“It doesn’t matter how many people care about you if the ones you care about are gone.” Blister had told me that cloudless night above the cityscape on the roof of the tallest building in New Domino.

Although it was ten-odd years ago, and I don’t even remember how I ended up there, or what we were even talking about before that moment, but I can still see the words leaving him like cigarette smoke. I guess I could consider those his last words, as he killed himself that night without speaking to another soul.

It wasn’t really a surprise when I learned he had driven a stolen duel runner off the bridge not even an hour after speaking to me, as I knew Blister hated life with every fiber of his being. He probably would’ve ended it sooner if we didn’t need him, but instead he endured it all until the dangers were gone. Life was his steel cage and death was his sweet prison break.

I never expected Blister to be the kind of person to leave a note, but I went to his place anyways. The only thing that I found that could even be considered his end statement was a picture of him and Aero with a few lines of a poem scrawled on the back of it in messy handwriting.

I am a cathedral of deadbolts

and I’d rather burn myself down

than change the locks.

His death didn’t faze me too much at the time, but now I understand why. Blister really was a cathedral of deadbolts, and the locks couldn’t be changed, burning it down was really the only solution.

I guess I never really saw eye to eye with him until I was in his shoes. Yes, I know there are people who care about me, people who would take me in on this cold night, but none of them are people I’d ever want to take me in. After our little mechanics business grew I had it all, but somehow I let it slip through my hands like raindrops.

The loss of Crow to a violent bar fight was devastating, especially when Jack followed him to the grave not long after due to an oncoming car slamming into his runner head on; both were killed almost instantly. Rally, we lost the poor kid to a hit and run when he was two weeks past eighteen, his murderer was new caught. And Akiza, my beautiful Akiza left me due to childbirth complications while giving birth to our first child.

All the rest have faded into the background; their deaths were expected and uneventful. It’s not to say I didn’t care, but their deaths didn’t leave me feeling as if I was at fault.

I hope my leaving doesn’t make anybody feel as if it was their fault, as sometimes caring just isn’t enough.