03-Jun-2004
Author: Natea
Title: Thanatozoe
Pairing: 2x1x2
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Yaoi, Heero PoV.
Challenge: A Phobia.
Word Count: 786
I'm not afraid of death.
I see no reason why I should be. It's completely illogical to be afraid of something that is going to happen whether I want it to or not; we're all born into this world dying, our very first breath is nothing but the start of a countdown to our last.
And that terrifies people.
Why, I'm not sure... No one has ever come back from the dead... so how do they know there is something to fear?
I suppose that is the very root of the phobia, the lack of knowledge. It's a well known fact, after all, that people who fear wasps have usually never even been stung.
I, on the other hand, have been stung... but not by an insect.
Stung so many times that I have become almost complacent... building up my apparent immunity with each and every event. I can, and will, take risks that most people wouldn't dare; if I die, so be it.
If I survive then I move on to the next threat.
I am not afraid of death.
Fears may be fuelled by the unknown but death holds little surprise for me; I came too close too many times. They say the grass is greener on the other side. It loses its mystery when you're near enough to see that the colour is down to dandelions and ragwort.
It's a challenge to get that close and then return. It's not always easy - during the war Trowa spent a good month coaxing me back from the greenery to the land of the living. A second gift of existence to do with as I saw fit.
I offered it up to the memory of Noventa as soon as I could.
Just because I've seen the weeds, doesn't mean I can't appreciate the colour after all.
I'm not afraid of death.
No, life is far more terrifying.
Life for me is steeped in fears every day. I'm scared to let go, scared to appear less than perfect in front of the people I think of as friends. Scared sometimes to even have friends. Scared to laugh, unless it is in the presence of death.
Scared to love and be loved in return.
I sleep with death... or at least, someone who once went by that name. We have sex often - not love - not even, as he would call it, 'fucking' - those require some sort of emotion behind them, driving them.
This is sex. Rough, painful, wonderfully cathartic sex in its purest form. An automatic response by the human body caused by friction - no higher centres involved. An act of perpetuation, continuing the thread of one's existence by weaving it together with another and creating something new from worn out old strands.
Something that won't happen in my particular case. I sometimes wonder if I'm tainting the act by engaging with a partner with whom I know I will never naturally have a child. After all, that's what sex is about - reproduction. Without it, can it still be called sex? If not, what does it become?
Selfish.
By my actions, my choices, I have condemned Duo to death. Not immediately; not next month or next year, perhaps not even next decade. One day though his mark on this world will be gone, with nothing to show for it.
Because of me.
He doesn't appear to care much but I wonder, even if he did, would I feel guilt?
I don't, I can't. Not when he kisses me hard enough and deep enough to steal the breath from my body; nor when his own selfish needs overflow and he leaves tapered bruises on my hips that run so deep they reach my chest, making it ache almost pleasantly for days afterwards whenever I look at him and remember.
Duo is alive, very much alive.
And sometimes - when reality, when life, death, Duo, have all bled away and all I can feel is 'white'; when he looks at me so intensely that I battle that whiteness away in order to lock the memory of that gaze into my mind. When I open eyes I have no recollection of closing and get a skewed, upside down view of the bedroom wall; when Duo's lips cover the pulse in my throat, reheating the sweat cooling on my skin, not an inch of space between us; when I finally realise that the laughter I can hear, borne of release, is my own.
Sometimes I am afraid of death.
Because he makes me unafraid to be alive.
The End
(:./natea/thanatozoe)
