Well, well, well...
What did we have here?
There was rubble and wreckage all to be found across the tattered remains of Amone, a most fitting locale for their final pittance in a simple task that had, as what seemed almost inevitable, taken a turn for the worst. At the resound of artillery fire over the patter of the gentle rain both above, what downpoured did little to alleviate the chaos that lie below. And throughout that conundrum, Inès did commit herself most thoroughly to that man, shaken and battered, as she did bear witness to the pitiful scene about her.
Those few among the fireteam of scouts paid as much mind to discipline and organization as they may have the day's precipitation. One of these fools did scrape together a plan on the basis that firing drills and running exercises constituted as an apt tactician, and just as soon found himself joined by another more foolhardy to insist his justification was not hasty enough, and flung herself into the fray just as well. Just as well, another fool had clamored about, waving his hands as he darted back and forth looking for some manner of inspiration from which to obtain orders, when the fact of the matter was that they were there all along; Report back, and bring everyone back to base. Yet, as it would seem, even so simple of ordinances could be needlessly...obtuse, when the time came to put order into action. No, for the time being, as Inès performed the most necessary of tasks, she too was carrying the burden of a squad dead-set on refusing to coordinate with one another, whilst a pained Marathon was left to her very best care.
She heaved for one moment, lugging up the taller man into her fold, and dashed wildly into what sparse cover there could be. Another heave signaled her release of the man, himself holding upon her for dear life as if the Darcsen were the man's own mother. She felt him quiver. Shiver, as if he was cold. He shook and tremored with every waking, hurried breath at irregular intervals, as if a thousand frissons came over him like the man, standing so proudly and strongly not seconds ago, quaked like an invalid. Inès set his back against a wall, well feeling him shudder with every fleeting moment. Time was of the essence. Think, Inès, think!
Reaching down to what remained of his half-limb, her fingers pressed further and further along each and every vein she could feel, yet as she applied more pressure, felt the coursing vessels almost deflating with every press. Over her thighs and legs, herself, she felt it. Warm. Clumping. Like it stuck to ever fiber of her and imprisoned her with dread, like it suffocated her limbs as rapidly as it poured out like it were a boiling oven of molasses and sap. Even in the lukewarm summer shower, it seemed to burn. Sear, almost. Leave a scar deep and unique into her as Inès felt the Oceaner's blood weep whilst he cried in pain, and impress into her clothes the life it so gleefully imparted from Thomas' own. And the more pressure she did apply, even through the hemorrhage, the profuseness, the carnal sickening that she so calmly overcame...Thomas shed tears.
His voice was a soft thing, at the edge of hearing, but to his caretaker, it was most thoroughly pronounced. Thomas, the great, invincible Pride of Oceania, wept in pain, his mouth agape and crying for air. With each moment came another sorrow, another gasp, but in that strength to cry his breath drew weaker and weaker, more irregular, hurried and as if he were drowning to his own tears. His entire body shivered more the greater he tried to draw for air, until all he did was make constant vibrations, like his heart itself marched steadily until his death.
Inès looked over him. Full well...she was giving what she could to spare the man, yet had neither the tools nor the expertise to grant him redemption from this horrid mistake. Desperately, she would find new veins to press, only to find them soon deflating to a constant offset of blood upon her, and the sobbing mess before her growing into agony so deep, the strength to scream was robbed from him.
Yet...if she could not save him...Inès could...
...the woman looked down at her side, meeting gaze with the closed flap of her satchel. Max had given her a few things to trade away, of course...or use them in case of emergency...but she could never...
Her hand met with the top of the bag. The bleeding lessened. There were shouts and gunfire, and the roars of such detonations grew further with each moment, until it deafened itself to her action.
Another case she undid, well in the bottom of that bag. Then a bronze hook she undid, to which the strapped, constrained elements unfurled themselves in the dark. The bronze shone through, four rows neatly distorting their glisten as the rain assailed them. Down her bag, she reached, almost hesitating with how slow she grasped her tools, yet as she felt the cold, cold cylinders come around her fingertips, the retrieval came with ease.
