Things Fall Apart

And everyday Cherri Cola and Kobra Kid would wake up next to each other.
But Kobra never noticed.
Kobra never noticed anything, apart from Poison. Poison was all he knew and all he cared about.
And it was a shame, really, because Cola did care, but he never saw.
He felt extremely lonely, but he never had been.
And maybe his eyes were a little bit blind.
And maybe his heart was a little bit hurt.
And maybe his brain was a little not right.
Cola knew but said nothing.
Because Cola loved.
But the thing was that there was no room for Love in the Wasteland.
The ground was too dry for anything to grow.
The air was too thick for anyone to survive.
There was only Rage.
Cola loved, but a dead-end kind of love, a love that would only wither and dry him up.
Ghoul loved, but in a hopeless pitfall kind of love. He loved simply because he knew that We must love one another or die.
Kobra loved, and once had been loved, but what once was his was now someone else's. Love had been ripped off his chest and stuck all wrong onto Someone else's.
Poison loved too. But Poison loved and was loved back.
And it hurt.
And it wasn't fair.
Because there was no room for Love in the Wasteland.
Kobra was out of breath, out of tears. There was a throbbing hole in his chest.
He had been ripped off from his Hometown, forced to abandon his identity to become someone else.
His life had been torn apart and stuck together again all wrong.
And now the only person whom he loved had been taken away from him.
By Her. It was all Her fault.
And every time a little bit of him died to her, she laughed with effrontery.
She had stolen his breath, stolen his tears, stolen his life, stolen what once was his.
She had stolen his love.
He was falling to pieces.
He could see his skin crackle like an egg, delicate, fragile. He could watch it through the cracks. His whole life falling apart. He could watch it through the cracks. The Void.
It was All Her Fault.
He woke up after dreaming of Home again.
He cried about it, but the bedroom was still dark and everyone still asleep, so nobody saw, so nobody knew, so it didn't count, so he should have stopped thinking about it.
But he didn't.
He knew what he had to do.
He softly pushed Cola's arm aside and got up. Everyone else was asleep, and he almost envied them.
But he had something important to do.
The good thing about the Wasteland at night was that there was nothing to light out the stars. They were brighter than anywhere else, here.
And the sky was as a giant mouth swallowing the Earth.
And it was beautiful.
But that night Kobra didn't have time to behold the stars.
The ground wasn't so hot now, and it didn't burn his bare feet.
Just like everyone else, he knew the Wasteland just like the back of his hand, just like his own body through which he wandered.
And he knew exactly where She was. And where He was too.
The day before, Poison had decided to go camp a few day in the Wasteland, to make sure everything was normal, to be ready and close if anyone was in need.
It didn't take much time to Kobra to locate his campfire.
Nobody was up guarding the sleepers, unlike how the Fabulous Killjoys used to do.
He never should have left. Kobra thought.
It was all too easy. Father and daughter were sleeping in the same tent but in separate bags.
Kobra slipped close, as delicate as a bird, as swift as a snake.
Throughout all these years, he had mastered the art of Silence.
And even though Poison's hearing was really thin, he didn't wake up.
Kobra was no more than a shadow when he entered the tent.
It was done in a few seconds. She looked up at him with uncomprehending eyes but she didn't make a sound.
Blood tainted the sand and his hands.
And that what it.
He didn't know what he had expected, maybe guilt, maybe regrets, maybe relief? But there was nothing, nothing at all.
He thought it would feel different, but it didn't. It was just like any other time.
Just like they had taught him.
It wasn't his fault it was Hers.
It wasn't his fault it was theirs.
He left as he had come, only throwing a last loving glance at his sleeping brother.
A look Poison would continue to carry in him long after he was gone.

