Title: Remembered
By: Aina Song
Fandom(s): The Green Mile/ pre-Xenosaga
Genre: Non-Yaoi
Rating: PG
Warning(s): Direct Quotes; Angst; Comfort.
Pairing(s): None
Reviews: Yes, please.
Author's Note: Standard Disclaimer. This story was not written for money.
Teaser: Hadn't he waited long enough…?
It's my atonement, you see. It's my punishment… for letting John Coffey ride the lightning. For killing a miracle of God.
Oh, I'll die eventually. Of that, I'm sure. I have no illusions of immortality. But I will have wished for death, long before death finds me. In truth… I wish for it already.
I lie in bed most nights, thinking about it. And I wait. I think about all the people I've loved, now long gone. I think about my beautiful Jan, and how I lost her so many years ago. And I think about all of us, walking our own green mile, each in our own time.
But one thought more than any other keeps me awake most nights. If he could make a mouse live so long… how much longer do I have?
We each owe a death. There are no exceptions. But, oh God… sometimes… the green mile seems so long…
~o~
(10 Yrs. Later)
The skies outside his window were beginning to grey with the approaching dawn, when Paul Edgecomb heard the door to his room quietly click open. Having suffered another restless night, Paul was just awake enough to watch as his door swung silently inward. And there in his doorway, illuminated by the soft light of the corridor, stood a very young man whom he had only seen once or twice in the institute.
It was the new intern, the one to have transferred to the senior home less than a week past. So young he looked to be little more than a boy, he had dark olive skin and feathery black hair that framed his delicate features and fell into his unusually bright blue eyes. He was a small, soft-spoken young lad whose only duties in the institute thus far seemed to be availing himself to any of the elderly which might have need of a listening ear.
He let himself into the room now, his feet almost soundless as he crossed the floor. Paul carefully pushed himself up against his pillow, too old and tired to sit upright all at once. The boy paused near his bedside, and his mouth tugged back in a small smile that did nothing to hide the sudden melancholic light in his eyes.
"Hello, Paul," he greeted, his young voice barely stronger than a soft whisper - and missing its Hispanic accent. "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to find you."
"Find me?" Paul echoed, his own voice a frail and crumbling echo of what it once had been. "Why would you be looking for me?"
And the boy's voice grew quieter still; "Don't you think you've waited long enough, to be allowed to pay what you owe?"
His chest tightened, and he felt his heart miss a beat. He pushed himself up a little more, staring at the boy. "Who are you?"
The young lad offered another saddened smile, turning to carefully sit upon the edge of the bed. He brought his hands together, hands that were always gloved in thin leather; he tugged one of the gloves off and rested his smooth uncalloused palm atop the back of Paul's withered and bony hand.
Paul closed his eyes as he was filled with the kind of light he otherwise would've had to have been blind to see. It warmed his aged body, seeming to soothe its aches away and even comforting those buried deep in his heart. And then Paul glimpsed something in the light… a pair of familiar, guileless cocoa-brown eyes…
The hand gripping his lifted away. Paul blinked back his tears to stare at the boy gazing steadily back at him. The lad's smile now was one of aggrieved apology, and Paul watched unbelieving as the boy's olive skin paled to soft ivory and his feathery black hair lightened to strands of white silk. Yet those bright, translucent blue eyes remained the same, their level gaze never wavering, never turning away.
"My name is Yeshua," he very softly answered at last. "And I truly am sorry, to have made you wait this long…"
"J-John," the aged man croaked past a thickness in his throat. "I-I saw…"
"Yes," the boy nodded. "Yes, that was John Coffey. He's waited too, you know… He's been waiting to tell you that what you destroyed so long ago was just a shell. His soul is as pure and as unscathed as the day you last glimpsed it." His eyes grew very saddened and infinitely kind; "You didn't kill a miracle of God, Paul Edgecomb. You set it free."
Paul could feel his tears escaping, leaving scalding trails down his weathered face. And, unable to voice the joy in his heart at being vindicated at long last, he lifted his hand and reached his fingers for the boy's once more. The pale lad smiled gently, a single tear falling from his own eyes, and he gripped Paul's hand in his own again.
Sighing, Paul tipped his head back atop his pillow and closed his eyes. He drew a breath… and then another… and was gone.
Yeshua bit his lip, drawing in a great slow breath and letting it out again. "Come," he whispered to the soul now cradled protectively within his chest. "It's time you and he were reunited. It's time I bring you home."
The End