AN: For now, I see this story as being a one-shot but if I can figure out ways to develop a plot, I would love to turn this into a ShizuruxKurama story. Right now I see that as being a long shot but I just want to put this out.
The Heart and Mind Do Not Always See Eye to Eye
"No Sakyo, no! Don't leave!" she cried.
Shizuru woke up, sitting up abruptly, wiping away her tears. It was the same memory that had been plaguing her dreams since the end of the Dark Tournament. She knew it was pointless to keep him in her thoughts. However, the mind and the heart do not always see eye to eye much to her chagrin.
It had taken her a while to accept his death. Some days she still felt like she was starting the five stages of grief all over again. She knew it was for the best that he wasn't alive anymore, but for a while she had this illogical bit of hope that he survived and would come find her. She scoffed at herself. She wasn't naïve or a romantic yet here she was pining for a man who wouldn't have stayed in her life any longer than her father had. Maybe this is what daddy issues are she mused.
Even if Sakyo had survived, what would those consequences be for letting someone like him live? No matter how much she thought about it, Sakyo was on a dark path. Even if he had a bit of good in him, he had committed many atrocities that could never be atoned for. Shizuru also knew that he would never take them back even if he could.
His goal of taking down the Kekkai Barrier to let demons run rampant in Human World was only abandoned because he had an ego.
Somehow that last statement didn't ring complete to Shizuru. She wished it was as simple as an ego problem. Maybe she could have moved on more easily if she could see him as someone so simple. Sakyo was a complicated character to Shizuru. Perhaps that was why she became infatuated in the first place.
His ego was only an alibi to why he gave up on his goals. Sakyo was someone who walked down a sinister path ever since he was able to. There was no turning back for someone who went as far as he did. She knew that peace was not something Sakyo would have known how to live in.
While Shizuru was no saint and she didn't wish terror on the world, she had a fixation on Sakyo that she just couldn't shake off. It was similar to how some people are fascinated with serial killers and horror. She just couldn't let it go.
As fucked up as he was, he also had a very strong sense of honor. Not to be confused with morality, but he was a man of his word. Perhaps that appealed to Shizuru as well. While she did not boast about her own sense of honor like her brother, she did possess a similar code.
The more Shizuru thought about it, had he have lived, even if he did not want to pursue his former plans, he still would not have been content. Someone like Sakyo could never be content with a peaceful life, let alone a simple one. In a lot of ways Shizuru understood that. Even if she could have saved him, she knew it would have been futile. Sakyo did not want to be saved.
She laughed bitterly. Shizuru was not a hopeless romantic. She just wasn't the type nor was she stupid. Yet there she was pining for a broken dead man and going in circles. She felt like an idiot.
Leaving her bed, she walked out to the balcony of her small apartment. She lit a cigarette, examining the initials on the lighter that Sakyo threw to her shortly before his death. It was all she had left of the bastard. Proof that their short interactions might have meant something to him as much as it did to her at the Dark Tournament.
Proof that what she felt was not simply imagined out of desperation to escape her dull life. Although the more she thought about it, the more she questioned if she was that desperate.
Maybe Shizuru needed to just get out more. Ever since the dark tournament, life felt dull. She never expected to be pulled into the supernatural despite witnessing pieces of it her whole life.