A/N: This is one about what Meroko and Izumi thought of Mitsuki. The idea for this just kind of popped into my head, about how people try to hold on to life until the last second, even though they were useless. Mitsuki knew when to let go.
Shinigami, harbingers of death
Izumi's PoV
I sit behind Meroko, cold, stoic. She tries her best to hide the fact that she's crying, but ever so often, I hear her gasp or sniffle. Then I know that she grits her teeth and wills the tears to stop.
She can't stop crying, and I have no words to comfort her. Even if I did, I wouldn't dare to turn around to face her.
Because if I did, then I was afraid that I would start crying too.
We are Shinigami; the harbingers of death. Humans feared us; reproached us; begged us not to take them away.
What did they know of us, truly?
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
I had stopped blaming them a long time ago. They didn't know anything, after all.
It's not that we wouldn't stop; it was that we couldn't.
Once we had taken a life, we were forced to take another. And another. And so it goes on. The only way to survive was to kill.
It probably wasn't even killing, anyway. We just take souls from this world to the next. In a way, we helped. On the worst of days, we tried to tell ourselves that we were giving them new life, helping them to reincarnate.
Few of us were convinced.
We never knew what happened to them.
I had already taken so many away without feeling anything for them. Nothing but a sense of purpose.
It was a job to be done.
After so many years soul retrieval, why did the mere thought of taking Mitsuki hurt so?
Even as I wondered, I knew. She had taught me how to love. Showed me what I wanted. Released me from my pain.
She was my angel.
Why did angels have to suffer the most?
Maybe it was that they were being punished for trying to protect others.
Meroko's PoV
I clamped my hand over my mouth, trying not to cry. What did I do to deserve this? What had Mitsuki done to deserve this?
She's an angel. She showed us, the cursed ones, the fallen ones, the truth. She brought us to be able to accept ourselves.
Yet, after all that she had done for us, in the end, we couldn't help her.
We had tried ever so hard.
It wasn't fair.
We had been her friends, helped her out of trouble, fulfilled her dream. What else?
Nothing.
She had brought us peace and self-acceptance, but we could only grant her a transient moment, a vain hope.
It didn't last.
How had she broken? She was so strong. Even when she was so lonely, she smiled. Even through her unhappiness, her insecurity, her pain, her fear of the end of the dream, she smiled.
She smiled even though she knew that she was about to die.
I respected her for that.
There was a reason why we were not allowed to reveal when a human would die; they would go insane, start planning their deaths, break down, begging us to let them go. For once, they would say, just give us one more chance.
They didn't understand.
They thought that our taking them was of our own free wills. Nobody ever understood.
Then Mitsuki came along. She wanted to help us, even though she knew that we would have to kill her eventually. It was only a matter of time.
She even offered herself as a sacrifice to save Takuto. Willingly. Sincerely.
Why had she fallen so?
The stronger they are, the harder they fall, I remembered.
Even through all the ups and downs, she had wanted to save us. She had succeeded.
She should have been blessed, right?
Instead, she suffered a fate worse than death. She lost both Eichi and Takuto.
She must have thought that she brought about destruction to those she loved and those who loved her.
Mitsuki...