My mother always warned me never to play with fire. She said it was a game with only one certain winner, and that I would end up getting hurt no matter what.
  — But she was wrong.

  For it was not the fire I had to fear, but the fallout. The ash, the grief, the all-consuming nothingness and everything in-between that came after anarchy. And facing it alone was enough to fell even the strongest of saints.

  Only, I was not alone anymore.

  I had once thought that love was suicide — that love alone would be our undoing, the final strike to tear us apart once and for all.
  — But now, with him beside me, I finally realised that love was the bravest act of all. To bear your soul so complete and utterly before another, regardless of the scars, that was bravery.

  And I knew as much as I stared out over the blackness beyond, stars glinting mutedly with a new-found hope for a better tomorrow.
  Heaven could fall and hell could rise with the dawning of the sun and still we would not fracture. Still we would stand tall and steady as the stars themselves, never to buckle or bend beneath another.

  — For as long as the stars lit the sky, I would love him and he would love me, and together we would be okay.

  To be continued in Fallout...

~ Seven