Disclaimer- I don't own anything from Les Miserables blah, blah, blah…

So this was something I wrote for school a while back and I was looking through my Google Drive and I saw this and I was like, "Hey, wait a second!" and now here we are! Hope you guys like it! Please review!

~The Guilt of the Only Survivor~

Inspired by the song "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from the movie Les Miserables

It is a different kind of grief, the grief of a survivor. There is a pain that comes only with being the last one standing. A doubt that fills your mind, seeking to know why you should live when your friends have died. An emptiness that forever reminds you of their absence. The guilty emotions you carry by day, the gore-filled memories that plague you by night, they're always there. There is no bandage that can cover it, no medicine to cure it. Though the gashes mend and the bruises fade, there are wounds that can't be seen, can't be healed. Words spoken that will never be able to describe the anguish that comes with the needless sacrifice of lives. Sometimes you still hear them, speaking of a beautiful and better tomorrow that never came. Sometimes you relive those last moments, and you hear the agonizing screams, and you see the phantom shadows of dying men spread along the floor. For the rest of your life you will carry that melancholy heartache.

Then, there are are those objects that you keep near to you. The ones that remind you of all you have lost, the ones that you never have the strength to throw away. The bloodstained badge you had pinned to your coat, a symbol of the revolution. The tarnished musket you keep wrapped in your trunk, the gun you are determined not to use again. The ragged red flag, kept folded and preserved in a glass cabinet. All these are torture to you, these things you carry. Whether you can see them or not, they're a part of your life. The life of an only survivor.