Finite

Genre: General

Rating: PG

A.N: Time to pull another one of those fantastic "I've never written in this genre, please don't pick on me!" routines. I genuinely haven't though, so if you can see something that needs fixing or is just wildly inaccurate please tell me.

Mmm, introspective. This takes place during the King of Swords Arc, after Muraki has been killed (duh, I doubt Hisoka would be sitting on the edge of his bed if there was a chance he was alive). I'm considering making it into a little trilogy with Tsubaki and Tsuzuki doing the same thing, so if you think it's worth continuing, likewise feel free to say so.

You're not perfect.

It's the first conclusion I make as I stare at you, lying paler than pale upon your bed, still smelling faintly of the roses your dead fingers clasped to your chest before your assistant took them away and wiped the coppery trickle of blood from the corner of your mouth.

Death reveals you for what you are - just a man. A sadistic, bitter and cruel man in life, but human nonetheless. When I lean in closer to you I can see the faint traces of lines on your face; tiny imperfections that tell me from the way your skin is creased at the edges of your eyes and lips that you do know the difference between a smile and a smirk and are capable of both, even if I've never seen them. There are horizontal marks across your forehead, too. What the hell would someone like you have to worry about?! In that moment I want to choke you, make you beg the way you made me beg and humiliate you and...no. There's no point. No matter how hard I squeeze you won't open your eyes in terror or even mockery. You're already dead. Just lying there taking my scrutiny without complaint; your mortality written on your white face and the beginnings of stubble on your cheeks and chin.

Funny that you cheated Death's guardians over and over again; fought with and antagonised them, refused to die...but you couldn't fight age. You're just human, and I hate you for it.

You were supposed to be as immortal as me - a demon, an enemy, a corruptor and destroyer frozen in time the same way I am. Someone I could hate wholeheartedly without being questioned. You were perfect and evil and as much as I wished you dead, in a way I never wanted you to die. Not that I want for you to wake up and start whispering to me again, calling me your doll and making me burn...perhaps I just wanted you to sit on your throne of bones and blood like the devil you were...are?...I don't know anymore...I want something, someone, to point at and be able to say, it's all your fault.' Someone to hate other than myself. And you couldn't even do that after what you took from me.

Bastard.

Maybe I should check your pulse - make sure you're actually dead and are going to stay that way. What would happen if I touched you? I don't want to touch you, but I need proof. Need to know that my skin will stop crawling with your touch from now on and that occasionally I might be able to sleep without waking up in a cold sweat.

Your skin is cool. Cool and smooth and utterly without evidence of a heartbeat. And I know you used to have one - not that I'd have put it past you not to - because every time I relive that night you ruined me, I can hear it thumping wildly between my shuddering breath and the thin screams torn from my bleeding throat. Somehow I imagined that touching you would be some sort of filthy, vile experience; like having your fingers break through something rotten. I read in a book somewhere a fictional empath - blind, virtuous and well bred - described the antagonist - a cruel boy with a voice like undiluted honey - as sweet in the same way off things are sweet and that was why he'd never attempt to read him and avoided touching him. But there's nothing remotely sweet about you now, except for the faint hint of roses and the slightest tang of sweat and cologne. Even the decaying smell won't arrive for a few days.

You don't even smell of sakura petals or blood this way. Maybe you never really did, and when I smelled them on you it was just psychosomatic in the way that I sense my own sweat and the feel of earth and mud and bark beneath my back when you walked in the same room.

The sea air has blown a strand of pale hair across your face. That won't do at all. If it's there I can't be sure that your eyes are really closed and you're really dead and gone. My fingers are shaking as I reach up to move it away - the most natural reaction in the world...until I realise how maternal and intimate the gesture is. I snatch my hand away as if it's burnt and slam the door on my way out, leaving you there to lie quietly; mortal and dead and done.

You're dead, you died as someone's angel...and I don't like it one bit.