Without Me (Infinite x Reader)

Chapter 1 ~ Close

Nobody cares. They don't care. I'm only another soldier lost to war. One in thousands. Nothing about me is special, so why do I stand out from the crowd? All those times that Sonic took my hand and pulled me away from imminent danger, he could have left me to die. Why did he save me?

   My gaze moves to my feet as I walked out of the city, the grass progressively raising higher as I left further from the outskirts of town. I felt a dead weight resting upon my shoulders, pressure built up in my chest. This wasn't the first time I've felt like this. It has been happening on and off for a while now.

   I look up to the sky, stopping in the field, the soft colours of the ever-setting sun lighting up the sky. It wasn't until then that I realized how far I had wandered. It isn't safe to be out alone... I think. The war had been going on for several months, there are reports of soldiers going M.I.A after nightfall, not being too uncommon. But they were often drunk. I was armed with all my equipment, and I'm sober.

   I sit down in the field, resting my head in my hands, lip beginning to tremble as sadness took over me. Eventually, my eyes began to water, and I start tugging my hair in attempt to make myself stop crying. It was ineffective. Everything that has happened is finally taking a toll on me. I shouldn't say "finally", this isn't the first time I've felt like this. The want to disappear. The guilt and self-loathe for being the one still breathing and not countless others.

   I've watched so many of my brothers and sisters in arms die. I could list dozens of new ways to get killed. One always stands out from the others. When I was scouting an artillery-barraged area with my unit, the young man ahead of me on the path – only by a few feet – had crouched down and turned to face me. I had copied his actions, he whispered to me "tangos on the trail". Then boom, just like that, shot through the chest. Not me, who was under less cover, but him. I tried to help him, but he only ended up bleeding out in my arms. We didn't even know each other before the war, we weren't even best friends. Just mostly a mutual friendship at most. Yet, that was enough to wake me up at night.

   All hell had broken loose after he had died. We were ambushed, I was only half present mentally, barely anyone of my unit had survived, yet I was one of them. Me, someone who was on the brink of crying in the middle of a battle because they were too frail to deal with the death of a comrade.

   I scratch my face, crushing my eyes shut as I drag my nails down my forehead, over my eyelids and cheeks. I stifle cries, not at the pain and small streams of blood running down my face, but the memory of the blood spurting up onto me with each heartbeat. Another's blood. Not my own. The blood of someone I failed to save.

   "Why am I still here...?" I mutter to myself, bowing my head. My voice was raspy, due to lack of use. I barely talked to anyone. A full sentence was rare. I don't know the full reason. Over time, I just found myself talking less.

   I grab my pistol from its holster on my leg, not opening my eyes. I slowly raise it to my head. I feel the barrel of it touch the side of my right temple.

   What am I doing? I think, a tear flowing down my face. This is a coward's way out. But that is what I am. A coward. I take deep breaths, what I was instructed to do whenever I felt anxiety. Thoughts flow through my mind, all mentioning how everyone would be liberated without me here to drag them down. How the weight that crushes me every day is spreading to them too. It's like being tied to a large brick of concrete and falling into a lake and you're clinging to the thing nearest to you; my friends. Looking to them to keep me from being swallowed whole by the water and drowning. They will try to make me let go hesitantly while I keep my grip on them, only to slowly drag them into the lake with me. It isn't fair for me to be in that situation, but it sure isn't fair for them to be dragged in with me.