Rocky Road 11, Cantaloupe 30, Rhubarb 14
Title: Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun
Flavors: Rocky Road 11: inn/hotel, Rhubarb 14: one small step for man, Cantaloupe 30: final offer
Toppings/Extra: Chopped Nuts, Butterscotch (Mashiro's death), Cherry (whatever the heck I tried to do with Ragnar, death fic), Brownie (for mine is an EPIC death fic)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5834
Summary: Some die alone and wretched, some die content under the fear; some deaths are for the best. Everyone dies; this is how it could have happened, and might yet.
Notes: Summer challenge 1/1, idea from Miyabi in an IM conversation. And to recap, Mashiro and Ragnar are the Big Bads, though their deaths happen here pre-vampiric conversion. (And on a different subject altogether, last Cantaloupe and Rocky Road! Woo!)
1. The Lonely Death of Jaida Lenore Ames
Jaida spat red, which helped very little. When she could still publicly enjoy lollipops without causing mass temptation, she'd heard a man use the phrase to emphasize his dwindling patience - "spitting blood," he'd said he was, and explained that it meant he was angry enough that he would soon gladly allow Jaida's father a more literal experience of the phrase if he didn't begin taking him seriously. Jaida's father had very little to fear, as it turned out, as the man simply stiffly informed Theo Ames that he would take his business elsewhere. It was a fortnight later, when Jaida turned eleven and learned what was meant when poets said nothing golden stayed that Theo really had something to be wary of, but that was a sling that had long since fired. Jaida had been the one spitting blood since then, angry at herself, at the world so brimming with mediocrity, at that last memory of her parents as they bled out on the floor of their living room, at the goblin she only wished she could have taken apart more slowly, more agonizingly.
Jaida spat, and she knew without looking that it stained red; she could taste the color in her mouth, the copper and the death, could feel it in the wetness on her lips. It wasn't bitter, but the taste triggered something deeply sour and sharp in her, and while it wasn't the first time she realized she was completely, utterly alone, it was the first time it rankled.
There was no one there with her; her attacker - murderer - clearly didn't kill her just to watch her die - and wasn't that a truly colossal fuck-you, getting killed by some jackass who didn't even enjoy it - and her friends were, with any luck, out cold in dead-bolted, triple-locked rooms. It was silent and still, and so very white; the snow outdoors was soft, pure, and thick, glimmering in the artificial lights of the city, casting its own layer of quiet upon the evening. It might have been peaceful if Jaida weren't dying. Everything hurt and she was breathless with sensation, with the fight against tears and pain and the keening cry that tore at her throat for escape. Everything hurt, and she was going to die in total fucking white-walled silence - she was going out quiet and defeated and there was not a body in the room, in the country to mourn her, to just be there, let alone end it quick and sharp and hot - and nothing, absolutely nothing was right about that.
She was bleeding out on the floor, with her friends near enough in their adjoining rooms to be thousands of miles further apart from her than if they were merely on the other side of the world. Sixteen years away in the past, her parents were dying alongside her, but Jaida paid just enough attention to her religious studies in between passing dirty notes and drawing stick figure porn to know they weren't going to end up in the same place.
Jaida died as she lived, and with demons enough Below to make it indistinguishable from a very long and troubling dream.
2. The Justice of the Humoresque as a Requiem
The last breath Kristen Morrow drew was tangled up in a laugh.
It began with some of the strangest, most awkward flirting she'd been privy to; she and Cliff were hunting a mark together, a basan so very far from home it could never have strayed alone. Kristen's current pet theory had been that it was smuggled across the Northern border for the monster fighting fad in Strathclyde and Soonah, but hadn't quite made the entire trip.
"Poor basan," Kristen murmured, genuinely sympathetic. "It's probably attacking out of fear - or maybe it's just snapped. It must be hard to earn respect when you look like a rooster overdosed on growth hormones."
"Well, if you want to sit this one out, I can handle it. I bet you anything this will be over before you know it," Cliff had said, and there was a sly eagerness that should not have been quite as charming as it was. Kristen smiled and said, "That's certainly the word on the street."
The basan was something Cyprian would have gotten a kick out of - ("A fire-breathing cock, really? I'm pretty sure there's a pill for this," Kristen could just hear him saying) - but which wasn't so much a laughing matter with just herself and Cliff. They'd managed to make light of the poor monster anyhow, turning its death into a contest - who had the least amount of chicken scratch clawed into them, who got in the best hits, who could pull off the most ridiculously complex evasion. It took only a short while for the basan to die, and okay, so maybe Kristen shouldn't have spent quite so much time staring the dead bird in the eye, because yes it was dead, but all things died.
But Kristen had always lived oblivious to change, let it sneak up on her with the force of a train, so on the other hand, it was unfair to expect any more of her just because the change came in the form of a second basan dislocating a few ribs and pecking an inconvenient hole in her.
She screamed, which only made the pain worse, and screamed louder from the fresh agony in her chest, but she did manage to fend it off long enough for it to spot Cliff before falling and trying to stitch herself back into the paragon of control she'd always thought she'd been. She ached for Humpty Dumpty in that moment.
Cliff fought hard and fast, clumsier and far more careless than he'd ever been, eyes coming back to rest on her every tenth second, his whimpered mantra of "No, no, no, no," sounding like nothing more than broken whimpering from some horribly abused animal confronted with a speeding foot.
Kristen gathered herself up and and threw her knives at the second basan. There was no sympathy in her when she realized it was dead, no awe like there had been with its other, because suddenly death was the commonest thing in the world. Cliff tripped over himself in his rush to come to her side.
"What?" Kristen said, as kindly as she could. Waves of dizziness rolled over her, but she did her best to ignore them. "There's nothing wrong. See? I'm still stan-"
And of course she collapsed right there and then. She felt Cliff catch her, but she was lying half in his lap, half in his arms, and there was another half of her she couldn't quite feel lying on the ground. At least she was atop the soil and not six feet underneath it, she thought to herself, but that wouldn't last long.
"Oops," Kristen said, and allowed herself to smile. Cliff choked on a strangled sound that might have been words, but was just as likely to have been an aborted cry. He tried his luck again, and words came out: "Come on, stay with me, Kristen. I've - I've got a restorative draught somewhere - god, remind me to label my pockets-"
He was so young. Eighteen, barely a man. It never escaped her how young he was, this Cliff Knight, but - the truth was so was she. She'd been alive for twenty-four years, and how many of those years did she spend happy? How many of those years did she spend well? It wasn't her fault, but under all the years that weren't her own, she was barely older than this boy. They already made each other happy - they could have worked. Cliff had his entire future ahead of him, and so had she.
