My Shadow And I
It's not that I try to be overly cheerful or something. If you see me when no one else is in the room, you'll find I'm not talkative at all. I'm thoughtful, or so I'd like to describe myself as, but I've learned long ago that your own opinion on yourself doesn't matter as much as someone else's impression on you. Their words will have a lot more impact than yours will – you'll sound like you're boasting, or desperate to get out with your pride intact. I don't TRY to be hyper all the time. In fact, I'm sure I can say a few things that would even make Clay think. It's just my sixth sense, so to speak. Can't block it out like Erts can to his. He's actually good at it. Of course, he's a telepath and all that, but I should be able to control this too. I don't want it, after all. I don't want to feel other people's happiness.
Erts is completely the opposite of me. His abilities are to feel people's sadness, confusion, and all that angsty stuff. That's why he's depressed all the time; he doesn't FEEL any happiness at all. All he feels are dark and stressful. I'm surprised he got this far. But, no matter. You see, he and I are foils of each other. We are apart, and yet we share the same sort of resentment that no one understand us. I sense people's happiness. He senses people's darkness. The human capacity to feel is overloaded on us. I guess we are the scapegoats of all the sadness and all the happiness in the world. As a priest of the dark, Erts leans towards light, and I, towards dark. We share our feelings.
Sometimes a feral mood will arise in each of us. Me, I sense people's liveliness and zeal for life each day. Do you think I don't get tired of it? Sure, it promotes me to live and enjoy life – to a certain point. Then after that I get tired. Life is boring. All you do is overcome obstacles and get stronger. Is that all there is to it? When this mentality seizes either of us we will meet, and we'll walk into that area together and we'll "study in the study hall". Study what? Stress? I don't understand other people; other
people don't understand me. So, I guess it's okay. Either cancels the other one out.
Sometimes we'll fuck. I want him to torture me, to pressure me as hard as he can into the ground. I WANT him to hurt me, to grind me into dust, and he does just that. Thank the Goddesses that he's there. Afterwards, we'll act like children and laugh like any other boy our age, relieved of the burden that has been building up for the last month or so. I love seeing him like that. I guess it's because I sense his happiness and content more than any other person I know. That's to be expected. He's a good friend. Sometimes the only reason I let him kill me over and over is because then I'd feel his happiness radiating off like waves. He's a good friend. He's my best friend.
Once, we lay in the sheets, basking in the fact that our lines of cheeriness and sorrow have now been slackened. He stays with me for a little bit, just a week or so, before he goes back to the GIS and does his stuff. I pity him. He needs me more than I need him. The weight of a planet and numerous colonies are on his back. In the gloom and the random thoughts, up floated a phrase, and I said it out loud even though I knew he'd read it through the connection of his hand on my forehead anyway. "You're a priest", I stated, and he looked thoughtful.
"Yes", he agreed. "What are you, Zero?"
I gave a little chuckle, the answer clear to me already. "Your sacrifice, of course." We laughed.
Once I asked Erts about his brother. He told me that his brother was just a telepath. He didn't feel the sadness or the happiness or any other emotion in particular. But Erts looked a little dubious when he said that. I think he suspected that his elder brother did have some sort of ability like ours, but he never told anyone, not even Erts35. Maybe Erts felt he was JUST a little brother to Ernest, and nothing more. But I wasn't sure. I wasn't going to find out, either. Any big brother was a touchy subject for Erts anyway. I didn't help that a lot of people actually grieved for Ernest. He visited me thrice the month after the death, and those were the most violent I'd ever seen him. That was the side he showed to me. I'm glad to see it – it proves he's human, and that he trusts me.
I think they're just blowing this all up. You see, those people who're in control of the Academy and all, they make it seem like these little kids actually stand a chance against the Victims. So, then, why are they dying then? It's not that dying's a bad thing – after training and the slow draining of our EXs, I'd want to rest too, you know. People just make it sound big. But when a pilot dies, just the Academy and the kid's parents know about it. It isn't blown up. No one outside of us know about it. I recall that I wrote a letter to the-lady-whose-name-I-think-is-my-mother before training started, and I never got anything in return. I think it never got sent out. I asked Clay and he said that was probably it; G.O.A.'s students had to be isolated to make them strong and all that crap. They were to find solace and comfort among the other students, not in the past or in the instructors that littered the ship. Only when we became pilots would we be seen as 'people'.
I sense their happiness, you know. I know when someone's got a bad grade on a test or lost a match because I can never read anything from them. It's ten times as worse for Erts: he actually feels their sadness and humiliation because he's a telepath. All I know is that they're happy or their not. There's no in between lingo area.
There's no love between Erts and me. Well, not of THAT sort anyway. Some people wonder if that's not true, especially when I protest it, but they just shove me off as some little rookie who has a big ace by his side. That's not true either; Erts comes to me because I understand him, because he needs me. People say that you don't need a reward for helping someone because their happiness is your reward. Well, that's what I'm doing, right? I'm relieving his stress. We fight. That is our solace. That is where we can bare our true souls out and hit each other to kill each other. We WANT to die. I want to die because there is too much happiness. He wants to die because there is nothing but sadness. (1022)
Strange, eh, how we're so different and we want the same thing. I wonder who's going to get there first. Probably him. He has more reason to, of course. I'd go crazy too, if I had to feel everyone's sadness. It's not fair a poor little guy like him got this job. One day or another he'll collapse and that'll be the end of it.
Pity. That's what it boils down to. I want to cry, to laugh, but it all comes out fake and used. To feel, you must be human, and if you're human, you must die. But what about the immortal ones? What about ME? I want to be able to be selfish too. I want to be able to die and be loved too. I don't want to be some nameless name on a plaque in the hall of this place when this hell's destroyed. I want to be remembered forever. It won't happen, though. You can pray to any god, you can plead to any deity, any spirit, any goddamn Buddha you chose, and it'll bring you nothing. In the end, there are only two people who can destroy you: you and your shadow. (1221)