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Some days you believed Goro Takemura was so devoted to being by your side because he felt as though he was indebted to you. Witness V, the one that pulled him from his darkest valley back to his snowy peak.
But debt does not drive someone to care as fiercely as he had. His heart fell for you, unbidden, unafraid of the pale horse galloping towards you. He had taken you to his homeland, where he knew you would be more comfortable than your former home that was cut with heartache.
Yet, sands from your hourglass fell through his chrome fingers. Confidence that his love could save you fell away with each day you took slow steps to the end. Not with all the tests, the therapies, the surgeries. Death loomed all the same.
And so he had cared for you through it all. Lathering your hair for you with sweet shampoos. Massaging every sore spot when pain crept down to your bones. Holding you through the nightmares. Bringing you every food or flavor he could think of to coax you to eat and keep your belly full even when it churned.
But now was time for the two of you to part.
Pink petals float down from the trees around you. He tells you that this is one of his favorite places. That it brings him peace. He doesn't say it, but you know he is now staining it with the memory of letting you go. But that's you, V, the thief in the night that painted the people around you with a splotch of ink so ugly that death followed you in your wake. He is no different; the halo around him unwarded of your tragedy until his heart was broken just the same.
Not that he ever wanted to stay away. He jumped after you, feet-first. From the same day he caught your wrist at the Arasaka space station, asking you not to go alone.
His white shirt hanging off your sunken frame doesn’t keep the bite of the Spring wind away and he takes his time wrapping you with a soft blanket. Sitting around you, his legs on either side of your body to keep you safe. His arms slide over your front and you let yourself fall back into his arms. Your body is spent. Mind nearly gone as well, but he holds onto you with a single golden thread for just a moment longer.
His cheek meets yours as he curls around you. His protective nature never falters, even at this moment. Despite the stillness in his breath his cheek and beard are soaked with his quiet tears. Mourning you, before you are even gone. Mourning the days that will never be. The family that he wasn’t able to give you for as long as he thought you deserved.
You aren’t going to tell him not to cry.
“Duty is heavy as a mountain, but death is lighter than a feather,” he murmurs.
“That supposed to reassure me?” Your voice is hoarse, and he shushes you gently. He takes your hand in his own, bringing it to his lips and kissing the back of it.
“I am not sure. I believed once that I had already come to terms with my own end.”
“But mine?”
His voice finally breaks, a shuttered breath out his lungs as he presses his face into your neck. “No.”
You know he will be alright. You are not the first person he's had to witness slip away, but with your last breath, you pray it is his last. That his days left are bathed in nothing but the loveliness and tranquility he sought until you could meet again.
Your eyes slide closed. Safe, warm, loved.
Lighter than a feather.