A Rose and a Sakura

Rating: PG-13

Genre: Angst/Romance

Warnings/Spoilers: Pegasus's past, suicide, a little bit of necrophilia, slightly AU

Summary: It's spring again. But the winter in my heart will never pass... Pegasus angst/Suicide warning

A/N: I really don't know what possessed me to write this... oh yeah, it was a review I got for one of my other stories, Rose Red. Someone told me that the blossoms in the show weren't roses; they were sakura, or cherry blossoms, which represent how short life is as well as tragic love. I'm not necessarily writing this to disprove that, but... Well, I'll continue this at the end.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-gi-oh! I have a deck. That is all.

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It's spring again. Birds are singing, the flowers are blooming.

But the winter in my heart will never pass. I brush my hand along your gravestone, tracing out the words I had lovingly carved on the marble. If only I could have placed a statue of an angel here... It would have been more fitting than this simple block of dark stone.

My hands then touch at the frozen blossoms of the rose tree at your grave. The blossoms are black now from icy decay. How is your body, deep in that casket underground? Does it now decay, your lovely flesh dripping from the elegant bones of your face?

Ah, but I am mad with love for you still. I would dig through this green grass, through the damp black earth and rip through your rotted casket, pull you up and dance madly with your form like some ghoul trying to find something pure, even in the sickening decay of death.

I would desecrate you for love, my darling.

The sakura are blossoming, love. They're beautiful, their pure white tinted with pink, the delicate mockery of tainted purity. Someone had trained a rose vine up one of them and now buds of crimson are starting to bloom, but hesitantly, shyly, in face of the delicate storm of the parent tree.

They're beautiful today. You would have laughed as I pulled out my sketchbook and pastels, shyly asking you to sit at the base of the tree so I could make a quick sketch. You would have protested that you were in no condition, that your dress was too simple, too drab.

But you make anything you wear beautiful.

How many roses did I bring to you today? So many... I settled my affairs before pulling as much money I dared from our account. I went through so many towns to find these roses for you. I must have sold out nearly every floral shop for miles around.

Cabbage roses, China roses, damask roses, mundi roses, musk roses, tea roses, red and white roses, white roses, yellow roses, Burgundy roses, Japan roses, moss roses, rose buds...

They're all about us now, in a beautiful display of color and fragrance. It's a heady scent, intoxicating... like sakura.

I hope you like them. The scent must reach heaven by now. You probably peep over the delicate wisp of a cloud and see the array of colors from above.

I laugh softly. A lover's fancy; that is all...

I should have brought black mulberries, perhaps as my last meal... for I fear that I will not survive any longer...

The knife in my hand is sharp, keen like winter's bite still upon a chilly breeze. It should be; I made sure of it. I will make no mistakes with this. The books I had fervently searched through, the doctors and professors I had asked, all of them told me what I should do.

Cancer took you away, eating you from the inside as your own body rebelled. Steel will give me my passage, my blood and pain Charon's coin for me.

I fumble as I roll up the sleeves of my shirt, for once lucid, without the taint of alcohol fogging my mind. My fingers trace out the complex web of arteries and veins, searching for the right ones.

I trace the blade down my arm, watching in morbid fascination as the blood welled up in beads of scarlet. But the blood flow is quickening, as my life is trickling away. I sit and lean against your headstone. I'm feeling... light headed and rather frail.

The stone feels nice on my back, the sun warm on my face. Feeling is fading away for me, but it still is nice. It doesn't hurt anymore. My eyes are starting to shut.

Look, Cyndia, the sakura... and the roses... They're blossoming and falling away...

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A/N: Disturbing, no? Well, I didn't write this to disprove it, but my reviewer did have a point in the symbology of anime. I still have to look, but I'm still going with the fact that Pegasus used roses as metaphors, as indicated by the animation. Sakura blossoms are rarely shown as bright, blood red. There are a variety of them that come in magenta though...

Yes, sakura means tragedy. In fact, sakura are used as symbols of the samurai, because sakura are rather frail flowers, and remind samurai that their lives are fleeting and fragile, that they could be blown away at any moment.

Roses almost always mean some sort of love or beauty. And the roses I listed are actual varieties, and each variety has a different meaning. Black mulberries mean sadness and the message "I shall not survive you." /grins/ If you've been reading some of my fiction, you will realize I put plenty of flower references. That's because one of my hobbies is looking up flower meanings. There is an entire language to be created simply from using flowers. I haven't sent any bouquets yet, but I'm certainly planning on it...

By the way, anyone catch the Romeo and Juliet/Anne Rice references? It's Pegasus steadily going insane, by the way. But we still love him...