Horizon 1
Kyrie Eleison
Time.
Like resolve it’s always there but never enough when you need it.
More time is a good thing. It’s always something someone wants whether they are aware of it or not. But it hurts when you see someone with less time than they should have, with not nearly enough time that they merit. He deserves so much more than what sparse amount he’s allowed himself…
Is the boy even aware of what he’s done? Of what he’s cut so unceremoniously short?
Kami-damn all mother fuckers to hell! Why the fuck wasn’t anyone here to stop him!?!
It’s… not something I ever thought I would find myself faced with amongst the people who have incorporated me into their little clique. They seemed far too… stable, to even think of such things. Especially this one, especially the boy… He always seemed so much higher than the others, the brightness of his soul even taller that that of his father’s. In my thoughts I have always placed him higher than those he stood with, the miracle child I had met on Namek-sei that in all rights shouldn’t exist. Beautiful, impossible child, that lit the way for me to exit my cage of eternal hell and shed hope on my future, caused me to see that we hadn’t died out, that we could still exist, that there was one miniscule breed of beings on a planet so small it could be classed a moon that my species could actually breed with. Actually BE with. Wonderful, stupid child that had so carelessly cut the threads of his time loose from existence.
Stupid boy…
STUPID!
What the hell made him feel that this was the answer? Damnitt, boy. Damnitt…
My heart is beating much faster than usual, and I’m almost afraid to touch him. By all rights he shouldn’t even be upright. There’s more blood on the floor than I even thought possible of coming from one person. And I’ve seen a lot of blood, before. A lot. Not so much of his, though, not nearly so much…
It’s… shocking, in a way. My hands are shaking slightly. Yes, shocking is the right word. The brat’s managed to shock me once again. Stupid, stupid boy…
“Baka…”
The word left my lips before I was even aware of it, and my body is kneeling at his side and I have no idea when I sunk down here. The warmth beneath my knees is disturbing; I feel it cooling even through the material of my clothes. I can see him shaking, and not one single drop of cold sweat on his pale face escapes my notice. I can see the colour draining so clearly… running through his veins, out the gashes that gape hideously in his arms and down across the floor…
Stupid bitch! Where the fuck is his sorry excuse for a mother?!
You idiot boy… There are other ways to dealing with pain than this… You should have talked to me – I would have listened even if I was pretending not to. I’ve always listened. It would be utmost stupidity to walk around in existence with two deaf ears to everything. And the Namek-seijin. He would have listened, too. That damned green Namek follows you around like one of those Guardian Angels the Earthlings are all so fond of. But where the fuck is he now, boy? Now that you need him where is he?
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I still can’t grasp at what I’m looking at here. The boy is looking at me now, aware that I’m here. I watch with what feels like lead in my lungs as he attempts to say something, his bluing lips splitting as they move, some small slit of colour dashing them where the rip bleeds.
“G-geta-s-saaa…maa…”
“Shut up, brat.”
Was that my voice? Is this even me kneeling here? Fuck it. This is affecting me way more than it should. I’ve gotten too close. I should never have gotten this close. Damnitt, brat… Damnitt.
I should have seen this coming. With that idiot father of his gone it should have been my duty to watch over his family. But I screwed up. I missed this. How could I have not seen this coming! The boy can’t hide anything in his eyes! Why the fuck wasn’t I watching?!
Kami-samma, the smell… It’s so strong… too strong… And it’s wrong, completely and utterly wrong on some scale that I can’t yet define. The scent of scorched rock is missing, the distinctive tingle of discharged ki in the air is… absent. It’s wrong, so wrong… it’s too clean. Death is not supposed to be this clean! Not his! He was supposed to go down fighting, like a true warrior, if ever at all…
“Gee…geeta?”
“I told you to shut up.”
I meet his eyes again and I can see the fear inside of them starting to well. When I first looked into them they were empty, accepting, as if the reality of what he had done hadn’t yet fully sunk in. Not now. Now the pupils are wide, swallowing up the brown of his iris, and dark shadows are dancing in them. I can see them there, behind my reflection. Behind the welling tear that starts to slip down one side of his face in slow mimicry of the blood coming from his arms.
A wind blows in through the open window and brushes against my skin, ruffling at his hair. And then suddenly, as though he were paper and the wind the catalyst, I watch him begin to fall. I’m moving before I have even realized it, a blur of motion that only stops when the boy comes to rest in my arms, and I’m sitting completely on the floor in a pool of his blood with his head cradled on my shoulder. One of his hands flops down onto my thigh, and I look down at it, the bloody fingers twitching as if they can’t wait to die.
Die.
Oh shit.
I’m relieved that I can’t see his eyes sitting like this. I don’t want to see the fear in them. The fear I can feel in mine.
Damnitt, he’s so cold.
“You shouldn’t leave windows open in the winter, brat.” I hear myself say. I try to hold my mouth shut, but I’m too stunned to make it quiet. “Even Saiya-jin’s can catch colds.”
The brat tries to reply, but all he makes is a low, purring sound in his throat.
Suddenly, there’s a thud from over by the window, and I look up as a shadow is cast over the boy’s feet. It’s the Namek. I start to growl, getting ready to scream at the boy’s most trusted idiotic friend, but stop when I feel the tremors that start to shudder through the boy’s body. I glare instead, trying to infuse all my anger at the bastard who shows up when it’s too late, but the Namek’s not looking at me. He’s looking at the boy.
I start speaking to him again, as the Namek sinks down to his knees beside me and starts running his fingers through the boy’s hair, saying things that I’m not even sure are making sense. I can hear some words I haven’t heard for a long time running off of my tongue, and I begin to realize that what I’m actually saying is in Saiya-go. I doubt the boy has ever heard the language, but maybe it’s doing some good. Maybe we’re helping the boy in some way. After all, no one should ever go alone.
I feel his breaths begin to slow, my hand around his chest monitoring his faltering heartbeat although I haven’t realized it until now.
Stupid brat. He didn’t have to do it…
Piccolo is saying something from beside me, but now all I can hear is the boy’s heartbeat and breathing as they begin to grow more shallow, more slow. I can feel my own heart try to match his, then leap and stutter as the blood that’s in my body forces it to move. There’s no blood in the boy’s, though, to feed his starving heart. It’s all on the floor. And I’m sitting in it.
I’m sitting in the boy’s blood.
Shit.
Shit.
I still can’t grasp what’s happening. The boy is dieing. The boy is killing himself. The boy has killed himself. I’m just waiting now… Just waiting.
It’s taking so long…
But it’s still not long enough. Not long enough by half.
His heart thumps loud, heavy, and stops.
I strain my ears, waiting for the next beat, the next breath of air.
The boy exhales.
It isn’t until he’s gone that I realize that I’ve been crying.
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Kyrie Eleison {Lord, have mercy}
Cabbitshivers 2004
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