The Final Step

"(...)I believe you can't appreciate real love till you've been burned.
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side,
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye.
I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality,
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy.
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul(...)"

                                                 -'Affirmation', by Savage Garden -

Just one step forward.

One single move, a simple rippling of muscles and the bending of my own will. One step forward.

The thick ice is so tempting, the alluring call of those windblown layers of frozen sea, so tempting to make the last move and let it all go. To shatter my dreams and body against the cold unforgiving surface, and forget, forget why I am here.

Why I stand before this cliff, hearing the ice crack and split under my feet, seeing the long drop that ends not in roiling seas or fiery pits, but on ice. Simple cold ice.

Just one step forward and I can let it all go, I can forget everything and everyone.

Him.

Yes, even he must fade in death from my mind, even he must pour his essence out of my body as my blood will, once I move forward. And nothing can stop me, nothing can make me think otherwise. It's over, it has been over for so long, and I am tired.

So tired! I haven't eaten much in the past few days, nor do I want to. How can I? What is there to feed in this empty shell, when all I am and would have become was smashed? And there was no hard ice to end the fall and crush the pain, no coldness to numb the feeling. It was a long way down, and I don't think I can take it anymore. I don't think I can go on falling.

So I want this end.

I want this hardened ocean to greet me with closed arms, and I want it to crush me to pieces as I fall into it, I want it to purge me with it's crystal glimmers and finish off this game.

Just one step forward...into the lack of any tomorrow.

He was there for so long I forgot what it was like to be on my own. There was always someone, but never anyone that could drill itself so surely and painfully into my heart. But he did it, he took his chances and became all I had, all I wanted.

He was all. Everything.

And I was nothing to him.

I never was.

"You are so beautiful," Saga would whisper, stroking my hair after we made love. He would hold me and tell me things like this, or simply talk about a small memory, a strange thought. A dream. "I have never seen anyone quite so stunning."

I would just press against him, trying to mold my very soul against his, drawing the warmth from his body into my own. I drowned in his scent and in those deep blue eyes that would smile so sweetly for me.

Just for me.

And it's so cold now, so lonely. There is nothing against my soul except the memory of something lost, something gone so long ago I can barely remember it.

Yet it has been only a few weeks since that day, when I saw the disgust in his eyes, the truth behind all those smiles. Fake. Always a fake.

But I can remember how I loved to believe in that lie, how I longed for deeper nights and shallower days, how I would let him take me as I was completely and suffocate me with the strength that was ultimately him, all of him. I remember his lips and my own still burn where they touched me last.

I remember his hands and I still ache for them, for him.

I remember the warmth, like a cosy fireplace in winter, that would envelop me completely. His arms, so strong and perfect, so right against my skin as he moved slowly and whispered love.

Maybe lust.

I did not care what it was he said, all I cared about was him, in me, around me, holding me. The rest was irrelevant, reality was irrelevant.

So now, when I say all need is one more step, it is the truth.

He took no more than that the day he hugged me in his room, the day I found out he loved me and the mirrors seemed to portray us into eternity. Just one step.

One step.

It looks so cold down there, so absolute. Perfect oblivion at the hands of no one, no enemy. I am the owner of this life and I have decided it is time to kill it, to end it. To cease to be. Who cares? No one ever loved me, no one ever cared.

My master had other dreams - nightmares - to haunt him, things he could not say. Moments lost among a prairie full of blooming flowers and a standing stone that was now his grave. Nothing more.

My best friend - my first love - was no more than cold eyes and frozen sweetness, a life turned to frost so quickly no one noticed, and even he would not take me. I remember his words.

(I'm sorry... I don't love you...)

He didn't love me, even though he was everything to me. He didn't love me, I was nothing.

Nothing.

And Saga... beautiful, strong Saga. Beloved, tender and perfect Saga with his blue eyes and angel smiles. Saga, whose hands were always gentle, who spoke to me as a lover might. Even though he loved me not.

I remembered his words too.

(Nothing is wrong, I just don't love you. I never did...)

All those smiles, all those little stories and things. All those curiously tender caresses and murmured joys he spilled for me, he lied for me. All those moments... the mirrors, the soft sheets.

His eyes. All of that for nothing.

All of that for a harsh truth.

(Did you really think I could fall in love, with something... like you?)

Yes... there was disgust.

It took only one step to hug me, to lift my heart and show me how to soar among the galaxies. It took only one look to cut off my wings and show me what I was.

What I was not.

It would take only one step to end this wingless plunge into darkness. Just one move.

He gave me everything, and then took it all away. How could I live now that I had known heaven and I was denied hell? How could I go back to life when it had been taken from me without even the mercy of granting me death? I was nothing!

