` ` Let This End ` `

"Let this end. I want to be free of this suffering!" My words were bitter, as I choked on them, spitting in anguish as the tears ran from my eyes. My throat felt tight. My chest felt like a million needles were being pressed into its very core, piercing my heart. Why was it so hard to breathe? I gasped for air only to release the breath I fought for back into the sky, a pained cry slipping from my lips. I was on the edge. Standing at the end of a high ledge, staring out over the town that many called paradise. This however was a prison for my weary soul. Somewhere to hide from the overarching guilt and pain that I tried so desperately to escape. 'The gods don't pity mortals like me.' I was a failure. Why would they give me the mercy I begged for? I felt like a coward when my thoughts spilled in the form of sobs. I was no warrior. I was a guilty, wretched, sinner who wanted nothing more than to walk off the edge, and fall into the darkness before me.

"I want to close my eyes," I whispered to the wind. My lips stung from the cold whipping gusts of air and I could feel them cracking in the cold. My body shivered, but not from the cold, a familiar shaking I had no control over. 'If only He was here to hold me.' He would have. He never hesitated when it came to these things. He was always there to lead me through the valley my mind trapped me in. However, He could no longer. 'He is gone.' He was gone. Forever ripped from my grasp. Forever out of my reach. I could no longer feel the warmth of his sweet honey kiss, or the soft silk touch of his hands as they tangled with my hair when he was trying to calm me after a stressful day. How was a man supposed to keep on living, if the person who made him feel alive was no longer by his side?

He would not want me to think this way but how was I to block out these overwhelming nightmares? 'I just want it to end.'

"Can I just let go?" I stepped closer to the ledge, My feet half off the end, as the internal war inside of me clouded my mind. I could only think of death. Would Hades have mercy on my soul in the underworld, and let me be with my love? Probably not. After everything I have done, I could never consider myself a hero. Only heroes get beautiful endings. I knew the stories all by heart, heard the tragedies and knew that even if I begged on my knees for Hades to let me be with my love, I would never be good enough of a hero to earn that kind of mercy. Despite that, the thought of being a lost soul in the fields of Asphodel alongside the soul of my fallen star was a better fate than being trapped on this forsaken planet without him. I would rather live with no memory of this life next to him than go another day feeling this lost.

All it would take is one more step. I could give up. I could beg the gods in the afterlife to take me instead. He was more of a hero than I ever was anyways. Guilt and pain follows me like a lost sheep everywhere I go. Death is all too familiar of a concept to me I no longer feared. I could take one last step and it would all be-

"Achilles come down!" a voice called out to me from somewhere close by. I tried to search the dark night streets below for the person who called to me. My head was so jumbled I could not make out who exactly it was that was speaking. While searching I saw him, unmistakable and alive.

"Gabe?" My voice left my throat before my thoughts even formed in my head. A glint of blonde in the distance, shining against the dark clad streets of the town below. I would know him even in the dark of the night. My vision was still blurred with tears, but I knew it was him. It had to be him. It made no sense yet still, I wanted to yell out to him. I started to take a step forward, desperate to get to him. My surroundings were gone from my mind. All I could think of was Gabe. "Ga-"

"Achilles Don't!" My head whipped back as a desperate, yet soft voice broke through my words. A hand, warm and delicate, having no blemish, and unharmed by harsh work, grabbed at my arm, pulling me further from where I had been standing moments before. The girl who held my arm was weak, so her efforts only managed to pull me just barely away from the edge I had just been so close to. I looked at her only for a moment, before my attention swung back around to where I had seen Gabe moments before. He was gone. I had lost him again. I felt like a hollow shell. Like a weak tree, ready to blow over in the wind. The girl who held my arm was speaking to me. She was crying. I could hear her words getting choked up and caught in her throat. She sounded desperate. Yet every word she spoke felt so far away. My own voice in my head was still louder and I could not make out a single word she said, aside from my name alone.

Finally exhausted, I just fell to my knees and sobbed out his name. My lips forgot how to speak anything other than Gabe. Gabe. Gabe. My voice cracked and I choked on my own spit, coughing up bile that burned my throat. I felt sick. I felt alone. My body shook violently, my hands ripping at my hair, pulling strands hard till they broke from my head. My breathing grew equally as violent, breaking apart the few words I still tried to muster and left me gasping for air. I started to scream till my throat went numb, but I could not even hear myself. There was no comfort. No calm. He would have known what to do at this moment. Gabe would have known… Gabe. But Gabe isn't here. He won't ever be here. Gabe is dead. Those words finally sunk in. I could not have been seeing Gabe. He. Is. Dead. The words stuck in my head. Everything suddenly fell silent, the only thing now audible to me was the growing sound of my heartbeat ringing in my ears. My senses shut down and all I saw was black, and a fading image of Gabe in my memory. My Gabe. If I could just hold him one more time, I would never let go. The image of Gabe soon faded and I was left in the empty void of my head, the lack of oxygen finally kicking me into darkness, as I mumbled his name once more and passed out.