Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN YGO.

Christmas ANGST.

Snow, And Her Letter

In the semi-darkness of my room I can still see the soft flakes of snow falling outside. The glass is cold as I lean my forehead on it, transfixed on the last sunrays of this year. It is dying out now, covering everything that happened in a white blanket holding hopes for the future. When I think about my future, I can't really find difference between it and my past. And as for my present, I successfully mislead myself again walking the tangled way my sanity twirls up for me in my mind. All I can think about is the snow flakes, and how, luckily, I could be one of them, falling to be melted, yet turning to spring.

In the horizon, the city lights are burning holes in my eyes. Little flames of blue, red and gold stirring on my closed eyelids. Distant echoes of faraway parties, they are welcoming the passing of the time. It is natural, it is obvious, it is the same. Year after year, and snow still covers the streets on a day like that. And its glitter reminds me time after time about the day he left.

It was actually eight years ago. Do you remember what you've done eight years ago?

Eight years is a great deal of time. It is a matter of wanting, and then you can forget. I really don't remember myself eight years ago, but somehow that day was recorded and burnt so deeply within my mind, that I can imagine it very alive and sound. No, there were no sounds on this day. Only the ticking of the clock and the squeak of his trunk on the old stony floors of the doorway.

I remember when the door finally closed, I went to the room he used to live in, and opened the door. The room was empty.

No, not literally empty. The furniture was still there, his bed, the closet, the rag on the floor. Still his presence was somewhere there, like he was sleeping and sitting near the window and packing all at the same time. I wouldn't be the one that stopped him. After all, it was his choice. Have it brought him the happiness he asked for 5000 years? Or was it another inevitable mistake of faith?

But there was one consolation this time.

He wasn't alone, where he was going.

I remember sitting in his former room and watching the snow cover the windowsill and the city lights shining their celebration to heavens. I wasn't sad, I didn't felt lonely, but there was something within me that made me feel…Strange. I thought about him, then I thought about her, and something wasn't…Wasn't that.

I wonder what made her decide to try such a thing. Wasn't she young, brilliant, beautiful girl he met one day, lost in the snow? And I wonder what made him spare her life, coz when he's hungry…Nothing stops him. Not even slashing my FlEsH.

After that I got out of his room I locked the door. I threw the key to the snow, and never found it again. When he left, his room wasn't the only one he abandoned empty. It was another room located deep within my soul.

He didn't choose her over me, I know. But he didn't love her either. Did he love me?

The house is still right now, just like that day he left, when I sat alone and measured out the silence. Miles of silence ahead of me, I could almost hear the scream echoing through the walls. Like every Christmas Eve for eight years now. Empty, abandoned, alone but not broken.

He left me eight years ago. He left her seven years ago. He left us seven years ago, and went far away. He left his room empty, he left some clothes no one touched, he left dried tears on the cold, he left only gloomy wind to wallow for him, and he left a void in my soul, a void where a door used to be, a door to his part of my existence. The door that made me his victim, his Hikari, his vessel, and him my tormentor, my other, my pain.

I wear my coat and zip it. I look at the darkened window and wonder why I am doing this. But it is something I'm used to do, I guess. It is very hard to break old habits. Especially on Christmas Eve.

I sit on the bench, hands folded on the wooden board, and listening carefully to their words. Soft voices are telling me to open my eyes and to believe, they try to convince my withered heart to wake up and beat for the coming of the New Year. They talk about new chances and hopes, they pray for good days, for sun light and for the spring. They bless me in the name of god, and promise me the oath of light. I let my soul step out of the darkness, I leave the hole his forgotten door left in me, and when I open myself to their voices I in a way close myself for the outer world, thing I learnt how to do when he used my body before he got his own skin.

His mouth never whispered the prayers. I feel I'm somehow doing this for him too.

The candles cause the colorful stained glass to glam around in shadows of dreams, the place is bright yet shady and calm. Only few people are sitting on the benches praying for the New Year. Most of them are more likely welcoming the New Year in some party there in the city.

One girl in the choir sings solo, her voice smooth and soothing. She is excited and determined. A voice of a storyteller. I wonder how her voice was. I remember them sitting in the park in the semi-darkness and she sang for him. He sat quietly, his eyes closed, the pale light of the streetlamp was enough to see his face. He was relaxed, his face calm. Not distorted with rage and malice as it was years ago when he lived with me. Not mutilated by the hate he used to radiate. He sat unmoving, not breaking the silver thread of weak bond of hope he had with her.

And when he opened his eyes, they were deep brown and lucent, not red and blood-searching. I hate to think about that moment, because then he looked precisely like me.

Steps. Their echo swallowed well by the clean carpets on the floor, still I hear them. Steps, light steps of someone who hasn't walked for awhile, whose legs are slightly shaking from the cold, who is going to fall heavily on the bench on my side.

