Summary: How do you mourn a stranger?
A/N: This is not a fic, but an outlet of my feelings , it's kind of incoherent but also personal in a metaphorical way. I'll just throw this in the coai week dumpster because if you squint it could fit prompt 2: Protect and/or prompt 5: Secret. I will, however, finish another (happier) entry for prompt 5. Later. When I'm on the mood.
Warning: Major character death. Entire blocks of text. No dialogue.
Dedication: To the almost-lovers.
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"Thus much and more; and yet thou lov'st me not,
And never wilt! Love dwells not in our will.
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still.
― Lord Byron, final verse of "Love and Death"
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I - unus
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They take you away in a wooden casket as you lay asleep, laden in an ocean of white roses whose petals are barely a few shades paler than your skin.
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The room is lit with the warm light of candles and a monochrome picture of you that I almost don't recognize: your expression stern as ever, eyes staring blankly at the camera as the corner of your lips curl into an almost-derisive smile. But it's you, I'm sure. Even when I'm way more used to a much younger version of yourself, even when the picture can't capture the peculiar shade of your strawberry blonde hair or the cynical glint in your jade green eyes... it's you in the haughtiness, the aprehension, the disdain. I know those well from you, and I wouldn't miss them.
I would never miss you— before, today or ever after.
But today…
Today we're burying Miyano Shiho.
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II- duo
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Outside, a clear sky is framed by endless rows of late blooming cherry blossoms. April dies today, and in its haste to leave it takes you away with it. Summer isn't your thing anyway: you hate the heat and the overwhelming humidity of sunny days that drowns you in a breathless stupor. And I think it's ironic that you fell in love with Japan despite its temperamental weather, when your sensitive complexion was clearly more suited for higher grounds.
Japan stole your heart for some reason, and you learned to love it back with unyielding devotion— like a dandelion, you found new roots.
You'd be most surprised to know that you made quite a few friends on your short time with us, good friends. There's the kids— I don't care if you wouldn't allow it.
They deserve to know.
Because they are here, yes. And Ayumi is —as you would expect— inconsolable. Genta and Mitsuhiko, bless them, they are trying their best to be brave for her... for you. I'm trying my best too, but damn you, you are the one who would know what to do now, you're the one who would know how to fix this.
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Why are you not here to fix this?
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On a corner stands Jodie, and I know that she's trying her best to look unaffected while her eyes follow Akai's fleeting silhouette as he hastily leaves the room. He's taking this too hard on himself, and he shouldn't. You weren't his responsibility, after all. You were mine. I made you a promise I couldn't keep, and now you're trapped inside an endless slumber from which you'll never wake up again.
Heiji has flown all the way from Osaka just to say goodbye, even when he barely knew you at all. Kazuha stands by his side, her grip firm on his arm. She has no idea who you are, but she's here anyway; I'm assuming that if you're important enough for him to fly across the country for, you'd be important enough for her to be here too. Some things— people, they are sort of a package deal.
Ran is here, too. But she's not here because of me. She's here to mourn you. We all are. Even Sera and your aunt Mary, who you never meet.
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Among the white sea that surrounds you, a single red rose blooms in your hair.
(He's nowhere to bee seen, but it suits you, and I let it be. Chasing phantoms can wait for another day.)
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II - tres
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Hakase can't even start his eulogy without breaking down in tears, and I'm sorry that I'm not strong enough to lift that burden off him.
(It's not my place.)
But you broke his heart, did you know that? He didn't just lose a friend... he lost his daughter.
(How dare you.)
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They speak of you with such fondness that makes me wonder... when did it happen, that they got to know you so well, that they learned and fell in love with your quirks and flaws the same way they admired your virtues?
They talk about you as if they knew you, as if that was really you. Yet I can't help but wonder—
Was that really you?
They mourn the girl they knew so well, they mourn Haibara Ai.
But who's Miyano Shiho?
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(And how do you mourn a stranger?)
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IV - quattuor
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I dream of you often.
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In my dreams you walk, and I always follow. Sometimes you just stand there— unattainable, worlds out of my reach.
Sometimes, you kill me.
But the absolute worst dreams are the ones where you acknowledge me, the ones that blur with my memories because they happened once beyond my dreams. The ones about the lost opportunities I no longer can seize, where I hold you close to me and I get to tell you what I never knew before I lost you— the ones where you tell me I'm late, way too late.
I wake up empty.
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V - quīnque
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Life goes on without you, of course it does.
You were never the center of my universe or the one I couldn't do without. You leave, like every stranger I meet on the commuting train or the clerk working at my favorite coffee shop. Like the childhood friends I never contacted after junior high graduation, or the old baa-chan who used to gift me candies when I stayed in my mother's country house on long summer nights. You leave and the world keeps running at its normal pace, and I'm the one chasing to keep up with it.
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And it kills me that I can't grieve like the others do, because to them you were someone. In your own way, you belonged to them— a daughter, a best friend, a comrade. But what are you to me, even now, if not just a stranger? And why is my mind— my heart, determined to leave this open space in my chest where no one else seems to fit quite right? Saying we were friends is a stretch, saying I loved you is insanity.
So what is this, huh? What is this feeling of utter emptiness that hovers over my existence like an endless shadow, blinding me from light? What is this silence that wraps around my throat and takes the air out of my lungs? What is this hole, this vacancy in my life that I try in vain to fill with work and seeings and speckles of people that remind me of you in the most ridiculous, unassuming ways?
And it's every detail of you I missed back then that I now recall with excruciating clarity. It's the playful condescendence of your voice and the way you'd roll your eyes while fixing loose strands of hair behind your ear. It's your face, staring back at me with knowing camaraderie. The warmth of your hand holding me back in the face of danger, the weight of your head resting on my shoulder on long field-trip rides. It's you in my memories and you in my dreams. It's you that I can't let go of.
Normal life resumed without you, yet you took something away. And I see it reflected in the hollow stare in the mirror and the missing cup of coffee next to mine. I hear it in the jokes that no one else gets and the monotonous sound of your voicemail message, in the echo of the words I never said to you… and the silence, always the silence. I feel i in my hands, my skin, my heart— this sense of pure, sheer incompleteness.
It's something I can't tell, something they wouldn't understand. Of course they wouldn't. How do I explain this to anyone?
How do I tell the world I lost you when you were never mine?
How to explain the emptiness of a place you never filled?
The worst kind of pain is the one you're not allowed to mourn, the one that feeds on your heart because there's no way of letting it out.
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You leave me with nothing— Not a letter or a single fading picture. Not a broken promise or a grudge to hold. Not a kiss, not a love confession. Not the lingering touch of your hands of my skin or the warmth of words whispered to my ears.
Nothing, at all.
You leave, and you take my heart, my life away with you.
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You leave all of me behind.
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A/N: wow i'm depressed.
I'm tired of sugar coating this: please review or i'll be writing for other fandoms.