| Valentine's Day 2004: ...this is our love. |
To love him is...
At 11am, the young master got the note. The estate was full of guests, the celebrations
exuberantly underway. He never trusted the estate guards and the note had been very
specific, he rushed to the top of the stronghold alone, only his lieutanant sabre handy in his haste.
He knew the man who waited for him there, a rival baron's son, the least he heard of him he'd
been sent to the Assassin's Guild for a respectable, if shadowy, education. It seemed he had
graduated into the profession. Not very well, Seishurou noted, he plyed the dramatic rather
than his trade - the purpose of his dark clothes were marred by the glow of his red silk cloak,
and the weapon he held was a 19th Century rifle - one shot only. He must not have
learned many things.
...to be happy for him...
...But a rifle still it was that he held, cocked, aimed, and ready to fell him. He reached for his
sword, but he knew it would be too late. As he stared down into the endless depths of the gun
barrel, he reflected that, as a self-professed survivor, he must not have learned many things
either...
It is my intention to kill your father tonight. You should know the nature of such an
engagement. Alone at the tower, if you would care to dissuade me...
Such a note! And he had fallen for it, ill-prepared.
...to be sad for him...
At 11.02, his servant got the note.
...It is a terrible thing, he thought, to die alone, from a one-shot rifle wound at the hands of a
badly accessorised assassin - in one's own stronghold, no less. If I could have him here with
me, this last time, to ease this prideless passing...
- and promptly found his wish fulfilled, as a streak of blue silk and long dark locks threw
himself in unannounced.
...to live for him...
The rifle fired.
...to die...
One shot.
[ to kill ]
He could not have felt, he thought, more pain if the bullet had gone through him instead.
He rather wished it had. The world flushed red in a miasma of rage - he wrenched his sword from
its scabbard and sheathed it in the blackguard's heart.
...for him.
It was far, far too late. He never knew his jaded heart could break.
Some things required no words. His servant...sweetheart looked up at him, eyes dark with
love, and a terrible encroaching otherworldly presence. He was smiling, and he reflected sadly
that he had rarely seen him, nor given cause for him to, smile. All too late! He would have had
him smile more often; a damning line of blood now marred his angel's lips. No words. He smiled
back, tender in a way he had never and would never again show.
Never again. His sword lay stained dark next to him. He took it up, and stained it further with
his own heart's blood.
Together.
Fading like this, the warm ebb of red from both their broken bodies merging, the warm, still-
steady glow of devotion from his one love's eyes, he couldn't really, at this final moment, find it
in himself to regret it at all.
END
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