Disclaimer: I, obviously, do not own PSoH. ...and we're just not going to discuss what would happen if I did. P
A/N: Again, fairly melancholy piece. Not quite a drabble, not quite a oneshot, but somewhere in between. When I have the time, I might expand on this and make it into an actual, multi-chaptered fic. Maybe, though, if I have the time and the interest for it is there.
How often have I dreamed of the end? How often have I shed tears I could no longer contain as one more species turned and walked away, never looking back from that fearsome journey to extinction? And how often have I cursed, bitterness and hatred filling my immortal soul as I witness the horrors human negligence and ignorant idiocy has inflicted upon themselves and the rest of nature's creation? But never, never in my most horrid, tormented night terrors have I imagined that I would be here to see the waste that has been laid over the Earth's once-beautiful landscape. Never, never could I have anticipated the horrors that lay in my future, the true and inescapable scope of death and destruction that has left my beautiful world barren and destroyed. Never, never could I have thought to prepare myself for the stench of death that assaults my nose every time I venture outside my pet shop's door.
Everything is decay. None, no animal or human can venture into the world without terror and grave danger. Pestilence has scoured the land, blighting plants and mutating without cease until the lines of species are blurred, all equally falling victim before the unstoppable force.
How ironic that all of Earth's creatures, who would never be equal in life, are equal now in death.
The stench of decay wafts to my nose, and I cough involuntarily from the pungency of the odor, lifting my cheongsam's sleeve to cover my mouth and nose as my eyes fill with unbidden liquid. Gingerly I step away from the bloated, decomposing arm lying before me, my slippered feet making a silent and delicate path through the bodies strewn as far as the eye can see, animal and man curled together in a cruel, twisted mockery of the perfect symbiosis my people had long ago envisioned. That future will never come to pass now.
How ironic that, in the end, this undeniable, bitterly fitting and gruesome end, that the fault lies not with the hated humans but with the arrogance and hypocrisy of the self-proclaimed saviors of the natural world, the Chinese kami.
Delicately, I jump through the broken window of what, a year ago, had been a proud grocery store. Glancing around, my cheongsam's sleeve still held to my mouth and nose, I look for the food that I know will not be there. However, I am desperate. Desperate enough to venture into this wasted landscape, knowing full well that I will bring the pestilence with me into the magic of my shop, breaking a quarantine I have rigorously guarded since the outbreak began.
But quarantine doesn't matter any more. Disheartened, but resigned, I navigate through myriad skeletons and corpses and return to my shop and the man struggling for breath on my couch. His skin is pale almost to the point of translucence, his once proud, defiant blue eyes listless and glassy. I doubt he even recognizes my presence anymore. Lucidity has not come to Leon in over two weeks. Collapsing to my knees beside him, I wrap one of my slender hands about a pasty one of his, my other hand resting gently, lovingly, on his forehead. For the past two months, I have shared my life with him---ever since young Chris unwittingly brought the plague into my shop and everyone else fell into death. Now, we are all that is left.
"It is as we dreamed three years ago, Leon," I breathe, my voice labored and soft. "It is the end, and we are alone." I'm tired. I don't think I can hold on much longer myself, much less continue to bolster my detective's failing health. I have taken his weakness as my own, and have offered him my strength in return.
But now, I have no reserves left.
Damn you, Father. If you hadn't been caught up so entirely in your vengeance and your hate, if you had stopped to think rather than create, we would not be here now. We, of all people, know the consequences of attempting to control nature. And yet, you, like a foolish human, thought to take everything in your hand. Stupid. Foolish. And all have suffered for your mistake, not that you are here to see it. In your madness and cowardice and shame, you took your own life months ago. You had been so proud of the virulence of your plague…and look what it has cost.
But not all blame is yours. We, as a people, have acted foolishly for centuries. Vengeance is a human emotion, a human weakness we have exploited often. And now, the lesson has come full circle.
Brushing the forehead beneath my fingertips, I cough. I struggle for breath, much as Leon does, and lay my head against his chest. This is the end. We are alone, and I can no more kill you for sustenance than you would kill me. Rather, I will die with you. Nothing more binds me here. You were all I had left. I cough once more, closing my eyes wearily. I am tired. I can keep this up no longer.
I breathe.
I embrace the fall. Beautiful darkness, bittersweet darkness, devoid of life and light and welcome final reprieve. We were alone. And now we are no more.
Nothing remains.