WATASHI NO AI,WATASHI NO SAIGO NO KOTOBA/MY LOVE,MY LAST WORDS.

SAKURA

Morning comes.
Sunlight seems to drape over the river in a wave of colors that make me stare in awe of the surreal beauty.I rise up slowly,softly.

I do not want to wake him up.

I finally get to see his face,his smile.
Feel his warmth and tenderness that really no one else got to have or no in this era.Last night was very simple and so intense for me that I am afraid to close my eyes lest I am stuck in that prison I was in or back to my time.
Moments after he spoke so softly to me I put my head to his shoulder and I slept so peacefully and so did he.
I would have imagined a thousand different scenarios to that span of minutes and hours that have led to now from when we met and I would not have considered this.
But nonetheless i am happy.I have felt love.

Simple.
True.
Pure.

"Tongue you are afraid to be loosed.Heart you want to pour and hand...you shake like a drunkard...."I think out-loud in spite of myself and hadn't even realized I was speaking out loud until I feel strong arms suddenly around my waist and a head resting on my back just beneath the top of my spine and it remains for moments enough that I inexplicably freeze.
He raises his head to rest stop my shoulder and Noroi speaks with a hint of playfulness I rarely get to enjoy and after today I won't again.

"There is not a man alive who relishes the idea of his lady becoming motionless at his touch.Rather a turn,a smile and a bit of sweet vermilion for lips for a long time is a bit more welcome."
I smile,but it turns bitter quickly leading my well of pain,sadness and my future to come to bear down on me because only with him and one other have I ever been able to fully release my whole heart to in words and these are the very ones that are many lives but my....

My death.

NOROI

I have been slashed by katanas.
Stabbed by spears.
Pulled out arrows and daggers from my very own person.

I had tattoos put on me by villagers who thought I must have been a curse or a demon to have been born with my birthmark when I was barely old enough to walk.
Saw my parents slain before my eyes and a sibling I won't know till a next life I may not get to see much of because I fear I will not be forgiven enough to see it by GOD.
I  watched hell before my eyes in the form of men with swords and what they do with them and now I have felt my greatest pain second only to watching my daughter be tossed down a well then my wife disappearing all at once.

I have never prayed so hard in my life to either defy this life or to simply die and return never again to any semblance of life at all than this.

"I have to die here,soon.I saw things in those three months Noroi....A past of her life,so many of mine and the first one I lived as Kiko which led to her hating me.Her life I ruined inadvertently by changing her course.I lived here over and over trying different ways to have a way to stay here,to keep you alive."
"No matter what I did and do though..it can not work.I watched it all happen in different ways NOROI!I watched my son die before my eyes the last time by my hand!!My poor grandson who had all the potential in the world...our daughter I barely remember because just the sight of watching Kiko go so viciously mad,our fault at that makes me want to die,to suffer..."

I want to comfort her,kiss a tear away.
To hold her but her eyes refuse any form of it so I remain motionless,try to be feelingless as well if I am to survive even these words.
She leans forward after her first shower of tears ends and she takes to caressing my face,where my dimples are like I did to her before and it is intoxicating any other time but now.

It actually hurts me now.

"I saw my grandmother there,Noroi.I saw her alive and well.Young and beautiful like she was in the pictures I saw of her except she was dressed in warring states era clothing standing in front of a warrior like a pure shadow with a sword that seemed like it was made of blood.Oh the screams the blood screamed made my ears bleed my love...oh the pain but I did not run this time!I was brave in it,like you in battle."

Moments escape by as the sun rises to its glory but it could be a night with an eclipse far as I am concerned.

"I saw her as he left and was slain before her eyes,how she grasped this locket every day,every night repeating her wish while her will to accomplish it somehow began to be.She lived on and tried to learn more and more my grandmother and she did!She really did,even married someone she feigned to love in the eighties so that she could get stronger and test it.She was amazed when I displayed the same will power over wanting a dream to be real so much it happened....She tested how much she could manipulate through me and all of these...'Realities'are because of that.All the people who have lived,died,suffered and gone through things that didn't happen before are because of her...because of me.Because we chose not to let go at the cost of everyone else,except now I know what it is.I tried to deny it over and over but I know now!I know now....."

"You want to be a heroine,You want to save lives....How can you be wrong in that?It sounds like you did not chose to do any of these things Sakura..You were toyed with.There should be another way."

The pain in her eyes is like another way to die.
Sakura looks into my eyes and the expression is a mix of deep affection and also a deeper feeling of self loathing.

"No.NOROI,I did chose.Over each time I returned a little would come back to me and I wanted here,you,our child.I wanted it enough to keep replaying all of this time over and over looking for a 'right'way.But it does not exist except to return things right.The only way is for me to die here,to do so of myself,will myself to remember this and....Stop her back when all of this began.Before the death of Oda Nobunaga."

I now stop,I become almost as stone and think remaining so would be better than what she is proposing.

"You promised you wouldn't leave me again...."
"I never will."
"Then what is this you are saying!?"

She shrinks back at my sudden outrage that I almost do not mean but she still keeps her eyes locked on mine and that is more frightening than any foe.
Her true resolve.

"Should a world die,over and over for a love that beautiful,blissful it is..should not have been?I kept choosing you,my grandmother kept choosing him and the world will utterly die....My love I SAW THE WORLD BECOME A HELL for what she did.The love she held onto was a curse to life and life should not have to be destroyed over the loves of us few.Love is life."

My eyes sting like they have only two other times.
I can not look away from her,I do not agree not wish to.
GOD has always given her a way.
Why can't she believe that and find a way to stay and save?

"Saku-"

She stops my words when her vermilion lips make contact to mine.

On to few occasions I get to feel those lips,the love that she easily lets me feel from them.
All to often it is right before something bad is to happen.

GOD please don't.

She tries to pull away but I hold onto her,her wrist is in one hand and her waist in my other hand.

"Let me go Noroi..."

I do not let my eyes stray.

"Don't let me go Sakura...For once."

Her light brown eyes weaken a bit,The soft strands of hair like a rare silk to my touch wave in the wind making her in this light by the water a masterful illustration before my eyes and I am so,so tired.

"Let me go.My love."

I close my eyes when she kisses me again,it is not heady as before but it seems so much more passionate somehow.
Then.

Sakura runs.
My one.
My only.
My love.
She runs.

But she will not run alone.
In heaven or in hell I will not leave her.

Should heaven hold her I will pray to see her one last time before I join others in hell.
If hell holds her then I pray that the power of GOD will give me strength to free her and be in her stead.

Either way.
I can not leave her.
Not now.
Not ever.
"I will never stop Itoshi Hito....Never my lovely flower of shadow."