"You-you're joking, but it's not funny," Ghetsis said, giving the doctor a blank stare. "You're kidding, right? I'm not even twenty-five. There's no way."
The doctor looked at him with sympathetic eyes. No one liked to accept it, especially not young people with so much more to give to the world. "I'm so sorry. There's nothing we can do about it. The estimate is that you have a month left, six weeks at the most. The best you could do for yourself now is to go home and spend your time with your family, pray if you want to." He shook his head softly, not seeing the faintest flicker of recognition in his patient's big red eyes. It was almost heartbreaking, the stubbornness of how fiercely people clung to their lives. "I'm so sorry."
Ghetsis left the room, strolling down the sterile white halls with a neutral sort of scowl. "I am in denial," he thought coolly, shoving his hands into his pockets. He had never thought of himself as someone who would die young, really- maybe at fifty, but not twenty-two. e saw the statistics of yearly deaths in his age group, but it never really clicked with him. Dying young was for those who didn't have anything to contribute to the future, he had thought, but he had so much... Why, God, did things happen to him when he didn't deserve it?
Cyrus stood from the squeaky plastic chair he'd been seated in once Ghetsis reached him at the end of the hallway. He had a somewhat hopeful look on his face, but Ghetsis just shook his head, swallowing tightly, and the look changed to faint concern. And once they were outside, breathing in the winter air, Ghetsis spoke.
"I... I'm going to die." His words were incredibly steady for such a despairing revelation. "I have a month to live. It was just a fever and headache, and now I have a fucking month to live."
"But that's impossible," Cyrus said. "You were perfectly healthy last time you were here. And you're not a person who would-" his voice fell out here, despite his valiant attempt to stay calm. "You're not someone who should die. I don't believe it." He crossed his arms, a dark frown on his face that was an obvious prelude to crying. Even though Cyrus didn't really have mental emotions, his body sometimes had physical responses to the feelings that should have been there.
Ghetsis just shook his head wordlessly. The ride home was spent in silence. He was a a fragile man already, and he felt now as if he were simply about to break apart. He didn't want tot die. Just thinking about it made him feel ill, and it scared him so much more than he wanted to admit. Would it all just stop existing for him? Would he be born again as a totally different person, with no recollection of his past lives? Perhaps there was a God, a Heaven and a Hell. He didn't want to think about that. He was a gay and agnostic man, and he didn't want to think about where that would end him up.
At home, Ghetsis quickly changed into a pair of pajamas, pulling off his uncomfortable eyepiece and curling up under as many blankets as he could find. Only then did he start to cry, holding back his sniffles to try and not alert Cyrus, but the Kantonese man had an amazing intuition for when those around him were having strong emotions.
He was right there, rubbing one hand comfortingly over the smaller man's back, wishing privately that he could fix this all. Apparently there wasn't even a Pokemon who could help his oldest friend.
The green-haired Unovan rolled over to face Cyrus and held out his arms, nonverbally and insistingly asking Cyrus to sleep next to him that night. He felt cold, he wanted to have Cyrus and his warmth around all through his remaining days.
Cyrus was not going to deny him. Turning off the light, he slipped under the covers to cradle Ghetsis in his arms, as if the porcelain man was the most valuable thing in the universe. What else could he be right now than that?
~A later day~
Only a few days later, they were curled together on the couch, rewatching movies from their childhoods. Ghetsis hadn't been able to think of anything he really wanted to do with his last days- just spend them with Zweilous and the last living human he cared about. The movies, in retrospect, were laughably stupid, but he didn't really care about anything besides Cyrus's presence.
"I," he began suddenly, as if they'd been in the middle of a conversation. "I want to spend every last second with you." He hoped that Cyrus would be able to move on after his death -of course, it was Cyrus- but he was too selfish to start letting go of him now. He shrunk from the idea.
"Don't say that," Cyrus sshed him quietly, closing his pale blue eyes. "Don't talk that way. It's selfish of me, but I want to pretend that you'll still be here in three weeks, the month after next, next year." During the time it took him to say that, Cyrus had begun crying. "I won't ever leave your side until you're long buried, but please, can we fool each other with kind lies? I can't... I don't want you to go."
"I don't want to go either," Ghetsis said, tears beginning to spill over down his cheeks, clumping together his long lashes and making a mess of his pretty face. "I'm scared, Cyrus."