Thomas' eyes paralyzed in fear, shaking as he deathly stared into the rain above even as the irritant of drops into his very eyes muted to his sensation. He responded to Inès' brushing not, uncaring that she had cleaned him up or tilted his head. Nonplussed that he now faced the Darcsen head-first. Apathetic to how she unbuttoned his shirt and jacket, coursing her hands until she found a familiar, urgent sensation.
A sharp pain came about him. He felt his chest tighten, pierce open like his body was almost being sundered apart by some manner of explosion, so intense was that initial sensation. Then...it...came over him...it was...
...it was...
...like...
...heaven...
...
...
..
.
.
.
..
Thomas fluttered his eyes into bliss, some sensation of peace overcoming him, like some surge came awash over him as what came of the harsh reality set in, not to be gone, but to be accepted. That these, were, in fact, his final moments. That what was here were the circumstances, no matter how unpleasant or brutal they may be, and yet...Thomas felt his missing leg itching. Tickling. He'd ceased shivering, a sudden, cooling calmness washing over any shock throughout him. And he'd certainly feel nothing as he numbly felt the cold bronze withdraw from his chest, not even the apparent drop of his body like his own bones were being plucked from his skin did register as anything more than a light pat.
Thoughts coursed over him in some...blurred fashion. Unfocused. Unready, like...like they came by all too quickly for them to count. And amidst what remained of the pleasure of life slowly sapping from him...Thomas smiled.
He remembered so much...
...so much...and so little...
...
..
.
.
..
...
..
.
.
.
"...girl...?"
His mouth hung in awe to the angel before him.
"...Thomas?" The seraph called back.
Thomas crookedly smiled, for deep down, no matter what any of his logical senses might have said, that there was no literal angel before him. Yet...for too long, Thomas beckoned for any manner of cherub...this day...he knew, somehow, some way, would come, for on that fateful day, there would need for there to be an angel to guide him along that final expedition.
Inès was not the angel he had hoped. Yet she held him like only an angel could...and looked upon him with two cherubic eyes.
Two...soft...
...heretic...
...stern...
...austere...
...weary...
...melancholic...
...beautiful, beautiful eyes.
And he smiled.
"...I need another..." He wished.
And awash came over the man, in a blissful blur, another willful hole did he feel inscribe into his bare, bleeding chest, and deluged in numbness did he feel whilst the second pillar struck him where he lay. And so, his wish was granted.
He felt his body deflate with his simple exhale, like the air which gave him life slowly defusing into the world around him as the life which he so righteously stole was reclaimed by the earth, as she so righteously retook what was owed her for so long. In the few moments of peace to follow, Thomas hushed, slowly taking back in small amounts of air, as if not to anger the earth around him whilst nothing else mattered. It was an awash, serene peace in which he came to with his own body dissipating. And he did so all with the willing company of one.
The one he never asked for.
The one he never wished for.
Yet...the one who was there for him. In the last moments that he needed someone the most.
And yet...Thomas laughed. Weakly chuckled, each chortle coughing up streams of tears to run across his face, his pain, whilst Inès above only held as she still tried to save him. He laughed. Laughed at her futility. Laughed in knowing full well that help could only be made when those wanted to be helped.
And laughed...painfully. With sorrow and remorse...in knowing he had failed her.
"...it's alright, lass..." Thomas hushed. He chuckled, looking back once more into those two azure gems...
"I'm...bloody...fuckin'...heheheh..."
His laughter came painfully, even the numbness never failing to mute the tears he swallowed. To the end, he'd be that beacon he hoped to inspire in every one of his friends, comrades, family-to-be. Friends he'd never met, or friends he'd neglected. Friends who could have been, and friends who never were. And he still regretted every last moment of it.
"I-i'm...why...why did I..."
Inès squinted, slowly shaking her head in some manner of pained confusion.
"...bloody fuckin' Riley...oh...Riley...why did I let you go on the charge..."
"...How-...Howard, mate...why'd you go on the trench raid with me..."
