AN: Nothing to say, nothing to say (except maybe at the end).
"I'm sorry," he says. Nothing answers him. His hand touches the granite, the harsh feel of the grey stone reflecting the reality of the situation. He lets out a bitter sigh and reminds himself that he isn't responsible for what happened.
A part of him bites back, snaps at his mind; putting the blame back to him. He ignores this to the best of his ability, but like everything, it leaves behind traces that he'll uncover when he gets home. It's almost masochistic of him, coming back every single day to the place that hounds him even in sleep. As if she still needs him.
She doesn't.
She's dead, Ikuto, of course she doesn't need you.
And everything comes back to him. His lover's frightened voicemail, his brother-in-law's desperate attempts to contact him, his father's pallid face. It regurgitates in his memory like a boomerang. One with thorns that cling and rip and grasp.
Even after all the years, he can still imagine how she looked in the casket. He can still see the way they tried to hide her shoulder wound by wrapping a bandage around it; simply because they all knew that the sleeveless white dress was her favorite – he can still remember her short blonde hair, neatly cut because there was just too much blood and gore mixed in the lower parts. He can still feel her, her skin lifeless but soft as it always been.
He remembers looking at her for the last time and taking in all the details. The circle-shaped scar on the left side of her head (due to chicken pox; she had been so irritated that she had accidentally clawed it open), the yellowish bruise on her knee, lace that she had painstakingly sewn to her dress, and even the form of her face was etched into his mind. Her slender face, high cheekbones, slightly pointy nose, and almond shaped eyes with long eyelashes that she had always been proud of. Snippets of conversations, banter, and laughter filter themselves in his mind like a movie.
Ikuto sighs again. The sky is blue and cloudless; not even the tragic setting of a graveyard can take away the fact that it's a beautiful day.
"Would things be different if I was at your side that day?" Ikuto asks. No one is around, and the only answer he gets is the tweeting of birds and the roaring of a motorcycle engine in the distance.
No, a part of him says. Nothing would've changed even if you had been here.
He tries comforting himself with this. It doesn't work. Looking around only serves as a deep plunge into darkness; the air strangles his mind as he continues to watch her plaque. Only when he realizes that he has been standing there for too long does the madness release him. He thinks about Amu, the one keeping him sane, and smiles as he finally drops the bouquet of flowers on her grave.
"Wait a little bit longer for me, Utau," he says to her, as if he doesn't repeat the same phrase every day. "I'll come as soon as life is tired with me."
He imagines her soft smile and puts on his headphone, the sound of her voice echoing in his mind as he makes his trip back home.
AN: I was going to write this cute Harry Potter one-shot for my other account and then, BAM, my hands started writing this. I'm not used to writing in present tense, so if you see any "he said" kind of moments, mention them. As for the chickenpox scar: as a shoujo anime character she doesn't have any physical blemishes, but I wanted to add it because I have a scar like that. I didn't get it from scratching it off myself, though (I was a smart kiddo), my mom was combing my hair and the comb rubbed against it too harshly. Utau is more the type to do something like that herself :P.
Anything else? Oh, yes, the grey granite tombstone is also a reference to my life. My bro's grave is made of that.