Of Love and Death.

The Past Chapter 19: Of Love and Death Pt. 1

Warning! This chapter contains blood, murder, death, small-scale war/fighting, more death, some existential crises, perhaps a little bit of trauma and grief, begging, fear of death, did I mention that there's death yet?, being transformed against your will, and quite possibly body horror! There's the final one for the bingo card! Body horror, we've got a black out bingo of trigger warnings completed! 

I should actually make a bingo board and see how long it takes to fill all the squares. 

Anyway, there's also some love in here. 

And, yes, war is bad. Peace is good. This is social commentary, but not the chapter. Please don't read the majority of the chapter as social commentary except for the parts where it s exceedingly obvious that it is. I hope this all ends as peacefully as possible, as soon as possibly, for the good of as many people as possible. 

I chose not to write a summary for any of this, at least not tonight. If you'd like one, and I haven't added a comment saying I put one, then please just ask. 

Fire and Mind were holding hands. Tightly. Like griplocks against each other's fingers. Woven together like wool or fabric. Mind could feel the heat pulsing through his palm. Emboldened and brighter by fear and anger. And some sort of protective instinct. You could still leave, were the words that he heard Fire think. And they were true. Mind could still leave.

Of course, Mind wasn't going to. You could leave too, he shot back. More to fill the silence than anything. That was all any conversation was right now. Filling the silence. The anxious fidgeting as you waited and waited with this piercing thing looming over your head. There even as you actively tried to block it out, all you could do was wait and wait and wait. Everyone could feel it. But no one could do anything about it except fill the silence.

But this was the end of the silence. Mind could sense them. Just barely, just on the edge of his mental radar. But they were here. Moments, mere moments. Everything that Mind wanted to say had already been said. He wanted to keep it at that. To not cheapen anything else. But at the same time, there was this pressing urge for a grand gesture. Something that would comfort him. And comfort Fire. So that there was nothing left unsaid to regret.

Looking up at Fire, Mind took in the way his face was silhouetted against the rain. It was still raining. But water had never bothered his boyfriend. Correction, Water had often gotten on Fire's nerves. But the actual flames of the sun had never been hindered by even an ocean of liquid.

There's one moment that you always know will be the last. The last time you're standing in the waves at the beach. The last time you leave your home before you move. The last time you eat your favorite meal, or the last time you hug a friend. Something inside of your bones makes you want to hold that moment within your heart, so that you never forget it.

Everyone has their favorite method. Maybe they write it down after the fact, in a journal. Maybe you give your friend a hug, or don't finish the last bite. Maybe you spin around in a circle inside of each room, forever sealing inside of you how it looks.

Or maybe you block and ignore that moment, so that you can pretend that it's not happening. So that you can pretend it's going on forever, never going to end, never going to fade. Sometimes you don't know when the last moment is. And it blindsides you, and you hate that. Because you never got that catharsis of having one last time, one last hurrah before it slipped away again.

Mind wasn't going to pretend that this was all going to work out okay. He wasn't going to pretend that he thought they would succeed. He wasn't sure what that meant. Death, maybe? Maybe that was what Cold wanted. Or maybe she wanted to drag him to the Shadow's Orb and make him suffer.