Title: Simplify Me When I’m Dead Characters: Mal Pairing: None Rating: M Words: 495

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Simplify Me When I'm Dead

(excerpt) Remember me when I am dead and simplify me when I'm dead. As the processes of earth strip off the colour of the skin: take the brown hair and blue eye and leave me simpler than at birth, when hairless I came howling in as the moon entered the cold sky. Keith Douglas --------------------------------------

The pounding had stopped hours ago, but he hadn’t heard it anyway.

When he had signed on, proudly marched away from Shadow with his mother’s grief fresh on his cheeks and his hard, young man’s voice ringing out in the sunshine, he had expected action and excitement. He had been promised a chance to make a difference and a hard fight. He had expected – wanted – anticipated like a longing – adventure above all else, more adventure than could be found in a branding yard, or the haystack of some father’s barn. He had wanted something finer, something more complex than the day to day creeping from bed to work to bed and back again, something more than callouses and the easy laughter of the ranch hands. His hands sang for it, his whole physical being ached for change.

Now his whole being simply ached, and things just got real simple again; a latent calm like clouds drifted across his soul.

There was a comfort that came from knowing Death would bring oblivion.

He knew that eventually the wound in his gut would get septic, and his blood would turn to poison in his veins. His limbs would stiffen, his skin would get ruddy and his unwitting screams would be unheard above the pounding of the artillery. Eventually he would lose consciousness and that would be that. He would either sink into the mud before his breath stopped coming, or he would twitch his way toward the Reaper and die slow and easy. For a while, nothing would happen, except maybe the occasional twitch or sound as his flesh relaxed into the process of mortification, as all the pieces and bits of him accepted the inevitable. He would get cold as the blood stopped flowing, skin turn mottled and limbs go stiff. In a while, they would relax again, and he could begin to bloat. He had always wanted to die pretty, and felt somewhat cheated that oblivion had to include bloating and bursting intestines. He disliked the violence of decomposition. He preferred instead to imagine a slow effacing of his whole self, like wind and water wearing at rock until it turned to sand, a simpler, gentler process.

Oh yes, he had forgotten about the shriveling of the eyes. The colour kind of leeched out too, same as the skin. Leave a corpse long enough, everything gets to be a uniform colour. Like rock left to itself for a millennia.

He groaned, fighting waves of pain and nausea that had somehow managed to break through his shock and numb unawareness. Hands plucked at his sleeve.

“Sir…” Alleyne’s whisper was rough and moist in his ear. He tried to grunt, and managed to whimper. “Medevac’s coming, sir. You don’t get to die tonight.”

He wept, with not enough moisture in him to form tears, and not enough strength to make a sound or a movment. There was a comfort that came from knowing Death would bring oblivion.