A/N Wow! Any sort of update from me! Thats like a volcano in Antartica! I got my inspiration for this in my english class and one of our homeworks is to write a short story from a choice of a few titles and so I wrote this- with a few changes obviously. Im going to give it in tomorrow and see what she thinks. Hopefully she wont think I'm disturbed haha :D! (sorry if the he's and his's are all female in the original Ichi was a girl)
Regarding my other stories- i just don't have inspiration for them at the moment but i promise once i get my inspiration I WILL ACTUALLY UPDATE AT SOME POINT! Anyway... enjoy the story!
The Hero
It was time. Time once again to lose one he loved. But that's how he lived; he let herself love them, every single one of them. It was his penance. His only solace in what he did. Some called him a hero- others a killer- but he did as she was told. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, just as you don't question orders from the one who holds the gun.
He brushed his soft locks out of his face as he gazed lovingly through warm sepia eyes at the man below him. His sleeping face seeming so angelic, so innocent though he was from it. He remembered the time they met, the time they fought, the times he constantly berated him for his obscene smoking habits, he remembered it all. Every single moment with his lost loves were remembered, etched into his very soul so that they could still live on within him.
Moonlight seeps through gaps in the curtains, reflecting off into a spectrum of colour as he silently removes his signature weapon. It was a beautiful butterfly dagger encrusted with tiny jewels of every colour. Looking upon the jewels he feels reminiscent of the past, thinking of the past loves that this knife has tasted. The one at the very top, Red for the one with red hair- he remembered laughing at his abrasive attitude and his arrogant tribal tattoos. He remembered loving him. Then black for the rich one with the long raven- black hair, he was seemingly stoic, an aristocrat in appearance but he knew him truly. He loved him too. Then indigo for the her eyes, full of life and so much intelligence, another of his loves whose life now lies sealed in her dagger. Green for the one who never cried, pink for the scientist, orange for the ditsy one and finally peach for the bald one- his bald head, shaved as he kept reminding his- reflected the light much like the gem that held his life.
Snapping out of his daze, he tucked his unnaturally orange halo of hair strands out of his eyes and once again looked upon the next life that his dagger would absorb. The knife was held with a practiced precision, softly pressing against his jugular. Tear threatened to spill over as he pursed his lips together in anticipation. Then he stopped, a hand grabbing his wrist and the feel of his chest rising and falling at a quickened rate.
Startled his eyes flicked upwards and saw his love's cerulean orbs locked with his. "Why?" he asks, surprisingly he doesn't seem startled- as if he knew this was coming. He just stares, astonished. They never wake up. Never. The grip around his wrist tightens, "Why?" he asked again, his voice strained and raspy from the pressure of the cool metal kissing his skin.
"Its what I do," he replied.
A small smile graced the lips of the man below the knife. "I'm the last one, are you happy that it's nearly all over? All my friends, partners are gone. It was all you wasn't it? One by one you picked us all off. Are you happy that your job is almost done, number 15?"
The tears start to spill as the one known as number 15 looks down at the one with the cerulean eyes. Knowing now that he had known his true purpose all along. "I love you, I love all of them," he cries softly as he caresses her tear- stained cheek.
"I know, we all know. And that's why we let you free us. You let yourself love us, knowing you have to kill us, to share our pain. Its your payment for our lives, the heartbreak is your penance and that's why we let ourselves love you back." He whispered through a true smile, the moonlight reflecting off his feral teeth giving the illusion that it is a wildcat, not a human, who lies under number 15 at the moment.
"You are then end. The final space on my dagger is for you." Reaching into his pocket he pulls out an azure jewel, the same as the flecks that resided in his final target's eyes. The free hand of the last one left he brings the jewel to his mouth and places a chaste kiss on it and together the fit the sapphire into its place at the very end of the hilt of the weapon filled with the lives of those that he had worked with.
"You're a hero, 15. You've set us all free, forgiven us for our unforgivable sins. Only you could find it in your heart to love after all we did. End this sweet torture, so I can meet the ones whose torture was not so sweet." He brushed his tangerine locks behind his ear endearingly as he lent foreword and placed a final kiss on the cheek of his final beloved.
"My final target, your crimes have far exceeded the others I have sent on their way. You have maimed, mutilated, tortured and murdered; yet I have loved you. It is because I have loved you that I am able to free you from the world that holds the humans you most despise and had to rid yourself of. If there is a god," his sepia eyes hardened and a look of serene acceptance came across his final target, "then I, number 15, deliver gods justice!"
With a practiced flick of his dagger it was over. Opening the curtains, then the sliding door, he stepped onto the balcony. Looking up, clouds covered the majority of the sky but the thin crescent of the moon was the only thing fully visible. That, he decided, was his love. Blocked and dulled by the clouds that bar the world of the living and the world but always there, one bit will always be shining down no matter how many clouds float in his way.
Days later his report was done. Handing in the write up to his boss in the ever-same gray office, in the repetitive gray city. "You have taken down the greatest terrorist group that this country has ever seen," his boss says proudly, "you are a true hero."
Is he not the same as them? The power to kill has taken over all of their lives, their own sense of justice driven them to different paths. They knew their sense of justice, to rid the world of those who are weak, the ones in the way of what they believed was progress. But what was his? To protect? To love? To find freedom? In a way his sense of justice was all of these, but none of the symmetrically. Only one thing was clear to his, as clear as the moon in the cloudy sky a few long nights ago.
Renji, Byakuya, Rukia, Ulquiorra, Szayel, Orihime, Ikkaku and now... Grimmjow.
He was no hero.
