One-Shots #2 [Boboiboy]

4, angst | you wanted to save us

Note: Same as last time. Halilintar, Duri, Blaze are females. Everyone else is male.

Summary: After Retakka's defeat, the galaxy returns into a state of peace, and it's all thanks to the five elementals who risked their own lives to face the tyrant.

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Wait a minute.

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Thinking back, Gempa should have gone with them.

The others didn't say it, but he knew from their faces alone, that they were thinking the exact same thing.

If any of them told him outright, he'd pat their backs and say, "There's nothing you could have done." He'd get some hot chocolate with them if they felt like it, and maybe even spend the day outside to clear their minds in attempt to make them feel better.

He was right. There was nothing that they could have done.

Gempa would tell the others that the fault didn't lie with them. That they were just as helpless as everyone else when it came to the decisive moment. He repeated the same sentence over and over again until it felt like a mantra. There's nothing that you could've done, said on loop to a point where it became a prayer of forgiveness.

He never blamed anyone else for their helplessness. They didn't blame him either. They parroted his comforts back to him, word for word, but dragging a knife down a blackboard wound sound less jarring.

He didn't deserve their forgiveness. He didn't deserve anyone's kindness. He wasn't like them. He was supposed to be better. They trusted him to rise above them, because he was their goddamned leader.

It may be Retakka's fault for stealing Solar and Halilintar, but Gempa deserved half the blame for failing to protect them. What was he, if not a shield for his friends? His family?

Learning from mistakes was easy, but the same couldn't be said with tragedies. He was incapable of practicing what he preached.

God, he's such a hypocrite.

It's been two months since Solar and Halilintar went MIA, bodies yet to be found.

Some part of Gempa wished that they would stay missing. That way, he'd never have to come face-to-face with his own failures, so he could cling onto that false hope that they'd walk through the front door once more. He and the rest of the team could live in a fake paradise, ignorant from the horrific fate two of their own had met.

The other part of him had resigned himself to the truth. The earlier they were found, the sooner that he could kneel upon their graves and grovel for forgiveness. All the unsaid apologies, regrets and what-ifs kept sealed in his head, he could finally break that dam and let them be known to the world. There was no use in grieving people who could still be alive.

If they were still alive.

If there was still a corpse left to bury.

When he'd broken the news to his team, the reactions had been mixed. He knew each of his friends had eccentric personalities and traits, and he saw with great clarity of how they handled the fallout.

The sight would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Taufan, who'd grown up with both Halilintar and Gempa, had his eyes blown wide in disbelief. He was the first to break the silence, imploring to Gempa that he must be joking, and this is poor timing for a joke, even for him.