Spideychelle one-shots

And The Stars Watched Them Die

In the end, they had fallen farther than angels. The bottom was hard, and it was cold, and there was no climbing back up. 

They lived in a world of darkness and pain, and the only thing the stars did was hang in the sky and watch them die. 

They ate a dinner of old granola bars and a single, stale bun that Peter had found behind one of the shelves in the bakery. MJ refused most food, these days. Peter had to make her eat. 

It was hard to not give up. 

He watched the flames flicker and stretched his hands towards the meager warmth. Musty blankets from the time before - when refugees where still being handed supplies - were wrapped around their shoulders. They had a gallon of water wrapped carefully in a bag. These were the things Peter counted now, as precious to him as gold. 

These were the currency of the new world. And they couldn't be bought with money. 

He took a careful gulp of water, washing away the dust and foul taste that came from breathing the air, even with the masks they wore nearly constantly. He offered some to MJ, but she just shook her head, face pale and wan. 

Peter didn't know what to do. 

As each day went by, their chances of survival went down. The world had been torched - and their own insistence in the early days not to follow the rumours of safe places had left them wandering a deadland alone. With no goal in mind and no hope.

They couldn't just give up, but Peter didn't know what else to do. He could feel MJ slipping away. He could feel himself losing her. 

And if he lost MJ, he would lose himself.

They had left the city with the remnants of the rising sun, weak beams barely filtering through the smoke that blanketed the sky. 

The bare bones of trees long dead rustled and moaned, joining the scrape of their feet along the pavement and the screeches of demonic birds in the sky. 

The road wound along a river, once glittering and pure, now polluted and choked with ash. Grey and lifeless, just like everything else in the landscape. Nothing was there. Nothing was left.

Sometimes, Peter wasn't even sure what they were fighting for.

They moved when they had to. Somewhere, in the back of his head, he was aware that he was unconsciously guiding them north, towards Canada. Somewhere, in the back of his head, he had stored the rumors and stories that had told of stories of new life, of communities banding together. 

Surely it couldn't be worse than here. 

Beside him, MJ hummed, a barely there wisp of a tune that dragged it's way out into the world, traced across the decaying horizon and joined the birds in the sky. 

He reached out and grabbed her hand, tried to ignore how cold it felt in his, how lifeless. 

Way back, at the Beginning, when Before was just becoming Now, they had still been fighting. There had been more of them: Peter remembered their faces with a sort of bitter pain reserved for those who had gone through war. 

Ned. Lost to them in the Plague that swept the land, buried in an small grave, a rock serving as a headstone.

May. Taken down in a fight with one of the violent cults that had sprung up, shot and taken. Peter tried not to think about what they had probably done with her body. Cannabilism was not uncommon. 

There were others, fighters they'd met along the way, refugees who wanted the same as them. People who had fought and died and lived and loved along side them. 

And Peter tried not to think about the day it all went wrong, the day everything fell apart. 

The truth came through in his dreams, and he would wake up shaking and screaming, calling out her name.

MJ.

Peter had lost things. Peter had lost everything. 

As he crouched, head down, sheltering under the husk of a blown - out semi, a wind swept over him, grabbing the ash and dead leaves from the pavement and swirling them up, up into the sky. 

Up over the dead highway, the craggy landscape, the ash-choked sky; up over the acid sea, the twisted animals, the empty world. 

Up over Peter, hidden in the wreck of his mind, muttering to himself.

Up over Peter, who was alone. 

Hi. 

I know I don't usually write sad stuff.

I hope this made sense. 

Please remember to vote and comment if you liked.

-Viwrit3r