Twinkle, Twinkle, Prisoner 5580
by Methinks
A Deadman Wonderland One-Shot
Disclaimer: Definitely AU - written after I had seen the first three episodes of the anime and before I actually sat down and read the manga. In case you weren't aware, canon goes completely differently. I still like this piece though. It's amusing to see just how different my expectations were than the reality.
Once upon a time, he had hated this place, loathed it with every fiber of his being, from the guards who ran them with an iron fist to the collar resting heavy around his neck to the excited crowds, cheering as they waited for him to die. But he could barely remember that feeling now. It seemed like it an eternity ago now, that time before... Before he had understood the guards, the collar, the crowds... Before he had understood the lesson the Red Man had been trying to teach him all along...
Deadman Wonderland was wonderfully ironic.
He never even saw the crowds any more. Just saw himself. Ten thousand Gantas screaming for him to die. Or rather, he saw who he was, who he might have been, had Death not broken forcibly into his life and stripped everything away from him. It was a sobering sight, seeing his face reflected over and over again, an unending sea, all cheering and waving, watching with baited breath for himself to be cut down like an errant blade of grass.
An entertainment. A distraction. One more thing to help them forget.
Bread and circuses.
Grass... What a wonderful analogy... Each blade, so different from all the others and yet all the same. Each confined to its lonely patch of dirt, unable to change its lot in life. All doomed to the exact same lot in life, to wither and die. Here today, gone tomorrow; caught underneath the reaper's blade.
Twinkle, twinkle little star; doomed to burn out, that you are...
He was quite mad, of that he was certain. Or maybe it was the rest of the world that was mad and only he knew the truth? Cogito, ergo sum. Mimi's dad had loved philosophy once upon a time. "I think therefore I am." But does the rest of the world think? Maybe he was the only one. Maybe this was all a figment of his imagination? An imperfect creation of an imperfect creator?
If so, what did this say about him? His own creation had sentenced him to die. How perfectly depressing...
But no, he was no creator. The creator, by necessity, exists apart from creation. He was in it, part of it, had been from the moment he was born and would be until the day he died. Today, maybe? Tomorrow? Who knew?
Who cared?
"I think, therefore I am," Descartes had said. Cogito, ergo sum. First principles, everything else rises from this. But he was wrong. There's just one truth and only one truth that can ever be known for certain...
Everything dies.
Still you shine up in the sky; like you don't care that you'll die...
In the end, he was grateful for the Red Man. He could have been out there in those crowds at this very moment, wearing clothes he had picked, comfortable, fitting. Warm. An ice cold soda, equally cold woman on his arm, cheering as one by one everybody died. He could have friends, family... he might even be happy.
But it would have all been a lie. Nothing is true. Everything is meaningless. Success. Money. Sex. Pleasure. All temporary. All lies. Mirages in a desert of suffering, tempting you ever onward, ever deeper into hell, before vanishing in an instant, leaving you to seek after whatever lie you choose next. They give you Hope, only to rip it away in ever more agonizing fashions.
Everything is meaningless!
But Death can have meaning.
Perhaps only Death can give meaning.
Twinkle, twinkle little star; I now know just what you are...
And that was the true irony of Deadman Wonderland. Those outside, the "free", they call what they have life. But they live without Death, simply allowing themselves to be swept along from one day to the next, never trying, never struggling. Never caring. Never understanding. Never, never, NEVER!
That's what the Red Man taught him. Today you live, tomorrow you die. If you cannot understand this, cannot live by this, then what you live is not life at all, merely a pretension of it. An illusion, with no more substance than the stars, who burn brilliantly one day and disappear forever the next.
Here today, gone tomorrow. Grass beneath the reaper's blade.
The true tragedy of the classroom massacre was not that his classmates had died, but rather that they had never even lived. No, not just his classmates. Ganta Igarashi died that day too.
But it was that day Prisoner 5580 became truly able to live. Ganta's death was his birth. Life from the ashes.
Phoenixes are real after all...
You're me...
Oh, if he could only tell all of them, those poor, illusioned idiots, what he now knew. Give them the freedom the Red Man had given him. Fight hard. Play hard. Love hard. Live hard! Forget yourself, your insignificant worries, your stresses, your concerns. What do they matter? Love your fellow man, fight for him, make a difference with your life. Change the world! For – whether it's three days, three months, three years, or today – we're all going to die!
Smiling, he unwrapped a candy and popped it into his mouth, taking a moment to savour the bitter taste he had come to love.
Memento mori! Carpe diem!
(Amen, hallelujah, peanut butter!)
This one-shot is dedicated to all those who have died for their beliefs: men and women who lived so fiercely and believed so strongly, that the sound of their willing sacrifice – a sacrifice of love, not conquest – has continued to echo down throughout the centuries and still influences the world today. May we all take the paradoxical lesson of their deaths to heart: that there are some things just worth living for.
Author's Note:
I apologize to everyone for putting you through this. I simply got struck with an oddly philosophical mood and this was the result. To anyone who can tell me where the line at the end came from, a gazillion points! But don't Google it, 'cause that'd just be cheating... ;p
Blessings to all of you.
Published: 05/08/2011
Updated: 09/27/2017