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This place used to be a beautiful city.
Anna Croft looks out towards the shattered streets with craters in the earth and smoking piles of rubble scattered across the ground. There's smoke rising in the distance, the source obscured by the skeletons of buildings that once stood proudly. She sighs.
Her heart aches.
One couldn't recognize the landscape anymore. As long as the scenarios were progressing, this city would never again be like it once was. The sky would never again be a cloudless sunny sky and the streets would never again be filled with people without a care in the world.
Anna Croft knows this well—likely better than anyone else. She's been in this exact spot several times before, staring out over these exact ruins. Nothing she's ever done has changed this scene, so she's long stopped trying. She needs to focus on other endeavors that will actually be useful in the scenarios. A ruined vista isn't one of those things.
She shakes her head. She shouldn't be so hung up on this.
Anna looks away from the vista back towards her company, seeing various members of Zarathustra move around checking on survivors of the last scenario. There weren't many useful survivors, which was typical. A few would be folded into Zarathustra while the rest would scatter, likely to die in the upcoming scenario. Anna has seen it happen before.
She heads down to the crowd to find Selena, needing to discuss the upcoming scenario with her. They needed to prepare heavy cold and poison resistance, they needed to find the right equipment to succeed, they needed this and that and so much more. Even with the gift of foresight, there was never enough time for anything. She wonders, idly, if this is how Yoo Joonghyuk feels—the curse of knowing what's on the horizon but being unable to over-prepare.
She opens her mouth to call out to Selena, but her mouth clicks shut in surprise when she sees who Selena is talking to. A young man with messy blonde hair in a dirty hoodie with some mascot on it. Anna's mouth goes dry for a moment, and her heart trembles with something like sorrow.
The young man looks just like her little brother.
Anna can't look away. This catches the attention of both Selena and the young man. Anna exhales. The young man's eyes are blue. Jonathan's eyes are— were brown.
Selena sends the young man away before approaching Anna with a soft frown on her face.
"Do you know him?"
"No." Anna answers it quickly, and she could end the conversation there. She should have, but she elaborates. Maybe it's the novelty of not having a conversation like this before. "He just looked like my brother."
"I didn't know you had a brother."
Nobody really knows she has one. Anna's certain not even Yoo Joonghyuk knows.
Anna smiles bitterly. "His name was Johnathan. He started college a few months ago. He was majoring in philosophy. He wanted to be like me."
Her expression must be particularly miserable, because Selena's face falls into that pitying expression that Anna has seen countless times before directed at the downtrodden and weaker incarnations. It burns like fire, Anna steps away.
"We need to discuss future plans," Anna says sharply.
The look of pity doesn't vanish, but Selena has the grace to not pry. Always kind, Selena Kim.
Later, Anna Croft is alone, staring up at the night sky. The night sky has long lost its beauty. Stars were nothing but objects of her hate now. How many times has she been in this spot before? Too many to count.
Her heart still aches.
She used to stargaze with her brother though, in days before the scenarios. Those days were becoming more and more like dreams as she got farther and farther away. With a jolt, Anna realizes she can hardly remember her life before the scenarios. Her mind has been so filled with survival, experiences piling up on one another like stacks of books that whatever was on the desk to start with has long since been buried.
Not once has she ever seen her parents after the scenarios began, and on the rare occasions that she found her brother, he was already long dead. Anna looks away from the sky sharply, putting a hand over her mouth in reflex to stop the unexpected and uncontrolled cry from making it past her lips.
There's no time for idle thoughts or regrets, especially none that can't be fixed. They were dead, and she was not, and yet she finds herself unable to take her mind off of it. Grief isn't a feeling she's had in a long time, she had thought whatever part of her that could still feel that had atrophied away. She swallows around a tightening throat and blinks the forming tears away. If she grieves, she can't let it show. The stars don't deserve to see her grieving.
Is this what Yoo Joonghyuk feels like? Does he also wallow in losses he can't fix? Surely he used to, but the man he's become now might be as numb as Anna thought herself to be. She wonders who has it worse:— Her, who will never be able to see her brother again, or him, whose sister could die at any moment. She supposes that the thing that would break Yoo Joonghyuk is the win condition of the scenarios being one that Yoo Mia could never see.
Even if Yoo Mia survived through everything, he'd still lose her. Anna is the only person that knows Yoo Joonghyuk now. Yoo Mia never changes, but Yoo Joonghyuk continues his unwavering march through regressions, each turn twisting him further and further from the person that Mia knows.
So maybe, Anna is the lucky one. Jonathan would never have to see her like she is now. He'd probably be horrified at how cruel she is. She used to teach him how to play cards; she used to help him with his homework; she used to be a kind sister. She remembers even taking him to one of her poker matches while he was still in high school for his birthday. He got to have fun in Las Vegas while she won the tournament. She hardly remembers the look of shock on his face when she gave him the prize money, like he only thought getting a chance to come to Vegas was the whole gift.
She has to stop thinking about this, otherwise it would just eat her alive. She can't focus on a past she can't change—she can only focus on things she can change, like the upcoming scenario. Jonathan is like the ruined city around her, lit only by the spiteful, glittering stars above: Something that couldn't be helped. The city was ruined and her family was dead. The only difference between them was that cities could be rebuilt, and her family could not.
Her heart does not stop aching.