A/N: Please, take a moment to have a look at this: lunissa. deviantart. com/ gallery/ #/ d4gsy7c

Thank you.

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Second Interlude

Humanity

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"It all just seems so strange to me, these days," the woman said suddenly, as she shook out her long, auburn hair.

"What does?" asked the pale boy.

"This." And she spread out her arms to encompass the torn land around them, the corpses and bomb craters, the clouds of toxic gas under a blood-red sky, the few survivors, scavenging for a scrap of food and a drink of water.

"Look around you, both of you," she continued. "A whole nation, ravaged and ripped to pieces by war, pollution, and famine. How can such things still be, if the three of us are dead? All of this should have died with us, half a millennium ago, yet it always keeps on going. Yes," she said, before either of her two companions could contradict her, "yes, I know it did die, for a very short time, but then it all started right up again. Why?"

The boy furrowed his brow for a moment. Then it cleared, and he crossed his legs and went on drawing imaginary shapes in the dirt he could no longer touch. "Don't think I see what you mean," he said serenely, in his quavery voice.

The woman rolled her orange eyes in exasperation, and waved her arms this way and that. "Oh, come now, Weiss! Think! How can we... How can war, pollution and famine still exist in the world if the three of us aren't there, truly there, to bring them about? We were killed, we are powerless, we didn't cause any of the horrors around us, but they. Are. There. I ask again, how? How is this possible?"

"To me, it seems very simple," said the tall, skinny man in black, with the neatly trimmed beard.

"Does it."

"Yes, Red. It does. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and it seems to me that, even though we, the three of us sitting here, were cut away from the human world, and can no longer act in it in person, our spirits and influences still remain, in the hearts and minds of men. Even now, the essence of us courses through their veins, too deeply ingrained to ever be uprooted. When you look at it like that, we cannot die."

Red raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, I can certainly tell that you've been thinking about this, Sable." She shrugged, sighed. "If you're right, then it seems to me that the cutting-off part didn't really serve any purpose. Nothing's changed, no matter what he thought."

"In other words, he killed us for nothing," the boy said sombrely, raking his fingers through his white hair.

Now it was the man's turn to sigh. "That's true, kid, that's true. First Red," and he paused as the woman shivered briefly, "then me, brained with my own scales, and finally you. And what a state you were in when you came where we were!" The boy shuddered, and Sable reached out and gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder.

The woman, too, nodded, wincing in sympathy. "What a state, indeed. The two of us, Sable and I, had to force you down to keep you still, and it took us literally hours of talking into you before you finally stopped screaming and calmed down enough to be reasoned with. After a very long time, we at last managed to get you to fall asleep, but even then..." Her voice trailed off.

The boy smiled wanly, but warmly. "I know. You did everything you could to help me. You still do, and I've always been grateful. That won't change. And if I'm not mistaken," and his smile turned just a tiny bit arch, "you, Red, even held my head on your lap while I slept. Am I right?"

Red wriggled, grinning a little awkwardly, and Sable clapped the boy on the shoulder again. The three of them sat in companionable quiet for a little while, until Sable raised his head, and said to the woman, "Hold on a moment. Red? Did I really just hear you call everything around us now... horrors? Did I?"

Red fidgeted. "I... Yes. Yes, Sable, you did. It's... Look. I know that these sights and sounds of human misery ought to make me rejoice, fill me with pride, like they always used to, but, since we died... they don't, not anymore, they... make me feel sad. Ashamed. It's been getting worse and worse, with every scene like this that we've encountered over the years. Something odd is happening to me, I've been denying it for centuries, but I... I think I'm seriously starting to lose myself, and I am afraid." She drew up her knees, rested her chin on them, and stared gloomily into the middle distance, twitching, occasionally, whenever a grenade struck, twitching, then scowling.

"I have that, too, to be perfectly honest," said Sable, frowning, after a time. "For just as long as you have, come to think about it. The knowledge that people around me are busy starving to death no longer affords me delight the way it did, way back when. It'd simply feel wrong, somehow, to enjoy it. And yet... And yet I can't rid myself of the notion that for some reason, the consequences of our influence are right, even though I sometimes wish they weren't there at all. You may be right, Red," he finished, pensively. "We really are losing ourselves."

"I don't think we are. I think I know what this is, this feeling that things are right," said the boy, looking up at the poisoned sky with obvious distaste, not seeing the other two jerk their heads towards him in surprise. "It must be the balance our Lord and Lady spoke of, all those years ago, right after they'd, um, done what they did. You remember, they said, 'Look at us, can you see us? In us, in us both, you see the balance that forever reigns in the world.'" He stopped talking, looked expectantly at the other two.

Red picked up where Weiss had left off. "'Good and evil, light and dark, air and earth, fire and water, male and female," she said, eyes beginning to shine. "I cannot believe I ever forgot about that. It's so true."

"'All the things that make up life, you see in us. Point, counterpoint. That is what we mean to perfect, and that is what you are a part of. You may not see it now, but given time, you will. Let it grow inside you. And when the moment comes, you will truly understand what it is to be human,'" Sable finished reverently. He shook his head. "Dammit, those two were brave..."

There was a long, long silence, not unpleasant, as each of the three was lost in his or her own thoughts.

"How strange it is, to be human, if this is what it is," said Red, at length. "So many questions and doubts and... and..." She snapped her fingers, trying to think of the right word. "And so many..."

"Feelings?" prompted Sable.

"Exactly!"

Weiss tipped his head to one side, looking thoughtful, and said, "Not entirely bad, I think, not even for us. Feelings are probably the reason the three of us never wanted to split up and walk the Earth alone, ghosts or no ghosts. Whatever we are now, those feelings make us... real. Ah, I'm not sure how to explain it, but you know what I mean."

Red considered this, said, "What the humans call 'need for company', do you mean?"

Weiss shrugged. "Need for company, friendship, call it what you will. Names don't really matter. It's what's inside that counts, eh?" he said, eyebrows raised, and held out his hand to the woman, smiling.

She sniggered in spite of everything. "How very human." And took his hand, held out her own to Sable.

He took it, in turn, and grasped Weiss's too. "Well then, my friends. Here's hoping all sacrifices were not in vain."

"You mean -"

"Yes."

The three of them sat there, in a circle, not speaking, in perfect concord amid the chaos surrounding them, not touching them.

And near, and far, and everywhere, a tall, hooded man was busy with his scythe.