How to Get a Leg Up in Life The First Final Sacrifice (The Second First Cut)(Part 2) How do you get a leg up in life? Start by being in a tough place — the toughest of all tough places — and find yourself there with nothing but your best friend. Where is your tough place? Where might you find yourself with your best friend? The knife feels heavy in my hand, its weight pulling me down into the snow. The mountain has taken everything else, so why not this? Why not let it finish the job? But as the thought flickers through my mind, I hear something. Not your voice — your voice is silent now, lost to the cold — but the echo of it, the memory of something you said long before we climbed this godforsaken peak. “We’re doing this together,” you’d said, your grin wide and unshakable. “All the way to the top.” I laugh, a harsh, cracked sound that turns into a cough. Together. What a lie that turned out to be. The mountain didn’t kill us — we killed each other, with every choice we made, every step we took without thinking. We weren’t ready for this climb. We weren’t strong enough, or smart enough, or prepared enough. And now, we’re nothing but two broken bodies on the snow, waiting to be forgotten. I look at you one last time, your face pale and still, and I make a decision. Not the kind of decision that saves anyone, but the kind that gives this story an ending. I raise the knife, not to cut, but to throw it away, to hurl it as far as I can into the abyss below. It’s a useless gesture, but it feels right. It feels like the only thing I can do that the mountain hasn’t already taken from me. The blade disappears into the void, and I collapse beside you, my breath shallow and uneven. The cold seeps into my bones, and I know it won’t be long now. The mountain doesn’t care. It never did. When it was done, we sat there, blood pooling beneath us, our breaths shallow and uneven. You looked at me, and for the first time since the storm began, I saw something real in your eyes. Not fear, not anger, not even regret. Just… peace. “We did it,” you whispered. “We did.” The lie tasted sweet, almost comforting. It didn’t matter that neither of us would make it down the mountain. It didn’t matter that this second time was just a mirror of the first, a cruel echo of a decision that had already been made. The cut had been given. The sacrifice had been taken. And in the end, neither of us had won. But here, in the shadow of the mountain, as the cold seeped into our veins and the darkness began to close in, we found something close to truth. It didn’t matter who had given, who had taken. It didn’t matter who had been the asshole, or the savior, or both. We were just two best friends, broken and bleeding and alive for a little while longer. Together. And in this, the mountain had finally given us its answer.
