[fic] A Shade Below Violet (#313 Obituaries yada yada yada)
Title: A Shade Below Violet
Author: sistercacao
Word Count: 1060
Pairing: none
Warnings: Lovecraftian horror, kinda TWT, POV, OOC Duo (you'll see what I mean)
Rating: PG?
Summary: Set in Episode 24. Wufei, about to die, has a fever dream... or an epiphany.
“Do you believe in God?” Duo Maxwell asks me. He’s been silent for a long time, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever.
They shut the air off in the cell hours ago and I can tell we are slowly dying. My head feels heavy, my thoughts grinding slowly to a halt. Maxwell does not seem fatigued, his voice is clear and precise. It’s bizarre.
I suppose he’s asking because, barring an act of God, we are about to suffocate. I think about telling him to shut up and stop wasting our last remaining oxygen molecules, but I find it hard to care anymore. Besides, the corners of my consciousness are beginning to blacken and fade, and talking might help me stay awake a little longer before slipping into oblivion.
I consider his question. Do I believe in God?
“I’m not sure.”
“You do, don’t you?” He says forcefully, and I crack open an eye to see he is sitting up, legs crossed, peering down at me in the murky shadow. His eyes are bright and focused, I can see the violet of his irises clearly even in the dark.
“I said I’m not sure.” I sit up too, heavily, wearily. Maxwell watches the movement with only his eyes, not turning his head. He cocks a smile.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to die here,” he says strangely. I can barely make out his clothes, the expressions on his face, but his eyes are bright and fixed on me.
“Did God tell you that?” I can’t quite keep the incredulity out of my voice. I didn’t think Maxwell believed in God, somehow. I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense; he does, after all, wear the habit of a priest and call himself God, albeit one of death. I suppose that morbidity is what makes me skeptical.
“Yeah.”
“You’re kidding.” I snort. “You’re hallucinating from oxygen deprivation.”
“You’re wrong,” he says, his voice quiet, but decisive. “They are here. They have plans for us.”
“They?” I wasn’t expecting the plural form. Perhaps the Catholic getup has confused me. “Who are ‘they’?”
Very slowly, he turns his head to follow the path his eyes have already taken. I still cannot see his face, his mouth as he begins to speak, only his eyes. Violet.
“You know who They are, Wufei. You believe in Them too.”
“I assure you that I have no idea what you’re talking about, Maxwell.”
“You’ve invoked a Name before. I heard you.” I know he’s smiling, but I can’t see anything, just that violet gaze, which continues to glow bright in the gloom.
“You called your gundam Nataku.”
I almost choke. “T-that’s--”
“You were talking to Her.”
“I was...” I struggle to contain my temper. If I get upset, I might black out. There’s not enough air in the room to afford hyperventilating. “It’s an expression of respect for... someone.” I do not care to elaborate.
He peers at me for a while in silence, and seems to come to a conclusion: “You invoked Her name in ignorance.”
“Whose name?” The space around Maxwell is greying, spots forming in the shadows. His eyes are still crisp and clear, but the rest is succumbing to the darkness. I am succumbing. “Who are you talking about?”
“She is Nataku, to some,” he says, “God, to others. She has a thousand names assigned to Her. Shinigami. Death. The names do not describe Her fully, because we cannot pronounce Her true Name, just as our logic cannot comprehend Her true nature. But She hears our convocations, unsuited for the human vocal apparatus though they may be. Even those performed accidentally. She has found you worthy.”
My vision is darkening, the shadows seeming to swallow everything but Maxwell’s eyes. Violet. No, a shade beyond. The invisible end of the rainbow, the violet below violet. The eye cannot be that color. Its fragile insufficiency of melanocytes and its delicate epithelium cannot support a violet that should not exist, should not be seen.
Something stirs in the blackened corners of my consciousness, curls and slithers from the confines of Maxwell’s shadowed body, unfolds in the gloom, filling up the space of the cell. Tendrils snake their way around me, just out of sight, rushing with a sound not of Earth, like the cracking of bones folding into impossible shapes. Maxwell is suddenly huge in the darkness, and I am sure I’m going to die.
“They have plans for us,” he says, and it is Maxwell and it is not; it is the Old One, the Eternal, the God of Death and Life, such that those concepts exist to one who is eternally dead and eternally alive. I know these things because She is telling them to me, somehow, in an instant. She is explaining with a patience borne of infinite time, though the explaining of it all would surely drive me mad. She told Maxwell these things, when he, too, began to call himself by Her name.
Eternal, She waits. Her eyes are the shade below violet and they burn, they burn. “Everyone in this place will die, Wufei, so that we shall live. That is what They desire.”
The words are in my head, the language slurred with strange inflections, and I imagine what I am hearing is the difficulty to attempt the language of the corporeal with a mouth and tongue whose true speech would destroy the fleshy confines of the human mind upon its attempt to comprehend it. Perhaps I am imagining all of this entirely. Perhaps this is a dream. Perhaps I am already dead.
The Old One stretches wide, wide, Her tentacles feeling out and occupying every space, through the walls, through the universe. She is right here with me, as Maxwell is here with me, and yet She is far, far away, eons away. She is calling me. I called Her, knowing not what I did, and now She calls back to me, from the edges of reality, and only here, in the sliver of air left to me in the cell, can I hear Her. She has plans for us. We will not die. We will never die.
Nataku’s tendrils encircle me in benevolent terror. I close my eyes and see only violet.
