Fame Isn\\\'t Everything

It was raining, because it always rains on occasions like this. There is something about a storm which compliments the heavy air of depression that always hangs over last goodbyes.

They stood in a half-hearted circle, a bare remembrance of what used to be. It was perhaps the hardest knowing that the gaps left in the circle were once friends and comrades, now lost and never to be seen again.

They stood like that because they didn't remember another way of standing. They didn't try to close the gaps by moving closer, for to do that would be to forget, and any feeling of closeness had long since disappeared.

"So I guess this is it."

He lifted his head and tossed some of the rain from his untidy black hair. He thought the words he didn't have the courage to say out loud. I'm sorry. I failed.

There was a crowd of redheads to his right, none of them meeting each others' eyes. The youngest, the only girl, was watching him, heartbreak written across her face. Her brothers all fidgeted. One of them stamped heavily on the ground, splattering mud on some of the others.

"We ought to be pleased," he said, looking anything but. "End of evil, and all that."

"Don't be stupid," said another man, looking like a child's worst nightmare. One of his eyes moved independent of the other and was a shining electric blue. He pulled his coat around him tighter.

"It's over now," a woman interrupted hurriedly. Her neon green hair shone, wet from the rain. "Forget how. I say we go our separate ways."

The second oldest redhead stared at her. Running away again? he wanted to say. He said nothing.

The others were nodding at her statement. She had a point, she was right. After all, there was nothing keeping them together anymore. He was gone, they had no purpose. After struggling for so long, the magical world had what it had always wanted: peace.

The thing was, they had had nothing to do with it.

A round-faced boy stood next to a skinny blonde girl. She was staring off into the distance, completely detached from the world around her. The boy was several steps away from her, fastidiously not looking at the gap between them. When she took a dreamy step toward him, he stepped away, determined to keep the space. They kept up this dance until he bumped into someone else and fell into the mud, his face red.

A shorter girl, no longer really a girl, with thick brown hair, standing to the side of the nightmare-man, was crying. It was hard to tell in the rain, and when she spoke, no trace of her break down could be heard.

"So this is...goodbye?"

On her other side was an older man, looking defeated. Anyone could see, when looking at him, that he was fighting a battle he was perpetually losing, and had little to keep him going.

He didn't say anything. He just took one last look at the beleaguered group, and walked away.

One by one, some in pairs, with mumbled excuses and false promises, the circle faded away until only three were left. The mud-stomper, the crying girl, and the boy with the untidy hair stood staring at one another for several minutes while the storm raged around them.

"I love you both," said the girl.

"Always," said the redhead, softly.

They waited for the third musketeer to speak.

His voice was rough and angry. "I never expected betrayal from you. From everyone else, but never you. Don't try to find me. Don't try to contact me."

He left. A torrent of thoughts rushed through his mind, all focusing on a single point.