There were a lot of things that Wade missed; hot showers and cold drinks being among the first things that usually sprang to mind. Now though, staring at his decrepit surroundings, of which only shards of splintered glass and twisted signposts served as evidence that yes, this had once been a city, he was starting to think differently.

The sky had turned gray a long time ago, casting the rubble-strewn landscape in a tragic hue. His eyes skimmed over the toppled buildings and cars buried under just enough debris to make any form of rescue futile. Not that a recovery would do much good, the streets had long become a minefield of boulders and rusty pipes anxious to reach out and trip even the most sure-footed of scouts.

No sane person ventured into the city anymore. The shops had long since been cleared out, and there was no food left to speak of, or at least nothing edible. In short, wandering the city was an unnecessary risk, and that was even before the Raiders had shown up. Nowadays, to go there was to die.

Which of course begged the question of why he, Wade Winston Wilson was even there in the first place.

The answer had seemed so clear to him just moments ago, something tangible and solid, heavily nestled in his heart. But now...? Wade saw it for what it was. It was squishy at best, its foundation too fragile to be built upon. He wondered at not having noticed it earlier.

He supposed he had been trying to find some connection to humanity. Not his own, heaven knew that had run away a long time ago, it's tail tucked firmly between its legs, but simply to humankind as a concept, proof that things hadn't always been this way.

He was one of the very few who remembered a time before the invasion. Even now, there were those who insisted that there had never been an invasion- that the skies had never opened up and rained down hell's nightmares upon them. And still there were others who acknowledged the invasion, but insisted that it had occurred way before their time, certainly too long ago for anyone to be able to remember.

Sometimes Wade questioned his age. He seemed to be thirty something, as far as he could discern. It was hard to tell with the scars raking their way across his face and body. The scars were ever present shifting snakes, resting beneath his skin, each day slithering somewhere new. Which begged the question, if Wade didn't even know the intricacies of his own body, how did he know what was the truth? What he perceived with his own convoluted mind? Or the interpretations from the equally corrupted surrounding him? But the pain was real enough, constantly burrowing its fangs deep into Wade's skin, so he supposed that this must be reality, that perhaps he wasn't dreaming after all. Whether he was lucid or not was another matter entirely, and one of which he was not sure that he could ever find an answer to.

Not that he had never tried.

Which brought him back to his reason for coming here at all to this godforsaken place. He sat perched atop what at some point had probably been a fairly large and impressive statue, his hands raw from the climb up. The wind whistled around his ears, hot and persistent in its quest to topple him over. Wade adjusted his grip, determined not to let it succeed, and peered out into the gray haze. It was only after the sky had muted into black that Wade allowed himself to fall back in resignation.

He remembered sunsets. He knew that they had existed. He recalled how every night the sky had been flooded with vibrant reds and pinks and little dashes of lavender sprinkled amongst the clouds. They were stark in his mind, crisp in their natural beauty, but now? Now they were gone and the sky was as ugly as the rest of the world.

His memory was fuzzy at best and nonexistent at worst, but the way the sky had exploded each night before dying was one of the few things that he could actually remember clearly. If he couldn't count on his sunsets, what could he count on? He'd had false memories before, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to admit that the sunsets he remembered had been a lie. It had been a constant in his life, the one thing he could depend on. Even when he had been squirreled away beneath the earth, hidden away from the world, they had allowed him a small mercy in the form of a tiny smoke-stained window from which to watch the sunset. It seemed ironic how, in those dark times, a dying sun was the only thing to brighten up his life.

Wade heaved a great sigh and allowed his eyelids to slip closed. He was losing his grip on reality. He knew he needed to move. If he couldn't find shelter before dawn he was a dead man, but now, sucking dust into his lungs with every rattling breath, he couldn't find it in himself to care. He stayed exactly where he was, splayed out against the rough stone high above the city (or at least what remained of it) and drifted off into a fitful sleep.