Song removed due to new Rules!

Song : Concrete Angel

Artist : Martina Mcbride

Disclaimer: Don't own song, don't own RW, but I have a Sage plant, which I do own..

NOTE: Sage can't heal yet in this fic, possible OOC warning, I'm still new at RW. Based on the music video.

Done as partial flash back

(song was here archived at Fan Fiction now with original text)

Sage entered the grave yard, the same one he had entered many times before. None of the other Ronins knew about this place or the pain that had been born here, there was a deeper reason he was a 'flirt'. The reason was here. This was where she was, the one who may very well have been his first love, if 10 year olds could fall in love.

(song)

That day she had come in her face had a single bruise on it, but Sage knew there were others on her body, and he wished with all of his heart he could take away her pain. He always wondered why anyone would hurt a child like her. She was a perfect little girl and a very good friend to him. He had and still would wonder why no one helped his friend.

(song)

They had meant when some bullies had been picking on her because she was wearing the same clothes as the day before. Sage didn't like that and had stood up for her. Since that day the two had been best friends. So the one day that she had told him she wanted to die, he told her if she killed herself then he would do it too, and they had made a pact. One fateful night Sage chose to walk her home after school since they lived next to each other. Sage walked her home and saw the anger on the little girl's mother's face. He watched as she was yanked inside and yelled at about how bad boys where to be friends with.

(song)

That night the sounds of someone being beaten came again. Sage tried to get his mother and father to do something, but they insisted it wasn't their business. So Sage snuck out in the middle of the night, and broke into her house. She was in the arms of her mother, the one parent the little girl had. This embrace was anything but loving, the mother had her hands rapped around the little girl's neck and was trying to strange her. 'Leave her alone!' Sage screamed and ran forward, trying to get the little girl out of her mother's arms. The mother slapped Sage hard across his face. He tried to get to the little girl again and the mother hit him again knocking him across the room and into a wall. Sage whimpered and sunk to the floor. He began to pass out, and before he did the last thing he saw was the mother hitting the girl again.

(song)

Sage woke up several hours later, and felt something strange on his head. He touched it with his hand and when he looked at his hand he saw blood on it. He knew that he must have gotten cut when he slammed into the wall. The house was quiet and the boy forgot why he was there for a second. The reason was given back to him when he heard a sound. Something that could only be described as a death rattle sounded across the room from him. Sage pulled himself to his feet and stumbled across the room to make it to the little girl's side. She looked up at him, pain in her eyes and something else, the knowledge that she was about to die. 'I love you.' She told him and closed her eyes. A final shudder ran through her body, then she stopped breathing. Sage ran to the phone that was in the house and called 911.

When the ambulance and police arrived they led the little boy away and back to his house. They took away the girl in a black body bag, and began the search for her mother who had fled the scene of the crime.

All the way through the funeral service and the weeks that followed Sage cried, even in front of people he cried not caring who saw.

(song)

"I miss you." Sage told the grave of the little girl. The wind wrapped around his body and for several seconds he thought her heard her laugh, the same laugh he had been able to get her to use only once. "Why did you have to die? If you had just waited a little longer I could have healed you instead of watching you die!" He screamed to the heavens wanting the pain he would always carry in his heart to vanish.

(song)

The teen Ronin sunk to the ground, falling onto his knees, eyes filled with tears. "If you had only waited a few years…" he would have liked to date her, but now she would never grow up, unlike he who had.

He glanced up and for a few seconds thought he saw her. The girl smiled at him and vanished.