Miles - Yami

Strong Bond



“Father?” Miles spoke suddenly, surprising both himself and his father reading quietly beside him. Yami blinked once before looking to his son expectantly. Miles waited a moment, before he finally spoke. He sounded unsure of himself, “What do you think happens after we die?”

Yami looked puzzled. He slowly closed the book over his hand that still held the page. An interesting question indeed… He never really thought much of it. Text said that one was reborn to start a new life—and depending on the text—you may be reborn as a different race or sometimes a different creature entirely. With a slight mental shrug, Yami wasn’t sure if he believed either.

“Why do you ask?” was his absent response.

Miles shrugged his shoulders slightly, his head tilted down and face turned away from the other as he absentmindedly fidgeted his fingers.

Miles was indeed a pretty thing. He had come into Yami’s care a broken, disgruntled and violent child. Yet with much love, talking and patience he had slowly become the young and gentle man he was today. Yami had always given the drow the option to seek him out and talk to him about anything. It was Miles’ release… As a child he had often times tormented himself for far too long about unanswered questions—usually serious questions that most young children shouldn’t be worrying themselves over.

Yet, Miles was a drow. This was a race of people that did not at all shelter their children from the horrors of the world. Miles’ thoughts had poisoned him at one time, driving him into sickness and despair. He would lie in bed for hours fighting with himself—Should he be the child he had been raised in the Underdark, or should he be more like his brothers and sisters here in this new world? Instinct had told him to fight this new foreign world and everything in it, but something else entirely had begged him to embrace it.

“Miles?” Yami called delicately, placing his hand on the others shoulder. Miles jerked back and gave his father a startled look. Yami’s face softened. “What do you believe?”

“I don’t know…” the drow whispered quietly, and he was sincere. Miles looked back at his father, and his auburn eyes were wide—frightened. A look that made Yami’s heart squeeze painfully. “Do you think that everything just ceases when you die? Everything just goes black? That’s my fear… all your senses are robbed but you’re still a conscience… You’re just left to your own mind in an abyss of black… a terrible, terrible abyss of nothingness…” He raised his hands up to stare at his shaking palms before he allowed his face to fall into those trembling hands. “That would be the worst possible end…”

At first, Yami didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. He simply reached out to gently run his fingers through his son’s shoulder-length white hair.

Yami was not foreign to poisonous thoughts, but he had never really regretted having such an over-active mind. To him, his intellect was his singularly most prized bodily possession. It was something that no man could strip him of. He had once lost his royal titles, his dignity, his heart… but he had never lost his intellect. Well—briefly he had lost his mind, but his mind had no abandoned him so readily and he had recovered… The thought of death bringing an eternity left with only his own mind wasn’t all that unpleasant to the demon… but Yami understood where Miles was coming from. Sometimes the mind almost felt like a sneaky assassin. Slowly, very slowly throttling the will out of ones soul…

“I think after death you go somewhere calm…” Yami finally said. Miles lifted his face from his palms and looked almost desperately to him. “I think where you go is a gentle place filled with a certain serenity…” He struggled for words. “I think after death, there’s more. I don’t think your life here ends… but I’m not so sure if you’re reborn again… You’re still you…. But…” The demon laughed quietly, rubbing the back of his head, frowning slightly. He sighed, frustrated. “I don’t know what I think.”

Miles nodded slightly, “I’m sorry for asking…”

“Don’t be,” Yami said, ruffling the white-haired young mans hair. “Though understand such philosophical questions have no concrete answers. To each their own… I suppose.” Yami crossed one leg over the other and sat back, his crimson eyes rising to admire the ceiling painted with the Stone of Blessing residing in Stardome. It was blanketed in snow—but beautiful. He was most impressed by his daughter’s handiwork. Christine was such a talented young woman… Yami’s mind began to wander, but he quickly brought it back to the question at hand.

“Miles?”

“Yes, Father?”

“I understand your fears, Miles. No man or woman of our flesh and blood is immortal. We must all face death, but it is not something you should live in fear of.” The demon brushed back a lock of stubborn hair from his eyes. “The goddesses’ are good; regardless of what actions you make in your life they will not make you suffer for eternity.” That was odd of him to say—considering he really had no affiliation with the goddess—Light or Dark. He left that to Kaelin. Yami didn’t have a particular fondness for the goddesses—he knew they existed because that was irrefutable. But he would never bow his head to them in prayer. He had felt that had abandoned him, but a part of him only knew his life was his own and no goddess could change that through prayer.

Yami looked back to the drow, “Well?” he asked.

A smile tugged the corner of the boys lips, “Well, what?”

“Will you stop it with the angst?”

Miles laughed quietly and leaned back into the sofa, rubbing his palms over his face. “Well when you say it like that…” Miles sighed lightly, letting his hands drop from his face and fold neatly over his stomach. His eyes too, gentle now, searched the painted dome ceiling above. “It would be entirely too sad for there to only be one life… Cruel, really. Each lifetime is different… some suffer, some rejoice. It would be unfair if you knew only one of these lives.”

Yami nodded in agreement.

“Hey…?” Miles murmured quietly after a moment.

“Hm?”

“What are you reading?”

Yami looked back down to his book, for the first time actually reading the title of the book he had randomly pulled from the shelf. He looked back up, smirking unabashed. “Apparently ‘The Origins of Flowers’.”

For some reason, the two began to laugh. Perhaps it was indeed a good thing one didn’t live just once.


[Ramirez]

A/N:Story Bond 38/81 of a project I'm working on.

Well, after listening to classical music and attempting to read Ecology I pulled up word and slapped together their story bond in about an hour between laundry and eating lunch. Unfortunately it's really not as deep as I hoped it'd be and not nearly as meaningful, but it's been sitting there for a month waiting to be written and I'm just glad I thought of something



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