Title: Simplify Me When I’m Dead

Characters: Mal

Pairing: None

Rating: M

Words: 495

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Simplify Me When I'm Dead

(excerpt)

Remember me when I am dead

and simplify me when I'm dead.

As the processes of earth

strip off the colour of the skin:

take the brown hair and blue eye

and leave me simpler than at birth,

when hairless I came howling in

as the moon entered the cold sky.

Keith Douglas

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The pounding had stopped hours ago, but he hadn’t heard it anyway.

When he had signed on, proudly marched away from Shadow with his mother’s grief fresh on his cheeks and his hard, young man’s voice ringing out in the sunshine, he had expected action and excitement. He had been promised a chance to make a difference and a hard fight. He had expected – wanted – anticipated like a longing – adventure above all else, more adventure than could be found in a branding yard, or the haystack of some father’s barn. He had wanted something finer, something more complex than the day to day creeping from bed to work to bed and back again, something more than callouses and the easy laughter of the ranch hands. His hands sang for it, his whole physical being ached for change.

Now his whole being simply ached, and things just got real simple again; a latent calm like clouds drifted across his soul.

There was a comfort that came from knowing Death would bring oblivion.

He knew that eventually the wound in his gut would get septic, and his blood would turn to poison in his veins. His limbs would stiffen, his skin would get ruddy and his unwitting screams would be unheard above the pounding of the artillery. Eventually he would lose consciousness and that would be that. He would either sink into the mud before his breath stopped coming, or he would twitch his way toward the Reaper and die slow and easy. For a while, nothing would happen, except maybe the occasional twitch or sound as his flesh relaxed into the process of mor