I'm sure people have noticed that everything in ffnet is romantic in nature, and to be perfectly honest it's starting to bore me. There's little enough in MK that suggests actual romance; on the other hand, there's a lot of stuff that's philosophical or questionable or just plain fascinating that hasn't yet been explained. This fic is to ponder a few of them.
WARNINGS: massive weirdness; do not approach without your brain turned on. Minor squick factor if you get to thinking about the main pairing of the fic. Hints of Hiead/Zero if you look at it from a certain angle and squint. About half the story of this fic (if not more than that) is TOTALLY made up. Could fall into the category of "mindfuck".
Enjoy. ^_^
SYZYGY
a speculative oneshot
by Kay Willow
"Do you believe in reincarnation?" she asked him one day.
It startled him. She had grown quiet and thoughtful of late, and even when she had been at her strongest she had rarely wandered into the realm of the mystical, clinging as best she could to her limited human life. After a moment, he answered, "I believe that it exists, I suppose. I've seen all too often that death is a relative state. Why do you bring this up, all of a sudden?"
"I was just thinking about their past lives," she said, waving vaguely at the star-crusted expanse of space beyond the window. She had specified no one, but there were only so many people that she could be referring to in that all-consuming way of hers, that manner which seemed to indicate that 'they' were embodied in all the heavens that humans had ascended to.
"Do you know of them...?"
"Of course I do. I know everything about them. I knew them when they were only ideals, concepts to be aspired for and never reached." She drew closer, played with his hair almost idly. "They have become different, those children; life among humans, as humans, has changed them."
"How so?" Curious. He was always curious. Once, she had loved him for that insatiable drive to know. Now it was only one of many traits that she loved so much, keeping her with him even after all this time.
She smiled at him. "All humans are born from a mother and father," she murmured, her voice slipping into the even, rich tones she used when storytelling, a voice only he had ever heard. "And in that way, our children are no different from humans. But in truth, they began long before their mother ever walked among humans, or their father were even born."
Another of her rare, affectionate smiles, and she whisked away, to stand closer to the window and the universe she loved only slightly less than she loved him. "And they might never have been born in the human way, had you not convinced me that they were the answer to the crisis we faced."
"Never?"
"No. I should never have wanted them born, I imagine, for they may have been mere concepts but they were precious concepts, too precious to squander on anything less than perfection. The force that brought them into existence had to be worthy of them... and until I found you, I did not believe that such a force could ever be."
It broke his heart every time, her tender words of devotion and adoration, words that he could no longer return. They had been so long together, so happy, and now in the twilight of their time he could only watch her, unable to express his own love for her without the wisdom and meaning of eternity that she infused into her every word, and without the passion that he had once given her instead.
She smiled, gently, at the window. Laying a hand on the transparent barrier, she whispered, "My children. Hiead, my focused hunter, and Rei, my cheerful warrior."
He shook his head, uncomprehending. "Can they truly have been two halves of a whole? They are such fierce enemies, composed of such different pieces--"
"Ah, but that is the now, and not the then." She stretched out her arms, as if to embrace the universe. "I can remember them playing and brawling with each other, like puppies, like brothers; eager to find new fun things to do, helping each other and teaching each other. They danced across the stars together, in their innocence...
"But things like that don't last." She sighed, seeming to deflate as her hands drifted back to her sides. "They began taking an interest in the affairs of humans -- not so long ago, only a matter of centuries -- and found new games to play. They learned how to share a body with a living soul, and experienced things that they had never experienced before, met people different from themselves. And almost immediately they began to change."
Having seen their enmity, he himself could not picture them as innocent companions. Nevertheless her words painted the scene in his mind, and her sorrow struck at his heart, making the situation more real than it would have been if another had told the tale. She knew this story as well as she knew her own, and she spoke the truth.
"They experienced different things. Hiead often chose to share with the rich and elite, or the orphaned and alone: he learned how to be bitter, to never trust, to put only his own concerns foremost. Rei usually chose to share with the poor but content, or the kind and loving: they taught him how to be generous, to make everyone he could his friend, and to smile and have fun no matter what was in his way. Hiead, who had always been so dedicated, became intense and obsessive -- Rei, who had been light-hearted from the beginning, learned to hide his deeper nature behind a lovably childish facade of shallowness. Hiead drove people away, and Rei drew them close..."
