trodain | [Complete] But A Distant Memory

Title: But A Distant Memory
Characters: Minato Arisato, March
Pairings: -
Type: Guess
Summary: Not every story has a happy ending.
Word count: 1,510
Notes: This was based off a prompt about tearful cross-canon farewells. I hope it made you cry.

There lived once a boy who had lost his parents and had come to know Death all too soon, and a young girl who would learn to live without love for that love would someday kill her. The boy spent much of his life alone only to find meaning in his life before passing away and the girl was his opposite, forever seeking reprieve from her nightmares of death and the end.

Now it seemed as if they would never meet and the story would thus end, but fate had other plans in mind for them and they would find themselves awakening beside each other one day, in a run-down apartment standing alone in a ruined city. The girl was the first to react, bloodied as she was from defending her life, while the boy lay asleep for a while, for simply living again was nothing short of a miracle to him.

They would come to know each other in time, the boy who had given up his life of his own will and the girl who yet sought a meaning beyond living. In many ways they were different from one another, in how the boy was calm and collected while the girl was emotional and lively, in how one had come to love all beyond himself while the other yearned for love never found.

And yet they would come to love one another for there was much that they shared, both having been orphaned at a young age and having their lives changed forever for it. The boy who loved everyone loved her especially because she was like a sister to him and she alone of their friends never seemed as if she would leave him, and the girl who loved the idea of love found comfort in the boy’s gentle smiles and warm words, and for all her worries that she would never be with another person, he never failed to remind her that all was not lost for her.

The ruined city posed many challenges for the two and there was many a time when one of them would worry about losing the other too soon for death always lay in wait, desiring to claim that it was cheated of. Yet their friendship held strong even as others came and went, their presence fading away like whispers murmured to the wind, and they would someday behold a second miracle as the dead city returned to life once more and they could finally return to their own worlds.

The ones once trapped vanished one by one, and as no one knew when they would disappear many would find themselves seeking their dearest friends for a final goodbye for they had long known that those who returned to their worlds found themselves forgetting- it had seemed a blessing then, and now it felt like a final curse placed upon them, that they would neither gain nor lose anything after years upon years of laughing, suffering and crying together.

Though it seemed as if they might never leave, they smiled at each other even as they sought refuge in their room for the city was seeing its first true winter in years and the elements would be tamed no longer. “We’ll remember each other, right?” the girl had asked the boy. “We will,” he had said as he looked up at her from his bed, smiling warmly in spite of the exhaustion that had come to creep onto him slowly as peaceful days had come to the city once more.

The boy grew ever more tired as each day passed and the world itself revived while the girl grew ever more energetic as she pointed out little things to him so he could see it through half-closed eyes. It was not as if the girl didn’t know something was wrong, but then he had taught her so much over the years and she knew he smiled best when his friends were happy, and for him she would smile the brightest for he had taught her that love sometimes meant keeping tears away from those would who be sad to see them.

Spring came at last and the girl would help her friend to sit up so that he could see the blue sky and hear the birds sing, for he could no longer move about as he used to and for her he did not need to completely pretend that he was fine- that is the lesson he has taken from her, that people would not abandon him simply because he was less than perfect. And so it was that they would spend that morning together, with the girl asking the boy once again if they would remember, with the boy replying once more that they would. It is as happy an answer as the girl might have expected, and she is delighted when the boy does something unexpected and asks her if she might hold him just for a while, a shy smile gracing his lips as he waits for an answer. He doesn’t have to wait for long because she does so nearly immediately, embracing her dear friend and brother with all her might.

It had felt to her then that she had finally found happiness in a land where she needn’t fear for her life any longer, and even if she regretted that she might never see her old friends again, she felt that they would understand if they could see how happy she was here, her nightmares but a distant memory now. It felt as if they had nothing left to worry about, that her friend would someday recover his energy and leave the hospital he had been in for months and that they could finally have a happy future together. The girl who had learned not to cry thought of such things because she wanted to believe in happy endings- it no longer mattered to her if she would never dance in halls or wear pretty dresses, not when she could still live freely as a girl here, with the best friend anyone could ask for.

And yet it was not the same for the boy, who knew that not everyone would have a happy ending or have a future lying ahead of them. It was all that he could wish for that he would not be alone this time either, a close friend holding him and smiling as he falls asleep in her embrace, passing from life into memory hours after they speak of dreams and hopes for a better tomorrow. There was to be no tomorrow for the boy, and the girl would come to learn with his death that there was not to be a better tomorrow for her either as she cried endlessly over his still body, not wanting to let go of him even as the kinder residents tried to take him away that he could be dressed properly and be laid to rest.

Perhaps it was their bond that had kept them together months after everyone had left for the girl found herself fading away not long after her friend was buried, and it was with sadness that she would leave, tearfully promising the dead boy at his grave that she'lll never forget him even if they’ll never see each other again- and she forgets, returning in the same state that she had left in with no memory of everything that had happened between. She lives for a while more before that which she has given up years back takes her and inevitably kills her, and yet it takes a while for her to lose herself for she dreams of love and she sees a young boy smiling sadly at her, shaking his head gently when she tries to talk to him and vanishing when she tries to run after him. She finds only a nameless grave whenever she stops running in the dream and she cannot understand what he means to say to her, only knowing that he is not the one for her.

The day the girl is put down is wrought in mystery, for accounts of her passing differ in two regards. The girl has no proper grave to speak of and it truthfully lies where few would think to visit for she was buried where she was killed, but there is an old woman who speaks of a blue butterfly landing beside the freshly dug mound for a while before taking flight, never to be seen again, and a young lady who speaks of seeing a boy with blue hair setting red roses upon the mound, staying there for a few moments before vanishing. The old woman and the young lady bicker over this stranger with both insisting that what they saw was true, but for all that they could argue, there was but one thing they couldn’t disagree upon.

Whether it was the butterfly or the boy that had been present on that day, there could be no doubt that he was saying goodbye.