If you have not seen the ending of Gunlock and do NOT want to be spoiled, do not read. If you have not seen the ending of Gunlock and do NOT CARE to be spoiled, continueonward. If you HAVE seen the ending of Gunlock, then what're waitin' for?
Last warning for spoilers. Here on in it's all your fault if you spoil yourself. :P
Title: Ashes to Ashes
Rated: R
Warnings: I hear any death-fic is rated R. :P But, if not, this should only be PG or so.
Summary: Hazel's thoughts before he dies regarding his life, his mission and the people in between. In his POV as well.
Notes: I despise the ending, of course lol. But I love this song and wanted to write an angsty Hazel fic to it. Determined to incorporate the song into a fic somehow, I realized it would only fit in this situation.
DISCLAIMER: NONE. OF THESE. PEOPLE. OR THINGS. ARE MINE. OKAY. THANKS.
---
It really hurts.
I've felt a lot of pain in my life. I've been battered, torn apart, clawed up, bitten to the bone. I've had limbs broken, been through my fair share of comatoses, bruises the size of a small dish, cuts as long as connecting dots from one spot of my body, clear down to the next.
Physically, every sinew has been picked apart and healed repeatedly. Mentally, my brain and emotions have gone through a shedder. Pieces missing, but messily glued and stapled back together, despite the holes, despite the absent parts.
I've had my fair share of hurt.
But this hurts more than anything in the world. Because it touches my entire being. My mind, my heart, my entire body. Every piece of me is aching. What I constantly held together with string and wax has fallen apart. I can't put them back together. Partially because I'm not in complete control.
Partially because what's left of me doesn't want to.
Although I am in no control of myself, and my body is not my own, I haven't disappeared. I'm still inside the flesh, bones and muscle mass that make up my exterior. I can scream and I can kick, but my voice is mute and my limbs are heavy. No matter how hard I try, I'm not strong enough.
Not anymore.
The catalyst of my success is gone. Turned to dust and now in the wind, carried along on the air that, somewhere, carries those pieces I lost and could not find. I never realized that a good deal of my strength was another's. It took me until now to study that a good deal of my power over what I despised was me standing behind a shadow and pointing and commanding and wielding weapons that my hands never touched.
I feel ashamed. I feel dirty. I feel embarrassed. I feel sick. Reality is cruel, it's so cruel. It is the cause of my hurt. I don't care if right now I have nothing left and I can't do anything about that, nor do I want to... It all means nothing compared to what I have lost.
I lost the most important person in my entire life that I've only lived half for. And I was the cause of their demise.
I lost the most important person in my entire life that I've only lived half for that took me a good amount of years to realize was, indeed, one big missing piece. And it was my fault.
I pushed and pushed and pushed over the limit, over the boundaries, jumped back and forth on the outskirts of what I should do and what I shouldn't. It wasn't me that suffered, it was the innocent people who I stood behind in their shadows and pretended I had complete control of the situation.
But that's changed. Like they say when it comes to messing with dark forces; everything you do comes back at you threefold.
And how bloody true that is!
Everything hit me at once and hard enough to knock both the air out of my lungs, the lingering sanity from my brain and my feet off the ground.
It hurts.
Although I have nothing left to run or use, I can still feel pain when my body is hurt. I can feel the blows and the strikes and the cuts and the bruises forming whenever my body is hit. And although I wish I didn't, I still do, because then I know that somehow I'm still ihere/i and that means I haven't lost iyet/i.
I don't know if I want to lose. Losing seems more easier than winning, but losing hurts when winning only hurts when you get bored or you lose yourself. I haven't won, but I've lost myself. And I find that I've got a hand up, reaching for an orb of light that tells me to give in and to let go, but at the same time, give in and let go as yourself.
Win one last time, then let yourself lose. But that would end up making me win?
The voice is recognizable and it echoes. There's indeed two tones to it. One that belongs to an older man with softness. The other more monotone, deeper, but much older. And I realize these two voices are voices of the two victims I ever felt sorry for destroying.
They stay with me, they come to me and they cheer me on to get up out of the darkness that this monster two have become one has caged me in. Despite everything I've done to them. The ashes and the blood they spilt for me. They're still here.
