Did you finally have enough of me?

Timeline/World: Wings of Freedom
Characters: Rufus Strauss
Race: Human
Age: 25
Final Word Count: 594 words

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I admit that I might have been a little rough around the edges when I was finally released from the hospital for what should have been the last time. With my luck, it certainly wasn’t and I ended back within the confines of the white walls just three months later but that one visit was indeed my last one.

Between these two visits, I’m sure I pushed my brother Julian to the very edge of his patience but he never once acted cross with me, never once told me to suck it up and stop acting out. In a way, I’m more grateful to him than I’ve ever been able to put into words and it might be why I’m still here with him. In the same large apartment but we both have our own things going on, we share meals but otherwise, we try to keep our lives as separate as possible.

This weight on my heart, not a literal weight but a painful one nonetheless, made its appearance when Nathan stepped out of my life. It was a gradual thing and I knew it was going to happen but I still felt bitter and wanted to blame my weak body, my illnesses, the tumour that had slowly been killing me. When he graduated, he did leave, we kept in touch for a short little while but soon enough, those letters became less and less common and before long there no longer were any letters.

I had loved him, I still do but I know that if it didn’t happen and work out now, it’s simply because it just wasn’t meant to, I’m all right with that. It hurts, of course, it will hurt and that’s inevitable, he was my first love and in some way, I know he felt the same about me but our age differences made things a little difficult.

Julian though, his patience, what can I say? He was at my side through thick and thin, keeping me on my feet when nobody else would, our parents had long ago ceased to hold any place in our lives and perhaps it was for the best. After one particularly frustrating visit and chemotherapy treatment, I’d had enough of the world in general and when my brother walked away from me, I just croaked out at his back that this was fine, he could run off, I was sure he’d had enough of me and I’d been expecting it… but he came back just five minutes later with a newly bought electric blanket and he helped me settle in. Helped me wash up, bundled me up and sang me to sleep. I cried, of course, I did. I felt rotten both from the treatment and from how I had been treating him lately but he never wavered.

I know I don’t deserve my brother’s friendship, his strength at my side, his patience. So often now, when I look back at the scene, I realize that I had it all wrong but I was in pain, I felt like I was dying, I felt like the world was against me. He never once turned his back, never once walked away. My brother is patience incarnate and I know he put his life on hold for me when I was sick and I can’t really do anything to repay him for that. So the rare times he has company over, I make myself sparse and hope that this one works out for him, he deserves all the love and happiness he can get.

I won’t forget this.

Timeline/World: New York City – Surviving Earth
Characters: Jaela Shiroshinrei
Race: Human
Age: 27
Final Word Count: 567 words

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Her gaze was off in the distance, watching what she could of the setting sun behind the mess of tangled vines that still fully covered one side of the building they had selected as their own to be their little home sweet home in this whole mess of things, this new life out in this brand new world. There were four apartments that still had been in good enough condition to be lived in and now all four were used and that by people she trusted, it helped her sleep better at night.

The soft snap of a dried root cracking under a sudden weight pulled her attention down from the setting sun and she watched the young woman she’d been talking to earlier, as she navigated her way down the small hill on which their home sat. Her eyes narrowed a little but she shook her head and let it go. There was nothing she could do about it now. She’d seen the woman in ‘sessions’ like these for a little while now and to this day, there just hadn’t been any progress so it had seemed seriously pointless to keep on going.

The woman would keep on going around in circles on the same one scene from her memory, seeming content to speak only of that and make no progress toward the source of her own issue and the reason why they were talking, to begin with. She’d hadn’t quite had time to finish her studying, when the world went to hell, when snow started falling and the rest, so no, she didn’t have any diplomas to show the world but the rest of her studies were plenty to get her far enough in the world as far as helping others and she’d had.

There had been other ‘clients.’ It had been odd at first when she’d placed her name on that little billboard asking for help from everyone who could. There had been a swarm, all just wanting to talk about all the snow that was still falling outside and she’d made time for each and every single one of them, gently dismissing the vast majority after a session or two, they were grieving but that was about it. This woman, however, the one now slowly disappearing in the distance, she’d come much later, having found them after they’d made their lives out in the open again. They’d been talking almost weekly for six months but just earlier, Jaela had finally, gently, told the woman that perhaps it was best they stop with these meetings for a while, that they hadn’t really made much progress since the beginning and she felt that it was best that someone else try to help because she didn’t feel qualified enough.

It hadn’t quite been the truth because she felt the woman had only wanted to relive that one memory with someone there to listen to her talk about it, her voice trembling from not anger or pain or sorrow but excitement. There was something wrong with that woman and it made Jaela seriously uncomfortable. There had been some anger at the gentle dismissal, the woman shaking her first and rambling some that she wouldn’t forget this, that she would be back, that—well Jaela didn’t want to think about it too much, she’d just let the issue be known and they’d deal with it when it happened.