[Fiction] Red eyes and white hair

Even as my body is riddled with lacerations, I walk through a pile of corpses of people whose sacrifices I shoulder. Their hopes and dreams all are snuffed out, each irreplaceable. I can see my breath, but not much else. I am alone. There is no one to catch me when I fall, and no one to have my back.

I break down and keep getting back up, again and again, all because I care about a world that seems to not understand or care, a world beyond the reach of god.

It hurts. And yet, you are by my side. In my dreams, my memories, and my heart. I close my eyes and I see your smile. Your beautiful face and your soft hair. I pause in the silence and I hear your voice. Your joy and your affection. And so I continue, even as every step makes my bones creak, every second I spill blood onto the snow, and every inch of my way forward is shrouded in fog. I protect.

The same way you protected me when I was abandoned and lonely and hurt. You taught me how to care for others. You taught me I was worth caring for. And so I choose to care for the world the same way you cared for me.

I cannot fight entropy. It eats at me. The cold drains my vitality, the wounds seep my blood, the pain consumes my sanity. And yet. You are the only thing that keeps me going, and that can keep me going, at this point.

It doesn’t matter if I will lose. I will fight with everything I have. My existence has always been a weapon, and I wield it to the best of my skill, to remake this world into one you wanted it to be.

If I win, we shall have a world free of pain and death and suffering. A world where a girl doesn’t have to see her mother die before her eyes. Where children do not grow up beaten by the people who they love the most. Where the hunger of one does not mean the death of another.

And if I fall, I shall join the mountain of corpses of people who dreamed of a similar world. Perhaps I can tip the scale and become the final sacrifice.

I just wish I could feel you hold me one more time.

I miss you.