This fic was inspired by the episodes featuring Methusala. I would tell you exactly which ones they are but I'm too lazy to go back and look, so please, forgive me.
Summary: memory is a thing immortal, even if the people who lived it are not. We must take their memories-passed down through the millennia-and not ignore them but instead learn from them.
I own next to nothing so don't sue me. Thnx :)
Nostalgia:
One old woman in a wheelchair sits in a darkened room staring at a blackened wall watching the world go by: watching history repeat itself. Her body sits in a grey broken down concrete warehouse. Her soul lives a hundred colored lives and dies a hundred painful deaths: remembers a hundred last sunrises which will never come again (and yet exist everyday).
Two women come into the darkened room bearing candles. Representing Youth and Long Life, they come to remember days gone by.
They kneel beside the old woman offering food, warmth, and life. The Old Woman sits and remembers Death. Youth and Long Life remember only the colored lives, and long for their light and laughter. They do not anticipate their own deaths. The old woman has already experienced them.
'Remember, 'they say.
'Remember when we danced in the moonlight. Remember when we lived Under the Hill. Remember when we were the fairy-folk, the wanderers, the gypsy, the fae. '
'Remember when we were the oracles and ruled Delphi.'
'Remember when we danced on light feet in green meadows, and talked to gods in the forested temple of Earth. '
'Remember when we could still hear the Mother.'
'Remember when WE cast sickness from the body, fatigue from the soul, and evil from the land.'
They sit together clasping hands, staring into the dead light in each others' eyes. The old woman regards them from her throne of age, her leathery skin a mockingly sorrowful grey mask. She passes her hands over their eyes: performing the Death Rite, opening the Gateway.
Slowly she fades into the shadows.
Youth and Long Life still sit together connected: a fragile chain in the looming dark. Their whispers fill the shadows:
'Remember.
Remember.
Remember. Remember. Remember. Remember remember remember remember…'
They are already lost.
The old woman watches from the corner, hidden, but she is already gone, watching this Death from a different room in a different time. A thousand colored lives and a thousand fearful deaths.
Distantly a voice crackles on a radio, worried: 'Be careful, we don't know what they're doing…'
'…remember remember remember remember rememberrememberrememberremember…'
The Hunters close their ears and eyes and souls.
The doors burst in and fire roars. Youth and Long Life glow in a halo of light. Their hair flies around them in an unseen wind, rising from ages gone by. The fear is overwhelming. The pain doubled by memory and reality: an old enemy come to call.
The colored lives flutter and cry and fade softly into acceptance. Death was always an inevitable part of living, a natural law, as immortal as the tides… a blurring of all the colors into dark night, black oblivion.
The pain is ended by two swift gunshots and the fire disappears. No light remains in the old storage room. The fire burned it all away. Hope stares into Death's dark eyes and wonders if it will ever be her at the end of his gun. The old woman stares at them both and sees an opportunity to end the millions of fearful painful deaths.
An old woman stares at the brick wall end of a dimly lit alleyway. Hope stands at her back. She is the first not blinded by the colored lives. She sees the deaths and shudders in fearful anticipation: he has walked long beside her and now Death looms behind her.
'It is time.'
The old woman gives a leathery gray grin. The please is never spoken. She has found the power that can release her and save the future for the colored lives.
The flames burn high and the gunshot never comes.
Hope doesn't need to turn around. Death is finally on her side.
So tell me what you think. It boosts my ego to incredible hights and makes my sad days bright ;D