'When you want to do something,' Kaho had told him once, smiling, 'and it never seems to happen, something always stops it…perhaps that thing which you wish to do is not what you should be doing.'
He'd taken those words to heart, as he'd taken nearly everything she'd said to heart. And Touya, who was wise beyond his years, knew not to throw away her words as lightly as she had thrown away his heart.
And so, when Yuki began to fade, he waited. Waited, because Yuki had to know who he was, had to make peace with himself – and himself – before he could deal with the people around him knowing this as well. Waited, because something always seemed to go wrong whenever he tried to tell him, and that meant the time was not right. Waited, because his own emotions, his role to play in this grand game were secondary to Sakura's, and he had patience.
But maybe it was time to stop waiting.
Kaho was never wrong.
But there was right, and there was truth. And the difference between the two was the difference between inevitability and fate, between consequence and destiny, between choice and submission – and Touya, who had paid with his heart and his magic and his life to know that difference, knew also when it was time to act.
Falling, turning transparent, and look up, Yuki, wake up, look at me, don't fall, please, not you too, Yuki, Yuki
When you want to do something, and are always thwarted, perhaps that thing is not what you should be doing.
Or perhaps, he thought, it was simply that it was not something he had wanted badly enough before. Because, in the end, that was what changed everything – the intensity of a desire determined its chances of success.
That, he knew, was not a problem anymore.
Yuki…I know you're not human.
The words echoed in his mind, and he let his hand brush a cheek which had turned too pale – too pale, too transparent, too dangerously close to disappearing forever – and waited for him to wake up.
Time had just run out.