The Phantom and the Angel

The Phantom and the Angel Part 1

Sarah couldn't help but smile as she gazed up at the blue sky overhead, the thin whips of black smoke that trailed across the sky somehow only adding to her acceptance of the situation. She was lying on her back staring up into the midday sky trying her hardest to ignore the pain in her chest. There were many poetic ways of referring to what she was currently experiencing; in the process of pushing up daisies, crossing the River Jordan, about to walk though a valley of shadows, but Sarah preferred to keep it simple.

She was dying, courtesy of the blood filling her lungs due to a bullet that had lodged itself in her chest.

For most reasonably sane people the realization that death as only at most a minute or so away would cause them to panic. They would try to bargain with whatever god they believed in crying to themselves for just a little more time or maybe they would be furious, trying to blame anything and everything for their fate. But Sarah wasn't like most people, even if you weren't going to take into account the fact that the world had gone to hell on her a few years ago.

No, instead Sarah couldn't help but feel a sense of elation as she coughed up even more blood. She could hear the sounds of the foreign troops all trying to shout over each other in order to get some semblance of unity established but the dying girl knew they would fail. After all, the man she had come to kill, one of the bastards who had destroyed her home, was lying in a pool of his own blood not ten feet away and without him their lines would soon collapse. A part of her was surprised to find that no one had put her out of her misery yet, as there were plenty of armed soldiers hovering around who had more than enough reason to put a bullet between her eyes, but at the end of the day she was only a war orphan with a hole in her chest, no reason to waste the ammo when nature would take its course soon. With her matted black hair, jeans that were barely held together, and a shirt that was so dirty at that point that it was mostly brown Sarah looked no different than any of the other downtrodden civilians who filtered through the area.

There was only really one thing that set the dying assassin apart from others; the fire in her sea blue eyes, the only sign that she was still willing to fight.

The black haired teen would have laughed if it weren't for the fact that just trying to breathe was excruciatingly painful. No one had expected her to break away from the column of refugees and fight her way to their command center, her combat knife and stolen pistol ending lives as she went, but she did the impossible and in doing so she accomplished something no one would have thought possible. Without their commander leading them they would soon fall into chaos, and while the effects might not be felt for a few days Sarah was certain that the others would be able to push the invaders back to get the breather they needed to regroup. Hell, if they were any luckier than she was then they might just be able to win, and that was enough for her...

...Or it might have been, if it weren't for the random firing of synapses in her brain shoving memories into her vision as things began to grow black. She saw the other kids, most of who would either cry or be absolutely furious with her, she saw her parents cheering for her as her middle school orchestra concert ended, her violin gripped in her hands tightly as she fought off the nervousness that any kid in middle school would have standing on a stage...her memories of the day the bombs began to fall, the all to loving smile on her mother's face as the world burned around them.

But more than anything, Sarah thought about all the stories she started and, at this point, would never finish. For her entire life she loved to read about fantastical worlds and the heroes and heroines contained within. She would spend so many days of her childhood just running around outside pretending she was fighting along some of her favorites, protecting the innocent and battling against the forces of evil. And sure, she may have eventually gotten the chance to fight against bad guys, some of the worst if she was being completely honest, but here at the end she just couldn't help but feel regret for all the tales she would never finish, all the things she left unspoken...all the time she was about to lose because she hadn't been quite fast or skilled enough.