Final Version. Please remember to review!
This may be a bit confusing at start, but bear with me and you'll get something out of it.
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... We sleeping wake, and waking sleep. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, 1580
When he came it was winter, and it was night. From her seat of roses she could hear his booted feet crunching through the snow, crisp and deliberate. He reached the wrought-iron gates of her prison and pulled at the no-rust; the door swung open, a ringing silence. There was a slight pause as she heard him breathe, and she felt in his lungs the stirring sharpness of her garden's air, normally so sweet. Behind him: the silhouette of his spear, ploughed at an angle into the rich soil outside her domain. She began to tremble. She had waited so long, and yet they had met only last night, and every night before.
She had endured an infinity of eternities; had, with the roses, withered and died. But this cycle, this blood-drenched primavera, had brought him, and she had known that, at long last, her duty was complete. His footfalls were closing, longer, yet hesitant. She strained against the gravity of her eyelids to meet his gaze. And, shoulders quaking, found she could not. He stepped, again, and tears sprang to her eyes, nectar bitter as asphodels. Around, the snowfall ceased, its last efforts dying faded-white against the perfect alabaster of her skin and the scar-slashed tan of his. One thunderous step closer, and he was near her, arms-reach, his gauntlet with its viridian crust reaching to rest upon her bare shoulder, while the other turned inwards, to grasp her chin.
She heard his voice: a breathless, baritone, sighing, shiver. "No," he said, eyes down, looking upon the hollow of her throat. She felt her blood freeze and she heaved with every ounce of ten thousand years but she still could not meet his gaze.
He repeated himself, softer than the wind, a whisper as dead as her heart. "No."
---
No.
He inched up the hill, holding his entrails. Behind: it did not matter. Ahead: he did not know.
But he knew, felt it in his dream-echoes, in the resonances of his soul. If such a thing existed.
The cold was sharp, razors in his marrow, winds biting through hollowed steel and broken flesh with whiplike cruelty. The hill was sodden with specks of his gore, stained-out rivulets of blood. He had been abandoned, by man and by Fate.
For every king, a Camlann.
Snowflakes, now – he could pick out their constellations before they melted in his hair, and if he had the strength he would scoff at the futility of their beauty. But he had the energy for only one endeavor: Ahead.
He crested the hill, leaving a wake of broken grasses and blood, and then he moved onwards, near-dead, steps like a metronome winding down.
Above, stars flung milky against a velvet backdrop. The moon, cruelly Cheshire smiling, lamented and gloated his demise. He almost tripped, was saved by the shaft of his spear. Wounds re-open trickled fresh red on his left hand, past the knucklebones where his intestines were bunched and onto the hungry earth.
Ahead.
The hills rolled by, endless moonlit green. He had been told that there, it was always morning, and was always spring.
Had She, too, abandoned him?
He would cease to exist, once he stopped. He had been told that the journey was the purpose. He would rather have had the destination – for where She was concerned, one could not exist with the other.
His armor, provenance of a million sweat-drops and baptized by a thousand tears, creaked wetly as blood washed into its joints. His? Theirs?
It made no difference. He continued, as his life spilled into the suit holding him together. Droplets fell inky onto the ground, the grass.
Ahead.
Hours ago, the pain had stopped. Or had it only been minutes, and he was about to die? What he felt now was not the numbness of corpse-death. It was merely a presence of absence: no tearing in his sinews nor blades enmeshed in his organs; no barbs in his lungs nor fire in his limbs nor passion in his heart. Only the cold remained, and it had been with him forever these last days.
He had no doubts that they were the last. She had told him, and from what he knew she never lied. But then he knew very little.
The world lurched with each step, and the plates clanked, were granite and lead against his spilling veins. This, his Sisyphean chore, weighed upon him like a yoke: oppressive, but leading him ever forward, ever forward, ever
Ahead.
Blood leaked over his eyes, and he was glad he did not need to see. He had traced this path, this endless path, uncountable times.
And then he saw the first petal, red as if fresh from his heart, and despite the weight he was unconquerable. It floated on an updraft, gently glancing off his armor, was gone before he could capture it in his grasp.
She had seen and scented him. He made haste, cuts closing as if in reverse-time, minting a new pattern of scars. The world flew by, was a shambles, an illusion to her delusive call.
The song which roared in his veins rang from hers, and to it every Siren was an empty hound. The Lady of the Lake had summoned, and he sensed her impatience in the breeze.
They had left him but she was still there – tangible, he was sure, with fingers milky and soft that he could hold, with skin and warm, thrumming flesh that he had felt for too long only in ephermis and delusion. And as he drew closer there was a breathiness in his chest that he had never felt, even when he had died and the sharp-cold of the blade-tip had cleaved through his spine.
Apprehension was a dozen coiled muscles in his heart and he sprinted, sprang with all his warrior's might, landed – and the garden was in his sight. From this last hilltop, he could almost see her amidst the trees, the roses, the gate. She was waiting for him and he had bided too long for this not-Destiny to occur.
But something told him to take this last stretch slow. It was still winter and it was still night, but she was real and that was all that mattered. There was no more need for haste.
