idek anymore just take it

The fight drags on forever, a battle against a person you prayed, hoped wasn't involved in this mess, but ultimately knew was now the enemy. How much of her is still there, you don't know. You know only that you're fighting a losing war, that you have no chance, and yet you must win anyway. Else they'll take you. Else they'll kill you. Or worse, make you like them.

Everything hurts, yet you still fight on. Your fists are numb from the blows traded. Your chest is in agony, it feels like something broke. Her wedding ring has left cuts and scratches all over you, and despite all your conditioning her blows still are hard enough to bruise. Yet you keep swinging, and swinging, until you're lightheaded. You can't let yourself stop. You can't stop until you're dead.

One fateful blow takes you to the ground, and time slows to a crawl as you realize how many people you've just failed.

The boy from the mall with the fluffy brown hair and chocolate eyes, who fought so valiantly when he was taken back to his cage. Your best friend, with whom you bonded so close over your anxiety, your mutual misery, now off fighting others away from this battlefield. The boy from the library, who listened to you try to overcome your learning problems the whole night and never left your side, who was now locked away just over there, left to watch as his only savior was struck down in front of him.

And most of all, your sister. The one who means so much to you. The one who saved you from yourself that night you tried to kill yourself, who now you thank even though at the time you wished only for death. The one who's been with you your entire life, much as you've been with her for hers.

You won't even get to tell her you're sorry.

A cry breaks through the darkness, both in this hall and in your mind.

“Please, get up!”

It's a voice like honey and hot breakfast tea on a rainy Sunday morning. Like a sunrise over a rocky coast, breaking through the shadows of this terrible situation. A voice you've grown very acquainted with both through your own exploits and those you've shared with its owner. It's the boy from the library, still trapped in his cage.

Time restarts for you. All at once, you feel a fire in your gut reignite. A surge of energy rushes back to your limbs, and you spring upward as your once-beloved teacher dares to move in and try to pin you down. You nearly knock her over with your sudden movement, and the fight begins anew.

You trade blow after blow after blow, again and again and again. After a while, it starts to feel as if you haven't even made a dent in her. But you can't surrender now. He's watching. Even though your face is cut up, and your nose leaks blood in a steady flow. You're pretty sure it's broken. But you must keep fighting. Everyone has a limit.

Your legs begin to buckle, when another voice cuts deep into the battlefield and the reaches of your mind.

“Help me! Please!”

It's the voice of someone who sounds like a friend. Someone valiant, someone desperately wronged. You recognize it as the terrified tone of the boy from the mall. You remember how much of yourself you saw in him when you spied on his conversation that day. When he was taken, they used him and his memories. They planned to manipulate your dear sister, because they knew from his mind that he had held feelings for her from afar. In that moment, you had known that you had to save him, no matter the cost.

Because if you couldn't save him, how could you ever hope to save yourself?

The sheer anger that boiled within you as you realized just how much his situation sounded like yours returns to you in the moment you hear him.

More voices call out and reach into your soul.

One voice like sugar and fresh linens begs you to keep your wits about you.
One that sounds like anger and fire and the crackling of a wizard's spell shouts to keep going, to bash her face in.
A rough, jagged voice that crashes like the seas and pierces like a spear demands that you rain justice on the heads of these who would do so wrong.
One last voice, one that feels like home and tastes like love, calls on you not to give up.

So you don't.

You can't.

You keep fighting, even through the pain. You keep toiling, keep swinging, keep trying to gain the upper hand. You can barely see from the blood in your eyes, now. But barely is still more than nothing. And even when you have nothing, you'll still keep fighting. All these people depend on you.

It feels like this has gone on for decades, now. You can't tell if you've even begun to wear her down anymore through the red mist in your vision. You can feel your mind growing more distant from your body by the second. Even the hardest of blows don't seem real. Everything has gone hazy, like you're beginning to slip away...

But one last voice reaches out.

“Keep going.”

The order is simple, yet it roars through you like an angry dragon, defending its territory. It commands like a goddess and howls like a wolf on the hunt. It rumbles like a shotgun blast and resonates with you like the greatest guitar solo you've ever heard.

You know, deep in your heart, that the voice isn't one of the others. It isn't your disgraced teacher, your mothers, your sister. It isn't library boy, or your best friend.

That voice could have only come from within.

That voice is you.

It's something you've never heard from yourself. A far reach of you walled off by the troubled waters of your mindscape, that only when everything is crashing down is allowed to rise up. And she is brave. She is strong, and confident, and angry. Oh, she is very, very angry. And because of her, you keep standing. Keep going.

After all, there's no crying until the end.