@terrorsave
it's been years-- how many though? he's really lost count
between a throttling pandemonium of viral attacks, the world has only grown rotten and more dangerous with the passage of time. there are only a few soldiers left from an era far off that still 'fight the good fight'- whatever that fucking means anymore. it's a losing battle against corporation after corporation that vie for power through greed - the expense of innocent lives simply didn't matter.
it never does.
with the aging days, steve's memory remains a vault. locked in memory; fresh blood, gunpowder, the scent of decay, a mammoth mountain of pain and torture set before his eyes. bodies. bodies. and more bodies. the island never left the boy's thoughts, his dreams nightmares. it serves as a reminder of mistakes, stolen time, childhood. -- love.
staring at the overgrown headstone, the chiseled beginning of the name starting with 's' only manages to breed nausea in the pit of steve's gut. wrong, wrong, wrong. he should be in that grave. should be the one rotting, with worms crawling through his eyes and infection long since faded away.
ghosts don't belong here.
but why was this fucking thing here in the first place? HOW long has it been here? but more importantly, why is HE here?
claire. of course she'd never leave him behind, after all this time.
in truth, he's been running for so long. afraid. yes-- fucking scared shitless, really. in his youth steve wouldn't have come to the conclusion so fast; always eager to prove himself, to please others, to not be USELESS. but those ideals withered and transformed after the island incident, rockfort had changed everything.
SHE did too.
seeing his own grave with a fresh layer of snowfall and wired brambles clutched at the base fills the boy with a visceral pull that hounds every last muscle taut. december has it's demons and each cycle of seasons only roots him deeper into a lingering despair. its stupid, he knows. steve knows he should think better, make the most of his time while he still lives and breathes.
it's a gift; no-- its a fucking curse. just a sick game and we're in for the long haul. the chess board's been flipped so many times over, long before the burnside name was wiped clean from umbrella's records.
for what he assumes is the cemetery's usual visitors car door closing, eventually break steve out of just staring at the headstone like some pining idiot craving past dues and justice. one knee digs into the snow; it's cold but he's layered in a simple jacket, gloves, a hoodie pulled up beneath the first layer. steve realizes he doesn't feel the temperature as well as he should, learned over the years the virus' keen abilities to surpass most human limits.
slow, steady fingers graze over the top of stone - brushing away the powder. soon to follow are the dried brambles, broken and brittle, disintegrating under simple touch alone. it reads the remaining letters of dread that spell out the name: 'steve burnside'.
