And that's the end of you

Going through my post-apocalyptic YA one more time (Once More With Feeling!) and thinning out the unnecessary bits, including characters. Feels weirdly wrong to search and find and delete someone's existence, even if they only exist on the page. And it also seems right. If it's that easy to get rid of them, with only minor write-arounds, then that person wasn't where he/she needed to be. Maybe they'll show up someplace else, some other time, some other planet.