To Be Loved and To Love in Return
Hmm... another Deg alternate universe fic! The pairings are KaoruXTotchi, KyoXTotchi, DieXShinya! This is part three of four parts, ne? ^o^ Some of this is in Shinya's POV, the beginning part. I'm kinda sorry if this offends anyone with the part about god... Though I'm a Christian and those aren't really my beliefs, okay? ^o^ The second segment is in Kyo's POV.
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It's true, you know? Daisuke and I loved each other so much. We were like brothers at first, confused to why two boys would have been promised to marry each other. We didn't think like that about each other. I guess I began to see him differently when I discovered the real him. When we were children, Daisuke smiled so much. He was always happy, always teasing others, yet his teasing didn't get them angry. It just made them smile. He was so lively and always smiling...
People knew I wasn't happy. I was always so sad, always asking myself 'Why am I here? I'm just a waste of a life, I have no purpose. I can't make people proud or happy; I can only make them cry.' They'd avoid me because they thought perhaps my pessimism was contagious and it probably was. But Daisuke was so different. Instead of walking from my path, he'd walk straight to me and say, "You might have not found your reason, but instead of looking, why not make a purpose with your own hands? As long as your alive, you can make yourself count. You can live your own life however you want, just make the choice and move on." And then, he would smile.
Everyone saw the smiles. No one saw the tears which he cried inside. One day, he asked that I call him 'Die'. It sounded like a joke and all, but nonetheless I used the nickname. Even though at first the nickname was something silly, it eventually grew into something more. That evening, I was complaining to him again. I know it sounds pitiful, me being a man and complaining and whining like a baby, but it was something of a nightly ritual between the two of us. As he listened to my problems and inserted advice here and there, he suddenly tackled me over, falling on top of me and started screaming at me.
"Why do you always have to see the dark side of things? Why can't you try to live? Why can't you accept what you have and leave behind what you don't? Why can't you try to see things differently, instead of seeing the glass as half empty, as half full? Why can't you try? I try... I try so fucking hard! Why can't you? Why can't you?"
And then he collapsed on top of me, crying and sobbing. His whole body was wracked with the cries, his masculine and strong self. It shocked me. I was always scared to cry before another since I thought it was weak, and yet, the strongest person in my life was crying right in front of me and on top of me in that case. I had always thought of myself as strong only because I didn't cry in the company of others, yet I realized that was a weakness in itself. Crying meant being human, embracing the strength hidden within the weak flesh of man.
That night, I took him in my arms and cried alongside him. I promised that I'd take his hand and he'd take mine and somehow we'd walk together to discover ourselves and how strong we could be. And ever since then, whenever we cried we would cry together, whenever we smiled we would smile together. We were one person, combined through a bond that no one else could ever break. Somehow, we had achieved true love, a love not based on lust and passion, but of simple understanding and caring and kindness.
We excelled in both our fields. Though our sciences were related in some way, they both took away from our time together. We didn't let our professions get in the way of our relationships as we saw how terribly they could destroy others. Besides, our love was special and like no other for it was true love. Nonetheless, during this time, I opened up a side of myself which I thought I would hide forever. I finally decided to tell Die the reason why I was always so sad and somber. He had known that I was keeping that a secret, but he didn't mind since he told me that I could tell him whenever I was ready and I finally was.
Ever since I was a child, I felt I was different, not at all special, but rather a freak. I would get these visions, dreams, premonitions which told the future. The scariest part was that many of them would come to pass and they usually weren't the happiest of visions. For a child to see a person get raped, or someone get murdered, or some person be tortured until death, or some couple having kinky sex was traumatizing. And the thing is, it happened around me, to the people I cared for. So instead of caring for them, I tried to seem uncaring, cold, indifferent. I tried to push people away for the sole reason of not getting hurt also when they were hurt by my visions. I felt that their pain was my fault; I knew it was going to happen and I couldn't stop it. So, I felt terrible. Of course, for a child to think like this was terrible.
Nonetheless, Die simply held me close and assured me that it wasn't my fault - I was a child and there was nothing I could do. From then on, he told me that I should tell him about my visions, then he would try to help me with them. And so, I wound up entrusting a part of myself to Die which I never thought I should expose. He would smile and tell me that we could pull through, if only we were together. And I believed him. Yes, I believed him not because it seemed true, only because I wanted to. I told him of my visions and of my dreams, but I never told him a specific one which was about him, even though I knew I should have.
