Work Text:
Grief is an emotion that sits with you. It lingers.
Other emotions come barging in alongside it.
Horror.
Self disgust.
Anger.
Apathy.
Why did you live as a coward, when so many others died? It's simple really.
You ran away.
You left them to die.
All that time you spent living interesting lives, your soul shoved back into your body again and again, each time coming back as something stronger. And yet, when you got to Hazma, you traded all of that to live.
Not for everyone to live.
For you to live.
Just you.
And Charlie.
You left them there. To die, or to live In suffering, maybe.
The worst part is no one knows what you did. They blame gas. As if that in any way explains the giant crater.
Charlie can not look at you, anymore.
That's ok.
You don't want to look at him.
When you do, you wonder if the feelings in his eyes are reflected in yours.
You feel empty. Guilty.
The school is gone, and it is your fault.
Everyone is gone. Even your demons have left you.
Maybe there is nothing you could have done, but… you will always wonder.
What if you had fought him instead? What if you hadn't taken the easy way out?
What will you do if Hazama invades?
Charlie continues to run away, and you don't even learn that he left until you try to find him.
And you guess, you are alive, and so you have to keep on living. Even if you don't know what to do with it.
What can you do with it? You fought so long to get out of there, that now you are in the real world you don't really have any goals.
You are alive, but you don't feel like it. Some days you don't really feel much of anything. Maybe it's a leftover effect of dying so many times, and being shoved back in. Maybe a part of you doesn't remember how to stop being dead.
You are going through the motions, some days. Other days it's hard to get up. You should learn to get better at pretending to be Ok, even if you're not really sure you can ever be Ok again. Your parents aren't going to let you avoid school. They've signed you up for a new one, since your old one disappeared out of the blue.
There are days where you wonder if you should let go of this life, and try to come back stronger. The rest of you point out that dying that way would be dying worthlessly, and would therefore lead to you being possessed by a worthless demon. You have to make the most of life.
You realize you are applying demon logic to the business of staying alive.
You don't live in there anymore. That's the fate you left everyone else to.
Maybe you should have stayed there. For all you wanted to run away, you thrived there.
Now there's a wall between you and everyone else. They can't understand it. You can't talk about it.
They weren't there.
Charlie was, but he's gone.
And you are left, still standing.
Some days it feels like you can't live, but you get up and pretend anyways.
Sometimes you argue with someone, and for a moment you feel alive.
And then the grief hits you. It walks in your shadow, coming for you when you are feeling alive, instead of dead inside.
It haunts you, the thought that you are alive in the human world, and many of your old friends are not.
Should you even enjoy this? They are never going to see the natural sun again.
And it's your fault. You abandoned them.
Maybe they will invade the human world alongside Hazama one day.
And you learn to hide when you feel numb. To smile when you are feeling anything but happy.
The new school is both better and worse.
You join the fencing club, and have to work to tone things down because you are not fighting for your life anymore. You don't want to hurt anyone.
You watch them, and note in your head what mistakes would lead to death in a battle.
There's one kid there, a spoiled son of a pharmaceutical family, who drives you to annoyance with his antics.. It makes you feel alive. You could almost like him for it, when you argue and everything else is driven out of your head.
You get better at pretending with time. Or maybe the mask becomes a reality.
Then, everything changes.
Demons invade. You don't hear anything about Hazama.
And a part of you feels excited, you feel alive, this is your territory! You are talking about it. You are talking about demons, and they have to believe you, it's happening in front of them!
You have your sword, and you are getting ready to go!
Then you remember, and your enthusiasm evaporates.
You can't do this again. What if you balk? What if you fail them?
You can't do that again.
You don't even look at the face of the kid you give your sword to.
You are too busy thinking of old friends and failures