Angel's Grace

By ElveNDestiNy

Disclaimer: Please see the previous chapters. No copyright infringement intended.

EBOOK Information: Please go to my author's profile to learn how to download the ebook version of this story. It's nicely formatted, has all the miscellaneous author's notes removed, and you can "flip" the pages, bookmark things, and admire the coverart in your spare time, lol. Acknowledgements for all your help are also in there. Anyway, this epilogue has some pretty strong allusions to a few quotes about angels and love that I'm sure you'll recognize. Please review!

As of March 29, I've moved the end of Chapter 15 from the Epilogue to the correct place.

Epilogue

"To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic."
- Alphonse de Lamartine

One year. Seto had stopped counting, so when the day came, it seemed to take him by surprise. Little wonder, since he had become more of a workaholic than ever. The date looked innocuous on the calendar that had become his desktop background. The day passed innocently, too, the same as any other.

But unlike other days, I didn't follow him around like a ghost haunting him. I didn't even watch as I usually did. This day, this one day of the year, I claimed for myself—and yet the very indirectness of my guardianship seemed to kick something heartrendingly familiar back into place: the bond. I had felt him all these past months, of course, but just a little. Now, when I sought to distance myself, it seemed he needed me enough that something drew us closer than we had been for the past three hundred and sixty five days.

All through the day, I felt his feelings. All day, I wondered if he felt even the slightest echo of mine. If he remembered that even in leaving him, I had never really let go.

Sunset came and went. The night was completely cold and dark when I couldn't stand the separation any longer. I could instinctively feel him; I traced him to his present location and felt a stab of fear. The rooftop of Kaiba Corp. He hadn't been there since that day he had let my feathers float away on the wind.

He wouldn't, he wouldn't. Would he? He had promised.

But then his emotions suddenly intensified, so much so that I could barely handle the onslaught. I had grown used to the serenity, the calm that seemed to be at least slightly inherent for angels. This, what was this? My lungs seemed to seize, my heart pounded so hard that I thought it would stop—and none of it made sense.

I tried to will myself there, but whether because of my panic or some other reason, I couldn't. Though my invisible wings were merely decorations since I was only a spirit, I opened them anyway and flew.

I landed on the long side of the L on the rooftop and my legs buckled beneath me, almost sending me to my knees. He wasn't there. I almost stepped to the edge, unable to stop a horrified memory of Seigo Tajima's broken body on the street so many floors below.

No. He wouldn't. I ran instead to the corner he had never ventured beyond, turned the corner, and gasped.

He was sitting on the floor, papers clutched in his hand and several pencils besides by his feet. His back was toward me, but beyond him, I could see that the vine had climbed the side of the grey concrete wall somehow, had even spread—and it was in full bloom. The air was heady with the fragrance of the blossoms. The flowers were as white as snow, as incandescent in the darkness of the night as the feathers of an angel's wings.

I took a step forward, and then another. He rose to his feet, leaving the papers on the floor, weighted down by something glass or crystalline that I had never seen before—something with a familiar white feather suspended within. The glass caught the light, illuminating a circular area of the paper, showing the dark slashes of music notes on white.

Somehow, I knew that if I were to glance at a clock at the moment, it would be midnight. The night air was chill and I shivered—I shivered.

And then, disbelievingly, looked down at myself. I hadn't felt this cold in a year. I hadn't felt my heart contract like this, or heard the sound of my own surprise, my own breath. The tears that slid down my cheeks hadn't dripped wetly onto the arms I was crossing defensively in front of me, tight against my chest.

Then I knew, finally, when I looked down and saw the finished song. He had been patient, though he had not waited, because waiting meant expecting, and that was an arrogance he had relinquished, a sense of self that he had given up for humility. This was his choice, too. His choice to still love me, even though I was gone, even though for one year he had never seen the slightest sign of my presence. His choice to believe, hope, and endure.

Seto Kaiba. This was his choice, too, deliberate and purposeful, a love that went beyond the emotional and impulsive. I finally understood then what it was to have an angel's grace.

He turned around and his eyes drank me in, made me human, because he no longer needed an angel.

"Hello, Kaiba."