The Last Laugh

A St Seiya Fanfic by Brian Doyle
Completely unauthorised.

I am old now, and the years have not been kind.

My body, once young and strong, is bent under the weight of too many years. I need a support frame to walk now, and when I do I can barely make it to the next room without a rest.

My hair was dark green and long, it went a strange chartreuse shade when the white hairs started coming in. Now there's so little left it's hardly worth having anyway.

Next door I can hear Seiya's great-grandchildren playing with their grandmother. He'd have loved them all, he was like a little kid at heart himself for his entire life. That's what made him the strongest Saint, I suppose, oh we were more powerful and versatile, but he always had this unconquerable hope for the future.

Heh, little Shinji looks so much like him it's untrue, but it's young Saori who has his spirit, she's an incorrigible little thing, always trying something new, always investigating, never thinking about the possible dangers. He'd have loved her to pieces, though her name might have caused him some unhappy memories.

I think about them all the time now, I miss them all, my brother and my half-brothers who were just as dear to me. And the goddess who was almost a sister to us. We went through so much together, from the day we arrived at the Foundation, to... well... the end.

We fought madmen who thought they could become gods, and then the gods themselves; Saga and Hilda, Poseidon and Hades, Zeus, Chronos and his Titans. We faced them all and we won. And when we finally returned to Earth after our adventures, we thought we had at last earned the right to live out our lives in peace, that we could put away the God Cloths and return to some sort of human life.

Even after all that we had seen, we were still so naive, so confident in our abilities. We had "fought the good fight with all of our might". We would grow old together in peace.... Hah!

We should have remembered that the Fates do not like mortals who dabble in the affairs of the gods.

Yes, we killed Hades' body, but you can't kill a fact of life. People didn't stop dying, souls didn't stop passing through Hades realm. In some obscure way, Hades remained, lacking any chance of reincarnation, but still aware. He and his fellow Manifestations of Death did not take kindly to an assault upon one of their own, and their revenge was subtle and cruel.

We had two good years, we were able to relax a little, and have our "normal lives", just enough time for us to learn to appreciate the good things of a normal life. And then things started to go wrong.

Seiya died the day his son was born. They let him enjoy his daughters for a couple of years, but his longing for a son of his own was so evident it was almost funny.

When he found out he was going to have a boy of his own to raise I don't think I ever saw him look so happy. He planned this and prepared that, he was going to be everything to this boy that his own father had never been to him. And he'd have been so damned good at it too. Don't get me wrong, he loved his twin daughters to distraction (Despite his comments about twins having been nothing but trouble for him so far in his life), but his son would have been everything to him.

And on the very day that little Seiya was born his father suffered a cerebral embolism. Totally unexpected, instantly fatal. Nothing any of us could have done would have had the slightest bit of use. This wasn't a foe that could be beaten or defeated by combat skills or cosmo, or even the influence of a goddess incarnate. It was a natural (though we had our doubts about that) medical event that simply... occurred, and by the time we were aware of it, he had already gone.

Despite what we knew had passed between Saori and Seiya, at Athena's command the new Cancer Saint, Constantin, travelled to his ethereal plane of the dead with Shiryu and myself accompanying him. We hoped to try and convince his soul to return, but it was no use, he'd passed through and beyond. Something had over-ridden his Eighth Sense and we were never able to find out what, though we had our suspicions.

We were devastated, he was the first and best of us, and he had been the one to keep our disparate team together, even if it was sometimes by annoying us all equally (I always wondered just how much of that was deliberate, Seiya always was smarter than he let on).

His wife was devastated of course, but she soldiered on and she raised all three children well (The Foundation ensured she wanted for nothing materially, but as my 98 half-brothers, one true brother and I could all tell you, that is no guarantee of good parenting). Seika helped her out and always stayed close to her remaining family.

Little Seiya grew into a man his father would have been proud of, not just because he became a classical guitarist (We knew that Seiya would have loved to be able to do that professionally), but simply by being as fine a man as you could wish to meet. I still treasure the fact I knew him, and was able to tell him about his father.

But I'm wandering off the subject here. I do that these days, the mind is sharp, but the memories get cloudy when there are so many of them.

Sometime after that we had to deal with madman called the Evangelist and his Four Horsemen; War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. They threatened Tokyo and so, of course, the Saints of Athena had to defeat them.

We eventually overcame them, they were hardly in the same league as the Titan's or the Spectres, Hyoga defeated Pestilence by blast freezing him into crystals, I defeated War (I still recall the debate we had about the justification of battle, it got rather abstract, but was quite fascinating), Shiryu defeated Famine and Ikki took on Death (He'd had practice, as he put it).

This event though, brought home to us how much we missed Seiya, and was the start of our team's break-up. We drifted apart in our own ways and it could never be the same between any of us.

