This is for the LJ Edgar Allen Poe competition. It's going to last for a few weeks.

For this first week the Poe story is based on the Tell-Tale Heart. A little different format from my usual stuff so…yeah.

Broken Glass, Held Hands

Pain—yes pain is what I feel as my bare feet walk across the broken glass and it slices into my skin embedding itself into my flesh. Yet it hurts less than the pain in my heart. The pain that is tearing me apart.

The glass came from the mirror I had broken today…or was it yesterday? I'm not sure. The days run together now that you are gone. They hold no importance.

I stare out the window at the ground blanketed in snow in this Village Hidden in the Leaves. In my unheated home the crisp feel of the chill from outside makes me yearn for your warmth…and there's something you should know.

I miss you.

I miss the sounds you made as my tongue traced your nipple in the throws of ecstasy. As we reached heights that I had never been to before with another lover. I miss the little sounds you made in the back of your throat when you're amused by something.

I want to sleep. I want to sleep forever and not know that you're gone. I want to think that when I finally open my eyes you will be there at my side.

You'd crack open a lazy eye and smile-the very smile of the devil himself and how you tempted me. Every morning of every day in every way.

Do you remember that time? That mission that I wore those shorts that were too short and you walked behind me the entire time? You were such a perv. And yet I smile through my tears just thinking of you, of us at such a different point in our lives.

Come back to me.

I'll…I'll do anything. I'll be someone else. I'll—

I'm being foolish. It's over. It's done. The chapter of my life that held you in it is now over. I need to move on but where does one go when one reaches the end of the story? Start another? I can't imagine it. I don't want to. I don't even know how to try. I barely exist, barely live without you with me.

Please. Please. Just come back. Give me a miracle. Just one. It's not such a big thing, is it? It couldn't be too much to ask, could it?

I'll get down on my knees and beg. Let me be with you. That's all I've ever really wanted was to be at your side. It my only wish, my only dream. Nothing else even mattered or rather it was all secondary to you.

It's pathetic. You can say it. You can laugh in my face. I know it is, but I'll be damned before I care. Pride is a thing that at this point I toss away willingly. Place pride and you on a scale and I dare say I know which one has more worth.

My fingers dig into my skin leaving red welts as I do anything to distract myself from the all consuming pain that has filled me. Now that you are gone all that remains is pain. It flows through my veins with more potency of the blood that supposedly gives me life. If you kissed me you'd taste it on your tongue.

Kiss me. Kiss me once more.

My home is empty and it's as cold as the outside on this winter day. If I had you here with me I'd bask in your brilliance. I'd walk in your shadow and be a better person because of it. It sounds silly to hear me say this now when before all I'd do was yell and complain but you know what they say, Kakashi, you never know what you have until it's gone.

I know now.

If I could go back to those days of love and anger, pain and denial…the things I'd redo. What would you redo?

I'd redo the night I burned Icha Icha Violence. You were so angry you didn't talk to me for weeks. I didn't care at first. I still had my own grudge that I was holding on to but it didn't take long to realize that I'd rather be holding you. It amazed me how there could be so much distance between us when we lay side by side. I made it up to you, though, didn't I? Although for years after that you called me a fool for using that forbidden jutsu to raise Jiriaya just to have him autograph another copy for you. You called me a fool but you were grinning like an idiot—especially after he sat down and wrote out a small short story for you featuring you and me.

Kakashi…

Call me insane if you will but I am not. Insane is the rumble in your chest as you laugh at something wicked that you've done. Insane is your terrible sense of timing. Insane is the rightness of your touch against my skin. Insane is the sincerity in your eye when you told me you loved me…and I reveled in it. I crave it. I'm insatiable. Or perhaps I can only be sated by you.

There is another word for what I am in this moment of desperation.

Determined.

How could you bind me to this promise to let you go, to move on? How could I have been such a fool to agree? I don't agree Kakashi. I take back those words that I said on the day that everything changed, the day my world ended and you left. You promised me first! You promised me that we'd be together and now you turn a blind eye to me—to us! I want to hate you. I want to hate you and forget you ever existed. It would serve you right.

In truth, I do hate you but I love you more.

How can I forget the best thing that ever happened to me? How can I forget that you showed me you were the only man who could ever deserve my love? You made all other men inferior, but it's just like you to have to be the best at everything.

To this day I still remember why I fell in love with you. You swore it was your suave demeanor but really Kakashi wouldn't I, of all people, be immune? And what is this suavivity that you spoke of anyway? Is that even a word? It's not. It can't be but I won't even go into your propensity of MSU. No, I was talking about why I fell in love with you. If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times. You were wrong. Your 'charm' had no effect on me.

It was the way you looked at me. It was something about that single eye that stared at me as if you were scared I would reject you at any moment and yet you wanted me to want you so much. You were like this big puppy dog and I wanted to scratch you behind your ears. It was adorable. Saying that probably damages your 'suavivity' but it's true. It was so obvious that your heart was in my hands that I wanted to do everything I could to protect it.

From that moment on you were something more, someone more. Someone I can't let go of. It was wrong of you to ask me to.

Friends tell me to respect your wishes, to let you go. Well, to hell with them. What do they know about us? About our love? I won't let you go. No, Hatake Kakashi, I will not. Heaven can't possibly taste as sweet as our love. I know it well, and you know it too. Its hell for me without you just as it is hell for you without me. Your heaven is here with me, now, today, in my arms. I refuse to spend another moment in misery.

Either we live together…or we die together.

As I finishing telling this tale of my broken heart you should know one final thing:

Since you have already died…prepare for me to join you. We'll be together, Kakashi, one way or another.

I slowly bend over and pick up a shard of broken glass.

And as my life's nectar spills unnoticed on glass littered floors I feel you take my hand, whisper 'It's okay' and 'I forgive you'. You hold me close and I know that all that was once wrong is now right.

My heart stops beating.

-Broken glass, Held Hands, Unending Love