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The ice in the air bites at you, grips you through your clothes. You let it embrace you, for it holds you closer than any lover. You stand out in the cold, before-snow wind, staring at your apartment building's rooftop.
You're about to wipe yourself off the face of the earth.
But you're taking them with you.
You have no idea why you were born on this earth at the same time the planet went to hell, but you still have a lingering certainty that it was for a reason. You have to have had a reason for existing. If you let yourself stop believing in that, you just might fall into an existential crisis.
You don't have time for that.
You look over at the woman standing beside you. Her pale hair is the same color as yours, she's wrapped up in a form-fitting coat with her collar up to her jawbone. She's just as ready to die. You have a feeling she knows exactly how this confrontation will end, but you can't muster the courage to ask her. You don't need two voices in your head telling you that these are your last hours. Instead, you ask her if she is ready.
"I was waiting for you to collect yourself, Mister Strider. I've been ready."
You bite back a sharp retort. It's probably only clever in your head, anyways.
You're so tired. You've already killed two men tonight, but you have to make one last effort to save your planet, to save your entire race... to save the kid your companion says will live in your home hundreds of years after you die, your clone of sorts. Can't you try to make the world he finds himself alone in a pleasant one?
Lalonde's eyes are harder than usual. They remind you that this was the day she became a killer as well. Unlike you, she seems to have no noticeable qualms about what is to happen. Maybe she's right, it's not like the sea witch is a virtuous being. She seems bent on shrinking the human populace to nothing, and as someone who knows about her... you can't stand not doing everything in your power to stop further tragedy, even if it's hopeless.
"It's not hopeless," Rose says suddenly, and it feels like she had her eyes on your mind the whole time. "We are powerful. We have a chance to stop the alien queen for good."
She leaves the whole dying part out again. On second thought, she might be just as scared as you are.
"Rose Lalonde. I'd be honored to die beside you," you murmur. You keep your eyes fixed on the apartment rooftop, on the sun bleeding onto it as is sunk further towards the horizon.
The plan was to leave after dark, and it was approaching fast.
You fail to drive out thoughts of a kid living there in your empty penthouse. You try to stop yourself from imagining how he'd look like, how he'd act like.You had decided the name for him a couple days ago. You scrawled out a "your name is dirk" on a note and left it under the shades you placed on the table. Would he find the food? How about that awesome SBAHJ merch? Would he maybe play with them? What would he like to do? Would he watch your movies? Would he ever even know how you look like, your name? How the hell would he manage to feed himself? The more you think, the more you worry, and the more the biggest question nagged at you.
Why was the world unfair enough to stop you from ever seeing the kid?
Rose said she had prepared things in her house as well, and you wonder if she wondered about her as much as you did..
You wish he'd get to meet you.
The sun is teetering close the horizon, and you can't watch it anymore. You turn around, starting to pace. You feel completely unable to stay still, though Rose has parked herself on a nearby bench.
Snow is beginning to fall, and a vivid image of you and Lalonde bleeding out into the snow and being buried in white floods your mind immediately. The batterwitch is hovering over you two, laughing, and plunges her trident into your stomach.
A jolt runs through you and you snap your eyes back open. No more daydreaming.
In fact, you're sick of staring at the sun like a scared mouse, dreading its slow crawl down. You don't want another thing controlling your life.
"Let's go now," you say firmly, afraid you'll change your mind. Rose stands up, smoothing out her jacket.
"I'm ready."
You both begin the journey, following an overly simple trail. The fact that it seems almost like an invitation unnerves you, but Rose says in a quiet voice that it's paranoia coming from your uncertainty in your ability. You can't really believe her, but the sureness in her words reassures you a bit.
When you find her on a rooftop, she smiles like a child who had just received two new toys.
Rose raises her needles, you draw your sword, and she throws her trident at you in one smooth motion.
You narrowly dodge it, though it catches on your sleeve and rips a hole clean through it. Good luck fixing that, Lalonde.
She darts between you two to retrieve her trident, slippery as a fish, and you can't help but wonder why she's taking such risks when Rose is slammed against the ground, a strange blue-red lights surrounding her.
