2mar.ces.cent
märˈses(ə)nt/
adjective
(of leaves or fronds) withering but remaining attached to the stem; withering without falling off
War was a difficult thing to talk about, and after a lifetime spent dealing, chronicling, even making a living out of it, it didn't become easier for Apple. She had it boiled down to a routine in the last few years; a young man, usually in their early twenties, came knocking on her door a few hours before sunset with just enough awkwardness to suggest the classic 460s-styled wooden arch would break upon infinitesimally rougher handling. She would let them do it once, twice, before opening, accepting their words of introductions and let them marvel about her for a little while at the entrance. A cup of Seika tea, made the old way.
What followed next would be the silence, as the young man took liberty to scan around and realized that before time even heroes fade. Photographs adorn Apple's walls, none of them depicting a person still alive. She would smile, and her guest would try to gave one as well even though their minds fumbled over and over the ultimate question.
"What was it like, the war?"
For someone who had been in and out of it, multiple times, it was a question reaching deep into her throat and wrench through her guts. She was not exactly on the battlefield, no, but she had the luxury to see all the deaths. Front seat. Transformed them into tallies to be crunched later. She wrote their stories, listened to the soldiers' tales a night before they marched into their ends.
These children born in the era of peace, they knew nothing of it, and her past quietly turned into bedtime whispers, campfire scares, urban legends. Those curious enough dug around the archives where they would find a record on her, the only one out of the originals not claimed by death or declared missing.
Silence unnerved them, got them raising timid apologies as they repeated their question in their heads, worrying that perhaps the old lady found it offensive. Was the old lady healthy enough to comprehend them? Should have said it louder. Fingers would be rubbed in anticipation. They had come a long way, this famed historian of antiquity should be able to tell them something (those elaborate stories couldn't be all lies, could it be?).
Apple knew the cues far too well now.
"Where shall we begin?"
She offered them a smile, they presented her a pair of expectant eyes.
So she would tell them of fates and the act of defying one, of triumph and loss, of betrayal and sacrifice, each and every time without fail, until the day she died. Master Mathiu, she thought, would be so proud of these people's innocence.
It never did become easier.
A/N: So this was born out of a dazed mental state, a mixture of 'what if Apple is the only survivor of the last war of all war', 'children of the future', lachesis108's 'A Sacred Refuge' Suikoden doujinshi, and some UK short story anthologies. Yeah, I don't know how my mind works.
