Miroku, Set #1, Theme #6 (Nostalgic)
Title: It Is
Author: seinakyou
Theme: Set #1, Theme # 6 - Nostalgic
Genre(s): Angst, Friendship, Horror
Characters: Miroku, Kagome, Inuyasha, Shippo, etc…
Pairings: Implied het, but interpret it however it is.
Word Count: 709
Rating: T
Summary: It is everything he has lost and everything he stands to gain.
It’s painful, and utterly trite, but his heart is breaking.
It’s raining today, but it’s not like he cares because he got by without a pink umbrella for years before them, and he could always find better ways to get warm than by being next to someone.
It’s raining, but he can’t ignore it anymore.
It’s cold. It’s very cold for October, and he wonders why it’s not snow falling, why instead the rain is pelting him, plastering his newly shorn hair to his face and making rivulets down his back, through the folds of fabric and soaking through to his shivering body, shivering because it’s cold and because it’s painful.
It’s so painful.
It’s not like he can’t get by without them, he tells himself, but there’s still an icy fist slowly squeezing him, a slowly burning coal right beneath his sternum, and he reaches a hand up to where his heart should be, clenching his hands into fists and making half-moon shaped cuts in his palms.
It’s because he’s shaking, and needs something to hold on to.
It’s so incredibly confusing. It wasn’t like this ever before, wasn’t so hard to get by without a flash of hair by any colour and laughing eyes that get mad so easily, it wasn’t as if he wasn’t used to being alone, all alone, all the time.
It’s not his fault, he keeps telling himself that, but yet he still doesn’t believe it, never will.
It’s his fault, it’s all his fault, his faults, and the fault line between them won’t grow or shrink, it’ll stay exactly the same until he bridges the gap, and that won’t be long.
It’s the dirt, he decides, it’s the massive amounts of dirt piling up in neat little mounds numbering five, five score and seven years but even that isn’t right and no one will be able to correct him anymore.
It’s a wail that finally pierces the silence, a tiny little keen of agony, and he looks around for where it’s coming from before he realizes his mouth is open. A choke, a cough, a breath hastily taken and then he lets it all out, lets everything go.
It’s hours, maybe days before he leaves the spot, covered in mud and tears and dirt beneath his finger nails from where he lay in front of them and cried, and his mouth is dry and his throat aches and he stumbles to stand up and scrapes his knees against cold rock but that doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the fact that all of him and all of his hope and his happiness and his future lies silent and unfeeling beneath his feet, five shallow graves that hold friendship and caring and camaraderie and romance and love in so many different forms.
It’s not a tear that creeps out, he tells himself, staggering away from the site, leaning on his broken staff for support, it’s not like I’m crying, but he bites his lip and steps on the leg being eaten away by miasma away from the torment and all the memories he’s trying to burn and away from them all. His arm burns from digging, from the cuts along it and the gash on his left shoulder that goes straight to the broken bone beneath it. His stomach churns, and he throws up, but he barely even notices because he’s on the ground again and his vision is blurring. Not crying, not crying, not crying…
It’s not like he doesn’t try to get up, he just falls over, onto his back into a hole and stares up at the blurry sky through eyes that can’t see very well any more. His head aches, and his heart aches, and the agony is overwhelming him and it’s not just metaphorical.
It’s the stars that are the last things he sees, but he can actually see the constellations now, now that they’re just streaks of light in the sky joining together. With a rasping breath, he shudders, and the pain stops.
It’s over.
It’s just beginning.
It’s a flash of hair and eyes sparkling with mirth, and it’s catching a glimpse before catching an eyeful and an earful and getting tackled and hugged and celebrated.