Chapter Text
News guy wept and told us, Earth was really dying.
It was like something out of a bad movie, the day they declared Earth was dying.
People were tearful and sobbing, reeling in disbelief, as if this was a surprise. As if scientists and scholars hadn't been trying to warn them for decades.
Just like when the first of the world wars broke out, everyone had aching lungs from the gasps of shock horror.
Not the artists or analysts though. Their lungs ached from being silenced as they tried to get everyone's attention.
Bullet wounds had become rather popular in those days. So had death by assassination.
No, people were amazing at putting their heads under the sand so that they didn't have to notice the crows lining up on the branches outside.
One by one, they lined up. A murder of crows.
People said they didn't notice.
People were fools.
He was a fool for a while.
He would say the world was always going to end, why waste tears on it? Besides, this Earth was barely habitable anymore, children barely survived, and food was becoming scarce. Why waste time trying to elongate suffering when it was inevitable?
Some would call his line of thinking cold. He was just being reasonable.He could better use the time helping those who survived do so with fond memories of their time on Earth - as futile as it was.
Still, he didn't throw himself into hedonism with reckless abandon as some had. No, he had a sense of self-preservation and where he could, he tried to make the Earth a little less dismal. His main avenue available was volunteering wherever he could. Of course, the military was out of the question but medical centres always needed an extra hand as did museums and various archives.
It was a futile attempt to cling onto human history as though there'd be someone after them to remember. There wouldn't be but that was fine. It helped those people feel as though they had a purpose and if that was what let them live, then so be it.
Another small bit of work he did was public readings. Not much of a public left, really. Still, it was an honourable group, trying to remind people that the Earth wasn't dead yet. They would read descriptions from old books and new; about the beauty of the world they lived in. Of what used to be.
You had to be careful what you read of course - the wrong book and it would be a much more gruesome public display, usually ending in the knot of a noose. Reading about 'A host, of golden daffodils' was far greater a risk than it used to be. But it was worth it for the smiles, weak as they were, as well as the stories people shared. Stories about feeling the ground beneath your feet, as the smell of petrichor wafted around, almost a cleansing presence.
He spent his time away from home - no need to be in an empty home, nestled away in the woods. It was lonely, but it was fine.
He knew that the people around him needed more help than he could provide. He knew he couldn't save everyone - and even if he could, what was the point? The world was not a pleasant place to live and so elongating the suffering would be cruel. There were those who harped on about the little pleasures and joys the world had to offer - but what was the point of those in a time where time would soon end.
Yes, it was a lonely life, but it was a proper one. He had seen people clutched by fear, by the never ending cycle of birth, death, birth again - all of it inevitabily leading to rot. He'd seen his mother, widowed at a tender age, who practically wasted away her life on her own, weeping. She had died just like his father, who had a jovial, booming laugh, who grew poppies and chrysanthemums with no difficulty.
Their lives had been different - one short, one long, one filled with joy, the other with sorrow. And yet, his mother would say that her peace had been with him, her short period of happiness. What was the use of it when he lay in the ground, becoming mulch for the very flowers he grew?
Or his sibling, who'd been a guiding force for him, who despite the unhappiness of their life, had found reprieve. Academic accolades, and photos of success lined their walls. They had found love, a wedding day, even children who he'd had the briefest pleasure of meeting. And then there was a blip on a monitor, a scan that came out wrong, a part not functioning as it should. And they reacted with fierce outrage, with love for their children, even as their brain deteriorated and with it the funds. His name was lost from their mind, their love for their children grew into something twisted and confused, their partner struggled to make ends meet.
It was a relief when they died, and he wasn't afraid to admit it. It was better for them to have not lost at all, than to have slowly felt their mind slip away.
The worms found their orifices. Death created peace.
The world ending would be for the best.
People tended to put his nonchalance about these sorts of things to his life. His skepticism must be because of the great loss he had suffered. But really, everyone had stories like his. They just liked to ignore it and keep going.
Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
Once in a while he'd wonder why he stuck around. Suicide was common enough and there really wasn't many who'd miss him, if he were gone.
He could make it tragic and use one of the blades in the museums, polished so they gleam pristinely, make a spectacle of himself.
He could walk out into the waves as they defiantly crashed, the wind bellowing as he slowly slipped away.
He could run into the streets yelling inflammatory content and die by bullet wound as many had before him.
He could go to his little empty house and pop open every pill and tablet he had, swallow them up in one go and die alone.
He could die in many different ways really - humans on their time on Earth had made sure of it. He had more choice in how he chose to die rather than whether he'd die or not.
But there was little to no point really. He wasn't an unkind man, he didn't want to leave these ignorant fools to suffer. As long as he had something to do, as long as he was useful, he would stay.
Children especially liked to listen to the poetry, as though they were comforting fairytales. They might as well be fairy stories with how unlike their own world it seemed.
Children, he supposed (at the risk of sounding sentimental), were one reason he hadn't jumped. They had no choice in the matter being born into such derelict conditions. They were to young to grapple with their own mortality, to think like he did.
They should never have been born but alas, they were. Instead of punishing them for that, he stayed to comfort, to give them some illusion of calm.
Perhaps he was a hypocrite. Humans at their best usually were. He stayed alive for the sake of being alive and alleviating the melancholy others kept in their heart which he for some godforsaken reason couldn't access.
Where others wept, he stared. Where they raged, he murmured. Where they killed, he read.
It was an odd, contradictory existence but that was fine.
He was never planning on playing the hero, anyway.