Kuebiko: n. A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.
Jazz feels like he's been old his whole life. There is a vague imprint in the back of his mind of being a child, happy and free and restless and bare-footed as he ran through the green hills behind his mother's little wooden house, but lately he's begun to wonder if that might just be a memory that belongs to someone else.
What he remembers now is all heaviness and fear, the weight of his armor and his sword still hanging off his shoulders even when he hangs them on the wall by his bed each night. He feels like he's always tensed up, his stomach in knots and his heart in his throat, waiting for the peace to come crashing down around his ears like shards of broken glass. He is strong. He is capable.
He is twenty-seven years old, and he's ready to be done.
It's not that he doesn't care for the people around him, it's not that he wouldn't do anything to stand by them for as long as he possibly could, but he's just so tired of this whole backwards world that keeps eating up all the boy he tries to train to be men. He isn't ready for it to be over, not really, not yet, but there are days when all he wants is to lie down in the tender-dark arms of his underground caverns and go to sleep for a while.
There is no rest, though, so he rises to don his armor again, feels the heft of it in his hands and in his heart. People are dying, he thinks, sits down on the edge of his bed as his knees buckle a little at the thought. He can't leave them to this disaster alone, and he wonders, did the child he used to be ever think of this, of the barbarity humans are capable of? Was he ever this tired before the world went cruel?
He stands up and walks out, falls back into his military footsteps—one, two, one, two, Claves to his right side, Falsetto to his left, and behind him the long stream of men and women who are following Jazz because they believe Jazz has the answers that will lead them to a better tomorrow. It weighs upon him, but he smiles and struggles not to show it.
There is, he'd learned, a special kind of weariness that comes when you surround yourself with people who will meet a sudden end.