99 Ways To Die (BL| MxM)

The stars were beautiful tonight. That was irritating. He would have preferred rain. Rain would have been appropriately miserable, the sort of weather that belonged over a battlefield littered with broken weapons, fallen banners, and men who had long since forgotten whatever glorious speech had convinced them to march here in the first place. Thunder would have been even better. Perhaps a flash of lightning tearing across the heavens while two armies slaughtered each other beneath it. Something dramatic. Something memorable. Something worthy of the final moments of a man who was dying for the ninety-ninth time. Instead, the sky above him was painfully clear. It stretched endlessly beyond the smoke drifting over the battlefield, dark and vast and scattered with thousands upon thousands of stars. They twinkled peacefully as though nothing of importance were happening beneath them, entirely indifferent to the armies fighting, the kingdom hanging in the balance, or the fact that he was slowly bleeding to death on the cold ground. Beautiful. Peaceful. Completely inappropriate. He stared upward and tried to decide where this particular death belonged on his increasingly ridiculous list. Not the worst. Definitely not the best. His breathing caught suddenly, and pain answered the movement with enough force to make his entire body tense. His fingers tightened instinctively where both hands were pressed against his abdomen. He remained still afterward, waiting for the wave to subside. It didn't, exactly. It merely settled deeper, changing from something sharp enough to command his complete attention into a heavy, throbbing ache that seemed to drain what little strength remained in him. Perhaps he had judged too quickly. This one might earn a respectable place after all. Ninety-nine deaths. The thought came with a strange sort of amusement. If he survived long enough to become a writer in his next life, perhaps he ought to write a book. 99 Ways to Die. His lips twitched. The title had potential. He could organize it by category. Illnesses in one section. Accidents in another. Murder deserved its own chapter, obviously. Wars would need an entire section because humanity had proven remarkably creative when it came to finding new reasons to kill one another. Perhaps it should be a memoir instead. He certainly had enough material. He had drowned once. That had been unpleasant. Actually, no. Unpleasant was an insultingly inadequate description, but he was dying and therefore entitled to be lazy with his vocabulary. He had died of fever more than once, which seemed unfair. There ought to have been some cosmic rule against repetition. If he was being forced to die again and again, whoever was responsible could at least have shown enough creativity to provide him with ninety-nine unique experiences. He had been poisoned twice. Trampled by a horse once. He had died peacefully in his sleep exactly three times, all after reaching old age, and those remained firmly at the top of his list. Not because of the dying. The living had been the important part. Those three lives had given him enough years to watch children become adults and adults become grandparents. He had experienced mornings when his greatest concern was whether it would rain before he finished whatever mundane task occupied him that day. He had complained about aching knees, forgotten where he'd put things, fallen asleep in chairs, and discovered the peculiar indignity of younger people speaking louder to him simply because his hair had turned white. He had loved those lives. Not romantically. He had grown considerably less sentimental about romantic love over the centuries. He had simply loved being alive without constantly wondering when it would end. He had watched kingdoms rise behind walls of stone and had lived long enough to see some of those same walls crumble. He had ridden horses along roads that would, centuries later, vanish beneath asphalt. He had watched candles become gas lamps, gas lamps become electric lights, and handwritten letters become voices carried across wires. He had been a soldier more than once. A scholar. A merchant. A physician. A teacher. Once, disastrously, a farmer. He still maintained that the goat had been unreasonable. He had been wealthy enough to own houses he rarely entered and poor enough to count every coin before deciding whether he could afford another loaf of bread. He had lived in palaces and in rooms so small he could touch both walls if he stretched out his arms. He had spoken languages that eventually disappeared from the world entirely. He had watched fashions become scandalous, respectable, old-fashioned, and fashionable again. Ninety-nine lives. Ninety-nine names. Ninety-nine families. Ninety-nine beginnings. And, inevitably, ninety-nine endings. Through every single one of them, there had been one constant. Him. A distant shout dragged his attention back to the battlefield. Steel struck steel somewhere beyond his blurred field of vision, followed by the unmistakable roar of men charging toward one another. Commands were shouted through smoke and darkness, but he could no longer distinguish one army's voices from the other. Earlier, everything had been painfully clear. He remembered turning. That was the ridiculous part. One moment, he had been fighting the soldier in front of him, struggling to keep his footing on earth churned into mud beneath hundreds of boots. His opponent had been stronger, but strength had stopped impressing him somewhere around his thirty-seventh life. Experience tended to win against brute force, and ninety-nine lifetimes provided an almost embarrassing amount of experience. He had knocked the soldier's weapon aside and was preparing to finish