The sakura trees flowered in the blush of spring, when everything was raw and young. The land was a complete reincarnation of itself, and the pink cherry blossoms were the brightest and most beautiful of all.

And now they littered his lover's grave; a mark of the dead.

Kunzite looked down at Zoisite's corpse, the overwhelming aroma of burnt hair filling the last Shitennou's nostrils. He reached forward and touched his skin. Zoisite had always been pale; they all were, living in the citadel closed out from the eternal winter of the Arctic. But now it was grey, just lighter than their uniforms, as all the blood settled to the bottom of his body. He bent down and kissed Zoisite's lips one final time, pretending that he tasted the bittersweet tang of his mouth even though there was nothing to dance across his taste buds but bile. And when he parted, he listened, suddenly filled with a child's hope that Zoisite might breathe again. Of course, he was disappointed.

But Kunzite would not remember those things. When he looked back on his final moments with his lover, he would remember only the sakura blossoms, the symbol of life, and that Zoisite had been beautiful even in death.