He held her by the hands, and set himself free of her embrace, pulling himself up together with her. A sigh escaped Nyoko's softly parted lips at that, but she didn't oppose him. Her fingers only softly sled out of his hands, and her eyes followed his face as if they were glued to it.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"I am not going anywhere. Not anytime soon. When the flowers of red, black and white reach their full bloom, and end the carnage the dark blade wrought... On that day, I will be yours."</span><br/><br/>She smiled as she listened to his words. "That day... Then I will make sure that day comes soon. I said I don't care about the cost. That day," her hands cupped around his, bringing it up to her chest, "will come sooner than you think. I can feel it here," Her fingers softly placed his palm on where her heart was. They would<span style="font-style: italic">make</span>that day come soon. She didn't fear the Black Samurai anymore.<br/><br/>Haruki didn't give Rosalia more than a shrug. "You were right, to say the truth. I was an idiot to rush in headfirst. But that revenge that you find stupid is more important to me than you think..."<br/><br/>His gaze grew distant, slipping across all the things in the room to some point in the middle of time and space. "I don't know if I ever had any parents. I don't know where I came from. I don't know a solitary shit about what depths of hell I was dragged out of and taken to a temple of the Black Samurai. Maybe I was a sacrifice, or an apprentice material... But I only knew the darkness between those walls. And I hated it, because I feared it. I feared the day he'd come again. But a man descended down to that darkness and took me out to the light I didn't know before. Kurohana's master... My master. I thank him for my life, I thank him for everything I am and everything I've done in my life. And then that man was, before my eyes, stabbed to a wall, torn to pieces, and burned. How could I not want revenge more than anything else? That man was everything I ever saw as good in the world. Nyoko... Nyoko can take care of herself alone. I never wanted anything but to avenge him." He clenched his fists so hard that his knuckles turned white.<br/><br/>When he turned his head back to Rosalia, crystal-clear beads of tears shimmered in his ears, on the border of welling out. "I'm not going to be anyone's light, Rosalia. But if I can, I will be another night that will crush the one that's fallen over us. I don't have in me what my master had... I'm hollow inside, and it's dark there, too. But I don't care. I..."<br/><br/>He drew a sharp breath in. "I will kill the Black Samurai. I will kill him no matter what. That's the only thing I ever wanted."<br/><br/>Bowing his head to her, he took the white blade. "I'll give it to him." he assured her, handling it softly, but with the confidence of a man that knows a blade better than the inside of his own head.