I killed them.
I killed all those people.
I don’t even know how many, that’s the worst part. I don’t even know how many people I killed. I’m never going to know, either, even if we got all the bodies. We killed them together… but I guess I killed all of them. Does it really matter who struck the final blow?
I just want to go to my bedroom, lock the door behind me and never come out. I can’t. I know that I can’t. Savir is counting on me. But I don’t know how to deal with what I’m feeling right now.
I would go to her, normally, and just being with her would soothe me. But I know that she’d be angry. I went Southside again, and I took a risk, and I got injured, and then I aggravated it digging the graves. There’s no way she wouldn’t be angry, and I can’t handle that right now. I want her arms around me, but I can’t.
And Lien and Rothgar… Rothgar wants me to get back to killing more people pronto, and Lien is only interested in scolding me. Maman would smile and hug me and tut-tut softly, but to her I’m still and forever her golden boy. To her they attacked me, so they had it coming and it’s just that simple. No. I don’t want anyone around me right now.
How can I possibly make this right? Money would help, if they had families – if I could even find their families, if they would even speak to me – but it wouldn’t bring back the dead. I want to confess, and it will cleanse my soul, but what will it do for them?
I can’t change what happened.
There’s nothing I can do. And all the work I’ve done in Southside to try and keep people from feeling like violence was the only way out… completely wasted. The work I did after the Flood… meaningless. They hated me enough to die fighting me for stepping out on their streets. And I used to be one of them.
I wanted to flee, to run, anything… but we had the Hillbeast in chains, if we couldn’t cut a clear safe path for Kyla, he’d have certainly escaped when they attacked her… I go back over it, again and again, in my head. There wasn’t any other option, once our disguises fell apart. There wasn’t any other option. And that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.
I keep dreaming the mage dream again and again. Except this time I killed even more people, and it’s -real-.
I don’t ever want to fight. Anyone ever again.
I don’t want to fight.
I don’t want anything.
