“T.E.N.A.N.T.”

Author’s Notes: Yay! Finally it’s done!

Cha woke to long-fingered hands gently shaking him. He murmured something and blinked his weary eyes open to look up into You’s glassy orbs. “You? What is it?” he asked, confused more than concerned. He yawned and sat up.

“Did I die?” You asked, his voice shaking.

“What?” Fully awake now, Cha touched the other’s hands that still rested on his shoulders.

“Did I die? In the forest?”

Cha winced shook his head. “I thought you did, but no. No, because Gackt brought you back.”

You shuddered and fell into Cha’s arms, pressing his body against the smaller man. “I love you,” he whispered.

The other smiled and leaned back into the pillows. “I love you too.”

“Cha…”

“Yes?”

You paused before asking softly, “Will you die, Cha?”

Cha sighed and rubbed soothing circles on the other’s back. “One day. One day I’ll die. It’s part of being human, You – we all grow old and eventually die when our bodies are too tired to keep going.”

“…will I die?”

The hesitant question stilled his hands. “I…don’t know.”

*****

“Of course he can’t die,” Gackt said as he paced their room.

You had come to them near-delirious, he was so distressed. ‘Will I die?’ he had asked and at the time, as now, Gackt hadn’t had an answer for him.

He supposed that it was a reasonable question. After all, all the other persons You had come into contact with were human and humans died. They lived but a brief 70, 80, 90 years before succumbing to sickness and death.

Masa and he were exceptions to the rule, to an extent, Gackt supposed. Matsumoto had cheated death by living on in part through his child-clone. Gackt had done the same through his lover’s regeneration project and becoming not entirely human but not entirely an automaton. But neither had been created in full by man’s hands. Nature had had enough of a say to guarantee them age and death.

“Automatons are robots, androids,” Gackt continued. “They can be put back together, rebuilt, updated, wiped but they can’t die. Not like humans die, at least.”

“And why not?” Masa asked. He sat on the bed, naked save for the towel he was using to dry his hair. “Why can’t he die?”

“Because it’s not possible.”

Dropping the towel to his shoulders, Masa leaned back on the bed and unfolded his legs till his feet brushed the wood floor beneath them. “Are we talking mechanics or ethics now?”

“…both I think,” Gackt answered after a moment. He stopped to admire the man on the bed before continuing to pace. “Ethically, death is something only living things can experience.”

“Are you saying You’s not ‘alive?’ I think Cha would beg to differ.”

“You’s an android – masterfully programmed, but an android nonetheless.”

Masa was silent a moment. He worried his lower lip between his teeth before he said, “But he remembers.”

“What?”

“He remembered. Like you said, computers – because if we follow your train of thought, that’s all androids are – can be put back together, rebuilt, updated, wiped. Death is something reserved for living things, but we can also remember.” Gackt opened his mouth to argue, but Masa raised a finger. “Let me continue.” Gackt closed his mouth and took a seat in the lounge chair in the corner of the room. “We remember. Personal, emotional memories. We too can have them wiped or deleted but then we can remember, we can bring them back on our own. Machines can’t do that. Machines become blind, deaf, and dumb when their banks are cleared and as long as the back-ups are deleted too, nothing can be brought back unless they’re told to do so. You didn’t do that. You remembered on his own.”

Gackt stood and seemed to ponder what Masa had said. Sitting down on the bed beside him, he sighed. “I still don’t think it can be done. You’s not like us.”

“No, I’m a lab rat; you’re a zombie…or the bionic man, I can’t really decide.”

Gackt shot him a seething glance. “We were both born human, Masa. Part of me may be held together by mechanics, but I’m still human and by the grace of God, you were born human as well. You wasn’t – he was put together on a conveyor belt.”

But Masa pressed on. “But who are you to decide if he can die? It’s not fair to him, to stand by while the rest of us grow old and sick and weak and die. It’s not fair to him to watch the rest of us fade away into oblivion. You, Gackt, out of all of us, should understand the best. You stand on the middle.”

Gackt stood to move away from the younger man. Masa recognized the retreat and narrowed his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper, “You should know his pain.”

After a long moment, Gackt took a deep breath and turned back to his lover. “I do. But I can’t help him. I don’t know how.”

Masa’s eyes glazed over and he smiled. “I think I do.”

****

You looked down at the blue capsule Gackt had just placed in his hand. He tilted his head to the side and looked up at the two men before him. “What’s this?”

“It’s a virus,” Gackt answered.

“What does it do?”

Gackt turned to Masa, who stepped forward. Taking a seat opposite the automaton, he explained. “It’s specially designed for you. It will slowly eat away at your system until it…crashes. Until you die.”

You looked back down at the blue pill. “Will it hurt?” he asked softly.

“No. Well,” Masa chuckled softly, “no more than growing older usually does, I would think.”

“If you took it today, it would give you about fifty years of life,” Gackt added, “before your system would be completely destroyed.”

“And then what?”

Masa and Gackt glanced sidelong at each other before they smiled. “None of us know what’s after that, You. I don’t think we will till we go.”