by Livia Balaban
Rated R = VA, A very dark one, multiple POVs
Spoilers: Requiem
Summary: You will know humankind when you see through their eyes, live
their lives, and die their deaths.
- - He will open his eyes and see the truth, and it will throttle his soul to know it cannot be avoided. He will gaze out a portal and know he is farther from home than he ever has been, or ever will be. He will plead for his life and hers, plead for his race, and he will fail to recognize the sound of entreaty as his own voice. - -
- - She will wake one morning and discover the sickness is gone. She will think that perhaps she was mistaken, that the peace and contentment she expects will not arrive merely because nausea has ended. She will hope that the hole in her will fill as the baby grows. She will wonder if she will be empty again once it's born. She will go for an ultrasound, eager to see the growing form of her child. - -
- - He will wake one morning and discover that the promise was kept. He will weave his fingers together and draw them high over his head, straightening and lengthening his spine properly for the first time in years. He will hold his weapon in his right hand, and rest that hand on the flattened palm of his left. His gun will be more stable than it has been since he was butchered in the snow. He will celebrate by fucking Marita hard and long, holding himself above her on two sound arms, smiling harshly at her thrilled groans. He will gloat, knowing he was right to suspect she would want to be dominated. - -
- - He will take the same route home every night. He will cook a nondescript dinner, he will read through case reports. He will pay his bills and watch the game. He will shower, brush, floss, and retire. He will arise the next day and start his work all over again. He will never cease. The guilt will never abandon him. He will look at her carefully constructed blank expression and refuse to give up. He will repair the damage he has done. - -
- - He will look at her in bewilderment. He will wonder what could have happened to twist a person into such a shape, to become such a hollow caricature. He will refuse to accept her unsupportable conclusions. He will trust her protection implicitly, but he will staunchly refuse to view the world through anyone else's eyes. He will listen, but he will not believe. He will not become a laughingstock. He will troll for old rumors about the partner and come away successful but vaguely sickened. - -
- - She will hold her nose while she works. She will permit her partner of sorts to believe she wants him, she will take what he gives, and she will seem grateful for it. But her eyes will wander each time he holds her, mapping out an escape route, finding a way out. She will wonder if she should feel sorry for what she has done, and she will eventually dismiss those concerns in favor of self-salvation. She will rise in the middle of one ordinary night to pour herself a glass of water, and only minutes later will bury a knife between his ribs while he sleeps. She will disappear completely before his body cools, wondering idly if she should have washed the hardened cake crumbs off the blade before using it. - -
- - He will start back in alarm and block the screen so she cannot view it. He will tremble and pretend that all is well. When she asks to see the display, to see her baby, he will make an excuse. His voice will falter, and he will see her eyes close in grief. He will know that she already knows. He will study, he will research, but he will not find anything in the literature to explain the odd cranial configuration, or the strange limb placement of the fetus. He will wonder how she already knew the child was deformed. He will call her in the morning and explain her options. He will prepare her, sympathetically, for a termination referral. He will want to study the fetus when it's over. He will be dead before the end of the week. - -
- - She will weep, she will pray, she will handle her rosaries with such force that tips of her fingers bleed. She will maintain an impassive exterior but she will churn with dread inside. She will mourn her losses mechanically, separating herself from the grief, compelling herself to be strong for her child and the souls of her child's misbegotten children. She will retreat from her daughter's impossible tales. In the wake of the ensuing rift that develops between the two women, she will pour herself into charity work. With each bowl of soup she will pour for a homeless man, she will remove herself from the tragedy, one bowl - one step - at a time. - -
- - He will hover between life and death, wondering if all the sacrifices he has made are worthy payment for his minor accomplishments. He will think of his child and remember a time when the mother smiled at him with trust, love, and just a little fear. He will at last disregard the eventual fate of his race in favor of sweeping nostalgia. He has never been a sentimental man, but a tear will escape his closed eye, trickling down his cheek, spattering as it falls to the table to which he is strapped. He will think of another lovely woman and realize, with utter misery, that he should have given her the real disk. He will die in his sleep. - -
- - He will not see the enemy approach, nor will he struggle when he is trapped amid dizzyingly high stalks of corn. A tiny speck in the vast field, he will be infected, consumed, and left to die, the promise of preservation broken. His straw Panama will blow away in the blast-furnace wind of the Tunisian desert. The new leader of a new world will burst from his gelatinous corpse. - -
- - The sun will rise, arc across the Earth's sky, and set, a reference point for bees and desert beetles, as they remain close to shelter in their search for sustenance. No mammal with a body mass over eight pounds will survive the forced extinction. The dry wind will blow over the cool gray skin of new inhabitants. Like their predecessors, they will fail to understand that they are servant to nature's master. They will discover it, quite by surprise, when the comet arrives forty-three years later, banishing them to extinction as well. - -
- - The eight hundred sixty-six humans who remain will never see their world again. One lone spermatozoa will penetrate one long-harvested ovum in a laboratory, and when the new cluster of cells grows to the point of independent survival, it will be placed in the arms of its male parent, its little ginger-topped head squirming restlessly. They will both wail in distress. Their genes will be preserved, as will those of countless others already harvested, but they will all die in their own time - observed - nothing more than a curiosity on an alien world. - -
- - The human race will finally end one long dark night, when the last
of its kind perishes, pressing its shaking fingertips to the transparent
barrier of its enclosure. It will whisper only one word before it draws
its last breath.
"Why?" - -
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end
Notes: Many thanks to Kelly for beta and a gold star sticker for guessing all the characters correctly; Lysandra for the uber-hyphens and the gloating; Sarah Ellen for the smack and the thoughts on repetitive repetition; and Maria Nicole for the basket catch. And as always, thanks to YV for support despite the shuddering. Yes Virginia, I'm grateful.
This was yet another experiment (obviously). I just did the Second Person voice, so I decided it was time to play around with verb tenses. This was supposed to be a simple little thing in the future tense, and I swear I don't know how it turned so dark.
On behalf of Homo Sapiens everywhere, I would like to apologize for killing us all off. Thank you.
- LB
