The snow was cold, on his bare feet. The wind, even in it's slow, leisurely zephyrs, biting. One hand was clasped around the IV stand beside him, used, again, for support, as he stood in the entryway of the clinic.
He needed a cigarette, and he was having one, despite the better judgement of his physician.
Any suitably slow death is indistinguishable from a life.
Snow buries things, and buries things, and buries things, until there is nothing remaining save the soft, impermanent shapes.
He flicked ash into the wind, and suppressed a shiver. His feet were becoming numb now, but this was okay, preferable to the artificial comforts of his hospital bed. The biting cold was real, and he enjoyed it.
He took another drag on his cigarette, and sat down on the spartan, wood and metal bench that stood in the entryway. The world was coming apart at the seams around them. He had seen it himself, and yet, he couldn't shake the overbearing feeling that he, personally, was doomed.
The absurdity of it brought a laugh out of him, a chuckle. The warmth of it dissipated rapidly. It is the way of the universe, to return to empty cold. Energy, ephemeral. Heat is a presence, and presence is fleeting.
The man turned down to literally gaze at his naval, and laughed again. He was thinking too much. This is what he was without the doing. At least it was what he was now. All he had to do was bare up under the pressure until the next, pleasantly distracting crisis came along, and he could throw himself into that.
All things must come to an end. That had been his job, after all. Atropos' personal killer. To do endings. To kill and not ask why. To refer to what was happening to him as mission creep felt... inaccurate. It had not crept. It had run away from him. Or they had run together. He and his work. The work that expanded in scope and gravity with each passing day, irrespective of the fact that he was but a simple man, of simple origins. A killer. He stubbed out his cigarette against the pressure treated lumber of the bench, and tossed it responsibly away inside the ash tray. Numb feet carried him back inside. It was time for dinner... and there would be pudding.
