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Air burns when Spoke breathes it in.
Making his lungs feel bloody and stung with each inhale of the chill surrounding his body.
The sun hides behind heavy clouds, shy to show its face.
A valley, in gloomy darkness.
Each flower, once bright and welcoming, now dull and lifeless.
He's not sure where it is. Wherever he is.
It hurts to take a step forward.
The humid, cold air soaks into his bones and makes them ache. Ache for warmth he has felt before, long ago.
The only warmth is on his hand, palm pressed tightly against his friends like it'd kill him to let go.
A feeling that is entirely familiar, yet at the same time, a foreign event.
The muscles in his body cry like rusted gears for a break, but he squeezes his friend's hand and keeps going.
Mapicc follows almost right up against him, the cold chilling him down to his toes.
Seeking warmth.
Spoke pauses at the peak of a hill and looks down.
Breezes twirl around their bodies, singing songs of souls of adventure, lost to the winds they inhabit now. It shakes the poppies and dandelions, it scatters the leaf litter.
Quiet encases the never ending field, their synchronized breaths seeming to echo in it, standing out like the cornflower settled in the middle.
Mapicc turns to look at him at the same time he does. Their eyes meet in an understanding only they've mastered. Grief floods off of Mapicc in waves, a slow, sad, accepting feeling. The grief Spoke feels meets his, but opposite; fast and angry and denying, burning with a feeling of injustice that never quite died out.
Unfairness. It was not fair. Spoke thought he'd wail it out like a toddler. Over and over again like it would change anything. Change the outcome of what had to happen. Like it would change the feelings raging inside of him to build a typhoon.
Spoke leans forward, trying to capture Mapicc in an embrace he wasn't sure he'd find it in him to let go of. His arms reach out tentatively; the dove reaching for the olive branch— the only sign of land, of survival.
A hand phases through the vibrant red of a hoodie.
The world seems to darken in mourning, and the wind starts to wail. Thunder roars, angry and fierce. Nature speaks for Spoke in that moment, angry and utterly betrayed by the world he once thought was his.
His arms rapidly fall back to his sides, hands fisting up the fabric there.
Mapicc stares, a frown on his face, like he's longing just as bad as Spoke is, in his own way. Longing for the world they could have run together.
It was too late for that.
Spoke turned around. He couldn't bear to see Mapicc's face, full of pity. Just like Minute's was, just like Jumper's was, just like Jamato's was. All of their eyes, flashing in his mind like the tormenting screams of hell.
Purgatory, prison, every step that lead up to the choices he'd made.
He faced Mapicc and took a wild dive with arms out, feeling his knees scrape against the ruthless ground as his arms hugged against nothing, barely stopping his face from smacking the grass.
Tears built up, and he sat out in the lonely field.
He sat there, with the echo of Mapicc's friendship, and sobbed, a song of the ways the world had wronged him.
Wailing, screaming with the calls of birds.
Alone.
Just like how he'd always end up.
Tears made a path down his cheeks, sticking to skin like a parasite.
A terrible, awful sight.
Rain soaked his clothes through, wind whipped his hair and stung his face with a bite.
The warmth of Mapicc's hand was gone. Forever, he thinks; but doesn't hope.
He stopped crying and stared at the valley in silence, thunder ringing his ears. Anger pulsed in his chest, twisting and rising into an ugly beast.
It was his fault he'd be alone, forever.