“what do we say to the god of death?”
“not today”
i find it fascinating that we’ve twice seen Shiro stare down a blade to the face and not even blink. and it reminds me of a discussion i had with @equineporcupine about Shiro, and an important aspect of his character: Shiro does not fear death.
i don’t mean “Shiro wants to die” because i don’t think he does – someone who actively wanted to die wouldn’t survive a year in the gladiator pits. i mean that Shiro isn’t afraid to die.
death is inevitable for all of us – there’s no way to avoid it – but most people don’t like to think about it too much because it makes us uncomfortable. we’d rather joke about it or avoid it. but Shiro… he spent a year in an alien prison with no realistic hope of rescue or release. thinking about his own mortality was inescapable.
there must have been multiple times in the arena or the labs when he thought “this is it. this is how i die”. there must have been multiple times when he sat alone in his prison cell and thought about the inevitability of his own demise, and wondered which particular alien evil would finally kill him. there must have been multiple times when he faced monsters and thought “there’s no way i’ll survive this”
but he did.
Shiro was forced to acknowledge, time and time again, that he might die at any moment – maybe this moment, maybe the next – maybe today, or tomorrow. he faced his own death so many times he stopped being afraid of it.
and now he doesn’t fear death anymore.
and it makes him incredibly powerful.
he’s powerful because he has accepted, on a bone-deep level, that at some point he’ll die (because we all will) and that he probably can’t control when or how that will be (because most of us can’t). but his reaction to that is to try and live the best life he can in the time he’s given. which is why he was still fighting back against his captors after a year in the Galra prisons, and why he fought so hard to survive in the arena, and why he never gave up.
and it’s why he can stare down a blade to the face and not blink. because if this is the blade that kills him – if this is how he dies – then that’s okay. he’ll die fighting, and protecting his friends, and he’ll die with his soul intact, and that’s all he can ask for.
Shiro just… he looks death in the eye, and winks, and says: “not today”
saratogaroad 