Shiryu had returned to Rozhan shortly after the funeral, and we saw him rarely after that, though he appeared against the Horsemen. He'd always been rather insular and aloof, and with Seiya gone, his only real link to the "real" world wasn't there any more. We tried to get him involved in things, but we were still in shock ourselves, and didn't have the heart to stop him, it would only have made him more miserable.

Shunrei tried to keep his spirits up for as long as she could, but she'd already lost her father figure when Dhoko died and the change in Shiryu was too much for her to take for long. She disappeared from Rozhan not long after, and though I know Saori kept track of her (as I suspect she kept track of EVERYBODY), we never saw her again. I like to think she found happiness, wherever she ended up.

I also know he took on at least one student whilst he was there. His training with Dhoko had made him a good teacher and even as disenchanted with the world as he was, he wouldn't have wanted the knowledge and wisdom that he had gained to have been wasted. He had forsworn the use of either his own Dragon Cloth or the Libra Cloth unless Athena was endangered, so he trained a new Dragon Saint.

Several years later, shortly after she had gained the cloth from him (He had commanded it to revert to it's original bronze level form when he gave it up) Shiryu just seemed to fade away from our perceptions.

We "Bronze Boys" were so tightly linked to each other that even when thousands of miles apart we could one sense another through our cosmo, but he just started to drift off slowly, over the months.

I know Shiryu had been experimenting with refining his cosmo through his Tenth Sense (the one most of us could barely conceive of until we faced Chronos, I'd explain it's function to you but it's hard to describe to those who only live in three dimensions of space and one of time, the prepositions alone would baffle a quantum physicist).

Ultimately, I figure Shiryu must have perfected this technique, transcended himself, and become pure cosmo for good. I can still pick up his resonance's in the aether if I try hard, but no concept of his "self" remains.

In a certain way I think he "haunts" the Dragon Cloth, because when I hear that Rei is using the cloth, I can pick up traces of him manifesting through it. It's a sad reminder of what we lost, but it's good to know he's still keeping an eye out for his student, even if he himself is no longer with us.

I'll always regret not talking to him one last time, to try and tell him his life on this plane was really worth something. Still, too little, too late, as they say.

Hyoga surprised us most of all. He'd always been the "Saint of Ice", always in total control of his emotions, never letting anything show. But losing Seiya was too much for him on top of all his other losses and he suffered a serious breakdown. The treatment he received was a catharsis for him beyond anything we might have hoped for. He was able to unload more excess emotional baggage from his first two decades of life than most people pick up in a lifetime.

It took months, but when he came out into the real world again he was hardly recognisable. He smiled. He laughed. He actually socialised... voluntarily! Of us all, he became the most normal; joking, making friends, dating. I was so jealous of him for a while, but I couldn't begrudge him a moment of the happiness he'd found. And then he announced he was getting married! Seiya would have been so glad for him.

Ellie had grown up into a wonderful woman I must say. When she smiled the room lit up, and she had the most infectious laugh I have ever heard, bar none. She could relate to Hyoga like few others, having been through some of the weirdness that had ruined his life. And when you were with them, the love between them was almost palpable.

Saori officiated at the marriage service, few mortals have a goddess giving their blessing for real. I just wish Hyoga could have had longer to enjoy his happiness. The epidemic that swept through Siberia during the summer of '98 was appallingly virulent, and I personally feel it might have been a last "gift" from the Pestilence Horseman. Saori tried her best to save them, but the genetic breakdown the virus caused went too deep, her skills weren't subtle enough to save any of the victims.

Ellie died first, Hyoga's constitution being stronger, but when she died, something of his new life died within him too, and he became more like his old self, briefly, but even then she was influencing him. He knew he was doomed, but he spent his last remaining days trying to comfort other victims, as Ellie had done.

In a way I'm glad, having seen them together, and having seen Hyoga in the days after her death, I don't think I imagine either of them lasting long apart from each other.

And as for Ikki, my beloved niisan, the quintessential big brother; overprotective, smothering, caring more for me than was probably good for either of us. And at what cost to himself? He never did quite come to terms with the fact that I had matured too, and that I didn't need him as much as he assumed I did.

If I thought it would bring him back as he was, even for a day, I'd play the helpless little brother forever.

The Phoenix Cloth always returned him to life, but it didn't keep him young. As he grew older, he reached the point where he didn't want to rise from the ashes, but the damned cloth didn't care, it kept bringing him back, and bringing him back, and each time it did, there was a little bit less of Ikki inside him and a little more... something else.

We didn't notice at first, we were young, we were all changing so much and so fast, but over time it became clear that the being who wore the Phoenix Cloth was no longer entirely human, and certainly had little in common with the man by brother had become.

