A dimly lit shack remains disordered during the night's darkest hours, battling to be still, a time for rest and idleness—but no, not particularly for this certain someone who lingers awake and restless.
Crickets create their nightly noise, accompanied by the sounds of a single finger beating on sturdy wood and a leg tapping heavily against cobblestone.
Gradually, the noise resonates throughout the dull shack, and the figure in it remains in the dark.
What poor soul—kept awake with relentless thoughts, clearly subjected to the terrors of the burden of thinking so heavily; it's irritatingly unbearable. Thoughts remain loud and emotions feel static.
Funny how this weight lies carelessly on my shoulders while I struggle to simply lie on my bed.
A certain thought emerges. The soul within the drained body awakens from a conscious daze.
The weight of what?, she thinks. There's a sudden intrigue. Her mind is now aware, and the life in her eyes begins to spark some light. She questions.
"The weight of what?" she stifles. The thought has now manifested in words, voice soft and throat dry. She questions again.
"The weight of what?" she questions once more, tone noticeably shifting—much louder and eerily stern, as if meaning to wake, as if demanding for an answer.
In a moment's snap, a quick second— like the thunders of colossus titans! How terrifying!—does her body hurriedly get up from the creaky chair.
Papers are sent flying all over--over the desk, messily piling on the floor, with page numbers losing their order as the wind breezes; but the mess within this room's walls never seems to be a bother.
That's how it's always been.
To be aloof with such a mess, makes her seem rather unhinged, don't you think?
Eyes wander throughout the room, sweeping through the uneven floors and fogged up windows and eventually down to her dusty, ink-blotted hands and scattered papers.
There's a moment of terror, an immensely dreading reminder of a truth she won't bear as she reads the bold ink that sits heavily on its dry pages.
HANGE ZÖE. TO BE TRUSTED? The ground below her seems to sink, "It's heavy."
HANGE ZÖE. ERWIN'S SUCCESSOR? SCOUT REGIMENT LEADER? The ceiling seems to cave in. "It feels heavy." There's a quiver in her voice.
HANGE ZÖE. TRAITOR TO PARADIS? The space around her seems to darken. "It's too heavy."
There's a build-up of coldness in her chest.
HANGE ZÖE. SLAVE TO HER MORALS? WHAT ABOUT US ELDIANS?
There's a darkness that envelops her vision, she feels tears gradually swell from her eyes, and as if her own lungs betrayed her and deprived her poor exhausted body of oxygen. The lingering question soon dawns on her wearied mind once more.
"THE WEIGHT OF WHAT?" There's a sharp sensation, of fear, of guilt, of failure, and a horrible sentiment that every single second of the terrible life she's lived deserved to succumb to a meaningless, trivial end.
She stifled her cries, only reducing it to choking sobs. Her poor soul suffocates in a guilt-ridden torment, and the scars on her body feel opened again just to bleed.
Violence ensues, staggeringly falling to her weak knees as she begins to pound the cobblestone floor and her knuckles start to bruise.
Her mind awakens once more, but sadly not to attenuate her guilty conscience, and instead subjects her to a horror only the war pushes her to face--death. Not of her, no--of everyone but her.
The flashing images of her fallen comrades, her lost loved ones , and the ones who have fear stricken so deeply in their hearts they fail to see a soldier's exigency.
It's simply horrible, that's one word to it all. Whether life nor death, both have the weight of her being deluged in the blood of her own allies. It's unfair. There you have it, another word for it all. Gather all the invidious words there are to exist, and there you have it.
"That's simply just life."
There's a stillness, the calm after the storm. Gone. However, it's pitiful how she remains composed, as if the torture she instigated upon herself was the usual.
"Because it is." she mutters. No other way to describe how lowly it feels, to allow herself to be broken like this. To uphold that reckless, cheery, and such an intelligent-trenchant-of-a-"Commander" facade this "world"; if that's even fair enough to say as an Eldian and a heavily dutied citizen of The Walls--knows her to be.
To remain a two-faced individual, "How lowly of me to lie." she says with a chuckle of despair and a sigh of disbelief.
The only way to survive, the prerequisite to what truly is living, no longer encompasses morality-- which leaves the only way for living is to sin. That's a truth she'll never think to consider; but consequently will remain the certainty of having been born into this world.
One day the devil shall rise up, to cease and eradicate the evil humanity brought forth upon this world. Such an irony will perpetually be a condemnation and a crusade as long as these evils exist.
"Devote your heart."
An honorable salutation, a patriotic tribute.
"Just to have it forcefully taken away from you."
It's just something I can't accept at the merest.
"The weight of what?"
The question still lingers.
The answer remains unspoken.
YOU ARE READING
The Weight of Living
Fanfiction"The weight of what?" There's a sharp sensation, of fear, of guilt, of failure, and a horrible sentiment that every single second of the terrible life she's lived deserved to succumb to a meaningless, trivial end. She stifled her cries, reducing it...
