Deemed Lost in Vain
“Do you remember the last time we were here?”
Images flash unbidden before my mind’s eye. The roof burns over our heads as we run, cracking, splintering, sending embers and ruin raining down around us. Not everyone makes it out, struck by debris, pinned, killed. Blades are drawn and weapons clash as hatred burns in many eyes as new enemies meet and fall at each other’s feet. Faces, faces known and unknown spin around me though there isn’t the time to contemplate their separate fates, too preoccupied by my own.
“That was a long time ago.”
Her eyes watch me from her shadowed perch, piercing as they stalk me through that once familiar place. Rubble is displaced as she shifts, her outline barely visible in what little light comes filtering in.
“But do you remember?”
Again the images come, better forgotten but never gone no matter how hard I try, how long it’s been. Turning to face away from her I kick a stone from its resting place and can’t help but wonder what it use to be all that time ago.
“Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” I spit, seething as I stand with my back to her, my fists clenched at my sides, my teeth gritted as I try and fail to suppress a growl.
“How can you even ask that? As if any of us will ever forget.”
She scoffs.
“You could have fooled me.”
I glance in her direction and our eyes meet. I haven’t a clue what’s in mine but I see a fire in hers, an all consuming flame which has been burning for over a decade, fueled by the dead and the lost, fed with screams and pain and a sort of suffering which never ends, kindled by that which we all wish we could forget.
“Look at us! Dressed in rags and covered in filth, forced to beg in the streets just to survive, stripped of all we once were until any legacy we ever had has been forgotten and erased yet you stand there, claiming to remember what happened here. If that were true you, all of you, wouldn’t be content as you now pretend, accepting of this hand we’ve been dealt. If you truly remember what happened here then those who did this to us wouldn’t still be breathing.”
“And what would you have us do, get ourselves killed in some misguided quest of vengeance? Have you forgotten, we were the ones who were revenged upon, not the other way around? That old cycle has been broken, let it remain so. Once was already too many, we needn’t make it a repeating folly of generations.”
Her eyes bore into mine as she rises to her feet, stalking towards me, emerging from the shadows to better face me, her steps echoing through this place which has gone so long without sound.
“Were you not the one who always spoke of our glorious return? Were you not the one who waxed poetics of our victory, of our ultimate triumph? Now, you stand here before me, speaking of ending the cycle when we’ve lost? What happened to you? Where has that thirst for success you were once known for gone, that reason I and so many of us called you friend?”
“I don’t know. I guess the bloodshed isn’t worth it to me anymore, it isn’t worth it to any of us anymore.”
“Then I suppose I’m not worth it to you anymore.”
She scoffs, throwing her hands up as if washing them clean of me when I say nothing in return.
“You disgust me,” and she is gone.
Her ghost turns away, retuning to its haunt of these ruins where she died oh so long ago, forever here, trapped where the blood spilt and the battle forfeited with heads bowed.
I should have listened to the others, I never should have returned. My conviction is not shaken but my shame has been kindled anew. Our reign has long been over, undeserving of further bloodshed, but never will I forget that which was already spilt and, in the end, spilt in vain.