Die's strongest advice to me ever was "In order to make for yourself a purpose and a reason, all you need to do is to be loved and to love in return. Love is the essence of human beings which makes them more than just a human. It makes them angels." I guess I wanted to believe in that more than anything, because if it were true, then Die was surely the most beautiful seraphim to ever descend from Heaven. Die was not a slight bit religious, but he was interested in that sort of thing. He rather stood, watching the world from an agnostic point of view. I loved Die for his ability to say the obvious, yet he could say it just when I wanted to hear it. I loved Die for his ability to reach past my dark, depressed mask and accept the crying boy behind it. I loved Die for the sweet way he talked, for the way he brushed back my hair, the way his smile reassured me. I loved Die because he loved me. I loved Die because I loved him.
Then one night, I had a vision. It was about myself. It showed me that I would be killed, some fellow researcher of Die's would kill me, shoot me. I wanted to tell Die, but I was scared. What would happen? Would Die do something he'd later regret? I decided to not say anything about it, to just let it happen and it did. As I walked into Die's research wing and waved to him, he smiled as he stood up to greet me. We were just about to leave the center when the supervisor stood, gun in hand. He aimed and pulled the trigger. At first, the bullet didn't hit me - Die had blocked me. I was shocked and scared. Did this mean he was trying to change the way I saw it would happen? Did he somehow know about my vision? "Die!" I knelt next to him and held him close, trying to get to the wound and somehow make it better. "Shi-!"
The gun was put against my head, the trigger was pulled back. And I don't remember anything from there on. From there on, everything fades into a darkness, the same darkness which ruled my life before Die came to me and brightened my world with his fiery spirit. I discovered myself alive again, but I couldn't love him! I wanted to love him, he was my darling, my love! And yet, I was incapable of doing so. It frustrated me. I wanted to kill myself, but then he would lose me a second time and he would grieve again. During that time, though I tried hard to love him, I just couldn't.
I was alive, yet my soul was dead. I couldn't do anything about it and it hurt me. Nonetheless, Die told me he wouldn't give up. He would find my soul. But I realized that he was growing weaker and weaker. The search for his love was killing him, draining him of his human strength. When I tried to tell him that it was enough, that he could rest and stop now, he wouldn't listen. And so, he locked himself away again, working on something more, something which would restore my soul. I believed that it was impossible. How could a man restore the soul of his equal?
And yet, before I knew it, I was alive. My soul returned to me, even as his life was giving way. It was then that I realized, Die was not a seraphim, he was not an angel. Somehow, he made himself into a god. A god which could give a human life, a god which could give a human soul. He had to be, but because of that, he had to die. He had to disappear. He didn't deserve to suffer! He didn't deserve the pain of living a human life since he was greater than us! He didn't deserve to be kicked down by humans since he was above them!
That's why I did it. That's why I killed him when he was happy. Because he was slowly killing himself anyway, but I didn't want him to suffer slowly. When I killed him, I killed my creator. I killed god. I didn't deserve the gifts he gave me, Die's love, my second sight, my second chance at living. I fucking killed god! I always abused his gifts to me, I always took them for granted. God made me into an angel with his love and I treated it like dirt! So worthless, pitiful am I. I deserve to suffer. And so, I abandoned my emotions to live an eternal life of being used. I deserve this living hell. I made this world for myself.
That is the fairy tale gone wrong which didn't end with a happily ever after. So, why am I helping you? I don't want you to end up this way. I want you to have a happily ever after. Remember the advice which I received from Die: "In order to make for yourself a purpose and a reason, all you need to do is to be loved and to love in return. Love is the essence of human beings which makes them more than just a human. It makes them angels." In order to make the God's Hand pendant work, all you need to do is to be loved and to love in return. That's all.
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After listening to Shinya-san's rambling about his past with Die-san, I finally made the conclusion that he is crazy. He must have been driven crazy after dying, but then who's to say that Toshiya hasn't been driven crazy as well? If all you need to do to regain your soul using the God's Hand is be loved and to love in return, in that case Toshiya can't truly love Kaoru. Remembering our past together, the life that we shared... I have to be the one to save him.
Shinya-san taught me something important today with each word that he said. It's true, true love must be a sacred thing so rare and hard to find. Yet, it must be dangerous. Very dangerous. So dangerous that it could destroy itself from the inside out... I have to be careful, but I have to find Toshiya's soul and return it to him. Somehow, I have to make myself a god...
To Be Continued
To the next part