"Wess...bloody Wess...why did you say to go without you..."
"...Prim, Prim, gal...I-I...fuckin'...why-why...why didn't I just say I loved you...why didn't I tell you...before..."
He felt the nothingness loom over him. His angel clenched him harder, he felt, Inès listening politely to the corpse below her speak those parting verses. They were...pained. No matter the morphine she injected him with, no matter how numb his body lay as he murmured and stared distantly into his closing eyelids, he felt that pain stronger than ever before. A guilty, conscious pain, of one that no medicine nor science could hope to bandage, whilst the wisest of the animals proclaimed their miracles might help their fellow creatures through such struggles. Thomas knew it all to be lies...and had lied to himself for too long.
"And fuckin' Val. Sweet, innocent, Val...i'm such a fuckin' cunt..."
"...why did I leave you behind...why'd I leave you without a brother..."
"...why'd I leave you without a son..."
He welled up. In those final, sad-set eyes, in the alienation of rain and debris about him, Thomas recalled the dusty scenery that was his home. It's people. His people. His friends, his family...his beloved who he would never see, not for some time, he earnestly believed, looking to the sky as his mind reached to where he felt himself longing.
But...of course...Thomas wept one last chorus. A requiem to who remained. Unfortunately remained, so it would seem.
"Frey'..."
It came out as a crying grunt, pained, like that bronze needle stabbed right through his lungs, and for any semblance of memory, he would have to fight just to say. Numbness overruled his corporeal sensation, guilting him into calmness.
"Frey', you bloody idiot..."
Thomas weakly looked to his angel above, something he, out of frankness, didn't deserve. Pallidly...he chuckled.
Freya was a fool for rejecting the seraph above him.
Freya needed an angel more than he did.
And Freya's cherub had, to her, long departed to heaven, and for whatever beacon Freya might be, the travelers to her were only led astray.
But Thomas laughed once more in sorrow. For no matter how much a fool Freya was, he looked well inside of him on his deathbed muse, and resoundingly, he knew he was the sorrier. He'd abandoned living for the people he loved, and told himself he'd die, carrying with him the things he wished he'd told them earlier. And now, in the final moments he had accepted too long ago...Thomas couldn't tell Inès that the woman she loved needed someone the most...and would never accept them.
Thomas...was not Freya. If he had accepted his own demise so long ago under such different circumstances, integrity to himself proved far more grave than any manner of worthless muse. Slouched in some haze...he felt the aching returning...a swell over him as he struggled again. His time was now. His time had passed.
Slugging his head up to Inès eyes once more, the weak man did gaze, and for one final time, tried to crack a smile.
"...hey...Inès?"
She quirked up, softly residing over what was left of the legend in her arms. Tried as she had, Inès' attempts to still save him bore no fruit. He'd turn colorless, cold, bleeding over her in slouched, neurotic smile.
"Yes?" Inès responded.
"...one...more." he begged.
The final needle impaled him. He felt the gate to heaven open before him.
He had let go...he hadn't told everything. No...that man would die with many regrets set before him, sobbing still that he had not the strength to confess them all, even to a stranger. Even the secrets she'd need the most. Even to the people who needed him most. Yet, for all too long, this, Thomas felt, was a befitting end for a man like him:
A propped-up hero on paper-thin premise, hollow and ready to be discarded as soon as he'd gotten wet.
And so...Jean called back.
"T-Thomas! I need you to tell us...what to do? You know what to do, right?"
Thomas smiled.
"...fuck if I know...i'm just a bloody farmer."
There were some words, some cries as he had just cried, and Thomas found it all adrift in a void. Hollow. And pointless.
"I can see the world...get a bit..."
"Dark."
This was it.
He wouldn't meet Him standing tall.
And that was alright.
He wouldn't make love to anyone.
And that was alright.
He wouldn't have a real job. A house of his own.
And that was alright.
He died a disposable hero, in a faraway land fighting for money, instead of protecting the people he claimed to care about.
He died knowing his only friend from home could only bear more pain to the one who loved her, and did nothing to stop it.
That was unacceptable.
