Death Seeker / Fan Works

• A Crown of Stars:
  • Due to the events of the preceeding story, at the beginning of the fic Asuka was so exhausted and soul-burned she genuinely believed that dying in battle in the upcoming war was the best thing she could look forward to.
  • Invoked. Before bringing him back, Daniel called Kaji a death-seeking idiot for letting himself get killed stupidly.
• Advice and Trust: Rei lived in permanent pain due to her soul being split into three pieces. She also knew she was a clone and she would be replaced if she died. She collaborated with Gendo because she hoped she would die and finally rest in peace if he carried forward his plan. However, as her bond with Shinji and Asuka grows stronger and sturdier, she starts enjoying living and hanging out with other people, and stops wishing for the release of oblivion.
• Children of Remnant: By the later chapters, it becomes clear that Jaune would actively welcome the conspiracy to kill him. Between blaming himself for the torture his sisters endured, the fact that Blake actively tried to murder her own mother to protect him, and his general status as an enemy of all humanity, he would consider death to be a release.
• Code Prime: Deconstructed with Suzaku. He wants to die because he sees it as a way to atone for killing his father when he called for ‘do or die’ resistance against Britannia’s invasion of Japan. Kallen calls him out on it, telling him straight to his face that his desire to die a martyr’s death is not redemption, but a coward’s way out due to his refusal to accept responsibility for his actions.
• Doing It Right This Time: Rei was one in her former life, seeking oblivion to escape from her pain. After actually dying and returning to the past she is done with that attitude and intends to live and try new things.
• Evangelion 303:
  • Deconstructed. During pillow talk, Shinji tells Asuka that he has never cared about living or dying. Asuka replied that was a dumb attitude since no one can live without a need for self-preservation, she could never go into combat with someone will not even fight to save his own life, and there were people — including her — that depended on him to live.
  • Ironically, after her best friend's death Asuka was so depressed and guilt-ridden that she wanted to die to meet Jessika again. She nearly did it, but Jessika's spirit stopped her, telling her that it was not her time yet and sent her back.
• Here Be Dragons Series: Gangrel starts like this, but he gets better.
• Nine Days Down: Gorehounds desire nothing more in life than to die fighting a powerful foe. As a result, they have little desire to escape Tartarus due to it being filled with mighty horrors to die against, and the ones that attack Celestia all but throw themselves to their deaths in fighting her.
• The Price of Flight, a Discworld, has the Air Watch move to their other function of being a combat air force. Composed mainly of witches ^note There are a handful of Klatchian carpet pilots and a substantial Feegle presence with their birds of prey with a special affinity and aptitude for flight, they see combat over Lancre and the Chalk against Elves. The squadron commander realises there is a problem with Hanna von Strafenburg. Hanna led a miserable and isolated life in Überwald and was neglected, rather than actively abused, as a child. on the ground Hanna is reserved to the point of being cripplingly shy and unable to open out; in the air she is a demon. It dawns on her wingmates she really doesn't care if she lives or dies in the air. This makes her an Ace Pilot with a tally of kills far in excess of anyone else, including the Red Baroness Olga Romanoff. On the other hand, it doesn't exactly make her a safe presence for her comrades either, who keep well out of the way when she is hunting Elves.
• Rig the Game: Royal: In Akira's counseling with Maruki in Chapter 16, the doctor identifies traces of this in Akira: he doesn't necessarily want to die, but judging by what he did for Kasumi and Shiho, he thinks nothing of putting his life in grave danger. Akira hadn't noticed it himself; Maruki pointing it out is what lets him start to heal.
• Scar Tissue: After masturbating over Asuka's comatose body Shinji was so sickened and disgusted with himself that he just wants to die. He sat in some place and prayed for someone coming along and killing him.
• The Three Kings: Hunt: Ryou becomes this after becoming a pariah for being a mage as well as suffering abuse at the hands of his family and the unspeakables. He sort of succeeds in getting his wish, but he also gets better
• The Lion King Adventures: Shocker is made immortal in his debut story. From that point onwards, he seeks to die. But not before getting his revenge on Simba, Nala and Haiba first... Ultimately, he fails in all his goals, as the Interceptor buries him alive forever in order to get rid of him.
• For The Legend of Zelda, in Kasuto of Kataan's "Eternity", the villain is attempting to kill herself with a special spell which would happen to kill several million bystanders after realizing that immortality is actually a curse since the world is boring after living for a really long time. She had already tried every other conventional method and failed.
• In Murderer's Row, a Red vs. Blue AU fic, freaking Grif becomes one of these after Simmons dies in a prison riot.
• In The Hill of Swords:
  • A crossover between Fate/stay night and The Familiar of Zero, Shirou outperforms Saito's Last Stand and ends up dying after having wiped out an army of 70,000 soldiers. He went into the battle for this reason:
    "And as he stood upon the battle fields, she thought back to his oath: to be reunited with his love upon a hill of swords. To be reunited with his lover. His lover was dead. And it was only through battle that he could finally join her again. When he too was dead."
