"Never Let Go"
by s1ncer1ty

Honjou Yuushi hated roses, but he brought them anyway -- an extravagant spray of tight crimson blossom that the man presumably buried in the grave before him would never appreciate in either life or death. Not from Yuushi, whom he'd long ago cast aside like stray refuse, at any rate.

His hands trembled minutely as he clutched the flowers in his fists, thorns popping through tissue paper and breaking skin. Yuushi barely noticed the sting and the thin trickle of blood, only dimly registered the ache of protest from his knees as they sank into cold ground. He'd been a man in mourning the instant Queen had informed him so many months ago of the "official" demise of Fujimiya Ran.

At first he'd refused to light the incense at the grave or to pray for his soul, but as days gave way to weeks, each day bringing fresh, unappreciated flowers to that solitary grave, the hope he'd harbored deep in his heart that Queen was horribly wrong faded to dull acceptance. Tears were useless for Ran, and just like the red roses clenched in his hands, Yuushi had long refused to let them drop.

"Why did you have to let yourself die?" Yuushi whispered for what must have been the thousandth time to the grave. "I thought you were too damned stubborn to leave this world."

A caress of soft fingers seemed to whisper up his cheek in response, and instinctively Yuushi inclined his head into the touch. It may have been nothing more than just a stray breeze, echoing between the otherwise still gravestones, but to Yuushi it was all too real. Nostalgia welled within him, and his breath caught in his throat in lament of what might have been.

"You couldn't have done that while you were still alive, could you, Ran?" he murmured into thin air, laughing mirthlessly at his own fantasy. For an instant, it had seemed so very much as if Ran were... "No. You never could accept that someone wanted you safe -- that someone else wanted to help share that life you only saw as a burden."

Warmth wrapped fast around Yuushi's fingers; the resulting shudders reverberating up both arms, and the fat bundle of roses spilled unceremoniously from his hands, striking the ground with a rustle. If he tilted his head back, he wondered if it would bump against Ran's chest, or if he stood he would bump into a wiry man clad in an ugly orange sweater, glaring him down with an unwaveringly hard glint in his eyes.

"I'd hoped Queen was wrong -- that she was mistaken when she told me you were deceased. I still don't want to believe. She can't be right, can she? Please, tell me she was wrong ... Ran..."

Yuushi wrapped both arms around his chest, and the ethereal warmth seemed to follow, winding him fast in the spider-threads of a ghost's embrace -- but he couldn't look up. If he did so, the illusion would only fade from existence, he was certain, and he wanted to cling as long as he could to a comfort he could never find when Ran was still alive.

"Don't let me go," he whispered, finding his lips almost too numbed to speak. "I don't know what I'll do if you really are gone. So much of what I've done with my life is for you -- was always for you."

Long strands of dirty brown hair fluttered from his brow, although there was little breeze to speak of, and those invisible, envisioned fingers tilted his head toward the clear autumn sky. Regardless, Yuushi could almost hear the dim whisper in his ear, as if carried to him on the wind: Look at me.

"I can't." Yuushi's eyes squeezed shut, and he shook his head, shivering as the fingers at his cheeks held him in an unwaveringly firm grip.

I haven't gone anywhere, you idiot. Now come on. Pull yourself together and look at me.

"How do I know -- How can I be sure?" Words forced from his lips like chunks of ice.

Baka. I'm right behind you. See for yourself.

At the urging of the strong fingers pressed to his chin, Yuushi swiveled at the waist, teeth sunk achingly into his bottom lip as he refused to open his eyes. "Ran, please..."

Soft breath whispered mere inches from his lips. Open your eyes ... Yuushi...

Inhaling deeply and steeling his resolve -- wanting so hard to believe -- Yuushi let his eyes flutter open once more --

-- only to be greeted with the cold slap of empty silence and a thin cloud of incense smoke swirling around him.

"Ran?" His voice caught in his throat, chest hitching, and he slumped back against tremblingly weak knees, tears starting to flow for the first time since he'd learned the news of Ran's demise. They spilled down the arch of his cheeks and circled his chin before dropping to the bare ground. Yuushi folded in on himself, arms circling around his chest and providing little warmth as he bowed his head to the ground, weeping into jarring emptiness.

Vorzüglich. His creation was a thing of such beauty even he was stunned.

Catching a shuddering breath, the telepath slumped heavily against a headstone not fifty feet away from the weeping man in white. This particular illusion had taken as much energy out of him as a good fuck -- only the despair spilling from the grieving man's soul was infinitely more exquisite. He savored his tears like fine wine, shivered in ecstasy with each gasping breath, fell with the man to the ground as he shared that outpouring of raw, unadulterated pain.

His target had been easy prey -- almost too easy -- but he had far from tired of him yet. Even after the tears dried and he struggled to press ahead with a willfully loveless life, there would be plenty of opportunity to break him.

And when his toy did in fact break, Schuldich would be there to drink up the remaining dregs of his shattered heart.