There are days when my bunnies seem to come up with the most random things.
I don't know where this came from, but it wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it all out. As a result…well, we have this. I'll go ahead and put a tearjerker warning here, so as a heads up you may want tissues; I don't know how this will be received, but don't say I didn't warn you if you do end up crying. I used Croquet's dub name, mostly because I don't know what his sub one is and because I like Croquet better.
Pre-canon, set before Duelist Kingdom (and you could view this as both manga verse and anime verse), and I have a new poll that needs your attention. Leave reviews on the way out!
He hardly cared at all about the falling rain around him, even as cold as it was, and he refused to go beneath the umbrella. The icy water was the only thing right now that was numbing him to the rest of the outside world, and he clung to it desperately to keep his mind blank.
It had happened too fast…his world had collapsed in the blink of an eye. One day she had been smiling at him from across the altar, her blue eyes warm and kind and a matching smile on her lips. The next, her face was still and silent and she lay motionless inside an ebony coffin.
Though there was a crowd at her funeral, there were only a few select people who at least pretended to care that she was dead, and only her parents were openly in tears that she was dead, though he could tell that those tears were only there for the benefit of the people around them.
Why didn't the rest of the world share in his sorrow? Why was no one except himself mourning for the loss of this woman? Why was he the only one who cared? He seemed to be the only one who this woman's death touched—why was he alone in his grief? It wasn't right! She was so young! Why had this happened? They were supposed to be together!
But now...
If he had the power to do so, he would have stopped everything. If he could manage it, the world would mourn with him over the loss of this woman. If there was some way to bring her back, he would leap at the chance. She was not just some ordinary girl! She was the woman he had been about to spend the rest of his life with, the woman who he had loved unconditionally.
But he did not have that power, and all he could do was watch in devastated helplessness as they lowered her into the ground and poured the dirt on top of the ebony coffin, each shovelful carrying both dirt and an air of finality to it. His eyes, though, remained dry—all he could feel then was a numb despair that threatened to overwhelm him at any given moment.
He was the only one who remained at her graveside even as the sun started to go down, and he stood before the tombstone as a broken man; Time had slowed everything down, and he viewed the world with a dazed and frighteningly blank expression. Everyone around him whispered, some sympathetic to him while others were affronted by his seeming lack of caring; he should have cried by now, they thought.
It was not until night had fallen, not until Croquet came alongside him and shrugged himself out of his jacket to gently drape it around his shoulders, when reality set in and the tears finally began to fall. It was only then that he allowed himself to crumple in a heap at her tombstone, allowing Croquet to guide him to the cold wet grass and keep a supportive arm around his shoulders.
An animalistic, wounded cry escaped his throat as the sobs began to rock his body, his silver hair acting as a curtain and hiding his face behind it. He grasped at the cold and wet grass with inhuman strength, barely aware of Croquet's gruff but genuinely sympathetic voice trying to comfort him and hardly caring about grass stains on his suit.
The only thing he noticed, with all too cruel clarity, was that headstone with her name on it.
He was not certain when he started speaking out loud, nor when his raw, emotion-filled words had taken on that hysterical pitch, but he kept right on speaking without even pausing for breath because the dam had burst and if he stopped talking he would break into a million pieces and oh Cyndia no not you, please God bring her back, Cyndia come back, let me wake up this isn't real, oh please God not my Cyndia please…!
It didn't matter how much he cried, and he knew it. She was dead, dead and gone, and she was forever out of his reach. She had left him here, not of her own volition but because of her traitorous health, and she could not come back; if she had been given a choice, she would have stayed. He knew that.
But that did nothing to comfort him and nothing to heal his broken heart. It did nothing to stop the bitter-tasting tears that rolled down his face. Nothing would ever make them stop, even if his eyes ran dry; his heart would always be crying, always torn into shreds as it mourned for the loss of Cyndia, always breaking whenever he thought of her. Those wounds would never heal until he was dead and with her once again. He would be joining her soon enough; his view on life now was bleak and already darkening, and he frankly saw no more use for living.
For now, though, all Pegasus could do was let the tears fall down.