One Step Forward; Two Steps Back (Ichiru Kiryu)
The academy couldn't have been more steeped in chaos, more horded by dangerous beings, foreign and domestic. Cries of pain, fear, and demented mirth rattled the dorms and stretched greedily for the grey sky as though demanding it to rain blood and spatter the paths even more thoroughly than they already were. People and beings that weren't quite people were dying. Friendships were being tested and broken. Alliances and leadership were changing for more than one association such that a hidden world would change drastically, but none of that mattered in a stone cell below ground, granite floor stained crimson.
Tears.
He felt them pitter-patter on his cheeks like rain. The arm that cradled his head was the root of the old willow from back home, and the pale face above him a graying cloud that cried its tears for reasons he couldn't quite fathom. Her breathing was the wind whispering to the leaves of the tree and through the grass, the occasional choked sob distant thunder of a storm from years ago. It was like he was regressing even as the Styx impelled him forwards.
He was cold.
No, he realized, not so much cold as numb. His body was becoming numb to the hard stone floor and the dull throbbing pain in his throat. Oddly enough, the warmth of her lap and the hand on his cheek was still vivid, a stark contrast with her blurring image. Thunder rolled again, and she held him a bit tighter and called his name. He blinked slowly—it was becoming difficult to open his eyes once they closed—and with some effort, managed to lift his hand to catch the falling rain. The drops rolled down the creases of his fingers and coalesced in strange, shimmering orbs just before breaking from their foundations and shattering on his face like balls of glass hung decoratively in some high-class manor.
They were beautiful.
They reminded him of his deceased master, a glittering jewel that almost rode the wind with her moonlit delicacy. She had been perfect, untouchable even as he held her dying in his arms, just as he was being held now, under the gentle rain and faraway clouds. Always flawless even when she fell to pieces, pure white even in her blood-covered darkness. Maybe that was why he had approached this girl in the first place; her eyes and long hair were similar to those of that mortal goddess. Tendrils of the pale hair brushed his skin, and he remembered the swaying of the willow. It was strangely ironic, seeing as they both wept. Twin moons appeared among the paleness of the clouds to gaze at his languid face, and then quivering lips parted.
She asked him why.
The corners of his mouth tilted just enough for the weak smile to reach his eyes in grim amusement at her naivety, but he didn't have the strength to chuckle as he usually did. Fingering a lock of her hair, he told her he had always been a lost cause. She denied it, clutching his hand, and listed good qualities he hadn't even seen in himself, trying to spin a safety net for him before he hit the ground. He told her it was too late, inducing more raindrops. Another thunder roll, and for the first time she stated aloud that she wanted him to stay. Why did she care so much, he wondered? After all, she was just chasing phantoms and she knew it.
It was definitely his fault.
Sighing the way he remembered his master had, he momentarily forced his eyes to focus on her face and apologized, despite her insistence that she was to blame for letting her feelings run away with her. It was his own selfish need for a substitute, however insufficient as it might have been, that lead him to draw her in and make her want to hold him as he slipped away. She told him he had always been slipping away, but he confessed he had been drawing her after him intentionally. Like a child might pull a balloon by the string, that was how he kept her close to him. She said she didn't care.
He understood.
Reaching upwards with difficulty, he cupped her face with his hands and smiled again, tucking as much sincerity into the action as he could in his state. He thanked her. For mirroring his pain in her own heart, for wearing his scars, for having faith in him when he was hopeless, for not only forgiving him but never blaming him in the first place, in exactly the same way he had forgiven that woman, he thanked the grieving girl in whose unrequited embrace he lay dying. The strength in his arms depleted, he let them drop to his sides. His name reached his ears, a questioning tone in it, and then a second time begging him not to leave. The clouds and twin moons were blurring into a single smear of grey, as was the willow and the rain.
Something was stirring.
Curious, he toyed with it, analyzing it to the best of his ability. There was some sadness, true, but it wasn't all negative. Some of it was lined with melancholy memories, speckled with relief, and a rose-colored clinging feeling throughout. Was it attachment? Regret? It couldn't be love, could it? No, it was different from the longing he felt with his master; it couldn't be. But somehow, the name suited it. Part of him shook its head and warned him not to think of long-forsaken possibilities, because progress at this point wasn't just useless, it was regressing, paddling against the flow pulling him. An epiphany that could have been useful in life was only a hindrance in death. In spite of it, he wished he could have given her more than forced empathy.
He gave her a single tear, trickling quietly from the corner of his eye.