What you take won't kill you, but careful what you're giving. There's no time for hesitating, pain is ready, pain is waiting, primed to do it's educating. Unwanted, uninvited kin. It creeps beneath your crawling skin. It lives without it lives within you
[Explanation: it was cleaning and laundry day and I wrote this just before dinner so I was tired and hungry and in need of caffeine. Sure, yeah, we’ll blame all of those factors for what happened here. Bad end.]
It wasn’t a feeling, not exactly. There wasn’t some grand indication, some signal to tell him he was slipping again. It was instinct, the subtle pluck at a nerve that was only partly his own. Pieces sliding into place with such ease that he didn’t feel them move at all.
Or it seemed that way. Hindsight was a marvel. Living through it, over and over again in different ways and different places–
He’d served again, once. Willingly, that time, with intention. Thought it only fair; to defend a new home, a new country, new family and friends. Ultimately he’d wound up clearing both sides of the battlefield with fire in his veins.
A healer then, perhaps? That lasted longer. He was respected, celebrated. Eventually reviled with envy. They came for him in the night, and he fought back. He defended himself and still… too far. Not as many fell to him, but too many. Too much.
The life of a hermit was not safe, either. Even when he wasn’t discovered despite his best efforts, didn’t fall to the trap of thinking he might be fine to simply watch a civilization rather than participate in it, when he kept to himself and became devoured by loneliness…
Something heavy and cold slid beneath his skin and clasped what passed for his heart from one beat to the next.
Was it always going to end this way?
Every end is a new beginning.
