DYER - The Durban Wolves [discontinued - pending V2, someday, maybe]

.:15:. Before The Virus

They left in the dead of night: a convoy of two unassuming vehicles loaded too fully for the good of their axles. Tiaan drove the first vehicle, Jex following behind. The road was long, and the conversation grim or drowned out by music in an attempt to maintain some form of positivity.

Dyver couldn't bring himself to relax, knowing what was coming. Tiaan's words from earlier kept repeating themselves in the back of his mind.

If it's going to work, you're gonna have to forget everything the guys and I spent so much time hammering into you and go back to the Divan I hated before.

Dyver wasn't sure when it happened that his character changed. It had happened to him a few times in his life for a number of reasons. However, there was no confusing what Tiaan had meant.

Before the virus, Divan had been turned into a person that he was never able to be proud of. Thinking back to before, he wondered where it was that he let himself lose his identity to the moment.

"I'll take next shift." Dyver offered with a glance to the GPS. "Wake me up when you get tired."

"Will do, Dy." Tiaan smirked.

Dyver put a hand behind his head and leaned into the corner between his seat and the window to use his arm as a pillow. Watching the darkness speed by beyond the glass, he drifted, and sleep quickly overtook him.

***

Victory is something that you can easily get used to. When you are so used to being powerful, it is easy to lose sight of what makes you so strong. You become complacent, and, in the moments after that, when your strength quietly abandons you, it comes.

Defeat.

"Markus!"

"Vasbyt, Markus!"

"Is hy OK?!"

Markus would have been fine on the field that day, under normal circumstances. He should have been at home, dealing with the grief of having had just lost his older sister in a car accident. Had he told his team, he would never have been on the field.

Had he told his team, he wouldn't have just broken his neck, in the same way she had.

Just like his sister, it wasn't the impact that broke Markus. It was the whiplash.

The high school sportsman was rushed off to hospital. The game continued. His team won.

Markus would never play rugby again.

But for the rest of the squad, life went on.

"...You can stop looking blue like that, you know."

Tiaan stiffened, looking up to find his science teacher and coach standing next to him with his hands in his pockets.

"Sorry, Sir." Tiaan said, standing. "It's just that it's that we didn't even get past 7 points yesterday..."

"We're still just not used to playing without Markus." The coach, Gerard Nieman, sighed. "We'll figure it out, Louw. Just give it some time."

Time... Tiaan grit his teeth as he began running his laps around the field with the fifty-odd other boys that made up the three-and-a-bit teams of the school rugby club.

You haven't even decided who on the B team is going to be his replacement, fool.

While Tiaan and the rest of the students continued their fitness training, he spied Gerard and the other supervising teachers discussing probably just that topic, based on their concerned expressions.