Things Fall Apart

Life after Us.
That's when and how it begun.
Building up inside their chests like a crooked rusty tower.
Swelling in their throats like a gas-filled balloon.
Spiders' web silently drifting in the dark alleys of their minds.
Tasting like bitterness and as pale as a moon.
The infinite sadness.

The sky had turned grey now,
All clues about Time had disappeared,
And living had lost its taste.
Individuality had been erased.
Eyes had been shut,
And dimples filled.
Names had been forgotten,
There was no We. No Us.
No Alone Stands I.
The Infinite Sadness remained.
It was life after Us.

A nameless boy was being led across black and white corridors, again. He knew where he came from and he knew where he went. He didn't remember his name. It didn't matter much to him anymore.
It had been two years.
He never noticed, how he slowly had ended up forgetting everything, but, even if he had, he would have let it go. He never thought it mattered much anyways.
Maybe, if he had wanted to, he could have remembered, but his free-will had been erased and his individuality tamed under a black and white mass.
Them.
He had forgotten what Different meant, but he knew that's what she was.
Bunny.
Bunny mattered. She was the only thing that mattered to him anymore.
Bunny remembered. She remembered everything. And she kept it warm, in a secret place, for Him.
She knew everything about Fun Ghoul, Jet Star, the Kobra Kid, and his brother Party Poison. And, sometimes, when he slept, she crawled towards him and whispered it in his ear. His name. The one he had chosen himself. Had he been awake, he wouldn't have understood, only looking at her with his bland grey eyes.
She remembered the Fabulous Killjoys.
That was the worst way of killing somebody, she thought, the way the Better Living Industries were slowly erasing their existence while keeping their bodies alive. She couldn't help but admire the Leader's cleverness.
It was Bunny who saved them after all.
Because she knew that Killjoys never die.
Sometimes, when the air was a little too cold, a little too dry, when they thought nobody watched, they would give themselves over to each other. How it happened wouldn't be clarified, whether it was Sex or Love, Needs or Feelings. None knew and none cared.
From these cold air Needy-Feely meetings, a child was born. Nobody ever asked about it. Bunny did her best to hide her. She secretly knew things would get Ugly. She never trusted anyone, not even Him. That's how the child survived. She named her Bandit. It wasn't a Better Living Industries' name, one of those leftover from a former failing society that had put down all the Laws.
The Love Laws. The Name Laws.
Bandit was a Killjoy name.
She was the first child ever to be born a Killjoy, and she was born in the heart of the Better Living Industries' world.
Bunny wanted the Best of Lives for this tiny creature that she had grown inside herself for so long. And the Best of Lives was very far away from there, way beyond Battery City, way beyond the Zones, way beyond the Wasteland.
The Best of Lives was the future they had to fight for.
They had to get back to the Wasteland.
She had planned it all, hoping the Fabulous Killjoys would snap out of It once further from Hell and closer from Home.
She didn't know exactly what It was. The only thing she knew is that It had made the light fade away from their eyes and the colour from their lives, It had made them a little bit less themselves and a little bit more Better Living Industries'.
A little bit less Us, a little bit more Them.
She also knew that It would eventually kill them.
They had to get away.
And so, one day, she gathered them all and ran away.
She had planned it all. Out of love, out of survival instinct.
Dying trying was always better than sticking to half a life here.