the fight when movement caught his attention several paces away. Another enemy soldier. A raised sword. And beyond him— the prince. There hadn't been enough time to shout. There certainly hadn't been enough time to think. His body had simply moved. Perhaps after ninety-nine lives, some instincts sank too deeply into the bones to overcome. He had thrown himself between them. The strike hit his armor with enough force to steal the breath from his lungs. For one strange instant, he registered only the impact—a brutal pressure against his abdomen that stopped him in place. Then the pain came. His entire body seized around it. His breath disappeared. His mind emptied. He remembered looking down in disbelief at the sword lodged through the damaged plates of his armor, as though the weapon itself had made some sort of administrative error. Really? After everything? This was how life ninety-nine intended to end? His knees nearly buckled. The enemy soldier planted a foot behind himself and tried to wrench the weapon free. He grabbed the sword. Both hands. Held on. Every instinct demanded that he let go, but his fingers closed tighter. The soldier cursed and pulled again, and the movement sent another wave of pain through him. His vision briefly whitened. Still, he refused to release it. Not because he wanted to be heroic. He had been heroic before. Heroism was terribly overrated. Mostly it hurt. But the prince was behind him. The prince was always behind him. Or ahead of him. Or standing somewhere just beyond his reach. Never quite where he needed him to be. The soldier never managed another strike. The prince's blade ended the fight. The enemy collapsed, and almost immediately there were hands on his shoulders, catching him as his legs finally surrendered beneath him. "Look at me." He did. The prince's face hovered above his own, pale beneath streaks of dirt, his expression sharper with alarm than he had ever seen it. And because apparently ninety-nine lifetimes were insufficient for his heart to develop even a shred of dignity, it gave that familiar, pathetic little leap. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. "You're hurt." He had almost laughed. Brilliant observation, Your Majesty. Instead, he concentrated on breathing. The prince looked down at the sword and then back at his face. For once, all the composure expected of royalty had disappeared. He looked frightened. For him. That realization was dangerous. It would have been so easy to mistake concern for something else. He had done it before. Far too many times. Around them, the battle continued. Their soldiers needed their commander, and the prince knew it. His gaze shifted toward the fighting and then immediately returned. Duty and concern warred plainly across his face. He already knew which one would win. It always did. "Go," he managed. The prince didn't move. "Your Majesty." Still hesitation. He forced the faintest smile onto his face. "I'll be here when you're done." A lie. They both should have known it. Another enemy soldier came rushing toward them, and whatever choice the prince might have made was taken from him. He stood. For one brief moment, his hand remained on his shoulder. Then it disappeared. The prince returned to the battle. He watched him go. Of course, he did. Even after everything, he watched him go. Only when the prince had disappeared into the chaos did he lower his gaze to the sword still caught in his armor. He knew better than to move it. He had accumulated a truly absurd amount of medical knowledge over ninety-nine lifetimes, including enough to understand that pulling a weapon from an injury was generally a terrible idea. He also knew no physician was reaching him anytime soon. The battlefield had swallowed everyone. So he wrapped his hands around the hilt. "This," he whispered to absolutely no one, "is going to be unpleasant." It was. When it was done, he no longer had the strength to remain upright. He lowered himself to the ruined ground, one trembling hand returning to his abdomen while the other struggled briefly for purchase against the earth. For several moments, there was nothing except the effort of breathing. Then even that began to feel strangely distant. So he looked at the stars. He had seen these stars before. Different names. Different maps. Different people pointing upward and inventing different stories for the same lights. Perhaps that was what people did. They changed the stories because they couldn't change the stars. His eyes burned. No. Absolutely not. He was not going to cry. He had died ninety-eight times already. Surely, at this point, he ought to have developed some dignity about it. Apparently not. A tear gathered anyway. His thoughts began to wander. They always did near the end. He thought of his first life. He could barely remember it now. That frightened him more than dying. There had been a beginning once. A real beginning. Before the loop. Before the impossible task. Before a voice—or fate, or whatever cruel mechanism governed this existence—had made the condition clear. 