  • Needless to say, after being revived by Tiffania, he clearly states that at that moment, he really, REALLY, hated her.
    Shirou: [after being revived by Tiffania] And in that moment, I had never hated anything as fiercely as I did her.
• Downplayed in Intercom. By chapter 25, Riley doesn't want to die exactly, but she does seem intent on cutting off all ties with the real world and staying in the mind world forever, giving little regard to her family and friends.
• In The Prince, a Death Note Yakuza AU by Neverending Odyssey, Light sees the deaths he must deal out as a burden and truly looks forward to the day L will catch and execute him for it-however since he's not engaging the detective in pitched battle he isn't leaving any clues behind and Ryuk sees a very long lifespan ahead of him.
• The World Ends with You fanfic, Eris Game, has the titular character trying to become an activist just to die as she's responsible for Shiki's death. However, some mysterious force, who is Shiki, keeps on foiling it. Luckily, her wish is granted in the end of week 1.
• Light in The Art Of Drowning upon learning that L is his long lost childhood friend who he thought was dead and the reason he became Kira in the first place to L's utter disbelief Light suddenly confesses to being Kira and begs L to execute him.
• In The Jaded Eyes Series once Harry/Tristan has fulfilled his goals of creating a perfect world for magical people he fully intends to die.
• My Hostage, Not Yours: Tak is this for awhile in the third story, following her transformation into a human.
• In Diaries of a Madman, this turns out to be the main motivation for Discord.
• Claire becomes this in the climax of the Bloodier and Gorier fanfic Jurassic World (The Geeky Zoologist), after realizing that she will have no future because of her role in the fall of the park and that she is likely to get imprisoned. Learning that her DNA is part of the Indominus' genetic makeup doesn't help.
• In Trust Doesn't Rust, it is all but explicitly stated that Needy became this, with Sam later acknowledging that her attempt to ‘attack’ him was so pitiful compared to what she did to Low Shoulder that it only makes sense if she was trying to get him to kill her.
• In Memento Mori Light tries to commit Suicide by Cop by confessing to being Kira but L refuses to allow Light to be tried and executed until he understands why Light confessed.
• Harry Potter and the Death Wish. Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's a Dark Fic that's a more deconstructive take on Harry's history of childhood abuse—Harry feels utterly worthless and unloved and he is completely serious about wanting to die.
• In Technomad's Death Seeker, Grima Wormtongue is inadvertently released from Saruman's influence at the same time that King Theoden is, and becomes the most fearless warrior in Rohan, charging headlong into every fight to pay for his folly as well as cursing out Saruman to his face in depth and detail that awes even Gandalf.
• In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, an Alliance N7 finds a Cerberus Phantom who actively hoped to die in battle and says as much when speaking to the N7 since Phantoms live a miserable, painful existence from their cybernetics.
• Leorin becomes this at the end of Shadowchasers: Torment, as illustrated by the final scene where he attacks the Dread Emperor. The ending is left ambiguous, but now that he can die, it is clear that he is trying to find a way to do so heroically. (The situation was a win-win for him; if he struck his opponent down, it would mean a cold-blooded killer known for slaughtering innocents would be eliminated, but if he lost, he would finally be free and his soul allowed access to the Bastion of St. Cuthbert.) The author has said that had he won the battle, he would have simply started looking for other powerful villains and challenged them, until he got his wish.
• Most of the D.A. slips into this in Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness. At the beginning of the story, they decide that they will all go on a suicide attack as a protest/revenge/hopeless last stand at the end of the year rather than continuing to live under the current regime. Some of them were also talking, even joking, quite detachedly about their upcoming deaths.
• Nearly every act carried out by the villains in Angel of the Bat was the result of a single death seeker: The Seraphim was made immortal by some kind of hexing ritual by Deacon Blackfire, who told him he would only be allowed into heaven when he fulfilled his purpose of destroying the sinful of Gotham. It also justifies some of his Bond Villain Stupidity- he doesn't kill members of the Bat-family until things get extreme because, if all else fails, he wants to torment Batman enough to push him to kill him.
• In Queen of Shadows, Nonki is a downplayed example. While he does see death as the only means to ever truly find peace and looks forward to it, he also knows that he's lived a sinful life and faces eternal punishment, unless he can find a way to insure that he reaches Nirvana.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide:
  • Subverted. The three pilots had been actively seeking (Rei) or passively wanting to die during the War, but they started to get better after the death of Kaworu.
  • Played straight with Keiko, who wanted to die after her mother's death.
• In The Zeppo in Mind, every Slayer subconsciously wants to "surrender and embrace darkness". Xander and Faith theorize it's likely the real reason every Slayer dies so young; they eventually give in to a desire they're not even aware of. Xander helps Faith by giving her dreams of dark and violent sex to satisfy her desire for darkness.
• In Chrysalis Visits The Hague, the queen herself repeatedly states that she knows she won't leave the prison alive, and seems to have made peace with that thought.
