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It goes without saying that, Death is a simple means to an end.
However, in spite of the worship of trepidation it faces for its impending nature, it is anything but.
It is a gloomy, and rather dull, Sunday afternoon when Dahlia Caste is pronounced dead. There is an uncouth silence that surrounds her corpse, and, if the fraught quiet portrayed nothing else, it was suffocating. The screaming tempest that engulfs the field, now devoid of life, makes Peter realize he chose the life he is now in abhorrent regards for. Since the day he decided that the mask which veils his face will become an effigy of prospect, Peter knew, in the furthest depths of his budding soul and the buried truths of his heart that coveted a world akin to one he was so desperate to congregate, that he had signed his life away. To be a hero was to be prepared to shoulder the suffering of the ignorant, pour solace into a world that will never appreciate you, and break for the masses which pummel you in lieu of their own desperate survival. It is a cruel, inescapable cycle with no innate rhythm but stark purpose—save the weak which are accustomed to failure: Humble the strong which have lost their way in a moment of compulsory greed. This impudent gluten has opened the mouths of many, ready to receive the food of clemency, but shunned the notion of others.
Regardless of all the suffering it has brought him, Peter wanted to save people.
Though, people seemed to be ensnared by the maudlin mourning of illusions. It was an age of fundamental understanding, but cosmic chaos. It was the destruction of fallacious safety most people tucked under their pillows at night in good faith. In short, it was an iconoclast of sorts.
Dahlia Caste was dead.
She was, and it was all Peter's fault.
Though it's no surprise to anyone; Of course it's not, because Peter knew the ups and downs of loss like the back of his hand.
There is loss in every life. It is common, certain, and remiss. This fact Peter has known of ever since he was a young boy. Regardless, as his body grows older, and his mind wiser, it never becomes any easier to digest. After all, obtaining a seat at the dinner table is not the insurance of a satisfactory meal. And he'll be damned, but Peter is starving. This stagnant pit in his stomach is synonymous to the insatiable urge to consume: the good, the bad, and the in between. Similar to Dahlia. Similar to the whole world. Similar to Peter himself. It was making him sick to think that he was comparable to the very people he vowed to protect simply because of their differences. Though, really, it couldn't have been helped. Peter was destined to fall along with the rest of the world.
Dahlia could never escape the temptation of power held within the walls. It whispered things to her, proselytizing a life without captivity. A life Dahlia and Peter had preached to the world, but with less malicious intentions of breaching this utopia. Dahlia felt trapped in the flesh of her own body, a blanket that's meant to shield the organs, the parts of which make a person vulnerably human. Peter had to save her from what she wanted. He had to.
