“Sakura?”
Senpai’s voice calls after her, hesitantly. Senpai’s voice calls after her softly, nervously.
Ah, she thinks, he needs reassurance, and turns to him. She folds her hands in front of her skirt. “Yes, Senpai?”
Senpai hesitates for a moment, scratching his cheek, then takes a deep breath and blurts out his thoughts, his golden eyes oddly bright, oddly desperate. “Are you happy?” he asks.
Sakura blinks.
Are you happy?
It is an odd question to ask. She is living with him now, has been for two years. Rider is still alive and her best friend, enjoying the mortal world. Taiga is the boundless ball of energy she has always been, and there is something comforting in the fact that she will probably never change.
Are you happy?
“Yes.” She smiles, because he needs to see it. “I’m happy, Senpai.”
She smiles so sweetly as she lies.
(Two years. It’s been two years, and she still calls him Senpai. Not Shirou. Never Shirou.)
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Nee-san crumbles.
Nee-san crumbles, like a beautiful red flower wilting before it even reaches full bloom. She slumps against Sakura, releases her hold on her, and crumbles to the altar as her life bleeds out from the wound on her stomach. As her life bleeds red, dark red staining the corrupted ground of the altar.
As her life bleeds, red and warm, from the wound Sakura inflicted on her.
“Nee-san!”
Sakura falls with her, tries to gather Nee-san up, support her, get her standing again; but she’s too weak, she’s always been too weak, and all she can do is cradle Nee-san in her arms, cling to her like a child. “Nee-san,” she sobs. “Nee-san, don’t die, don’t leave me, please, please…”
Nee-san laughs. It is a small, weak, ragged sound overflowing with warmth. “Idiot,” she murmurs, and tilts her head slightly, dazed, dull light blue eyes meeting Sakura’s own red ones, a broken, frightened, tearful smile on her face. “I’ll be all right.”
She smiles so warmly as she lies.
Death is not quick. Death is slow, agonizing minutes of bleeding out, of muscles going limp and light draining from her eyes. Death leaves Nee-san’s body still warm but horribly still in Sakura’s arms, and she wails for a sister torn from her grasp right when she had her.
Senpai comes, but not even the man who once desired to save everyone can revive the dead. He comes to save Sakura, and is too late to save Nee-san.
Sakura never forgives him for it, not completely.
She never forgives herself, either.
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“You aren’t happy.”
The voice doesn’t stir Senpai as he sleeps, one arm lazily sprawled across her stomach and his head against her shoulder. Sakura tilts her head slightly, looks up, and sees Nee-san leaning absently against the wall, one foot braced for support. She is eternally frozen at seventeen, blood staining her stomach, coating her sweater sleeves, dripping from her mouth.
Sakura doesn’t reply right away, not quickly enough for her companion’s liking, and the older girl scowls. “You lied,” she says.
“I do that sometimes,” Sakura replies mildly, and keeps her voice soft; unlike Nee-san, Senpai can hear her when she speaks.
“Why did you lie?”
Ah, she must be in a bad mood tonight. She isn’t usually this forceful.
“He needed to hear it.”
Nee-san has no response, simply gazes at her quietly. It is a half-hearted reason, a weak reason, a flawed reason, but Sakura had lived her life by such reasons before. She knows Senpai is just as haunted as she is; she knows that at night, he dreams of golden hair and gleaming green eyes.
Senpai has ghosts she can’t see.
Finally, Nee-san sighs; her shoulders slump. “That isn’t healthy, you know,” she mutters.
Sakura smiles.
It is not, in fact, a good smile.
“Nee-san, you died two years ago and yet I’m still talking to you. I don’t think I’m healthy in any sense of the word.”
She has no response to that, and the sun is beginning to rise; daylight is not Nee-san’s domain. “Sakura.”
“Hm?”
Absently, Nee-san brushes some blood from the corner of her mouth. “You need to forgive yourself.”
