Mount Everfall down in a hole, and I don't know if I can be saved

@Mona backdated to sometime shortly before this thread

 

Something wild was brewing within him-- he could feel it.

As he gathered his strength, a fire was returning to the former soldier's veins, a renewed will to live. It burned fiercely, as he did, in argent and ink. Feeling returned to him now in stinging waves of heat and biting surges of ice, battling painfully in his chest. Nathaniel thought himself unable to bear it-- so he took a walk.
A walk, yes, to clear his mind and his heart and maybe have himself another helping of that stony indifference that seemed to have worn off. Perhaps not the healthiest coping mechanism; shouldn't he have been waiting for this? For the grief to wear off finally, so he could deal with the mess that had become himself and move on? But no, he hadn't been looking forward to it. It felt wrong still, to consider giving himself closure when those he had left behind would have none. Not even in the grave, for they had none but where they had fallen.

He shook his head as if to ward off the thoughts. If he was to be as he had in the past-- the rage and the flicker, the heat and the chill-- he could not do it brokenly. Nathaniel had always lived dangerously; there was no room in that world for the broken.

But he was no fool, fired up as he already found himself. Nor was he as cold as he might have others believe. There was something for him here, one of the few things he had left in this world. Small and weak as it was, the connection to his father was enough to anchor him for now. The old man was dying, he concluded in his own mind as he sat a few feet from the edge of the cliff, peering over it. It would not be much trouble to stay until he passed... would it?