Chapter 45
Memento Mori
Ronald didn't see when it happened–he was too deep in shock, staring with parted lips at the sight that defied reason. He didn't even notice until she was standing in the growing shadow, her back turned toward him, short hair fluttering just for a moment before she vanished. He felt something inside of him crack at that moment, at that particular sight. His stomach burned and he felt more sick than ever before in his life, as though he'd eaten hundreds of different poisons at the same time, on purpose. His lead-weighed legs suddenly sprung with blood as he shot up to his feet.
"TARAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" his scream quickly became a fading echo as he struggled to run. Without realising when the boy approached, Ronald saw Elijah appear by his side too, running like mad as well. Both lunged at the massive claw and began trying to lift it. In the midst of it, notifications flashed like crazy in their peripherals, but they both ignored them all.
No matter how much they tried, however, they were unable to even budge the claw. They fell to their knees, heaving and panting, desperate, angry, bitter, terrified. They pushed and pushed and pushed… but it wouldn't move. It was an unmoving statue, forever a gravestone.
That was when Ethan stumbled from the other side, his gaze drifting between the claw and the two of them.
"Help… help her…" Ronald mumbled toward him, his lips trembling. It was less of a plea and more of a prayer, at that point.
"... look at the party window," Ethan's voice was calm. Annoyingly, bastardly, evilly calm. "She's dead."
"No… she… she can't be…" Ronald refused to believe it. She wasn't dead. She couldn't be dead. She would crawl out from underneath the claw any second now and shoot them a quip and show off in front of Ethan, bragging about how she saved his life.
"..." Ethan didn't say anything, his gaze glued to the claw. As though it was by his will–though it was definitely just a coincidence–the claw shook for a moment as the creature's entire body disappeared in a shower of light, leaving behind several items scattered about. However, the two boys didn't care about them. They cared about the tiny body faintly imprinted in the ground.
Before they could move toward her, however, a figure stepped in front of them and forcibly yanked them backwards.
"This is not something you want to remember," he said.
"I–"
"It's non-negotiable," Ethan's voice was firm and unyielding. "Let your last memory of her be the one where she stands heroically. Go back to the tent. I'll come shortly." Though they wanted to protest, neither Elijah nor Ronald said another word. They caught a glimpse of the figure, and it was already a horrifying sight. Though they wanted to see her… they didn't want to replace the person she was in their memories. They turned and began limply walking toward the tent. Elijah had cracked and started crying, and Ronald soon followed suit. There was no armour thick enough to shield from a broken heart.
Ethan escorted the boys with his gaze for a moment before he shifted over to the tiny figure on the ground. All four of her limbs were splayed unnaturally, deformed from the pressing weight of the beast. Her neck had snapped–likely what killed her instantaneously–causing her head to be angled oddly, looking out from the ground at an angle. Her eyes were no longer there, just deep-black sockets of darkness, their light extinguished.
It was a horrifying sight, the kind of sight that would leave a normal person mortified till the end of time. But Ethan… he'd seen worse. Much, much worse. And yet, this one felt different than all the ones before. The creature was dying. It would have died and taken Ethan with it should she have left it all alone. But… she didn't. She threw herself into the shadows and saved him.
It was only then that he recalled the kids had the ability to sacrifice a portion of their health to heal him--he'd forgotten, as have they. He was still woefully unfamiliar with his own Class, let alone theirs. And they were beyond ill-prepared for all of it. Would it have been enough to save him? He didn't know. Maybe, maybe not. The uncertainty... was harrowing.
He crouched and gently stroked her hair, his sigh deep and mournful. Deaths inside the Tunnels were as natural as breathing. People died all the time, of all sorts of things. And there was no doubt in Ethan's mind that more people under him would die in the future. But he would only have that future because of her.