She plays with her food, you think with horror as the same light paralyzes you, forces your muscles to remains stiff, and you watch Rose get slammed into the ground twice more before her release. Rose lunges at the witch, her needle meeting her mark. The batterwitch hisses as a thin needle blooms from her stomach, and pins Rose to the ground by the neck with her trident, yanking the needle out with a disgusted sneer. You stare, transfixed, at the pink blood dripping from her wound and down her wetsuit, and realize you can move again.
Rose grips her remaining needle tightly, and the empress pins the hand holding it down.
You run at her again, though it's hard not to scream at the sight of the pale skin of Rose's wrist being punctured by long claws. You slash at her, opening a gash in her her side and grinning at the satisfying ripping noise of her wetsuit being slashed open. You draw more of that disgusting pink blood and try not to impulsively wipe it off with your shirt.
The Empress throws you back with a simple bat of her hand, lifting her trident off of Rose's neck. Rose is straddled and unable to sit up, her eyes widen as her remaining needle is easily pulled from her hand and snapped in two, but refuses to make even a dignified grunt as the three prongs entering her stomach.
She makes no noise as her head falls back. Instead, she turns and stares at you, a faint desperation glittering in her eyes.
"finish it"
You can't finish it, you're immobile and your sword is slack in your hands. The empress doesn't pull her trident out of Rose and instead picks up the needle she had been stabbed with.
She intends to kill her with your ally's weapon, and the humiliation and anger burning inside you forces you to your feet. You lift your sword with heavy arms, the amount of psychic energy is ten times more powerful than what she had used when focusing on Lalonde. You don't know how you're still moving, but you take another shaky step and stab her thigh.
The empress laughs, and there's a needle in your gut.
Pain erupts in your stomach and you stagger back. Part of you wants to lay down, to just let yourself end, but you raise your sword and aim a haphazard swing to her shoulder.
It doesn't knick her.
She laughs, loud and careless, and there's a another stab of pain, this time barely missing your heart. Your breath catches and you feel your throat fill with blood. You want to fall, you want to lay down, but your eye catches a motionless Rose and you let out a hoarse, desperate yell and take one more step, stabbing the alien in the stomach.
She looks utterly surprised at the blade and slashes across your torso with an undignified shriek. A gash opens across your chest and you want to scream again, in anger and frustration and a refusal to die.
She stabs your shoulder and doesn't pull the needle out.
She yanks her trident from Rose's stomach, a movement entirely unceremonious and you wish for the energy to jump at her, but your sword has already fallen from your hand, your head is already half-empty, it's all you can do to shuffle to Lalonde on your knees.
You collapse a foot or two away from her, and the batterwitch is gone when you look up, probably to dress her wounds.
"I didn't do anything," Rose rasps, and you feel a tiny spark of hope. She's alive, she's salvageable.
"I'm going to die, Dave." Her voice is even, she tilts her head and half smiles at you. The snow is starting again, but you don't feel the cold.
"We can get up. We're stronger than this," you insist. You can't look at the blood spreading persistently across her clothes and collecting in a puddle underneath her body. Do you look that bad?
You cough up blood and give up trying to dress your wounds with the snow gathering in lumps around your body. You're both going to die.
"We did our best. We've killed three figureheads."
You don't say that it probably did nothing. You don't want to believe you died being worthless.
"You fought so hard, Dave," Rose continues. "I'm so proud of you. Thank you." Her words have finality, and though you think she probably has enough energy to say more, she doesn't. Instead, she closes her eyes and lets a smile grace her lips, waiting for death with the same quiet dignity she tries to maintain for so long. You never saw the tears streaks on her cheeks, you only saw her smile and the red flowers in the snow.
They're blooming around her wrists and neck and stomach, they peek up at you through the clean white. They're beautiful.
The wind suddenly picks up, and you feel the same cold you had felt before. The wind holds you like a dear friend, and whispers songs into your ear that grows in intensity.
"Thanks, Rose," you mumble. You don't think she hears you. You barely hear yourself over the mournful wailing of the wind.
The wind, the snow, the flowers. They don't let you die alone.
The wind sweeps you away with a particularly stubborn gust. You let it carry you and sleep, wondering what you'll see when you wake up.