She had.
"I told you I never loved you," Kristen said, and was just as surprised at the sudden rasp as Cliff. "But I - I could have. I could easily have. And I do."
Cliff's eyes brightened involuntarily, and Kristen realized the brightness was tears. They were more than she deserved, and she wanted to tell him so, but - around the twisting of her lips, bitter and sweet and kind of happy, what came out was, "You really cared for me."
There were no stars out tonight, and it was dark - darker than it had ever been in Daldain or Strathclyde, with their artificial lights always burning as if it could chase away the darkness of the gutters and the gospel of the street corners - but she had all the brilliant beauty she could ever wish for. He was right there, and that was more than she could have ever expected of anyone just eight months ago. It was a bit of a joke, her life was. A little funny.
Cliff caressed her face, touched her hair as if it was in danger of disappearing with the dawn like fairy's treasure, and he was right there. This was how bad things had to be for her to let her guard down. To be happy.
It was just the tiniest bit funny. A killer joke.
Kristen laughed off the punchline, and Cliff - poor Cliff, who would never get the joke - clutched her to his chest, his heart breaking against her, but Kristen still managed to slip away.
3. Small Favors
It was really rather fortunate that Cyprian was too dead to hear what the kelp in his pants had to say about their resting place; he'd gotten abuse enough in life.
The kelp, of course, being prospectively the least of his concerns, would have also been the first thing he'd notice, followed by the overwhelmingly cold water. After lamenting his being brought back to life only to die unpleasantly and with soiled underwear again, and why did he ever expect otherwise, he might have noticed that someone had tossed him in the goddamn ocean and apparently he had been more welcomed there than anywhere else. As it was, the tiny fish making itself at home in his mouth happily met no resistance, the algae recolored his eyes a mossier, lighter green, and the kelp and sargassum continued to disapprove of their roost.
The kicker was that whatever sorry, panicked soul had dumped Cyprian in the sea did so needlessly; his wasn't the sort of murder you could pin on just anyone. There was seldom any human person who would bother trying to drain a man dry with pronged puncture wounds, and fewer could leave as little blood left as there was.
There hadn't been a dumped body in the seas by Soonah for many thousands of years, but the sea welcomed Cyprian's body as it did any oddity.
"What do you think it was?" said the sargassum collective to a strand of kelp. "We have seen nothing like it. It could not have lived long, could it have, with fins like these?"
"They're limbs, not fins," said the kelp. "I've seen something like them - not quite an exact fit. Bulging heads and four odd, long fins - they called themselves otters. Claimed there was a dry world beyond this one, and that was where they gathered their breath. I always thought they were a little over the bend, but now..."
"There is a world beyond?" said the collective. "This is not something we have heard of before. Is it possible?"
"I've heard fish mention a suffocating sea, where everything is bright and painful and they are helpless to move," another kelp said thoughtfully. "They describe staring at the face of a higher being - very much like this creature - which communicates with a strange unknown language before delivering the fish safely back into the proper world."
The plants took in a moment of the kind of profound silence shared between those who have looked down at the edge of the known world and discovered that it was not quite flat, and possibly not quite the end of all things it had always appeared to be.
"Well," said a kelp, from somewhere inside the body's underwear, "from where I'm looking, a magnificent being this ain't."
"Do you suppose," said another kelp, young and simple, "that there are more of this creature? Will they come looking for him, and will they judge us if we let his death be pointless?"
"Oh, god damn it, kelp," the first kelp said. "Why would they do that?"
"Perhaps," the young kelp spoke quietly, "he is here to test our worth. His kind must not spend all their time in a world where everything is slow and blinding and painful; perhaps, there is a kinder, gentler world, and they want to steer us all towards it. But...only if we are ready to live in such a place."
Another silence.
"We shall not let this creature's death be vain," said the collective sargassum, "for we must not forget that, even if there are no Higher Waters, that ours is a short time to fill with wonder; too short for us to be anything but good and worthy."
And if Cyprian were still alive, if he could have spoken, he still wouldn't have, because he would have spent every last breath laughing that someone would have mistaken him for a divine messenger, that his body got more respect bloated and drained and lifeless and desiccated than it had whole and well. Of course the only living things that would love him for his body would have no interest in taking advantage of it. But he wouldn't have complained, not really. Sargassum had been somewhere in his top three best plants to grow since his first acquired sample some ten years ago in the war, and had proved a decent replacement for some rarer hydrophytes with a little tampering. They'd saved the lives of his platoon, every one of them, at least twice, and though they had all died in the end, it had given them all time enough to compose those last letters the night before the massacre, and that was worth something greater than his post-mortem dignity. There was no dignity in death; everyone ended up cold and soiled and rotting, and in the end time and the history books forgot everyone. It was how you were remembered and what was done with your memory that determined your worth, not for how long and how often your name showed in textbooks forced on a bored classroom more concerned with the girl next to them, the boy just behind them than the events that wouldn't directly touch on their lives. Cyprian always knew that sooner or later he'd wind up dirt in the ground; at least this way, that dirt would never be used to raise mandrakes to harm and shrill or to cultivate roses, who all seemed to harbor loathing and jealousy under the overrated redness of their petals.
Over the years, the body transformed, sacrificing pieces of itself for the growth of young kelp and sargassum, and while he'd never view his death as anything but blatant overkill and his life as anything but too short and unsatisfying, he just might have been glad that his body, at the very least, could do something right.
Over time, the bones of Cyprian were wrapped in kelp and sargassum, and it was the bones of him that held the two species together, unified in symbol and structure.
4. Here Comes the Sun
It was April nineteenth, 3899, and Cliff was holding his tiny little sister, barely five years old, in his arms and idly considering, for the first time, that maybe what made his grandfather so powerful a knight was having something wonderful and grand to live for as well as having something worthy to die protecting.
Cliff hadn't prayed in a long time, long enough that he measured the distance between his last day of worship and the present not in years, but the events that flanked and created it. He remembered the day before, all the ways his stepfather broke apart the scaffolding of his life and the way his words flayed and stung as he explained that Cliff's humanity had been wrapped around the meat and nerves and bones of him entirely the wrong way, how he'd tried so hard to make him a decent, presentable heir, but that Cliff was the permanent sort of black stain. Cliff remembers the night that followed, the way he'd wondered and thought with a brain that was, after fourteen years, only beginning to fire with the proper cylinders. He remembers the way the sun burned away the dark cast of the night with a brilliance he'd never noticed before when he rose to meet the dawn the next morning, the way it burned away the tiny flecks of faith that survived the night as he determined to live his life according to his own plans, not anyone else's. Faith, he'd thought, wasn't something he would ever need again.
