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Relena: Ewww!!!!
Ghost of Quatre: Well, that's rather...erm...graphic.
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Bandai: O.o ...
Chapter 12
No.
No?
No.
Don't blind yourself-
No. No. No.
The cocoon was still, everything…a still ness…nothing.
I don't lie.
He was right…I knew…I knew there was-there is something wrong. Just like I've always known when a soul left a body, which one lying down in a raided mess hall was still alive, barely hanging and who had died. It was an aura that was missing, and what was left was just meat: dead cells.
What I held in my arms right at this moment was just meat.
You've been underwater for half an hour now. His frail mortal body…
I placed my hand gently against the back of Quatre's neck, and pulled him away from me. He felt…nasty, prune-like and cold. Come to think of it, the entire pool was cold, but his body felt… clammy.
Time seemed to have slowed down. Blinking seemed to take a whole minute.
His head drooped. I shook him gently. His neck twisted in an unnatural angle.
He was…really gone.
My stomach churned in a strange way.
I let go the body. It slowly floated down, the face pressing against my stomach, sliding lower, against my crotch…my whole body tightened. There wasn't much space in the damn thing. It crumpled below, in a little nest of hair, the same hair keeping me prisoner, keeping me at close proximity with …it. Its legs had folded beneath him while his head rested against my feet.
It's going to start decomposing soon.
I hate corpses.
It's Quatre.
Quatre is dead.
Did I kill him?
Quatre is dead.
I was too tired to panic.
What the hell is happening right now, in this place…I'm in a cocoon. A pouch thing…with no opening that is made out of my own hair. This is absurd. This is absurd.
What place am I in?
What is a place?
What is space?
I closed my eyes, and fell into the darkness waiting behind my closed eyelids. I spoke into the darkness.
"You can fix him, can't you? That's why you're not letting me up. Take me then."
Wait, you're not even going to hear my offer?
"Does it involve me giving you my body in exchange for his life?"
Yeah! How did you know? The voice spat in a sarcastic tone.
I saw electricity fizzing, crackling in the darkness. Little bubbles of color floated around the corners of my eyes.
"For a supernatural being, you're kinda retarded."
Pop.
Crack.
Fizzle.
"One, you've been threatening to take over me for years now and…you've been in my head for how long?"
Since your first thought…
"That's how I knew, fuck-tard."
I don't appreciate your kind of attitude
"Neither do I appreciate you taking my love's life."
You're handling this very well.
I was…wasn't I?
"I'm… just beyond psychosis here. Did you expect something else?"
Something on the line of: 'YOU FUCKER! GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!!! I WOULD CHASE YOU TO THE END-VERSES YOU FATHERLESS GOULAG!' and so and so…
My ears were ringing.
What the fuck is a Goulag?
"Now, on with the list of cliché questions: Why me?"
Remember your first memory?
"Yah…it was…stealing some really ripe and juicy tomatoes from a market fruit stall."
Ever wondered why you can't remember anything before that?
"No…I was fucking three years old."
Ah…right, human beings, still somewhat primitive with memories, but what tasty bits they are, oh yes…except, you're not human.
"Oh, do tell, do tell…"
Yeah, you want know more about this don't you?
"I do."
Is he trying to arouse some sort of reaction from me?
"The reason why you don't remember anything is because you weren't around, even 'alive' until that point."
I realized that last sentence had sounded just like… sounded like Quatre.
I opened my eyes.
He was floating upright, looking right in my face.
Looking very much like the corpse I knew he still was.
And I screamed.
Quatre/Shinigami frowned, tilting its head to the side.
"I just wanted to make sure you didn't… weren't going into shock or something."
"SO YOU TAKE OVER THE BODY OF MY DEAD FRIEND?!?"
"Well, you do seem more animate now that you were a second ago. Your mind seemed to be short circuiting."
My voice was coming out of Quatre's lips.
This was just too fucking much.
I yanked my head forward, as hard as I could. Nothing happened. My head was stuck to this wall of hair and I was just jiggling around like some fucked up Rapunzel-doll, dangling from an edge.
So I did something I really didn't want to have to do, but in this case was necessary.
I started pulling my hair out.