Though he felt it was just his mind comforting him, had he had foresight of this happening… he would have left. Ran. Let the city fall. No… in more ways than one, that thought stained her far more than him. Why did she save him? It was a difficult question to answer, even for Ethan. It was not just one thing–it never is. Was it her naive adoration of him? The pristine thought he was the hero the world needed? The ultimate expression of her never-fulfilled fantasy of being a heroine herself? The culmination of hypocrisy that followed her all her teenage years? Yes… and no.
People don't sacrifice their lives for notions but for other people and causes. Whatever Tara believed in was so deeply ingrained in her bones that it commanded and lorded over the most basic instinct every single person in the world had: self-preservation. It took a lot for something to overpower that. There was only one person in the world who could move him toward it, and it was Layla. And, usually, there is only ever one person or one cause someone would die for.
Tara, Ethan felt, was… different. He hardly thought he was the only person in the world she was willing to die for. There was a good chance she would have tossed herself in the shadows for Ronald and Elijah, too.
"Fly high," he said as her body began to shimmer in the faintly blinding glow of white. "Free of earthly bonds."
She shattered into the shards of light, leaving behind dry chunks of blood as the solitary reminder she was ever there. Silence reigned supreme as Ethan remained crouching, his head hung low. He stood up a couple of minutes later, taking out a bottle of water from his inventory and washing his face.
He was fine. Though her death would likely shatter Ronald and Elijah, as well as Layla, for a long while, he was… different. Sometimes, that difference worried him. It was alarming, feeling relief that he did not die and not guilt that someone died in his place. He knew what he was supposed to feel. In a way, he forced himself to replicate the sensation, the feeling. He forced guilt into his heart, but as long as he wasn't manually festering it… it would vanish. His self was sterilised in so many ways that he longed to be torn.
Inside the tent, both Elijah and Ronald were already two cans of beer deep, their eyes bloodshot red, cheeks soaked wet with tears. They looked at him and tried peeking past him, expecting that he'd taken Tara with him.
"When someone dies in the Tunnel, a person or a monster," Ethan said. "The same thing happens to both."
"W-wait… you, you don't mean that–same thing happened to her like that monster?!" Ronald asked, standing up abruptly just as Ethan sat down opposite them.
"Sit down," Ethan's voice was calm and even. "Take a deep breath. Both of you."
"What–"
"Just listen to me," he said. "A deep breath. Yes, good. Another one."
"This isn't helping! You can't–you can't just make us feel better through some fucking breathing exercises!!" Ronald lashed out angrily, throwing a can of beer at him. Ethan didn't dodge it, letting it ricochet off his forehead as its remaining contents spilt over him.
"... I know," he said simply, wiping his eyes clean. It stung a little, but only for a moment. "I'm not trying to. But, we'll have to leave this place in one hour. And when we're out, I don't want you scarring Layla more than she'll already be scarred."
"... do you even give a shit about anything except for her?" Ronald asked.
"Honestly?" Ethan's question stung, causing Ronald to gnash his teeth at him.
"She died for you. For you "
"She did."
"You'd think that would have bought her some care."
"I can't make you understand my perspective, Ronald," Ethan said, his voice an unchanging lake. "But I do understand yours."
"You don't have a fucking heart. You don't understand shit."
"... I had it, too, at one point," Ethan said. "You're already suspecting it so I may as well just confirm it: you're right. I don't luck into knowing the things I do. So, how do I know them?"
"..."
"I lived through it all once before," Ethan's words, though only confirming what even Elijah had come to suspect, were still thundering. "I've loved and lost everything, more than just once or twice. I've spent more years being stripped of humanity than you spent living your life thus far. I can't care. Not just yet, anyway. But I know you do. And I know another thing you don't: this is the best you'll feel for months."
"..."
"Grief is a demolisher," Ethan continued. "But an eerily quiet one. You'll feel yourself getting better and, seemingly out of nowhere, you'll smell something in the range of memory and you'll be back on your bed, catatonic, broken. You won't be alone for it. I may not care as much any longer, but I can still help."
