Legacy

By Ryu Niiyama

AN: It's a one shot… which means I'm depressed out of my mind….again. When I initially came up with this (about two minutes ago from me typing this Author Note) it wouldn't have fit in the Sailor Moon category so I switched POV and here we go. This is AU to my Eternally damned fic (which of course is no where near finished) and has absolutely no bearing on that story. I don't think you have to read that fic to get the emotion behind this fic.

Suicide warning/character death warning

Today should have been a day of celebration.

Instead it's a day of mourning, a day of indescribable pain. It is a day of sadness and regret. It is a day that never in the darkest corners of my mind did I ever anticipate coming and yet it will remained burned in my soul for the rest of my immortal life.

I came here with the hopes of greeting my best friend today, to celebrate this day and its counterpart as we always had…together. On this day there were no sides that separated us, no invisible lines drawn, no painful pasts or clashing of ideologies. On this day and the other like it, there was only she and I as it had been when we were children as it would be always.

I pause momentarily and pass my hand over my face, blinking my mauve eyes free of the steadily falling rain…and my tears. I try to smile briefly but the pain that has lacerated my soul makes this action impossible. She always had the oddest affection for rain; even when we were children I would find her perched in a tree or on the roof of her family shiro, her face up turned and a lazy smile on her beautiful face. I remember watching her in awe as a child; her crystal blue eyes were closed and her lanky form exuded quiet confidence and contentment…I never saw the pain that hid behind those closed eyes, I never heard the quiet longing when she called my name. Even into adulthood, the rain always changed her; conjuring forth various emotions within her. One moment she would be slothful, the next determined, sometimes she would be contemplative and the next I could see the purest of passion burning in her gaze.

I had been blind to that too.

Never seeing, never realizing how much I hurt her in my innocence; merely taking comfort in her strength, shielding myself with the vow she made to always protect me from a time forever lost to us. I never listened to the echoes of that vow, never heard that even as the words stayed the same, the emotion bolstering them changed and grew. I didn't see the child give way to the woman, or the friendship give way to love…such painful, deep, and consuming love.

I never realized that I broke her heart.

I flinch under the rain's frigid embrace as the weight of that thought settles onto my burdened soul. I drop my head softly, not caring as my drenched chestnut locks whip against my face as my tall frame finally gives way to the sobs I've been trying to hold at bay as I attempted to make sense of this. I'd sworn so long ago that after losing her once that I'd never let her go again…because we were family, and because we were all we had left.

I had believed that despite everything that had happened between us, despite her insistence upon hatred, upon vengeance, that I'd held true to that vow. That though we were blurring the lines between us and all around us that one thing would never change.

She and I.

I came to her early in the morning, just before the predawn light in order to protect myself and to surprise her. I didn't expect to find the heavy oak doors of her manor open, I didn't expect to follow her scent into the basement…a place I'd never been, and will never go again. I never expected to find the paintings, countless, limitless paintings, adorning the walls and lying propped against the baseboards. Several lifetimes of work, all in one place, and all with one focus…myself. She chronicled my life from the painfully shy child that had been tormented for her heritage and needed her protection, to the adolescent apprentice, full of hopes and dreams, to what I have become now. For the first time I saw myself through her eyes and I saw a woman that could not have been me; this woman was kind and noble, innocent and wise, strong and gentle, but most surprising of all, she was beautiful. In her eyes I was the most beautiful woman in the world while in mine she had been a constant, a trusted friend but never a woman. I had come to take her presence for granted, knowing that she would always be there.

I never knew that I had been rejecting her. Killing her slowly as she loved me even more deeply.

