Frail heart

Closure

Chapter twenty-six

It was with a sharp gasp and following laboured breaths that you awoke that morning, rubbing the fading images from your eyes and wiping the beads of sweat off your forehead. This was the 4th nightmare in a row and you'd barely gotten any sleep that week.

A weak groan slips past your lips as you adjust your body higher up the bed to check the alarm clock on the nightstand. 3:24am. You feel your mind slipping ever so slightly back into the drowsy torment you'd only just managed to escape, harshly kicking the messy sheets off of your body before it has the chance to take you under again.

"Fuck..." You'd forgotten how sore your body was, the wounds you'd sustained not that long ago only now beginning to show signs of leaving, if the red, irritated patches of skin were any indication. A hand clutched to your aching side as you rose from the bed, only now noticing the glow of the moon piercing through the gaps in the curtains and projecting onto everything in the room. Normally, you'd think this to be peaceful, the perfect time to just...think, but you hadn't felt much of that recently.

Your steps were barely noticeable as you toed your way down the hall, hovering beside Wanda's door as you considered waking her. She had mentioned many a time that if you needed her, she was there, and she'd stayed true to her word. It didn't matter what time it was or what she had going on, she was by your side when you needed her to be, and you couldn't think of a sufficient way to thank her just yet. She'd done more than enough for you, so you decided to tough this one out alone.

Nudging the door open with your shoulder, you shut it gently behind you and inhale the chilled air of the compound's roof. You made your way over to the ledge, sighing heavily as you leant the majority of your body weight against it and gripped the railing. The view was beautiful from up here, miles of trees stretched across the land as the wind whistled through the leaves. The moon reflected off the lake, distorted by the ripples in the water as the fish swam around, and the ducks nestled together where the grass peaked through the water.

There was nothing more innocent than nature, it simply existed just to exist, or to be marvelled at, you didn't know. You couldn't blame nature for what it created, violence only ever meant protection and defence, while beauty only ever meant potential. There weren't such things as monsters in nature, only fighters, creatures with something to live for and protect. You never understood why it wasn't the same for humans, why people couldn't fight with the sole intention of maintaining something good and worthy, why everyone that had something worth fighting for was considered evil.

The most beautiful of flowers have thorns, just as the most honest people have bloodied ledgers, knowingly or not. You don't stay honest without fighting for it, it always comes with a price. Roses pierce the skin of those who try to pull them out of the soil, but to watch a world be torn down by people with the power to do so, and fight for that same world, is rebellion. It was all so nonsensical.

The warm breaths expelling from your lungs came into the world in whisps of white cloud, foreign to the cold air. The stars weren't as bright tonight, they'd faded considerably over the past few weeks, or maybe it was just you. Deception was the mind's favourite trick, and you'd fallen victim to it more than you'd like to admit. You couldn't tell when you were coming or going these days, it all blurred into a mess of confusion and loss and feelings you couldn't describe with dry eyes or a steady heart.

It was when these thoughts seeped into your head that you knew it was time to go back into the compound, it was possible to think too much, to not know if what you were thinking derived from you or some other force. You couldn't delve too deep, it never took you anywhere good, so instead you pattered back into the warmth and shook off the lasting cold.