(A/N) Written to the songs "Emotional Anorexia" by Svavar Knutur, "Pieces" by Red, and "Skin and Bones" and "Ever After" by Marianas Trench; edited to "Rain" and "Outside" by Hollywood Undead.
Written last night in the throws of insomnia. Since I'm on vacation, my schedule's all out of whack... It's a bit abstract, so fair warning.
A different view of this dynamic that I couldn't resist exploring. Feel free to see it as ZaDr or extremely fluffy ZaDf. If you go into it as ZaDf, beware the use of the word love and the angsty fluff. It leans more toward ZaDr, but there's nothing definitive.
I do not own the characters portrayed- they both belong to Jhonen who, I somehow think, would not approve of this. Lawl, sorry, dude. :P
The young boy had never allowed himself to feel anything- perhaps it was the fact that he had never been the object of affection or anything similar, feeling disconnected from those he should have held dear and ostracized by his peers. But the idea of being cared for or caring for anyone else frightened him- it frightened him nearly to death.
And so he starved himself.
If he did not desire affection, he would never be in danger of the pain that emotional withdrawals would cause.
He would not give in to the cravings- the desperate cravings for warmth and passion that he would never admit that he experienced.
And so, denied love and lightheartedness, he grew all the more hateful and serious, throwing himself with reckless abandon into this business of saving the Earth from alien invasion- saving an Earth and a people who cared nothing for him, who did not care if he lived or died, thrived or starved.
~.~.~.~.~.~
It wasn't normal- and that was his greatest fear. His desire for something more, for a connection to some other living being- it wasn't ordinary. And what was unusual was, undoubtedly, Defective. And Defectiveness led to certain rejection and, inevitably, termination.
So he denied himself.
If he ignored the strange dependency that had to be imagined as well as the longing that must be some demented trick of his homesick mind, then they did not exist. He had a job to do- a task that had been his purpose since birth, and a task that he must carry out.
Yes- the job must be done perfectly; flawlessly. And such useless feelings did not allow for the job to be carried out flawlessly.
Feelings made things very messy indeed. That was why they were deemed unnecessary, and relegated to an obsolete, primal part of the brain which must be ignored at all costs. Feed it, and it only grows.
And so he starved himself.
He needed little physical sustenance, and so it stood to reason that he required even less emotional sustenance- he required, in fact, no emotional sustenance.
… Didn't he?
Of course; second guessing was useless; pointless; a waste of valuable time. And so he threw himself into the task of World Domination with feverish abandon, focusing all his energy upon his duty and upon his enemy, scarcely realizing that he was pleading with his programming to be allowed so much more.
~.~.~.~.~.~
The tears came sometimes, no matter what he did to avoid them. They tore him apart- weak with want of nourishment and able to feed only on his own loneliness, he sobbed uncontrollably into his pillow on long, sleepless nights.
No one would have guessed; he did such a good job of denying himself all emotional outbursts- at least of the personal kind, for he showed anger and annoyance and other such things frequently –that he seemed to be entirely whole.
He was, in fact, wasting away inside the walls of his own heart; deprived of the warm rays of the sun and all food others enjoyed together, among friends. Breaking bread was forbidden for him- he had no one to share with, regardless.
And without that vital nourishment, he was dying.
He just refused to realize it, convincing himself instead that his emotional fast served only to make him stronger.
~.~.~.~.~.~
Everything he pretended to be fact was a façade; he knew that as well as his laughing superiors, who watched it all with sadistic enjoyment.
Weakened from total lack of anything that could even begin to sustain him, he clung to what skeleton purpose he could find within the world. The paralyzing fear of what awaited him if he let go was too much- it was overwhelming.
Yet fear was unbecoming for an Invader, and so he would sooner die than admit that he was terrified half to death- terrified enough to starve himself.
And so he went without, day after day, even though his will was weakening and wavering, his famous bravado becoming a fragile mask which he wore to fool himself as much as anyone else.
He didn't allow himself to second guess his abilities, ever; he didn't second guess his ability to go without, even after the two creatures he held in the highest regard cut all communication with him and his last lifeline vanished into the cold vacuum of space.
A robot was his only cold companion- a child who didn't realize that his master was dying, right before his eyes. But he was a dedicated little fellow, and he obliged whenever his master asked, timidly and gruffly at once, trying to cover his uncertainty with that famous bluster, to be held for a moment.
He was curious, of course, about why a simple embrace would weaken the humans so.
An experiment, for the sake of observation only.
It was probably such crumbs that kept his stupid, starving heart alive.
~.~.~.~.~.~
When he first became aware of it, it was nearly too late.
When he found the knife hovering above his already scarred wrist, he was surprised at first- but even such an emotion as surprise had been dulled by his long spiritual deprivation, and he could only stare in shock at the fact that the blade was turned sideways.
Not horizontal- vertical; not across the wrist, but up his whole arm.
Tears sprang to his eyes and the chosen tool of his suicide clattered to the floor. For a moment he couldn't breathe; for a moment he couldn't make a sound, and his head buzzed with the realization of complete hopelessness. He staggered back; tripped; fell.
And then he was wailing- a high pitched keen of agony as the hunger struck his heart with all the force of a starving man's physical longing. But this was hunger of a different kind- even more compelling and, left alone, far more deadly.
Hunger for love; hunger for friendship; hunger for anything that would nourish the soul instead of devour it, as loneliness was bound to do. A meaning beyond hate- a meaning based in love, one which he no longer possessed. He did not love the people that he sought to protect, nor did they care about him.