Despite my awe at her work I remember striding forward, intent on seeing her, even teasing her about her choice in muse, finding that my search ended far too quickly; I would have given anything to have stretched my steps into eternity. There lay one last painting, the pastel just beginning to dry. Once again I was the focus of her inspiration but this time I was not alone; my back was turned to a solitary white mountain in the background as I desperately clutched a figure in my arms; upon this figure I could only glimpse the barest hint of blue. The symbolism and direct reference to her had been lost on me at the moment and I remember turning to question her, when I found her form shrouded in shadow in the corner perched in the nearest chair. I smirked and strode forward only to slow to a stop as I realized how quiet she had been. Only then did I notice the smell, a fragrance that should have called to me given my nature and should have horrified me given my heart.

Even then I'd didn't see.

Refusing to believe what my senses were telling me I strode forward, demanding that she cease whatever childish prank that she had decided to indulge in. Only then was I close enough to see what my eyes had attempted to deny me. Only then did I reconcile what the scent was… only then did I see the gun.

Only then did I see the blood.

She, who loathed humanity with all her being, had decided to die in such a human way. She, who hated herself for having been born human, for having been born to a destiny of loss had decided to destroy her most hated enemy…herself. Her beautiful blue eyes were closed forever, the rest of her face, so beautiful, so kind and feral, had been mostly destroyed from nose down. I feel my stomach burn and retch in memory of the wall behind her splattered with her once silvery white hair and the remains of her once beautiful mind, a mind a keen as my own but hidden under her bluster and humility. Her large, lithe frame that once matched mine in height, and surpassed mine in strength sat in the chair, composed and resigned to her fate… to her choice.

Why didn't she tell me that she had been hurting so?

I clutch my trenchcoat about me and hunch over as the sun finally begins to rise, and attempts to force its way through the clouds. The physical pain is nothing to what I have lost…to what I have done. I hear a keening wail issue in what sounds like my gentle contralto as I remember the words she had scrawled in her own blood from a wound on her abdomen on the wall behind her; the words that she felt described all that she was: FAILURE. In that word she expressed the tumult of her pain, while still refusing to say she was hurting.

It was fitting.

Only she could cry out into the darkness but only as the heir of the White Mountain, only as one who had a duty to fufill, but never as the woman within. Perhaps that was the reason I never saw her pain, perhaps that is why I only saw her strength. I clench my fists and my nails rip into my palm the pain comforting me somehow, acting as a weak physical counterpoint to my soul's anguish.

No. I did not see because I did not wish to see.

How could I after six centuries of her protecting me, even when we were on the opposite sides of battle ever think that she could ever need me this way? How could I, an outcast for not being Japanese enough, an outcast for not being feminine enough ever think that she could want me this way? How could her eyes burn in jealousy and unrequited passion as I confided in her the longings of my heart for another? She who was to have been the shining heir of her clan, in unfathomable kindness reached out so long ago to a lonely five year old and bound the two of us together…forever.

Until I turned my back on her.

Until she left me.

Forever.

Even as my body burns in absolute anguish it does little to appease my pain. I can only hope that this is a worthy penance, and in the final moments before the glorious sun claims my wretched life I reflect on her final words, upon her legacy.

Failure.

For I who had forced her to falter, who had destroyed such noble light and strength, I found that word to a fitting legacy for myself as well.

"Failure…"

Forgive me Yuki-chan, for it is I who failed you most…Happy Birthday…

…

…

…

…

The dying vampire never heard the scream of anguish of the water elemental that appeared from the morning fog to her side. She never felt Ami Mizuno's arms pull her into a desperate embrace nor the bitter tears of loss that splashed against her charred skin. She never felt the piercing cold of the ice that encased both of their forms in a crystalline coffin as the elemental promised to be with her for all eternity. She never heard the cycle begin anew…and claim another.

10/13/06

R. Niiyama

Alright, I wrote this about two days before the 13th and finished the editing the day before. However I figured it would be best not to post this on my birthday (yes Yuki and I share a birthday) which is why this is being posted now. And before anyone asks, yes I am still on hiatus (only having written two pages to both ASC and ED), hate to say it, but school full time and 4 jobs is killing my free time (as well as my sanity)…ah the woes of poor college students.