she wears a simple burgundy dress and sits on the porch of her childhood house. it's a creaky house in the woods, full of secrets that have spilled into the open. she's still trying to accept the truths with time.

she's not watching the birds, or listening to the trees. all she does is sit, staring at nothing. now that she's alone, there's nothing to do. no one to talk to, not a single moment to remember.

so much of her life was taken away, she forgot was true living was.

and so she painted her mind with unseen colors, to find a peace among the burdening memories.

unnamed feelings are rich and burning, surging through her. so powerful they start to blur together.

so the woman sits in her burgundy dress and hears everything instead of listening. sees everything instead of watching it. touches everything without feeling it. because numbness is her healing.

...

wars pepper the worlds.

she wants to know nothing of them, have nothing to do with them. and yet fighting was her forced destiny.

there was no safe place left for her. not even her own mind, which she lost long ago to machines and twisted visions.

...

they gather, born heroes and built heroes and lost heroes. they all gather to fight a higher power.

recruitments and revivals of new heroes and anti heroes. any help possible against this higher power.

hope is unreliable.

so is mundane fighting against "magic".

but quantity and quality begin to level out at a certain point. when the numbers are so disastrously huge people stop counting. people see the simple things. people build their strength off of each other and become a team.

humane flaws are insignificant. the weight of this nearly crushes them, and they start to become blind to everything except their goal.

but working with small numbers can only achieve so much.

...

as things begin to fall apart, a certain soldier tries to fade away from everything. tries to become meaningless. but her efforts will have to wait.

because another broken and bandaged soldier is looking for her. he needs her.

in the end it was always them.