~*~

I watch you, now. Your hair clinging to the pillow, black fading to red; so much like my own. I tenderly brush blond bangs away from your forehead. So innocent. So sweet. So totally ignorant of the horrors life can offer.

Your very soul reeks of it, innocence. The embodiment of everything pure, good. An unblemished purity that even angels would envy. So you see, why I could never tell you. It would be desecration, heresy, for someone so dark to love something so chaste.

But I do. I tarnish your crystalline soul with my adoration, even from afar.

Hikari. That name suits you, too well. A ray of light in the darkness, brightening even my thoughts. An ethereal presence that tortures my enslaved spirit, I worship you from behind a frosty barrier, my reward; the brotherly affection you shower on every acquaintance.

You mumble, shifting in your sleep. My hand soothes you, caressing silken skin; you drift back into peaceful slumber. I sigh. Asleep, you unconsciously lean into my touch; awake, you would never seek my affection. Your naivety is endearing, attracting others the same way it did myself; like a moth to a flame, willing to die for such innocence.

Gods, how can I live like this? Staying so close to you, our very spirits connected, so near, yet so far. Sensing your presence, but never being able to touch you, hold you.

If I told you, if I took a risk on the slightest chance that you do, could ever, love me.

No. You would reject me; spurn my tentative advances as if they meant nothing to you. Discard my feelings and throw away the tattered remnants of my heart. I could not live through that. My existence is chained to you; I would go insane if you recoiled from me.

So, I keep my distance, hide my feelings behind a stone mask, and watch you with your friends, wrapped in another's embrace, slowly being consumed by this insatiable yearning.

Even as I burn for you, I know you love someone else. That is the knowledge that fuels this possessive hatred, gives root to the searing agony I feel when I see you in her arms.

It hurts so much. Hovering on the fringes, never to be an integral part of your life. It would never be possible, even if you had not fallen for that other. Darkness always endures, while light waxes and wanes like the sun's cycle. A union between the two doomed to failure.

My heart will not lie. I cannot refute the behaviour of others, proving this comfort irrevocably wrong. The tomb robber and his hikari, their differences resolved, united by love. If only.

But you love her. Even as my soul suggests these things, my mind dismisses them as irrelevant. I would not, could not, interfere in anything that would bring you joy. No matter how desolate my future without you, it would be infinitely worse knowing I had destroyed your only chance for happiness.

So, I will remain as I always have; watching from the edges, guarding you, guiding you, prepared to die for you, but never searching for anything more than what you have already offered me.

~*~

Only a one-shot, methinks. Review!