A/N: This is going in a sort of loose chronological order, so you can correctly assume that this takes place after the events in the last chapter :)
icarus enjoyed the view — wow. That was the longest review I've ever seen that had the opening sentence of "I'm going to keep this short." Great job with cross-country! I have a friend who used to do it, but she moved to Virginia and I don't know if she still runs. My swim team won 1st place for the boys and 2nd for the girls in conference! I didn't get to swim in districts cause it's hard for girls to get in since there are more guys than girls. Our regionals are this weekend, I can't wait to see how it goes!!! You were right about Riza's thoughts, they aren't exactly what she's consciously thinking, but they are strongly affecting her actions. I think she tries not to think too much. It's kind of funny, the lines you say you like the most are the ones I throw in randomly, not really thinking about it... what I'm trying to say is thank you so much for the longest review I have ever gotten!
winglessfairy25 — to be honest, I don't know how old they are, or what rank... I'm sorry about that, if anyone wants to give me a few tips it would be greatly appreciated. (Crap, I started another story without knowing half enough about the characters. How many times will I do this before I learn?) I have read some of the manga, but I don't have a lot of time lately. I'm sorry if there were some errors, that was all my fault, I've been writing so darn late at nigh (well, technically, the morning) I'm glad you liked it, even with the problems! What confused you exactly? Thanks for reviewing!!!
I Can't Move
He'd fallen so much more fantastically than her. She figured the shock was about the same. The feeling that it wasn't just the room spinning, it wasn't just the tent or your head. It was the entire desert spinning around and around, the whole world spinning so hard that your stomach revolted and so did your poor heart that you will soon realize is past repair and will never be what it was again.
She could hear him retching behind his tent. There were other ones at the same activity and other ones who already had made the air thick with cigarette smoke. And there were some like her who just sat and stared straight ahead, blind to anything and everything. For once she couldn't remember the battle. It was all a blur of fear and hands that didn't shake anymore (not until afterwards; afterwards her whole body quaked, and she couldn't move.) Of the stink of death. All she could pull into her fractured mind was a splintered image of fire growing where it shouldn't be able to. Of fire that was an animal with molten teeth and searing claws.
The image could move in and out of focus, drift and scatter and melt, because her head didn't have the strength to keep it whole. But that didn't take away any of the memory. That didn't keep her from knowing that her head was to weak to keep one image together. Just because she was too weak to keep one man together.
And now he had fallen hard and fast to where he lay, broken, lost. Not understanding just what he'd done, what they'd done to him. In time he will understand that it is not something you can understand. And it's not something you can know and see and smell and touch and keep your sanity at the same time.
He has just signed up for a lifetime of ghosts whispering in his ear. And now he knows it. Her own ghosts are rising up inside her and she listens to him heave without hearing. Sniffs the stinging aroma of second hand smoke without smelling. Feels the blood between her fingers without touching. Sees her hair bleached white as the bones the desert greedily swallows without looking in a non-present mirror. There's no need to leave her head now, not when the whole world is in her head already. And she is slowly losing the grip of her will, so the world inside her head is a little number, a little quieter.
Stubbornness is not a good enough reason to live, maybe. That would be a problem for her little heart that wants so desperately, so pitifully to keep beating, because stubbornness is the only thing she has now except for her orders and her gun and the ever shifting sands.
She is shaking, because she knows that she doesn't care, that she is becoming just like the ones who just want to die. Some of them did. Just decided they'd rather die by their own hands, instead of by some innocent forced to kill to survive. She let that image into her world, let it rip her apart, let it help her to repent for the lives of that day, for the lives of the day before, and before that and then and then. She can't remember how long she's been here, and she can't remember ever being not here, so she has been here forever. And one memory cannot repay the sins of forever. That is an impossibility.
Footsteps crunch on sand and she suddenly is wrenched into a world that is too sharp and too cruel. His hair is black, but the desert has already taken the luster out of once perfect locks. Now he was dusty and his heart was destroyed, decimated in an all-shattering blast of what passed as reality in this world he would come to only know.
He stumbles towards her. Broken eyes like shards of black glass, crushed underfoot, they catch hers, and hold them there because seen another's eyes in months. They are dead. Her body shakes.
"Why?" his voice is raw.
She is shaking with guilt, and she cannot move.
A/N: I actually wrote this while writing the last chapter, and finished it before I got to the third verse...! haha. I hope you all liked this! I enjoyed writing it. Reviews are my life-juice! I love them!
