I Know What It's Like To Lose [SL Thread](Lance)[Morning]

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Tired. So very tired.

This wasn't your normal, garden-variety fatigue, mind you. It was an existential soreness, the very act of being was exhausting and taxing on the mind. Ritsuko felt dead inside, emotionally numb as her downcast eyes scanned the cracks in the sidewalk, lusterless and empty. Her posture was slouched, yet not drawn into herself like usual as she trudged through the wake of much taller people. The guitarist didn't want to think about things anymore, the very act of thought was drudgery, like pushing a stone slab up a slippery desert dune. Struggling. Agitating. Futile and draining. Were there a way to disappear inside herself and rest for a year meditating in the empty abyss she would... but Life wouldn't stop. The best she could hope for was an afternoon by herself recharging. The other night was an ordeal, but not one she couldn't handle. Her body ached but overall she was fine, her muscles were a little weary but other than that it was the massive emotional drain of the morning that siphoned her soul away and left nothing but a few drops to remain.

Over and over again she was assaulted and menaced with despair, brought face to face with the tragedy of her past. It tore at her, ripping her to shreds as she tried to get away until nothing was left but a shuddering mess. As she drifted through the crowd she could feel nothing else but numb. Cast in gray, disconnected from the world and her own mind... This was what death felt like. It was like... being empty. It wasn't a good feeling and not one she wanted to experience more often, but it was preferable to the sensation of her heart ripping in half slowly as she'd experienced all day thus far. Of all the things she wanted to do today, living through what she did this morning wasn't very high on her list. Though... in a sense... it was motivating. It opened old wounds long stapled shut, but that sort of festering scab was the kick in the ass she needed to start moving again. It put things in perspective. Grief? Grief was useless, but the rage behind it would carry her aching feet forward. In this moment it sucked harder than anything could, but she would become strong from it if she survived. Like she always did. Ritsuko was too stubborn to let anything kill her after all that had tried to stop her up to this point. That all had its limits nonetheless. She'd shut down again to save herself.

The notes took a while to register through the gloom, through the void that she'd created within herself to avoid feeling anymore but it was there. She couldn't ignore it, there were forces at work that wouldn't allow her to. The Muse of Song would not permit her to pass by without taking in her own language. Dull eyes glanced upward to find... Crow. The kid she had seen what seemed like ages ago before the night were to traumatize and the day were to desensitize the tortured soul. The melancholic sound pierced through her depressing veil to pick at her emotions like his namesake on carrion, tearing more painful bits away as she absorbed the music. Melancholy. Defeat. Submission. She could feel her eyes begin to grow wet again even as she'd already cried out all her tears that morning. It was what she loved and hated about her artform. It could evoke powerful feelings slumbering from deep within, and these were the closest to the truth one could ever get. But it was painful. Every single time it hurt. It was a beautiful, fantastic hurt, but it was pain all the same.

Rubbing her dry eyes, the forlorn guitarist would shuffle her feet closer to the sound of expressed agony. Just as before she sat wordlessly beside him, kicking her feet on the edge of her precipice as she existed with him for an innumerable moment in time allowing the rhythm to course through her in depressing waves before shedding her guitar case. She didn't want to carry the wait or speak to anyone. She didn't even want to exist right now. But if it had to be anywhere, she'd rather it be here.

OOC:

Posts : 61 Join date : 2016-10-09

Nothing else existed.

The sun clambered up from the horizon like the dead returned to life, but Lance felt none of its warmth. The throngs of people bustling along with the morning rush were little more than droplets of water in a silent stream, floating past a dead stone without even registering its presence. He was barely there himself, a dully aching shell of flesh surrounding a vacuum. A black hole that sucked in light and heat, joy and passion, thought and memory.

Except one.

Over and over again, the sight of the green ghoul, its depraved, bony form. The spiraling needles that burst from its flesh, the blooms of pain across his form that throbbed in time with his current injuries. The black, the grey, the awakening. The guitarist and the dagger girl.

Every recollection brought his fingertips down upon the ivory with just a little more weight. His wounded arms moaned in protest, his thumbs throbbed as the bones thudded beneath the drone of the notes. Even the stand the instrument rested upon wobbled with uncertainty, unsure if it could bear the boy's emotions as they spilled out over the keys, absorbed into the wiring, and wrung from the speakers.

The ache and the memory were all he had left after last night, after smiling at his mother and pretending he'd just taken a bad fall while freerunning. After walking Luke and Lexi to school, to make sure nothing could bring them harm. Not that anything would, anyway; it was broad daylight, and there were Cadets practically at every corner.

But he had to make sure himself.

It was the only thing he could do now, the only comfort he had left. He now knew what the people of Endymion were really afraid of, and that there was nothing he could do to ease that fear for those he loved. He had to be aware, to see the signs and the threats before they could have the chance to strike, and yet... nothing existed.

Not even Ritsuko, as she came to sit beside him just like before. She was just another silent figure, a drop curiously misplaced by a ripple in the flow. His eyes were affixed to the pattern of black and white, the discs of ice failing to send clear signals where they needed to go. The pain was the only sensation he had left, the only mark of his existence that registered. The notes spoke on their own, now, no longer led by the hollow mind.

The black, the grey, the awakening.

The guitarist and the dagger girl.

The keys fell with more weight.

Those We Failed to Protect: