An antagonized scream ripples through my chamber and through the cracks in the floorboards of my room, sliced bits of my agony slipping down into the lower floor and to the other rooms next to mine. Heavy breaths of air forced to hastily replenish themselves pump rapidly through my lungs and out of my mouth. My skin is moist, populated by droplets containing fleeing memories of my most recent dream -- or a nightmare, really.

Ever since I returned from war and the scene with Alexei, I have been experiencing frequent nightmares -- and by frequent, I mean every single night -- and they are usually of the same event, or a distorted version of the same event, the event that haunts me the most. I am utterly traumatized by what I saw on the battlefield and in the infirmary and even in the lack of prospects in the soldiers at camp when they were docile at that specific moment, but it still cannot compare to how I feel about what happened to Alexei. It never leaves me, especially because the possibility that I caused his death directly is a very likely possibility.

Even though it is late at night, I hear voices from downstairs. I must have woken them up with my screaming. They do not speak in a normal volume, rather a hushed one to avoid waking other people up or -- more plausible -- to avoid having me hear them talk about me.

"What is wrong with our boy?" my mother asks desperately, the first time that she's cared about me since I learned how to talk.

"He is scarred from war, Marie," replies my father in an attempt to console her, but all that I hear is a truth that he has never accepted before, and in some ways I feel grateful that he finally has, despite the fact that he led me down this road by shoving me into the military.

I detect a soft knocking at my door, and automatically I know that it is my sister coming to check on me like she often does. I do not vocally invite her inside, but she takes my lack of words as a lack of protest, and she cracks the door open. The light from the hallway illuminates her delicate features that are then concealed in darkness again as she closes the door, until she blesses a candle with fire, which she brings over towards the bed and sets on my nightstand as she sits beside me.

"My dearest Olivier..." Lourdes draws out in a gentle tone. She reaches out to stroke my hair to comfort me, though I do not meet her eyes, yet she continues, because she knows how much I am in need of any sort of affection from another human being, how much I am in need of a reminder that there are people in this world who love me, even if the number is a low one.

Lourdes watches me suspiciously, softly curved brows now tight together. "Another nightmare?" she asks.

Still quiet, I nod.

She shakes her head slowly, not wanting to believe the reality of how things are now, and her thumb swipes my cheek as she whispers, "Where has my dear brother gone?"

"I abandoned him the very moment that I stepped onto the battlefield of Borodino."

I saw too much that day. Death hovered all around me with no traces of sympathy. The air was thick with panic. I witnessed numerous crimes on the battlefield, and I committed some myself. Alexei wasn't the only person that I killed.

My mind recalls the instance in the graveyard when Alexei and I had just met the day before. He spoke to me of his sister who he felt was dead because of his selfish actions, and he has grieved since the event. He has blamed himself for inadvertently taking someone's life, even though it was not intentional. Maybe it was made worse because it was unintentional -- maybe he felt as though he could have done something more, could have been less careless. He was truly remorseful for what he did, a sentiment that I could not understand at the time but fully understand now.

He asked me if I knew what it feels like to have somebody else's blood on my hands. Now I do. And I'm sure as hell going to pay for it.

~~~~~

A/N: this is the end, thanks 4 watching

tell me if this one hurt more than my other books

~Dakota