Breathing deeply, I turn around slowly to see who it is, and I froze. Seven years, seven years since I've seen her last time, her face pale and almost gray, her hands trembling and her voice broken in tears, and here she is, sitting a meter away from me.

In seven years she hasn't changed that much.

She is slim, skinny than usual; her skin death pale like it hasn't seen sun in years. I remember the times she was tan and healthy. Now her young face is wearing the constant mask of mourn, worry, isolation. Her hands shaking lightly in their gloves, her features calm and steady though the turmoil is well seen in her burning blue orbs. She grasped the board in front of her, her lips mumbling unreal words.

Dead soul in a body of 23 years old girl.

Bowing her head I can feel her fighting the tears. Where has she been for those long seven years? I've never seen her in the city, nor in the neighborhood, nor here. Was she indeed sitting there, waiting for him when she knows it is hopeless?

She looks to her side, feeling my stare on her, and a lone tear streams down her cheek as she sees me. First it is happiness in her eyes, but then she looks closer and recognizes me. I'm not him, and she is disappointed. Greatly. But a moment ago I saw blink of desperate hope in her eyes. It was like she was granted life again for a mere second. But she knows I'm not him. She knows, and she mourns him twice. I'm a damn copy, through I was born alive. I was nothing to him though we shared body, soul and mind. What am I to her?

I don't get closer to her. Another tear streams on her cheek. My pain has faded away some time ago. I told myself again and again he is dead, so I won't have to face the fact of never knowing what really happened on that night she called me. The night seven years ago when he left.

The mellow voices bring back the memories of that night. I was almost out of the house, I was going to the Christmas prayers session. And then it came. First it was the feeling something was wrong. Growing will to fall on my knees and pray before the snow falling outside. Then it was my lost key. I couldn't find my key and therefore I couldn't get out in time.

The phone rang.

It was her voice. On the other side.

She told me he was fading, withering away.

I left everything. I forgot what he'd done to me. Everything was erased.

Years of abuse.

His brutal usage of my body.

My FlEsH he tore.

No Praying.

The key.

That night I didn't go to pray. It was the only time I missed the prayer.

I came to their house running, almost knocked down by people, cars, streetlamps and snow mounds. Frozen tears were on my face when I knelt beside his bed. She held his hand, praying for him, begging him to stay with her, to stay with us. I took his other hand, and it was cold and light, like he was nothing but illusion.

He looked at me with empty eyes, and then his head slowly turned to her. The smile that rested on his face was the most frightening and tragic thing I've ever seen. On the next moment, my hand held air. And he was gone.

She cried his name until her voice was broken. Then she whispered, coughing. I went to the kitchen and poured her a glass of water. When I returned to the room I saw her holding into the blanket he was covered by, the material soaked with her tears. Her face was buried in the place where he rested few moments ago.

Why did he fade?

Hadn't he eaten? Hadn't he satiated himself with blood?

It wasn't the sun that brought him end. Was it lack of blood?

But I saw her arms. They were slashed, long white scars, red marks – the evidence she gave him his food. So what was it?

I left the glass with the water near the bed, and then I turned around and went out of the room.

The apartment they shared was small, again I felt his presence somewhere near, like the day he left my house. But the atmosphere in this place was different. It was hers as well, her books, her blanket, her glass standing next to his. His clothes on the floor, the cold kettle and cup of tea on the table.

A clock was ticking somewhere near.

And the squeak of the front door made it clear for me. He wanted me out, with whatever will he had left. I knew he wasn't going to let it alone. I went to the door, opened it and closed it behind myself.

That door wasn't touched for seven long years.

I helped her up when the prayer was over. It was obvious she rarely moved like this, so her legs were still shaking under her when I led her out. She said nothing till we were standing in the cold, her body shivering violently near mine. I closed my eyes as I brought her closer to me, wrapping my arms around her. She only shivered more.

We stood like this, eyes trailing on the graves visible in the cemetery, washed down by tears of rain, covered by snow, cold, and withered petals. The plants around the tombs were dead and wilted. Do they wait for spring?

"Please…" her once beautiful voice was hoarse from being unused, tears of frost on her cheeks "Let me go, Ryou-san. He…He doesn't want this…"

But he is dead.

"I missed you, Rose. I missed you, and I was afraid I would never see you again," I say calmly, not looking in her eyes. We stood like this, she quivering ever so strong and I feel the blows of the cold wind on my face, like he slaps me for holding her that close to me, painful enough like he was scolding I touch what is his.

"Let me go, please," her dead voice was desperate, and I stand still long moment before I collect my arms back to myself. We stand and look at each other, trying to decide what to say to build the bridge over seven years. She says

"I shouldn't have come."

"No, Rose," I say "It's over. He's over. It's all over."

