Dragon Knights Fan Fiction ❯ Twenty Themes ❯ Immortality ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

This is for the 20 Themes challenge on Live Journal. Quote from 20 themes "The 20 themes fanfic and fanart challenge was originally conceived by Japanese fandoms, in which fans create a set of 20 or more themes for a series/fandom or character or pairing. The idea is to write/draw a fic/fanart for each theme in a set, finishing all 20 themes, but few actually manage it."

Theme 20 for Dragon Knights is Immortality.

Warnings: Angst, Garfakcy,
Size: 4.09kb

Some things are expected to last forever: the sun, the stars, music, love, fear, hatred, humanity, but not specific humans. Humans are one of those things that are built to fail. The body just falls apart, forgets how to renew itself and that's okay. Somehow people deal with it. I see them all the time.

Babies turn into children, children into adults, then their strength fails, they grow wrinkles, turn grey, fade away. The funny thing is that it's always the young ones that complain. The young ones want to live forever. The old ones know that they can't.

So what happens when you're taken away from all that? What would happen if you were taken apart, before you started to fade, before you'd begun to truly shine?

What do you have to look forward to, when you're stuck in now? What if there's something that I've missed, that I will miss, that I can never reach, because it will happen when I'm older? But I'll never grow older. Not like them.

I wonder about it. I watch my master, but he's not human - I can't learn about humanity from him and so I've made a study of people. After centuries of life, you need something to distract you and cleaning up just doesn't cut it.

Slice, stab, die - a young one fades as quickly as an old one, with the aid of a knife.

Cut, stab, die - they bleed, scream and cry, just the same.

Stab, cut, die - there's no difference in the manner of their death.

Stab, slice, die - stab, stab, die - die, die, die - nothing changes.

I used to feel superior to them, now I feel shackled. Every hundred years I take a pill and that keeps my humanity away. What would happen if I missed one? What would happen if I kept a pill and didn't swallow it? My master wouldn't notice - he barely pays attention to the world. It's all saved for his experiments. I was one of them, but I guess that I'm finished now. Maybe that pill is the experiment, or maybe he just likes hearing my pleas to become a proper demon, rather than a human-hybrid. Maybe if I'd claws and fur and nothing but instinct, all this would feel right. Maybe then Lord Kharl would let me grow up and he could be my father, as well as my master.

If I threw it away, would I return to a normal life? If I ran away, could I grow older, find someone special and then die? Or would I zoom straight to death, missing out everything in-between?

Look at my tiny hands. They're not as strong as full-grown ones. Look at my body. It's half the height it would have been if Lord Kharl had waited another ten years before he took me away. Look at my face! There's no sign of a wrinkle. I've scowled for countless centuries, but no-one can tell.

Everyone human treats me like a kid and that's never bothered me. It makes it easier to slice, to stab and to kill. They treat me like a kid and I think that maybe they're right to. I'm older than the most wrinkled of crones, but I haven't changed as much as she has. I haven't learned as much as she has. What is the light that's in her eyes, but not in mine? What does she have that I don't and why do I want it?

I look at the world in a different way to my master and it's not because he's a demon and I'm a human. I think it's because he was born to this; he's grown and changed, but I'm frozen. I'm a boy. I'm a toy. I'm a doll and I don't know what will happen when his master wakes. I don't know if he will take all of Lord Kharl's attention and I'll be put back into a bottle or a jar - a specimen captured for further study. A preserved, loyal servant. Alive forever.