Stephen’s words hit her more than the slap itself... well, to be honest, she felt that too, as her whole face was red, her whole being was shaken up by it, because no one had ever hit her this hard.
No one ever had enough balls, especially in the governnt, to raise their hand against her out of respect, out of friendship, out of fear, but Stephen did it... and with it, he did sothing deeper.
Stephen planted that seed in her mind that would grow and grow, the thought that she would never be on top of the chain, that she would never be that person who could command or give orders that needed to be said, especially in this situation.
She is not soone who can give out those orders without damage to her soul. She isn’t the person who can just get over it, knowing very well that innocent lives are being lost, they are killed and she is dumb enough to think that it wouldn’t happen.
That those soldiers with those patches would just let them live. Yeah, she gave out the command without even thinking about that possibility, but then when she realized it, she couldn’t take it anymore. But moreover, she couldn’t take how calm they were, Thomas, Stephen, and even those technicians inside.
Without even watching as it played out... that it is for the "greater good," ... that hit her even harder the realization that it was all because of them, because of her.
That is the worst kind of pain, the kind even Jas himself spoke about and experienced.
It’s not a bullet, not a knife, not even a bomb... no, those are rciful and quick deaths. Those give you an ending.
But this... this is different, this is the kind of ending that doesn’t end. It’s the kind that lives inside you, haunting you every single day.
Guilt and regret.
You start to think " if only I had done better, if only I had tried harder, if only I hadn’t made that one mistake." you begin to understand that everything the chaos, the suffering, the loss might have changed if you had just been stronger, smarter, faster and that thought, that single, unbearable truth, starts to eat you alive.
It’s not death that destroys you. It’s knowing. The knowing that it was your hand, your decision, your hesitation that led to it all. You rember their eyes before it all went wrong.
Then co the questions. What if I hadn’t hesitated? What if I had seen it coming? What if I could go back just once, just for a second? You ask yourself these questions every night until they no longer sound like questions, they sound like screams in your own mind.
You fall into a loop, an endless circle of regret. You relive the sa mont again and again, trying to find a way to change it, but you can’t. It doesn’t matter if it was yesterday or years ago, it still feels like it’s happening now, over and over.
And in that loop, you realize sothing even worse, ti doesn’t heal this kind of wound. It only teaches you how to hide it better. You start to smile when you’re supposed to, talk when people expect you to, but deep down you’re still there, trapped in that single mont, with the sound of failure echoing in your mind.
Because sotis, the most painful thing isn’t dying. It’s living with what you’ve done or what you failed to do.
The worst pain isn’t a wound on the body, but the slow, silent tearing of the soul that never stops bleeding.
Guilt and regret.
Jas’s guilt and regret... it all began on that one day, the day he let Hans and Rafael go. Because of that choice, because of his recklessness, people he loved, people who truly mattered, ended up dead.
All because of him and his stupid, selfish decisions his mother will never live a normal life again. She’ll never know peace. One of her sons is dead, and the other, Jas himself is half-dead already.
His punishnt isn’t prison, or death, it’s the knowledge that he’s the reason his family will never be whole again.
Then there’s Benjamin. His guilt and regret aren’t about sothing that happened, they’re about sothing that could have been, sothing he never had the chance to change. He still rembers the day his whole town burned down, shot and killed. He rembers the flas, the screaming, the faces of everyone he loved disappearing into the fire. He tells himself he could have saved them, that he could have done sothing, anything. But the truth is, he was too young, too scared, too fragile, too powerless to stop it.
Still, the guilt eats him alive. Every laugh he fakes, every joke he makes, they’re all shields to hide the fact that inside, he’s still that frightened boy watching his world burn.
And then there are Stephen and Thomas. Their guilt and regret are not tied to one event or one person.... no their entire lives are built on it. Every decision they made, every path they took, every life they ruined along the way all of it weighs on them. They regret the lives they chose, the blood they spilled and yet, they never turned away.
They never even tried.
Maybe because they knew there was nowhere else to go, or maybe because guilt itself beca their ho. They carry it silently, pretending it doesn’t hurt anymore, but it always does.
And Linda understood it as she finally stood up and looked into the mirror at her washed-down makeup, at her bloody mouth and her face... she understood that it was not her who decided, no, life had already decided for her and what she could do was just flow with it.
"Twelve years... huh?" She whispered as she looked down at the pills that Stephen shoved into her palm... she didn’t know it.
Didn’t know that Stephen was doing it, making himself numb, that’s why he was always like that, that’s why he was always nonchalant, bored, and didn’t give a fuck because of the pills he took, because of the alcohol he drank to it.
What she knew was that Odin did it, he always drank that coffee with whiskey. He was open about it, though never open about why he was actually doing it. But she now knew it, and with that, she decided her own path as she opened her palm, and the pills fell into the sink, washed down by the water.
She would embrace it. She would accept it, even if it might lead to her death... embrace that the only thing she could do for those who had died through the years... she deserved to suffer, and she would not push it down, because the ultimate truth is that...
One day they will all answer for their sins... but until then, an endless circle of death will follow every step they take.
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