What did we have here?
There was rubble and wreckage all to be found across the tattered remains of Amone, a most fitting locale for their final pittance in a simple task that had, as what seemed almost inevitable, taken a turn for the worst. At the resound of artillery fire over the patter of the gentle rain both above, what downpoured did little to alleviate the chaos that lie below. And throughout that conundrum, Inès did commit herself most thoroughly to that man, shaken and battered, as she did bear witness to the pitiful scene about her.
Those few among the fireteam of scouts paid as much mind to discipline and organization as they may have the day's precipitation. One of these fools did scrape together a plan on the basis that firing drills and running exercises constituted as an apt tactician, and just as soon found himself joined by another more foolhardy to insist his justification was not hasty enough, and flung herself into the fray just as well. Just as well, another fool had clamored about, waving his hands as he darted back and forth looking for some manner of inspiration from which to obtain orders, when the fact of the matter was that they were there all along; Report back, and bring everyone back to base. Yet, as it would seem, even so simple of ordinances could be needlessly...obtuse, when the time came to put order into action. No, for the time being, as Inès performed the most necessary of tasks, she too was carrying the burden of a squad dead-set on refusing to coordinate with one another, whilst a pained Marathon was left to her very best care.
She heaved for one moment, lugging up the taller man into her fold, and dashed wildly into what sparse cover there could be. Another heave signaled her release of the man, himself holding upon her for dear life as if the Darcsen were the man's own mother. She felt him quiver. Shiver, as if he was cold. He shook and tremored with every waking, hurried breath at irregular intervals, as if a thousand frissons came over him like the man, standing so proudly and strongly not seconds ago, quaked like an invalid. Inès set his back against a wall, well feeling him shudder with every fleeting moment. Time was of the essence. Think, Inès, think!
Reaching down to what remained of his half-limb, her fingers pressed further and further along each and every vein she could feel, yet as she applied more pressure, felt the coursing vessels almost deflating with every press. Over her thighs and legs, herself, she felt it. Warm. Clumping. Like it stuck to ever fiber of her and imprisoned her with dread, like it suffocated her limbs as rapidly as it poured out like it were a boiling oven of molasses and sap. Even in the lukewarm summer shower, it seemed to burn. Sear, almost. Leave a scar deep and unique into her as Inès felt the Oceaner's blood weep whilst he cried in pain, and impress into her clothes the life it so gleefully imparted from Thomas' own. And the more pressure she did apply, even through the hemorrhage, the profuseness, the carnal sickening that she so calmly overcame...Thomas shed tears.
His voice was a soft thing, at the edge of hearing, but to his caretaker, it was most thoroughly pronounced. Thomas, the great, invincible Pride of Oceania, wept in pain, his mouth agape and crying for air. With each moment came another sorrow, another gasp, but in that strength to cry his breath drew weaker and weaker, more irregular, hurried and as if he were drowning to his own tears. His entire body shivered more the greater he tried to draw for air, until all he did was make constant vibrations, like his heart itself marched steadily until his death.
Inès looked over him. Full well...she was giving what she could to spare the man, yet had neither the tools nor the expertise to grant him redemption from this horrid mistake. Desperately, she would find new veins to press, only to find them soon deflating to a constant offset of blood upon her, and the sobbing mess before her growing into agony so deep, the strength to scream was robbed from him.
Yet...if she could not save him...Inès could...
...the woman looked down at her side, meeting gaze with the closed flap of her satchel. Max had given her a few things to trade away, of course...or use them in case of emergency...but she could never...
Her hand met with the top of the bag. The bleeding lessened. There were shouts and gunfire, and the roars of such detonations grew further with each moment, until it deafened itself to her action.
Another case she undid, well in the bottom of that bag. Then a bronze hook she undid, to which the strapped, constrained elements unfurled themselves in the dark. The bronze shone through, four rows neatly distorting their glisten as the rain assailed them. Down her bag, she reached, almost hesitating with how slow she grasped her tools, yet as she felt the cold, cold cylinders come around her fingertips, the retrieval came with ease.
