17-April-2003
Disclaimers apply. Overall this fic will contain shounen ai,
religious ideas, and 2+?. If the warnings change, I will be sure to
post at the top of the fic installment to let you know. Thanks to
Ayeka for helping sort out my babbles into a fic idea. I'm really
pressing for feedback on this, even though it is only the Prologue.
A/N: This fic hasn't been beta'd by anyone, so if you catch any
typos could you please alert me?
It started as a disease.
It flourished beneath my skin, spreading its sickness at an overpowering rate. The pain was mind numbing, aching to the very fingertips of my soul. On some nights, when left to myself, it would force me into the corner of my bedroom beneath the shadows. I always knew it was a futile attempt for escape, for it would never fail to find its way into my brain, seeping into my thoughts. However, the mere minutes of solitude I partook in before its coming were enough to keep me returning to those shadows.
Those fragmented moments of peace, were better than no peace at all.
Peace, inner peace, is such a luxury we take for granted. I know I did. When I was young I had nothing; I was destitute. However, I did have one thing more precious than any material possession I coveted, and that was my inner peace. As a child I hadn't seen much of the world so there wasn't much I could really question. I knew what I believed; I knew what I had experienced. My entire belief system was based around those notions and events. I remember telling Sister Helen at the Maxwell Church that I didn't believe in their God, but I did believe in the God of Death. I had never seen any miracles, but I had seen plenty of dead people[2].
Those concepts followed me up into puberty. Sometimes my beliefs were the only thing that could keep me sane in a time when the entire universe had lost its own sanity. But eventually, I became subject to other things- brand new notions. A whole new world had been opened to me when I became a Gundam pilot, and I experienced events unlike anything else I had ever known. I began to give a damn- about others, about the war, about the world... about myself. My eyes were opened up to acts of kindness and charity. Deaths that had before just been deaths, became sacrifices for the greater good. Children slaughtered in the street no longer were seen as casualties of the war, but murdered innocents. These new notions were like a foreign food my palette had never encountered, and I hungered for more. And it... it... terrified me.
So scared of the concept of "new" was I, that I did the only thing I knew to do to block out change. I embraced my old beliefs with a chokehold so strong, that I became obsessed with them. We became one. We became whole. No longer was I just fragile, confused Duo Maxwell, I also became Shinigami... the God of Death.
I accepted my new identity without hesitation. I even declared it, making sure everyone knew exactly who I was. At the time it seemed like the best, no, the only answer to my situation. My old beliefs were rekindled with a fire more potent and deadly than any other. No longer did I have to pay any attention to the questions and confusion the new world had opened me up to.
Or so I thought.
It hit me one night without warning, in the confines of my dormitory bedroom. I lay awake, replaying the scenes of a mission earlier that day over and over through my mind without pause. Deathscythe had been dealt a metal splitting blow by a missile, from what it seemed, out of no where. I couldn't understand why I hadn't seen it coming, didn't understand how it could have slipped by me undetected. Was it because I was so caught up in the act of carrying out Shinigami's duty that I had dulled and numbed my senses? Was I so immersed in the killing that I didn't even hear the shrill beeping on my radar console? I started to feel myself tip, the Gundam rocking beneath me, the monitor began to tilt slightly to my right. I was falling over, leaning towards a badly crumbling building and crashing into its side.
And then I saw her.
A brief glimpse, perhaps even only a flicker long enough to leave an impression in your mind. My mouth moved, but no words came out. My limbs were frozen in place, immoveable. I felt detached from my body, floating, as if I saw it happening from some other place on the battlefield. As if... as if it hadn't been my fault.
The rubble from the building fell straight for her, to fast for her to even move. Too fast for me to even think about reacting. Too fast for coherent thought. Yet... slow enough that I saw her last movements, her last actions as a living, breathing being on this Earth. Her hands came up beneath her chin, she closed her eyes... and... and...
She prayed.
And then she was gone, buried beneath tons of concrete and metal. She was snuffed out as swiftly as a candle. Forever.
But the image of her could not be purged from my mind as easily as her life had from existence. All throughout the night it plagued me. It jolted my entire world. Everything I had made myself into suddenly seemed so fake, so orchestrated, that it sickened me. My body felt dirty and vile- my beliefs only falsehoods. My insides felt wretched and decaying. My soul a breeding ground of illness.
And so began the disease[3].
I tried to fight it at first, ignore the questions and images that trickled through my mind at night. During the day, it was much easier to feign normalcy. I was always so busy with missions, school, or other going-ons that I didn't have time to pay attention to the sickness burning deep inside me. During the night, if bunking with someone else, I trained myself to refrain from showing any signs of problems by thinking of my childhood or other times in my life when I had felt stable. However, when the nights were dark and lonely, hiding in the shadows was all I could do to escape the urge of screaming out my confusion to the entire world.
Slowly, it infected my whole being. I couldn't take part in any action without questioning the right or wrong of its consequences. Things that were everyday knowledge to me no longer made sense. Why was I killing? Who was I killing for? What happened to the people I killed? Nothing seemed clear. The only way I kept from breaking was hiding behind the life of a jester, always laughing always smiling. A few might have seen through me and realized it was fake, though I was comforted in knowing they could never see far enough to realize what was really wrong.
When the war was finally over for us Gundam pilots, when the fighting finally stopped, I thought the questions in my brain would stop, too. Perhaps they became a little quieter, yet they never fled. I stuck around with the guys for a while, interested to see what they were all going to do with their lives. Eventually, they all began to seep through the cracks, moving on to greater things. It more than slightly bothered me, that they all had found happiness within themselves. But I suppose I found great comfort in the fact that one other besides me... had not.
Heero remained on Earth, as did I. It didn't surprise me that he felt lost and indecisive about where he should take his life. During the war, I often found myself relating to his actions on many more than one occasion. It did surprise me, however, when he propositioned me to join him in leaving to L1. I was quite sure there was nothing left for me where I was, but was there actually anything waiting for me on L1? It was Heero's "home," not mine. I doubted I would find any peace there. Yet... yet...
Something just wouldn't let me leave hold of Heero. I couldn't place it, couldn't fathom my urge to follow him. All I knew was that it was the only thought in my head that was clear enough for me to hear. So I told him yes.
That day, that day six years ago that I was supposed to meet Heero at the port... never happened.
Sometime during the night, another thought finally spoke up loud enough through the disease for me to hear. The words were foreign to me, a language that I couldn't understand. There was one word, however, that was crystal clear, and so loud it pierced through my soul to the very core...
God.
The reason for the illness finally became clear to me. The battle raging throughout me was waging war against my beliefs, my ideas and perceptions of this life and the life beyond. And at the head of the opposition was a notion that God may in fact, be real.
I had to know.
I had to find out for myself if there was a God looking over us or only my Angel of Death looking down on us. It was the only way to finally end the disease within me. It was the only way to find my... inner peace.
So six years later, here I am, still trying to find the cure to my sickness... still trying to find the magical sword that will end the battle within myself. Whether it be God or Death, I must know. And I must not end my journey until I come upon the answer.
No matter where my travels take me.
End Prologue
TBC...
NOTES:
1.) Wooden Jesus is a song by Temple of the Dog that describes
a man's journey through fake deities, false religions, and religious
propaganda for the real God.
2.) This conversation took place in Episode Zero between Duo
and Sister Helen.
3.) Ok, if you haven't gotten it by now, Duo doesn't really
have a disease. It's just what he likes to call the confusion he's
experiencing inside himself because it spread throughout him
destroying his life like a disease
Kirei
Please send comments to: kirei_tenshi@hotmail.com