Author's Notes: Really quite odd.
For moeouji, with apologies for the experimental nature of the piece and a promise to write something else if this is just too much of a disappointment.
Warnings: Abstract personifications. Painfully unbeta'd.
Pairing: Life/Death.
Disclaimer: I don't own Super Smash Brothers.
Summary: A collection of one-shots (drabbles) in the genre of speculative fiction. Alternate universes in every sense of the term. -Yaoi, slash: Ike/Marth-
Chapter Inspiration: [Life and Death AU]. Flirting with Death was a lose-lose situation.
Speculative Impromptu
10. Vices
By SSBBSwords
Sometimes Life smoked. Sometimes he drank. Sometimes he even wobbled a few steps on the guardrail of bridges.
He didn't do it for shits and giggles. In fact, there was nothing he could do that produced any sort of significant result. He was, after all, immortal. Inhuman. Incorporeal. Life was beautiful and magical, but he was equally rough and tragic.
As he stood on the scene of a highway accident, he wondered if Death knew how much he enjoyed these meetings. In the bustle and flashing lights, he glowed, but despite the chaotic movement around him, all he cared to do was wait.
Despite ever-evolving preferences, Death preferred to glide in on cue, like mist across a silent lake or clouds around a lonely mountain. Currently, the dark shroud took a graceful, lithe form—a glamorous interpretation of what humans found a hard pill to swallow. Death wasn't beauty or magic—he was cold and vacuum, loss and regret, and an endless ocean of nondescript tears.
Life loved Death. There was something extremely attractive about his otherworldly counterpart. It wasn't so much about opposites attracting—after all, they weren't all that fundamentally different (perhaps at most, two sides of the same coin)—but it was the nebulous concept that Death defined what he wasn't, and vice versa. After all, Life was arguably daunting short-term but trivial in comparison to the hauntingly long-term consequences of Death.
He wondered if Death loved him back, because perhaps the other didn't have the emotional capability. After all, it was Death, and death was theoretically the ceasing of all things considered life, right? Life loved Death, just as he sometimes hated, missed, or simply wanted to be near the other entity, because Death always came for him—ignored his heartfelt wishes, left him alone to his own devices, and swept in and out of Life-or-Death cases like a business meeting.
Like all the times previous, Death entered the wreckage unruffled and undeterred, sparing nary a bat of an eye to the surrounding carnage. With one careless wave, the reaper collected four of the six souls in the vehicle and departed as windless and soundless as arrival.
His step toward the disappearing figure was too slow. Death tended to be swift and unexpected, often catching him unaware and unguarded. Sometimes Life managed to be stubborn, clinging desperately to an individual, and believed he was saving something precious (only to realize Death was humoring him all along and allowing the suffering of humanity to prevail by giving him these small acts of triumph). If it weren't for Death's selection, the rate of collection would have included all six lives, but leave it up to his counterpart to create work for him.
Okay, maybe he was feeling a little bitter for the closed window of opportunity. He should have been prepared to act quicker, maybe snag Death for a few precious seconds, but instead, he stood among smoke and debris, forever doomed to clean up after Death as if that somehow brought them closer together.
So here he was: accompanying the chronic smoker, the drooping alcoholic, the desperate jumper.
When Death flickered into existence before him, he leapt away from the soul, feeling like a guard dog until the other's outline solidified fully, to which the protective instinct melted away with any remaining sense of responsibility.
"Hey," he blurted out hurriedly, eyes and every fiber of being keyed to give chase if Death had a sudden change of heart (or mission, to be exact). When the other ignored him outright, he immediately felt chastised for such an informal greeting and rephrased, "H-hello. Hi."
Before he slipped into other forms of salutation, Death invaded his space, causing him to trip backwards into the soul he had forgotten needed his attention. "Life."
He could forever sink into the black recesses of the other's visage—it was an all-absorbing, swallowing void that drew him in. Now and then, he sensed a spark of something, something bright—reflective even—but it seemed to snuff itself out when Death turned away from him. He wanted to draw the other close to him, to stare endlessly into those depths to observe the glimmer. He knew even the greatest forest fire did not induce the same phenomenon in Death; yet, he had witnessed it enough to advocate its potential.
"Death," he replied with enough formality to theoretically please the other's rather stiff standards.
As if he had filled a request, the other pressed closer to him, forcing him further off balance. The soul near their pseudo-entwined selves wavered and threatened to detach. He debated backing away to fully focus on shielding the human. "Is there something I can do for you?" the other asked him, stealing air and energy from their surroundings.
"What?" was all he managed in return. After all, he felt a little breathless himself, if that was possible. An icy touch crept up his side like vines climbing a wall.
"You called me," Death said, with a look promising his utter salvation should he let himself fall—confirming exactly why no one ever won against Death. As if that explanation was insufficient, the other added a decibel above silence, "It's all you ever do."
Was he? Did he? It was hard to formulate anything, really, when overwhelmed by exactly everything that worked against him. "I-I," he began with no lessened level of fumbling for words, "do?" He paused for a second and felt a violent jerk from his center, instantly recognizing the loss of the designated soul to Death. "Don't," he remedied in a hurry, "I don't." Do I?
He realized belatedly that the faint, hollow vibration was the other's mirthless laughter. It chilled him as much as it enthralled him, because he somehow had amused Death. Like the fading purr of a powerful engine, the reaper whispered, "My mistake then." The inward tremors decreased in intensity as Death pulled away from him.
"Wait—!" He instinctively reached out and was struck by the sense of dread and magnetism.
"Unlike you," Death informed, marginally avoiding his touch while gently cradling the soul for departure, "I'm busy."
-fin-
Author's Notes: Impressions, questions, ideas all welcome!
Chapter Hints: N/A