Disclaimer: I own this movie! ...on DVD. Nothing more. I make no monies from this, either.
Rewatched Golden Army over the weekend and felt inspired. I really love Nuada and Nuala, delving into their psyches and relationship. They made them deliberately ambiguous and creepy in the movie, and I thought it was amazing. What would go into their characters to make them so...almost obsessive about each other, even Nuala, for all her semi-normalness? So, I'm extremely proud of this little piece, even though it only took minutes to write. I've always wanted to do a full story for this series, but I doubt it will ever happen - but who knows? Until then, this satisfies me.
Decisions are never easy to make. The hardest often mean the most. And death is not a decision typically left in our hands. Death, the failing of life, is eventual, inevitable, and unavoidable, and maybe ours to speed along, but never a choice. Forever is not an option, which only makes life the more precious, treasured, held close and clung to. Because life can only be lived once, and then it is gone.
Maybe her life wasn't much; deep in the recesses of the dark, beneath forests of metal instead of trees, long destroyed by those who'd vowed to keep to their own. A dying people, a small community, a lonely existence with a forever grieving father, bowed with age and sadness and regret. She had nothing to her name; a princess to a fallen kingdom, standing tall against extinction, facing eternity with the hole in her consciousness, the ache in her mind, the dull thrum in her heart where her brother resided, her twin, the one who'd been with her since conception, raised at her side since birth, who knows her better than she knows herself, who is her other half. Imagination could never have prepared her for his exile; no nightmare could compare to the reality that was him walking away, leaving her only half herself, lost, truly alone for the first time in her existence.
No matter his crimes, he was a part of her. Every memory, every moment, everything they share. He has been her protester, her guardian, her shield, and it is this that has driven him beyond duty. This is the world his sister, his most precious one, lives in, and he must save it if she is to be saved, that he knows, that guides him. The world she loves, the world that holds her life, is falling to the greed of man, and he cannot let them destroy it, or they will destroy her.
But, in the end, it is he who is destroying her, isn't it?
Her life wasn't much, alone and in the dark, in the sea of gears and iron and all that goes against her very being, but it is life, and she would have lived it no matter the circumstance. She would have loved it, if her brother had come home to be a part of it. In trying to protect her, her left her alone; in trying to save her, he drove her into a corner.
In the end, it's almost as though he's made the decision for her. She feels it in him, that knowledge, in those last moments; he cannot live in this world, a world that is no longer their home. The forests that they were born in have been destroyed in favor of human expansion, for factories and parking lots and skyscrapers. The oceans that fed the land, the rivers and lakes that brought life are polluted, infested, degraded. The very earth that is mother of all crumbles under the plague that is man kind, and he must stop it. He cannot stop until he's stopped it.
When the human infestation is under control, when the world has been restored and is a fit home for the only family he has left, then he can finally find home again. He will die fighting before he stops. He is prepared for that; resigned to it now that he stands defeated. He keeps moving forward, even against hope; pride lost, his own blood against him. He must move forward.
And she must stop him.
She must admit, he's brought some light into her dreary existence. Her brother's war, his fight, brought her together with someone she otherwise have never known; never given her heart to. Meeting Abraham has been one of only two good things she has come out of this. The other is finally having her brother back again, feeling him there, inside her; her mind, her consciousness, her soul. She has fallen in love with Abraham, a mind like hers, a soul searcher, lover of the arts, and alone, even when with the ones who are most precious to them. She will always love her brother, who knows her always, who tries to fill her needs the only ways he knows how, who does what he believes must be done for her, when she could never do such things.
Her life is full of anguish, loss, suffering; she still feels blessed to have two people who mean so much to her, who she means so much to.
She wants to live. She wants to live with them both. Even in a word so seeped in corruption, she wants to go on, wants to be together with them. She could be happy, she really could. She thinks she could make him happy, too. But not with his heart hardened against it. She knows that, truly, there is no hope. Her brother must be freed from this world that tortures him, and only she can do it.
She wants to live, she truly does. She wants a home and a future and a family, and she'll take this world as it comes because it's the only world she knows. What comes after this life...that is a mystery even to her. It is a mystery that scares her; the unknown. Terrifies her.
But she will not face it alone. Just as he won't. They are together; they always have been. They always will be. They are one. They share everything, the always have. They share a life, even when they're apart. They share knowledge, they share feelings, they share pain.
With one last gasping, fear-filled breath, she plungers the tiny dagger up, under her ribcage, into her heart; and into his.
They will be free; they will be together. For that, for her brother, she'll give up everything. Life; Love; Hope. She's made that decision.