Shadows of our end - KDA x Male Reader (Original)

Act 2 - 015

It's a nice day. But I wouldn't want to spend this day like this first day in the morning but Sam asked me to come to see her here and I wouldn't dare want to say no after everything that has happened... I think there is something important she needs to show me.

I spotted her waiting for me at the entrance. She glances over her shoulder and flashes me a weak smile. She's grown up to be beautiful, I would never have imagined her to grow up so quickly. I lift my hand into a tiny wave.

"Morning, Sam."

"Hey," she steps closer to give me a quick hug. "Sorry, I just need to make sure you are still with us, otherwise this would... be sad."

I furrow my brow at her as she pulls away. "What's up?"

She gestures at the cemetery. "Not exactly the place to start seeing ghosts of the brother you could never say goodbye to. It wouldn't be fair of you either to come here to haunt me, so, yeah."

I nod with a pained chuckle. "It sounds like these past two years were rough on all of you."

The two of us walk and she starts. "It has been... very rough. I don't know how to explain it but there was a flash one night and the world felt like it was going to fall apart, the rifts were happening much more frequently and months ago was the first time they all stopped."

Months ago I was... where was I? I killed Nox I think.

"When I joined up it was a requirement to be able to fend off the demons in a rift, the monsters... all of them. They threw us all into the deep end and I lost half of the people in my group in my first job..."

I glance at her to see her watching the headstones with a feint smile. "I sometimes think about them, think about how it would have been to see them here with me if they joined months ago instead of then."

I shake my head. "They forced you-"

"We had to," she shakes her head. "What choice did most of us have? Just let the world burn down around us and we watched knowing we could do something about it. Even Mom chipped in despite... despite her saying she would never come back to the scene after what she did."

I rub the back of my neck. "What happened?" I ask her. "Because I don't know why Mom left, I think she was scared to tell me because she was afraid that... if I knew the same thing would happen to me if I tried so hard to keep it from happening."

"Mom killed an entire agency. Wiped them out." She answers bluntly. "Two of them because they betrayed her trust... the rest died because she lost control over her powers and ever since then she walked away from that life."

Memory appears behind the two of us to weigh in his opinion. "One should not shun your powers, much like lost to the darkness, you mustn't let it overtake you but instead you should shape it."

Sam glances at him and then with a smile. "I don't know why, Mom never told me about that but only that... nothing she could do will ever make it up, because she the gods knows that she tried everything."

I exhale sharply. "I get why she wouldn't tell me."

She nudges against me. "Mom is doing her best to make sure you and I will be better than what she was... she promised Dad, promised that her focus will only be on the two of us moving forward."

I nod, recalling something like that being said once, but I don't remember when I heard those exact words. I look at the graves and see that my shadows all slowly drift to some of them but none of them ever enter the graves, as if something was calling out to me.

"Here we are," she lowers herself down beside a headstone and wipes the dirt off of it.

I freeze in place to see my own name.

"I remember it like it was yesterday, every week I came here hoping that maybe the grave would have been shattered with you cursing us for daring to think that you'd die just like that." She chuckles as she lifts herself. "I remember that the day was just like this one, it was warm, and the weather was nice, but I already missed you."

"All your friends were here," she breathes out. "I don't remember the names of all of them, but they assured me that you were adored when you were around. This funeral was held exactly three months after you 'died'." She turns around to look past me. "I remember that... even when everyone left someone came to me to apologise that she could never find you in the Void and that she had given up."

I lower myself beside my own grave. "It sets the perspective, doesn't it? How a death changes everyone..." I glance to the side to see another name that I remember, Akane. "May the dead be in a better place."

Memory steps toward the grave in my focus, and mimics my gesture. "This world is subject to Despair, may the worlds beyond free you of the nightmares that haunt you. You are free, your memory will be our weapon, our reason."

I glance at him and he responds. "A prayer for the dead, you knew him, I saw what happened to him."

I nod slowly. "He didn't deserve what happened to him," I breathe out and lift myself to my feet, almost like the two of us died that day. Or at least a part of me died then, a part of me died when I was shoved into the Void.

What's left to lose? Or what will I lose next?

Sam looks at Memory. "You are a Nightmare, right?"

He looks at her. "I am, but not yours."

"It's fascinating, you are, I mean." He turns to face her fully. "Your name is Memory but it feels like it is more than a name, like a purpose for you. I think it is the way you speak and what you said that makes me feel that way, sorry if I am wrong trying to make sense out of you."

He shakes his head. "You'll understand eventually, we all do," like wind being blown through the air, it chips away at his body and he fades away to return back to my shadows.

"Thanks for bringing me here, Sam."

She steps closer to give me another hug. "I wanted you to know that even though it may not seem like it right now, they did care for you. Unlike them, we never gave up, but I can't fault them for not waking up every day hoping that when you open the door you'd be right there. The day just never came."

I hug her tightly. "I don't know... am I dead to them?"

"You were." She whispers, "Give it time, even if they won't give you a chance I know that if you give them one they will show you that that a part of them did hold out for you, that they were holding onto the memories. That they wished they never gave up."

I breathe out with a heavy sigh. "Easier said than done, Sam."

"You've already done the hardest part, just prove to them that the world couldn't break you. You played its sick game, and you showed them that it would never be enough to erase you, that your shadow will always be there even when someone wants it gone."

Some of us cast a large shadow, Shadow. Yours will touch darkness that will come to consume you and in the end? Whatever is left is the Abyss. Prepare to make that choice because when that time comes the Abyss will swallow you whole.

When that time comes, decide, will you rule over the Abyss? Will that Abyss become the shadow you cast? Or will you just become another soul lost to the void you opposed?