Thomas' eyes paralyzed in fear, shaking as he deathly stared into the rain above even as the irritant of drops into his very eyes muted to his sensation. He responded to Inès' brushing not, uncaring that she had cleaned him up or tilted his head. Nonplussed that he now faced the Darcsen head-first. Apathetic to how she unbuttoned his shirt and jacket, coursing her hands until she found a familiar, urgent sensation.
A sharp pain came about him. He felt his chest tighten, pierce open like his body was almost being sundered apart by some manner of explosion, so intense was that initial sensation. Then...it...came over him...it was...
...it was...
...like...
...heaven...
...
...
..
.
.
.
..
Thomas fluttered his eyes into bliss, some sensation of peace overcoming him, like some surge came awash over him as what came of the harsh reality set in, not to be gone, but to be accepted. That these, were, in fact, his final moments. That what was here were the circumstances, no matter how unpleasant or brutal they may be, and yet...Thomas felt his missing leg itching. Tickling. He'd ceased shivering, a sudden, cooling calmness washing over any shock throughout him. And he'd certainly feel nothing as he numbly felt the cold bronze withdraw from his chest, not even the apparent drop of his body like his own bones were being plucked from his skin did register as anything more than a light pat.
Thoughts coursed over him in some...blurred fashion. Unfocused. Unready, like...like they came by all too quickly for them to count. And amidst what remained of the pleasure of life slowly sapping from him...Thomas smiled.
He remembered so much...
...so much...and so little...
...
..
.
.
..
...
..
.
.
.
"...girl...?"
His mouth hung in awe to the angel before him.
"...Thomas?" The seraph called back.
Thomas crookedly smiled, for deep down, no matter what any of his logical senses might have said, that there was no literal angel before him. Yet...for too long, Thomas beckoned for any manner of cherub...this day...he knew, somehow, some way, would come, for on that fateful day, there would need for there to be an angel to guide him along that final expedition.
Inès was not the angel he had hoped. Yet she held him like only an angel could...and looked upon him with two cherubic eyes.
Two...soft...
...heretic...
...stern...
...austere...
...weary...
...melancholic...
...beautiful, beautiful eyes.
And he smiled.
"...I need another..." He wished.
And awash came over the man, in a blissful blur, another willful hole did he feel inscribe into his bare, bleeding chest, and deluged in numbness did he feel whilst the second pillar struck him where he lay. And so, his wish was granted.
He felt his body deflate with his simple exhale, like the air which gave him life slowly defusing into the world around him as the life which he so righteously stole was reclaimed by the earth, as she so righteously retook what was owed her for so long. In the few moments of peace to follow, Thomas hushed, slowly taking back in small amounts of air, as if not to anger the earth around him whilst nothing else mattered. It was an awash, serene peace in which he came to with his own body dissipating. And he did so all with the willing company of one.
The one he never asked for.
The one he never wished for.
Yet...the one who was there for him. In the last moments that he needed someone the most.
And yet...Thomas laughed. Weakly chuckled, each chortle coughing up streams of tears to run across his face, his pain, whilst Inès above only held as she still tried to save him. He laughed. Laughed at her futility. Laughed in knowing full well that help could only be made when those wanted to be helped.
And laughed...painfully. With sorrow and remorse...in knowing he had failed her.
"...it's alright, lass..." Thomas hushed. He chuckled, looking back once more into those two azure gems...
"I'm...bloody...fuckin'...heheheh..."
His laughter came painfully, even the numbness never failing to mute the tears he swallowed. To the end, he'd be that beacon he hoped to inspire in every one of his friends, comrades, family-to-be. Friends he'd never met, or friends he'd neglected. Friends who could have been, and friends who never were. And he still regretted every last moment of it.
"I-i'm...why...why did I..."
Inès squinted, slowly shaking her head in some manner of pained confusion.
"...bloody fuckin' Riley...oh...Riley...why did I let you go on the charge..."
"...How-...Howard, mate...why'd you go on the trench raid with me..."
"Wess...bloody Wess...why did you say to go without you..."
