Archive of Our Own ^beta

            The Last thing that Joakim heard before the darkness finally enveloped him was the lone exploding sound of two bullets.

The next thing he heard was his own strangled breathing, as his body worked quickly to repair the damage it had been inflicted,

He could feel his cells close at the wound, it was slowly becoming easier and easier to breathe again,

Although the pain did not relent, even as he was being healed he could still feel the same hot searing pain from earlier, it was horrendous and he tried swallowing thickly and coughing to get rid of the feeling until it eventually subsided on its own,

He sat there, breathing ragged and heart pumping fast, he felt… strange… and alive…

He couldn’t see anything and could feel two distinct weights on either side of him resting on his shoulders, they were cold, very cold…

Joakim swallowed thickly,

“H-Hel-lo?” he nervously spoke and nothing answered back to him,

He began to panic and tried to undo his bindings on his hands, when they were free he tore off his blindfold and found himself covered in blood and discovered just what, more like who, the two weights were,

They were his brothers in arms who fought alongside him in the army, his best friends, his family…

Joakim shrieked in fear and panic, the first thing he did was scramble away from them, he watched as the bodies stayed as they were, rigor mortis had already set in, they all lay or sat slumped over in their final moments in this world,

“no, no, no, no , No, NO, NO!” he wailed as he rushed to the side of one of his comrades, he reached over and touched them, they were unmoving and cold,

Joakim yanked his hand back and wailed in pain as tears spilled from his eyes, openly he sobbed at the loss of his friends,

He didn’t believe it,

No,

He simply couldn’t,

He didn’t want to believe it,

Through tears, he fought and approached each one of his fallen companions and undid the blindfold off of each one, and what greeted him sent a cold hard shiver down his spine,

Their eyes, all of them, were cold and dead,

Glazed over and devoid of the life they once held,

He couldn’t look at them anymore because they tore at him, they opened a rift inside of his heart where all he could feel was anger, pain, and suffering,

He didn’t want to live in a world like this, he couldn’t not without them,

He screamed, it was animalistic and full of raw and unfiltered emotion in it, a wave of anger rose in him that his gentle soul hadn’t felt in years,

He grabbed at the dessert sand with his hands and pounded at it with all his fury as he cried and screamed,

It did nothing and all he was greeted with was the hot summer breeze of the dessert that ignored him, he was an insignificant chess piece that was a part of a much larger plan,

Joakim stood up on shaky legs and paced around the small area back and forth as he wailed, his gaze was cast up to the heavens as he pleaded with whatever divine powers lay beyond his grasp and understanding,

He pleaded,

No,

He begged for it to give him back his friends, how it could take him instead, after all, he was a filthy sinner, he knew he had sinned in his life as a mortal, indulging in envy, pride, greed,

You name it, he did it, He knew that the divines hated sinners, so he pleaded to them to cast his soul onto the fiery and darkest pits of hell, where he would be chained and trapped for all eternity to atone for his crimes,

He groaned inwardly and perhaps thought that the last thing that a divine entity would want to do is make a deal with him,

So, he cast his gaze downward, to the sands of time, where he begged and pleaded with the devil to take his soul and to torment as he sees fit but to please give him back his friends,

When he received no response, he stopped walking and collapsed back onto the sand, allowing the grief, despair, and complete utter hopelessness of the situation to overwhelm him, allowing the tears to freely flow through him,

He didn’t know for how long or how hard he cried, all he knew was that he felt empty,

Like his whole world had everything he ever cared about torn and taken away from him in an instant,

With nothing else to do, Joakim sat there and accepted his fate,

He had come to the terms that perhaps there was some sort of divine entity out there who absolutely hated him, and this was his punishment,

He wiped away at his damp cheeks and stood up on shaky legs,

He spared himself from a final glance back at his deceased friends, it was useless now,

That he knew,

Because they were never coming back,

Never…

And so, he set off out into the hot Syrian desert,

He didn’t have a destination in mind,

But all he knew was that he needed to leave,

To get out of here,

To get lost,

To forget.