An End to Endings

       He woke up as he did every day. He stared disdainfully at his alarm clock and let it ring to spite his sanity. He took a lukewarm shower, he brushed his teeth, he ate breakfast and rushed to work, always a little too late. A little too late, because he drove slow and his hands shook when he approached the traffic lights. His work was comfortable, and slow and repetitive. His eyes flicked from his computer screen to the stray papers on his desk, to the picture frame he had hastily thrown a napkin over. He hadn't yet summed up the courage to put it away. It would be an end, and as much as he hated this static, underwhelming position, he hated endings more. He heaved a sigh and dared himself over and over to stand. He walked to the break room, sustaining heavy blows from breeding rumours and thick, pitying gazes that hurt him so much more than loneliness from lack of attention would have. He needed escape from this. An end to endings.

          He scrolled through his news feed slowly, savoring every minute of hope that he would find what he was looking for. He took a deep, tense sip of his coffee and clicked on the icon reading, "World News." His heart leapt. A headline. Bad news, but news he desperately needed, craved, and felt so guilty for praying for.

        Months of glancing out his window, searching for a familiar face, watching the television screen display thousands of names. Numbers were next, the all-meaningful numbers, the ones that would lead him to his new start.

          "Please," he whispered, holding a slip of paper to his chest.

        Someone heard him. Finally, his number had been chosen. Finally it was time to go. He jumped off of his couch and threw his arms into the air in triumph, laughing. He reported to basic training, the only man with a smile on his face.

        When fires burned around him, he lost his smile. When he felt a young man's pulse on his hand, and stared into his eyes as he pushed harder and harder into his throat, he wasn't thinking. When the sick concoction of acidic vapor unleashed by mortal enemies he never knew turned his stomach and stripped the bark from trees, he wasn't alive, truly. When every inch of earth had been rubbed in salt, when every drop of the oceans had been tainted by the radiation of uncountable attacks, when the life that persisted was broken and small, he didn't have the mouth to smile. His lips had been chipped away by empty prayers that things could go back to how they had been, when he had understood love and remembered it.

        Someone came to him. Someone made him remember. He was nearly blind from the torture of survival, but he felt soft skin, and smelled sweetness and heard a gentle voice that promised he would be okay. That promised salvation.

          He spent his mornings next to a warm, trusting body. An understanding entity who held him and forgave him when he cried out in his sleep that he was sorry, that he was wrong to have hoped for this war that shook the earth from her axis and tore her skin open. It had been so long since he had not been lonely. So long since a simple car crash, because someone didn't see a red light. So long since he had seen the bright eyes of adoration and devotion, so enthusiastically given and so enthusiastically returned.

          He felt a cool hand on his fevered face, dripping with sweat from nightmares.

        "Charles," he heard, "I'm so glad I met you."

          "And you," he said, and he tried to open his eyes but it meant nothing, as he couldn't see though he so desperately wanted to. "And you."

          "One day, we'll put an end to this."

          "We will." He almost smiled.

          They were both sick of this realm of anguish. They were sick of this hell. They fought against it. They writhed like snakes and lashed out, screaming at the circumstances which had placed them here. They dug their nails into the liquefied corpse of what humanity had been and pulled out survivors. They devoted their lives to the cause of each other and all others, as people, as lives. With battered fists they broke down the walls and trenches that scarred something that might have been mistaken for Earth. They reached for allies with outstretched arms and cured them all.

        He sat on his porch with an arm wrapped around him, and with a reformed face he used to smile in the rising sun. He had recovered. He was new. There was an end.

          He felt a gentle kiss on his cheek. They never needed to speak anymore. The warmth by his side left him. He followed footsteps to the garden and pretended he could imagine a figure there, sitting among the flowers, breathing them in.

        A gasp. A muffled shout, an argument, a struggle. He stood, but what could he do? Really, honestly, please, what could he do?

          "Run, Charles!" Ragged breaths. "And know-"

          He did as he was asked, but he lingered for a moment, when all he wanted was to hear what came next. In a second he hoped and prayed and felt his heart leave him and his stomach fall away, he strained and leaned forward and received silence in return.

        He took off through tall grass, and tripped, and fell, and lay there numb. He got up again, and stumbled but this time did not fall, and his feet ached with each step but each step brought him further from pain, until he had led himself to the city he had built. Why did it smell like iron, when he had made it from steel? He knew the answer when he slid on the slick sidewalk and tasted salt in his mouth. He knew the answer when he heard nothing for miles, and became sure he was alone. Again. After everything, he had done nothing, and his pain didn't matter and he was alone again. So he sat himself up against something metal and hoped that something would change. No one heard him.