It's Always So

With Hope

Their chairs were close together.

Lance regarded this with a neutral mind, gaze returning to the glass of beer clutched in his grasp. The handle was cold in his hand, in both of his hands, but he couldn't find it in himself to be bothered by something as trivial as temperature.

He could hear his comrades singing in the background; drunk, fearless, oblivious.

Lance believed now that it was a good idea to let them go out tonight. To ease their pain, to forget about the darkness that haunted their nightmares every passing moment.

He swirled the liquid in his glass, pausing as he turned to his partner in crime.

The man's chair was still as close.

"Aslan," Lance said, and the man didn't look up. He never responded, when Lance called. He was always laying his head on the table, pretending to rest whenever Lance talked to him. Aslan's blond hair looked dull in the bad lighting, where it usually looked like the colour of shining wheat fields in the sun.

By now, even if he didn't respond, Lance knew when he had Aslan's attention, and it was nothing but obvious to him.

"I saw something on the newspapers, you know? 'We live under the burnt clouds', they say," Lance scoffed, only to—a moment later—sigh, knowing that the night was going to be long. "As if they knew anything."

They had stories to tell: the two of them. Aslan's eyes, whenever Lance managed to catch them, told a story all by themselves. An icy pool of hopelessness; empty and sad.

So, so sad.

They talked all night long, if Aslan's responses could be counted as talking. Aslan never replied to him. But that was normal.

It was normal.

"But they have a point. We can't see the stars, out here." Lance looked up, as if he could see the sky past the wrecked ceiling. "It's always like that, in the evening time. The clouds cover it all up, like they're covering up everything we did."

His hand, cold.

He shouldn't care about things like that.

"Can you hear their terrible singing right now? It's always like this. After we're done fighting, we sing like idiots to ease our burdens."

Lance laughed.

"I think about the lyrics you made, a lot."

We must all gather as one
Sing with hope and our fears will be gone

"I thought you were really cool, when you first said those words."

The lights were on, but the room was dark. He didn't know what time it was. How long had he been sitting there? How long have his comrades been singing?

"Hey Aslan, we're bad people, aren't we?" Lance asked, staring back at his cup.

Empty.

He hadn't even taken a sip yet.

"What we do... it... It's not what heroes would do."

Lance told himself that he wouldn't cry anymore, but he broke all the promises he made anyway. What was one more?

"I said that we'd be the stars of this town, to replace the ones that we can't see now."

The singing in the background faltered, like a broken record.

Through his quiet sobs, he could hear marching footsteps, trampling over his entire life.

Ruining everything that he created.

"We must all gather as one," Lance sang, and he squeezed his hand. Cold.

He turned over to Aslan and he smiled. It was the temperature of Aslan's hand that was cold this entire time, not his glass of beer.

He had taught himself not to be bothered by the fact that his partner's hand was limp and unresponsive, because Aslan had always been a little unresponsive anyway.

"We welcome tomorrow, was what you always said."

His friends' singing stopped altogether, and Lance turned to them. To the pile of them, gathered in the middle of the room.

They always did that; stopped singing randomly because of some funny happening. They were probably laughing in secret right now, hushed breaths that Lance couldn't hear.

The puddle of their combined blood stained the wooden floor.

"I'll pour you another drink."

He turned away from the sight and grabbed the bottle of beer with his free hand, pouring its contents into the cup lying next to Aslan's head. Empty.

The marching footsteps outside were getting louder and louder, and Lance pretended they didn't exist. He only looked at Aslan's face, at where his cold and guarded eyes would have been, had a shotgun's bullet not taken his face away from him.

"It's always like this."

The wooden doors to the building were broken off its hinges, and soldiers stormed inside the deserted town's brewery. The rising sun's light bled into the room, illuminating the gruesome scene that Lance resided in.

The men in the front gagged, bringing their hands up to cover their noses and mouths. Bodies, everywhere, decaying. There was a long and thick trail of dried blood, from the door to the pile of bodies in the middle of the room. There was one that separated from the rest, where it led to the bar and onto the chair next to the only breathing person. The rest of the counters and chairs were covered in dust, as they had been ever since the town was abandoned.

"Lance, you are under arrest for the massacre of Reiche Stadt. Hands in the air; we have permission to shoot!"

Lance didn't want to let go of Aslan's hand, so he sat there, wondering why these soldiers had to come in and ruin his night of festivities.

"Put your hands in the air where we can see them!"

He heard the cock of guns and yet he still didn't move.

He simply stared at Aslan, wondering what the man would do if he actually decided to respond. Aslan was kind of an idiot, at the moment, for pretending to be asleep right now.

Lance sighed, and he saw the soldiers flinch when he finally moved, laughing under his breath.

"We have permission to shoot!"

The pistol from Aslan's holster was colder than his hand, but the weight felt familiar, and the yelling of the soldiers was even more familiar.

Everything was familiar to him, except for the feeling of the barrel on his temple.

He clicked the gun into preparation—

"Sing with hope and our fear will be gone."

—and pressed the trigger.

Ah, it was such an Aslan-like thing to do, to leave one chamber empty.

The second shot did the trick.

so ist es immer - hiroyuki sawano