It'll be fun, Mephisto had said. Shiro knew better than to fall for that. That he still ended up on the plush couch in Faust Mansion's library had nothing to do with fun and everything to do with Mephisto - damn him - giving him that look that meant he was honest. Nothing more dangerous than a demon being honest. And then he'd asked if Shiro wanted to know his future and...
Shiro put the book down. Put a cigarette between his lips. Set the flame of his lighter to the cigarette, which sadly wasn't there anymore.
"I thought we agreed that if you were gonna show me my own miserable future, I could do as I saw fit with it?" He glared across at the hideously pink bean bag chair and the demon in it.
"You can," Mephisto agreed, tapping away on his phone to pour some more oil on the comment section drama he had started on youtube.
"We're in that future now: the future where I smoke my brain black and you fuck off, and no you may not combine these offers."
"For being the school's best marksman of all time, you are missing the point by a mile. And the opportunities. Don't you see the position you're in? The tragic hero, the captive fighting for freedom, the-"
"I know what bloody 'position' I'm in, I don't need you to tell me that when I've just seen my future self hold the love of his life in his arms as she dies in a snowstorm and know that I'll die just a few years later, taken by Satan just like everyone always said I would be. I know exactly what position I'm in, and if I can off myself with lung cancer before that then I bloody will."
Mephisto looked up from his phone, but only to give him a suffering look of betrayal.
"I'm almost starting to think you aren't happy with the role I'm writing for you."
There was a response burning at the back of Shiro's tongue, and swallowing it felt like eating glass. There were better things to do with hate. There were other things than cigarettes to burn, when you happened to be in a private library.
...for all that Mephisto claimed not to be able to read minds, sometimes you had to wonder. Shiro's couch was suddenly far removed from any bookshelf, and the Blue Exorcist volume he had been reading was gone in a wisp of pink smoke.
The images would never go away. The woman pleading for her children's lives. The woman going cold in his arms, leaving her newborns to him. The loss of everything and the bitter irony of being given the living testament to the evil that killed her.
No, he didn't like the role Mephisto was mapping out for him.
"Think Dimwit will ever get back to writing me? All the way to my miserable end?"
"It won't be miserable," he told the phone screen.
"You know, I find that really fucking hard to believe. And it's been what, two years? Two years and nothing but little- little scraps in that fluffy wlw polyamory ficlet. And the wacko one about Mini-Moriyama and Amaimon." He needed something to burn, or he'd end up crushing the lighter in his fist. "I'm gonna die without even living first in this universe. Bloody wonderful. "
"Dimwit will continue the story, Shiro."
"Because you say so? You're a figment of imagination, too, asshat."
"Ah, but what is human life but the figment of imagination? It is through dreams they picture what they could be, what they could have, and for that dream they remake reality, like the images of God they all are." Mephisto finally deigned to look away from his phone, only to shoot him the smug look of someone who considers himself quite close to God, too. "Authors write because they want to live, Shiro. Dimwit writes you because they live through you, and that's why they can't stop."
"That's the dumbest thing you've said so far," he muttered. Ran his hand back and forth through the lighter flame. There were other things than cigarettes to burn, when you happened to be in a private library. "If this is the kind of life they want. Look, I'm not complaining, it's nice to get to at least speak again, even if all I get to do is bitch about your no-smoking policy, but. If I could make up whatever life I wanted, in whatever world I wanted, I wouldn't choose this."
The demon rolled his eyes with a dramatic sigh and murmured, "Glasses never did you any good." Then he crossed his long legs and levelled a nonplussed stare at Shiro. "I didn't show you your future for you to mope about it like an overused teenage protagonist trope. That future you is what others see. It's what you look like through their eyes, and different eyes see different truths. You inspire hope, that's why they read about you - that's why they write about you and your stubborn, hilarious, and sometimes outright lunatic refusal to just lie down and die. And that," he said, smile lighting his eyes as he saw the cogs turn in Shiro's head, "is why they won't write you a miserable end. People like Dimwit need stories to end happily because they can't see a happy end to their own." He glanced sideways, smiling as if he had just remembered something funny. "There are a lot of Dimwits in the world. And they're all hoping - waiting - for you to get the end you deserve."
Shiro tried not to dwell on the past. It worked well enough, most of the time, although there were also times when the past kicked the door in and duct taped him to a swivel chair. He'd been here once before, in the past - not on an ugly couch but in the hanging gardens on the battlements of the Academy. He'd thought about that ridiculous little wall of red brick trying to stand in the way of people who saw no future ahead but across the edge. Then Moriyama Sayuri had been there, out of the fucking blue, and knocked his thoughts onto an entirely different track. Had talked about inspiration and people being determined to overcome obstacles and shit like that. Had looked at him as if she saw something other than a curse and a safety hazard.
"The end I deserve," he repeated to the lighter making slow turns between his fingers. His face conducted a complex drift across five octaves of emotion. "Fuck it. Be humanity's shield against demons - I swore that on my inauguration day." He hissed out a seething sigh between his teeth. "Includes all kinds of demons, I suppose. Fuck." He shot a venomous glare at Mephisto. "They'd better come up with a real good end, if there's that many idiots that'll be disappointed otherwise."
Dear everyone
I have been notified that there are people who still remember me and would like to know if I plan on continuing this fic or not. x) It warms organs in my chest I thought had shrivelled up like an old banana peel.
Please believe Mephisto when he explains why I will continue writing, when I can. I'm not well at the moment. Some days I think I will never be well again, and wonder why I bother using up all energy I have just to stay alive one more day. Frankly, it's so that I can continue doing what I love, what I have always loved, and always will love.
Over the years some of you have approached me to tell fantastic stories of how TEotB has inspired you, sometimes even helped you. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, let me just stress that I know the therapeutic value of fiction, both reading it and writing it. My stories are my life. It's as simple as that. I have some exorcising to do before I can finish them, but I will.
All the best,
/Dimwit