And today, though his faith was as battered and small, he prayed again.
It was summer, the sky full of corpse candles flaring and hot with the fires of the hall of infernos, and Cliff was alone in a manse that in all its grandeur never quite fit him. Outside, his father took up his sword against the demons, and Cliff had faith profound and solid enough to kick that his father would win out against the lot of them.
Cyprian had spoken quietly of his time in the Sangrian prison camps during his war, the first war, what he and his men suffered under Ragnar Merridan, the things that changed inside you that you thought were totally impervious to change. Cliff remembered, too, that he'd joked about Ragnar and Cyprian's forbidden love; he remembered the way he'd never even thought it might be true, be anything but Cyprian trying to be an asshole. Through hindsight, Cliff thought he could see the weariness and the paranoia hidden almost perfectly beneath the irritation that came so easily to him, could recall tiny indicators that Cyprian half expected untold horrors to befall them at the drop of a hat even in those fledgling days of their acquaintance. Cyprian might have had crap for stamina in those first few months of their trek, but he was by far the best damn runner Cliff had met.
It was May, and Cliff, young and sheltered, believed in the world and the righteousness of life with a strength that he could dash himself against if he wasn't very careful.
Cliff missed him sometimes, when his name - when any of their names - didn't make his throat try to rip itself apart to keep from vocalizing his self-loathing and guilt. He was not far gone enough that he would have given the enemy any kind of solace.
It was 3999, and Cliff had the sneaking suspicion, watching the most beautiful creature ever conceived drool on her pillow beside him, that everything was going to be all right. Kristen Morrow was physically nothing incredible, as lovely and long-limbed and beautiful as she was, but she was such a kind and loving and hopeful woman even after the life she'd lived that you didn't immediately notice that, and Cliff didn't want anyone else ever again. It was a kind of powerful, reverent belief all in itself.
Sometimes while he dreamed, he shouted his grief with feeling enough behind it that it burst out of his skull and from his lips, and he woke up every time wishing he could erase himself. He knew it wouldn't happen; even the nifty little putty erasers his sister kept in every pocket she owned left faint impressions of what had been. The strongest pencils created lines and shadows too dark to ever really be erased even a little bit; Selene tried it once. The darkness only spread, the remains of other pencil drawings left on the eraser combining to make the current drawing even darker, and what he did was stronger than any pencil sketch Selene drew, darker and more massive and hopelessly ruined than the rough sketch of their cellar.
It was 3999, and even though his arm was broken, his family was dead, he was wanted by a powerful and merciless crime lord back home, and a crazy lady with red, red lips knew where he slept and kept smiling at him whenever he caught her sharpening her blades, life was good.
Cliff remembered mostly that he let his friends die. He'd chosen their deaths. The vampires, fuck, he'd understood that strain of madness, but he was a human being - but the hell was his damage? Ragnar's ultimatum, the one Cyprian had been forced to answer years ago; Cliff had been less man than Cyprian had - Cyprian, the pink-haired botanist - and had done nothing but stare at the rope of the noose and wonder if the terror would overwhelm the pain if his head didn't snap when - if - he hanged himself.
Then the first day came to an end, and he'd been forced to dictate which of his friends would die first, and how. He'd never touched the rope, not even when it was just him and Kris left.
They'd made him watch. They'd made him deliver the news and watch the ensuing shit storm of humanity, the way Kristen had said she didn't blame him even when her eyes did nothing but blame him long after she'd been burned. Hers had been the easiest death assigned - Jaida had been dismembered, first her fingernails and then her digits, fingers and toes both, and Cliff just did not ever think about her unless he wanted to scream himself voiceless - but Kristen's was the death that left Cliff so that the sound of her name sent him into hysterics, the upward curve of anyone's lips reminding him that no smile would ever be reassuring ever again.
Kristen had smiled, just before she walked to the crematorium. Cliff couldn't stop seeing it.
It is morning, and Cliff is lost and uncertain under the bright warmth of the sunshine, but there is still so much hope for the future and he doesn't miss the intangible weight he left in the murk of the night. The sun burns in its heaven unconcernedly, and Cliff can feel himself being pulled in by it, just a little.
Cliff had plenty of reasons to distrust faith, because although he'd not prayed to any deity or spirit in years so great he couldn't account for them, faith let him down many times before and since. But here and now, he closed his eyes and prayed because there was nothing else he could do, trapped on the mercy seat as he was. He prayed, not only for himself but for all the people he let down in turn, his grandfather and his biological father, his mother and his sister, the people he traveled with; he even found himself wishing his stepfather's soul well. And then he opened his eyes, kept his focus away from his witnesses, and waited.
It was the morning of Saturday, September 6th, 4002, and Cliff was ready to meet the sun.
5. And Not Fade Away
It all begins with the sharp cauterization of his memories, his nerves flaring with agony and fury, pumping him full of spite, and when he peels back the gossamer
layers of his surface thoughts, there lies the sense of perpetual unchanging motion, and of a name; Shroedinger. He's certain he lives only for the simmering
discontented tides of wrath and bloodlust within him; he's more right in the mornings than he'll know until twilight, but as dawn's fire catches the sea, again
he forgets and again he returns, degraded. He has forgotten so much already, though he suspects. Soldier no longer has meaning beyond the concise
noun, one who contends or serves in a cause. His name is gone from him, and his life, too, worthless and ill-regarded until lost; and beneath
everything, buried so far back any sudden movement would jerk it free, there is the first day, the abhorrence and bitterness of Lieutenant Ragnar
Merridan as he considered his shameful legacy, death by civilians, lending to the enemies hope and stories, all resources which needed no
rationing. And there is too the slaughter, that first blood shed as an unearthly thing, and the first glint of developing thought which would
be the first realization that something was wrong with him, something essential and cherished had not made it across the great divide.
The whys will always be lost, but he knows that his endurance was grander than any fledgling spooks', and he knows that he damn
well made use of the power that thrummed inside him as naturally as his absentee heart once had; if he dwells long enough the
shade of Ragnar may recall the taste of living mortal terror, more satisfyingly bittersweet than raspberries, richer and headier
than the finest, priciest and well-brewed lilac wine. But the first thing he would recall could only be the reeling shock which
overtook the hate, the vicious need to rend, harm, kill, the impressions which loosed it - "I am not here. I am not me."
And it was true, there in his hands if he'd only took care to examine them right; he was there, but missing his core,
his soul - whatever he was, whatever name suited him, he was just AI and a bible of memories, not even whole.
