Fire Emblem (Edgar Frog Fanfic)

Prologue

??? POV

Dear Whomever,

I write this now as a declaration of separation from who I once was, who I currently am, and who I hoped to be. Not that the identity and standards I held for myself in the future means anything now that this is in your hands. I'm not penning these thoughts to be pessimistic about the outcome of my life, but the reality is my chances of living are dim. If you are holding this leather bound journal between your palms, listen careful- rather, read carefully. Follow along with your finger AND eyes to ensure you don't miss a single thing.

As aforementioned, if you are reading this, I have quit living. My heart has lost all its will to continue the tasteless life of silence and daydreams of what once was.

Even as I write this, the what ifs and daydreams of what once was bring exhaustion to the very center of my energy source and heavy the heart that beats in my chest. I close my eyes and the faces return- the eyes of the lost souls, of the lost boys, pop up like the moles in the carnival game. One by one they resurface, burning their expressions and the smallest of facial detail into my brain as if I could speak for them as they lie buried beneath feet and feet of dirt or- as the still breathing do- lie beneath the tens of feet of emotional baggage their hearts have been smushed underneath.

All the brown eyes, all the blue eyes, all the green eyes, and all the stormy eyes I'd looked into have morphed into strangers. Strange eyes with emotions I can no longer face or place- emotions I'd never associated with them. Every single one of them now unpredictable.

Over the years of observing people and listening to conversations rather than engaging in them verbally, I've learned a single common thing. Every single soul on this Earth is damned by something whether that something rests in the present or past, every soul clings to this damnation as a blanket for fear that its shadow will always come before the its own very soul. They believe their damnation defines them when all it really does is accentuate their individual strengths. They use their damnations as an excuse to survive.

And that's exactly the thing- I am tired of surviving. I can't handle JUST surviving. What purpose is there to continue to breathe, move, talk for the sake of surviving if you aren't going to live. It's not a life worth enduring if all you're going to do is stare at pieces of paper full of writings you once wrote to that special someone instead of getting out there and delivering it to them. It's not worth enduring if all those you loved are now people that you used to know instead of people you still know.

It does not do well to dwell on the past.

That's what I told those I love for all these years and yet here I am, doing exactly that as I pen this. All there faces that I can and have drawn on blank sheets in color and more recently, black and white. I've watched life bring color to their actions, expressions, and pigmentation, yet also watch it drain the exact same thing from them. I've seen beautiful beginnings come to tragic endings.

And I am tired. It went from ten to two with years full of great memories between, and now, as I stare at the red tinged clock hanging above my head with seconds ticking by to bring nightfall shortly, I rest with one friend. He lives in the dark, hides in the shadows and once it was because he had to. He's now blurred the line between necessity and desire, blurred the line between who he is and what he is so he thinks all that he hides in the dark is because he has to.

I went to visit him today for the final time- not that he has any knowledge of that little fact. But it was the same routine that it has been for the last five years. We danced lightly over the topic of vampires and although I tried to press it forward, bringing up the hearsay arrival of famed author of vampire romance novels to ease into the conversation, he shut it down. Quite harshly too which he immediately apologized for afterward, yet the feeling I couldn't shake off nor shove down like the medication I've been prescribed to calm my anxiety, to calm the wild thoughts constantly racing through my head.

I stayed for a few moments more, hoping the conversation would change to something worthwhile or at least something reminiscent of those we used to have before he was changed. But the physical change had led to an emotional and mental change and the conversation between us remained strained with so many words left obviously unspoken. I got up and left.

Saying goodbye is always hard. No matter the circumstance. I learned that early in my youth and consequently never say it.

But today, I finally did.

I whispered it as I kissed his forehead, my touch lingering for a mere second on his shoulder before I quickly walked out of his house. He could always sense when something was wrong with me and now that he had his physical change, he could have walked after me and still made it around me quicker than I could if I had sprinted. But he didn't. A major part of me is glad he stayed glued to his seat- left me to leave at my own will on my own terms. His brother certainly didn't. But that's a whole other section somewhere in this stack of papers, multiple times.

Goodbye is heartbreaking.

Goodbye is also elevating in some weird sense of the word. It's almost an emotional liberation if you say it on your own terms to define your actions. It's closure to yourself and to the other person.

Goodbye is powerful and moving and definite and definitive. It means the final end. It swarms people with emotion. It makes people rethink their own motives and actions. It leaves no room for what if and unsure meaning. It's long term. Endgame.

So, here is my goodbye.

With so much love,

Fire Emblem