You never gave me any choice, you know. Nobody gave me any choice, any say at all. In meeting you, in being with you, in having you around me all the time, in loving you. But my life has, after all, always been this way. I have never had to make my choices, they were always made for me. People asked, of course, but they never really expected any objection. And I let it be. And I was happy this way because I never liked decisions—facing them or making them.

And so I let things be.

But you taught me how wrong that was, through your actions, your words.

Because you made me regret ever letting you into my life.

“Arashi.”

I turned, my gaze settled upon him, strong and steady. For an instant, amidst the other five people anxiously waiting the arrival of their enemies, there was just the two of us. Just the two of us. Then a soft breeze blew, soft and faint but mercilessly icy, typical of the weather on the tops of high-rise buildings, and I realized with a start there was still the long tiring battle ahead and the deaths.

And the blood.

His eyes were searching, probing—as they always were. But this time there was an almost tangible urgency in them, a quietly desperate plea. I felt the sadness again, washing over me a wave of numbness and the immediate impulse to reject it awakening.

Just this one time. Let it be.

Just once.

Something within me crumbled—I knew not what, but for the first time, I submitted to it. I submitted to him.

“Arashi.”

He came to me, his eyes seeming to bore right through my soul, so filled with pain and wanting they were. I looked to him, saw who he was to me, and suddenly wanted so much to open the dark void that was my soul to the revelation of a love.

But I knew I couldn’t. Not now, not like this.

He was beside me before I had realized, and I was still oblivious to his nearness until I felt the soft delicate sensation of my hair being stroked.

I looked up in shock, he smiled his gentle smile. I couldn’t—couldn’t he see?

After all that time, I had managed to keep him out, barred from the me whose only desire was not to fight, or to release the fatal weapon that was my flesh to kill or to hurt, but to love—and to be loved. It was hard—oh how it was, but I had always known from the start that it would be hopeless for the both of us. Your fate saw to it. Yes, yours and mine.

Still, even by his slight hesitant touch, I quivered inside. My conviction quailed for a single second, before I quelled its uncertainty. “I love you…you know that, don’t you?” My eyes closed, as if trying to shut out those words, shut out his voice. I felt his hand leave my hair, felt his presence leave my being. He was gone, his exertions exhausted.

I smiled to myself a soft, sad smile.

Didn’t you know? I would have said it right back.

During the battle, I was careful to keep him at a distance. It wasn’t difficult, seeing as he was absorbed by the task of defeating the massive machinery the girl of the seven angels brought along with her.

Soon, however, I had forgotten all that, only knowing the exhilaration of being a seal, knowing the euphoria of sailing through the wind and slashing with all my might. The angel I was fighting with was as inscrutable as I was, maybe even more so. Still, his indifference made things easier for me to concentrate.

Once, I thought I saw Sorata nearby, and so I led the fight further away, but it was ineffectual for, in the next moment, a huge slab of rock was blasted our way and, although I jumped to avoid it, I felt it impacting the right side of my body with a force unimaginably powerful, throwing me several feet away.

I think I heard Sorata’s cry, but I couldn’t be sure. My opponent fully took advantage of the situation as his powerfully charged cloth came flying toward me in a blinding flash of potency—pulsing, roaring. I took a feeble swipe at them with my sword but it was barely effective.

For a moment I thought I was being consumed by a dragon itself—so mighty and deafening was the vortex of thunder encompassing me. The sheer energy of it was ringing through my bones, my being. I would have screamed had I enough strength left in my broken body.

There was no pain—no, not until I felt the harsh hard ground beneath me breaking my fall, breaking me, that I felt the scream of pain ripping through my body in a vicious cacophonous explosion. This time I heard his voice, loud and clear, somewhere above me. He was yelling something. I strained to hear but the aftershocks of my fall began to bombard me, deal me eruptions of excruciating pain everywhere. My voice throbbed through the tumultuous clamour of the battles within and without me to him. “Leave—”

“Leave me.”

With that, somehow I found it within myself to open my eyes and see him. Everything was swimming before me, a torpid whirl of colour and sound. I could make out his dim outline, fuzzy yet stagnating. I could see his lips moving, speaking words with a fervor that frightened me. I could not hear them even though the clashes of the other battles were thunderous to my ears.

I had almost summoned enough energy to push him away from me, before another collision cleaved the air and engulfed my vision with stinging light so that I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or not.

Heat all over…all over…

I was not so easily taken. I fought, how I fought, though my weary arms seemed to do so little to the relentless onslaught of rocks, ash and flames.

I was blind—blind and fighting. Nobody was going to die for me, especially not him. I would rather die than let him. Knowing that I had died fighting, died defending myself rather than being protected was the one thing that lifted my weighty arms time and again to shield me.

Can’t you see? It’s the one thing I live for, and you wanted to take that away from me. I love you, perhaps I even knew that a long time ago. You don’t understand how much I don’t want you to take you away from me.

