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.
Challenge #17
Phrase: "What will I become?"
Word Count: 522
Rating: R
Title: Names
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: Fortune reflects on who she is.
Warning: Angst and over-drama. But hey, this /is/ Fortune, after all.
I have many names given to me over the years.
I am called Fortune. They call me that because I don't seem to be able to die. The guns fired at me are useless, and the bullets fly wide, arching out around me as though there's some sort of invisible barrier. This has been going on since I joined Dead Cell, and that's what helped me work my way into a leadership position here. They call me Fortune because they think I'm lucky to be alive. But I disagree. Being forced to remain alive in this mortal plane of existence is the unluckiest thing that's ever happened to me. I joined the military because I wanted to die. I wanted peace. I wanted death, but I couldn't seem to take my own life.
I come from a military family. My father was a commandant in the Marines and my husband was a colonel and the original leader of Dead Cell. It was only natural that I should join too, and look where it's gotten me. Nowhere. Now I can't die, no matter how hard I try. My father drowned aboard the ill-fated USS Discovery that Solid Snake sank two years ago, and my husband was jailed for a crime he didn't commit. My mother took her own life soon after, unable to deal with a 'criminal' in the family...but she'd always been a little off since Dad died. I can't say as I blame her. After I lost the baby, that's when my husband lost his will to live...and now I'm alone. Why /should/ I have to live?
My friends call me Lady Luck. Some people say I have sold my soul to the devil for the ability to go on living, but that's not true. They don't understand that I long for death. Some have said that my luck on the battlefield is to make up for my bad luck in life. Perhaps that is true, but if so, I curse that luck as well. No one seems to understand that death is truly what I long for. No one can understand what it's like to lose everything important to you in a span of six months. They can't see that all that's left is a broken woman, a shadow of who she once was, waiting for her death simply so that she can be free.
My marriage certificate reads Helena Dolph Jackson. But that isn't who I am any longer. It's a name from my past, a named offered by a dead mother and a dead father and a dead husband. What am I now? What will I become? These are questions I don't know how to answer. I'm afraid of living and of loving, since it hurts so much to lose. I can't live in this world any longer, nor can I part from it in death. I'm a specter, a ghost caught between two worlds.
My names can't tell you who I am. I am not Helena Dolph Jackson. I am not Lady Luck. I am not Queen, and I am not Fortune. I simply am, indefinable, unnamed.