The Pain That Defines Us [Ritsuko Zayasu :: Morning]

Ritsuko's eyes bored a hole into the ground as her knuckles clenched around the neck of her guitar, Aoide giving off a soft whine. This was never something she wanted to involve herself in. Caring sucked because it hurt and left you disappointed. She didn't want to care, it was easiest that way. Compassion was exhausting and showed little reward, no one she'd ever known lived long enough or gave a shit enough to show any sort of reciprocation. Her heart was lost to the world because she didn't matter and she knew that. No one listened, no one paid attention, no one reached out. Everyone was in it for themselves and their own selfish motivations. She was far more intimate with that fact than anyone else. It had cost her a lifetime and the lifetimes of several others for their greed for power and control. Ritz had given everything and had gotten nothing in return. It was time to quit giving. She had no idea why she invested the emotional effort, only that she did. People weren't rational beings. But it was a painful process and she wished it could stop. A risk the guitarist was unwilling to take yet would chance anyway. On the offchance she did care, could understand, would reciprocate was what Ritsuko had faith in. Faith was pointless. A hope without promise, only good for suffering when it fell through. And so she herself was selfish but she couldn't help but care, with a pointless faith she didn't want that would end up breaking her heart.

The feeling was agonizing. Ritsuko could sense her pitiful eyes on her, staring at her miserably just like the miserable creature she was. It felt like a cobra was swallowing her heart, that sinking, crawling, eating feeling that drops in the bottom of your chest. It fucking sucked and it wasn't something she could deal with via the usual means. No matter how much she'd want to shove it away the wretch felt like a disappointment because there was precious little she could do. Ritz deigned not to chance trying and failing with her. Distancing herself was more her style. This wasn't her fault or her problem, why the hell couldn't she stop caring? Accepting that the aching feeling of guilt would follow her until she forgot, the grass rustled with footsteps as the lonely guitarist began to shuffle away with forlorn footsteps. Yet another isolated memory this would become, a picture in her photo album of regrets. Something to haunt her like the rest, that one time she met another twisted soul and could do nothing. Not that anything could be done. That's simply how thing's worked out sometimes. Life sucks then you die and there's not a whole that'll change that.

But then she called out to her. Ritsuko felt like picking up her own pace to evade it all, it was taunting. What was she supposed to do? Tell her it would be all better? It wouldn't, the both of them knew that, and she could either stay with her in misery and allow herself to be dragged down or save herself the trouble. On the one hand she felt as if she would understand, she did, she'd shown it... but on the other it risked exposing herself. Ritz wasn't prepared for any of that yet, maybe she'd never be. And she stopped. At the sound of a command. Fight. There was determination in the blonde's voice, it was faint but it was there. The melancholic musician perked her head up and turned to look backward. It was exactly what she wanted to hear, what she was trying to do. She suddenly felt like crying again but there was a whole walk home for that.

Words were beyond her. The sullen guitarist didn't want to cheapen the experience by speaking. There wasn't much to say besides and she wouldn't want her voice to crack. Ritsuko let out a trembling saddened sigh, spinning her guitar by the neck anxiously. Sheepishly she hefted it up and pointed to her headstone with the body, her back to her counterpart.
"...I'm a little angel... if you can believe that..." she remarked cryptically. All she needed was right there written in stone. Quite literally. Wordlessly the young woman would began to drag herself away across the windy graveyard, Aoide hanging over her shoulder. An angel she wasn't, not anymore. Those days were long forgotten and would never come back. The World had a habit of doing that... sometimes.

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