Have You Ever Seen the Sun Rise at Midnight?

Victory

You succeeded.

You had won.

There will be future generations and prosperity because of you...

But you...

You will die alone.

In the midst of your greatest victory.

The knife was lodged deep in your chest. 

As you stumbled away from the last of your fallen foes you knew it would be your end.

In this dark, damp cave, your enemies' cave, filled with mildew and dotted with blood and sweat from the fight.

You collapsed to your knees at the entrance.

Breathing your last shuttering breaths with the sort of defeated desperation of someone who knew death was there but resisted anyway.

Struggling to cling to those last few seconds of life.

Scrambling to force yourself back to your feet.

Desperately trying to claw your way out. 

Even if you had to crawl.  

Trying to move from that forsaken cave and back into the light.

No one would find your body there. 

Not even if you could make it out that entrance. 

Maybe...

Maybe no one would even know what had happened.

For them there had been no fight. 

One day the demons had just stopped coming.

You had won. 

But at what cost. 

You had nothing remaining except this victory.

Everything else had been left behind or lost.

You were nothing. 

There was no one who would remember your name.

Alone and defeated.

Filled with misery. 

The hero dies alone. 

Unremembered as all but another average man, perhaps, from anyone you had once met on the streets. 

You did not manage to regain your footing again.

But you still managed to crawl. 

You could feel warmth on the back of your hand.

You choked on your own blood as it filled your lungs.

Inch by inch you moved forward though. 

Not ready to give up.

Not yet. 

You didn't want to die. 

Not yet.

The sun was warm now, bright, on your hands, on your arms, on the back of your head.

Painstakingly you pulled.

Dragging yourself onward until the light reached all the way, covering as far as your lower back.

Trembling, your hands gave out.

You could move no more.

Hacking and coughing, your body gave out.

It was over. 

Finally, you could physically do no more.

You could go no further.

You could finally rest.