A Petal Down The River

By Rose

:.:Alarm Clocks Are Broken.:.:

I felt him racing after me, I could hear him. I felt his presence encase over me.

"How can you understand?" I screamed, racing up the hill, tears blurring my vision. Maybe I was a child, I was acting as one.

"Ayame…" he breathed out, grasping onto my wrist.

It felt like everything stopped, and if it wasn't for him holding onto me I'd have been lurched off this planet into the unknown. In my mind, I was already lost. I sighed, bowing my head so I wouldn't see him. I felt secure, down beneath my hair.

"Kouga…" I breathed out, taking a deep breath again, "I… love… I loved…"

He sighed, and I felt his hand slacken on my wrist, however it was still there. I lifted my head up, tears running down my face now, my nose clogging, and looked over my shoulder at him. He looked so beautiful like that, so tussled and yet calm at the same time. How could I love someone so much who didn't feel the same? Why…

"Do you know what it's like to love someone who loves someone else?" I asked softly, knowing he wouldn't answer it. It was one of those question statements… one that never needed an answer.

"Ayame…" he moved forward, and I just stood there as he draped himself around me.

"I understand," I said softly into his shoulder, "…I understand, now, that you do not love me…"

I smiled, and as he opened his mouth to protest I put a finger to his lips to silence him. He looked at me, his eyes twitching with anticipation to prove me wrong, a feat he could never achieve now.

"You love Kagome, Kouga. Maybe… you're confused, or, you're just so far gone you'll mate me for a tribe and something to your name now that Inu Yasha has what it is you truly desire…" My smile disappeared, and I felt so dead.

"I was so naive…" I said calmly, laughing and shrugging, my face still placid, "to think, someone as great as you would love me. I am… it was so much easier to think I could give you this one thing-the tribe. I gave you my love and you did not want it, but you wanted the tribe and I could give you that, the one thing you'd accept."

I saw the way he looked at me, and I knew he was realizing all of this.

"Kouga, I can't live with you," I stated calmly, as though I was a professional at this. I backed away, straightening my back, and gave him a foreboding glare. My tears were still running, but everything else about me was erect and calm.

"I can't live knowing you love another while I love you. It ate away at me before, but being with you always… being so close to you… I can't do it, do you understand?" I asked, looking at him through my tears. He didn't answer.

Maybe… he just didn't care.

"I'm going to leave now, Kouga. I'm going to go somewhere, and live there, until something fills what was once my heart. You'll always have it, you know, my heart. But my love… is dead," I shrugged, and backed away, before turning and leaving. There was nothing to run from now, it was all over.

You'll go home, Kouga, and pretend to love another, until you eat her heart, too.

---x---

It was three days, four moon glances since I last saw you, my Kouga.

Since I last held you, since you last held me. I am no different now, my Kouga.

I have become something, though. A woman… a wolf… a person. A god, if you will, in my own eyes. I have prospered from this, grew away from love and attachments and became someone of just power.

I am Ayame.

And I do not need you.

(I think I might just end it here. D: )