He would remember remembering a girl he'd admired - no, he'd loved her body - and still this was not all true,
he'd just liked the twisted, beautiful style in her POW culling. The point was there was a girl, Elle Surlen, a
girl who'd wanted to be Shroedinger's cat. Her theory had been that if she could everywhere at once,
then it'd be logical to assume she could be in every tiny slice of remaining paradise on Anharo and
all the infinite Edens of the heavens, and the Lieutenant had decided right then that someone had
replaced her brains with shit without telling anyone. Who the fuck would want to be everywhere
always? It meant you'd be there when the world ended, you'd be there when your mother was
violated, when she was breaking and slipping out of her shock and each time she thought
about it; somewhere in time and space, Ragnar had already moved on, but his loathing
hadn't died with him. Ragnar numbered two, and one of them - him - was left in a hell.
And deeper yet, there was the knowledge of magically-timed bombs, the way they
began as entire spells for however long you'd set its charge time for, and how
they'd perpetuate the cipher inside them a little less complete with every
parsing, how it steadily forgot that there was a sum greater than ten,
than nine, than eight, until it made its way into reality for a fleeting
energy explosion before being erased totally, leaving no traces
to be found. Dusk is in its death throes when the shade finds
all this sunk deep inside him, and he angrily crushes the
limestone that survived the abandonment of its
town by the slant-eyed fuckers who killed him.
He imagines he can feel whatever makes
up his consciousness falling away like
sands down a time glass, and he
thinks to himself, subdued in a
way he can't remember ever
feeling, that he must have
well and truly forgotten
who and what he had
awaiting his return;
when he thinks of
his probable fate
of total oblivion
he just grins
and feels
nothing
much.
6. Waking in the White Room
Mashiro Yuuki had not seen another living creature for precisely nine days, and had not had contact with a living being in roughly three. Mashiro would normally not mind as much, but he'd been assured that he'd be stuck in isolation for only seven, and that last moment of contact had been Sergeant Seurat Blomkvist informing him that his release would be delayed for a few hours, but he'd not been told why. Since that, there had been nothing, not even food, and Mashiro knew he'd done nothing to deserve extended punishment; everything he had to hide was out in the open now. His parents would be pissed, but they were goddamn pacifists, not sadists. Draconians were stronger than humans, were capable of a greater resilience, but Draconians were not invincible, and not even the most deeply misinformed racial supremacist would even bother denying that. Nine days alone in a dimly lit room, painted white from every angle, and three of those days without sustenance and deliberately set on edge. This was in no universe right. This was in no universe the sort of - experiment, or game, whatever his punishment had turned into - a just and divinely descended race would partake in.
Mashiro began speaking to himself the day after that, though not so much because he was lonesome or very worked up about anything in particular; it was just that he had been trapped alone for ten days, seeing and hearing nothing for four, and even the Executive Power had not been alone in the world for longer than two before creating sound and sentience and light, things to fill the endless nothing that had been so desolate that the emptiness had within itself its own emptiness.
In that room with Mashiro, though the walls did not stretch out to discover eternity, there were the vestiges of that great and terrible nothingness.
The dryness became its own thing, and reality turned into a distraction, bending like a ray of sunlight beneath the stillness of the Zarnich River until it was not reality at all, but something not quite there, not as ever-present around him as it should have been.
If reality hadn't ruptured, then what was his sister doing just over there, touching the walls like they were the pale white skin of Yon?
"Silly," said Rina, "Yon himself can't help you here. What would a god of life do here? In a box like this only Death and the Executive Power may enter."
"You're not real," Mashiro said. Rina arched a golden eyebrow - and, that was right, she'd dyed it with the rest of her hair the day before he left. "On the contrary, I'm more real than you are. I'm out there somewhere, living. And where are you? Did they even let you see to which containment cell you'd be trapped in?"
They had not, and the blindfold had been cool and soft against his eyelids. Mashiro almost wished that they'd let him keep it; hallucination or not, it hurt to look at Rina, because she'd been right - he'd never see her again.
Two days later, his heart slowed in his chest, as if winded. It was beginning - good. Mashiro might have breathed a sigh of relief, but breath dried his tongue, and it was already large and stiff like a log in his mouth.
"You can stop any time," Mashiro told his heart, and didn't worry a bit about being crazy, because when you already spoke to your delusions and to yourself, when you stopped praying for the end of the genocide of your people and began to pray for death, what strand of sanity and reason was there left for you to reach for?
Mashiro woke up the next day and sat up to stand, but stars met him from behind his eyes and around his head, and Mashiro flopped uselessly back down to sleep again, dizzy and shot through with sparks of shock to find himself the center of the small universe around him.
When he woke again, he didn't open his eyes, and ignored the dry, scarring heat he felt on his skin, the touch of the burning shaped like fingers. Nor did he bother the second time, or the third, or the times he forgot about or simply didn't care to recount. His stomach had stopped keening for sustenance what seemed like so long ago. He wasn't really sure if it had been days ago or mere hours. Time, like reality, was beginning to lose meaning.
The day came when he opened his eyes and saw a girl he didn't recognize, urging him not to give up. She was brand new every time his vision returned to him after blinking, though he saw her through a film of snowy static, as if she was a photograph from many hundreds of years ago.
"I'm your sister," the girl cried, and Mashiro closed his eyes against her. He didn't know why - she was cute, after all - but looking at her was unpleasant. He only hoped sleep came soon - what sort of lunatic was the girl? Mashiro could no more have a sister than the walls could be hiding a world beyond. He was the first and the last being in the world.
When the scouts and trainees from the Sixth Vanguard came and discovered the massacre at Gyoro Mais, when they looked into containment cell seventeen, it wasn't Mashiro they found, but a thing freshly crawled from some fearless sadist's worst nightmare, and there had been an overwhelming relief when it was established that he was also a casualty. His body burned with his comrades', and his family was told only that he had died giving aid to the fallen. There was not a soldier brave enough to present the truth to Daisuke and Yumeka Yuuki - they were good and kind people. There was no need to show them how far gone from stern lectures and "I told you so's" their son was.
Nearly two thousand years into the future, Anharo was a world without Draconians, but there were no nations besieged by genocide and the sun still hung bright in the sky. It was the year Cyprian Corvo and Sorensen Carter Knox would introduce love-lies-bleeding to the world and the year the Knight clan would be revived, the manor reconstructed by the hands of its naive dreamer of an heir and his wife-to-be, and it would last for many years after their deaths.
It was nearly two thousand years into a future without Mashiro Yuuki, and there was a certain, steady stumbling towards a mass happily ever after that thanked him for his absence.