"You can't die." Cyrus wrapped his arms almost crushingly around the small man, feeling this shattering sort of sensation in his own chest, as if he'd been ht with a stray bullet. He didn't understand it.
Ghetsis was almost angry about his upcoming death, he realized in the back corners of his mind. He didn't deserve this., Cyrus didn't deserve this. It was so fucking unfair. Why was he going to die when there were so many terrible and useless people out there, so many more expendable people? He'd always believed himself to be special, important. He had dreams of grandeur, so many plans to put in motion.
And -it was almost hilarious- other people thought he was special too. They called him a pawn of Satan because of the perfectly star-shaped scar around his eye, called him a maniacal radical, but none of it even mattered anymore, because he was dying! It was sidesplittingly laughable.
~Even later~
"You should leave me now."
It was a week before his deadline -oh, haha- and Ghetsis wanted Cyrus to go away. He didn't deserve to die in the presence of one who loved him so undeservedly when he was such a horrible person.
He had gone through some rather dramatic changes over the last two weeks. Rather than thinking of himself as a visionary, he'd altered his self-image and come to the conclusion, after extensively reviewing his past, his faults, that he was a cruel and wicked person who deserved to die in pain and anguish.
"I mean, if you need to. Or want to. I don't want to force you to stay with me through whatever misbegotten affection you held for me. The sooner you start trying to forget about me, the better." He trusted that Cyrus wouldn't be upset about all this- he didn't really have many emotions, although he cried surprisingly often for being such a distant person.
"I don't care," Cyrus said. "I'm not going to get over you, so I'm going to be there for you every second you've got left." He held up one finger as Ghetsis opened his mouth. "No, don't try to dissuade me, it won't work. Whatever idea you're entertaining about yourself, it's not what I think of you, and I have no reason to be repulsed by any part of your being."
Both men being the fantastic speakers they were, their squabbles could have been political debates.
"You're not evil, Ghetsis. You're the first and only person I've ever had a romantic attraction to. What does that say?"
"You have a bad taste in partners," Ghetsis responded unhappily, wishing Cyrus would just let him end it. There was no need for him to be in pain too.
Not that Cyrus would be hurting any more than he was, the thought suddenly struck him. As the illness had progressed Ghetsis had been having migraines every few hours. His body was always overtaken with fever and chills, with pain shooting through his abdomen- it had made him think more than once that perhaps he should just kill himself and get it over with already than deal with any more pain.
Cyrus grabbed his shoulders tightly, stared him right in the eyes. "You're my love, Ghetsis, you're my life. And even if that has to be severed soon, I don't want it to end until the moment you take your last breath."
They had certainly given up pretending that everything was alright.
~Now is the time to cry~
Cyrus could only hope that he had died without pain or fear, peacefully. He'd woken up to find that Ghetsis was not merely asleep, but that there was no life in him.
It had caused a dull sort of aching for him, a kind of blackness.
Ghetsis's funeral was small, not attended by many. There was the priest of the local church there, two men Cyrus didn't recognize -the white-haired one was crying his head off- and the kid woman who had adopted Zweilous and accompanied the ever-faithful creature. Cyrus himself was there too, of course, and Saturn had insisted on going with him for emotional support, even though he personally didn't know Ghetsis all teat well.
He had a nice, quaint ceremony with words of blessings that fell hollowly on Cyrus's ears. Nothing could ever feel blessed again. This was all wrong.
"Zinzolin, you knew him well. Would you like to say any words over the deary deceased?"
It was the turn of the white-haired stranger to speak, and he did so, with much pause, of the pitiable, but perfect and beautiful man Ghetsis was- had been. He seemed to have a deep connection with Ghetsis, almost like a father. Cyrus had to wonder, vaguely, as he waited with coldness for his torture, why he didn't know this man. What did he really know about Ghetsis?
"And Cyrus, is there anything you'd like to say?"
What was there to say? The only person he loved was dead. What mattered anymore?
These stupid, despicable emotions... damn them!
"He was-" Cyrus began, before his tears began to flow uncontrollably. Saturn looked at him sadly from the audience. Right there in front of the people, turned away from Ghetsis, Cyrus emptied himself of anything he had managed to force down that day, falling to his knees because of the crippling, stabbing pain in his chest.
It wasn't fair.
~Okay, this was done as a prompt on a forum called PokeManiacs. I have a link to there on my page.