down in the wet grass, breathing in the smell of clean nature and ash as it drifted down from his hair.
There were storm clouds roiling in the lower cloud layer too, he could see distant flashes of lightning past the Terra's edge.
This was good, he decided as his eyes drifted shut, it fit; there was no last chance to see the sun, not now, when his family was gone.
Three Days Grace pops in there oh so obviously too. Sorry 'bout that, couldn't help it.