Story Continuity: Battle For the Sun
Flavors: Rocky Road 11: inn/hotel, Rhubarb 14: one small step for man, Cantaloupe 30: final offer
Toppings/Extra: Chopped Nuts, Butterscotch (Mashiro's death), Cherry (whatever the heck I tried to do with Ragnar, death fic), Brownie (for mine is an EPIC death fic)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5834
Summary: Some die alone and wretched, some die content under the fear; some deaths are for the best. Everyone dies; this is how it could have happened, and might yet.
Notes: Summer challenge 1/1, idea from Miyabi in an IM conversation. And to recap, Mashiro and Ragnar are the Big Bads, though their deaths happen here pre-vampiric conversion. (And on a different subject altogether, last Cantaloupe and Rocky Road! Woo!)
1. The Lonely Death of Jaida Lenore Ames
Jaida spat red, which helped very little. When she could still publicly enjoy lollipops without causing mass temptation, she'd heard a man use the phrase to emphasize his dwindling patience - "spitting blood," he'd said he was, and explained that it meant he was angry enough that he would soon gladly allow Jaida's father a more literal experience of the phrase if he didn't begin taking him seriously. Jaida's father had very little to fear, as it turned out, as the man simply stiffly informed Theo Ames that he would take his business elsewhere. It was a fortnight later, when Jaida turned eleven and learned what was meant when poets said nothing golden stayed that Theo really had something to be wary of, but that was a sling that had long since fired. Jaida had been the one spitting blood since then, angry at herself, at the world so brimming with mediocrity, at that last memory of her parents as they bled out on the floor of their living room, at the goblin she only wished she could have taken apart more slowly, more agonizingly.
Jaida spat, and she knew without looking that it stained red; she could taste the color in her mouth, the copper and the death, could feel it in the wetness on her lips. It wasn't bitter, but the taste triggered something deeply sour and sharp in her, and while it wasn't the first time she realized she was completely, utterly alone, it was the first time it rankled.
There was no one there with her; her attacker - murderer - clearly didn't kill her just to watch her die - and wasn't that a truly colossal fuck-you, getting killed by some jackass who didn't even enjoy it - and her friends were, with any luck, out cold in dead-bolted, triple-locked rooms. It was silent and still, and so very white; the snow outdoors was soft, pure, and thick, glimmering in the artificial lights of the city, casting its own layer of quiet upon the evening. It might have been peaceful if Jaida weren't dying. Everything hurt and she was breathless with sensation, with the fight against tears and pain and the keening cry that tore at her throat for escape. Everything hurt, and she was going to die in total fucking white-walled silence - she was going out quiet and defeated and there was not a body in the room, in the country to mourn her, to just be there, let alone end it quick and sharp and hot - and nothing, absolutely nothing was right about that.
She was bleeding out on the floor, with her friends near enough in their adjoining rooms to be thousands of miles further apart from her than if they were merely on the other side of the world. Sixteen years away in the past, her parents were dying alongside her, but Jaida paid just enough attention to her religious studies in between passing dirty notes and drawing stick figure porn to know they weren't going to end up in the same place.
Jaida died as she lived, and with demons enough Below to make it indistinguishable from a very long and troubling dream.
2. The Justice of the Humoresque as a Requiem
The last breath Kristen Morrow drew was tangled up in a laugh.
It began with some of the strangest, most awkward flirting she'd been privy to; she and Cliff were hunting a mark together, a basan so very far from home it could never have strayed alone. Kristen's current pet theory had been that it was smuggled across the Northern border for the monster fighting fad in Strathclyde and Soonah, but hadn't quite made the entire trip.
"Poor basan," Kristen murmured, genuinely sympathetic. "It's probably attacking out of fear - or maybe it's just snapped. It must be hard to earn respect when you look like a rooster overdosed on growth hormones."
"Well, if you want to sit this one out, I can handle it. I bet you anything this will be over before you know it," Cliff had said, and there was a sly eagerness that should not have been quite as charming as it was. Kristen smiled and said, "That's certainly the word on the street."
The basan was something Cyprian would have gotten a kick out of - ("A fire-breathing cock, really? I'm pretty sure there's a pill for this," Kristen could just hear him saying) - but which wasn't so much a laughing matter with just herself and Cliff. They'd managed to make light of the poor monster anyhow, turning its death into a contest - who had the least amount of chicken scratch clawed into them, who got in the best hits, who could pull off the most ridiculously complex evasion. It took only a short while for the basan to die, and okay, so maybe Kristen shouldn't have spent quite so much time staring the dead bird in the eye, because yes it was dead, but all things died.
But Kristen had always lived oblivious to change, let it sneak up on her with the force of a train, so on the other hand, it was unfair to expect any more of her just because the change came in the form of a second basan dislocating a few ribs and pecking an inconvenient hole in her.
She screamed, which only made the pain worse, and screamed louder from the fresh agony in her chest, but she did manage to fend it off long enough for it to spot Cliff before falling and trying to stitch herself back into the paragon of control she'd always thought she'd been. She ached for Humpty Dumpty in that moment.
Cliff fought hard and fast, clumsier and far more careless than he'd ever been, eyes coming back to rest on her every tenth second, his whimpered mantra of "No, no, no, no," sounding like nothing more than broken whimpering from some horribly abused animal confronted with a speeding foot.
Kristen gathered herself up and and threw her knives at the second basan. There was no sympathy in her when she realized it was dead, no awe like there had been with its other, because suddenly death was the commonest thing in the world. Cliff tripped over himself in his rush to come to her side.
"What?" Kristen said, as kindly as she could. Waves of dizziness rolled over her, but she did her best to ignore them. "There's nothing wrong. See? I'm still stan-"
And of course she collapsed right there and then. She felt Cliff catch her, but she was lying half in his lap, half in his arms, and there was another half of her she couldn't quite feel lying on the ground. At least she was atop the soil and not six feet underneath it, she thought to herself, but that wouldn't last long.
"Oops," Kristen said, and allowed herself to smile. Cliff choked on a strangled sound that might have been words, but was just as likely to have been an aborted cry. He tried his luck again, and words came out: "Come on, stay with me, Kristen. I've - I've got a restorative draught somewhere - god, remind me to label my pockets-"
He was so young. Eighteen, barely a man. It never escaped her how young he was, this Cliff Knight, but - the truth was so was she. She'd been alive for twenty-four years, and how many of those years did she spend happy? How many of those years did she spend well? It wasn't her fault, but under all the years that weren't her own, she was barely older than this boy. They already made each other happy - they could have worked. Cliff had his entire future ahead of him, and so had she.
