The Lasting Damage event isn't over yet, but I felt the need to write this. <3
Set on the morning of Tuesday, December 9th, 2014.


Word Count: 545

You see her eyes in your dreams. They are never kind, and they are never beseeching; they are lifeless, empty sockets and bottomless pits into a soul that has since departed.

Not nightmares. You do not jolt awake afraid in the middle of the night, nor do you weep with the coming of the dawn. You slip slowly back into consciousness with the memories just there behind your eyes. They haunt you, but the haunting does not impede your days as you thought it would. It spurs you on; it sets your gaze upon the future.

You rise from bed refreshed and energized. Your face is pale and blotchy, red where you have cried for hours, but for now there are no more tears to shed. You are resigned to it. You are not proud of it, but you face it as you have faced the rest of your life—with defiance, with resolve, with resilience. It happened and there is no turning back from it. There is no denying it, for others saw, and they will not soon forget it.

You wonder, vaguely, what they think of you now. Certainly before you were a nuisance. Argumentative. Uncooperative. Once, years ago, you allowed others to die around you and made no effort to save them. You were lost, and you were afraid, but you are neither now.

You know who you are; you know what you've done. You've embraced the fear and use it to feed your passion, that yearning deep within you that reminds you always that the normal, uncomplicated life you want is just there beyond your reach. You must fight for it, and others must die for it, and that is okay. You've done your duty and they have done their's. You will live a fulfilling life in their memory, and pray that their next existence is painless. You hope that it is without war and know that it is in your power to make it so.

Once, you thought yourself of the light, and your enemies of the darkness. You thought yourself pure, free from evil. You shine with a golden light and wear pristine white, but you know now that there can never be light without darkness. No soul goes unblemished. Not hers, not yours, not your worst enemy's or you sweetest ally's.

You are all tarnished and broken. Damaged. You have never been whole. It seems that there will always be pieces missing. Here, there, somewhere in between. You struggle to find them, to hold them together, yet you know that when you do all this will have ended.

But you are not lost. You have your place among the stars, and as the sun creeps above the horizon to greet the world with brilliant light, you look into the sky and turn toward that spot where you think your salvation must be. You feel its power deep within you, the steady thrum of energy that keeps pace with the beating of your heart, as if the two of you are one.

You will never forget what you have done; you will carry her memory with you for the rest of your life.

And in your dreams you will see her eyes, but you will not let them destroy you.