Title: Once Upon a Time (1/1)
Summary: A story is told, and a world is explained.
Type: Future Fic. Non 'shippy. It's weird... make of it what you
will.
Rating: PG or a low PG13.
Disclaimer: WB and 20thC Fox
Date: March 18, 2000
Hush, child. Shed no more tears this night. We are safe here, hidden
beneath buckling earth and wailing winds thick with smoke. Close your
eyes, child, and see the darkness behind your eyelids where once the
light of explosions burst behind them. This, child, this is the sight
of safety. Listen not for the roar of destruction, distant and muted
here, but to the sounds of your own breath. This is the sound of
safety. Feel my hand against your forehead, mattress yielding beneath
your body, the touch of woolen blanket tickling against your cheeks.
This is the feel of safety.
You do not feel safe, even here, child? Ah, what things burn in your
eyes. I have not witnessed the brilliance of the rising sun in years --
nor felt the sting of explosions washing over the landscape -- brighter
than the sun itself, it seemed. I see it in your eyes, now... wide and
frightened... the eyes of the dead, clinging to life though they no
longer recall why they struggle to maintain it with such ferocity.
Does that frighten you, child? Had your parents soothed you with tales
of the long distant past, lost to us all in a flurry of shattering
concrete, glass and steel? Did their voices lull you into sleep, a soft
murmur in the white light of the night that you followed beneath the
roar of death?
They told you of lush green grass, sprawling deserts, a vast expanse of
sky and stars stretching over head, benevolently draped across this
world, did they? They whispered lies -- a hope from a time when the
future reached out bright and untarnished before those with the will to
forge ahead.
Those are no longer stories for our world, child. There is but one
now, it is the story of the destruction of our past, the creation of our
eternity -- a story not ours that has become ours to bear.
Myths -- they are a cultural consciousness that warn and teach those
who listen. They are the past of a people, their goals, their values
hidden beneath the facade of the fantastic. Green grass, friendly
stars... those, child, are myths that our world can no longer afford.
I will tell you the true story of our planet, child, and you would do
well to remember the words I speak to you.
The warm earth and thick grass in which you curl your toes in your
dreams -- real enough, though most feet found more comfort upon hard
ribbons of concrete biting through the world. The sky above, left
unseen by eyes blinded by our own importance. And those who watched the
skies... they watched not with naked eye or mundane instrument... they
watched with technology whose names have become as strange and exotic as
the monsters and beasts of days of old.
They watched the skies, and waited for the world in which we die.
Some turned their eyes upon this earth, fallen stars upon the surface
of this world, unseen. And they searched... vigilant... ever vigilant.
For we could not allow the sky to descend upon this world we paid so
little heed, to claim it as their own.
Ah, they told you that we loved this world, did they? That we buried
our fingers into the earth, warm and vital. That we lifted arms and
faces to the sky and felt pure water fall from the heavens, washing
across joyous faces. That the water that passed our lips was clear and
sweet, untainted by the death that lies over all here.
Perhaps I am indeed mistaken. Perhaps the years slipping behind me
into darkness have blunted my memory. Perhaps my mind has cracked and
torn as the earth does above our heads this very moment. Perhaps,
child.
Perhaps not.
Hush now, child. Listen carefully, and find the truth or lies in my
words as you will.
We searched, and what was sought was eventually found. Three fallen
little stars, cut off from the sky which had birthed them, unknowing of
their own nature in truth... knowing only that they were the hunted.
Forever fleeing through a world hostile to what they were, sanctuary
ever beyond their hands...
Like yours... five fingers unfurling, stretching, reaching for the
stars. Do you think that hands so small could grasp something so very
immense?
They lived as did our own, when the world was strung together. Hands
and faces... and _hearts_, just as ours. But we did not see, did not
_wish_ to see. We looked and we saw monsters, creatures, _threats_.
The threat we most dreaded, though our own had proved as capable as the
others of driving humanity into oblivion.
These three, aliens, we called them, they had friends drawn from the
unbelieving, fearful masses of our own kind.
Shh, child! Speak not such words of people and events that you do not
understand.
Not traitors, but more caring than we were, more human that what we
have become.
And they loved, and were loved in kind.
Does it seem so strange to you that they could love? Listen, child,
and you shall hear that this world was born of love.
And we saw that they loved, and that they were loved. And we, fearful
and hating of the unknown, the vast expanse of sky and space that had
cradled this world since its infancy... we reached into their lives and
tore away those who had shown them that our kind were deserving of love
and mercy.
A mother and father, unknowing, they who had taught their children
mercy and love... their lives falling away in a spray of blood and upon
cried pleas for mercy.
Three left, who loved fully and were loved in return. Threatened, bait
to lure the aliens into the gleaming white labs of our own where we
could safely prod and cut, crack open ribs and peer into the recesses of
their beings...
One died, a warning... a human life taken by those that protested that
they served to protect such. And he did not scream nor plead, but
looked into his end and claimed that death was worth her life. Perhaps
he did not believe that darkness would sweep in over him, that his own
kind could take away his life. But I believe that the words he spoke
were true. For you see, he loved her.
And this world was born of love.
A second died, when the aliens came, grief in their eyes and vengeance
hovering around them as a cloud. And she screamed his name... Ah,
child... a single word thrust out into the air, an entire person
packaged into a string of phonemes. And she was gone -- her body dead,
and his eyes gone dark. For you see, he loved her.
And this world was born of love.
Of what use a world to which you do not belong, which strives only to
destroy you, to make you a display to the masses? What attachment held
to a world in which those who bound you to it have been taken?
Have you learned yet, child, that there is no love without hatred?
Love died, the balance upset... and our world was born. Perhaps grief,
perhaps rage... perhaps finally something alien born into the emptiness
of where their links to humanity had stood.
Power, child... such _power_ you have never felt. White light burning
away the flesh of those who had destroyed what had been... slowly,
screams drawn out into forever... so thorough that nothing remained when
the energy ebbed.
And the last, not example nor sacrifice for her love... it merely
washed against her, cool against her skin -- soft, a caress... love made
visible, wrapping about her -- comfort, a plea...
Am I crying, child?
I have shed all of my tears, littering the years which have fallen away
beneath me.
So you choose to see the lie in those words, do you, child? Perhaps
you are correct, perhaps this story shall never pass my lips without
tears. Perhaps it is no less than this story deserves...
For when the light faded... they who had sought so hard for the
monsters who had accepted the burden of humanity more fully than our own
kind were gone. Those who had chosen to embrace the humanity that we
had been born into, that our kind had sought to take from them -- they
too were gone. The two who had loved, and had for such died by the
hands of their own were gone.
And she was alone. What was love made visible, comfort in a touch of
white light when she stood alone -- friends, lover, innocence torn from
her?
Their kind, so long searched for, saw the dying gasp of energy from
three of their children. And they came. They looked down upon us, a
sphere of earth drowning beneath concrete, water turning dirty beneath
our own filth and greed... and like the God who had urged us towards
mercy, opened up the heavens and brought judgment upon us.
And our world was born.
You have heard my story, child. Have you chosen to see truth or lie in
the words I have spoken?
~end~