~ Oneshot Collection: Loved ~
II
Because Blue Skies Are All I Have Of You
The last thing Masamune saw was red – red sunset, red pain, red jacket, red light of love.
"It's...fire. Red, I promised...to win."
Red eyes, brown gilded and reflecting the rest of the red, red world. Red eyes, and the tears falling from them clear and thick and fast. In that moment the war is lost and meaningless thing, and Yukimura is just a boy, not a general, not a fighter -
The feelings that are so strong in him right now he has no words for; they have been with him since the first moment he saw the man in his arms, but until this moment they have been nothing – nothing.
Now, he knows that until this moment love was a whisper, a silken sheath for an unacknowledged sword.
Now, that sword plunges naked into his breast.
Masamune's voice flows over him.
"...I'm glad. It's you. You don't forget – you remember me and everything, you see? It's up to you – party's over, Red."
Taste and smell fade from Masamune first, eliminating the slaughter house odors, taking away the copper flavor of blood in his mouth. It is his sight that goes next, and then the sounds of the world, dim and dimmer, coming through a cottony blanket of dull warmth.
The pain goes last - the broken aches, the sharp dark agonies - but as long as it lingers, as long as Masamune can feel, there is the wetness of not-his-own-tears on his face, and the pressure of the lap supporting him against his back, and a whisper of breath near his ear, words he cannot hear -
But he knows them anyway, and smiles.
It's a promise, Red.
The red-beating sun of his life drops below the horizon.
Night falls.
Years pass like the smoke of a summer fire, but not much changes.
Yukimura lays his spears over his shoulder, looks out over the battlefield with pride and the calm that comes from having seen many such sights.
It is his day of victory, but it does not really belong to him; he knows that and feels no anguish at the thought. It is the last battle, and he has fought it well.
The last battle of a lifetime of combat and glory and gore, the last battle of conquest, the last battle of the age that the future will call Sengoku Jidai.
The last battle, with which he has fulfilled the calling of his life; the calling he has carried since he became solitary thunder, the companion to a lost bolt of lightning still wandering in this world alone.
Now, though...now, he feels content, though everything is coming to an end.
He has kept all his promises, fulfilled the words on which he has built his life. Slowly, Yukimura sits down on a patch of green grass and lays back. He stares up into the sky, blue and cloudless and overwhelming in its brilliance, a great wash of lazuli color powdered over with a silver sheen, and he speaks to the one who is never far from his side.
"I did it for you, Dokuganryu. I saved Oushu and the Land of the Rising Sun; I didn't waste your sacrifice – I finished Nobunaga and Hideyoshi both, I closed the way that leads only into chaos. I took your path, your journey, and made it mine."
His eyes close to crescent-moon slits, and the heavens become the world.
"I kept my promise, Date Masamune. I kept my promise, and I love you."
The last thing Yukimura sees is blue – a blue eye, a blue jacket.
A blue and endless sky.
A/N: Part II of the Beloved/Loved series I'm working on with Naqaashi! You know where to find Beloved! (And if you don't, check the A/N of Part I, which will tell you!)
Prompt: Ends
Premise: Yukimura/Masamune, "On The Road"
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