(A/N: I wrote this two nights ago after watching the finale; I usually have a rule not to write after 9:00 but since this is just an atmospheric piece I broke that rule. XP I wasn't really gonna post this either but, eh, I figured I'd throw my mandatory post-SoG angst oneshot into the pile with the rest XD I don't know what happened to Misako or any other minor characters in this fic; they probably all evacuated the city. Or died. Take your pick. XD)

A soft orange glow, sleepy and drunk, filled the room with a tranquilizing haze. The usual smells of hot noodles and other dishes stayed stagnant in the air, having nowhere to go past the next table over. Cold air tried to sneak its way through cracks in the boarded-up windows, as if trying to escape the chaos outside, but to little avail. A dim neon buzzing played as the constant soundtrack to the night, almost forgotten as white noise. And lying on a mess of faded, used blankets were four teenagers, lying in a lazy pile and staring up at the ceiling without a care in the world.

This was not a happy scene— oh no, not by a long shot. The peace of the night was born from the silence of death, and the carelessness was only afforded by the fact that the four lying on the floor had nobody left to care for. Everything they had loved had been taken from them, snatched, gone in an instant.

One of the three girls in the group— a tan-skinned, amber-eyed girl with long, messy red hair— rolled onto her side, readjusting herself on the makeshift pile of blankets without much apparent success of comfort. She made a small noise of affirmation that she was just moving positions (any unnecessary stirring would be frowned upon by the others) and lazily flopped one of her hands near the girl's face that was closest to her.

The second girl— a brown-eyed, hardly-moving lass— didn't make any noise back, but shifted her head to the side to affirm that the first girl could stroke her face if she so wished. These two girls of the group were by far the most active, although they still mostly remained passive enough so as to not disrupt the others.

The "others" consisted of one more girl— this one with metallic hair and an eternal expression of complete nothingness— and a tattered blond boy with numerous scars and bruises that had yet to heal. He sometimes played with the bandages, and none of the others cared. They all knew that the deepest scars within him— within all of them— would never heal. They'd never even come close. A sedative of acceptance was all that kept their wounds from breaking open or becoming infected; a drug of passive denial was all that allowed them to stomach the sedative.

"Time."

It was the first word spoken in a countless number of hours, and it was a question, not a command. The red-haired girl glanced up at the clock on the wall and answered the blond boy with an equally lazy voice.

"Midnight in five."

"What are we still doing up?"

"Sleep then."

"Fine."

That was the most passionate argument in the group since… well, since before the group had started, really. Started the way they were now, that is— now that the clock had stopped ticking. (Oh, it ran. Time moved forward. But you simply couldn't hear it anymore.)

The blond-haired boy closed his colorless eyes and breathed slowly, lulling himself to sleep. The hardest part about achieving sleep was achieving an empty head. Everyone knew you couldn't go to bed while you were still thinking— there was only one thing to think about, and that was loss. And thoughts of the loss brought nightmares, and nightmares brought waking up, and waking up brought emotions, and those were terrifying. Everyone agreed it would be for the best to avoid them at all costs. Even to be caught would be better than to have to sit through a night of emotions, because the latter was contagious and brought feelings and pain and thoughts of reality.

Sleep wouldn't come and thoughts weren't allowed, so the boy turned his gaze toward the silver-haired girl, who was staring off into space as usual with a blank, emotionless stare. She didn't eat. She didn't sleep. She didn't talk unless prompted for information. It was comforting. "Broken" had been her code name, during the brief period of time when the group had thought of resisting. Thinking of that time was almost enough to make the blond-haired boy laugh. Resistance only brought about emotions, and why they'd ever cared to bring those upon themselves willingly was beyond him. It seemed like he'd grown decades since that time, although really it was probably only a matter of… weeks, perhaps? Well, weeks may have passed according to the clock, but according to the spirit it had been an eternity. Time passed slowly in the routine, after all.

And the boy wished he could get to sleep so he could get back to the routine. Sleeping was the best part, no doubt, but then there was the waking up. A dull few moments of confusion and haziness and generally not knowing who you were: that was almost as good as the total unconsciousness of sleep. And with the routine, you were allowed to keep your eyes closed for as long as you wanted— as long as you didn't start thinking, of course. Then you had to get up and move onto distraction, which consisted of talking (it was only the nighttime that was totally silent), eating, singing, and a small amount of drinking. There used to be a lot of debate about drinking, because on one hand, it helped the group forget, but on the other, it brought emotions, and the relief was only temporary. Now it wasn't technically against the routine, but it was usually reserved for when a member woke up from a nightmare.

"Sorrow" had been the boy's code name back in the era of code names, and although nobody used it anymore (as names in general had been discarded), he sometimes repeated it to himself in his head while he tried to go to sleep. He liked the way it sounded. Soothing and hazy, repetitive and sleepy, like the dull buzzing from the overhead orange lights that filled the room. The room was the primary location of the routine, and it was usually only the red-haired girl who went outside of it for supplies— outside the room, mind you, not the outside of the building. That was strictly against the routine.

Outside, as everyone knew, was cold and terrifying. Reality was unbearable; loss, pain, and regret were all that existed even if you took away the danger. It was really quite miraculous that the danger hadn't found them yet— the lights were kept on at all hours— but the group had really stopped caring about that. Maybe the danger got what it wanted. Everyone else had evacuated, as far as anyone in the group was aware. So maybe they gave up hunting. Or maybe not; maybe they were still in hot pursuit, living in reality and seeking to destroy every last member that had once opposed them. But the group didn't worry too much about that, either. They'd come to the consensus that a brief reckoning with reality would be worth it if they got eternal sleep afterwards. (Eternal sleep also used to be a point of debate, but the group had agreed to at least wait until the danger found them. The routine was their rightful punishment for all that had transpired, particularly in the case of the boy, although the others had slipped into apathetic forgiveness with him.)

Apathy. That was really the best word for the entire situation. Peace, tranquility, and two meals a day on one side of the coin; mutual loss, sorrow, and unbearable grief on the other. But it was one coin. And it was all the group had, and they'd learned to live with their lot. They were constantly physically weary, they all had scars that ran too deep to heal, and none of them would ever be truly happy.

But they had food. And sleep. And if they were going to be completely honest (which none of them ever were out loud but none of them ever tried to deny), they had each other. The red-haired and black-haired girls were the most open about it, most likely because of connections they'd had before the routine, but all of the group followed the unspoken mutual agreement that they were family now. Oh, it wasn't the same. The black-haired girl and the boy didn't even acknowledge that they'd been together much longer before the routine (after all, everything before the routine was forbidden from conversation). Neither did the emotionless one speak a word, or the red-haired one ask any questions about what might have been. The past was past now, and the group considered their lives to basically be over. They were four broken puzzle pieces that didn't fit together without all the pieces in the middle missing, but they stayed together anyway. After all, they had nowhere else to go.

The boy became vaguely aware of the dimming of lights; the tiniest sliver of excitement was allowed in as he realized he was finally falling asleep.

Midnight hit.

The soft orange glow of the room shone out into the vast expanse of nothingness. The boy fell asleep and the others, save the silver one, eventually followed. Nothing had changed.

Nothing would ever change.

(A/N: In case the fic itself didn't make it obvious, I purposefully never used anyone's names.)