All the living are dead, and the dead are all living
The war is over and we are beginning...
"In Our Bedroom After the War" by Stars


At last.

It was all Motoki could think when the arms were laid aside, when the dust settled to the ground, when the knees of girls dressed as schoolgirls collapsed and tears came running down. The war had been long, and too many had been lost. Sisters, fathers, mothers, friends.

Lovers.

There was an emptiness inside him now. A gaping maw carved out of his chest. But the void was a heavy one that made his shoulders sag and his head bow low. He remembered a song that said "don't give up - it's just the weight of the world." It was worse than that, but he remembered the beginning. He didn't give up.

So much was gone now. Buildings were laid to waste. Families were irrevocably destroyed. And the future that he had once been told was assured was shattered. There were no pieces to put back together. No mirrors that could be mended. The bright possibilities had been ground into dust, and now there was nothing for them to hold on to.

Nothing but the ones that were left.

And so that was how Motoki found himself with company in his bed that night. It was how they had moved together, clumsy and ignorant and terribly, miserably drunk. It was how he woke up sore with an abyss in his chest that felt as if a few shovels of dirt had been thrown into the pit, so that now it wasn't as deep. It was how he had an arm slung over one who had always spurned the feeling of skin unless it had come in the form of a too-small blonde with too-big heart.

She was one of the lost ones.

Unmindful of past convention, he'd pulled himself closer, longing for contact. His bare front melded to his bare back, and Motoki had spoken, knowing that the dark-haired, dark-eyed man who had swallowed shadows had gotten no sleep that night.

"At least the war is over," he whispered against an ear.

It was all the comfort he had to offer.