It was time, I could feel it. Every move I made sapped my energy. The fight was over. It was just as well for, at that moment, what felt like a large rock fell upon me, weighty and unyielding. I wouldn’t have resisted, either way.

I couldn’t.

The sensation of wakefulness swamped my consciousness and, for a moment, I was paralysed by its familiar sweetness. Until I breathed. In the next instance my head was clouded with poisonous air, as if someone had broken a vial of toxic fumes beneath my nose. The smell of the decayed, the decaying.

Of death and everything bad.

My legs were numb. No, my entire body was numb. I couldn’t feel anything, just this weight on me, hindering me, holding me down. I coughed and attempted to struggle into a sitting position, but the weight was dead and rock-heavy. I was suffocating, dying.

Urgency forced energy into my arms and I managed to push the weight off me just before I keeled over and retched, deep horrible sounds that made my eyes water and my throat raw. I lay there, coughing and forcing out all that was foreign and poisonous within me for a long time until I could feel no more strength. Supporting my body with my hands face-down on the ground, I managed to roll over in a lying position after which I swabbed at the saliva on my mouth with my right hand.

I saw it was stained a deep dark red before I let it thud soundlessly to the ground.

I lay there for a long time, simply breathing, not knowing anything else but that, not wanting to know. When the nausea cleared and the pain became bearable, simply a fatigued throbbing sensation, curiosity and the instinct to live forced my limbs into motion and I got to a sitting position, exhaustedly surveying my surroundings.

Dead people, many many dead people under the debris of the destroyed buildings. I didn’t feel anything—I don’t think I even could. Such weight, such knowledge of having been a part of such utter devastation would not strike me for a long time yet. No, I would shield myself from it. After all, hadn’t Kaede-sama said with her own lips that I was strong and adaptable? Kaede-sama…the seven seals…Arisugawa…I wonder if they died. I wonder if he died. I smiled, a somewhat bitter unsmiling smile, musing the irony of it all. Left to myself with these corpses, with this broken world, was I expected to carry on? Our destiny was foreordained after all…if I were to unsheath my sword from my hand and slice my head off at this moment, would it not be fate?

For a single moment, I was tempted to do such a thing, very much so. I even stretched my arm out, ready to release the power of my weapon. But I was just so tired. I couldn’t see any sense in doing anything right now.

Finally, I got to my feet, slowly and painfully. The bodies stretched on for as long as I could see, the landscape a sea of putrid revolting colours—black, grey, red. A burning, a faint flicker of yearning to find out what became of my comrades made me glance down and look about me.

At first I didn’t recognize his shirt, it was so grey with dust. Then I looked to his head and to his hair, and I knew it was possible. Too painfully possible. I knelt and I reached out to touch his arm. Cold.

Deathly so.

I cringed, I didn’t want to touch him, much less look at him. I didn’t want—I didn’t want anything. No, that was wrong. I wanted to forget, I wanted to die, I wanted to…cry. My mind, my eyes were blank. I was blank. But with a merciless flash of comprehension, a single decisive motion, I jerked his body toward me, and his head rolled sideways, his eyes closed, his mouth open with unspoken words.

Oh no, oh no.

And I screamed. The sound was so thin and alien in the huge silently forebidding atmosphere, yet so shrill in me it reverberated throughout—a streak of pain. I backed away, scrambling as fast as I could away from him. The realization was so ugly, so very terrible, it struck me like a lashing whip of icy water. He had died protecting me, after all.

He was just one of the many now, a motionless form in its early stages of decay. I was alone but very much alive, clutching my face, my eyes, screaming and screaming. He was dead and I was alive. Our destinies were foreordained…

He had shielded me from the fiery storm with his own body. I wanted to see him again, and I never would. He was dead and gone. I would never see him again. I lifted my right hand, now thick and coated with coagulated blood, shaking like a leaf.

But it was so hot around me…so unbearably hot…

“Arashi?”

A hoarse call made me start amidst the wet filthy heat that had plastered my body. Kamui. It was Kamui. Limping and bloody, but it was Kamui. “Kamui!” I screamed. I half-tottered half-stumbled over the corpses, to his open arms. Something tore wide open inside me at that moment. I never knew pain could hurt like this—so bad.

I had loved him so, how I had loved him! He knew—before the battle, before everything, he knew. And I was so blind, and I didn’t want to see and now it had ended. The realization of such utter misery seemed to split me in half, the knowing that I would never see him again bore down upon me with a wretchedly abominable heaviness.

Kamui held me gently, his warm arms encasing my heaving body, and he said in a soft joyless voice, “We’ve won.” I looked up to him, saw his eyes as if staring through a dull unpolished window with a murky light that was both unearthly and familiar.

Somewhere within the lost distant plain that was my heart, a desperate little girl, stumbling about the shards of glass and paper, broke down and cried, harsh inane sounds in the warm intoxicating embrace of the night.

~OWARI~