Troopers aren't mine. What I have them do is. And it's not very happy, just to warn you.

Leaving

"You're still going to go."

He stopped in the act of pulling on his jeans, spine pulled into a long smooth curve that disappeared beneath the fine cotton of his boxers. With an iron-clad calmness he began moving again, fingers drawing the fly closed with a low snarl and delicately manipulating the button. Only his eyes could see how he was not trembling. His breath was as steady as the night air he adored so.

"Yes."

The other fell silent then, observing the methodical way he went about clothing himself, the economical movements and surety, even in the dead of the night. He watched from beneath dusky lashes tinted heavy with darkness, upon a bed slashed with stripes of moonlight and anathema. The sheets lay about his waist and legs in creamy folds, light as his composure upon his skin. Like the sheets, his own focused demeanor hid barely anything of what lay beneath: His body. His mind. His core.

Just him.

He wanted to close his eyes, shut out the image of this readying for departure. From him. He wanted to keep his last memory of hair as wild as the stars, of eyes like time and space combined, all wanting him, thinking of nothing more than the moment. He wanted to keep that memory of them pristine. But he couldn't.

It was like looking at a car crash. It was wrong, so wrong, but he couldn't look away. He studied the picture of the tall, lean form searching for his shirt like he would any other wound. After all, he needed to know what to heal before he applied his powers to that end, right?

So why was it so hard? It wasn't as if this blood was visible.

"This is the end, then."

A statement, not a question. One which garnered an actual hesitation, a pause in the dance. He still didn't turn to him, one hand around his sought-out garment, the light cloth airy in long fingers. He was a sculpture of marble and a beauty from Diana, or was that Venus herself? Certainly he was no Pygmalion, if he could not keep the life in what was most certainly not his creation. For all that moonshine was born of the sun and owed its beauty to molten gold, he gave his half-truths something more and ensnared the sun right back.

"Was there ever a beginning?"

And ensnared him well, come to that. The hunter had become the hunted, and heat could not keep up with ice as its silver coin fled forever beyond his eye. Who said he was all-seeing? Light never is fast enough for it always knows that the nighttime is waiting for it.

He had been waiting. Now, he would be waiting. But when does the darkness ever approach the light when it will be killed by their embrace?

"Yes."

The arch of back straightened and he stood up, stirred into movement once more. Midnight blue swept over broad shoulders and corded arms. Arms that could draw back spun light and make it a weapon, arms that could hold and comfort, arms ending in hands that could stroke his hair and breach that barrier where nobody else could. He would have them no other way.

"Maybe. But everything has an end."

A sign of the structure in his mind. Everything has a logical sequence. And the light of a star comes from entropy.

He now searched for his watch, the one piece he never left his room without. An instrument to slice time into manageable increments, to take it from the boundless future and convert it into the ever-moving now. Because everything in his life was manageable and orderly and confined and he thought he'd been able to free him but obviously he hadn't because now he was returning to his cage because—because—

Maybe he would have been better able to handle himself if the sun had been dawning. Maybe not. In either case, there was no sense wondering about something that would never be his. No way to compare possibilities. Time was one thing that was beyond any of them. Save for possibly him, able to take apart the most intricate puzzles with his cool clear knife of intellect that even now he fell victim to. Which he, he wasn't sure.

But all things have their end, and this would seal it. He'd found his watch, moonlight sparking off the crystal face like a teardrop. Dark leather was invisible against their backdrop, until he wrapped it around pale skin like a familiar grasp. No watch would be able to tell what time it was, a time between epochs and a time beyond mere numbers. Because.

"I love you."

He paused before the door, blending almost completely into the shadows with his clothing and hair and his sheer unattainability by the master of light. The darkness flees and there is always the line between night and day, no matter how much the twilight reveals and dawn blinds.

"Yes," he agreed. "You love me."

And that was all there was.

~owari~

Notes: Don't know where the heck THIS came from. Wait, actually, I do . . . I'll just say this: flame wars can burn off Writer's Block. Keep that in mind.

Touma and Seiji are probably OOC as all hell. Damn.

Also meant as a gift fic for my friend and co-webmistress Shala, one of the best friends a girl could ever have. Sorry it's not fluffier, hon . . . you need to help me slip them something next time. ^_^;;;;

One pic this time around: http://home.att.net/~torsui/pics/toumaangel2.JPG. I scanned in an unfinished pic, then fiddled around with Paint and got that. ^^;;;; Not that appropriate considering the fic, but . . .

As always, the Review option is down there. So until next fic, minna-sama . . . ja ne! ^_^