A/N: Originally posted on LJ November 8, 2007. I originally began writing it to deal with my Moritz-ish feelings and by the end I wound up with something so much more than I had anticipated. Poetic references include the title, taken from In Memoriam, A.H.H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and a reference to Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" in part two.

We Lose Ourselves in Light

The grave is lazy.
He takes our bodies slow.
-- Jon Foreman,"Learning How to Die"

The truth is, he thinks about the gun a lot.

It isn't always the gun, though that's usually his favorite, if you can call something like this a matter of favorites. There's the river sometimes, of tying rocks to his waist, filling pockets with stones and letting himself drift beneath the water. The trees too; there's rope in Melchior's barn, strong and sturdy. It wouldn't break, wouldn't buckle under his weight. It wouldn't buckle like he buckles, every day. It's strong like he isn't, can carry things that he can't carry anymore.

But the gun, that's the quickest, and the most convenient. When his father isn't in the house, he steps into his study, pulls open the cabinet and stares at it. He weighs it in his hands sometimes, when they aren't shaking too much, smoothes his hands over the cool steel.

He always puts it back, though. Melchior comes into his mind, strong and sure, and he falters with the gun. Or his mama's footsteps sound in the hallway, and though sometimes she can be as harsh as Father, as cold and uncaring – Moritz remembers being a child, falling and scraping his knees. He remembers her hand smoothing his hair, her smile soft and gentle. She wiped away his tears then.

She doesn't anymore, but the memory is enough, just the same.

He sets the gun back in its cabinet, listens to the wood snap into place. Every time he thinks it's the last, decides that finally he's had enough facing his own mortality, enough fantasizing.

Each time he knows he's lying to himself. There's a satisfaction, deep and carefully buried, hidden away under the layers; it's what draws him there in the first place, to the metal salve that could relieve him of his problems, could ease away all the pain in his life. There's a satisfaction, yes, and it's what gets him through the days. He couldn't live without the shotgun, locked up safe in its prison.

It isn't even the gun, really. It starts so much earlier than that, at three and five and seven, when they're schoolboys with messy hair, all of them, and they all have dirt on their clothes and Moritz really shouldn't feel so outside, so iother/i, but there it is. He does and he is, pulled apart from the other boys, forced inside a cage. He paces behind the bars, watches them at their play but he's stuck, trapped behind lines of hard, cold, unfeeling steel.

It's an appropriate cage for him when he doesn't know what he should feel, how he should react or behave. His laugh comes at awkward times; he tries to watch the others, to see how they feel and react and think but he's too separate, too apart from them. And he wonders if they feel this way, if they could possibly feel so alone and clueless, shut off inside the silence of their own mind, but he knows – no, they're too confident, too easy. He's alone.

He strains, puts his arms through the bars and reaches, reaches, but the metal cuts into his flesh and he can never reach, can never strain far enough. He pulls his arms away, bruised.

He meets Melchior at the edge of the forest.

And he thinks maybe if he can just reach him – maybe if he can just brush his fingers against his coat, can grab hold of him – maybe that'll be enough to save him, maybe that will let the cage door swing open and he can be free.

There are times he almost wants to tell Melchior. The words are there, dancing on the edge of his tongue, but they never come quite close enough to tumbling out – or he chickens out, paling at the last second. He wants to tell, to share this with someone, to let go of this secret that burns him up inside more than the stockings at night in his dreams, more than any other secret because this one extends beyond his body, beyond his dreams, and dips into who he is.

But letting go of his secret -- ihis/i; possession is important here because really what does he have, other than the beating of his own heart, the breath in his chest? – would be releasing his blanket, his safety net, into the hands of someone else. What if they tore it from him? What if they held it away, never letting him have it again?

He couldn't risk that – ican't/i risk that. How could he live without it?

And what if Melchior finds that Moritz is itoo/i black inside? What if Melchior finds he's too withdrawn, too removed, too unconnected to the world and humanity, and he loses Melchior too?

How could he live without Melchior?

The first time he fails that term, he sets the gun on the table, sits in front of it and stares. It stares back, or seems to, the black circle growing until it fills the room, until he finds himself looking into a well of swirling blackness, of cool nonexistence.

It bores through him, sees right through the uniform and the hair, through the socks around his ankles and into the quivering boy beneath. It passes judgment on him there, in his father's study, and maybe it's then that Moritz is doomed; maybe that really is the end of it all because even though he locks it away again, tears himself away from the black reach of its singular eye, somewhere in the blackness he sees the answer.

It starts to become an every night sort of thing, and now he knows the number of bullets in the cabinet, counts them obsessively.

It's when he has to wash the gun oil from his hands, when his mama asks him how he manages to stain the cuffs of his shirts, and his hands shake so much he nearly sends shell scattering to the floor that he starts to get – a little – scared.

There's always been fear, the sort that crept into his blood and sent his heart pumping; it thrilled him, sent electric shivers down his back to hold the gun carefully in his hands, watch the light of the room play over the metal surface. It was always a little about fear, about daring himself to do it, but now his breath falls nervously; his heart skips beats and he almost drops it. His blood runs white hot until it leaves his body, leaves him breathless and pained and holding a cold metal harbinger of death –

It starts to become too much for him to hold onto.

