There was no relief.

There would never BE relief.

Like the mirages and quivering illusions the desert expanse taunted him with, death could never be touched. No matter how often or how desperately he reached for it, it skimmed across strained fingertips every time.

But.

It hadn’t always been that way. Michael will tell you the opposite. He’ll say it’s never been different, say there’s never been any reason to DO anything else other than suffer, tell you to go fuck yourself if you press the subject for too long. For him, it’s about deserving, and he doesn’t deserve any. Any of WHAT doesn’t matter except one thing:

Death.

He wants it. Needs it. Yearns for it, longs for it.

Never reaches for it. Never tries to touch it.

Doesn’t DESERVE it, he says. He believes.

He wasn’t born that way, no one really is. In fact, he was born into a loving family. Close-knit, tight. Beautiful, soft smiles and joyful laughter. Warm meals and clean beds, perfect beginnings and even more perfect endings. An awe of the deities both old and new, a deep respect especially for Vi. Taught the value of life, that to protect it was a sacred thing. Believed in it, life, believed in sweet, gentle death, was shrouded from the world and shown only things that made him smile and laugh. Sadness ignored, anger never offered a place to rest its teeth. The stain of rose-colored windows that made everything pretty.

Until Michael became a soldier. Wanted to protect, to defend, wanted to keep everything perfect and beautiful in all the ways it was at home. A wake up call with startling revelations and even more shocking consequences. He was 16 when he witnessed death for the first time. Real. Raw. Brutal. Death. And he knew it because he caused it. Because it was there on his hands, there in the blood. There on the edge of the knife that was there in the torso of the enemy. A young soldier like himself. Ghastly-colored now, dead. Laying there in blood and mud, and instead of the peace Michael had always felt with a passing within the family there was only…

Nothing.

Numb.

Resentment grew. Festered in a mind that hadn’t been taught how to handle emotions, and in its place came fury. A paroxysm of grief and sorrow, of loss. So much stolen from him for nearly two decades, false teachings, denial bottled in shiny, distracting glass so as never to be noticed. One might except the coddled to return into the arms of his protectors, but Michael could see no value in home anymore. Saw no point in sinking back into lies he would be encouraged to embrace.

Shut down, closed off, he let no one in except for one: Amelia. A soldier like he was, a runaway just like him. He found comfort in her presence. Maybe he felt a little less alone, too. A little less broken because she was shattered, too. Not for the same reasons, and he never asked. Never cared in the same way she never cared, either. They were busted up, shattered glass with no hope of fitting their pieces back together. And they liked it that way because it was the only way they could live life on THEIR terms.

But, she fell in love, and not with him. Found another soldier who promised to 'fix' her. Drew her away, led her from a life of violence and took her into a place he couldn't follow:

Stability.
Love.
Peace.

He didn't believe in any of it, felt the rise of paranoia that had always served him well in any fight. He argued with her, kept telling her not to go. Told her she would find only lies, there was no love and peace, not here, not in this world. That this soldier wanting to take her away wasn’t to be trusted, he was dangerous. She begged him to come with them, to prove to him that there could be a life beyond war. Michael believed he already knew that life, though, and he would never go back there again. Couldn't turn away from the foundations of certainty, of each day being the same, of always knowing what to do and how to do it.

You're throwing your life away, Michael.

That's what she said, and he told her he'd never had one to begin with. There was nothing to lose. Nothing to throw away.

She left, he stayed. Immersed himself in the only world that was predictable. No surprises, no lies.

His anger grew, increased in its ferocity. War came to an end, left him with nothing to focus on. Was encouraged to live his life away from death, to love, to marry. Aggression toward people in general increased, wild, unpredictable rage with no where to go. No way to explode now that there was no one to kill. No reason to annihilate. And so, he turned toward what he knew, tilted his sights on the one thing that had never truly faded from his thoughts, fusing and melting there in a broil of hatred and resentment:

His family.

His return came on the wings of anger nearly unchecked, of a pain so irrefutable it was the snap and the spark of electricity in his eyes. A stare that took in the carnage of home.

Empty, blood, scattered remains. Parents and three siblings gone, victims of war. Old corpses, more than months. Michael was nearly 25 then, had ignored all attempts of his family reaching out. Had told himself he’d needed time to understand why they had kept so much from him. Now, he regretted not going back sooner. Because, as furious as he was, as betrayed as he felt…

They had still loved him. They had still raised him.

Conflicted. Confused. No skillset in knowing how to assess these powerful emotions, how to manage them so he bottled them instead. Locked them away and destroyed the key. His teachings, beyond his family, were to survive by any means necessary. To kill those marked for death by his superiors. A simple existence, but one with structure and real-world elements that he could understand and find value in.

Bottle, explode.
Bottle, explode.
Bottle, explode.

Simple, easy, comforting in that it was always the same. There were no surprises, no encounters he didn’t have tools to evaluate and handle. Except now, here…

Again, he didn’t know what to do. Couldn’t comprehend what he was facing, and so he turned it all off. He didn’t even bury his family, saw them as corpses, dead meat just the same as he’d seen on the battlefield. Even the youngest of them, a sister of seven he’d never met.

Detached, disconnected. An icefield of numb in a heart that had once known only love. But, there was no love in this world, Michael realized now.

It had all been a lie.

The war was over. His family was gone. His purpose no was no more. He was a war relic, a weapon without a target.

Subterfuge, death, and abandonment. A purposeless shell who had stood there in silence over the corpses of his family, who had done nothing to honor them or speak well of them as they – and he – had done for others over the years. Something was wrong with that, and he knew it. Deep, deep down in the chasm he’d funneled all of his emotions into. The rot of guilt and the anguish of fury churning. Overwhelming.

Michael left, then. He had no reason to stay, nothing to go back to. Any friends he’d made as a soldier either dead or returned to their own families. No desire to TRY, to make something of himself, when all he could see as a result of effort was loss.

Michael became a seasoned nomad as a result. Self-sufficient and well-adapted to a life of survival through military training and an untold number of explorations, missions, and wars, he stuck to the wild places, jungle and tundra, riverbeds and desert. He found, and still does, more comfort in those places where few tread. Frequenting The Wilds more than The Settled Lands. Avoiding all nature of people and their lives, distancing himself from a world he no longer wants to be a part of.

Because what has it ever done for him except L I E?

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