Life is fleeting. In a split second, it can all be over, taken away from you without a moment's hesitation. Not only can the threads of life be ripped from your very being, but they can suddenly be taken away from another's, left to perish in front of you without any hope of ever returning to your side. In one frantic moment, everything you've ever known can be changed…. can be lost forever.
Nezumi thought he had learned this lesson at the age of four. He thought there would never be a second of the day, or of the week or of the years that continued to pass him by that he would ever take for granted. Not again, not ever again… not after losing everything. Yet…. the days spent beside Shion were fleeting, lost too fast. And now, as Nezumi lay broken beside the boy he cherished, he realized just how wrong he was. It wasn't until this very moment, with the world crumbling down upon them, that he knew it was too late, that he hadn't been prepared, and that perhaps he never was.
As tears rolled down his cheeks and collided with spilled blood and cold hard cement, his memory replayed every moment spent with Shion, and every single second that he should've been appreciating what he had before it was seemingly lost forever.
Shaky breaths were barely audible in the room where Nezumi and Shion lay. The breaths were a mixture of choked back sobs and gasps for air, Nezumi's own wounds taking a toll on him as he continued to stare at the broken boy at his side. He swallowed hard, his throat painfully dry as ever-dulling grey eyes scanned over Shion's chest. Where there was once a gentle, imaginative and loving organ pumping blood to the rest of Shion's body, there was now nothing. No movement, no sound… No heartbeat that sped up when Nezumi pulled him into a dance, no quickening pulse when Nezumi held onto his hand or even smiled at him, no heaving lungs that yelled when Nezumi teased him too much. There was nothing. His chest did not rise and fall as peacefully as it once had, and the sight only made the raven haired boy want to throw up.
Shion was never meant to be this quiet, Nezumi decided as he painfully gritted his teeth, tears continuing to spill down his cheeks. Suddenly, Nezumi missed the boy's loud, inquisitive nature… the boy who once screamed out of his window into the middle of a typhoon. Eyebrows knitted together in wretched agony as he continued to relive each and every moment shared with the boy that changed his entire world. In just one moment, one split second, those scarlet eyes that once begged to equally hold Nezumi's faded into a dull red, a color that only reminded Nezumi of blood. Of loss, of everything taken from him by No.6.
In this moment, words couldn't find their way up his throat and passed his lips; his mind, however, was screaming louder than ever before, cursing him for his stupidity and lack of strength, both emotionally and physically. 'If only I had tried harder to get up, if only I had reached his hand, it would've been me that got shot again, not him… never him…'
The raven haired boy began to crawl closer to his companion, the boy he never confessed his feelings for, much less accepted. His side was throbbing, blood seeping from his wound as he continued to scoot closer and closer. Nezumi tried to lean on his arm, yet failed miserably as his aching body crashed back down onto the cold hard floor. It was another lesson learned, and with a newfound sense of purpose and determination, he forced himself back up, only so that he could cover the face of the boy withering away before him. He couldn't remember Shion like this, he didn't want to remember another cold, lifeless body. He couldn't. Not again.
As Nezumi pulled his cloak over Shion's face, he allowed himself to take in the sight of Shion's pinkish scar and white locks of hair, battle wounds inflicted on an innocent young man forced into a world of change. For as much as Shion had flipped Nezumi's entire reality into a state of panic, Nezumi had also, in fact, changed Shion… although now, as his glassy eyes took in the sight of the white haired boy one last time, he knew that the change had been for the worst. It was all his fault, at least in every single way he looked at it. And the thought that he failed to protect the one thing he cared about more than anything else left him wanting to die.
'….Why? Why would anyone shoot at you..? This is all my fault, all of it… I didn't try hard enough, I.. I could've done better, I'm sorry Shion, I'm s-so….so…sorry…'
Nezumi knew he couldn't carry on with his life after losing Shion. There was no life after Shion, that much he was certain of. Nezumi never wanted to get attached to him, in fact he fought it with every ounce of strength he had, yet Shion had somehow pushed his way passed all of his defenses. He had been so lonely, so completely alone in that underground home that he wasn't sure he knew how it felt to have someone in his life that truly cared about him… not until Shion.
The third option, the grey area between friend and foe, love and hate, inside the wall or outside of it… Shion had become the grey area, he was the embodiment of all of the emotions Nezumi bottled up for safe keeping. In just the small amount of time that they were living together, Nezumi's life had seamlessly blended with Shion's. Instead of I it became us,it became we, without Nezumi even realizing. And now…? What did Nezumi have to live for if Shion was dead? Shion, his miracle, his only friend, and the boy he was only just beginning to fall in love with, was gone now… there was no mistaking that.
'After all this time,' Nezumi thought to himself as he zoned out, the image of Shion's body becoming blurrier and blurrier, 'You teach me things I never knew about myself, things I didn't know I was capable of feeling… you bring me back to life, only to fade away, like the rest of them.'
"….I can't be alone again, Shion," Nezumi whispered into the collapsing building, into the deafening silence surrounding the two boys. "I can't be without you."
After fighting for so long to speak, suddenly the words he wanted to say were able to reach his lips. They came to him in the form of a song, a particular tune Nezumi never once considered singing for Shion. His voice was broken, crumbling just like the walls surrounding them. Perhaps it was only for Shion, but maybe it wasn't… maybe it was for the both of them, to die together in the deteriorating facility that was responsible for so much destruction.
As the song faded into the louder sounds of explosions and igniting flames, Nezumi laid down next to Shion, and despite wanting to only remember his warmth, he reached out for his hand. He gripped Shion's cold fingers and squeezed, touching him one last time before curling further up into himself. 'There's no point in living in a world without you, Shion,' Nezumi thought as he squeezed his eyes shut. The pain shooting throughout his body was unbearable, but even worse than that was the pain splitting his heart into fragmented pieces. He couldn't do this, he couldn't bear it… Everything hurt so much, and all he could do was continue to silently cry, his tears hot as they rolled down his cheeks.
And as the life slowly began to fade in Nezumi's body, the raven haired boy held onto the memories that he always told Shion to let go of. He held onto the soft curve of his smile and the way Shion's eyes lit up when they discussed literature, and he remembered all of the silly things Shion had said that Nezumi accused him of being idiotic. He remembered the warmth that had filled up the cold half of his bed, and the small, lonely home that somehow became big enough for two. He remembered the way Shion was able to get him to contradict himself, and to dance… and most importantly, Nezumi remembered the boy that knocked down the walls surrounding his heart, warming it with his gentle caress and teaching him how to let love in, even if it took more time for him to accept it than it did for any other human being.
Nezumi had no idea that there was a light at the end of this dark tunnel, and that Elyurias would appear to him in Safu's body only to save them both… so instead of holding onto the remaining strings of hope, he whispered a thank you to the boy who saved him in every way someone could save another person.