The first time he mentions it, it's after his promotion. It's safe then because there's promise, a hope for the future. The eye can't haunt him anymore because he isn't that same nothing boy, the same one that dreams of such horrid things, the same one that thinks, in the quiet of the night, of Melchior and grabbing hold of him and saving himself.

He mentions it on the way home from school, his heart still racing, his arms still pulsing with the feel of Melchior in them and he remembers the hug, remembers the joy on Melchior's face. It slips out, almost, though it isn't really an accident. It's a test, mostly, to see – what? If Melchior cares enough about him to save him? If he doesn't care? Maybe it's a dare, prodding Melchior to do something.

"I feel that way sometimes myself," is his measured answer, after a beat of silence that was almost enough to be unnoticeable but this is Moritz and Melchior; this is all about what's said in the silences between them. He worries at his lip, the smile still there but it starts to drop from his face.

"I mean it, Melchi. I – I know where father keeps the key to the cabinet, where he keeps his gun."

Melchior isn't looking at him, tucks his books under his arms and stares at the ground that passes beneath their feet. Moritz's heart is racing because this is the moment where he discovers if Melchior wants him to stay alive, this is when he discovers if it's worth it.

There's a silence, of a few moments, and Melchior's reply is firm, but if Moritz had the ears, had the strength to listen, he could've heard the fear and the uncertainty, carefully guarded, around the edges of Melchior's words.

"You shouldn't say such things, Moritz. It isn't healthy."

Their walk home is silent, as is their farewell at the gate to Moritz's house.

Inside, Moritz lingers before the door to his father's study until his mother comes out to bustle him upstairs, remind him of homework and of chores, of the sin of idleness. But, it's stupid to think of the gun now, now when everything's finally come around for him. Even his socks managed to stay up an hour longer than usual, and his pen doesn't leak onto him as he starts to write.

It's stupid to think of it now, when he's passing school and – well, Melchior does care for his wellbeing, doesn't he?

He fails.

His face stings with the hand of his father and his fingers burn with the letter and her refusal.

He reaches for anger, reaches for bitterness because maybe that'll give him a little bit of dignity. Maybe that's how Melchior would do it, or Otto, or one of the other boys, but really he's crawled into the well where he feels nothing but the desperate end of things. That's all there is left for him to feel, all there's ever been for him to feel.

There's no way out for him now.

He goes to the study, opens the cabinet door.

He shuts it. His hands are trembling as he walks away, but he has to find Melchior – has to see him one last time and maybe this time he can grab hold of him, can pull himself to safety.

At Melchior's house, the light in his room burns low. He doesn't go to the door – can't bare to face Frau Gabor, but he waits, waits until he's sure Melchior isn't there before he slips around to the barn. It's Melchior's hiding place, and Moritz isn't really sure what carries his feet there when he knows Melchior could be out walking, but maybe it's the faint idea, silly and senseless, that the two of them are connected in some way and Moritz's anguish might drive Melchior to seek his own refuge.

The barn is silent, the air still.

"Melchior?"

He can feel his reply on the air before he says it, can feel the hesitation.

"Moritz. What are you doing here?"

Moritz finds the hayloft, finds Melchior sitting with his knees to his chest and never before has he seen Melchior so disturbed, so alone and fragile looking. He feels a start and wonders when he started looking in a mirror.

"I came to find you. I – I need to talk to you, Melchi."

But Melchior buries his face in his arms, shakes his head and hay falls from his curls. "Now?"

He falters, stepping back, unwanted. "Well, I – " When Melchior looks up, his face his is pale and his eyes are troubled. Moritz feels his shoulders slump and he turns his eyes to the floor of the loft. "Nevermind. It isn't important."

Melchior nods, softly, and turns his eyes to the wall. Moritz's arms drop from the bars of his cage. There's no reaching out to Melchior, not anymore. He's too far gone from his cage now, and Moritz isn't sure holding onto Melchior would save him anyway. He turns to leave.

"Goodbye, Melchi."

"Bye, Moritz." Melchior mutters it to the wall, and Moritz lets his eyes linger, bites his lip a moment longer before he leaves the barn behind him.

There's nothing left for him now.

He thinks it's kind of strange how the metal never seems to warm in his hand, no matter how long he holds it, no matter how much his hand is sweating. His warmth never passes over into it, never eases away the cold.

The eye stares at him again, his knees in the dirt and Ilse's flowers in his lap, the evening waning around him. He's ready to leave now, now that life has danced away from him one more time, left him behind in the dark with the absence of himself again.

The eye is small, dark but the more he stares, the more it grows until it melds into the darkness, into the night as it settles around him, and even the twinkling of the stars disappears within its infinite reach.

He shuts his eyes and lets it envelope him.

The birds start from the trees at the sound. He slowly slumps against the earth. It's strangely poetic that the first time he ever does anything calmly is after the life has seeped from his veins, skittering into the black void where the stars are swallowed up.