In a daze, Arrek walked listlessly outside. Barely finding the energy he pulled out and lit a cigarette. Inhaling deeply he walked for a short distance and flopped onto a small patch of grass. The events of the day threatened to open a hole in the ground and swallow him up. He felt it would probably be easier to deal with everything if he could just fade into nothingness.
Instead he lay back and looked up at the sky. The great azure canvas streaked with white filled his vision. The wind flowing and conforming to the shape of the land around him and his body rustled the grasses and trees. The sound washed over him, filled him, mocked him.
Inserting his headphones he switched on his minidisc, and escaped into music. As he looked into the sky various chords and lyrics washed through him. The sky started to darken, black spots seemingly formed across its surface invoking dark memories and plunging him back into past situations.
It was all so hard to take, a series of moments defined by a whole host of other moments both artificial and natural. Nothing and everything seemed to make sense to him at the same time. White arms curled down from the clouds and flowed into his ears fogging his mind. Everything he saw was through a haze, a haze he had had before his eyes before.
The clouds hadn't caused this haze. Arrek himself had caused it. Those moments haunted and uplifted him at the same time. Usually they occurred when he was at his worst, most of the time they occurred where he was at his worse and had drunk a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Why his mind had come to this place confused him. Why his mind didn't want to leave this place confused him more.
The day's events had crushed him emotionally. Seeing his sister in that state was more than his mind could take. He couldn't possibly imagine how he would feel if he had seen her before they started to patch her up. Arrek loved her so much. She was everything to him and that one of his own squad-mates had almost killed her made it just that much worse.
Here are people he had just met, who had taken him and his sister in, who he was expected to entrust his life into their hands and theirs into his, and one of them had almost taken probably the most fundamental being, the person who was half of him, the person who he loved more than anyone he had ever met, who he had trusted more than anyone he had ever met, the person who he decided to stay alive for in his darkest moments. Someone he was supposed to trust had almost taken this away from him?
Arrek had no idea how he would react if he saw Nolan conscious again. How can you react to someone who has lost control and almost taken away the thing you hold most dear? Arrek knew he wasn't exactly going to frag him, but his blood flowing through him burned for vengeance. A burning vengeance he knew he couldn't act upon. At least not so far as he knew. All he did know was that he would never trust that man and maybe at some point in the distant future he could forgive him. Arrek doubted it, but it depended on a lot of things, most of all the man himself. Sighing he turned to lie on his side, this matter was not something he needed to deal with right now.
Closing his eyes and opening them again the white haze was still there, black spots visible through it. Part of him wished that he had a sharp implement to help get back the other white haze he used to experience. Instead he rubbed at the scars on his arms. The chevrons on his forearms and the words he scarred into his legs. It was those feelings that assaulted him now, the clarity he felt as the sharp cold blade cut through his skin. The confusion that left him as blood would drip from his arm onto the ground below him, the pain that brought him back to his reality. The feelings he tried hard to really find. How he would eventually find the place he could leave his hurt behind.
That clarity eluded him now, only the tangible memories remained. Yearning for that clarity he reopened his eyes and looked again through the haze. A deep sense of wrongness and foreboding enveloped him. Trying to take stock of what it might be he felt a deep pain in his heart and then his heart stop beating. For a long moment he waited for his heart to start beating again, but the lack of activity and pain he felt brought tears to his eyes. Suddenly it hit him, a knife of pain being thrust into his gut. All his breath left him as in a final exhalation of the soul. Time froze. The wind slowly stirred the grass, the music became distorted and elongated into something incomprehensible, the white haze slowly faded away to fill his retinas with a bright stirring light. A light that faded just as soon as it had come.
In that moment he knew his sister had died. Explaining how he knew was impossible, he just knew. Tears streamed down his face and he began to sob. Huge convulsions ripped through his muscles as he looked at the gentle swaying of the grasses, their lines shot through with gentle light. He screamed. It was the most blood- curdling sound he had ever heard. It surprised him that it could emerge from his own lungs.
Curling into a fetal ball and trying to force his emotions down into his pit, he failed. It was the worst thing he had ever known. Sylvana had died and now Arrek felt truly alone. A selfish though maybe, but one that he could not escape. Sylvana's face was washed away from his mind. Desolation shrouded him as he fought in vain to recall her smile. The desolate shroud then ripped through him, a wave of sheer agony. Biting his lip until blood squirted from beneath his teeth he cried, cried like he was sure no man had ever cried before, and what made it worse was that he wasn't even a man, he didn't even know what he was and he knew that without Sylvana, he would never find out what he could become.
Now he was nothing.
Closing his eyes he waited for the sky to fall on him, the ground to open up and swallow him, for anything to happen that would take him away from this wretched place and carry him to his sister. She had fallen away from him.