Wraparound

TW: Swearing, Major Character Death, Suicidal Ideation

We did it again.

Are we safe this time?

No.

"Perseverance. That's all he said that it'd take. I think that he was a tad wrong with his observation with you though, since you seem like you aren't even trying to live past this sentence!"

"Like I'm not fucking trying to stay alive!"

The profanity was like a slap in the face at the same time as a jaw-drop. She never swears. She never swears. That's Mark's thing. She never swears.

"Language, mother."

"Fuck you!" The strain of the magic seemed to be taking a toll on her. Well, shit. If magic was taking a toll on her, this was one hell of an artifact.

"Just a little more, hold on! You can do it!"

"Thanks for the encouragement! I really needed that from you right now!" She sounded annoyed. I decided not to push my luck with her right now.

The artifact finally gives, and mother collapses into a heap on the floor. I run up to stimulate her, to make sure that she was still breathing, and even alive. She gets up before I can even try any of those.

"*huff* Thank you for your concern. That one was... difficult to do."

"Why so?"

"It needed soul contact."

My whole body went ice cold after those words. It was a topic that they had talked about before, but both danced around it for their own good. She was older, had dealt with being soulless for longer. I was much, much younger and was never really sure how my soullessness happened in the first place, all I know is that I woke up one day feeling nothing, for anyone. She found me and took me under her wing, kindly explaining that she was the same way.

She was the only person that actually understood me other than my other siblings, so it would make sense that I bond with her? I'm not certain that I could even call it a bond, but more of a mutual feeling of trust and understanding. I have a similar bond with my siblings, who are also soulless. Being the first child there (to my knowledge) I was also dubbed the oldest, and living for 1,000 years was a feat to behold, though I'm certain that mother has many more years under her belt, as well as many more children to worry about.

So, the reason that I went so cold is that if something requires a soul bond or a soul contact, it needs a soul, right? Right? But if say, a soulless were to come into contact with it, it would just leech any and all magic out of you that it needs (the soul is a very easy place to get magic out of) and then go on to your life force if it needs anymore. Mother, I knew, had a lot of magic, more than an average person would be able to use, and she could handle a lot. But when it came to soul contact, nothing regarding her was safe. The very culmination of her being, her ability to feel anything other than sensations, all gone, and for how long now? Too long. Anything even resembling her soul must have left her by then.

Perseverance was something that she was not the best at. It was almost always up to P.J. to get anything involving that to even work, because I was super interested in everything that happened to anything and anyone. Mother said that I should become a storyteller. Look where I am now!

"Are you okay?" The concern was bleeding into my voice, well, as much concern as a soulless could possibly muster anyway. She coughed into her fist, and the hand came away red. My eyes widened.

"Say- Say goodbye to your siblings for me, would you?" The pain was evident.

"N-n-no! No, I refuse!"

"Why? Why do you refuse me?"

"B-Because... Because you're going to make it out of here!"

"No, I'm not. No use in faking it to my eldest."

"You are going to be okay mother." I deadpanned my best, hoping that I could make her laugh and agree with me that she was going to be okay. That I could take her home and she could get healed by Shayne.

"Listen to me, child. I know that I will do today, here, in this spot with you onlooking. It's the end of my line, but yours extends for much longer than this. Say goodbye to your siblings for me, please."

"J-Just! Just a little more, hold on, you can do it!"

"Heh. You always were the optimistic one." She smiled, and then her face went entirely slack, along with the rest of her body, the precious light leaving her eyes. Mother was gone, and there was nothing that Shayne could do for her now. All of her magic and life was gone. Burning cold apathy was screaming at me to just get up and walk away, but something stopped me from doing that. Something that wouldn't let me move, or look away from the corpse in front of me. It shouldn't look much different than all of the other corpses that I had seen over the years.

But this one was different. This one was hers. Like hell I was just going to get up and leave after such a display of pain. I was feeling pain too, after all. I couldn't quite pinpoint it at the time because I was supposed to be completely and entirely emotionless, a 'sociopath' as the normals called it. Everliving freedom was more like it to me. After my only display of emotion that I had ever had, it was completely and totally overwhelming, like everything and nothing was existing, all at once.

I picked her up, carefully, gently, and took the orb still in her hand, the one that she died to get. I had to choose between throwing it into the deepest corner of nowhere and keeping it to figure out the magical achievement that she was so excited about.

I couldn't decide on which one was apparently more morally sound. I couldn't decide if what she wanted to do or what she died to do was the right thing to do, because I wanted so much to destroy the thing that had destroyed my precious mother.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to die or not.