He inched up the hill, and when he finally reached the gate he thrust the cursed Nihongo into the ground, and it quivered for a moment before slanting still, casting its beamlike shadow over the slash-marks on his face. The gate slid smoothly open and he wondered how such a fragile cage of stem-patterned iron had contained her sublime beauty.
As he stepped in he felt her presence and it was so beautiful he could not breathe. The Lady sat in her lake of roses and as he stepped through the gardens, perfectly trimmed, the long-stemmed flowers gave and parsed before his greaves. When he approached her he slowed, an excuse to gape at the features which had enraptured him before he could think. He had spent eons admiring her but now was the difference between subject and painting – she was more real than real, he could taste her with his eyes.
She swallowed as she rose, eyes demure and sparkling-moist. He was frozen by the shapely turn of her calve, which slid sinuously from the folds of her lust-red dress. Her skin as she moved made a sound of silk against silk and glowed like cream on her small pale shoulders. She shivered and he moved a step closer, saw the pink fall of her hair curling down her back.
Reverently he placed a hand on her gentle presence and used the other to grasp her face. And then he saw that he had not touched her: the gauntlets, gore-filled and tainted with sweat, had.
"No,"
She refused to look at him. He fought the mounting terror which had sprung into his gut.
"No."
Had he offended her, with the contaminated gloves? And, if so, how would a being of such purity react to his hands, which had slain so many? Quickly he stripped off the iron-smelling bracers, grasping her hands in his.
"Please," he pleaded, "I am sorry. I have no where else to go."
She was looking at his chest. He saw the trickle of a tear-path down her cheek.
He sighed and whirled away, unable to face the sight. Did Father win after all?
"Are…you angry, Kira?"
She stood next to him, staring out into the open. Her voice was so beautiful and broken that he dropped to his knees. It had been worth everything, if only for that tiny lilting heaven. Then he remembered that she had asked a question.
"Why would I be mad? Now, I can die."
Openly sobbing, she crumpled next to him, and though her words were stumbling he heard her in his mind. "I do not know why you apologized. But I, too, am sorry, Kira. I am not enough for you-"
He turned to her. "What? How could you possibly believe that?"
Sniffling, confused, she clutched at his bone-weary hand. "Didn't you say 'No,' Kira? I'm sorry that the dreams deluded you; I do not have control of how I am perceived in those and perhaps you made me more beautiful than I truly am…"
Inwardly, he groaned. "I was talking to myself. About those." He nodded towards his discarded gauntlets. "I thought the blood offended you."
Her fingers found themselves up his shoulder and there was hope in her voice. "I am…"
His hand touched her chin and gently guided her face up. Her eyes were huge and liquid and full of stars.
"Much better than the dreams," he murmured, his palm caressing the soft contours of her face.
"Kira…"
He had waited too long. Dipping down, he gathered her in his arms and captured her lips. One of her hands came around to massage the nape of his neck while the other was pressed between their chests, nimbly unbuckling his armor. As the plates thudded and buried themselves into the loam she molded herself to his form and he groaned at the soft unbearable pressure of her body.
She tasted cool and clear and fragrant, so mild that he could not be restrained from slipping in his tongue to ravish her mouth, her scent lingering, addictive.
She whimpered and blood turned to rain in her veins, and her pressing now was more insistent as she traced a hand down his torso, felt the ragged scar tissue and tightly coiled muscles. He smelled like fire and blood and she drank it in, the scenes of outside, where she had never been. Her tongue wrapped about his and she sucked gently, his hands going wild in her hair. She stifled a giggle and rubbed his pant leg against the inside of her thigh, taunt like a bowstring with desire.
Hands enmeshed in her satin tresses, he was powerless to stop her teasing and so he broke away and traced kisses down the side of her lips and loft of her cheek, madly tasting the beating pulse-point of her neck. She made tight, contorted sounds and stood with her delicate toes on his booted ones, rubbing the soles of her feet against the sides of his shins, their limbs entangled. The slip of a dress slid off her shoulders and he tore himself from the neck, nuzzling downwards where her flesh was soft and white and utterly untouched.
As she undid his pants he gorged his eyes upon her. When her thighs wrapped around his he felt about ready to explode.
---
When they finished he rested his face in the crook of her neck, his breath heavy and panting on her supple flesh. Flushed, she stroked the curve of his shoulders spiderwebbed by scars, the bowed neck and eyes which spoke more pain than her song could tell. Around, dawn had come, enshrouding their forms in dreamlike mist. There was no slush from the snow the night before and birdsong twittered from newly sprung trees in pale imitation of hers. Dew lay prismatic in the rising light and he covered them with the cloak, propped himself up to look at her. She blushed and fought the urge to cover herself, his other hand still warm and present on her opposite hip.
"You told me that here, it was always like this." He stared around, taking in the gardens before fixating again on her.
She laughed, a stream-melody that hummed through every meadow in the world. "It is, when you are here."
"Then," he snuggled her close to him, his eyelids drooping, "I am home."
This is actually the epilogue of a story I'm considering writing. I'm using this as an interest gauge, so please review! Reviews help me maintain my inspiration for writing fanfiction, and they're vitally important so that I can know what I'm doing right and wrong.