Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Mahasamahdi ❯ three ( Chapter 3 )

-Three-

There are books. Thousands of books with thousands of accounts. They tell you what its like. What you see. What you feel. They tell you everything that happens when it's over. I find that funny. If something's happening, then it's not over, is it? Whatever. Those books are wrong. None of them tell you the most important thing. They tell you the opposite. They tell you you're happy, and that you no longer desire to continue. They tell you there's a waiting room, a white space, where your loved ones are ready to accept you. They tell you there's a heaven, or a hell…but there isn't.

Those books lie. How could they not? If you haven't died, then how would you know? You have to die to know death. You have to die to meet the real Shinigami. I did.

I watched the realisation enter Wufei's eyes. I saw him let out a deep sigh as the tears finally threaded their way down his cheeks. I ran a gentle hand down his back and he shivered. My body was still as I looked at it. It didn't seem like me. It wasn't looking at anything. Those eyes…there was nothing there. They were empty, lifeless, like my body. No longer a window to the soul, they were a gateway to the emptiness of eternity. I turned my back on myself, determined. If I was honest with myself, I would admit I left because I feared the pain. I feared the look in Wufei's face. I feared his tears. Does this make me a coward? Perhaps. But what does cowardice matter when you're dead?

I walked away from Deathscythe. You know what's funny? Everyone says you go one of two ways. Up, to heaven and paradise, or down to hell and its eternal damnation. But the waking world is not black and white and neither is the sleeping one. Rather, it's filled with all those grey spots. You can go up, sure, and you can go down. I felt the pull of both. But you could also go back, back to life…the way all those people who wrote those books went. They've never seen a thing. They went back.

I went another way entirely. I went forward, ignoring the pull of up and down, ignoring perhaps the natural balance of things. Whatever, at least I chose where I went. I had no idea where I was going. I knew only that I had chosen this; that I had earnt it in some benign way. It was mine, this death, and no one could take it from me.

Or so I thought. There are stronger, wilder things in the universe than little old me.

The first thing I noticed? Death is a bore. I mean, you can't see anything, you can't hear anything, and there's no one to talk to. It's just…nothing. It's not black, or white, or multi-coloured. It just is. I didn't like it. Why would I? What did I usually do to things I didn't like? I moved away from them. Small problem…I couldn't not be dead. Death was the end of the line, right?

That's what I thought.

A wave of helplessness washed over me. I didn't know what to do, where to go. I didn't even know if there were things to be done or places to go. I felt suddenly weary and collapsed in on myself. I realised I no longer had a body. No form to call my own. I was intangible. I was fluff. That only made it worse. I wanted to cry, but the dead don't cry and neither do I. They just…float? There was no real way to describe it. I just was.

How long did I remain that way, curled in on myself ignoring what I was? Who I was? I cannot say. Time has no meaning to the dead. It is only life that gives time meaning, only life that gives death meaning. Once you're dead nothing else matters. All I know is that it seemed an eternity before someone found me. I could almost wish I was never found. Fading away would have been a much more pleasant experience than the meetings I was to endure. But no one runs from the pull forever, or say they tell me, and I was to be no exception. I was still weak. Still a coward.

"You are weak."

Isn't that what I just said? My awareness spun out immediately, seeking out the voice. How had it spoken? Could the dead speak? They could obviously think…Perhaps it was possible.

Before me was a man. Strong, slightly tanned skin, fiery chocolate red eyes, dressed in the darkest clothing I have ever seen. A smooth clean black. That was not what shocked me. It was the wings. The wings that were darker than black. They were pitch. A colour I seemed to be getting rather close to in my old age. I smirked.

"Hello fancy."

The man studied me. He was beautiful. Not as women are beautiful, but as humanity is, filled with all the warmth of life, yet stuck among the decaying dead. With me.

"Why do you choose to look this way?"

I had no idea what he was talking about. Like I had a choice! I died, I came here, I sat down and I waited. It was no different to any other mission I had been on really. Get all worked up, everything ready, take the plunge, then….please wait.

The man was chuckling. I don't know what he found so funny. There was genuine mirth in his eyes as he looked down at me. It was only then that I realised how tall he was. He was huge. Like…like Goliath, only I was no David. I was well and truly minute, on the almost non-existent side of the scale. The man only laughed harder.

"I can assure you, I am no Goliath, weak one."

There he goes again, calling me weak. I admit, it was getting on my nerves. I wasn't that weak; I could be just as strong as the perfect soldier if I had to be. I had proved that numerous times. Of course, that had been before I died.

Depression engulfed me, quick, insidious as a snake. It shocked the man as a shadow fell over my being and I once again began to close in on myself. Why had I chosen this? Was I mad? Nothing could be worse than this!

"Oh, stop that! Honestly, if you were even half this bad in life it doesn't surprise me you are dead!"

I had had enough. I wanted to disappear, but this…imbecile…just wouldn't leave me alone! I launched myself to my feet and charged at him, fingers wrapping around his neck and squeezing tightly, a loud snarl escaping from my mouth.

The man was chuckling. It brought me back to myself, as I recalled how I had always laughed in battle. It made me realise. I had feet. I had hands. I had a body, a mouth, a voice. In the space of a second I had gone from being nothing but a ball of energy left over after I died, to being a living thing again. Not alive, but live. All by sheer force of will.

"The dead are driven by desire, weak one. Remember that."

"I am not weak," I snarled under my breath.

"No? Then stop telling us all that you are. We can hear you, you know?"

I stared at him, dumbfounded. They could hear me? They? Could hear me? Who were they and what right did they have to listen to my thoughts?

"How did you get here?"

I was surprised by the answer. If he could read my thoughts, how did he not know this? Surely he could just ruffle my feathers a little and have all the answers he needed?

"How did you die?" He rephrased the question.

I thought about it. I put honest thought into my reply. The problem was I still didn't really know what happened. One minute I was victorious, the next I was in defeat. One minute I was alive, the next I drew my last breath.

"I chose to come here," I said at last. It was the only thing I knew to be a fact. The response? An enormous chorus of `Ah'. It came from all around me, shattering the near silence as shadows roiled in every direction. As I grew surer of myself I saw them thicken; I could see.

"You chose to? That is not possible."

"Well buddy, you better go re-write the history books because here I am."

The man took a deep breath and let it out slowly, squaring his shoulders.

"My name is Sentaku. I was once a member of god's choir, but when Lucifer was thrown from heaven…"

"Ah, so you were on `his' side," I remarked cheekily, butting in. I was rewarded with the most furious bellow I have ever heard. This left even Wufei for dead!

"I most certainly did not!" The man calmed down, looked me square in the eye as if to dare me to laugh. "I slipped and fell from heaven."

I laughed. How could I not? This guy, who was supposedly an angel, hadn't even been kicked out but had clumsily fell from heaven, at some point died and was now stuck in la la land with the shadows that went `ah'. Well, I found it funny.

"I will help you."

"Why is that?" Duo asked, skeptical. He wasn't even sure what `help' entailed, let alone if he wanted it.

"Because you may be dead, Duo Maxwell, but your soul is not. You chose to die when it was not your time. You can yet go back."

"And why would I want to that, if I chose to die in the first place?"

I had no intention of going back to that body. It was going to die anyway, I knew. It was cursed. Even my blood hated that body, and my blood was cursed! I was born to die.

Sentaku shook his head in annoyance.

"You have a choice, weak one. You have placed yourself here, and now you must decide the outcome of the Mahasamahdi."