Author's note: 200 reviews! Wow! I never expected to get this many. Thanks reviewers!

Sources: The Tale of Genji; Love Poems

Chronology: post "Born to Kill"

Tales of Ise 65:

For an end of love I prayed at Mitarashi.
It seems the gods declined to hear my prayer.

Eric placed a lily at Marisol's grave, next to a wilting rose that he was sure had come from Horatio. He looked at them for a moment before speaking, quietly. "Hey, sis." He swallowed. The pain of losing her was still so raw. "I know it's been a couple weeks since I've come by. I'm sorry. I still think about you every day." He took a deep breath. "I've kind of had a rough week." He paused again. "It happened, Mari. Remember when you said someday I'd get my heart broken? You were right."

It was a pleasant afternoon. A light cloud cover and a steady breeze kept the humidity tolerable. The sun was just visible through the pearlescent clouds. Eric watched as a small bird darted by, chasing an insect.

"Maybe it's karma," he said, continuing his musings, feeling a need to articulate his suffering. "That might be what she'd tell me. I've broken my share of hearts; I guess this is payback." He fell silent again and absently plucked at a leaf of grass. "I keep trying to figure out how this happened. How I could let this happen. But maybe I couldn't avoid it." He glanced around the cemetery. "She's so beautiful, Marisol. Do you remember her? Calleigh Duquesne. I can't believe it took me so long to see it." He was quiet for a moment as somewhere off in the distance a tow-truck beeped as it backed up.

"I'm in love with her," he admitted for the first time. He rushed on, feeling a need to explain himself, even though he was only talking to his dead sister. "I've been in love before. You know how I am about that. But this is different. I've never felt like this. I love just being with her, no matter what we're doing. Everything makes me think of her. I kept thinking it would just go away, but it didn't." The ghost of a smile that had grown on his lips as he spoke sunk to a frown. "I wish it would. She's in love with someone else, and it hurts so much." He glanced down, and then back to the gravestone. "A taste of my own medicine..." He rested his hand on her name. "I wish you were here. I could really use your advice about now. I wish I could just hear you tell me that it's going to be okay, that I can get over this. I think I'd believe you." He sighed. "Right now I think you're the only one who could get me to believe that."

W.B. Yeats, "The Folly of Being Comforted":

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
'Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
Heart cries, 'No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly, O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.'

O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.