KirbsterMK: Eh, my first fanfic in a while. This was originally written with my and my friend's two original characters, but I decided to rewrite it for the YnM section. I leave it to you, the reader, to imagine your own setting and what's going on. Not because I'm lazy, but because it would kill the story if I shoved in there, 'Yeah, this is what happened, and now I'm gonna cry 'cause of it'.

WARNINGS: Character Death, little blood, and shounen-ai. If you don't like shounen-ai, I don't even know why you're looking into Yami no Matsuei, I really don't.

Now, as a final note, I love Tsuzuki and Hisoka. They've gotta be my two favorite characters from that series, aside from maybe Watari, and I'm not gonna deal with flames, although I do enjoy constructive criticism.

Flames will be poked at, pointed at, and laughed at, because those who have time to read the story and then review it with a pointless flame must not have very much of a life.

Tsuzuki's Point of View

Shattered Life

I hugged his body close to mine, hoping to the heavens that he would somehow be all right. I could feel my body shaking, fingers twitching, and felt my sobs wrack through my soul as I buried my face into the crook of his neck. I hadn't cried like this in years.

He was breathing, but barely, and it sounded so painful that all I could think about was finding a way to heal his wounds and bringing him back to consciousness. I lifted my head to look at his face that in his forced sleep, had distorted in pain, perhaps because of his wounds or of another one of his nightmares. I clenched my eyes shut as a fresh wave of tears threatened to pout over their boundaries and down my cheeks as I put my hand to his cheek.

Opening my eyes slowly, I touched his forehead gently, guiding my hand down his face, wishing that his eyes would flutter open with the soft touch, and prove to me that he would live and be okay.

But his eyes did not flutter open. Instead they stayed close, sometimes wincing, and again, I was unsure if it was through dreams or pain.

I gave a shuddering sigh, as I leaned down to place a gentle kiss on his cheek. I leaned back against the tree I had decided to rest at after the attack, still pulling him to me as if I could still protect him from a second death.

Blood was spilled, all over the ground before us, and his clothes were torn and falling off. Blood, his blood, stained both his and my clothes, as well as my hands. I had few injuries, even fewer that leaked blood, but no amount of physical pain could be worse than the pain in my own heart.

If I could've stopped him from running off . . . If I could've realized faster the danger he would be in . . . If I could've just shut up and kept my emotions in check and safe from his empathic abilities to pick up. . . He wouldn't be dying before my eyes.

I should've known. I should've known something like this would happen if I didn't keep an eye on him. He warned me, after all. I should've known that he would stop at nothing to get done what he wanted. Dammit! I could've prevented this all!

In my anger, I slammed my fist against the side of the tree behind me. I was satisfied to hear something crunch, but whether it was my hand or the tree's bark, I couldn't tell.

But it didn't kill the anger and hatred in me that I held against myself. My eyes clenched shut again as I allowed tears of anger to course down my cheeks. Death had always stained my hands. And now it had come back to stain them again.

As my tears continued their rampage down my face, I took another look at him. The crimson blood that poured from his wounds had stained his pale blonde hair that used to shine so brilliantly in the sun. I still couldn't believe what had happened.

I reached for his hair, nearly blinded, with my right hand, combing through it softly as the tears continued to blur my vision. It wasn't as soft as it once was. It was rough, course, and matted down as the blood dried.

Brushing away the rest of his hair that stuck to his face, I could feel my anger boiling up again, at myself, at him, at the world. I clenched his left shoulder with all the strength I could muster in my broken state, and let out another sob.

I suddenly felt something grab my sleeve weakly and pull on it, and I slowly turned my head to look at his face. His emerald green eyes had opened, slightly, but instead of giving me hope, they brought my sorrow and guilt back to me. They were horribly dull. And there was no life left in them. My strong emotions must've been killing him inside, too . . .

His breathing was harsher now, shallower, and he was slowly getting ready to move on, yet again. I briefly started to wonder how a person could die twice . . . What would happen to him now? Would he disappear? Would he move on to the after life? Would he be able to return as a Shinigami again?

He still stared at me with those hauntingly lifeless eyes. He coughed up his own blood weakly, eyes clenching shut, and I helped him rest his head on my left shoulder, tilting my own head to shield his own.

I didn't trust my voice to speak, and my thoughts were too clouded with all my raging and overpowering emotions to say anything to him. I wish I would've.

He continued coughing up blood as I embraced him as best I could, wishing yet again that he would stay here, and not leave the land of the half-living. He suddenly slumped, his forehead leaning entirely against my neck. His hand went limp and didn't grasp my sleeve anymore.

I pulled away from him slightly, noticing that his breathing was nearly nonexistent. A new wave of tears came up behind my eyes in renewed angst, and I leaned down to give him a final kiss on his lips, his soft, blood-covered lips, as he passed on once again, into oblivion.

Pulling back, I brushed his hair back once again, and closed his empty, emerald, still-open eyes with two of my fingers. In vain, I checked his wrist for a pulse, and knew at once that none existed, screaming out into the night out of my anguish.

He was gone. And he was never coming back.