Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho characters.

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A Life With No You

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I stare at the ground at my feet.

It's ugly.

But beyond that, it is unfamiliar – it is a threat and a blessing. It is a new step – a new enemy – a new ally.

It is only the floor.

My hand grips the strap of my bag tighter – I can feel the rough material digging into my skin. I can feel the blood drain from my muscle-clenched fist. I can feel the skin lose color.

Something about that makes tears prickle the back of my eyes.

I bite them back and my bleeding lip is proof of the struggle to do so.

No one knows I'm here.

I don't think anyone would care if they did.

A cursed tear that my mutilated lip will later suffer for hits that ugly carpet.

Inari-sama, it really is an unpleasant color.

I try hard not to let loose that ragged laugh my chest wants to give. Here I am – broken, abandoned, leaving – and I'm complaining about the floor.

Well, how like me.

I bow my head to those around me – though there are few left. Most have already gone on, and I plan to follow soon. But I stand on the last bit of my old life – the last step I must overcome to begin again.

And I am scared.

I don't know if I can truly do this – if I can take a step and move one. If I can leave everything else behind me.

If I can leave you.

But who do I kid, ne? Leave you? To what, exactly?

No, I can't leave you, for it's a physical inability that stops me.

You see, you've already left me. You beat me to it and I am too late to repay the favor – there is no second place for this.

You took your gold medal and did not come back.

Well, how like you.

Another tear falls to that god-awful floor and I promise my bleeding lip punishment for not containing such a thing.

Heaven forbid I blame my eyes which were the gates to the flood, or my emotions – the gates' guards, or maybe I should just blame myself overall.

I've been doing enough of that lately that one more thing shouldn't be a problem.

No, indeed not – I blamed myself for your pain. I blamed myself for mine.

I blamed myself for your leaving.

I was blamed for mine, too.

I blamed myself for your harsh words.

I am blamed for not giving any in return.

If I had, I'd surely blame myself for those, as well.

So no, I think I'm sick of blame – especially that which is given at my own expense. So perhaps, just this once, for this one occasion – I will blame my tears on something else.

Not on you – they aren't for you. Inari-sama, they are not for you.

Perhaps in a year I will blame myself again for lying, but right now, they are not for you and I will die before I change that belief.

I cry for what you did.

I cry for what I do.

I cry for what has happened.

But, by my death and by my life, I do not cry for you.

Wonderful, I'm becoming a poet. Perhaps next I'll write a sonnet about that god-ugly carpet.

I think I might look into a psychiatrist for this new cynical self that is developing. Or maybe Youko resurfacing with all the newest events – you did piss him off horribly.

Perhaps I should ask Genkai for a ward to keep Youko deeper within me!

No, that is just my human aspect doing what most humans do: Procrastinate.

I swore to myself I would do this – I swore to myself I would end all this pain. Just one step – one more step – and it can all be over.

I know I'll not forget, but at least I can stop remembering.

I watch as another tear falls. They're beginning to numb my previous anger at their descent.

Perhaps it marks my own descent.

Although, I highly doubt the little drops of salty H20 are falling into insanity and depression.

I'd like to think that not everything I do – not everything I make and give – must fall into darkness with me.

I wish my tears would crystallize…I wish they could do what your race can do.

I wish they would form into beautiful blue gems….

I wish it so I could give you one.

Now I can not hold back my harsh and, frankly, humorless chuckle. What would you do?

Would you throw it back at me? Would you burn me until I was naught but ash on the wind?

I think I'd like that death – to be free to roam the breezes for all eternity….

I once handed your gem back to you – would you do the same?

That would hurt, I must admit…Did I hurt you?

I scoff.

Hardly.

Hurt? You? Yeah right. You aren't capable of feeling emotional pain – you are only capable of giving it.

I crouch down to gently trace my fingers over the spot of wetness where my own sorrows fell – they continue to fall. I can feel them trace down my cheeks and I weep with the horror of it all.

This spot – this tiny little piece of terrifyingly hideous floor – bears all my grief. It is a marker in my life – one I can never return to.

And no one will ever know it was there.

What travesties shall fall around the world – what pain and horrors we humans commit. What sins will be written upon? What wars will forever be documented? What disgrace shall always be remembered?

But what agony I've held that will never be known.

I will be forgotten – you will not remember, and you will not forget.

But mostly, you won't care.

Just like no one else will ever care.

Hundreds of feet will tread upon this solitary spot where I shed my last tear – where I marked my last sorrow and heartbreak.

Hell be willing, this may be where I lay my heart for good.

I brush a hand through my hair – subtle and gentle as always so none would ever know – and pull a rose between my fingers.

I wish I could say it was the most beautiful I'd ever birthed.

I wanted to claim that never has there been a flower so velvety and soft – so red and brilliant.

And I desire to make known that this rose might just have been the most romantic and most heartbroken that ever was given life.

But they are merely speculations – hopes and nothing more.

I lay it at my feet, where the single tear has fallen and dried – giving no remembrance to the visual knowledge that I was ever here.

That I ever existed.

That I ever cried.

Slowly I raise myself from the floor and tighten my somewhat loosened grip on my bag. It is time – I am the last and I must follow the others before I can no longer.

There is no turning back.

This solitary piece of floor – unattractive and uncoordinated as it may be – is my last.

I must start again, for I shall never see this.

It is my personal promise, my own mantra.

I will never cry again – I will never feel again – I will never stand here in my life again.

I raise my eyes from that revolting thing this place calls carpet and meet the eyes of another. The attendant is watching me curiously.

Is that worry in her eyes?

I think I just lost my last grip on sanity. I barely contain the sob my chest aches to release.

So much for that being my last tear.

Can you imagine it? My best friend – the one I love more than my own human mother – can not feel compassion for me, but a random stranger can.

How I hate irony.

I walk past the last kindness I will see in this life, this existence that shall soon be ended.

I walk down the narrow hallway – they call it a plank, which makes me thinking of walking such in pirates' days. To me, however, it feels more like the Green Mile talked about in American prisons. The walk to your death.

In a manner, that is exactly what this is. I am dying.

I clench my bag tighter in my hand. My tears are locked up now, hidden behind green gates that shall never open again. They will be impenetrable by the time I board the plane.

Perhaps it is a certain fear I feel now – a knowledge that what will be done will be done. That I will never see you again.

But why would I want to?

I turn back only once – something I told myself I would not do.

I am not one to look back.

But...I think I am glad for it.

The attendant is staring at me, holding my rose in her hand. She is kneeling where my tears fell, and her hand is on the very spot of my sorrows.

Perhaps one person will know the grief that fell this day.

And maybe, even if it is only a stranger and not you, maybe that'll be okay.

I turn back around and walk away to board the plane and start a new life.

A life with no you.