Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.
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Challenge #5
Phrase: "And how the angels weep."
Word Count: 763
Rating: R
Title: Without a Name
Author: Rydia Highwind
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.
Summary: As he dies, Psycho Mantis reflects on his life.
Warning: A bit of brutality and kinda weird.
--
The stitches on my head were never to help the slices inflicted there to heal; no, there is no healing for me. They serve instead to hold my skull in one piece, hold my brain inside my head. I don't grow hair on my head, or anywhere any longer, though I'm not really sure why. It doesn't matter anymore. The ones who did this to me did so with perfectly clear thoughts, feeling little or even no guilt for the condition they rendered unto me, and each one firmly believed that cutting through my skull and studying my brain would better the human race.
I know this because I read their minds. I choked on their ideals and I fed on their horror as I killed them.
I once had no name. My mother died giving birth to me and my father who raised me hated me for taking her from him. You can call it anything you like, fear, self-defense, a mistake, but I can see it for what it was. I don't deny these things anymore. It was murder. I murdered him in cold blood. That wasn't all either, I then turned around a burned down the entire village. When they found me alive, unhurt, they began to realize what I was. And that, that was when the experiments started, and I had no name once again.
I do not regret the actions I took then, and I would willfully take them again. I didn't read people's minds then as much as they poured their thoughts out on to me, forced me to hear their ridiculously petty ramblings even as I longed for silence. There was no escaping, it was like being in a room full of talking people when you have a migraine headache and you simply need silence to recover. It was enough to drive a lesser man mad, and perhaps it did do a number to my sanity, considering where I am now and how I got here. It's up to you to decide, I suppose.
I'm lying on the floor, soaking in a pool of my own blood, so where I am now doesn't really matter, does it? This man I'm gazing at before me--he has somehow managed to create a future separate from the one I first saw. The future is a confusing thing to look at, so many paths, intertwining and overlapping and branching off into new paths until you can't see what is what anymore and you just have to pick one to follow. The future molds itself, independent of the mortals it confines. He has chosen to follow a future I didn't know existed, and now I'm paying the price.
I've never used my power to help someone before. Not even the little brown haired girl that grew up in the house next to mine that I used to play with when I was small. I don't know why I remember her; she's the only part of my past that still lives with me. I have no past, and I have no future. That's why I'm here, that's why it doesn't matter that he outwitted me and that's why it doesn't matter that he pulled off my mask, exposing my hideous face I've always kept hidden and that's why it doesn't matter that I'll die. I never had a future anyway. I never had a chance to do the things humankind was meant to do, whatever that may be. I used to know but I'm not so certain any longer.
That girl died when I burned down the village. I didn't help her, though I think she tried to stop me, because he corpse was next to me when I started realizing what was going on. She was burned to death, her hand reaching out to me, and I had not a scratch. I can't even remember her name. Why should I help her, why should I help them? But I do, I do. He is like me, only worse, and his suffering won't ever end. Helping and hurting--it's all the same thing.
And yet, there is something so real about this, so nostalgic, as though there was a crash of lightning that started that fire, and that I found her in her house when the flames started raging out of control and grabbed her by the hand to help her. As though I pushed back the flames with my power...but I was not strong enough...not strong enough to save her...only myself...
And how the angels weep...I can hear them weeping...
--
Challenge #5
Phrase: "And how the angels weep."
Word Count: 763
Rating: R
Title: Without a Name
Author: Rydia Highwind
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.
Summary: As he dies, Psycho Mantis reflects on his life.
Warning: A bit of brutality and kinda weird.
--
The stitches on my head were never to help the slices inflicted there to heal; no, there is no healing for me. They serve instead to hold my skull in one piece, hold my brain inside my head. I don't grow hair on my head, or anywhere any longer, though I'm not really sure why. It doesn't matter anymore. The ones who did this to me did so with perfectly clear thoughts, feeling little or even no guilt for the condition they rendered unto me, and each one firmly believed that cutting through my skull and studying my brain would better the human race.
I know this because I read their minds. I choked on their ideals and I fed on their horror as I killed them.
I once had no name. My mother died giving birth to me and my father who raised me hated me for taking her from him. You can call it anything you like, fear, self-defense, a mistake, but I can see it for what it was. I don't deny these things anymore. It was murder. I murdered him in cold blood. That wasn't all either, I then turned around a burned down the entire village. When they found me alive, unhurt, they began to realize what I was. And that, that was when the experiments started, and I had no name once again.
I do not regret the actions I took then, and I would willfully take them again. I didn't read people's minds then as much as they poured their thoughts out on to me, forced me to hear their ridiculously petty ramblings even as I longed for silence. There was no escaping, it was like being in a room full of talking people when you have a migraine headache and you simply need silence to recover. It was enough to drive a lesser man mad, and perhaps it did do a number to my sanity, considering where I am now and how I got here. It's up to you to decide, I suppose.
I'm lying on the floor, soaking in a pool of my own blood, so where I am now doesn't really matter, does it? This man I'm gazing at before me--he has somehow managed to create a future separate from the one I first saw. The future is a confusing thing to look at, so many paths, intertwining and overlapping and branching off into new paths until you can't see what is what anymore and you just have to pick one to follow. The future molds itself, independent of the mortals it confines. He has chosen to follow a future I didn't know existed, and now I'm paying the price.
I've never used my power to help someone before. Not even the little brown haired girl that grew up in the house next to mine that I used to play with when I was small. I don't know why I remember her; she's the only part of my past that still lives with me. I have no past, and I have no future. That's why I'm here, that's why it doesn't matter that he outwitted me and that's why it doesn't matter that he pulled off my mask, exposing my hideous face I've always kept hidden and that's why it doesn't matter that I'll die. I never had a future anyway. I never had a chance to do the things humankind was meant to do, whatever that may be. I used to know but I'm not so certain any longer.
That girl died when I burned down the village. I didn't help her, though I think she tried to stop me, because he corpse was next to me when I started realizing what was going on. She was burned to death, her hand reaching out to me, and I had not a scratch. I can't even remember her name. Why should I help her, why should I help them? But I do, I do. He is like me, only worse, and his suffering won't ever end. Helping and hurting--it's all the same thing.
And yet, there is something so real about this, so nostalgic, as though there was a crash of lightning that started that fire, and that I found her in her house when the flames started raging out of control and grabbed her by the hand to help her. As though I pushed back the flames with my power...but I was not strong enough...not strong enough to save her...only myself...
And how the angels weep...I can hear them weeping...