A/N: This is not a lemon/ smut fic! As promised this is the other side of this collection. Something with a little bit blood and gore.

Actually, what you're looking at right now, is the first One-Shot I've ever wrote on Shimayu, but I didn't want to shock anyone. XD

I alternated a quote from T.S. Elliot for the title: "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."

Warning: This story contains blood and gore and character death. Do not read it if you are under 16!

The World Ends Not With a Bang But a Whimper

„Argh" Taking another step on his swaying feet, he needed a pause a rattling breath whistled out of his lungs as he desperately gasped. Sucking in as much air as he could get. He was a phoenix risen from the ash of the battlefield.

Too greedy swallowing down breaths, he coughed blood. The red liquid spluttered on the ground soaking it in a vermilion red. Pain rushed through his body, radiating from the numerous wounds and broken bones. Yet, he had to go further. Leaning down on his sword, he pulled his other broken leg after him, letting the twisted slide on the ground. His sight was blurred from pain and red for the blood, that had run into his eye thanks to the gush above his eyebrow.

He needed to get to them.

With unlimited resolve he dragged his broken body over the battlefield while blood continuously seeped out of the wound in his stomach. Corpses surrounded him. He barely evaded stepping onto some red and slimy mass that once must have been an eye. How many exorcists had died today?

He stepped over many bodies, old and young, starting to decay. Eaten away faces, torn of arms, broken apart torsos. The whole armada of the dead created a gruesome picture. The dull, lifeless eyes of a young boy, hardly twelfe years old, stared at him.

Grabbing onto his focus, he ignored the madness clutching on his mind. This war... A war lasting for a thousand years... Was it all over and lost?

The moans and whimpers of death had subsided long ago. The only noise piercing through the silence was his whistling breath. Sucking in another shallow heap of the burning air, he continued his last resort.

He tried not to think about, what was becoming out of his little sister, if they all were dead. The impurities must be raging in his world by now. He had to reach them fast. Even if he would die from his wounds, squeezing the blood out of them while moving. He could die afterwards. First he had to find them.

The sour and foul scent of decay lay like a cloud over the wasteland called Magano. Tears ran to his eyes. Tears he blamed the miasma for. The breath of Death twined itself around him.

Finally, after what felt like hours, he reached the cliff of the mountain, he'd desperately fought on for days until a severe blow left him unconscious, buried under a pile of dead bodies.

Scanning the valley in front of him, utter despair ripped on his innards. Torn and scattered bodies painted the picture of horror. On the peak of the hill, consisting of what had once been hundreds of human bodies, a monument was built. It couldn't be...

With an unconscious step, he tripped forwards and fell. With all of the strength he could muster, he turned his body on the side and rolled over stones and torn of body parts, painting his clothes in the colors of the apocalypse.

A few feet later he stopped rolling. Lying on his back his limbs stretched out, he felt as if the world around him was put on hold. He felt no pain. The very attempt to understand, what was happening was eating on his reason. Breathe, he needed to breathe.

He lay there for a while, starring at the sky of Magano, which wasn't a sky at all. It had been his realm for so many years. Now it meant nothing. The clouds of miasma lingered in the air, blocking the sight. He knew, beyond the miasma was their world and he reached out his hand to catch it but couldn't get a grasp on it. Tears rushed to his eyes.

They had failed. He had failed. He had failed them. He couldn't protect them. He couldn't protect anything.

Leaning his head to the side his eyes searched once again for them.

Enthroning the battlefield like the memorial they ought to be, there they were. Smeared with their blood, stabbed with spears, forever frozen in their last embrace. The hope for their world died with the Twin Stars today.

There was nothing to do for him anymore. No reason to live. By now the impurities were raging in his world, destroying the reality, he once knew. And he could do nothing about it.

Angry tears came to him. He was loosing his family probably this exact moment. The image of Chiiko being ripped apart made him groan in anguish. Hissing breaths left him, as he desperately grabbed onto his sanity.

It was his fault. He had been to weak to protect anything.

He even hadn't been capable of dying in battle. Letting his gaze swipe over the area around him, he looked for his sword, that he must have dropped in his fall. If his lungs weren't finally giving in, if the clutching wound in his stomach wasn't finishing him, he had to end his miserable life on his own. But even Suzaku's voice didn't reach him anymore.

He was a phoenix fallen to disgrace.

Suddenly his eyes noticed a shimmer. The foreground blurred, as he saw a white light on the side of the grand hill of corpses.

Leaning on his elbows, he heaved his body to the side. It was no hallucination. There was a sparkle of white calling out for him.

Gritting his teeth, he growled, as he slowly pulled his body into a standing position. He stumbled to the white light, ignoring all of his lethal wounds and the indescribable pain, they emitted.

He came to stop in front of her.

Unlike most of the corpses surrounding them her body was still intact, clad in her torn and dirty exorcist uniform. Laying on her side, her head was nestled in the crook of her arm. Almost as if she was sleeping. Her unique blond hair with the green endings covered her face.

He fell to his knees in front of her. Not feeling the pain of the impact, he was perfectly still. His eyes ran over her body, as he watched out for a sign. Searched for a sign showing, she was still alive.

Sitting on his knees, he stared at her for a while, before he finally was brave enough to reach out for her. A trembling hand tenderly pushed her soft hair out of her face.

He imagined her to smile at him. To look at him with her rosy cheeks and big blue eyes.

He imagined her telling him, everything was going to be alright and that they would go home now, as he would sink into the ocean of her blue, warm eyes.

The image faded and was replaced with reality. He choked on tears, when instead her eyes stared back at him, empty and dull.

All life vanished from those blue eyes, that had always reminded him of the sea with its various moods. A silent cry broke out of his throat, as he punched his fist into the ground. His lungs stuttered in pain.

Death was toying with him. Why was he the only one left alive?

Anger rushed through his veins. Everyone... They were all dead. They would never come back.

She was dead. A light extinguished. The last wave of anger subsided, as he mustered her lifeless body.

Misery. Agony. He now came to understand, what those words meant, now that he lost everyone, he loved dearly.

As if not to break her, he reached for her carefully and cradled her body in his arms as tenderly as he could.

He tried to remember the last time her eyes had shined for him.

He thought about the first full blown smile, she ever gave him.

And then he waited.

He waited for the moment, he would join them all.

He waited for the moment time would make him come undone.

He was a phoenix with broken wings.

And he would rise nevermore.

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A/N: "Hello Darkness, my old friend." If I would try to paint a picture with words, it would look like this.

And also: Don't hate me, I've warned you. #sorrybutnotsorry XD

I would love to know, what you think about it. Please give me your honest opinion on this even if you didn't like it.