A new story I've been thinking about for a while now. Chapters will get longer.

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You are eight when the growing up starts.

There are whispered words never spoken and a woman fleeing in the dead of night and in the morning you wake to find that everything has changed. The house is quieter now, filled with shadows of memories you will soon forget and promises destined to be broken.

Windows half-closed to let in cool summer breezes that smell of heartbreak and a loose sense of a failure that is not quite your fault.

Your father seldom speaks of her and that fact itself tells you more than his words ever could. You know that he blames himself. And he knows that you blame yourself and the only things you know together are that you are both right and the knowing will never get easier. You never speak of these things aloud.

And sometimes when everything is dark and silent and the world is shriveling up in front of your eyes, you can almost imagine her.

But not very often.

Mostly all you have are the what-ifs and maybes and one day even those will be gone, tossed away with all the other silly childhood dreams and wishes.

And eventually all you will remember is the sound of a door slamming shut.

You hear the ringing of gunfire somewhere in the distance and the boom of an explosion and the warm drip of red blood falling to the ground. Some might say its fate that is where you finally end up, but you've never really believed in fate, so you write it off as irony and move on.

You close your eyes and try to forget and are not surprised when it works, because your body's pain is nothing like the pain in your mind.

Your memories hurt more than their blows and your words hurt more than the insults and questions they scream.

And when you do finally fall to your knees you get a cruel sense of almost pleasure in the knowledge that you are still better than them.

But the lives you have saved and will save never quite even out to the number you ruined in that cold dark room, so maybe you are wrong in that belief.

You are covered in blood, some coming from the cuts and bruises and burns they have inflicted, but most is on your hands and in your eyes and in your heart and no matter how much you heal from your wounds and scrub at your body, you will never be free of it.

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Thanks for reading. Will update soon.