"Sakurakakouji-san,"
His voice came out broken and strangled. Twisted with pain and torn like her body, her face, her clothes. This wasn't the first time that he had held her like this, with blood running crimson rivers down his hands as he clasped her to his chest. It certainly wasn't the first time that he had pictured it, imagined it ending this way; but it must have been the times that she had beaten the odds; cheated death so vigorously that he had apparently come to assume that the beaten, bloodied, and barely breathing girl was incapable of actually dying- of suffering the same violent fate that had befallen her now.
It was stupid, Ogami realized, to have ever let her follow him; and the explosion that that epiphany sent through him was more terrifying than he could believe. He had always known this. Of course he had. But, like the fool he was, had chosen to overlook it merely for the sake of basking in the pleasantries that her company brought to him. Indisputably and unforgivably selfish. He should have bound her; strapped her down to her previous life with titanium ropes and burned to hell anyone who had tried to undo the knots. If only he had cared enough when he had had the chance.
Sakura groaned, and the weakness of her breath sent cold shivers down the boy's spine that didn't go away and rendered him freezing. More blood trickled from her mouth and stained her lips what must be a sadist's favorite shade of red. The quivering in Ogami's hands was beginning to supersede the quakes of her body, and it was the numbness that began creeping up from the depths of his stomach that made him realize the end was almost at it's peak. Her end, his end, the end of everything he had gained within the past year. The friends that she had introduced him to; the parties they had celebrated; all the happy memories that Sakura had convinced him not to burn, because how could he make new ones if she wasn't there to oversee it all and keep him on track to become less evil.
"Sakurakouji-san..."
She wouldn't come back. And what of his life, the Code: Breaker wondered in a rush of clarity, if she wasn't there to witness it.
"Please..."
If she wasn't there to grab him by the hand and make him partake of all the joys that she could so easily see. But her hands were still now; her fingers unlaced with his and cold. It wasn't a fair trade, her life for his. It was a travesty to waste such beauty on a monster. The monster who he knew now, could never be redeemed. He recalled the death of his brother as the stiffness his Rare Kind so feared began to settle over her, and how it had drained him of emotion for several weeks. There was a dim recollection of water running down his cheek, and not a cloud to be seen on that day. It would be different now, he knew, with the overbearing weight of the numbness spreading rapidly across his chest. His lungs. His heart. It would be different forever. And it was now, he understood, that feelings had to be finally accepted, acknowledged, and relayed, for he knew only his demons, and no righteous gods would offer him a deal. Soon, nothing of him would be left.
Her eyelids fluttered weakly. He opened his mouth. Croaked,
"Sakura,"
Her body sank.
And he was gone.
