Work Text:
I could have saved you, if I had wanted to.
I did not. Not then. I do now, but I am too late.
The poison chews through your flesh and I long to suck it out, draw it through your skin into my mouth where it would falter and dissolve against the power of my own.
I long to tear at you, rip away all the parts of you that are also him.
You sit and smile at the flowers, helpless and begging for someone to save you, even though you know no one can. Not anymore.
I could have, but I chose not to, and for that I carry regret.
I knew it was you. The scent in the air was his, but I still knew it was you and not him. That is why I came to this place of flying petals and swirling wind. How appropriate. Petals, detached from that which they need to survive... are glorious and eye-catching, but doomed. Every second of scintillating flight marks their gradual death.
You could have escaped him. Perhaps. But the petal-death would have been your fate then, too.
Ah, Kagura.
What is it about you that draws me so? Perhaps it is the very fact that you are doomed, and thus forbidden. I have always had a taste for that which is not possible. The edge beckons me.
You ask me if I came willingly, then, even though I knew it was you. Of course I did. There is nothing I do that is not my own choice. Have you not learned that about me by now? Foolish woman.
Foolish, beautiful woman.
Foolish, beautiful, doomed woman.
These are your last moments. I can see them sliding out of you like pearls on a string, tearing themselves messily from your dark and poisoned flesh. Death is coming for you and the even the sword I bear (cursed, blessed) cannot save you.
In this moment, I truly wish it could. Why? Because you and I are so very, very alike. I am running too, from duty and obligation and external control. I am longing too, for a world where I can exist in whatever manner I choose without fear of the consequences.
I too no longer wish to be alone... no, that is not correct, not quite. I no longer wish to be lonely.
What a pity I was too foolish to accept that realization earlier. I knew, but I did not wish to. It was too uncomfortable to admit that I need anything from outside myself.
Is it too late to apologize? You smile at me and whisper something that sounds like gratitude, and I simultaneously understand and do not. Gratitude for what? For wishing?
Tell me, Kagura.
The wind — gentle, blossom-laden wind — pulls you softly apart and you dissolve into it. You are still smiling. This is a sort of freedom as well, I suppose. Not the one you wanted, of course, but oh... beggars cannot be choosers, and you are happy enough with this, I suppose.
I only wish I did not want to pull you back and make you stay. You are free now, at long last, curling through the gentle curves of the air, twisting and cavorting without pain or apprehension.
May I join you, Kagura?
X