“Sleep, child,” the Old One slurs, and I do.
Author: sistercacao
Word Count: 1060
Pairing: none
Warnings: Lovecraftian horror, kinda TWT, POV, OOC Duo (you'll see what I mean)
Rating: PG?
Summary: Set in Episode 24. Wufei, about to die, has a fever dream... or an epiphany.
“Do you believe in God?” Duo Maxwell asks me. He’s been silent for a long time, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever.
They shut the air off in the cell hours ago and I can tell we are slowly dying. My head feels heavy, my thoughts grinding slowly to a halt. Maxwell does not seem fatigued, his voice is clear and precise. It’s bizarre.
I suppose he’s asking because, barring an act of God, we are about to suffocate. I think about telling him to shut up and stop wasting our last remaining oxygen molecules, but I find it hard to care anymore. Besides, the corners of my consciousness are beginning to blacken and fade, and talking might help me stay awake a little longer before slipping into oblivion.
I consider his question. Do I believe in God?
“I’m not sure.”
“You do, don’t you?” He says forcefully, and I crack open an eye to see he is sitting up, legs crossed, peering down at me in the murky shadow. His eyes are bright and focused, I can see the violet of his irises clearly even in the dark.
“I said I’m not sure.” I sit up too, heavily, wearily. Maxwell watches the movement with only his eyes, not turning his head. He cocks a smile.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to die here,” he says strangely. I can barely make out his clothes, the expressions on his face, but his eyes are bright and fixed on me.
“Did God tell you that?” I can’t quite keep the incredulity out of my voice. I didn’t think Maxwell believed in God, somehow. I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense; he does, after all, wear the habit of a priest and call himself God, albeit one of death. I suppose that morbidity is what makes me skeptical.
“Yeah.”
“You’re kidding.” I snort. “You’re hallucinating from oxygen deprivation.”
“You’re wrong,” he says, his voice quiet, but decisive. “They are here. They have plans for us.”
“They?” I wasn’t expecting the plural form. Perhaps the Catholic getup has confused me. “Who are ‘they’?”
Very slowly, he turns his head to follow the path his eyes have already taken. I still cannot see his face, his mouth as he begins to speak, only his eyes. Violet.
“You know who They are, Wufei. You believe in Them too.”
“I assure you that I have no idea what you’re talking about, Maxwell.”
“You’ve invoked a Name before. I heard you.” I know he’s smiling, but I can’t see anything, just that violet gaze, which continues to glow bright in the gloom.
“You called your gundam Nataku.”
I almost choke. “T-that’s--”
“You were talking to Her.”
“I was...” I struggle to contain my temper. If I get upset, I might black out. There’s not enough air in the room to afford hyperventilating. “It’s an expression of respect for... someone.” I do not care to elaborate.
He peers at me for a while in silence, and seems to come to a conclusion: “You invoked Her name in ignorance.”
“Whose name?” The space around Maxwell is greying, spots forming in the shadows. His eyes are still crisp and clear, but the rest is succumbing to the darkness. I am succumbing. “Who are you talking about?”
“She is Nataku, to some,” he says, “God, to others. She has a thousand names assigned to Her. Shinigami. Death. The names do not describe Her fully, because we cannot pronounce Her true Name, just as our logic cannot comprehend Her true nature. But She hears our convocations, unsuited for the human vocal apparatus though they may be. Even those performed accidentally. She has found you worthy.”
My vision is darkening, the shadows seeming to swallow everything but Maxwell’s eyes. Violet. No, a shade beyond. The invisible end of the rainbow, the violet below violet. The eye cannot be that color. Its fragile insufficiency of melanocytes and its delicate epithelium cannot support a violet that should not exist, should not be seen.
Something stirs in the blackened corners of my consciousness, curls and slithers from the confines of Maxwell’s shadowed body, unfolds in the gloom, filling up the space of the cell. Tendrils snake their way around me, just out of sight, rushing with a sound not of Earth, like the cracking of bones folding into impossible shapes. Maxwell is suddenly huge in the darkness, and I am sure I’m going to die.
“They have plans for us,” he says, and it is Maxwell and it is not; it is the Old One, the Eternal, the God of Death and Life, such that those concepts exist to one who is eternally dead and eternally alive. I know these things because She is telling them to me, somehow, in an instant. She is explaining with a patience borne of infinite time, though the explaining of it all would surely drive me mad. She told Maxwell these things, when he, too, began to call himself by Her name.
Eternal, She waits. Her eyes are the shade below violet and they burn, they burn. “Everyone in this place will die, Wufei, so that we shall live. That is what They desire.”
The words are in my head, the language slurred with strange inflections, and I imagine what I am hearing is the difficulty to attempt the language of the corporeal with a mouth and tongue whose true speech would destroy the fleshy confines of the human mind upon its attempt to comprehend it. Perhaps I am imagining all of this entirely. Perhaps this is a dream. Perhaps I am already dead.
The Old One stretches wide, wide, Her tentacles feeling out and occupying every space, through the walls, through the universe. She is right here with me, as Maxwell is here with me, and yet She is far, far away, eons away. She is calling me. I called Her, knowing not what I did, and now She calls back to me, from the edges of reality, and only here, in the sliver of air left to me in the cell, can I hear Her. She has plans for us. We will not die. We will never die.
Nataku’s tendrils encircle me in benevolent terror. I close my eyes and see only violet.
“Sleep, child,” the Old One slurs, and I do.