[He clawed his way out of years, years of that pained, desolate struggle, because the instinct to survive was ground into him in the glance over his shoulder and the blurring of trees into linear, green-brown streaks as he ran. This can finally be over! echoed in his skull like a klaxon when the blade slammed through neck, and he watched the red spurt out in a grotesque fountain.]
[And it was. It was over.]
[It was over, and no one made it out but the man who least deserved to make it out; the only one of them whose death would have solved something, and whose life had singlehandedly ruined so many innumerable others, simply because he happened to be.]
[Was there ever anything that wasn't broken, just for having him there?]
[It's a question that doesn't belong to him and was never pointed at him, but it resonates, nonetheless.]
1/2
[He clawed his way out of years, years of that pained, desolate struggle, because the instinct to survive was ground into him in the glance over his shoulder and the blurring of trees into linear, green-brown streaks as he ran. This can finally be over! echoed in his skull like a klaxon when the blade slammed through neck, and he watched the red spurt out in a grotesque fountain.]
[And it was. It was over.]
[It was over, and no one made it out but the man who least deserved to make it out; the only one of them whose death would have solved something, and whose life had singlehandedly ruined so many innumerable others, simply because he happened to be.]
[Was there ever anything that wasn't broken, just for having him there?]
[It's a question that doesn't belong to him and was never pointed at him, but it resonates, nonetheless.]