if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

set

     I was watching Urbosa closest. 

     Her expression was slowly taken over by horror, with every word, every clearing of the picture I was drawing. 

     Riju has said she had no idea. 

     Her hands had balled into fists, as if to fight thousands of invisible enemies. "How could I have let this happen?! I was there! I was right there!"

     My eyes shifted to everyone else, in turn. Mipha was keeping Sadie entertained elsewhere so she didn't have to hear what I was to say. And then it hit me like a punch in the gut.

     I did it again. 

     I'd forgotten. Again. 

     I'd forgotten that my friends were gone. 

     They were gone. 

     These people were not the Champions. 

     It wasn't fair to force this burden on them. This expectation of who I wanted them to be, who I remembered them as. Those were phantoms that haunt me, and me only.

     Yet I couldn't make myself understand, couldn't get used to looking at them and remembering that we were nothing more than allies, that the only thing binding them together was our cause and me. Every time the rude awakening was brutal but it kept happening. I couldn't stop it. 

     I hated myself. 

     I fell too easily to the old patterns. I wanted comfort from them, I wanted solace. I'd just seen something utterly isolating and I was seeking desperately for any trace of warmth. And naturally I turned to the ghosts of the past, of the future.

     I chose what I didn't see. I chose what I ignored, what I pretended wasn't there. What was left were only fabrication. 

     I lived one lie after another. Except this one was my fault. It was my fault what I wanted, what I couldn't have.

     Such as how hard Zelda was trying to be nice to me, how forced her smile was. How her eyes scan me as if searching and searching for what made me worthy of the Triforce of Wisdom and what made her not. 

     Such as how under Sadie's apparent excitement, there was an undercurrent of confusion, of fear always present, as her life suddenly turned into mess after terrifying, bewildering mess. How no matter what we did, it would never make it okay to force her onto the battlefield, into war. 

     Such as how the Champions always kept some distance between each other, how they seemed to laugh and be comfortable with each other, but looked within themselves with lingering distrust. They put on this front for me, not Hyrule, not our cause, because I was just that obvious with what I truly yearned for. 

     I'd never have what I once had back. I had to learn how to be all right with that. 

     I didn't know how. 

     Every time sense slammed into me like a brick wall, it was startlingly disorientating, and always a hollow ache blossomed, soft and painful, humming underneath my ribcage. 

     This was one of those moments. Suddenly I was reminded of how absolutely alone I was, even as I was surrounded by people, my friends. 

     I took a breath and choked my thoughts.

     "That's just one example." I said, my voice steadier than the voices screaming in my mind. "There's definitely more. We have to get going."