Cola woke up alone. He was the only one to notice.
And when he heard a terrible scream shake up the Wasteland to make all crows fly away, he knew.
He understood.
But, out of sheer love, he shut his mouth.
And when Kobra eventually came back to the Radio House with empty eyes and blood-tainted hands, he helped him hide it from everyone and wash them.
He never talked about it again.
Though sometimes, at night, holding tight his lover, he shivered.
Maybe it wasn't really Kobra's fault.
Maybe teaching kids how to kill wasn't such a good idea after all, because then they couldn't make the difference between Right and Wrong now.
But maybe there was no Right and Wrong.
Killing had became nothing for him now, and it wasn't the point at all, when they first came here. They had turned him into a killing machine.
There was something Terribly Wrong with Kobra.
But he loved him too much to tell anyone.

Obviously, Poison was terribly devastated by the death of his child. He came back at the Radio House the next day, lame, weak, carrying her little lifeless body as though it was the heaviest load in the world.
And maybe it was.
He dug a hole behind the House, and buried her here. He had never given her a mask. He remained there all day, staring at the little pile of dirt on the ground, not crying, because Poison never cried, not letting anyone come close. Nobody dared anyways.
Nobody but Kobra.
And Poison let him. They both sat together but apart, in silence, for a very long time.
Until Poison broke down and told him.
He told him that he was the only person he had left now.
He told him that he wouldn't let him die like he let everyone else.
He told him that he had shaky legs that never found stable ground, not even at home.
He told him they had been homeless for a while now, but he didn't know where to go.
And Kobra smiled.
Poison held him tight in his arms, saying he would never let him go.
That was all Kobra had expected. And he, for once, was happy.

It took weeks for Poison to get used again to anyone else's but Kobra's presence. He didn't trust anyone anymore, even though he had convinced himself that it must have been all Korse's fault, except for his brother, his own flesh and blood, the person he had been knowing his entire life.
But did he really know him at all now?
Kobra wasn't Mikey. And he had changed, just like everyone changes. But Poison had never changed, and he didn't realise that.
Fun Ghoul went to the Witch's postbox Shrine everyday, waiting. He knew Poison was eventually going to come back, someday.
He knew grief healed with time.
And, whole days on his own, Ghoul would think. He would think about Them, his children lost in the Helium wars, of course, but he mostly thought of Him now.
Poison. He could have sworn, when he looked at him with his fall-in eyes and his half-smile and boundless confidence, he could have sworn he nearly lost it all.
But he wasn't in love. He didn't want to call it Love.
And yet, he knew that We must love one-another or die.
He liked saying "We", and he said "We" a lot. Because "We" felt like a strong and powerful unity, like he wasn't alone.
But he only said "We" because "I" never mattered.
Maybe it did, before Everything Went Berserk, before the Helium Wars, but now there was nowhere in that world he could have been someone. Not in Better Living Industrie's world, not in Battery City, and, even though individuality was what they were fighting for, not in the Wasteland either.
His dreams were never big enough, his sorrows never sad enough, his joys never happy enough, his life never important enough, to matter.
He didn't know whether or not he would be remembered, whether or not the Fabulous Killjoys, "we", would, whether or not all of this was worth fighting for, and whether or not "all of this" really mattered.
But he couldn't have cared less.
There was nothing else to do, now.
Nothing but wait.
And, one day, Poison came back.
It was just like he had never left.
As though things had always been that way.
And he never cried when they kissed, even though it wasn't Ghoul's lips he thought about.
And when they touched, it never was Ghoul's skin he thought about either.
And Ghoul knew. But Ghoul said nothing.
From times to times Poison would vent down, about Her, Bunny, about his child, about Their Loss, and Ghoul simply listened.
He could have told him about Them, of course, it would have drawn them together closer.
But he snapped his mouth shut before anything took shape and underwent and listened and nodded.
Of course he couldn't understand. He had led a nice stable life from the start, he had no idea what loss felt like, he must have had no idea what it was to love someone.
And Ghoul nodded and kissed dutifully, trying his best to ignore the fact that he heard his heart shrieking under all those blankets he suffocated it in.
But, in the evening, once they each went their own way, it didn't feel any better.

Notes

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