"... like distracting us with your bombastic news?" Elijah mumbled somewhat angrily, eyeing him from the side.
"It helped a bit, didn't it?" Ethan glanced at the boy and smiled quietly and faintly. "But distractions are like bells: they ring hollow. One day, you will feel better. It's inevitable. Harrowingly inevitable, one way or another. Just like you can't feel jubilant for days and weeks and months, you can't feel the heart-rending grief either. We spend most of our lives in a state of silent and mellow content. Neither happy nor sad. Just… are, in a way. But today is not most of our lives. Today, we grieve."
"We grieve."
"No, all three of us," Ethan said. "I was fond of her, too."
"Yes," Ronald quipped back. "Was. Says a lot."
"... whether you choose to believe me or not," Ethan said, taking out a can of beer and opening it. "I didn't orchestrate her personality, Ronald. I didn't secretly manipulate her so that, one day, she'll sacrifice her life for me. That's just who she was. Chances are, she would have done the same for the two of you."
"..."
"That night, in the city," Ethan continued. "If you weren't there with her. Do you think she would have walked away from that club?"
"..." Ronald remained silent. She wouldn't have. She would have stormed it, all consequences be damned.
"Some people see sacrifice for a good cause as the ultimate expression of life," Ethan said. "We can claim that it's misguided, stupid, childish, and naive as much as we want… but it doesn't matter. If not for me, she would have sacrificed her life for someone else."
"You don't know that," Ronald said.
"... you're right. I don't," Ethan nodded. "There's no doubt part of what drove her decision was her infatuation with me."
"You sold her a dream," Ronald continued. "And she believed it."
"And I'll fulfil it," Ethan echoed. "You're right. I sold her a dream. But I didn't sell her a lie. She believed in something real. On a fundamental level, of course I think what she did was stupid. Noble, heroic, selfless–call it what you want, but it goes against everything our nature instructs us to do. But so few deaths in this world of ours will have a proper meaning, Ronald. So, so, so few. It may echo hollow and self-justifying, but having a meaningful death… becomes a luxury.
"It doesn't erase the pain, the anger, the blame. I don't blame myself, but you can't fathom it–because you do. You blame yourself. But you can't encumber your heart with another person's choices. Not only because you will die suffocating in that weight, but also because you deny their own agency, their own will, their own wants. You can be angry with them–angry that they made a choice that left you bereft of their light. And you can, ever for a moment, be angry with yourself that you failed to save them. But more so than all other things… just feel pain. It hurts the most–far more than all other emotions swirling around death combined–but it's the most human one. Someone you cared for, loved even, died.
"Pain should dominate us all throughout. But, every once in a while, it just hurts so much we'd rather not feel it. But only in pain can you recognise her life and all that it meant. In anger, you lose sight of what she stood for. In pain, you revel in it."
"..." Ronald and Elijah remained silent, quietly staring into Ethan's unflinching eyes. It did make sense–everything that Ethan was. It explained it all; far more than just his unassuming knowledge of things to come, but it explained how he could experience the infernal world so apathetically. How he could watch another person sacrifice her life for him… and not even have his voice crack ever so briefly with grief.
How much, Ronald and Elijah wondered, would one person have to lose until all losses ceased to have a meaning? How many heartbreaks would one have to live through until their heart simply couldn't be put together whole ever again? Neither were willing to ask and even less willing to learn. One death, already, felt incomparably suffocating. Just as the shock of it all began to wane, the catatonic emotions awoke. A burning inferno kindled within them, and without Ethan here to distract them by waxing soliloquies and speeches, they would have snapped, given themselves to the tangent desire to go comatose.
But he was right–in the midst of the seemingly detached ramblings, something he said did echo with the two. To deny her choice would be to deny her. All the two could do, in their own minutely different ways, was suffer unto that choice, and let the pain it caused course through their veins. For now, and forever.