No sooner than the second my fingers made contact with the side of my head that a cold hand grabbed my wrist in a crushing hold. I had gathered a large clump of hair while it tried to pull my hand away, but it caught on with what I was trying to do and brought Quatre's other hand on the other side of my face. I struggled as he brought Quatre's body closer to mine.
"Be still!"
"Please, DO NOT FUCKING TOUCH ME." I brought my hands close to my face. I had a feeling it was going to try to kiss me.
It brought Quatre's face closer to mine. An overwhelming sense of panic seized me, then…then I just stilled.
There was nothing I could do.
There was nothing I could do.
I slumped against myself…which wasn't hard to do, what with us being underwater and all. Ah, yes. There is the matter of us being underwater, still.
"There are some things I have to tell you know."
"Okay."
I was not breathing. I don't know when I became aware of that. I wasn't breathing. The still ness in my body was rather…calming.
You don't have a father and mother. You weren't exactly conceived in a wound, you didn't come out of anyone's vagina. In fact, you don't even qualify as a 'living being' since you were never born. Do you comprehend that?
"I kind of get it…but I don't."
Let go of my face, I thought.
It did.
"It would not make sense for 'death'…to be born. That would imply he was 'born' therefore 'alive'…and death is not of the living."
"So…I'm not even alive?"
"How do you think you can stay underwater for so long?"
"Why couldn't I do that before?"
"Having been raised by humans for so long, your subconscious: Shinigami…"
He brought Quatre's hand to his torso. I thought it strange that he was speaking in the third person…but I didn't exactly hold the mental high ground here.
"-sort of adapted to my surroundings by emulating typical human behaviors, replicating emotions, bodily functions like breathing, having a heartbeat, emanating warmth, bleeding and bruising when my epidermis was harmed, digesting food, and of course, breathing and feeling pleasure and pain. So a human being, in a body of water, would have to come up for air because he would drown otherwise. You might be unaware of it, but you only did it because that was the 'normal' thing to do. Also, your body repeated reactions and actions that would be expected in a distressed situation…let's say…you've been left on a station once without any air before, haven't you?"
"Yeah…one of the guys and me…"
"So, you felt dizzy, and lost consciousness, and your body was in distress. But it would not have shut down. It just acted that way. You cannot die. You and I are the same being."
"I had a feeling that's where you were heading."
"Yes, you're catching on. You are me, and I am you, yet you fought me for so long…"
"So you're saying I'm like…not a re-incarnation of you, Death, but an incarnation…of some sort?"
"Yes. To create our human mold, I used the cells of an unborn child I found in an unmarked grave."
I gulped.
"Didn't you just tell me I didn't have a mother?"
"The woman never lived long enough to give birth to you."
"BUT I still have a mother!"
It rolled Quatre's eyes. It was very unsettling. It was as if he had control of Quatre's body, but didn't know Quatre's usual mannerism, so one of Quatre's eyes rolled in one direction, and the other in another.
"You had a mother. She was a cheap prostitute a customer had way to much fun with one night. The man, your 'father', had to cover his tracks: he clubbed her and left her for dead in a ditch. I came upon her a while later."
It shook Quatre's head in an annoyed matter.
It was really starting to get to me.
"I had chosen her for one reason only: her beauty. Her character was faulty at best. She was weak, and could barely lift a finger to save her self. There was no way she would have been able to take care of you had she lived. I took her before her time, yes, I would admit to that. She would have survived the attack, crawled away to a nearby populated area, but I needed the child's cells."
My throat was suddenly feeling very tight.
"Didn't I have a soul? And how long was she in that ditch…I mean, how is my father the man who killed her?"
It had an unreadable look on Quatre's face.
"You are the soul. It was created at the moment in which a sperm entered your mother's egg. Conception was necessary for you to come into existence."
"Whoa…so you are technically alive as soon as you are conceived? Boy, the anti-abortion rights hippies would have a field day knowing that. I still don't understand, though."
"You cannot. Not now. Not until you and I become one."
"But then…Who am I then?"
"You, Duo, are that child's soul. You: The entity I am having a conversation with. You are not soulless…is that what you are afraid of? Being a meat-puppet? That's the word you use to refer to bodies, is it not?"
