I don't
know if I'm making sense at all with this fic but it keeps intruding into
my consciousness like it has a life of its own. ^-^ You guys be the judge
of it ne?
thanks
to everyone who commented.
Deathwish
Part 2
For the love I bear him,
I needed to stop him…wanted to stop him. I want to shake some sense into
him and turn him back to what he once was, not this dead uncaring person
whose only reason for living is revenge.
"Quatre, Bright Child!" I
call over the expanse that separates us and he stops, the animated corpses
stopping with him. I appear in front of him then and his undead servants
try to block me from my goal, lurching in a clumsy attempt to walk.
I do not spare them a glance.
I do not need to. After all, I am still ruler of the Nether Realms, eventhough
they have been taken out of my power, I still, to an extent, hold them
in my thrall. A flickering stare at them and the corpses stop in their
tracks and fall to the ground in a tortured scream that sounds more like
wind tearing through wood than a scream.
Binding Spell. One more punishing
chain to bind them. I do not want to do this because I know it hurts the
souls inside those ravaged bodies, burning them. I can feel them writhe
in agony inside. I cannot say sorry.
Nor does Quatre give me any
choice.
"Does it hurt, Trowa?" I
swing my head back to look at Quatre who has a cold smile on his face.
"Does it hurt to feel the agonized screams of those people?"
"Quatre…"
He goes on as if I did not
speak. "I hope it does, Trowa. Because I want you to hurt, I want you to
feel the control slip out of your grasp and all you can do is watch helplessly.
Will you beg me, Trowa? After all these years of silently trying to stop
me from doing this, will you finally beg me to let them go? Like I begged
you all those years ago?"
He raises arms lacerated
by a multitude of healed scars crisscrossing over each other, marring once
perfect skin the color of alabaster. The result of a hundred failed attempts
of tempting my scythe to cut his life.
/Trowa, take me! Let me
die now. Take me out of my misery. Please!/
All his cries and pleas stabbed
at my heart but never, not even once, did I accede to his request. I could
not…would not.
"I did not have any choice…"
Lie of course, a salve to my conscience, though there is truth in it as
well. There always is. Every lie has a measure of truth in it, just as
every truth had a lie.
I did have a choice, a limited
one. And in a way, I didn't. It is a paradoxical situation that developed
because of my sin.
"You are immortal. You cannot
die."
"Liar!" He screams, the unemotional
mask slipping to reveal blazing tearful eyes that brand me with accusations.
It sears my insides. "I know the pact my mother made with all living creatures
as much as you do, Trowa. You did not fulfill your duty, God of Death!
I called you and you did not come."
The vehemence in his voice
is almost palpable in its intensity. But what catches my attention is the
hatred I see inside his eyes. Never before has he ever looked at me like
that and it drives me back.
"I…"
"You came for him easily
enough without anyone calling you. There was no difference between my situation
and his."
Him…yes, it all came back
to him eventually.
Him. Duo. A name I curse
since the time I met him.
One supposedly easy task
to do, one choice to make…and in the end, a decision gone horribly wrong.
***
Duo Maxwell, born on the
second island of Lithandre (L2) where strife, poverty and hatred ruled.
He had lost his family early in life and grew up inside an orphanage with
the High Priest of Mercy. He should have been just one more mortal on the
world if not for one thing…
Duo Maxwell had been gifted
with physical splendor. The mortal had been famed for his beauty. Long,
rich chestnut hair tied in a braid that fell to his waist, eyes that rivaled
the most precious gems, and a lithe, slender body…twas said no living being
on earth could surpass him in comeliness.
Beings from all over came
to pay court to him, offering untold wealth and everything he might have
wished for. Feted, welcomed, loved.
But he spurned them all.
Like all creatures he wanted
to find love on his own, to be loved for who he was and not what he looked
like. Someone should have disabused him of that notion years ago.
So beautiful was he that
even the capricious Goddess of Love herself desired him. Even she, Duo
spurned. A foolish thing to do, in my opinion. What use is pride or his
ideals if he angered an immortal?
The Goddess, in exchange
for her humiliation, cursed the mortal. And not just any ordinary curse.
The Goddess of Love was more vindictive than most gods and put on Duo the
heaviest curse of them all.
Death-bringer. All he touched
would instantly turn into ashes and die. In one fell curse, the Goddess
tied my fate to his. We were brothers, in a fashion. Though it displeased
me to be at the beck and call of a mortal, albeit a very reluctant mortal,
I could do nothing to reverse it. What other immortals did, no other immortal
could undo.
He became exile. Not that
he could blame anyone, for who would want to be in contact with someone
who could bring about one's death in a matter of seconds?
From loved to feared…in a
space of a heartbeat. It proved too much for the youth. He tried to disfigure
his face, cursing it for being the root of his troubles. But he couldn't.
Along with the death curse, he could never damage himself. A bitter curse
to be sure…a capricious and vindictive goddess' vengeance can never be
taken lightly.
Maxwell became a hermit and
took to wandering places that did not have anything living in it. A shell
of his former self, resembling nothing of the vibrant youth he had been,
he became bitter. The bitterness festering his insides with a darkness
that threatened his sanity.
I, being bound to his fate
as much as he was to mine, was constantly aware of him and pitied him his
fate. It was I who led him to Quatre, knowing that the Bright Child, out
of all the beings on this earth, would understand.
I should never have led him
to Quatre. I curse the day I did.
TBC ^_~ Comments onegai?
I know I made Duo into the
cliched "shinigami" again but it's a lower position ne? Trowa's still Chief
Shinigami ahohoho! I needed to do it, I really do. And this sounds suspiciously
like a rationalization doesn't it? ^^ Anyway, I hope you guys are not disappoined.
