The world filtered into your eyes through a fluttering pane of darkness.
Perhaps lights flickered overhead, or perhaps you were slowly losing a battle with your eyelids; they certainly felt heavy, with every blink like a muffled clang rattling through your head.
But you couldn't hear anything aside from a persistent ringing. It spiraled through your brain, and you might have winced had you not been frozen in your spot on the ground—cursed to watch the scene play out before you without being able to so much as cry out a warning.
A loud bang in the distance.
Or was it beside you?
You couldn't tell. It just made the ringing louder.
And a spray of sparks from the fluorescent light above showered down on you, stinging your skin as if targeting individual pain receptors.
The world went dark again.
Several more bangs—like claps of thunder rattling the earth.
And then light.
You managed to pick your head up just in time to see the body of a little girl fall to the ground from where she was being carried by a tall man. Even in your state, you could see where two bullets hit their mark in him: one through the chest, the other straight through the head. Red mist exploded in the air behind him.
Somewhere in the very back of your mind, you screamed.
But you couldn't even utter a whimper to indicate your agony. You couldn't move. You couldn't do anything.
He fell to the ground alongside the girl and did not stir.
Darkness.
Light.
Darkness.
Light.
He still did not stir.
Darkness.
Light.
And even as you heard allies shouting off in the distance, seemingly miles away, you couldn't help but wonder if you truly were destined to watch everything you loved be stolen from you.
Perhaps the cruelest twist of fate yet was that even the family you'd finally made for yourself was still one that you could not keep.
Darkness.
Darkness.
Darkness.