Author's note: For Nightshade

It was summer, a time when life was in full bloom everywhere you looked, but here they were in a cemetery feeling the chill of winter in their hearts. He wanted to cry, scream, curse the heavens for what they had done, this cruel trick they had played upon mere mortals.

He had seen his friend lying cold and still. Even in death, he still had that old vitality about him. There had been a curl at the corner of his mouth that suggested that any moment now, he was going to smile, and sit up, and everything would be alright, and life would be normal again.

The moment never came. It never would. None of them would ever see that smile again. A stroke, the doctor had said. It was amazing. All that clump of blood cells had to do was stay where they were and Kogure, his best friend, was gone, vanished like a dream with the dawn.

Akagi was giving the eulogy, or 'eugoogly' as Sakuragi had so charmingly said, having seen Zoolander before. Watching the captain, his jaw tightening to keep his tears in check as he spoke, Mitsui was glad he was standing where he was under the trees.

He wasn't crying. He wouldn't cry. He never cried. He was Mitsui Hisashi, Shohoku's Scar Face, their Man of Valour, the Resident Bastard. Bastards never cried. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Rukawa, looking down at him with the most compassionate eyes he had ever seen.

The Resident Bastard felt a stinging in his eyes, saw the whole world as if it was swimming underwater. He cursed Rukawa for causing the flow of tears. Both of them knew he didn't mean it.

Kogure had been a pillar of strength through his dark days. He had never given up hope that Mitsui would rejoin the team. He had never said anything against him when he had been struggling to keep up with the game he had left for two years.

Kogure had been his guiding light, the one who kept him strong and taught him to never give up hope. He had showed him what perseverance meant. He had showed him what life was really about, how everything meant something. He had touched everyone he knew in some palpable way.

Things were so easy then. All they had to do was play ball, pass some tests, and maybe worry about the university entrance exams once in a while. And then they had graduated from high school, going out to make their mark on the big bad world.

Mitsui had always imagined that they would end up together in some nursing home, white-haired and tottering on the verge of senility, reminiscing about the 'good old days'. He'd always thought they would go through old age as they had in high school.

But it would never be that way. Kogure was dead, a meat puppet in his wooden casket, the strings cut forever, never to move again. His guardian angel had forsaken him. He had been only 25.

He hated God then. He had taken his best friend away. God was hateful. God was jealous. God was cruel. God was…

God was crying. The sky had become overcast. Clouds had gathered. A chill wind blew, and it began to snow in the middle of July. Snowflakes swirled down around them, white as cotton, gentle as a baby's touch. Gentle as Kogure had been. Rukawa's ice-blue eyes thawed. A single tear tracked down his ivory cheek. The Ice Prince had melted.

God wasn't jealous after all. God wasn't hateful. God was as heartbroken as they were. The celestial beings were mourning, as they were down on earth, for a man who had really been an angel in disguise.

And when flowers die
So blows a chill winter wind
Burying all life.