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She kept him alive.
It wasn’t that Twelve had any fantasies about dying. He never thought of ending everything all at once, but he couldn’t say he didn’t find it interesting. Death, that is. He was fascinated with it, with the cold breeze that had taken away all those children. He hated it, loathed it, and sometimes even embraced it.
He embraced it with open arms.
But he knew that death would come eventually, just as it would come to Nine. But while he often wondered about it, his companion ignored it best as he could. Twelve had wanted to ask him, really, how could he ignore death when every living moment was a reminder of it. He never said it out loud, not out of any compassion for Nine, but just because. Just because he didn’t always have to share everything with Nine.
So when she came around, a caged bird, a stray animal, a fragile wing – he was prepared to see her die. He often asked himself, cruel as it was, when hell would finally catch up to her. But that was where he was wrong. She had no interest in death, she treasured life like others, but she loved solitude. Loved it to the extent that she could no longer love again.
And he knew, just as she did, that no amount of happiness could take away that love. To ask her to give up solitude was a bat telling the bird to not fly. How could he tell her to abandon what he himself loved?
But like the different kinds of happiness, their solitude was at opposite ends. She wanted the world to disappear; he wanted himself and Nine to disappear. She was addicted to misery; he relished the taste of it on his tongue.
But this was not about how they differed. It was about how they met.
Twelve could never stand her voice now. He hated it so much these days that even Nine gave an inquisitive glance. He would never tell him that her voice made him think of winter nights and warm smiles, of hands clutching at warm sheets, of a future he would never get. Her voice made him want to hope. Not like the hope he and Nine had fallen into. No, it was the hope that maybe, just maybe, they would be happy too. That maybe they could win.
How foolish. Twelve didn’t even know what he was fighting against.
He thought it was death. It was life.
He realized that all too soon, that life was the villain who sucked at your soul, ate away at you until your chest ached with every breath because you need to hang on there is no question you need to live. He realized that no amount of promises and hope could stop life. Death, death was kinder. It had always fought life, fought to save him and Nine from torment. It had welcomed them where life rejected them. It made them feel just as human as everyone else, because death wanted them.
He was fascinated with death, but he feared its open arms and its welcoming smile.
Like a fool, he enjoyed his last moments with them. He didn’t know when he would die, but he knew that it was approaching. So, he held her hand. He played with Nine – a childhood privilege taken away – and with Lisa too. He smiled. He laughed. He dared to hope.
How dare he.
And if a person could live on after death, he would have told them all of this. All of this and more. He would have told them that they should not mourn his death, because he was free and he wasn’t cold, he was warm. He wouldn’t have told Nine much, not because he didn’t want to, but because he finally realized that Nine was him and he was Nine. They were part of each other and they were nothing at all. He was not the sun and he was not the moon.
He was Nine and he was Twelve; nothing more, nothing less.
But he would have told Lisa more. Told her that his death was no tragedy. He had won the battle against life, even though he prolonged it so much. He would have told her that she made him prolong his victory. Because for all that life was the villain in this story, it had given him a chance to help her live. And to help him live, too. He lived in her smiles, in her tears, in the flowers at their gravestone. He hadn’t really won the battle, because he was living with her, though she could not see him.
So he would tell her, that she kept him alive.