Sapphire & Steel. Silver/Steel. Table 6. Dark. Prompt 07. Destruction (original) (raw)
TITLE: Being Aware
AUTHOR: Ashleigh Anpilova
FANDOM: Sapphire & Steel
PAIRING: Silver/Steel
GENRE: Slash
TABLE: Dark
PROMPT: 07 - Destruction
RATING: G
WORD COUNT: 900
SUMMARY: Silver explains the true nature of destruction and how his partner deals with it.
WARNINGS: None
DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters, nor am I making any money from them. I merely borrow them from time to time.
Destruction is the termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired, or no longer exists.
To that end, it is considered to be something negative. Something to be avoided at all costs. Something that can never be right. Something that can never be for the good.
However, sometimes you have to destroy something, or someone, in order to save others. In order to save an entire world. To save a whole universe. To save humanity.
No one is more aware of this than we elements. We come into contact with the human race on a regular basis; we are sent to solve problems; to stop destruction; to save people. And we do that. Yet on more than one occasion in order to save, we have to destroy.
I say 'we', but it is not the likes of I, a mere technician, who has to make the decisions of whom or what to destroy; who has to live with what they have done; who has to be able to consider all options, and take the right one. No, it is operatives who take on such roles, and even then not all of them; just some. Just some like my lover. Some like Steel.
Everyone, even Sapphire at times, believes Steel to be like his name; tough, hard, distant, aloof, grey, uncaring, harsh, unyielding, untouchable. And he is. In many ways he is. If he were not, he wouldn't be able to do the job he does so well. So very well. Some might say too well.
Even I can look into his eyes, can look into the icy, cold, steely, grey gaze and believe that what he has done, what he has had to do, has not touched him. And if I, the only other being to know the truth about him, to have touched the inner Steel, to have seen exactly what he is, can be fooled, then others, who see only what he wishes them to see, have no chance.
I sometimes think that it is the only way he can deal with his decisions, with the destruction he must undertake in order to save. To be able to send a man, a human being, to his death, even though that man has no one to love him, no one who will mourn him, even though by doing so an entire world will be spared, takes something that very few people have.
We weren't lovers at the time he sent Tully into the darkness, into what was his death, yet I saw what even Sapphire didn't see. I heard them talking about it; for once they were not using our own way of communicating, they were speaking.
She was angry, furious even with him; I had never seen her like it before. She accused him of letting her, of making her, lie to Tully.
He didn’t get angry; but then Steel doesn't, not in the way others do. He was ever calmer and colder and more icy than he usually is. And his words shocked me, and her. Even now it chills me to remember them.
"If Tully had had anyone, even his cat, who depended on him, I would have offered the darkness me. I would have sacrificed myself, Sapphire."
And he would have done that thing. I believed him. And so did Sapphire, and she, at that time, knew him better than I did.
To think of what the world, They, the elements, and being selfish I myself, would have lost had Mr. Tully not had a neighbour who would happily care for his cat, is not something I wish to ever do.
Steel destroyed Tully.
He terminated him.
He caused so much damage that Tully in effect ceased to exist.
However, Steel did it to save.
He destroyed to save.
The destruction of Tully was not the object. The safety of humanity was.
The darkness would have taken Steel, would have willingly taken Steel. Would have swallowed him up; destroyed him; terminated him. My Steel would no longer have existed. And the darkness would have fed and gorged and gone on and on doing so. And Steel would have lived through it all, just as Tully would have done.
Tully wasn't the first, nor was he the last. And each one touches Steel deeply, each such decision pains him, comes a little closer to destroying him. Not that he would ever admit that, not even to me. At least not by choice. Nevertheless, I know. And he knows I know. And my knowing is the reason he kept me at arms length for so long; that he avoided my attempts to seduce him for so long.
Steel has powers that no other element, save me, knows about. Indeed, I sometimes wonder whether even They know the full truth of what he is.
His powers, his abilities, his knowledge, his intellect, his emotions, his very being are destructive.
He can destroy.
He does destroy.
But only for good.
Always only for good.
Only to save.
Only to build.
Only to construct.
He is so much more than what he appears to be. He does the job he does because he is the only one who can do it.
He destroys to save, something that more should be aware of.
He is many things, but most of all he is mine.