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[…] And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
—Sara Teasdale, There Will Come Soft Rains.
Jiyan remembers what happened that day and what happened during those that followed. But he cannot associate a moment to a specific date or hour. Everything happened during a season with no daytime, twilight or night.
The aftermath felt like waking up from a nightmare. There was still a rejection of reality, and the impulse of walking like a mindless corpse. He really wanted to convince himself that this was not happening. All of this was just a bad dream; tomorrow morning he would wake up and everything would be the same as it was a few hours earlier.
This was not happening. Not to him, not to all the soldiers that made it back to the base.
This is not real. Nothing is real...
He liked that idea: dissociating from reality.
It sounded so beautiful, such a nice thing to do. Embracing comforting lies and rejecting unpleasant truths.
He liked the idea of not having thoughts to process, no feelings to heal, no pointless words to muster. He wished he could watch everything unfolding without him as a force associated with progress, and this sudden weight over his shoulders. To pretend that all his insecurities were not poisoning his mind, whispering him to the ear that it did not matter how hard he tried, at any moment he would end up like criying like a coward, and that it did not matter how hard he worked, he would end up like Geshu Lin, hated for a decision taken when resources were scarce and there so much people to protect.
But he had no right to do so. He had no time to feel sorry for himself. He had a new place in this world, and that was being the new Midnight Rangers’ general. It was his duty to make sure things were back to normal, or whatever the word “normal” meant right now.
The battle was over, they were still here. Alive and procesing everything, gathering strenght before braving the enemies once again.
Still, he wished everyone was here, not only he and those who followed his order to retreat from the battlefield. It was an upseting feeling, witnessing death and life in once place; walking among the survivors, the dead and those who were barely alive a begging for more time among the alive, made him question if he was really awake.
Or even alive.
Maybe he was a ghost walking among his comrades and his body was scattered somewhere else. Who knows. It was possible that he was only here as a sorrowful soul that left so much things undone and came back to the base just to watch over his comrades and beg for forgiveness — But why would he ask for “forgiveness”? To whom? A retreat was also part of a strategy. Weather he liked or not, it was something that happened in war.
While helping his comrades, not with Jué's blessing but with his knoledge as medic, Jiyan saw tears, blood, faint smiles, eyes glistering with hope and sorrowful eyes filled with rage and sadness; people hugging friends and comrades that survived, people hugging those who were wounded in the battlefield and lived just to die in a safe place. But there were not laughs. Jiyan knew people would laugh later, much later.
The next thing to make would be a list and sort the personel according to their status and rank: Killed in action, missing in action, died of wounds received in action, survivor...
The collision of life and death made him realize that there was little —almost nothing— to celebrate. This was a Pyrrhic victory. They survived, but they took such a heavy toll that he could not stop wondering if this was actually the end of their problems, or the beginning of a bigger one. Sadly, Jiyan soon realised that all the loss was just enough to buy them a little time until they were able to find a better solution. They were in the middle ground, but also most likely to be whipped during a next assault.
“It’s over”, he heard somebody say. The person almost had no energy left “But for how long?”
They did not know it. Their safety was just something temporary. Like everything in this life, it was not supposed to last forever. The Ovathrax was still there, looming over them. Mocking them and their weakness, how the only thing they could do was to wait for something to happen or diying while things started to get better for them.
Meanwhile, they had to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Wait.
Wait for a miracle.
Back in those days, there were things he knew that would happen, and things that would not. But most of the time he wished that people, in the haste to fill blanks and find explanations, avoided to cast judgements so hastily.
Jiyan did not know it back then, but this event would go down to history under the name of The Battle Beneath the Crescent. He knew, however, what would happen before that name started to slowly spread among the population.
A part of him wanted to be optimistic and think that people would try to see beyond the unfriendly demeanor of the former general and give him the benefit of the doubt, but Jiyan was more akin to the idea that would never happen. Even if he wanted, it would be something impossible. He had to accept that actions would be framed and reinterpreted in a way that would make them blame the wrong person and worship the one that did the bare minimum.
After all, every story needed a villain and a hero, and that every villain would be teared down in order to enhance the importance of the hero.
It was given the fact that a large portion of the people would never invest time and energy to learn about the man Geshu Lin really was. Jiyan knew the former general would be their scapegoat. His accomplishment would be diminished, his action and judgement would be questioned and his name would be unfairly associated to the many pariahs that can be found across the world.
Before anybody had the opportunity to say anything nice about him, he would be an example of what to not become.
It was crystal clear that some people that would not waste time in starting to badmouth him. In the past, they did it behind his backs. Now that he was gone, it would be behind the current general’s back.
Jiyan was painfully aware that a lot of people never liked Geshu Lin that much, to begin with. It was a known fact that they tolerated him at best, but he was never somebody they would look up to. He never heard somebody saying that their lifegoals were becoming somebody like him. They respected him as general more by obligation rather than by choise, but despised him as person, and it was obvious that a lot of them were glad to know they would not be forced to deal neither with the man and the general. None of them would bother them ever again.
Soon, every bad thing that would be said about him would become the only thing people needed to know. Those who had good things to say would be considered the lucky ones and their experiences dealing with him would consider something minimal, not worthy of their attention. A few good things were not enough to completely redeem somebody they would invest time into making look like a complete bastard.
Some times, people were incredibly unfair and ungrateful.
It was always as white-or-black situation. Nuances did not exist when it came to judge somebody. The worst was that they all knew that, back in those days, there was no magistrate to protect Jinzhou. It was one general with and army, going against an enemy that was almost defeated.
Almost. That awful word.
Geshu Lin was almost a hero.
He almost defeated the Ovathrax.
And then, it came the retroact rain, bringing chaos and self-destruction to the frontline.
Geshu Lin sacrificed everything he had and bought time to the nation he dutifully served, and Huanglong people pay him by pretending that not retreating was the worst thing he had ever done.