I have a headache. But I don't. Because my body is trained to feel a certain way when I feel a certain emotion…
I was confused.
"Please, just get out of Quatre's body. Give him back his life."
It smiled using Quatre's face. Wrapping his hands around my body, he again, placed his hand against my face. I did not fight him this time.
"There is so much you have to learn…and I think I would enjoy being young again. Now, I have to ask you a question, and it is important that when you answer it, you will fully agree to it, not only with your words, but with your whole being."
Something was happening to Quatre's body. It was electricity, focused at the center of his being. It was coming to life out of nowhere.
"I don't have much time left. As soon as you and I merge, you and I would no longer exist as separate entities, or I as your subconscious. I would be you, and you would be me."
The panic I had sensed earlier returned in full force.
"Wait! Who's going to dominate here! Are you just going to-fucking-erase me or something! I don't want to disappear…I mean…I don't really want to live, on this world I mean-but I don't want to CEASE existing! Life is crap but I wanna know what comes after it yah know!"
"I see you still don't fully understand what you are, and how this is going to undertake, but I promise you, you would not disappear. You might actually, just feel the same."
"Really?"
"I've never done this before."
Oh Fantastic…What if something goes wrong?
The spark was getting brighter, making the water around Quatre's midsection warm significantly compared to the rest surrounding us.
"Oh and what about other gods and higher being and God, is there like a god that controls all of existence?"
"Your friend here, Quatre…he is…a special one."
Quatre had begun to glow, physically. His pores were giving off a golden haze. Only then did I believe he was coming back. It closed Quatre's eyes.
"The Light One is very near ready to cast me out. He's a powerful one. Are you ready?"
"Whatever."
I was scared shitless.
"Do you, Duo Maxwell, knowingly give me full control of your body and permit the melding of your soul and my essence?"
"Jeez, what the fuck is this, marriage vows?"
"This union, Duo, would never be undone by 'death', me, and you."
"Also, seeing that you are possessing Quatre's body, doesn't it mean that this 'union' involves him too?"
"Do you accept me?"
Yes. Yes I do.
The hair that surrounded us unwound itself, creating a weird vacuum, while Quatre seemed to be glowing like a 100 watts light bulb. The vacuum increased around us, as Quatre suddenly went limp and I caught his warming body.
I kissed him, sensing water wash away from our body. And was overtaken by an avalanche of memories that were not my own. Many girls, young women, taking care of me, sitting on a gentle man's lap, riding camels, tea parties, Sandrock's cockpit, Trowa's arm, and lying in bed next to a naked Heero….wait a minute…I tore my lips from his…looking at his peaceful face, at the color slowly restored, as I felt a warm breeze against my face.
What the hell was that last image I saw?
I looked up and saw that the water now only reached my knees, yet we were still at the bottom. That's strange, I thought, looking up. We were still pretty much in the center of the pool, and my hair was weighing my neck down, but seeing there was at least a mile of hair surrounding us, and my neck wasn't broken from having to support it, I would say Shinigami was already inside of me. Or maybe he wasn't and I was doing this on my own, since according to him, I wasn't even human in the first place.
My ears popped, as I heard the first sound I had heard in a while: whooshing water. The vacuum seemed to still surround us, and we were still near the bottom, but the water seemed higher. It was separating: the water in the pool divided itself into two towering columns of liquid running upwards, like geysers. The sound was deafening.
A thought went through my head.
Up, it said.
And up I went, carrying a slumped Quatre in my hands. He had just taken a tentative breath. Oh so tiny but I felt it. And it was as if my heart was about to burst. His shirt was stained with a growing pool of blood. It mattered not. I was filled with a great calm.
It mattered not.
Are you in there?
Shinigami?
I didn't feel any different yet I thought funny. My hair was levitating me, pushing against itself like a thousand legs, or tentacles, the tendrils moving like limbs, getting me closer to the edge. I should be impressed by this. I've never done this before. My hair wasn't this long this morning when I woke up. This did not seem a bit strange to me.
I tottered on my hair to the edge of the pool, covered in hair sticking to my body and Quatre's, my white pants rosy with Quatre's blood, and was met by the barrels of 48 guns.
Yes, 48. Don't ask me how I counted them so fast.