They were noticed as soon as they climbed down the first wall.
She told them to run. And so they did.
Jet Star was the first one to snap out of It, when the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W agents started shooting them. He began running for his own life and not because he had been told so. Bunny noticed and smiled to herself.
They had one point to get to, a torn up fence beyond which laid the Zones, then the Trash Lords, then the Wasteland. It only was a few feet away from the wall and even less from them. A real joyride, with the exception, of course, of not being the target of heavy shootings, in which case these coverless few feet became Hell's Path.
Maybe because of the incessant shooting or maybe because of the way she was unceremoniously shaken in the process of fleeing, Bandit started crying.
"Don't cry, baby..." Bunny whispered lovingly to her child, while running "Look at mommy, don't look around, this is a bad place, we're leaving for a better one..."
Bandit looked up at her mother with hope.
Of course she was too young to understand, but her mother's voice was all she cared about, and it was enough.
That was when Bunny suddenly fell to the ground, without a scream, without a warning.
Party Poison suddenly froze. He was the second one to snap out of It.
He slowly turned around, only spared from the lasers by a heavenly action.
The last two years appeared to him as a blur. And, even though everything had just exploded back into his face, words and colours flowing back into his brain like a tsunami, all he cared about was Her.
As she had been carrying Bandit along with her, Bunny was way slower than the four men, therefore, an easier target.
And so they had shot her down.
He rushed to her side and kneeled, fitting her delicate head into his palm like a broken egg.
No matter how hard she had tried, her blood was still black.
He looked at her life spilled on the floor, and something broke inside of him. Something he thought he had never owned.
Everything seemed pointless now.
He faintly remembered the pain he had been put through during these last two years, yet it seemed nothing, compared to This.
He would have let himself die here, if it hadn't been for his brother.
Kobra Kid never snapped out of It, simply because he never got into It in the first place. He had never gotten into anything ever since he was Kobra Kid.
And yet, Poison was the one and only person he acknowledged and cared about.
And so he came back for him.
Poison held on tight to his child. The only thing left of her. His lifeline.
Kobra grabbed his waist and forced him up, then pushed him through the fence and disappeared into the Zones.
He didn't let go of him.
Fun Ghoul snapped out of It last.
Nobody looked back.
All that was left of them was Four Black and White threadbare men and a baby, silently running towards the Wasteland.
The Trash Lords spread their shadows upon a lonely corpse left in her black blood. She had never owned a mask.
The Witch couldn't come for her.

