"It isn't a gift"

A Memory of Truth

In among the wreckage of July, the sad skeletons of grand buildings and garden of rubble, lay the countless bleeding bodies. Their breaths were choked by the settling dust and spackle - sharp, hissing noises that followed his every footstep. The distant light of twins suns refracted an echoing red around him as he walked, his goal in sight.

He didn't have to walk. He didn't have to pass through the deathless carnage that was once the finest of the Seven Cities. He didn't have to pause at the muffled sobbing, childish in its pitch, the he heard near the shattered crucifix of a crumbling church. He didn't have to; he'd know it all soon enough in their nightmares.

But this was why he'd come, to know this story before it was forgotten or, he frowned in distaste, distorted. This was the foundation of a legend, the lifeblood of this desolate planet's mythology. It was a story that would be told to everyone in breathlessly intense, anxious whispers, preserving one man's pain for eternity.

And Dream would be the keeper of the truth.

Deepset stars glittered in the place of eyes as the one who shapes found his destination - a young blonde man sleeping the desperate sleep of escape. His red coat lay around him in dirty tatters on the too clean floor. Ground-zero was bare, but for him.

And her.

Death was kneeling beside the man, the new outlaw. He would become legend itself, and she was stroking his gel stiffened hair, bent and wearied by perspiration. He didn't move under her care, lay so still that for a moment Dream wondered if his sister had spared him his destiny. But, no, that infinitely sad look on her face wasn't from deadly mercy. It was from cruel duty.

Death leaned forward, placing a soft kiss on the man's forehead before rising. Sorrowful eyes found her brother's face, "I wasn't sure you'd come in person."

Twinkling stars slid his attention to the red-enshrouded man at her feet. It was an incongruous and fitting sight; innocent and morbid. "It is too important a story to not." She nodded in agreement, waiting silently for further explanation. Dream did not grant it, instead asking, "Why do you remain here, when your work is out there?"

Death gestured vaguely to out there, "No one in the city will die." Dream raised an eyebrow and she glared, hastening to add, "Not by my choice, this isn't interference. This is Destiny at work, bro, and we're just minor players this time around."

Her brother remained stoic as ever, even in face of his role as a mere pawn. He knew matters were never so simple, and brought his question to bear once more, "Why have you stayed with him?"

"He's always so alone, and from now on it's just gonna get worse.

"And this will be the only time I'll ever touch him," she concluded softly.

"So you hope."

Death fidgeted, pacing away a few steps, "I think, in a way, that I don't want to ever touch him again. He's too good to die."

Dream looked at her pointedly, "He's too good not to die. he doesn't deserve a burden like immortality."

"Because he remembers everything . . ." she broke off before eying him suspiciously, "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"His story will be told, but no this. Never this. Someone will need to keep it."

She grinned, "But not him."

Dream was silent.

The light was dimming. He thought he could still hear that child. He was sure Death could, but her expression did not falter.

"It isn't a gift."

She nodded absently, she'd already drifted back to the prone figure, murmuring comfort to him.

"And it isn't permanent."

She ran her small fingers through blonde hair again, working it out of its spike, "He's very stronger, stronger than I would have thought possible. But he doesn't need this."

Dream began his slow, inexorable and almost regretful approach to the man, who seemed so fragile in his sleeping oblivion, "It may be worse - never knowing if the whispers of fear behind his back are justified, if he is the man they say he is."

Death sighed, "He doesn't need this."

When she looked up from her careful ministrations, he was kneeling across from her, "It isn't permanent." He reached out, an unnecessary motion, and brushed the tips of his fingers over closed eyes.

Pale eyelids fluttered momentarily as the memory was stolen.

And there you have it! I'm not sure I did very well on the characterizations of Death and Dream . . . But what is is. If I can figure them out better I might rewrite, but it's pretty unlikely.

The Sandman is copyright (c) Neil Gaiman and Vertigo Comics

Trigun is copyright (c) Yasuhiro Nightow and Young King Ours.

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