'Make him fall in love with you.' That was all. So simple. Except it wasn't. Because in every lifetime, the same soul appeared wearing another face and carrying another name. And every time, he loved someone else. Sometimes a woman. Sometimes a man. Sometimes a childhood friend. A rival. A stranger. Once, particularly insultingly, someone he had introduced to him. That lifetime had been difficult to forgive. He had tried everything. Devotion, friendship, honesty, deception. He had saved his life. Ruined his own reputation for him. Crossed countries for him. Waited years for him. Once, he had barely done anything. The man had fallen in love with someone else before they were Ten. Of course, he had. And whenever that man's life or his life ended, the world began again. New century. New family. New body. Same soul. Same task. Same failure. He had once believed there must be a reason for all of it. By his twentieth life, he believed there must be a solution. By his fiftieth, he believed he simply hadn't tried hard enough. By his eightieth, he had begun to suspect that whoever had designed this punishment simply hated him. By the ninety-ninth? He didn't care anymore. The battle sounded farther away now. Perhaps it truly was ending. Perhaps he was. He wondered if the prince had won. Probably. He usually did. The soul he had chased through every lifetime possessed an irritating habit of surviving impossible situations. Until, eventually, he didn't. And then everything started again. His fingers trembled where they rested against his armor. He looked at them with distant curiosity. How many hands had he possessed? Small ones. Large ones. Calloused hands. Ink-stained hands. Hands decorated with rings. Hands hardened by swords. He couldn't remember them all anymore. Worse, he couldn't remember his first mother's face. That realization hurt more than anything else tonight. What had she called him? Not the name he carried now. Something else. Something that had once belonged completely to him. Gone. He swallowed painfully. I'm tired. There. He had finally admitted it. Not angry. Not heartbroken. Not jealous. Just tired. Tired of beginning again. Tired of remembering people who would never remember him. Tired of watching history repeat itself in different clothes. Tired of learning names he knew he would someday have to mourn. Tired of meeting him. Tired of wondering each time whether perhaps this face would be the face that finally looked back at him and saw someone worth choosing. How many times could someone endure an unreturned love before it stopped being love? Maybe that was the cruelest realization of all. He wasn't certain he loved him anymore. Maybe he hadn't for a long time. Maybe somewhere between the promises, the deaths, the jealousy, the waiting, and the endless second chances, he had simply forgotten how to separate love from obligation. Another tear escaped. He let this one fall. Enough. There would be a hundredth life. He knew there would. Somewhere beyond the darkness waiting for him, another morning existed. Another name. Another body. Another family. Another version of the man he was supposedly destined to love. Fine. Let him exist. Let him fall in love with whomever he pleased. He wouldn't interfere. He wouldn't search for him. Wouldn't save him. Wouldn't become his friend. Wouldn't stand beside him while secretly hoping friendship might become something else. And he absolutely, unquestionably would not throw himself in front of another sword for him. That particular mistake had now been made more than enough times. This is the last time. His eyes slipped closed. No. Not yet. He forced them open again. He wanted the stars. If these were his final moments in this century, he wanted to remember something beautiful from it. The stars blurred. His breathing had become shallow, each breath requiring more concentration than the one before it. The cold came gradually, creeping into his fingers first and then spreading until the night air barely registered against his skin. The battlefield became nothing but distant noise. He wondered whether the prince would return before the end. Part of him hoped he would. The rest hoped he wouldn't. Because if the prince came back, he knew himself. One worried look. One hand around his. One desperate request for him to stay awake. That would be all it took. Some idiotic piece of his heart would carry that tenderness into the next lifetime and convince him that perhaps the hundredth time would be different. No. Better this way. Alone beneath the stars. His hundredth life would belong to him. Perhaps he would open a bakery. Why a bakery? He had no idea. He had been delirious near death before, but this was a particularly strange direction for his mind to wander. A bookstore, perhaps. He liked books. Or he could become a writer after all. 99 Ways to Die. He could already imagine the opening line. Drowning is worse than being stabbed, regardless of what anyone tells you. His lips almost curved. Then the humor disappeared. Because there would be another life. The certainty of it pressed down on him more heavily than the exhaustion. Another childhood. Another set of parents he would someday lose. Another collection of friendships he alone would carry into eternity. Another death. Another beginning. His eyes filled again. He didn't wipe them this time. He couldn't. He had no strength left for pretending. I'm tired. The stars faded in and out. Please. His final breath came quietly. No more. And the stars disappeared. For a while, there was nothing. No pain. No battlefield. No prince. No impossible task. Just silence. He wished it could last forever. Then someone began crying. He wanted them to stop. He had only just died. Surely a man deserved five minutes of peace afterward. The crying grew louder. Someone shouted nearby. Another voice answered. Footsteps hurried across a floor he couldn't see, and something warm surrounded him. He tried to open his eyes. Couldn't. His body felt strange. Small. Weak. He knew that feeling. A terrible suspicion entered his mind. No. Someone laughed through tears. No, no, no. A woman's voice spoke above him. At first the sounds meant nothing. Then, as they always did, they rearranged themselves inside his mind. Language returned. Meaning followed. "He's beautiful." His heart sank. Oh, for— He couldn't even finish the thought. His new lungs filled. And the first furious cry of his hundredth life rang through the room.