Garder mon Ame

Chapter Twenty-Two: Regret

"For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"

~John Whittier

"What have you done?" Ardin screeched. Ginger hair and gray eyes, wings as white as freshly fallen snow, gone. All that was left was a bloodstain on the ground that Maria – lord knows what she was doing at the scene – huddled by. Ardin shook her head. How could she not have known? How could she not have at least guessed that Cyra would become a Guardian? He was so righteous, so brave, that to think that he would have just been content to throw his eternity away for his own happiness was absurd. He was noble and always had been in love with the angels. To think that she had thrown away his own chance at peace . . . Ardin let out another tortured scream.

"Cyra!" She sobbed. Tears fell shamelessly down her face. She turned her attention to Grim once again. "You! This is your fault!"

Grim merely smiled, but he appeared rather bored by the scene. "I was merely trying to protect my wrath against the love she still harbored for a Guardian."

A world without Cyra, afterlife or not, was no world Ardin wanted to be a part of. She wanted to avenge her friend, punish God for taking him, but it was really the Devil who had slain his soul. And it was her fault.

"I want him back," Ardin sobbed. "Bring him back! This can't be happening. Bring him back."

Grim held up his hands in mild defeat. "No can do. He's somewhere no one can reach. It's hidden. You cannot get to him now."

"I don't care! I'll do anything! Bring him back!" Ardin screamed at Grim, cried internally, hated herself for the events that had transpired.

"There is no room for love in hatred, Ardin," Grim said.

Ardin shook. "That was my friend. He was all I had. I want him back."

When Grim just smiled, Ardin fell to her knees and put her head in her hands, hysterical. She wished for Death. She wished for the pain to subside. But, more than anything, she wished that Cyra was here with her now, showing her the error of her ways, pulling her out from the blackness that had enveloped her.

"Ardin." Ardin glanced over to where Maria knelt, her own eyes glistening with tears. "Ardin, there's a door."

"The idiosyncratic babblings of humans!" Grim exclaimed.

Ardin ignored him. "Maria, what door?"

"The Limbo. That's where he is. I think . . . Doors are meant to be opened, Ardin. There is a way."

Ardin thought for a moment. It was with tears streaming down her face she put the gun to her right temple.

Grim started. "Ardin, for fuck's sake, do not be ridiculous."

"He didn't need to die," Ardin sobbed. "This is all my fault. I'd give anything for him to be back. Anything."

She almost pulled the trigger, but Grim was quicker. He knocked the gun from her trembling hands, and she watched with horror as it skittered under the dumpster.

"Grim!" she exclaimed.

"My anger," he said coolly, but there was something underlying. Something that sparked every-so-strangely in those blue eyes. Was it . . . fright? "Throwing your eternity away just to bring back a spawn of God is absurd. Did you not want to win this fight? All your efforts, are you willing to throw all of those away?"