"No!" another whisper of her lifeless voice, and she looks at me through wall of tears "He's not dead! Ryou, he's here, he wants back, he wants back, I want him back…"

I look at her, compassion written on my face. Would she understand it, after so long? When there's no grave for him? Why didn't the pain get old, why didn't the memories fade away so she can get back to the day she met him and erase him from her life?

After all, she lived the same life as I lived it.

Embraced in the cold.

Lost for the world.

Exhausted.

A year of abuse.

A year of blood loss.

A year of dying love.

Did she love him?

The storm is getting colder and stronger as I walk her home. I expect her to take other directions yet I find myself pacing on the same road I ran to their house seven years ago. God, what time does to this part of city. The road is old and crumbling, the houses poor and the display windows empty. The area is gradually falling apart, apartments are empty and less and less lights visible in the black mass of buildings.

We get to the house they lived in. Poor, quiet place, the air here is standing still, the noises echoing like they were subterranean, nothing really makes the sound. They just exist, like nail in the middle of the looking glass, and the shattered opaque circles around it.

"Rose," I say silently. I know clearly it is my last chance.

"Rose, it's over for him, but it's not over for you. You know there's life beyond death. Don't…Don't do this," I say.

She turns to me.

"This isn't over. I don't believe. I'd give everything I lost to know…Ryou-san,"

I wait for the doom to slap me across the face.

"Not anymore." and with that she runs, almost falling, into the black entrance hall of the building. I automatically raise my hand to watch their window on the third floor. No light. No life sign. Like she isn't there. But where is she?

When I get up tomorrow, the world is white and gray, pure like first petal and soft like cloud. I went out to sweep the snow away from my door step. I made a clear rectangular layer of snow in the middle of the path. It was when I saw his name written in the snow, the signs of my plowing in the white mass of flakes creating exact pattern of his loathed and feared name. Did she call him that?

It was when I saw the letter stuck in my mailbox. Traces of rust were on the snow. Someone has opened my mailbox, which I haven't opened for years, and put that letter inside. I get the white envelope to find no address. No name.

I wonder.

I open the envelope back near the table. A single candle is lit when I see the writing. It isn't familiar to me.

He never leant how to write.

So it isn't him?

Ah no. forgot. He's not.

And there's a strange sensation down in my stomach when I read her letter. It's like I crave to see her, to hear her, to hold her in my arms just like yesterday night.

She tells nothing in this piece of white paper covered by ink. Nothing but the truth. May I believe that she know how to find the key I lost?

Or was it a mere feeling the answer was somewhere within my reach?

I can't forget him. Not really. Not after the years I lost. Not after the years she lost. Sitting there in their apartment alone and broken.

Was she feeding on blood?

And she talks about him. She says he is her world, her soul, her love. Her life. It matters nothing to her anymore. I don't matter. Was I a shadow, or was fate playing the game of sacrifice? And who is the real prey?

I'll perish alone

I know how she feels. She may think I'm nothing but I know how she feels right now. She feels guilty, she feels that void burning in her. During those seven years I prayed, but she…She must have lied in restless dream of false and sunset of red, eating through herself just like he used to do to her. I know she felt the pain growing wild with every beat of her heart. And he wasn't there to see her rotting. He wasn't there to cut her arms again. Then was she the one?

Can he see the ghost she is?

I read the next few rows she scribbled. In the end of the last row I see something that catches my eyes. Maybe the pen slipped to the side when she wrote. It left a mark.

Black stain.

And it is so close. Almost on the letters of his name.

She can't hide anymore from that feeling.

He's gone.

But will she follow?

She knows he's gone. And lying in the grave his bed became is all she was going to do.

I followed the path to their home once again. The letter was in my hand, grasped so tight I felt the pulse through my palm.

Some of the windows of their building were lightless, miserable, shattered. But the pale light was lazily penetrating the glass through. Only their window on the third floor was blackened. There were no curtains to hide it. It was just…Black.

I stood for a long hour and watched the windows. No movement was in the house.

Is she lying and mourning him again?

Aren't those seven years enough to forget? To cry? To move on?

Will she ever move on?

And as I watched the windows I felt the snow melting under my boots. The snow is melting into spring, just like I wish to drown. But the spring of my life is already wasted. It is turned to autumn, withering within a nugget of frost.

I go back home.

And I burn the letter in blue icy flames.

FAB: Had hard time deciding whether to post this one or not. It was written through the haze of a late night dream. Christmas ANGST is always a little too dramatic and heavy, and I'm aware of Ryou's rhetorical point of view, somehow confused and ambivalent in the same time. Still I don't know what to think.

All I have to say is that I was honest in this. I wrote everything I knew. So if you have a moment, please REVIEW and tell me what you think.

Happy New Year.