She had.
"I told you I never loved you," Kristen said, and was just as surprised at the sudden rasp as Cliff. "But I - I could have. I could easily have. And I do."
Cliff's eyes brightened involuntarily, and Kristen realized the brightness was tears. They were more than she deserved, and she wanted to tell him so, but - around the twisting of her lips, bitter and sweet and kind of happy, what came out was, "You really cared for me."
There were no stars out tonight, and it was dark - darker than it had ever been in Daldain or Strathclyde, with their artificial lights always burning as if it could chase away the darkness of the gutters and the gospel of the street corners - but she had all the brilliant beauty she could ever wish for. He was right there, and that was more than she could have ever expected of anyone just eight months ago. It was a bit of a joke, her life was. A little funny.
Cliff caressed her face, touched her hair as if it was in danger of disappearing with the dawn like fairy's treasure, and he was right there. This was how bad things had to be for her to let her guard down. To be happy.
It was just the tiniest bit funny. A killer joke.
Kristen laughed off the punchline, and Cliff - poor Cliff, who would never get the joke - clutched her to his chest, his heart breaking against her, but Kristen still managed to slip away.
3. Small Favors
It was really rather fortunate that Cyprian was too dead to hear what the kelp in his pants had to say about their resting place; he'd gotten abuse enough in life.
The kelp, of course, being prospectively the least of his concerns, would have also been the first thing he'd notice, followed by the overwhelmingly cold water. After lamenting his being brought back to life only to die unpleasantly and with soiled underwear again, and why did he ever expect otherwise, he might have noticed that someone had tossed him in the goddamn ocean and apparently he had been more welcomed there than anywhere else. As it was, the tiny fish making itself at home in his mouth happily met no resistance, the algae recolored his eyes a mossier, lighter green, and the kelp and sargassum continued to disapprove of their roost.
The kicker was that whatever sorry, panicked soul had dumped Cyprian in the sea did so needlessly; his wasn't the sort of murder you could pin on just anyone. There was seldom any human person who would bother trying to drain a man dry with pronged puncture wounds, and fewer could leave as little blood left as there was.
There hadn't been a dumped body in the seas by Soonah for many thousands of years, but the sea welcomed Cyprian's body as it did any oddity.
"What do you think it was?" said the sargassum collective to a strand of kelp. "We have seen nothing like it. It could not have lived long, could it have, with fins like these?"
"They're limbs, not fins," said the kelp. "I've seen something like them - not quite an exact fit. Bulging heads and four odd, long fins - they called themselves otters. Claimed there was a dry world beyond this one, and that was where they gathered their breath. I always thought they were a little over the bend, but now..."
"There is a world beyond?" said the collective. "This is not something we have heard of before. Is it possible?"
"I've heard fish mention a suffocating sea, where everything is bright and painful and they are helpless to move," another kelp said thoughtfully. "They describe staring at the face of a higher being - very much like this creature - which communicates with a strange unknown language before delivering the fish safely back into the proper world."
The plants took in a moment of the kind of profound silence shared between those who have looked down at the edge of the known world and discovered that it was not quite flat, and possibly not quite the end of all things it had always appeared to be.
"Well," said a kelp, from somewhere inside the body's underwear, "from where I'm looking, a magnificent being this ain't."
"Do you suppose," said another kelp, young and simple, "that there are more of this creature? Will they come looking for him, and will they judge us if we let his death be pointless?"
"Oh, god damn it, kelp," the first kelp said. "Why would they do that?"
"Perhaps," the young kelp spoke quietly, "he is here to test our worth. His kind must not spend all their time in a world where everything is slow and blinding and painful; perhaps, there is a kinder, gentler world, and they want to steer us all towards it. But...only if we are ready to live in such a place."
Another silence.
"We shall not let this creature's death be vain," said the collective sargassum, "for we must not forget that, even if there are no Higher Waters, that ours is a short time to fill with wonder; too short for us to be anything but good and worthy."
And if Cyprian were still alive, if he could have spoken, he still wouldn't have, because he would have spent every last breath laughing that someone would have mistaken him for a divine messenger, that his body got more respect bloated and drained and lifeless and desiccated than it had whole and well. Of course the only living things that would love him for his body would have no interest in taking advantage of it. But he wouldn't have complained, not really. Sargassum had been somewhere in his top three best plants to grow since his first acquired sample some ten years ago in the war, and had proved a decent replacement for some rarer hydrophytes with a little tampering. They'd saved the lives of his platoon, every one of them, at least twice, and though they had all died in the end, it had given them all time enough to compose those last letters the night before the massacre, and that was worth something greater than his post-mortem dignity. There was no dignity in death; everyone ended up cold and soiled and rotting, and in the end time and the history books forgot everyone. It was how you were remembered and what was done with your memory that determined your worth, not for how long and how often your name showed in textbooks forced on a bored classroom more concerned with the girl next to them, the boy just behind them than the events that wouldn't directly touch on their lives. Cyprian always knew that sooner or later he'd wind up dirt in the ground; at least this way, that dirt would never be used to raise mandrakes to harm and shrill or to cultivate roses, who all seemed to harbor loathing and jealousy under the overrated redness of their petals.
Over the years, the body transformed, sacrificing pieces of itself for the growth of young kelp and sargassum, and while he'd never view his death as anything but blatant overkill and his life as anything but too short and unsatisfying, he just might have been glad that his body, at the very least, could do something right.
Over time, the bones of Cyprian were wrapped in kelp and sargassum, and it was the bones of him that held the two species together, unified in symbol and structure.
4. Here Comes the Sun
It was April nineteenth, 3899, and Cliff was holding his tiny little sister, barely five years old, in his arms and idly considering, for the first time, that maybe what made his grandfather so powerful a knight was having something wonderful and grand to live for as well as having something worthy to die protecting.
Cliff hadn't prayed in a long time, long enough that he measured the distance between his last day of worship and the present not in years, but the events that flanked and created it. He remembered the day before, all the ways his stepfather broke apart the scaffolding of his life and the way his words flayed and stung as he explained that Cliff's humanity had been wrapped around the meat and nerves and bones of him entirely the wrong way, how he'd tried so hard to make him a decent, presentable heir, but that Cliff was the permanent sort of black stain. Cliff remembers the night that followed, the way he'd wondered and thought with a brain that was, after fourteen years, only beginning to fire with the proper cylinders. He remembers the way the sun burned away the dark cast of the night with a brilliance he'd never noticed before when he rose to meet the dawn the next morning, the way it burned away the tiny flecks of faith that survived the night as he determined to live his life according to his own plans, not anyone else's. Faith, he'd thought, wasn't something he would ever need again.
