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CHAPTER EIGHT. it still hurts watching him fade away
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LOSS WAS SOMETHING Ezra Windsor was forced to grow accustomed too. From the moment he witnessed his father slip away from him one cold night, fading away like breath on a mirror, grief, pain, and loss were three feelings that the young boy had come to know with time. He grieved for his father, and he grieved for the time they could've had together, but tragically lost down the line. He grieved for every life his mother took in order to protect him throughout the years. He grieved for the lives he took over the years. He even grieved for the childhood innocence he was once owned. The innocence he was forced to sacrifice in order to survive by taking the lives of people. People who were just trying to survive like he was.
Of course, Ezra was no fool. He knew he wasn't going to die of old age surrounded by his loving family in a comfortable bed as his final resting place before he took his last breath. Ezra knew he would meet death in one or two ways; he would either bite a bullet at the hands of his enemies, or succumb to the infection that's ravaged the world in the last twenty years. He was never destined to have a happy ending. That seemed to be the case for many others like him. They were all just people who were never destined for the fairytale ending they read in storybooks. But it never meant it didn't hurt any less when he lost someone because of their gruesome fate and even more tragic ending.
Ezra couldn't help but think about Tess when he thought about tragic endings. If there was one person the boy believed would make it to the very end, it was her. She was the exception. She was everything that no one else was. Someone they could never be. Tess was a survivor, and did everything in her power to keep fighting despite the loss she had endured prior to meeting Ezra. She was his moral compass in an ugly world, where it was easy to lose himself in the middle of it. And she fought every day until the time came when she no longer could.
He could never forget the sight of that bite mark carved into her skin like a bone chilling indentation — a constant reminder of their failure to keep each other alive. That's what it felt like to Ezra. He felt as if he had failed his friend, allowing her to succumb to the hands of a cruel and harrowing fate. Ezra felt a lot of things all at once. The pain, loss, and the indescribable wave of trembling grief was only the beginning of it. Ezra hated himself for not being able to do more. He felt guilty for leaving Tess behind to die in that fiery explosion, and he couldn't do anything to stop it.