He started wearing his cloth all the time and he spent more and more time alone in that volcano of his, cutting himself off from us all, not even Saori could speak to him. I spent days trying to reach him, but there was so little of him to reach any more that eventually I had to give up. Shortly thereafter the volcano erupted, hell, it all but went nuclear (cosmo must have been involved in it somewhere, but the catastrophe was so complete it was impossible to gauge). When we went through such wreckage as we could find, all that was left was the Cloth safe in it's chest, coated in layers of newly set rock. Somehow my brother had found not just the strength to die, but the strength to remain that way. He is the only person of whom I can honestly say "I hope he stays dead", because it is the only way he can find peace.

Saori too, passed beyond our ken. Without the majority of her Bronze Boys or even her Gold Saints to anchor her to the world of mortals, she let her goddess essence take precedence over her Saori persona. Her intelligence and wisdom increased to extraordinary levels, but so did her high-handedness and aloofness. Eventually, her wisdom allowed her to realise she could not remain on Earth as a goddess, or she would become as corrupt as her brother Abel had been. She sequestered herself in her Temple in Sanctuary and never emerged again. Tatsumi accompanied her into exile, loyal to the last. There was a flare of cosmo energy some months later from the Temple that every Saint across the world felt in the depths of their souls, a sort of combination of Athena's benediction and Saori's farewell. The Temple doors are fused shut from the inside, and even now the new Kyoko has forbidden anyone from trying to enter.

I lost Ikki over 80 years ago, and Ikki... well "lived" is too strong a word, let's say "existed", well into his middle age. That leaves me, of all our little band.

I haven't worn my cloth in over half a century, and whilst I know it would still come if I called it, I would look so ridiculous in it now that it would be unthinkable. I'm not even sure I could stand the strain of burning my cosmo any more. Unless of course something threatened the children.

I was the youngest of the Bronze Boys, and now, with my 118th birthday behind me, I've lived longer than Seiya, Shiryu and Hyoga put together!

Damn it, all I want to do is DIE! That should be easy enough for a man as old as I am, shouldn't it?

But of course, in my case it isn't.

Hades saved a special punishment for the one who spurned him personally, for the Andromeda Saint who dared to resist the "honour" of becoming his Incarnation. He cursed me with a gift I know many would give their all to possess; Death ignores me, I simply cannot die. No matter how grave my wounds may be Death will not take me, but will leave me to linger and suffer and heal as best I can.

I might be in such a state that I might wish to die with every fibre of my being, and there have been such times I assure you, but there is no release for me.

I even tried suicide about ten years ago, just to see what would happen. I cut my wrists (Heh, Shiryu would have been proud of me), but all the blood simply flowed out of me and I was left in an coma-like state until my body could replace the blood by itself, it took days and hurt like hell towards the end as I started to come around.

When I came to realise my situation, I decided that I could never settle down with a loved one. I remained too much of a coward to want to outlive someone like that. Oh, that's not to say I wasn't without companions at times, and good times I had with them too, but nothing permanent.

I considered returning to Andromeda Island and becoming a teacher too. June and the new Cepheus Saint had the matter well in hand though, and both were better suited to training others in the martial arts than I ever was, I felt superfluous. I showed up every once in a while to discuss the philosophy of combat with them, and to give the advance students advice in cosmo enhancement, but I never stayed for long, I just couldn't stand to watch June grow old.

So instead I returned to the Foundation, the only other home I had ever known. Saori had made generous provisions for all of her Saints, but my needs were and always have been, simple.

I actually did do some proper teaching, in comparative religion and mythology at Tokyo University (Well, I certainly have had first hand experience at both). I became something of a celebrity and I still record lectures sometimes, but I was always treated as something of an oddity. Most people know of the presence of the godlike beings across the world, but they choose to ignore them if they can, it unsettles them.

Luckily I have always had the children around me and all of Seiya's assorted children, grand-children and great-grandchildren seem fond of their "Uncle Shun". I may not be able to get around the way I used to, but I am prepared to defend them against... whatever shows up. Don't tell Mayumi (She's one of Seiya II's daughters) but I DO keep one part of the Andromeda Cloth here in my room, one of the gauntlets. It's still under my control if I will it, and I sometimes amuse the children with it, making it dance around like a snake for them. It may not be the best use you can put a cloth to, but I think I've earned the right. And besides... you never can tell, can you?

And you know what the truly insane part of all this is? As I lie here in my sick bed, where I spend much of my time these days, I realise that if I had to live my life all over again I would make _exactly_ the same choices as I did this time. I had true adventures, and the best comrades any man could ask for, and I wouldn't trade those times for anything.

The spirit of Andromeda is sacrifice, and despite my feelings at this moment, I suppose I would sacrifice myself a thousand times over to achieve the victories we did. I loved and was loved, and I helped save innocents from destruction. Surely no-one can ask for a finer life than that.

When Shakespeare wrote "Death, where is thy sting?", he meant it as a defiant rebellion against the Grim Reaper, but for me it's a simple, genuine question.

Hades has had his final revenge on the Saints of Athena, and his last little joke looks like it could go on for a long, long time.

+ - + - +

Fin