• Ask The New Hope's Peak has an interesting case with Monaca. She doesn't seek death by trying to find a worthy enemy to fight, she just taunts everyone and acts like a Jerkass, hoping that someone will kill her before the damage done to her legs does.
• In Out of the Corner of the Eye, Francis White lives in constant agony due to Nyarlathotep making him immortal before flaying him. And while going insane has helped him cope with this, he hints at the fact that deep down he just wants to die.
• Ageless: Whenever his semi-immortality gets to him (like after Kyoshi's death or when he believed the Avatar was gone forever during the Hundred Year War), Ryou would go looking for trouble, often signing on to fight in a battle hoping that someone would kill him. The Earth Kingdom even has a term for it; "going wolf".
• X-Men 1970: As trying to reason with the leader of a terrorist group who threatens blowing a building up, Cyclops realizes the guy actually wants a martyr death; and he intends to take as many people as possible with him.
  The guy had no intention of letting anyone in this building leave alive. Including himself.
  A deathwish? The lust for posthumous fame? Or just a more fitting, final Statement? The motivation didn't matter. All that would matter was the result.
• In Fallen Kingdom, after Peach disappeared, Bowser stopped caring what happened to his empire and is willing to let it collapse.
• Blackbird (Arrow):
  • By the time Oliver finds Laurel again, her time with the League of Assassins has made her dangerously close to this, if she wasn't one already.
  • Sara is most definitely this. She's barely been living at all since her mother traded her sister for her, and one of the reasons she wants to save said sister is because she knows Laurel will have every reason in the world to kill her.
• SAPR: Cinder becomes one after the failure of her plans, seeking to bring about a reenactment of The Mistralliad that will see her killed and remembered as one of history's greatest villains.
• Viridian: The Green Guide: Izuku's vigilante activities are partially out an unwillingness to kill himself, despite being suicidal.
• People Like Us: Arthur goes through a psychotic break from withdrawal and is so afraid of himself that he sneaks into Travis's apartment and begs to be killed so that he can at least die in his lover's arms. Of course, Travis doesn't go for it.
• Down And Out: Every conversation Grace has with Simon inevitably has the latter begging for her to just kill him and be done with it.
• In FIRE! (DarkMark), the Red Skull has grown sick of his endless conflict with Captain America and wants to die in battle with him.
• Destiny is a story about Jeri, who in the series was already a major Broken Bird due to the death of her mother when she was younger, the death of her partner Leomon, and her Demonic Possession at the hands of the D-Reaper, developing major suicidal tendencies after she is the Sole Survivor of the car accident that kills her father, her stepmother, and her halfbrother.
• Sparks Among The Stars: Salem is an interesting variation of the trope: she does want to end her immortality and finally die, but only if it's on her terms, said terms being that she takes all of Remnant down with her to spite the gods who cursed her in the first place. She's as terrified of dying in any other fashion as any normal person would be, which is why she actively hunts any Planeswalkers born on Remnant before their sparks ignite - they have the best chance of actually killing her before her plans can be completed, and she knows it.
• Chasing Dragons: Ser Brus Buckler becomes this after circumstances force him to abandon half his forces at the Battle of Piper's Creek and leaving him to be declared a coward.
• Under the Northern Lights: When the characters finally meet him, Wiglek is revealed to be seeking his own death — he has lived as a tormented undead horror since Nightmare Moon bound his soul to his flesh, and he's hoping to enrage Luna enough to make her kill him.
• In Underverse, XTale Frisk suffers so much in the prequel series that when he gets to the tenth timeline, he's become so fed up with repeatedly losing to and being used by XGaster, he tries pretty much everything to make the pain stop. Unfortunately for him, XGaster has other plans and forcefully keeps him and his brother alive.
• In the Better Bones AU, Breezepelt feels he needs to die to make up for his past crimes, and he's the one to come up with the idea of drowning Darktail along with himself. Hearing this makes Onestar feel like he can't constantly be a coward and let the younger generation pay with their lives for his mistake of abandoning his son Darktail when he was a kit, and he decides to do it instead.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Paradox: Kiryu Fudo Nagare spent almost 70 years in the Bad Future finding a place to die, feeling that fighting against JUNO would be hopeless and having went through intense post-traumatic stress disorder from witnessing the whole world crumble before his eyes. However, when he adopted the infant Ian while he was found by the latter's biological mother sleeping on a gravestone gave him a reason to live. He even relapses into this mindset again, going so far as to contemplate suicide, after he was supposedly going to die while buying Akiza enough time to escape with the Paradox Gundam.
• it's about the bones: Gideon, apparently, was even worse about this than in canon. When she was given the whole explanation of her power and the two hundred children, she immediately rolled away the Rock of the Tomb in an attempt to die, not caring that this would supposedly destroy God and all of humanity. It didn't, and she just ended up haunted by God's own enemy.
  Gideon: Remember that one time when we were kids and your parents told us we were two hundred dead babies, and we both took it astonishingly well?

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