For the friend who got me into this bird hell. Murderous doctors and their almost love stories are 150% my thing.

Title is from Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, and I like to think he would be mildly horrified to find out his masterpiece is being referenced in a fanfic about murderous, gay birds. Sometimes, the future is a strange thing indeed.

Please enjoy.

Death is that little thing with feathers.

Death is the twist of your body as you raise the now-warmed cleaver, and cut, cut into that frenzy of grey-red flesh.

Death is the brilliance of flesh laid inside-out.

You're trying to prove something, that the shade of death has no power over you. Oh, it's claimed you, half of you, anyway—the half that was smashed into a numbing hum of pain. Death was white, then, star-hot, a kiss from God Himself. And you came to, in a haze of searching, steady lights and wires piercing your veins and the rough rawness of broken and swelled skin.

A miracle survivor.

And as with other His prophets, God stole your sight. God's only a hunter-gatherer superstition, one you're too clever to entertain, but in that moment, as you were remade with fire and fear and hatred in man's image, you could have sworn otherwise. There wasn't any cosmetic damage, nothing you couldn't cover up in due time, but the subtly dragging limp and the eternal weakness in your right side remain. The dull grey of pain is a constant.

Death is red, the only color left to you.

You study everyone, simply because you are superior to them. Isn't that the only reason why one being studies another? They live predictable lives of petty squabbles and romance, misplaced allegiances and trivial deceit, unaware of the bright red spark inside them, the only one that you worship. They might cry and plea for their lives, but you know better, don't you? Their tiny lives all figure into your great plan. Ethics, after all, are merely a formality for the great, and you are no exception to this unwritten rule.

Death is that rush of red that makes everything worth it.

Death is the empty box and photograph at Dr. Kawara's wake. The one you missed because you couldn't leave Dr. Kawara's work, because he was there in the data and instruments, and if you only touched the glassware that he had touched, then he wouldn't really be dead. Just absent. As long as you never saw the box and the grievers, as long as you never had to learn how to react to death, then it's as if death never occurred, and you can count down the days from Dr. Kawara's return from vacation instead.

Death is the shadow of Dr. Kawara, the one you keep chasing, like a fool who hasn't realized that shadows, by definition, are untouchable. Such an oversight on your part. You prided yourself on your clinically cold detachment, but as the years separate you and him, as you grow into what he would never recognize, you realize that you've been wrong.

The mirror cracked from side to side, and you've only been staring at yourself in it.

Death is all the missed tokens of affection, the missed opportunities, the words that his presence woke, and then were caught in your stubborn throat. The heady lightness of his presence, the gentle annoyance at his stained lab coat, his flightiness. He never went home, and you don't understand what that means until you're older, when you lie alone at night and try to remember what color looked like. Ryuuji—you allow yourself this transgression—would have been yellow, you decide. An inconsiderate, unabashedly cheerful color.

(You're not sure when he became Ryuuji to you.)

They didn't teach you how to love, and that is your rationale for all these spent years: love, along with arithmetic and proper lab procedures, must be learned. If you can reduce something to a series of steps to be followed, a list of appropriate behavior, then you can master it. That is love to you, a procedure to be followed by simpletons.

(Sometimes, you try to hand-wave the feeling as a biological impulse to reproduce, albeit a little misguided in your case.)

Still, his shadow keeps escaping you, dodging past corners, vanishing into the data sets.

You promised his boy.

You'll make good on your promise, because that's all you have left.

Notes:

You might recognize the opening line as a mangled version of Emily Dickinson's poem, and spotted the other line from Tennyson, who is probably rolling over in his grave now.

Thank you for reading. Comments are loved.