Plotless pointless angst-filled ficbit. Pretty depressing, pretty abrupt. Major MAJOR spoilers for the very end of the game. I am serious.
No sex, no violence, one curse word. Oh, and some minor drug use.
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     Long live Expel.

     From up here, a few hundred feet up Lasguss Mountain, Noel can see the sullen torchlight of -- what was it called? Cross -- dotted out below him. It's really so little light, though; the stars shine just as clearly as if there hadn't been a town there at all. And the stars are beautiful, even if they're all in the wrong place. Up here, the only light is the glowing orange coal of the hand-rolled cigarette in Noel's hand, traveling in a slow arc from where it rests on his knee to his mouth, and back down. After a few moments, Noel exhales a cloud of earthy-scented smoke, and closes his eyes.
     I smoke too much of this stuff lately, Noel thinks, even as the smoke takes hold of his mind, turning his thoughts dull and idly pleasant. I haven't smoked this much weed since college... The thought doesn't stop him from taking another deep drag. To hell with it. No one can blame me for wanting to forget about all this. I'm just going to sit up here, and smoke my joint, and forget about it for now... Almost unconsciously, Noel reaches up and runs one finger along his ear. He's been doing that a lot since he was flung onto the reborn Expel. Aah, dammit. I had family, I had friends, I had a purpose, I had a life... now all I've got is... something to smoke, and ears that'll mark me as a freak for the rest of my life... And his eyelashes are just a bit damp, but maybe he just got some smoke in his eyes...

     The trashcan is overflowing with wads of balled-up paper. Every few moments, Chisato mutters another curse, rips off another sheet, and wads it up, tossing it at the trashcan with no real concern for where it landed. 'A week ago my world died...' No. Melodramatic. Another wadded-up sheet of paper. 'Energy Nede was a strange world, but it was home.' No. Off-topic. Another ball of paper joins the pile. 'Last week, in a violent explosion, Energy Nede was utterly destroyed so that Expel might be resurrected.' No, no, who would believe that? Rip, wad, toss.
     Staring down at the latest blank sheet of paper, Chisato pauses for a moment, chewing on the end of her pencil. Then her hand flashes down, and in jagged, dark letters, she scrawls, 'Once I had a mother and a father and they're gone they're gone they're dead' and the lead in the pencil breaks and Chisato is crying, even after she swore she wouldn't, her tears falling on the paper and smearing the words, eradicating them but not the truth behind them.

     For the last week, Rena's had this maddening compulsion: every few hours, she needs to stop, and go outside, and kneel down, and put her hand on the bare earth, in the grass, just to reassure herself that Expel really is there. I'm dreaming, she thinks, every time. My home is back... at the cost of my world. In the end, I can't tell whether I've gained or lost. Claude is amazingly understanding about this need; but every time, after a few moments, Rena is reminded that Claude has also lost something... and then she feels guilty.
     Claude's lost his father, Noel and Chisato have lost their entire lives, and I'm brooding over the loss of a place I barely remember. I shouldn't be so selfish... but I can't help it. I can't believe that Expel's back, that everything's okay... well, everything's not okay, but... At this point in the monologue, Rena always closes her eyes. I'm so selfish... but maybe somewhere there was someone I was related to, or a home I would have remembered, and now I'll never know... and it's such a little thing! Compared to what Chisato and Noel have lost, it's... so little... And here, as always, Rena cries, just a little, her hand closing around the clump of grass and pulling it out of the ground. After she finishes crying, she replants the sod, clumsily, her hands shaking.

     The Nedians are dead.

     Long live the Expellians.

     Flicking the butt-end of his joint over the cliff and watching the tiny ember fall, Noel thinks, I spent all of my life trying to preserve endangered species, and now I am one...

     Balling up the sodden sheet of paper and throwing it against the wall, Chisato thinks, I've been searching for my scoop for years, and now that I have the story of a lifetime, a story that only I can tell, there's no one left who would believe it and no newspapers to print it in...

     Folding her hands over the replanted sod and staring down at the ground, Rena thinks, I finally found out who I am and where I came from, too late for it to do me any good at all... and now it's gone...

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