She disappears as the first rays of sunlight spill through the room and Senpai begins to stir, murmuring groggily and rubbing his eyes. Sakura gazes at the space where she used to be, and has no response to her statement.
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Are you happy?
How many lives does it take to guarantee the happiness of one person? She wondered that, once. She wondered that, because so many people died for this to happen. For her to have Senpai, to live with him, to live with Rider. To be alive at all.
So many people died. She took so many lives.
And yet in the end, she’s the one still alive. She’s the one people look after, care for, comfort.
Are you happy?
It seems wrong, somehow. It’s messed up. People shouldn’t be doting over her. They shouldn’t be caring for her, comforting her, ensuring her life is warm and full of happiness.
So many people, dead because of her. The town was never quite the same, even two years after the tragedy.
Are you happy?
She got through it before by not thinking. If she didn’t think about it too hard, didn’t question it, didn’t ponder it, it wasn’t painful. She didn’t think of the lives lost, of the empty homes, of how warm and red Nee-san’s blood was on her hands. If she buried it and left it alone, it would never be a problem.
It worked. For awhile.
Are you happy?
And then it didn’t.
It didn’t, because she started seeing Nee-san, forever frozen at that moment when she died. She started seeing Nee-san when no one else could, speaking to her when no one else could hear her.
She never forgave Senpai.
She never forgave herself.
But even then, it was okay. It was okay, just a little shaky. Just a little shaky, until the day she’s on her hands and knees washing the dojo, and Nee-san is there tracing patterns along the wall, and in the silence she informs Sakura that Saber says hello.
And with those simple words, the façade shatters like glass.
Are you happy?
No.
No, she isn’t happy. She’s remorseful and angry and full of guilt, so much goddamn guilt, and enough self-loathing to drown in. But she isn’t happy.
And that’s just wrong, somehow.
So many lives lost to make sure she would live, would be happy, and she’s not.
It isn’t fair.
You aren’t happy, are you?
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Nee-san stands against the wall, arms crossed loosely over her chest, and watches with mild interest as Sakura packs. “Traveling light?”
“I don’t need much.” Some clothes, toothbrush, toothpaste, a snack and a bottle of water to keep her going until she gets to the next major city. It might take awhile, but she’ll manage. She carefully zips her suitcase, pleased when it holds.
A slender black eyebrow arches, and Nee-san follows her into the hallway as she grabs her coat. “Does Shirou know?”
Sakura ties back her hair with shaking fingers. “I wrote him a letter.”
It’s the coward’s way out, and she knows it. But he wouldn’t let her go; he wouldn’t understand. His happiness is as false as hers, a lie he keeps alive by clinging to her to bury memories of the noble woman he killed. If she leaves now, he’ll be hurt, but eventually he will heal.
He’ll force himself.
And maybe then, she can forgive him.
“And Rider?”
“My bond with her remains. She won’t disappear.”
Nee-san apparently runs out of things to argue about and follows Sakura back into the bedroom, leaving phantom blood drops in the hallway as she moves, little droplets of red that no one will notice. As Sakura grabs her suitcase, she speaks again. “Where do you plan to go?”
“Around.” Sakura leaves the bedroom, and doesn’t look back. “I’ll help people,” she says, and her voice trembles a little. “I won’t try to save anyone, I can’t do that, but if I can help someone, anyone at all even a little bit…”
Nee-san is silent, but Sakura feels a passing chill against her cheek, and smiles weakly. She heads for the door, opens it, and looks back.
Nee-san is standing there, in front of her. Nee-san is standing there as the woman she could have been, eyes gleaming, black hair long and flowing, and her gaze is warm and gentle.
Sakura opens her mouth as the tears fall, tries to speak, but her vocal cords won’t work, and even before she can say anything Nee-san is gone; simply disappeared, as if she never existed.
She closes her mouth, slowly. She smiles, wipes away her tears, and steps out the door.
She never looks back.
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Don't ask, because I don't even know.
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Why...why am I crying...?
Originally Posted by Techlology
