Disclaimer: Tokyo Babylon and X aren't mine. They're from wickedly cool Clamp.

In old times, when husbands would die, the widow's name would be written in red on the grave marker of the deceased. It was a custom that was done in respect to the widow.

But what did that really indicate, if anything at all? It only told that the one left behind had yet to die...

...Isn't that right?

Miboujin. (Widow.)

By miyamoto yui.

At that moment of his death, the green-eyed one didn't really know how to feel. He tried to hold back the tears only out of pride and the fact that he had cried in so long the tears just became embedded within him. They stubbornly didn't want to come out.

Saying all these years that he had to get revenge when all he wanted was to be found. Isn't that human nature, though? Looking and searching until one is found.

Whether or not that is 'good' is irrelevant to the seeker or the finder.

All his green eye could do was watch as he stained the white shirt with blood, holding on as if he had killed the other part of his demented soul. Only, this was in its flesh form.

"What had happened?" was written all over his body, and yet the black trenchcoat with melting red substance kept on flowing.

The one with a single amber eye was smirking. Whether out of pride or amusement, he refused to let the young man know anything of his true feelings. Until the end, he wouldn't show anything that resembled the façade of truth.

"It is finally over," he thought to himself as he made it a point to lean on the green-eyed beauty before him.

His green-eyed beauty.

The very thing he had smeared like a lamb's blood on a threshold as a sacrifice. From head to toe, body and soul, mind and beyond. Everything he had worked for was embedded ever so slowly and thoroughly into this young boy.

Yes, he was young indeed. For no matter how scarred and grown-up he looked, that heart was still the same. It was hardened by his own twisted suffering, but eyes never lie.

Nor a single slashed one. Especially not this green one or its holder.

Murmuring more of a story, he finally understood what his prey's twin had tried to tell him. He finally felt it for himself.

The discomfort of being killed the way he had always killed. Ignoring his feelings because they were just trinkets of false illusions which made a person react to the situation they were in.

Life was a case-by-case basis as well as all the dead corpses he had left behind him.

Now, it was his turn.

Then, the vampire-eyed man let go as best as he could. He had ingested the scent he wanted to smell at the last moment of his death and he couldn't stand that he was becoming too soft.

But it was there for both of them.

Silent chaos within their eyes, exchanging words without even moving their lips.

Wanting to stain his white trenchcoat, he wanted to hold on. What the hell was he thinking? He heard this person's words with all he could. With all that was left of himself, whomever that was. Whomever he used to be and who he was now amounted to nothing, anyway. Just an indifferent bastard.

Becoming the very person he didn't want to become. How ironic life was that way.

And the vampire eye still stared at the single green eye as if it were still pleased at the predicament he had wanted to be in. Finally, he also understood what his mother had tried to tell him.

What she tried to make him feel, but failed because she wasn't the one for him at all.

When he let go, he smiled with his eyes closed. Without the mask. Without the smirk.

He genuinely showed the truth in one brief moment.

He had become the person he never thought he was. Putting on the persona of a kind vet who flirted shamlessly with his lover. Liking the role until he became confused with arrogance and duty.

But now, he couldn't hold back.

Deep inside, he had wanted to be that normal person who could love someone freely. Someone worthy of being loved by someone so kind-hearted. Even if it was a lie.

That was the reason he couldn't let go of that illusion.

It was too sweet.

A taste of paradise...

How could one go back to hell on Earth, anyway?

Leaning forward, he whispered into the young man's ear to confuse the fucking hell out of him. He had to have the last word, but he couldn't hold him. No, not out of weakness.

It all led to pride, right?

Indifference would make you unfeeling through and through, correct?

Except, that wasn't the case.

It just made you more aware of what you didn't have. Of what you couldn't want. Of what you can't be to anyone, even to yourself.

--

So, many, many days later, even though the green one 'survived' in body, he was searching Tokyo for that smile. The one he had believed in. The one that came through at last when his special one had died.

Running away further and further from reality, he was closing in upon himself. Never to open his heart again.

He was going to keep up the custom of the Sakurazukamori...

You must be killed by the one you love the most.

"Yes, that's right..." he smiled as he stabbed himself with an arrow pushing onto the bark of the unusual sakura tree.

In the place where the heart should be.

Staining a make-shift grave for Seishirou in Ueno Park with red.

Red from his own blood.

Writing his name under the sakura they had first met.

The one left behind.

As it should have been with tradition.

At the bottom of the sakura tree, beautifully written in kanji for all to see,

"Sakurazuka Subaru."

Owari.

--

Author's note: I understand that this is probably not my usual. * sighs * But I had to write it. Been feeling depressed lately, so this story's more of an art thing than a plot...

It's because the thought of Seishirou still having his 'vet' smile before his death intrigued me.

Thank you for reading the bottom of my torn heart. I'm just feeling weird.