These characters are not mine... and I'm sure they're probably happy about this.
Reaction to character death and insanity.
The battle has ended.
All that is left now is the aftermath. The time when one doesn't look through the bodies of the dead in fear of finding one they know; when the most important thing is licking your wounds before the next round.
This time there are more important things to worry on.
Today we may have lost one of our own.
We don't want to acknowledge it but we have lost one who was important to us.
Blocking from our memories that brilliant flash caught out of the corner of an eye, hours ago. We've had little success. Trying with all our might not to relive the fear and pain permeating through us at that moment, trying out how to figure out how to keep fighting afterwards. Trying to have hope against hope.
Inside we knew it was useless.
But now that the urgency is over, we feel weak. Repeating over and over: a soldier will not fall, a soldier will not show weakness.
Regardless we fall from our position and drop to our knees in the remains of the day. Beginning to search through the rubble. Clawing with hands not used to being on this end of it. Nothing has ever meant this much to us before.
No longer laughing.
Breaking open hands already raw from the fighting.
No longer condescending.
It doesn't matter. And even as we feel the blood drip we know it doesn't make a difference; it won't make a difference.
Futile though it may be, we continue to deceive ourselves. It's all a nightmare. It has to be. A big cosmic joke. We can't believe it to be true. It may just rip us apart into pieces so small we will be scattered in the winds, never to be reformed as we were. It's happening already. We can feel it. We are watching the drips hit the ground and we are searching and we are praying to a god we haven't believed in for years; if ever.
We think there are tears.
Suddenly there are hands pulling us back. And though we fight fiercely to return, it effects no change. Holding us close, confining us from the one thing we need to do; the one person we have to find.
You can't make us leave him like that!
And when we can no longer move, can no more struggle then an innocent babe, a wail tears itself from our throat.
Unintelligible.
Pain.
There are no words to make you understand anyway.
What do we do? There is nothing left.
We had but a brief moment, shining through the insanity that is our lives. We would give it up; give everything up if only it would give us a different chance, more time. Give you another moment, another smile.
Our world is fading. The colors washing down to pool at the horizon. Taking away our perception. These tones of grey threatening to be all consuming. Wanting to append to our horror by adding blindness.
There's nothing we want to see.
We remember when he made us promise.
It was the day we started to become.
It has been four months to the day since he extracted that promise, and we have held true. We have tried for him.
He's not here now.
And our blood sings to be released.
We still have found no other way to calm down from this torture we can't run away from. As we ricochet through the cavern inside of our mind, wondering how... why... we haven't followed yet.
We feel... broken.
In the face of the human cage that holds us, we give ourselves over to the dark.
Things will not be the same when we return.