I...I am so sorry.
I swear the next one will be happy.
The rain that night was beautiful.
It whistled through the heavy swirls of fog, striking the ground like footsteps, the sound muted and soft. It was the kind of rain that made everything seem more silent, even as it created a soundtrack in the background, a symphony underneath the events unfolding on the wide stretch of the riverbank. That night the rain fell from the sky like it was dripping from the folds of a gigantic cloth, like it was collecting on the fingertips of people in the clouds and rolling almost lovingly through the air and down to the earth.
And that night it streamed down around a boy and a girl, one bleeding, and one crying, and one pleading, and one dying.
She was still alive, but just barely, her olive eyes glazed over with pain. Blood painted her lips an almost wanton shade, and she tried for a smile.
"Not...your fault..."
He was hunched over her body, his hands gripping at her clothes uselessly, and he was clenching his teeth so hard that his own lips were white. He was shaking, from more than the cold, and rain was falling from his eyes to her own cheeks, salty and bitter and despairing.
He shook his head from side to side, as if a simple action could change the future. His clammy fingers slid up to her cheek, cupping her face, and he whispered denial.
"No, no, Maka, please, Maka, oh God please, please no—"
His voice snapped in two, and the pieces jostled together in his throat.
"Maka...you can't...you can't...I—"
And maybe it was the steady stream of blood pumping out of the hole in her chest with every beat of her suicidal heart, and maybe it was the look of her consciousness fading from her eyes, but he suddenly leaned down, his eyes squeezing shut against the sight before him, and pressed his mouth to hers.
So human. As if a kiss, as if a "but I love you, you can't leave me" could actually stop something.
But for one tiny second, one split moment while the rain slowed around them, she kissed back, the movement only the barest of caresses against the broken boy's lips. He pulled away and a flicker of something—something more than regret and something more than realization—flashed in her eyes and jumped the scant distance to him. She exhaled once across his mouth, a shuddering sigh that carried more words than anything ever spoken between them. Her last breath.
And he was left there.
He was left there confessing things to a girl who couldn't hear them anymore. He was left sobbing her name over and over like it was the safe word in some sort of game that she had forgotten they were playing.
This isn't fun anymore, I want to stop. Let it stop.
Yes, the rain that night was beautiful.