Summary: Star-crossed lovers share one last kiss before the impending end. Kenpachi/first!Yachiru. Pre-series.
Star-Crossed
He'd never imagined it to come this far. Death, yes, death was inevitable. Everything, everyone died.
But still, they had been together for so long. They had gone through countless trials and tribulations, finally coming to settle down with each other. After all that they had endured, he'd thought that they'd be able to live on forever. Just the two of them, and maybe little "'Chirus" of their own, as he'd often called those little devilish additions.
A cough, and he held her closer to him, nearly squashing her up against his chest. His arms were wrapped tightly around her, so tightly that she couldn't have wriggled out even if she wanted to. But then again, she had no desire to. She couldn't. There was no more strength left within her any longer, all of it gone to the inner fight she had had going on inside of her system since gods-knew-how-long.
Her hands shook as she forced herself to reach out, to touch his face one last time. He grabbed them, clueless as to what he was supposed to do with them, panic rising fast within him. A gentle smile, one that spoke volumes of the peace she wanted for him, and she touched her fingers to his cheek.
"Come here," she whispered, and obediently, he bent down, nearing his face to hers. Entangling her fingers through his dark, coarse hair, she allowed herself a little indulgence, planting fleeting kisses to his forehead, eyelids, nose, cheeks.
"Yachiru…" His breath was hot on her skin, the one thing that she so envied at the moment. She could see her own breath misting in the air above her as she exhaled, as if the winter ghost had crept its way in on this beautiful, mid-summer's day. She closed her eyes, unable to see her breath once again manifesting itself, afraid that the ghost was indeed on its way to claim her.
"Kiss me."
And he kissed, caressed, ravaged her till those memories of their nights together, the mornings when he'd wake up to her smile, the evenings when he came home to her arms, were etched into his mind, as vivid as if he were reliving those days once again. Till he could feel the strange pricking at the back of his eyes, the blurring of his vision, hear the shattering of his heart in his ears.
She responded to the best of her capabilities, her weak fingers holding onto him for dear life, pleading in her silent fisting of his torn haori. She responded till she could no longer, and then in the next moment, she was nothing but a limp mass in his arms.
He caught her hand before it fell, and he gripped it tightly. She was cold, so damn cold that it struck him right down to the core. There was no more mist, the hitched rising and falling of her chest gone.
The only thing that stayed was the sweet taste of her, intermingled with the bitter, dreaded tang of death.