There's blood in your hair.

Once upon a time it was blonde, but now it's stained dark with dirt and the blood of those you once loved.

You've survived.

Or rather, you've been spared.

You're strong, they say. A fighter. As if the others weren't. As if they didn't fight until their dying breath, as if they didn't scream their throats raw with battle cries.

Battle cries.

It was never a battle. It was a game, a game of chance.

Luck is a cruel mistress.

You were never meant to live, not when they were gone. Not like this, while blood stains your fingertips and every breath feels like a sin. Not when hellos are too scarce and goodbyes are all too familiar, not when even your bionically enhanced brain can't count the bodies that litter the ground (maybe you've just never tried) but you can write the names of every living person on the back of your hand.

You'd leave your own name off the list. This isn't living. It isn't living when your heart is in fragments and your mind is far too close to following. You're existing, against your own will (you lost your free will when you pointed the gun at your own heart).

And you wonder why you're still here, why you haven't pulled the trigger.

Perhaps it's because you're all that's left. You're the only remnant of a place you once called home. You're the only one left to remember the Bionic Academy (memories taste like blood, but they're all you have). Rubble is all that's left of it now, stale, metallic air and crumbling, blood-streaked walls and the mangled carcasses of the people you killed (You're every bit a monster as the Tainted).

Perhaps it's for him, for the boy with the hazel eyes and the spiky hair and the cocky yet somehow reassuring smile. He was an unspoken leader, you followed him with blind faith and trust, they all did, because they knew he'd never let them down.

Maybe it's for the boy who taught you how to feel (a lesson that was quickly forgotten when the Tainted struck). The boy who snuck you kisses between classes and met you on the rooftops after curfew and talked to you for hours on end. The protective boy who held you in his arms and told you he'd never let go (promises are like rules and hearts; they're made to be broken).

You'd watched him die. He had been infected, moments away from joining the others, from becoming a Tainted. You'd watched him point the gun at his own head, heard him tell you that he'd rather die. You heard him tell you that he loved you, and you tried to wrench the gun from his grip but it was too late you were always too goddamn late (if he loved you, he would've never let you go). And you wanted to follow him, but the barrel was empty and bullets were scarce and he wouldn't want you to join him.

So instead, you built yourself a suit of armor with the broken pieces of your heart (the glass had quickly turned to steel). And you fought, with every fiber in your bionic body, and you won.

But victory is painted red and bitter, and freedom feels so much like carnage.

You step over a body. Four years ago, the very thought of doing so would bring bile to your lips.

Then again, four years ago, if someone had told you that one day, you'd be one of the last people alive, you would've deemed them insane.

You were a girl with bionics and ambitions and big eyes filled with wonder instead of tears and freckles on your cheeks instead of scars. You were a girl with friends and a family and a home.

How times change, and people with them.

You're a monster now, you were since the day you killed an infected man you once called a friend.

You're all that's left, but nothing feels right and they call you a survivor, a hero, but you're the biggest villain here because it should've been you, you should've been among the bodies you should've suffered with them and died with them because maybe if you had it would've been over by now. And life is a blessing that feels so much like a curse and the tip of the gun is cold against your head and you think about how he wouldn't've wanted this but all he wanted was to make you happy and you can't be happy without him. It's ironic, that you made it so far, escaped the Tainted and the waves of destruction that came with them only to be destroyed by your own goddamn insanity and yet there's nothing funny about it as you pull the trigger and everything's gone as quickly as it came.

A/N

Yes, yet another one-shot. What did you think? It was really short but hopefully content makes up for length.

It's very different from my previous stories, but it was crammed inside my head and begging to be written.

Thanks for reading!

~nova