A/n; woo! finally back to writing oneshots. It gets kinda choppy near the middle because I had started this a while back and just now picked it up and finished it XD Hope you enjoy it all the same.
I do not own Millions Knives, Millie Thompson, Meryl Stryfe, Nicholas D. Wolfwood or Vash the Stampede
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Humans are interesting creatures. That is the best way to put into words my understanding after all these years of studying them.
In scientific terms, they are carbon based life forms which have a lifespan of 70-80 of their years. They stand up right on their hind legs and have adapted over time to use their front legs as 'hands'. They are also what you would call 'mammals'; warm blooded beings with skin and fur.
But I believe they are more.
They are a virus.
They do not move like their mammals do. They do not 'migrate'. To migrate is to escape the cold or the heat, only to come back again when conditions are favorable. Mammals stay in one place. So do birds, and reptiles, and any other form of creature.
Humans have no where to go. They have no true 'home'. So, instead, they take other's. They move to a place, use all their resources, and move on only to consume more. They consume and consume until there is nothing left but their hunger.
I used to believe that this was all there was to humans. Mindless eating machines with no soul or purpose other then to devour all in their sights. If I were to tell you this is all there is and nothing more to them, I would be a liar, and I do not wish to be one.
I have found, through study, that humans did not wish to consume endlessly. It is something they could not help. I have also found that some tried, with their limited knowledge, to replace what they have taken, although their concern was in vain. The humans were too late to save their world, and so moved on, still driven by their hunger, their primitive will to survive another day.
Hunger is not the only thing humans are driven by. They have what they have so graciously named 'emotions', the very basis of their behavior. This is nothing special. There is nothing special about a human feeling compassion or hatred. Even a dog can fear and despise. Humans, although, take these emotions a step further by expressing them with such intensity, it is overwhelming. Through these emotions, humans do something no other animal can.
They create.
Humans have for centuries been creating, from the first to carve something into the bark of a tree or paint on the walls of a cave to the modern poets and authors who spend hours up in their rooms scribbling on parchment. Humans were blessed, for God knows why, with the ability to create, and with it came the imagination. There is no human on this planet who has not created, for they can not think without creating. This blessing—this gift is what sets them apart from anything else in their 'animal kingdom'.
Humans are in a class of their own.
Recently, I've been paying more attention to their creations. Mainly the one they call literature. Very fascinating what humans come up with in their minds alone. Of course, you can ask any author and they will tell you they've had 'inspiration' from something else. Inspiration, mind you, is just a fancy word for 'steal'. Yet, their stories go on.
May I remind you that emotions play a key role in the human's way of thinking. There has never been a creation in which a human did not feel a strong enough emotion to write it down, or sketch it, or paint it, or compose it. Pick up anything a human has created and you will feel the pure emotion dripping off of it.
But, I digress. Let us return to literature.
Literature is one of the finest points of creation. To write is to expand to the world your thoughts. I, myself, have fallen in love, as humans would say, with a curtain one of their genres.
Science fiction.
It is a very touchy subject, but it is a little less broad then fiction or humor. There are, however, some stereotypes; endless stories touching on the same subject, over and over. Clones take over the world. Robots and androids and machines go to war with their human masters and over throw them. Medical experiments go askew and destroy those who so graciously gave them life.
Heh.
I really am fond of the medical experiment ones. It reminds me of what I wanted me and my brother to do.
But that is all past, so I continue on with the present.
I have found through their literature, exactly how fine-tuned humans have made their emotions. They write endless numbers of novels of love, of rage and anger and of fear.
It has come to my attention that humans are fascinated by their own racial and irrational fears, mainly that of the dark-the unseen. To some, I myself would be seen as a creature of the darkness, a thing to be feared. They so quickly fear that which they do not understand.
A both rational and irrational concept.
With the fear humans house, they, in their eternal mind's eye, create their own monsters that hide under their bed, waiting for a chance to reach up and grab their foot or arm in the night. Creatures that are wicked and live on bloodlust. They bring to life things stronger then they are to fear and cower from.
Humans know they are weak. They know they are a fragile race that, like those before them, are too weak to protect themselves from that which goes bump in the night.
Through this fear, Gods were born.
Higher beings to protect the lesser.
Truthfully, humans think themselves so small.
They are, of course, but I was, for a time, unaware of their humbleness.
To me, since a young age, humans were arrogant beings who thought themselves as their own Gods, able to create and destroy on a whim. This theory was enforced by that beatings I suffered from the coward known as Steve.
Beats of fear-fear of a superior race he refused to understand.
Looking back, it was unfair of me to base all my theories of the human race on only one of their children's actions. I myself was arrogant in my own right at the time, seeing myself as a God just as high. I was a vengeful God, one of wrath.
I was Mars, God of war.
Perhaps I still am a God from human standards, but no longer do I enforce my powers for respect or fear.
Besides, the concept of a religion being founded after me is too comical a prospect.
"The church of Knives."
Hilarious.
Before, one could say I did have my own religion and was quite proud of it. It was a faith founded on the killing of the lesser, of the weak. My followers were not promised undying love or eternal life for their service, but were bought with temptation, threats and the mind games I used to be so fond of.
None of that is left now. All who had been involved perished for their efforts.
