Hopeless

Stortytelling

,,Who was Hopeless?"
She asks him with dull eyes, but there is a soft fire in them, reminding him of the time when her eyes had been completly aflame.
Back then she had been full of passion and fire, she had been the girl that had wanted to avenge her uncle.
The girl who took it upon herself to save the world.
Again and again.

Right now she is asking him, because she knows that this question hurts him auch as it hurts her, when he asks how Alice is doing.
Littel Alice, her sister, who she killed.
Killed and brought back to alive, but Valkyrie seems to think that that doesn't matter.
All she can see is that she killed her littel sister.

Sometimes Skullduggery wonders what she would think of him  if he ever told her.
Would she be able to forgive him?
Could anyone?
At moments like this he wonders if Hopeless forgave him.

,,He was my best man."
True and still it says nothingh.
Hopeless was his best man at Skulduggerys wedding, but he was so much more.
He was the unbreakable heart, the one you could always rely on.
If you expected someone to throw himself between a bullet and someone it was Hopeless.

,,I thought Ghastly was your best man."replies Valkyrie.
Even now, Years after Ghastly's death both of themfedl the pang of loss, you feel when you have lost someone.

,,Hopeless was."for once is Skullduggery is speechless.
Hopeless was.
Hopeless is dead.
Every time again it hurts.

Eventually Skulduggery recovers and looks at Valkyrie.

,,Did I ever tell you how Hopeless saved my life?"
Of course he knows that he hasn't told her, but he always found that question the best way to start a story.

Silently she shakes her head and waits.

Soon enough his smooth voice fills the Bentley.

,,It was during the war.

Like most life threatening events it took place during the war.
Back then it was only me Ghastly and Hopeless, months later the other dead man would join our group.

We were on our second suicide mission and still recovering from our first mission.
Ghastly still limped when he had to walk and buy the way he flinched when he had to put weight on his leg, one could only assume that he still should lie in a hospital.
But at that time there was no one else willing to do what we did.
No one, except us was stupid enough to risk their life like this.

Hopeless wasn't limping, but his face seemed to be painted with black, blue and a littel green.
Every time we happened to meet someone they would stare at him as if he had grown a second head.
Hopeless always told them rather seriously that he was an artist and that his face his newest painting.

I personally was the one who was best of, with only some light bruising.

On our way to the army camp of the enemy, it started snowing."

For a minute Skulduggery paused, then he continued a littel hestiatingly

,,I can't remember in wich country we were, but it was a cold one.

We had to walk and every time, we stepped into the snow, we sunk in waist deep.

In the end we had to stopp for the night in a forest and hope that it would better tomorrow.

It wasn't.

The next three day were awful.
Even trpugh it was bitterly cold, we sweated and sweated when we were walking.
As soon as we stopped the cold seemed to catch up with us and bite us with it's icy teeth.

After a week, two days longer then we had calculated, we finally arrived at at pur destination.

It was Ghastly shouting ,,Finally we will get killed by somethimgh diffrent then the cold."