Pet Shop Of Horrors Fan Fiction ❯ Unwilling Sleep ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )
Anime/Manga: Pet Shop Of Horrors Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Romance / Hentai / Drama | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 02.27.2004 | Pages: 1 | Words: 903 | Visits: 6.8K | Status: Completed
Author: raison d'etat (raisondetat@ebonyx.org)
Rating: R
Categories: AU, Drama
Summary: Set roughly 3-4 months after the end of the manga. D has made a choice. But does he really understand what he's chosen? Response to a challenge on the Pet_Shop_of_Horrors_fanfiction yahoogroup.
Disclaimer: Pet Shop of Horrors and all assoc. characters belong to Matsuri Akino. I am making no money from this piece of fanfiction or any of the other contents of this website.
Warning: Shounen-ai, DxLeon; also SPOILERS for the manga series, especially vols. 9-10. D's opening monologue refers to the episode "Dynasty" in vol. 9.
Author's Note: The title of this fic is taken from Keats' sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles." Thanks very much to Mouse, my beta reader, for all of her help!
Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint. Now 'tis true
I must be here confined by you…
-The Tempest, Act V
Prologue
"I cannot understand how to love a human."
Those are the words I said while that human girl stood in front of me, believing me to be the answer to her prayers, believing that she could comprehend the slightest thing about my "heart," believing…I know not what. To tell the truth, she was not my uppermost concern, although she thought I was speaking to her. I was not. I was speaking to myself, and -- as I thought -- I was telling the truth. I knew of love; I knew of humans; I had no notion, so I believed, of how to combine the two.
Later I pushed him away and I watched him fall.
His kind and mine had been at war for centuries, if the humans did but know it. In that respect, perhaps it cannot even be called a war -- a wholesale slaughter, perhaps, the grinding of the earth spirits beneath the human heel. Humans, little better than beasts, I have always been told -- but have I also not been told to love and cherish the beast? To never censure the beast for acting according to its nature? One animal must rise to dominion over another, and give no thought to what it dominates -- that is the way of things. The way of humans. The way of beasts.
I did not look away as I left him behind. I would not do that, as the sabretooth had done to me.
I watched him fall.
Now, as my ship sails away into realms he can never know, I see eternity stretching out before me again. He is not here. He can never be here. I roam the ship, searching for meaning, for reason, and finding nothing -- only a blank, puzzling bewilderment. Why am I here, in this place? What does it matter, that I am here, and not another of my kind?
And as the long dark night closes around me, I suddenly realize two great truths.
Firstly: it does not matter that I do not understand how to love a human, for I am doing exactly that, and have been for some time, and there need be no understanding involved.
Secondly: this is entirely unacceptable. All of this.
Time passes differently here. On my ship, surrounded by my animals, my pets, my lesser loves, it has been scarcely an hour since I pushed him away. Below, back in his world, weeks have passed. Perhaps months. Already. If I wait but another hour or two, it will be years. And then decades.
My grandfather will soon be coming to check on the ship.
And then I am running.
From the bow of the ship to the stern, I run, my feet springing over moss, over vines, over my startled animals, some of whom pull at me, try to hold me, cry out in wild chittering voices and demand to know where I am going. I feel the universe unfolding before me, showing me an infinite series of paths, so many paths I could walk, if I chose -- if I choose --
(There can be no going back. I do not know what will happen. For the first time in centuries I have no notion of what awaits me now. I am still on the ship. There is still time -- )
Already another day has passed in his world --
(Time -- time -- time -- )
My grandfather is close. He senses my flight, my terror, my recklessness. Another moment and he will be here, and he will stop me from my folly. I can feel him, feel him behind me, feel his breath on the back of my neck…Sofu who loves me…if I but slow for a moment, I can let him save me from myself…
The stern. I jump. My foot lands solidly on the railing of the ship, the stars swim in dizzy circles before my eyes, and I can see the blue planet beneath, so nearly out of the ship's reach.
In the space of half a breath, I leap forward, and the ship is behind me, the stars above me, and I am falling to Earth.
End Prologue