And today, though his faith was as battered and small, he prayed again.
It was summer, the sky full of corpse candles flaring and hot with the fires of the hall of infernos, and Cliff was alone in a manse that in all its grandeur never quite fit him. Outside, his father took up his sword against the demons, and Cliff had faith profound and solid enough to kick that his father would win out against the lot of them.
Cyprian had spoken quietly of his time in the Sangrian prison camps during his war, the first war, what he and his men suffered under Ragnar Merridan, the things that changed inside you that you thought were totally impervious to change. Cliff remembered, too, that he'd joked about Ragnar and Cyprian's forbidden love; he remembered the way he'd never even thought it might be true, be anything but Cyprian trying to be an asshole. Through hindsight, Cliff thought he could see the weariness and the paranoia hidden almost perfectly beneath the irritation that came so easily to him, could recall tiny indicators that Cyprian half expected untold horrors to befall them at the drop of a hat even in those fledgling days of their acquaintance. Cyprian might have had crap for stamina in those first few months of their trek, but he was by far the best damn runner Cliff had met.
It was May, and Cliff, young and sheltered, believed in the world and the righteousness of life with a strength that he could dash himself against if he wasn't very careful.
Cliff missed him sometimes, when his name - when any of their names - didn't make his throat try to rip itself apart to keep from vocalizing his self-loathing and guilt. He was not far gone enough that he would have given the enemy any kind of solace.
It was 3999, and Cliff had the sneaking suspicion, watching the most beautiful creature ever conceived drool on her pillow beside him, that everything was going to be all right. Kristen Morrow was physically nothing incredible, as lovely and long-limbed and beautiful as she was, but she was such a kind and loving and hopeful woman even after the life she'd lived that you didn't immediately notice that, and Cliff didn't want anyone else ever again. It was a kind of powerful, reverent belief all in itself.
Sometimes while he dreamed, he shouted his grief with feeling enough behind it that it burst out of his skull and from his lips, and he woke up every time wishing he could erase himself. He knew it wouldn't happen; even the nifty little putty erasers his sister kept in every pocket she owned left faint impressions of what had been. The strongest pencils created lines and shadows too dark to ever really be erased even a little bit; Selene tried it once. The darkness only spread, the remains of other pencil drawings left on the eraser combining to make the current drawing even darker, and what he did was stronger than any pencil sketch Selene drew, darker and more massive and hopelessly ruined than the rough sketch of their cellar.
It was 3999, and even though his arm was broken, his family was dead, he was wanted by a powerful and merciless crime lord back home, and a crazy lady with red, red lips knew where he slept and kept smiling at him whenever he caught her sharpening her blades, life was good.
Cliff remembered mostly that he let his friends die. He'd chosen their deaths. The vampires, fuck, he'd understood that strain of madness, but he was a human being - but the hell was his damage? Ragnar's ultimatum, the one Cyprian had been forced to answer years ago; Cliff had been less man than Cyprian had - Cyprian, the pink-haired botanist - and had done nothing but stare at the rope of the noose and wonder if the terror would overwhelm the pain if his head didn't snap when - if - he hanged himself.
Then the first day came to an end, and he'd been forced to dictate which of his friends would die first, and how. He'd never touched the rope, not even when it was just him and Kris left.
They'd made him watch. They'd made him deliver the news and watch the ensuing shit storm of humanity, the way Kristen had said she didn't blame him even when her eyes did nothing but blame him long after she'd been burned. Hers had been the easiest death assigned - Jaida had been dismembered, first her fingernails and then her digits, fingers and toes both, and Cliff just did not ever think about her unless he wanted to scream himself voiceless - but Kristen's was the death that left Cliff so that the sound of her name sent him into hysterics, the upward curve of anyone's lips reminding him that no smile would ever be reassuring ever again.
Kristen had smiled, just before she walked to the crematorium. Cliff couldn't stop seeing it.
It is morning, and Cliff is lost and uncertain under the bright warmth of the sunshine, but there is still so much hope for the future and he doesn't miss the intangible weight he left in the murk of the night. The sun burns in its heaven unconcernedly, and Cliff can feel himself being pulled in by it, just a little.
Cliff had plenty of reasons to distrust faith, because although he'd not prayed to any deity or spirit in years so great he couldn't account for them, faith let him down many times before and since. But here and now, he closed his eyes and prayed because there was nothing else he could do, trapped on the mercy seat as he was. He prayed, not only for himself but for all the people he let down in turn, his grandfather and his biological father, his mother and his sister, the people he traveled with; he even found himself wishing his stepfather's soul well. And then he opened his eyes, kept his focus away from his witnesses, and waited.
It was the morning of Saturday, September 6th, 4002, and Cliff was ready to meet the sun.
5. And Not Fade Away
It all begins with the sharp cauterization of his memories, his nerves flaring with agony and fury, pumping him full of spite, and when he peels back the gossamer
layers of his surface thoughts, there lies the sense of perpetual unchanging motion, and of a name; Shroedinger. He's certain he lives only for the simmering
discontented tides of wrath and bloodlust within him; he's more right in the mornings than he'll know until twilight, but as dawn's fire catches the sea, again
he forgets and again he returns, degraded. He has forgotten so much already, though he suspects. Soldier no longer has meaning beyond the concise
noun, one who contends or serves in a cause. His name is gone from him, and his life, too, worthless and ill-regarded until lost; and beneath
everything, buried so far back any sudden movement would jerk it free, there is the first day, the abhorrence and bitterness of Lieutenant Ragnar
Merridan as he considered his shameful legacy, death by civilians, lending to the enemies hope and stories, all resources which needed no
rationing. And there is too the slaughter, that first blood shed as an unearthly thing, and the first glint of developing thought which would
be the first realization that something was wrong with him, something essential and cherished had not made it across the great divide.
The whys will always be lost, but he knows that his endurance was grander than any fledgling spooks', and he knows that he damn
well made use of the power that thrummed inside him as naturally as his absentee heart once had; if he dwells long enough the
shade of Ragnar may recall the taste of living mortal terror, more satisfyingly bittersweet than raspberries, richer and headier
than the finest, priciest and well-brewed lilac wine. But the first thing he would recall could only be the reeling shock which
overtook the hate, the vicious need to rend, harm, kill, the impressions which loosed it - "I am not here. I am not me."
And it was true, there in his hands if he'd only took care to examine them right; he was there, but missing his core,
his soul - whatever he was, whatever name suited him, he was just AI and a bible of memories, not even whole.
