MCSM: Shattered Souls [COMPLETED]

25- In Which I Have to Cope with Still Being Alive

~Jesse's POV~

Hhnnnn sorry for all the point-of-view switches, I just wasn't sure how else to tell all this :T

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My 'some time' ended up being three days of solitude, curled up on my bed and wishing I didn't exist.

I wasn't supposed to be alive. That was supposed to have been my ending, bleeding out on the floor of the treasure hall. That's how I wanted to go.

Joss had exploded. Jenni had been shot. Jandro had fallen to his death. Justin had been torn apart by monsters. Jaq had watched her own life flow out onto the ground.

But I was the one who had to live with the memories. 

It took a while for the tears to come, but when they did, they took even longer to fade. The fear and adrenaline that had kept me going through the whole mess was gone, leaving me with a ragged hole of negative emotions. I'd kept telling myself to hold on, to not let the grief overwhelm me, to push it back until it was all over.

Well, now it was all over, and I was a wreck. 

As I ran through what I had known about the other Shards, I realized how much I didn't know. They'd all had their own lives, their own goals, their own friends, their own futures that had been ripped out from under them.

What gives me the right to live when they don't?

What advantage do I have in this stupid game of life?

What claim do I have on surviving?

My thoughts continued like that for a while, spiraling down into melancholy oblivion. Dying in those trials had no meaning. Even if I died here, in my own room, by my sword, it still wouldn't mean anything.

My battered, bloodstained armour had been piled in a careless heap on the floor. My usual t-shirt and overalls felt simple and familiar, but it wasn't comforting.

I was home, I was safe, my body was healing. I'd won.

Who knew that success could resonate so deeply with loss.

I sat by the window, looking down at Beacontown, my eyes drawn to the large likeness of the amulet in front of our headquarters. The sun glinted brightly off the stained glass, sending prisms of coloured light every which way.

It was beautiful. It was meaningless.

Kind of like life after a disaster.

I let my mind wander, considering what might've happened if I hadn't been the one to win. What if it'd been me who had been bitten by the snake, transformed into a monster? What if I'd been standing closest to the skeleton in the maze? What if Justin hadn't been able to catch me when I fell into the lava? What if we'd never talked to Herobrine, never known the extra secrets about the swords? What if I'd plainly refused to leave with the other Shards, at the very beginning of this whole mess? What if Jaq had taken Justin's sword instead, and 303 hadn't killed her right-out? What if she'd ended back up here with me? What if, that night when Entity 303 had brought us back to the little cabin, we'd fought him then and there? What if he'd killed us all? What if we'd won, and all found ways to go home?

Thinking of ways it could've ended happily for more of us hurt almost more than reality. I couldn't stop thinking of ways how it could've been one of the others with their lives back in full swing and the final Aristan sword in their hands.