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This is a life.
Yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, minutely, secondly, Silver realizes this.
The desolation left behind by the destructive force he’s spent his entire life fighting, an awful losing battle, brittle bones held together by hope and the feeling that one day, snow would be snow, and not ash.
Pitifully, it was almost destiny. It would have been if he truly was a hero, if he could have undone the irreversible. But one being is one being, and fire will burn whatever its hungry flames touch.
Until, of course, Blaze.
The only warmth of ember that Silver would ever learn not to fear, would learn to cherish and care about. To be protected by, and do everything in his power to protect. To defend his home, the only life he had ever been born into, he made a choice. To trust Blaze, and Blaze chose to trust him. Through all the dirt they’d sown and courage they’d shown, in every space in time. They would trust each other, and this would be their saving light.
There was monotony in defense, yet a sense of entropy was still laced in every battle. Maybe that’s because you can’t predict the moves of every opponent, even when you truly have been fighting them forever.
And shoes can protect your feet from burning, and gloves hide the callouses of your hands, but the both of them had always known what lies beneath the fabrics. Honor, and a cause. Pain, and the evidence. The everything.
A safe space, haven, almost, in darkness, save for a fire between the hedgehog and the cat.
Nothing more than heavy sighs were all that had been spoken for the span of minutes neither could be bothered to count, only grateful that the minutes, for once, weren’t spent fighting.
“I wish things would change,” Silver muttered, his breath forming clouds in the cold air. Blaze’s eyes, liquid gold, followed the trailing gas until it dispersed.
“I do, too.”
“Why does our life have to be this way?”
The question hung in the air, crystalline ice.
“I don’t know. We find our way in it alright somehow, though…”
That wasn’t much of a comfort, or an answer.
“Let me rephrase: we are fairing physically alright. Doing our best, all that we can. I don’t have an answer for why we are the ones fighting. But if not us, who else?”
Silver contemplates that for a minute. His expression finally resolves to something akin to understanding.
“You’re a miracle, Blaze.”
The cat took a moment to process that. Slowly, she asked. “A miracle?”
“I don’t think that I would still be fighting if it weren’t for you. Thank you.”
Hesitantly, she gave a curt nod. You’re welcome, went unspoken, but understood nonetheless.
“Is it like this where you’re from?”
She shook her head with a reminiscent smile, “No. It’s not much hellish over there, but I have half a chance at helping more people here than I ever could just sitting around.”
Vaguely, she wondered, if she could have ever imagined a world like this from beyond the confines of her windowsill. None of that truly mattered, now. Silver and Blaze had to daily learn how to uphold things heavy as eternity, hitting them fast as the speed of light.
“All I can truly say is, this is a life. This is our life. We fight until there’s no more fighting left to do.”
Until we cannot fight anymore, goes unsaid.