One For the Road

By Clorinda

Rated: PG

Category: Angst

Summary: I would never betray Kou for my life. But when the stakes are my heart, it's a different question altogether ... (DokugakujixYaone) One-shot.

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I'd never had much to be thankful for. Maybe I was glad to wake up and be alive each day, but that feeling sort of drains out of you when you're forced to murder your own mother.

Or so I'd grown to think when I'd met Kou. Kougaiji, the Demon Prince. Each day was a cloud of darkness passing over his head, his scarlet eyes faded with sadness and his sorrow. I'd never seen anyone like him. He had everything, and he still found pain.

I had nothing, and I still brooded? I should be a happy man.

Twice in my life, I had the option to save him or let him fall. Both times, I reached out and held his hand. Like I'd tell him each time, I was doing it because I wanted to do it for him. I was doing it because I owed it to him.

What I never wanted to recognise was that he was the one who owed a debt to me.

I want to call up that debt now. This moment. To stop my heart from tearing out of me. It won't stop pounding until Kou turns around and says, feh, it's okay, go for it.

She looks at me, and I can't help noticing how smooth her sea-coloured eyes are. They're like the surface of an emerald, more expressive than a flute. When she speaks, beyond that childish pitch and tears, you can see there's a demon, a woman, who's willing to fight for what she loves.

And I wish I were not like her so much.

She comes closer to me, her eyes glistening with grief. She leans her head against my chest, her arms go around me. She breathes my name, and I want to whisper back. But something is freezing me. I love her with the substance of my soul, and yet I cannot.

And I cannot help but think of Kou. How I'm going to betray him so easily, without a struggle.

"Yaone," I say bleakly. My eyes sting with my tears.

"Don't," she sobs against me. "Don't go ... If you love me, Dokugakuji, don't go..."

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One day, maybe, I shall be able to look back at this and draw my mouth into a smile like I've always done. Maybe one day, I shall be able to watch Kougaiji and Yaone laugh and play, be able to return their friendly looks, and smile back at them, all the while, deep inside, feeling unrepentant of my sacrifice.

—- End -—