They would sooner leave him to die, and his energies were wasted in protecting them.
But he knew, with a weighty feeling of certainty in his empty heart, that there was one who did care- a realization Fear had denied him for so long that he had almost given up; almost given in.
Closing his eyes tightly in a feeble attempt to ward off the tears, he choked out the name; hugged his knees to his chest; tried to keep himself alive with only the warmth of his own embrace.
Yet no one could survive in such a way. And so he broke down at last, and went in search of the warmth of another.
~.~.~.~.~.~
He paused; stared into the open machinery; wondered what it would be like to feel the deadly sparks play across his skin.
Perhaps it would give him the thrill he desired so badly- a feeling, any feeling.
Those that he had devoted his life and honor to had abandoned him; denounced him. Yet he slaved away for them, in some vein hope that they would change their mind. But they would not, and he knew that.
There was one option- an option he still refused to admit to himself; an option that would never be an option. It was his only way out alive for, if he denounced the only path available to him, he would have no other alternative but death.
And he was tired; so weak and tired and feeble from the prolonged starvation he had subjected himself to.
Emotional starvation seemed to be as deadly as physical starvation, even to a hardened Invader- a Defective one, at least.
He had long come to terms with the title, 'Defective.' What else could he be called, when he found himself dying for something that no Invader should need? And yet the need was there; tears rolled down his pale cheeks as he acknowledged it, but he could still not bring himself to accept the path that beckoned him.
Besides the fact that it was exceptionally unseemly, he only risked the rejection that would certainly come as swiftly as Death.
Taking a deep breath, he turned away from the machinery; he must not, he decided, give in to the hopelessness. They would take him back, after they saw what an excellent job he had done; they had to. And he did not need what he thought he did; it had to be a trick of his environment, a cruel twisting of the mind that was meant to defeat hostile forces.
A knock at the door rang out through the base, causing him to jump and look up; security should have handled any sort of intrusion, and so he trotted over to the view screen and flicked it on, switching to the camera positioned above his door.
His eyes widened; a breathy name left his mouth.
And, without pausing to think up even an excuse, he ran for the lift that led upstairs.
~.~.~.~.~.~
Uncertainly, eyes darting from side to side, the boy waited on his enemy's porch. He did not shout jeeringly or sneak about as he might have on any other day, but instead gazed up at the out-of-place restroom door and tried to fathom what he was doing.
But the hunger was relentless; it would not let him turn and flee, as his rational mind was screaming at him to do. His eyes were still sore with tears and his throat with wailing; his heart was pounding with anticipation.
And the door opened.
It only took an instant- a heartrending, commonplace glance at a face he knew as well as his own –to identify his own weakness mirrored in those tear-stained ruby eyes; to identify the hunger that had driven him to his enemy's doorstep, and then rushing into that same enemy's arms.
~.~.~.~.~.~
He froze as his nemesis rushed at him; he glimpsed pain and fear and a deep longing breaking in his gaze, the same emotions that he himself had denied for so long. And, feeling the boy's warm body pressed up against his chest- feeling the boy's arms wrapped tightly around him, encircling him in a protective way that he had never known was possible –he felt an entirely foreign feeling swell in his heart-equivalent and then overtake him, bursting onto the physical plane in the form of bitter tears.
Returning the embrace, he dug his claws into the boy's back; braced himself as if facing a storm and clung to his enemy like a lifeline, wailing his pain at last as he acknowledged his unfulfilled needs. Face twisting with relief and angst, he tightened his grip; felt the boy's presence swamp his starved senses in an overwhelming whirl of color. As if he had been blind, deaf and dumb, he cried out wordlessly; clung to the boy.
Suddenly, he found himself terrified not to reach out, but instead to let go.
~.~.~.~.~.~
Relief swelled inside the boy as his enemy hugged him back; wailed just as he had done earlier. A glut of emotion and sensation flood his starved senses, leaving him short of breath and sobbing harder than he could ever remember.
For here was the one creature cared about him; the one creature who he cared about.
And one was enough.
He drank in the alien's familiar presence; the deliciously foreign scent that he had never noticed before. He felt claws scrape at his back and gasped at the pain- far more colorful than the self-inflicted gashes that had been his only source of feeling for so long. He reached up and massaged the nape of his enemy's neck roughly as they both cried and held one another; as they both feasted on the other's mere presence after so long in a state of self-starvation.
Never again would either go hungry, and both knew it in that moment. No one else cared for the two outcasts, so they would care for each other; no one else loved them, so they would love each other; no one else looked out for them, so they would look out for each other.
As much symbiosis as affection; such would be their happy fate.
Regardless of their goals- for those would certainly change as soon as they were coherent enough to speak of such things –they would fight on the same side against both their worlds. Of course they would still battle one another, as was their custom, but if either was threatened the other would come to their defense without a second thought.
Even if it ended in disaster, they would still have one another; never again would either of them suffer from their self-inflicted starvation of the heart, for never again would they be alone. And it is an impossible thing for a soul- human or Irken, regardless –to resist the love that is held out temptingly in front of it, offered free of charge.
Injured, starving hearts such as theirs were perhaps even more desperate to trust than those that had never been hurt; they were even more willing to leap without looking than those who could afford to take love for granted.
And eventually, they would prove those who had thrown them away wrong.
Happily Ever After…
The Beginning.
(A/N) I truly hope you enjoyed. ^u^ Reviews are loved, faves are appreciated, constructive criticism is encouraged, and flames are used to roast marshmallows. ^_^