Artifice: n. Subtle but base deception; trickery. A clever strategy usually intended to deceive or defraud. Manga AU, spoilers. Angst/tragedy fic; PG-13 for language. Trigun under Nightow, not me.
Artifice: a noun.
Failure. Define that for me. There are too many damn ways to express it; it's too much of a versatile word, when pitted to severity of concept. Failure is getting bad marks on a test, but failure is losing 30 double dollars to some old bastard over chess, and failure is a disproved theory. You're supposed to learn from it, improve from it; study harder, make a better move, conduct an accurate procedure– but how do you improve when you fail every thing you've ever stood for? How do you improve when you fail your ideals and your life?
What am I supposed to learn now?
The end started with Wolfwood. Wolfwood is Chapel, Chapel is a Gung-ho Gun, Gung-ho Guns are servant to Knives. I could accept this. I accepted that. He was my friend, and I looked past it because I thought that maybe it wouldn't matter when everything was said and done. I can only say that I thought that, because I'll never know– Wolfwood was my first failure; the dead are indefinite.
After him, the black in my hair crept forth, a grain's breadth every night. I saw it. Now, as I sit in this chair (so uncomfortable), I think that I have actually been killing myself since then, without consciously realizing it. If I were presently under any other circumstances, I would be furious with myself. I've been committing suicide, so slowly, for the past three years, and now it's going to end in murder. How fitting of myself.
I've lived a very long life. "Immortality" is far from myself... I'm more like an ageless mortal, so to speak. I've been dying for the past five years. Three years ago it became suicide. And in an hour, it will become murder.
Am I confusing you? I'm sorry. I'll try to explain this a little better, but I really don't have much time.
Wolfwood died, and I lost faith in myself. I lost faith in peace, and I've never had any faith in love to begin with. I didn't dream about Rem anymore. I remember seeing this dog last year– it'd been hit by a car or something– it's back legs were crushed and it couldn't move, but hadn't died. So I helped.
I started to feel blood weighting my hands. A kind of sane insanity. Does that make any sense? I dealt with Knives last year, too. I remember hurting so much from the hole in my gut, and such numb sensation. I kissed his forehead, his cheek, and his lip. I apologized, told him I loved him, and helped.
My sisters didn't understand. They cried and accused me, and abandoned me. I regret it, because I'm so alone without him now. Another tally of my failure.
But then, I regret a lot of things. Like letting them stay; the Insurance Girls hadn't been much more than a pair of haphazard tagalongs. Women always made me feel so God damn guilty. Before I went to Knives, they saw me. I mean, that crazy shit I sprout. They fled, and I hadn't seen them since.
So, when I got a letter from Meryl last week about Milly's kid, I felt a need to investigate. Neither of them had ever really been my friends, but they weren't my enemies, and I had grown so tired of wasting away. It took me all this week to get here. I forget what the town's called, but apparently they've been living here a while.
I regret responding to her letter, and I don't. I do and I don't. Sort of like a 60-40 scenario. The letter was an artifice. A ruse, a net, a trick. It was a trap. They don't work for Bernardelli anymore. I can't say what stupid corporation heads their titles now, but I know they aren't pressing matters of property damage. They lured me here, and I can tell just by looking at either of them from my vantage up here on stage that it was purely professional. Milly's crying, but I don't care because it's time for me to get up now. Apparently the federal idiot was finished thumbing through my criminal records with the public. Public.
The bindings around my wrists are bruising under the tight knots, but it won't matter in a bit. I don't have any last words, but I look at Meryl. She's seemed so profoundly serious and calm through this whole... event, but she's finally started crying when they fit the noose.
They beckoned me into my own execution, and I followed right up onto the gallows.
Death was waiting for me here, but then again... I guess I was kind of waiting for it, too.
End.