Fools everyone of them. Poor misguided fools.
Both they and I were guilty of holding the emotion fear so highly above the rest.
Fear is so easy to come by. So is hatred and so is love.
But fear can be over come. The lights can be turned on and the demons can be expelled by the warm touch of another.
But hatred…
But love…
These are forever, if true.
And both can hurt.
Both are a weakness.
Both are brothers, much like me and my brother are, going hand in hand.
We are cursed, my brother and I. We are cursed with the gift of emotions and the pain they bring. My sisters do not know the pain of love or hatred. They do not understand our suffering.
But humans do.
Two humans do.
One knows the pain of loving our kind, an undying race, and the knowledge that she and my brother could never, truly, be together forever as their vows so clearly stated. The other knows the pain of loving a weak hearted mortal, and of its costs. She also still suffers from the pain of hatred's toll on her fragile human body.
Hatred of me.
I can still see it in her eyes as we pass on a day to day basis. It has been there since the day she found out about my connection to a certain loved one's death.
You know, there are times when I lie awake and wish I truly was a God, if only to bring him back to her. Then, maybe, she would look upon me the way she does others.
The way I do her.
With love.
Is the pain she feels what Vash felt when Rem died? I can only compare it to the pain I felt while he and I were apart, playing our deadly game of 'who would kill whom first'.
I love my brother and it pained me how much we used to hate-despise-each other.
Now he has forgiven me, and although I still feel the hurt of regret for the sins I've committed against him, the pain has subsided into a dull reminder.
But this…
This must be agony.
Does she fear me through this hatred? Afraid I would take more from her? Does she see me as one of the monsters lingering in her closet, unseen but deadly?
Or does she, Heaven and Hell please forbid, see me as Steve did, a threat? Something so horrid, so vile, so evil, such a monstrosity that should not be allowed to live?
I cannot bring myself to search her mind for the answers. Brother has suggested I ask her, but her possible answers keep my tongue tied and mouth locked in fear.
I know though that she hates me for what I've done. She does not act on this hatred, for she is too kind of a creature.
A Goddess of beauty among cruel humanity.
She just becomes very quiet when the subject of her lover or I are tread upon. Both are avoided at all costs, but her silence rings in my ears as a constant reminder of my sins against her and others.
When she found out…
She had been the one that nursed me back to health after my brother and mine's last battle, naïve to my connections to her lover's death. My brother was too weak to care for even himself, let along me upon our return, and the other human refused to care for the being who was the sole purpose behind my brother's suffering for so long, so she took it upon herself the burden of healing me.
Those first few weeks, I was so cruel to her, but she would return every morning without falter.
I gave her bruises, cut her, called her horrible things for even breathing the oxygen I intentionally gave off without my permission. I wanted her to fear me, for that was all I knew.
But she did not. She refused to fear me.
And so, everyday she would come to feed me, change my bandages and speak with me. I used to pretend to be asleep, trying to discourage her from rambling to me about what had happened at the general store that morning, but still she talked, unfazed and innocent in her intent.
It drove me insane.
Finally the day came that I was strong enough to care for myself.
Still, she came, to feed me and speak with me.
We argued a lot, over her cooking, her morals, her humanity. Usually it ended with her in tears, but the next day she would return, the argument before forgotten.
Her patience was extraordinary.
But, one day, he came up.
That day I had pretended to be sleeping when she entered my room. She sat, as she always did, in the chair near the end of my bed and began to speak, recalling how a Thomas had nearly squashed my sibling earlier that morning. After that story was told, she had paused, asking me if I was truly asleep. I hadn't answered, as usual, so she continued.
She started to speak of him.
I couldn't take it anymore. I sat up and started to laugh. 'You were in love with that foolish preacher?' I had asked her. I was so happy; I finally had something on this spider that might make her respect me for the horrors I had committed upon her kind.
So I told her. I told her all about my connects with the Gung-ho Guns and her lover and his death.
'I hate that priest,' I had said, venom dripping from every syllable. 'And I'm glad he's dead. It was his damned cross that put me in this bed, having to listen day in and day out to his forgotten whore.'
She had left in tears, as she usually did, and I thought nothing of it.
But the next day she did not return. Nor the next, nor the next after.
And, for a while, I saw her absence as a small victory.
But, slowly, I became lonely, lonely without this human and her kindness. It frightened me, thinking I might need her the way my brother needed his human companion.
I did, I realized, slowly.
I do.
So I began to seek her out, watching her from afar. Slowly, I learned what she liked and disliked, what her favorite color was, if she preferred cats over dogs.
And, though unaware of it at the time, I fell in love with her.
This Goddess of beauty among cruel humanity.
Sadly, she refused to speak to me after that day. I would enter a room and she would politely excuse herself. If by chance we pass each other in the hall, she would cast her eyes away from mine and try to pass as fast as possible.
I had accomplished what I had set out to do. She feared me.
She hated me.
She still does.
Still, despite the fact I know she would never nor could ever forgive me for my sins as my brother has, I mindlessly strive to make myself suitable in her eyes. One of these days, I will have the courage to take her aside and apologize for the death of the one she so dearly loved.
But I know none of it will help.
She will never love me the way I do her.
Venus and Mars can never be one.