It was Cherri Cola who found them. They had been waiting for someone, anyone, outside the Radio House.
He didn't recognise them at first; he had stopped expecting their return a while ago. They were thinner, colourless, almost lifeless. He saw a wound in the smile they offered him, and a blandness in their eyes that wasn't there before.
It was Kobra Kid whom he recognised first.
"It's been a while..." He whispered, trying to chase the tears of joy forming into his eyes.
The Fabulous Killjoys, alive after all!
He neither asked about the child nor about their whereabouts for the last two years. He led them inside to the others. They still hadn't said a word.
They didn't have anything to say.
"It's good to be back." Fun Ghoul eventually burst out, smiling broadly with his wounded smile and his lit out eyes. "I can't wait to get back to work!"
"What makes you think I'd take you back?" Doctor Death Defying cut him with his deep powerful voice. "You're proud, scornful and disobedient; I can't make anything out of you."
"But we spent two years in the heart of the Better Living Industries, and we survived!" Fun Ghoul exclaimed proudly "Besides, you know how good we are at being Killjoys. You can't afford not to have us back."
"You're right..." Doctor D. sighed. "I know you are. Welcome back, boys, and I hope you're at least sorry."
"Not much have changed since you've been gone..." Cherri Cola explained. "There's a new guy who replaced DJ Hot Shrimp, Show Pony. They're asleep right now but you can meet them later, they're really nice. Hot Shrimp left us to lead a lone life."
The four Fabulous Killjoys, Poison still holding his child tightly, nodded, not exactly sure what to say. They had forgotten about "us". But they felt like they never left at all.
"We've found your old clothes in masks in the Trash Lords by the way. You can have them again if you like, they're clean." Cola continued.
"Why did you keep them?" Jet Star muttered "I thought Doctor D said if we went there we would never come back. Didn't you think us dead?"
"Doctor D did. But I didn't. I believed in you. For the first months I thought you would come back, I waited for you everyday in the Trash Lords, but nothing ever changed. After a while I eventually gave up. I guess I kept your clothes as a sort of souvenir."
"You shouldn't have stopped believing at all." Poison said darkly. "Killjoys never die."
"I know..." Cola said shamefully, lowering his head.
Jet Star and Fun Ghoul felt really sorry for him. He had been really attached to them, but had never actually been included into the Fabulous Killjoys' friendship. Cola didn't really have any friends at all, down here. Nothing held him back here.
The night fell.
Poison wasn't at peace.
Bunny had died, saving them.
Her whole life she had been a prisoner in her own home city. She dreamt about colours. She dreamt of a better life. Yet, she had died in black and white for people to whom she didn't owe anything. Life was unfair. That's how it worked.
Her child had survived though, and Poison already loved her with all his grieved heart. Because, yes, he had been owning one all along.
He was sitting in front of the Radio House quietly, watching the stars Bunny had never seen. He wouldn't cry.
Fun Ghoul quietly got out of the Radio House. He couldn't sleep, knowing that Poison was ruminating dark thoughts outside the whole time.
He sat next to him quietly.
"Hey." He said softly "Will you be okay?"
"She had never seen colours, you know..?" Poison whispered.
"She didn't deserve to die. But, at least, she's with the Witch now. The Witch will show her colours." Ghoul tried to reassure his friend, putting his hand on his shoulder, but the latter suddenly stood up, angrily. His eyes didn't shine in the dark of the night.
"THE WITCH ISN'T REAL IT'S A KIDS TALE GODDAMMIT. BUNNY IS DEAD. DEAD IS DEAD. SHE DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE!"
Screaming felt wrong here, somehow, as though something had been broken. There was nothing around to stop it for swelling and spreading everywhere. Poison had stopped abruptly, out of air, taken aback by the sudden perfect silence. How long had it been since last time? Not knowing neither what to do not what to say, he simply ran away.
Ghoul let him go. He understood Poison needed to be left alone. He couldn't understand how his friend couldn't believe in the Witch. It meant that to him, death simply meant stopping one's existence. Ghoul liked to believe in the Witch, and never questioned her. It reassured him a lot, somehow. She made life easier.
She made death a little bit less scary.
Party Poison walked aimlessly through the Wasteland. Bunny was dead.
His sorrow felt too big for his body. He hated everyone and everything. He hated the Better Living Industries for taking over the world and appropriating themselves people's lives, Her life. He hated the pointless Radio that did nothing but broadcast obscure obsolete words and didn't actually do anything to make life a little bit better. He hated Fun Ghoul for believing in silly things as the Witch and ridiculously trying to comfort him when he couldn't understand. He hated Jet Star for not living enough but only depending on the others' actions. He hated Kobra Kid, for never living anymore, for never being here for him when he needed to, for being so sickeningly fragile.
He loved Bunny.
He ventured into some parts of the Wasteland people had forgotten about. His feet were the firsts to touch this ground for a very long time. Everything here seemed different. Even though the sand remained the same, even though everyone beheld the same sky everywhere.
The horizon was broken by what he thought were rocks, their shapes sharply cut in black against the black of the night. He moved closer to them, attracted by their uncommonly regrouped mass. What he thought were rocks actually turned out to be massive torn out pieces of metal. He ran his warm hand on their cold skin, wondering their origin, and the reason of their presence here.
They were much like him, he thought, things that shouldn't have been here, lying under the cold night turning their blind eyes to the sky, broken in rusty pieces a long time ago to big and shapeless masses like an infinite sadness.
He sat down, his back resting against the frozen metal, took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Ancient wires dating back to the Helium Wars ran, buried under the sand, and half a frozen moon-like face emerged from the Wasteland in a silent cry for help whose echo had been lost a while ago.
Poison didn't know yet the importance of what he had found used to have, what it still meant today, and how useful for the Rebellion it would turn out to be yet.
For the moment, all that mattered to him was Her, Bunny. Behind his back, the sprinkled broken pieces of Destroya shivered, being found again, knowing that their hour would soon come.

"Great news from the Wasteland, tumbleweeds !
The fight is on again!
Beyond the cover,
Pages give you color.
That ink will never run dry.
Killjoys...
Killjoys never die."

Notes

And, once again, sorry for not updating more, but I'm really busy and chapters are long ro write... Sorry about that