Nothing!

The ice is cracking, I can hear to soft snapping of it under me. I can see the smooth surface all those feet below, almost screaming for me to move, to give in. To warm that eternal ice with the icy fire of my blood, my living death. And I am so cold!

I came to my friend, and I do not know why... Perhaps I wanted to be saved. Perhaps I wanted to be warmed again... but he held me, he draped heavy sheets over my trembling body and held me. And still, I was cold.

I came to find if there was a reason and there was none.

(I'm sorry...I don't love you...)

Those were his words years ago. Before even Saga looked at me with utter revulsion. Even then I was worthless and banal. Even then I was nothing. And that was what he told me. I am a killer, and assassin, and I cannot go on with my life. I cannot go on killing when it is I who craves death more than those to whom I deliver it.

Even before he became Camus, Gabriel spoke the truth.

He said it...

He said it!

(How can you say that!? After all we have done together! I thought... I thought I was important to you!)

And I would not believe him, I defended myself because I thought I was worth more. But he knew he deserved a bigger treasure than my own heart. He just never told me straight, and so when I went to him, with my arms open and love fluttering on my lips he said he didn't love me.

That was all.

And Saga... he didn't even bother to apologise, he just scorned my piteous dreams of heaven in his arms and showed me who and what I was.

(So it was true? That you were always with Shion...?)

(Yes...)

So there is no more life for me, no more dreams and no more warm arms around me. There is only this cold frozen sea below me.

Why did I come here, if I knew I could not be saved?

What prompted me to believe there was something here for me, other than more frost to tinge my heart as blue as death?

(I'm sorry... I don't love you...)

Those were his words, and still I came. Still I came!

(...I don't love you)

He said something, and then repeated his rejection. So why did I come? Why did I let myself trust a glacier to warm the hellish night in my soul? The dark fires that burned stronger than the sun, and were not even cold, but a void.

A black void where there was once a sun, and not anymore.

But I came... because he said...

(You are...)

Yes... he said something else that day, didn't he? He told me twice he did not love me, he proved to me my utterly pointless existence. But before he said it twice, he said...

(You are... you are the...)

But it doesn't matter now. It never did.

Just one more step!

Oh, he will be angry! Camus will probably be angrier than he has ever been since he donned his cloth and forgot the he could feel. I always made him angry, didn't I? I always plagued him and still he stayed beside me. How foolish! Why did he stay?

Why?

Why...?

I can feel the tears on my cheeks, and they are so cold. So empty. Who am I even crying for? Once I am gone there will be no more tears. No gravestones for me or Blood.

No worries for cool and controlled Camus.

No disgusts for lovely Saga...

Beloved Saga...

(...you are the...)

Who cares? At this point nothing else matters... nothing.

(the most...)

One step, just one step.

One move, and I will never dream this dream again, I will never cry for what could never be again. One step and I can be gone, I can find death. I can finally end this unlife that is my destiny. I can find oblivion to soothe this frostbite in my mind, this ice in my heart. For there is nothing here, to hold me back.

Nothing to hold me if I jump.

If I jump.

Jump...

And I do it.

For a moment I think I am falling forever, I wonder when I will feel the blessed sea crunch into me and make me nothing in body, as I am in soul. My eyes closed, I wait. I simply wait, but the pain, then numbness, the blessing...they never arrive.

(...you are the most...)

I open my eyes, and look.

The sea is there, just as hard, just as wonderfully absolute. It is there, so far down I wonder why I am not there, why I am not falling.

I am not falling.

And there is something... a strange feeling I cannot place...

"Milo..."

That voice? It has something to with the feeling. I look up, and see him. Camus. Holding my wrist as he clings to the frozen ground, keeping me from falling. From dying.

And there is such a strange pressure on my wrist where he holds me...

I look at him, eyes devoid of any emotion as he fights to lift me back unto the cliff edge, so tight against my wrist. So hard. So warm.

(...you are...)

So... warm...

(...the most important person in my life...)

I had forgotten what it felt like. I had forgotten why I came here... even though there is no point in remembering now.

I am dead.

I died that day when the one I loved discarded me like a used toy.

A toy.

And Camus looks down at me, his eyes so cold and so alien, as they glow with a soft, sad light. He grips my wrist in his hand, trying to pull me up. And he looks down at me, with wide eyes and no smiles.

(Will we still be friends?)

(Always... Always. I promise.)

He hauls me up and lets me go once I am lying on the snow beside him, hearing his panting breaths.

"Fool!" he whispers desolately, as if I could hear and understand.

As if it made any difference in my life.