Chromium

7.3

Unedited/First draft.

People do a lot of stupid things when the world you knew, everything you loved and trusted, start falling apart.

Dia was no better.

It was still dark when she came back to her room, the urge to take a drink to drown her sorrows so strong it was almost like something tangible. She had never been much of a drinker, but the only time when she really wanted to get dead drunk, when she needed to turn off her brain, there was no alcohol available.

So, she did something stupid, something she would have never done if she was still in the Navy: she lost control. She destroyed everything she could see; broke apart the bed, crushed the fake wood of the furniture under her feet, and even started to smash the wall with her bare hands.

When she was done, the room looked like a completely different place than it had been a just a few minutes ago. It was all useless, of course. She couldn't forget what she learned, even if she really wanted to. Still, it gave her some sort of morbid satisfaction to see the destruction around her.

That of course, until what the Umbra said started to set in and she saw the bluish blood on her scraped knuckles. That was when she started crying.

She knew what old Sarge would say if she could see her now, sitting on the floor and crying for the injustices of the world, the shitty hand the fate had dealt to her.

He would say she was a disgrace, a stain for the uniform she was wearing. But right now she didn't care. What happened to her, the way she changed was bad enough but not nearly as horrible as the death of a dream, the only thing which pushed her to become someone better than the weak girl she had been in the past.

Over the last nine years, the empire had been the only constant in her life, a way to be closer to her mother, follow in her footsteps.

And now, even that was gone. The empire, the center of her world, was just a petty and corrupt organism, led by a cruel emperor who would do anything, even sacrifice his own people to stay in power.

But maybe the empire she dreamed of never existed, to begin with; maybe it was just an illusion, a childish ideal she created to justify herself, believe she was doing something noble when she was just another weapon, a tool of oppression in the hands of the emperor.

She was still drowning in self-pity when someone knocked on the door.

Dia looked up, realizing she was so shocked she forgot to close the door, and there was a man waiting outside.

It was Omen.

"O-omen, why are you...?" She cleared her throat but her voice still sounded rough, broken. "Why are you here?" She said at the end, quickly wiping her tears away.

She knew she was a mess at the moment. Her hair disarranged while the uniform was torn and stained with blood. She looked bad just like the ruins surrounding her, the splinters of wood and the fragments of plaster scattered everywhere in the room.

But Omen looked calm like he didn't notice anything.

"Can I come in?" He asked.

Dia stared at him for some seconds but nodded at the end.

He closed the door before sitting beside her. He didn't try to talk with her and just sat there quietly like he was waiting for her to speak.

And finally, she did.

"Are you alright?" She asked.

She glanced at him, but he didn't look like someone that almost died. Actually, he seemed fine, completely unharmed.