The calmness doesn’t hold the influence in this. There is no better way to describe it than a failure. Those images are still burned into my mind. Never do I think they will leave. I did, didn’t, shoot her. She had quivered some, like a shattering person, but still it was possible to save her. The search in her eye was obvious. There was something there, but it wasn’t hatred, nor was there any feeling of aggressiveness emanating from her. She was friendly, one of us, not them. Why did those things happen? There was no need for them to. Yet I did not help any of it. I was the only one who fired back. It’s almost as if she knew I would, her eyes were focused onto me, or maybe they had looked at me while she shot another.

She should have been crying, her face demanded something her eyes would not give. That frozen face; she knew that I would, but she was surprised, why? Maybe it wasn’t about what I did; instead it was the feelings of a metal jacket rive her skin. Possibly it could be her shock at being taken away from life and the feeling of on-setting death. I don’t rightfully know. All I have is her last expressions to try and understand the cause and effect. I doubt I will ever thoroughly. That almost graceful hair falling back, shadowing her face as her breath stopped.

Those moments don’t resonate now just because of a face, but also the pulsating blood I felt. It was a moment of death induced liveliness. I could feel the blood pump up my neck, around my face, through my fingers as they clasped an un-biased mechanical dispenser. Fear was there, holding my hands motionless. Regret had come to hold my eyes open. But was it wrong? She had opened fire on another member of our team. She wasn’t perfectly sane; still was she gone from us? Could I have overreacted to it? Was something missing in me that instigated this visage? Could my own lacking have caused this to happen?

I did go a subsequent day to the white manor to find someone I seemed to have lost touch with. I don’t blame her at all; I just couldn’t figure it out, understanding relations I guess. When I entered it was easy to find her though. It was the easiest part of my mistake. She came out from some room to a balcony. Her beautiful face was cheery until we met then she beckoned me up to join her as she departed into a side room. The dusty room served our conversation. Even with words it wasn’t a conversation. The things that passed from me to her were incoherent words of no value describing something she couldn’t understand.

However she could feel something coming from me, the feelings: regret, guilt, and now fear building a heap in me. Fear of what I was, what I will become, who I truly was. With a hugging embrace she tried to comfort in the only way she could. I should have cried, I could have; it was a piece of my penance for sin that I should have paid. I just didn’t though. They couldn’t come. It wasn’t a foreign thing; I have felt the emotionally induced salt water fall down my cheeks before. Now they can only be felt falling down inside. As I embrace her, my eyes shut, and the image is alive.