"...Prim, Prim, gal...I-I...fuckin'...why-why...why didn't I just say I loved you...why didn't I tell you...before..."
He felt the nothingness loom over him. His angel clenched him harder, he felt, Inès listening politely to the corpse below her speak those parting verses. They were...pained. No matter the morphine she injected him with, no matter how numb his body lay as he murmured and stared distantly into his closing eyelids, he felt that pain stronger than ever before. A guilty, conscious pain, of one that no medicine nor science could hope to bandage, whilst the wisest of the animals proclaimed their miracles might help their fellow creatures through such struggles. Thomas knew it all to be lies...and had lied to himself for too long.
"And fuckin' Val. Sweet, innocent, Val...i'm such a fuckin' cunt..."
"...why did I leave you behind...why'd I leave you without a brother..."
"...why'd I leave you without a son..."
He welled up. In those final, sad-set eyes, in the alienation of rain and debris about him, Thomas recalled the dusty scenery that was his home. It's people. His people. His friends, his family...his beloved who he would never see, not for some time, he earnestly believed, looking to the sky as his mind reached to where he felt himself longing.
But...of course...Thomas wept one last chorus. A requiem to who remained. Unfortunately remained, so it would seem.
"Frey'..."
It came out as a crying grunt, pained, like that bronze needle stabbed right through his lungs, and for any semblance of memory, he would have to fight just to say. Numbness overruled his corporeal sensation, guilting him into calmness.
"Frey', you bloody idiot..."
Thomas weakly looked to his angel above, something he, out of frankness, didn't deserve. Pallidly...he chuckled.
Freya was a fool for rejecting the seraph above him.
Freya needed an angel more than he did.
And Freya's cherub had, to her, long departed to heaven, and for whatever beacon Freya might be, the travelers to her were only led astray.
But Thomas laughed once more in sorrow. For no matter how much a fool Freya was, he looked well inside of him on his deathbed muse, and resoundingly, he knew he was the sorrier. He'd abandoned living for the people he loved, and told himself he'd die, carrying with him the things he wished he'd told them earlier. And now, in the final moments he had accepted too long ago...Thomas couldn't tell Inès that the woman she loved needed someone the most...and would never accept them.
Thomas...was not Freya. If he had accepted his own demise so long ago under such different circumstances, integrity to himself proved far more grave than any manner of worthless muse. Slouched in some haze...he felt the aching returning...a swell over him as he struggled again. His time was now. His time had passed.
Slugging his head up to Inès eyes once more, the weak man did gaze, and for one final time, tried to crack a smile.
"...hey...Inès?"
She quirked up, softly residing over what was left of the legend in her arms. Tried as she had, Inès' attempts to still save him bore no fruit. He'd turn colorless, cold, bleeding over her in slouched, neurotic smile.
"Yes?" Inès responded.
"...one...more." he begged.
The final needle impaled him. He felt the gate to heaven open before him.
He had let go...he hadn't told everything. No...that man would die with many regrets set before him, sobbing still that he had not the strength to confess them all, even to a stranger. Even the secrets she'd need the most. Even to the people who needed him most. Yet, for all too long, this, Thomas felt, was a befitting end for a man like him:
A propped-up hero on paper-thin premise, hollow and ready to be discarded as soon as he'd gotten wet.
And so...Jean called back.
"T-Thomas! I need you to tell us...what to do? You know what to do, right?"
Thomas smiled.
"...fuck if I know...i'm just a bloody farmer."
There were some words, some cries as he had just cried, and Thomas found it all adrift in a void. Hollow. And pointless.
"I can see the world...get a bit..."
"Dark."
This was it.
He wouldn't meet Him standing tall.
And that was alright.
He wouldn't make love to anyone.
And that was alright.
He wouldn't have a real job. A house of his own.
And that was alright.
He died a disposable hero, in a faraway land fighting for money, instead of protecting the people he claimed to care about.
He died knowing his only friend from home could only bear more pain to the one who loved her, and did nothing to stop it.
That was unacceptable.