I remember my companion telling me it was time to end all this and at first I did not understand what he meant. End the superficial things? No, it went more deeper. Stop the pain, and move on--even if it meant my death. And for many, many years that seem like a thousand, I finally remember the first time this monster took over, leaning over the corpse of a man who had smiled at me and pitied me and told me that one day he'd hope I found someone who would love me despite me and now he was with that man he hoped I'd meet and indeed did.
I've lost many a battles, but not the war.
Not yet.
Finally, after fire has taken my flesh, for a moment I can see blurring light then brown and yellow and blue and mountains and a priest and youkai...
I'm still not ready. My arm feels like it's been yanked from its socket. The pulsating muscle that's eaten at it has disappeared and my real arm feels shredded. It's in this time I realize my mortality and when it's time I go see the man I thought I was defending and justifying.
It doesn't take long before the monster reaches back into my brain and plants its deeds in my head.
I am quiet as I lay inside myself--and I wonder.
Do I continue this fight that I've lost? Do I keep going off the end of the world now that I've arrived to the edge?
Or do I stop? And stop and stop and that's all I'll ever do, is stop and do nothing more. But I'll be gone from the body and be somewhere where these two voices in the orb of light are.
That seems more better.
I feel my scream echo and resound inside my body when the symbol of God's servants rip out of my back, opening wide. I feel like I've fallen, and I feel like I've been gone for a long time, and that these wings are evidence of me forgetting that.
I fell a long time ago and now I get to see the proof of that.
I fell a long time ago and now I know it's time to stay down.
Again, I nearly bring down the innocents in my way. Poison them, letting them rot; let them feel my pain. I won't die. I was meant to die many years ago, but I always found an excuse and offered someone to take my place without their permission. Am I doomed to do that again? Will, in time, I fight this all off out of pure frustration and continue on, after killing the people in place of myself? Or will I destroy them anyway and just remain entombed and let this ithing/i use me for whatever it desires?
I do not regret killing those demons. To this day, my pride in that area remains intact.
I do, however, regret any other lives I did take.
It takes this effort and this moment to finally let me awake again.
And although I'm crying and although I'm scared and although I idon't/i want this to be the last time I walk on this planet, I know it's time and I know it's my turn. Not theirs. No, not them.
And I smile, even if it hurts. But slowly, I feel comforted. I'm going to Hell, maybe. I don't know. All I hope is that God will be as merciful as He claims to be. And although I've never held any other god before Him, I did by assuming His so-called work. It's not me who needs to decide what happens to anyone or anything or any demon. I've realized that now and as I take a moment to repent one last time, I begin to feel hope filling up inside me.
Those two voices--they're still here. If I go to Heaven, I know I'll meet them there. And if I go to Hell, I know they'll follow me. Because even if I hold high standards of myself, it has nothing to do with that--because I know they ilove/i me enough to follow me to the Pit.
And I beg and I plead and I get my wish. I feel almost gifted. Not because for once out of all my begging and pleading and demanding, he does as I wish him to. Because he hesitates--as if he actually didn't mean anything when it came to my existence being futile and pathetic. As if he had a shred of mercy inside of him.
If that man had mercy, surely God would.
And it only hurts for a second. It feels like a tiny sting, despite how deeply it penetrates. And I have enough seconds to smile and shut my eyes before everything in my sight disappears in a snap and the last thing I hear is my body hitting the ground with a thud.
In my last breath that took merely one-second, everything stopped.
And now as I move through lights and tunnels, leading me to where my soul belongs, I'm happy to see that I'm not alone. And I'm happy to see I'm happy. We're happy.
---
"Gave in Again
The bastard
Can't keep refusing rights
So he'll loan the cash
But the sin
Is on the hands of you
So to care or
Plead silence, weak hands are calling
There's close enough
And there's too far
It won't change an empty stare
But I can't seem to end
These images Hauntingly looks like hell
Come, Enter the foreign.
Face, All that's shameful.
Cheat,
May the past find Out;
Separating...
To end this catastrophic scene awake and breathe in."
-"Panic Prone" by Chevelle
OWARI.