He shook himself from his complacent listening, and asked the question on his mind: "How can they have lived among men if you said that they did not yet belong there?"
"Badly." She turned and walked towards him again, slow, measured steps tapping out lifespans and eons. "They unwittingly brought death and suffering to all those around them. Again and again, they chose new hosts, and again and again, they found themselves lost. Hiead dealt with the pain by regressing further into his shell, and Rei took the pain and shut it away, ignoring it. They wouldn't listen to us when we warned them that no good would come of it, each too stubborn for his own reasons.
"They accumulated souls who stayed near them, trapped in the vicious cycle. A boy sealed away in reason and logic; a girl too delicate for her own good, and a boy too sensitive for his; a girl who was as a sister to all, a boy who was as a brother to all, and a boy who wished to be brother to none.
"When the Crisis came, they fled." She sighed, as though remembering, and folded gracefully to the floor by his feet. She rested her cheek on his hand, gentle in her expressions as always. "They couldn't stand the pain, and they had lost so much... But they found that they no longer fit together. They argued with real anger now, had strong opinions and devout beliefs that conflicted with each other, and found that each had absorbed qualities that the other disliked. No more did they play, but hid from each other, seeking to avoid more pain than they had already been through."
"Until me," he whispered, almost horrified at himself for what had been so necessary and yet so cruel.
"Until you." But her agreement was warm, approving. "For the first time, they were born into bodies of their own, children borne of a mother and a father, like real humans themselves. In the doing, they forgot about their pasts, both together and apart, and were shaped anew.
"The soul is a strong thing, however. In the end... they wound up the same as they had been."
"Filled with hatred and contempt." He threaded a hand through her hair, shivering at the cool fall of silk that tangled around his fingers. "Rivals, mortal enemies, antagonists..."
"Yes, all that and more, all that is of loathing and opposition, no longer brothers in any way," was her answer. "But without the pain behind them, they were no longer afraid. They are ready now, ready to face the fate that they have forced upon themselves. They are no longer a single unit, and only a single unit can do what needs to be done. Only one of them will be able to step forward, to assume his rightful place."
She paused there, and their quiet breathing was the only meaningful sound in the potential-thick darkness. The quiet hum of the electronics, in the walls and under the floors and buried within the panels all around them, seemed flat and dead in that critical silence. The whole universe held its breath, poised as if waiting.
"I wonder which of them it will be," she mused. "My focused hunter, who has lost so much and nearly himself as well; or my cheerful warrior, who has denied himself in favor of the affection and friendship of others. I wonder what will become of the one who fails -- will he die in the way that humans die, or fade away in the way that ideas that never reach their potential fade away, or perhaps even start again, a new force in the universe with a new counterpart, while his former playmate takes that universe in his hands and guides it...?"
"Must one fail?" he couldn't help but ask. He knew, he knew already, but he didn't want to, just this once he wanted to not know, to shaft the knowledge aside and be ignorant--
"Yes." She reached out tenderly and cupped his cheek with her hand. "And it will hurt me as much as you, my love, to see one of our children leave this mortal coil -- whether forever or for now -- but he will be better for it. And in the end, that sacrifice may save us all."
Kuro leaned back in his chair and let out a slow breath. "It is a cruel universe," he observed with a sadness of his own.
"Yes, it is. I know." Teela stood and half-turned again to gaze out into the emptiness, the void that mocked with the semblance of light but never fulfilled its teasing promise, and in that moment her true age showed through, the weariness of her human form apparent. "And soon you and I will be ready to move on."
"Move on?"
"Surely you do not think that our story ends here?" Teela laughed. "What, Kuro -- don't you believe in reincarnation?"
This exploits my Theory Number One as to the nature of Zero and Hiead. A cookie for anybody who can correctly name the people in the list of souls caught up in the cycle of reincarnation in the order that they're mentioned in!
If you don't know what "Syzygy" means, then you are a normal human being. I have no further commentary, except to say that tomorrow I'll have more stuff. I'm unusually productive lately.
--Kay Willow, with three finished fics and a website update planned
for Monday. Huzzah!
MK Info Site: http://flash.to/dualpotential/
Blog: http://kay_willow.livejournal.com/
Email: [email protected]
Contact: (AIM) Savinsilk, (MSN) see email, (Yahoo) kay_willow