He would remember remembering a girl he'd admired - no, he'd loved her body - and still this was not all true,
he'd just liked the twisted, beautiful style in her POW culling. The point was there was a girl, Elle Surlen, a
girl who'd wanted to be Shroedinger's cat. Her theory had been that if she could everywhere at once,
then it'd be logical to assume she could be in every tiny slice of remaining paradise on Anharo and
all the infinite Edens of the heavens, and the Lieutenant had decided right then that someone had
replaced her brains with shit without telling anyone. Who the fuck would want to be everywhere
always? It meant you'd be there when the world ended, you'd be there when your mother was
violated, when she was breaking and slipping out of her shock and each time she thought
about it; somewhere in time and space, Ragnar had already moved on, but his loathing
hadn't died with him. Ragnar numbered two, and one of them - him - was left in a hell.
And deeper yet, there was the knowledge of magically-timed bombs, the way they
began as entire spells for however long you'd set its charge time for, and how
they'd perpetuate the cipher inside them a little less complete with every
parsing, how it steadily forgot that there was a sum greater than ten,
than nine, than eight, until it made its way into reality for a fleeting
energy explosion before being erased totally, leaving no traces
to be found. Dusk is in its death throes when the shade finds
all this sunk deep inside him, and he angrily crushes the
limestone that survived the abandonment of its
town by the slant-eyed fuckers who killed him.
He imagines he can feel whatever makes
up his consciousness falling away like
sands down a time glass, and he
thinks to himself, subdued in a
way he can't remember ever
feeling, that he must have
well and truly forgotten
who and what he had
awaiting his return;
when he thinks of
his probable fate
of total oblivion
he just grins
and feels
nothing
much.
6. Waking in the White Room
Mashiro Yuuki had not seen another living creature for precisely nine days, and had not had contact with a living being in roughly three. Mashiro would normally not mind as much, but he'd been assured that he'd be stuck in isolation for only seven, and that last moment of contact had been Sergeant Seurat Blomkvist informing him that his release would be delayed for a few hours, but he'd not been told why. Since that, there had been nothing, not even food, and Mashiro knew he'd done nothing to deserve extended punishment; everything he had to hide was out in the open now. His parents would be pissed, but they were goddamn pacifists, not sadists. Draconians were stronger than humans, were capable of a greater resilience, but Draconians were not invincible, and not even the most deeply misinformed racial supremacist would even bother denying that. Nine days alone in a dimly lit room, painted white from every angle, and three of those days without sustenance and deliberately set on edge. This was in no universe right. This was in no universe the sort of - experiment, or game, whatever his punishment had turned into - a just and divinely descended race would partake in.
Mashiro began speaking to himself the day after that, though not so much because he was lonesome or very worked up about anything in particular; it was just that he had been trapped alone for ten days, seeing and hearing nothing for four, and even the Executive Power had not been alone in the world for longer than two before creating sound and sentience and light, things to fill the endless nothing that had been so desolate that the emptiness had within itself its own emptiness.
In that room with Mashiro, though the walls did not stretch out to discover eternity, there were the vestiges of that great and terrible nothingness.
The dryness became its own thing, and reality turned into a distraction, bending like a ray of sunlight beneath the stillness of the Zarnich River until it was not reality at all, but something not quite there, not as ever-present around him as it should have been.
If reality hadn't ruptured, then what was his sister doing just over there, touching the walls like they were the pale white skin of Yon?
"Silly," said Rina, "Yon himself can't help you here. What would a god of life do here? In a box like this only Death and the Executive Power may enter."
"You're not real," Mashiro said. Rina arched a golden eyebrow - and, that was right, she'd dyed it with the rest of her hair the day before he left. "On the contrary, I'm more real than you are. I'm out there somewhere, living. And where are you? Did they even let you see to which containment cell you'd be trapped in?"
They had not, and the blindfold had been cool and soft against his eyelids. Mashiro almost wished that they'd let him keep it; hallucination or not, it hurt to look at Rina, because she'd been right - he'd never see her again.
Two days later, his heart slowed in his chest, as if winded. It was beginning - good. Mashiro might have breathed a sigh of relief, but breath dried his tongue, and it was already large and stiff like a log in his mouth.
"You can stop any time," Mashiro told his heart, and didn't worry a bit about being crazy, because when you already spoke to your delusions and to yourself, when you stopped praying for the end of the genocide of your people and began to pray for death, what strand of sanity and reason was there left for you to reach for?
Mashiro woke up the next day and sat up to stand, but stars met him from behind his eyes and around his head, and Mashiro flopped uselessly back down to sleep again, dizzy and shot through with sparks of shock to find himself the center of the small universe around him.
When he woke again, he didn't open his eyes, and ignored the dry, scarring heat he felt on his skin, the touch of the burning shaped like fingers. Nor did he bother the second time, or the third, or the times he forgot about or simply didn't care to recount. His stomach had stopped keening for sustenance what seemed like so long ago. He wasn't really sure if it had been days ago or mere hours. Time, like reality, was beginning to lose meaning.
The day came when he opened his eyes and saw a girl he didn't recognize, urging him not to give up. She was brand new every time his vision returned to him after blinking, though he saw her through a film of snowy static, as if she was a photograph from many hundreds of years ago.
"I'm your sister," the girl cried, and Mashiro closed his eyes against her. He didn't know why - she was cute, after all - but looking at her was unpleasant. He only hoped sleep came soon - what sort of lunatic was the girl? Mashiro could no more have a sister than the walls could be hiding a world beyond. He was the first and the last being in the world.
When the scouts and trainees from the Sixth Vanguard came and discovered the massacre at Gyoro Mais, when they looked into containment cell seventeen, it wasn't Mashiro they found, but a thing freshly crawled from some fearless sadist's worst nightmare, and there had been an overwhelming relief when it was established that he was also a casualty. His body burned with his comrades', and his family was told only that he had died giving aid to the fallen. There was not a soldier brave enough to present the truth to Daisuke and Yumeka Yuuki - they were good and kind people. There was no need to show them how far gone from stern lectures and "I told you so's" their son was.
Nearly two thousand years into the future, Anharo was a world without Draconians, but there were no nations besieged by genocide and the sun still hung bright in the sky. It was the year Cyprian Corvo and Sorensen Carter Knox would introduce love-lies-bleeding to the world and the year the Knight clan would be revived, the manor reconstructed by the hands of its naive dreamer of an heir and his wife-to-be, and it would last for many years after their deaths.
It was nearly two thousand years into a future without Mashiro Yuuki, and there was a certain, steady stumbling towards a mass happily ever after that thanked him for his absence.