For el_mcgruffle
For reference
Ultimately, she realized, this was her fault.
Before it all started, when she was younger and dared to be idealistic, her uncle had come by in the night to beg her father to flee the country with him and her cousins. Her father might have agreed, if she hadn’t argued that he, a teacher, would be vital to the nation’s recovery. If he fled, others would surely follow, and they would be causing more harm to their home, their neighbors, and their remaining family than the coming war would.
So her father stayed. They all stayed.
A few weeks after her uncle and cousins had fled, the police came for her father. She never saw him again.
As the war came closer, the army came for her older brother. She heard from him infrequently for a time thereafter, while the world’s leaders argued with their arsenal of lies - some for war, many for peace - but she would never hear from him again after the night that war returned to her homeland.
The fighting between the armies was fierce but brief; the chaos which ensued after the war was over became worse than if the fighting continued on.
Caught in it all was what remained of her family: herself, her mother, and her sister. Her sister was impressionable, always bouncing from one extreme to the next and usually against common sense. At first she carried the highest hopes that peace, whenever it settled in, would bring an everlasting and beautiful peace, a new age of prosperity. But her sister’s sentiments darkened as things descended further into chaos; and soon she espoused the same pessimistic views as those all around her who prolonged the nation’s agony.
She begged her sister to resolve herself to a middle way, but her sister, moving like a pendulum to its next extreme, would hear nothing of it. She became a radical - instead of bouncing from one extreme to another as an impetuous youth, she had found comfort in adopting an unyielding hatred in her heart for anything which might challenge the security of her assumptions.
Life continued on like this for years, even as the outside chaos slowly gave way to an uneasy peace. She even managed to find happiness in marriage.
Then their mother was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, killed in a skirmish between the old combatants. Quietly, her mother had served as a foundation which had kept her sister tame while she started her new life in a new home. It wasn’t long after her mother’s funeral that her sister disappeared.
One morning some weeks later, as she tended to chores at home, someone barged through her front door. She feared the worst, that she was about to experience the fate of her father, her brother, or any of the unspeakable horrors brought upon her neighbors in the last few years. Instead, she was face-to-face with a hysterical young woman.
The intruder calmed down enough to say that she was a friend of her sister, and she warned of an atrocity about to unfold. Her sister, in a mix of grief and anger, had sold herself to those more than willing to exploit her.
Horrified, she raced towards the scene of the intended crime, hoping to stop her sister, the last of her family, from committing the crime. She would beg her to think about how those who they loved but were gone would reflect on her intended course of action, she would implore her to think about her own future and not the grief of the past. She would ask her to think about how to create a better world than succumb to the ugliness which dominated this one.
Essentially, she would make the arguments which she had made to her father so many years earlier, which he had accepted but at the cost of so much.
She turned the corner to enter the marketplace; she could see her sister…
The concussion from the bomb’s explosion threw her into the door of a parked car, her arm shattering as it broke through the window. Where her sister had been was now a crater; what had been a marketplace was now Hell come to Earth.
She staggered away without anyone helping - everyone was too caught up in their own agony and fear to give her more than a parting glance. When her feet could go no further, she found herself on an overpass, blood flowing from the wounds she had sustained.
She turned to the east, where the sun had barely settled above the horizon. Staring out from the ledge, as she formed her last conclusions about her condition and the arguments she had made to her father, she wondered why the morning sun was becoming so dark.
Ultimately, she realized, this was her fault.
Before it all started, when she was younger and dared to be idealistic, her uncle had come by in the night to beg her father to flee the country with him and her cousins. Her father might have agreed, if she hadn’t argued that he, a teacher, would be vital to the nation’s recovery. If he fled, others would surely follow, and they would be causing more harm to their home, their neighbors, and their remaining family than the coming war would.
So her father stayed. They all stayed.
A few weeks after her uncle and cousins had fled, the police came for her father. She never saw him again.
As the war came closer, the army came for her older brother. She heard from him infrequently for a time thereafter, while the world’s leaders argued with their arsenal of lies - some for war, many for peace - but she would never hear from him again after the night that war returned to her homeland.
The fighting between the armies was fierce but brief; the chaos which ensued after the war was over became worse than if the fighting continued on.
Caught in it all was what remained of her family: herself, her mother, and her sister. Her sister was impressionable, always bouncing from one extreme to the next and usually against common sense. At first she carried the highest hopes that peace, whenever it settled in, would bring an everlasting and beautiful peace, a new age of prosperity. But her sister’s sentiments darkened as things descended further into chaos; and soon she espoused the same pessimistic views as those all around her who prolonged the nation’s agony.
She begged her sister to resolve herself to a middle way, but her sister, moving like a pendulum to its next extreme, would hear nothing of it. She became a radical - instead of bouncing from one extreme to another as an impetuous youth, she had found comfort in adopting an unyielding hatred in her heart for anything which might challenge the security of her assumptions.
Life continued on like this for years, even as the outside chaos slowly gave way to an uneasy peace. She even managed to find happiness in marriage.
Then their mother was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, killed in a skirmish between the old combatants. Quietly, her mother had served as a foundation which had kept her sister tame while she started her new life in a new home. It wasn’t long after her mother’s funeral that her sister disappeared.
One morning some weeks later, as she tended to chores at home, someone barged through her front door. She feared the worst, that she was about to experience the fate of her father, her brother, or any of the unspeakable horrors brought upon her neighbors in the last few years. Instead, she was face-to-face with a hysterical young woman.
The intruder calmed down enough to say that she was a friend of her sister, and she warned of an atrocity about to unfold. Her sister, in a mix of grief and anger, had sold herself to those more than willing to exploit her.
Horrified, she raced towards the scene of the intended crime, hoping to stop her sister, the last of her family, from committing the crime. She would beg her to think about how those who they loved but were gone would reflect on her intended course of action, she would implore her to think about her own future and not the grief of the past. She would ask her to think about how to create a better world than succumb to the ugliness which dominated this one.
Essentially, she would make the arguments which she had made to her father so many years earlier, which he had accepted but at the cost of so much.
She turned the corner to enter the marketplace; she could see her sister…
The concussion from the bomb’s explosion threw her into the door of a parked car, her arm shattering as it broke through the window. Where her sister had been was now a crater; what had been a marketplace was now Hell come to Earth.
She staggered away without anyone helping - everyone was too caught up in their own agony and fear to give her more than a parting glance. When her feet could go no further, she found herself on an overpass, blood flowing from the wounds she had sustained.
She turned to the east, where the sun had barely settled above the horizon. Staring out from the ledge, as she formed her last conclusions about her condition and the arguments she had made to her father, she wondered why the morning sun was becoming so dark.