A/N

A Hinamori chapter in response to the last Hitsu chapter. Please review!
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Dignitas

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weights so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, with someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes …

It happened so suddenly. No … it wasn't sudden. It was gradual, but I was too preoccupied to notice. It seemed like I woke up one day and his eyes were no longer warm, his smile had ceased to exist, and his body seemed to seethe with pain. How could I not have noticed? How could I have neglected him of all people? He turned cold. Everything about him turned to ice. He was no longer … Shiro-chan. He was someone I didn't recognize. Someone I couldn't relate to. Someone I could beg and beg for a response and get nothing in return.

I should have noticed it. I know now, looking back, that he gave me clear signs of his madness. I should have noticed over time that we used to spend every night together and that the times in between became longer and longer. I should have noticed his lack of interaction with our "family". I should have noticed his eyes growing colder and colder everyday. I definitely should have noticed his once gentle, endearing voice turning slowly into a growl. When did he forget how to laugh? When did he forget how to smile? When did everything start to spin out of control? I should have noticed! What was I so preoccupied with all that time? I don't even know … it was my fault. My fault for loving him so dearly before and letting that love slip slowly away. I should have loved him more, I should have held him more, I should have made him feel more at home. But I didn't, and because of that, things changed. I'm the reason why he became so self-destructive. So incredibly dangerous to himself and others, that I had not the ability nor the bravery to get through to him. Somewhere along the way, I lost the connection. I let it go. It slipped through my fingers.

Winter passed slowly and as Spring began to approach, I finally began to notice. But it was too late. He no longer responded to me. He didn't want to go out at night. He didn't want to play with the others. He didn't want to speak to me. I finally built up my courage to confront him, to attempt to take back the child I once knew. So I went into the room he always slept in and asked him to come play with us. But he barked at me to go away, to let him sleep. He only faced me for a half a second. But that half a second was long enough to allow me view of his eyes. Something was very wrong. His eyes held more than the person I knew before. And it frightened me. Half a second was long enough for my own eyes to widen surprisingly in fear. And the quarter second remaining was long enough for him to catch my own eyes. And at that moment, time stood still. It was only a second, maybe two. But we both stopped dead. He stared and me and I stared at him. And then all hell broke loose. He just started screaming uncontrollably. Screaming and screaming and screaming. Screams of sorrow and disgust and guilt and intense anger filled our home. It felt like his spirit was breaking, it felt like it was screaming out in pain for someone to listen, for someone to understand. And so, with his eyes wide with sorrow, his face covered in tears, his body wracked with despair, he got out of the bed he always inhabited, violently threw me out, slammed the door shut, and locked it. The house, which was always full of noise, turned dead silent. And the house, which was always warm and comforting, grew cold as ice.

It was my fault. If only I'd looked at him with a kind smile, he wouldn't have done that. I could only lay broken where he had left me. And I wept. For him, for us, for what I knew would come. We had passed the threshold. What both of us probably feared the most had just happened. We couldn't go back to the way we were before. He could never again be my Shiro-chan again and I could again never be his Momo. And when that dawned on me, mere seconds after he flung me out of that room, memories flooded into my mind. At that moment all I could picture was everything I had lost. Memories of our meeting, of our first time embracing, of our first night session, I recalled memories of every small thing he had ever done for me. I could never have that again. I will never meet another person like him ever again. I failed him. I let him slip through my fingers. And I just knew, I knew, that as much as he meant to me, I meant at least five times as much to him. If this destroyed me, then this would kill him. It wouldn't just wound him, it would annihilate him. I knew that I was all he had in the world. I was his world. Just thinking about how he had changed over the time that we spent together living in this house proved it. He wouldn't have done the things he did if I wasn't important to him. Tears would never suffice this loss for him or for myself. And so as his screaming was beginning to stop, my screaming voice joined his. For a moment, our pain was vocalized in unison, our words we could never speak united in one voice for all to hear. For a moment, time stopped, the air stopped, and everything hovered in its existence just for this. And just like that, the moment was gone. His voice stopped and my voice took on where his had left off. Our pain, our grief, our anger towards ourselves and each other took on different voices. But in reality, it was the same. We both wanted to scream forever. We both wanted to go back but knowing we couldn't, all that there was left to do was scream.

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I couldn't approach the door. Not because I was in pain, which I was, but because some strange force held all would-be intruders at bay. I was a child so words like spirit energy had never entered my vocabulary. Therefore, I wasn't thinking that some kind of power in him had awakened. All I knew was that the door was like ice. That everyday our house got colder. That my best friend was in that ice dying. The door wouldn't budge. The ice holding me back would not melt. I couldn't reach him. I screamed at his barrier, at his wall of ice to let me in, for him to come out, for him to say anything, but there was no response. None at all. And for three long days, I could do nothing but pray that he was still alive. I had left him before in his time of need. This time, I swore, I wouldn't leave his side. So I stayed by the door. Maybe I thought that if I waited long enough, the ice would melt, that he would walk out of the room, and I could make his pain go away. It's not like I actually believed it, but I hoped that at any moment I would wake up and Shiro-chan would be by my side dragging me off to some strange place again. But it was real. And as time went on, I became more and more desperate. I wanted him back. I'd take anything, even if I didn't recognize who I saw, even if he changed into another person, I just wanted him back. And if we remained the way we were, I would always be standing at the door to his heart. I would never be able to reach him or understand him. I would never be able to cease his pain or comfort him. I was desperate enough to bring myself to his level. So I decided that if he could destroy his body, then I could too. He couldn't come to me. So I would come to him. So after three days of waiting, I walked into his fortress of ice and I reveled in the excruciating pain it caused as my skin turned from pale to a ghastly blue and as my body turned more and more rigid in the unrelenting cold. And as darkness washed over me, I smiled in anticipation of our next meeting.