Don't forget me - Lara, death post end of day 4

[Red]

 

 

L a r a

 
Don't forget me
Keep me in your memory
Let me be your favorite angel

 

As the last blows had fallen, Lara knew that this time, she wouldn’t survive. She stumbled, pain and truth flashing in her eye. She was going to die. After all this time, she was fighting to prolong her death. Tears streaming down her cheek, her vision was blurry, the armed, hostile figures before her shifting and transforming into beasts, like the beast she had become when she had killed Olete. A sob gasped from her mouth. This was too much. She pushed away, back the way she had come, leaving the creatures that laughed and cheered at her every spilled drop of blood, who hissed and growled and struck her with metal teeth. She fled.

And after miles and miles, or mere steps, she collapsed into the dust. Gazed up at the stars, up past the thick canopy of leaves they danced, silver and green and black and blue, flashing and twinkling. “Magi,” she sobbed. Was he here for her now, in her last moments? Black spots flickered, covering up those beautiful stars. The pain in her body was subsiding. “Magi?” Would he hold her hand as she slipped into death? Because although they had barely known each other for four days, he was her only friend here, the only person not out for her blood.

He was the only person she wanted by her side now. Her vision black, her body numb, she urged her tongue to move. “Th-thank thank y-ou,” she whispered. Her body relaxed. There was more she wanted to say, but she couldn’t anymore. She opened her eyes one last time and saw. Her Grandmother was there for her, waiting with open arms, her mother right beside her. “Do-n’t forget me.” And death welcomed Lara in.

 

ELEGANT

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

m a g i

Gas, out of time, out of money
You're doing what you can, just makin' it run
(There's only so much I can)

What happens on the margins, in spaces full of small print at the footnotes?

He stood over his fallen friend and listened to the croak of her voice. A plea that he does not leave her lonely. That he could not forget her – a lump formed in his throat – she begged, life fading from her eyes.

No one wanted to be forgotten. Magi knew little but he knew that much. To want to live on was only human. To have one’s name etched in history or attached to something less terrible than this tragedy kept them from devolving into monsters. But how much could he promise when his own life was not assured?

“I’m here,” His voice cut through as strong as he could manage, “You’re not alone, Lara.”

Her blood trickled out onto the earth under their feet. He kneeled beside her and moved to take his hands in hers.

Death sat at his back, a head torn from a boy’s body, and now in front of him, too. Surrounded by something wretched, unfair, and barbaric. He wasn’t any better than the people in here, that much was true.

“I’m sorry,” He apologized as though that could sew shut her wounds. “I won’t forget you. I promise.”

He determined not to leave the promise hollow. He’d last as long as he could, even if it meant his own name fell to the margins.

“Be still. It’ll stop hurting soon.”

Magi didn’t pray over her body, though he did his best to forgive.

The only way through all of this would be to find forgiveness. Because of all that he’d ever learned, forgiveness was the only thing that would ever give him the strength to get through it.

His mother had taught him that no matter the pain or who had wronged him, it did nothing to dwell on what they’d done. Revenge could bring a momentary pleasure, but it’d only disappear just as soon as it’d been achieved. Only a hardened heart could take pleasure in destruction of someone else. And his was as soft as they came.

Forgiveness was harder, a virtue. A feat that only a person who stood on his own two feet was capable of, to forgive was to meet the morning sunrise and still see joy. It was forgetting the power someone else determined to have over him. It was knowing that even as Lara lay dying, they had one another, two hearts, one slowing, one beating.

“I won’t forget you, Lara.”

[Note: GMs approved posting here for day 4!]

ELEGANT