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May All Be Pain or Love	By : Skwishee Category: > Kyo/Kaoru Views: 5674 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Dir en grey. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 15
- 16
Nearly a week had passed until I saw K?zi again, on the evening of the 31st, but he hadn't arrived alongside his usual vanity. The very same thing that had come alive in Kyo's eyes those last few days seemed to die in his. More harrowing was the realization that I had been the involuntary trigger for both and I had mixed emotions on the fact. March was leaving the courtyard, which meant a warm wind and new buds on the sakura trees. I could smell them across the residence, strongest near the West gate because the scent was filtered in from Kiyomizu.

The sand trails that crossed the court slithered from gate to step in great stride as though they were long, white snakes converging upon the house. The maids didn't let anyone walk on them. There was too much maintenance required to keep the sand from shifting down the side of the hill, but now the sand had feathered softly outside its borders, days old footpaths marking the cause, and the sand that had once been the top layer was disarranged and bloody red. No one had made the effort to rake it again, not after the rain had been so heavy and the spirits of the servants so dim, so the maids had left well enough alone.

In a similar spirit of abandonment, Kyo had completely given up his usual habits of discussing affairs of the house with me, my role evolving--or rather devolving--back into the one I had played once when we were young and poor. I was his lover again, strangely on and off, my importance just as ever changing as his temperament which seemed to fluctuate between kindness and a mild hostility.

For the most part we had all fallen back into some sort of reluctant normalcy, as if all that had occurred between us and the world had never come to pass at all. In fact, Kyo was happy to forget it and quick to reassume his old routines.

I was expressly forbidden from speaking of Tokugawa'fs letter--Kyo deciding that it had been a ridiculous sort of thing, too inane to even consider? or of any yokai, other than him, that might have crossed my mind. But I was worried. Wasn'ft I always?

And so, I mentioned the fox...the one I'fd so responsibly left with the malefic wight. I had freed myself of him, and so I should have felt no responsibility for his suffering. Ha...Lies. When had I ever been free of my drowning sense of obligation? Surely not in this lifetime.

My grandmother found him before I did, her scream loud enough to wrest me from my place on the steps and follow it to the front gate. And there he was, terrible, magnificently displayed upon it as though he were only a painting, as if he were wearing ink and not blood...

He was art: morbid and beautiful, crucified by blackness as thick as tar, skin violated by the kiss of a clenched fist. Though all wounds bled, they seemed somehow superficial, printed with pleasure but far too brutal to mask the underlying intention of pain. The silk he wore was surprisingly pristine, no essence of blood on the cloth, leading me to believe he had been shown some semblance of mercy or had been cleaned. I wondered if Junji had removed the clothing to inflict the damage and dressed him loosely again, or if he was so careful as to avoid the fabric all together. But why? Why arrange him in this way? Was this the humiliation of a proud creature, a preview of the wrath I would be forced to endure should I breach our new agreement, or had this simply been his last opportunity to defile his favorite toy in this way? Whatever it had been I'd created my own opinion out of nothing and comforted myself in the likely false thought that this was just one of the hazards of his twisted promiscuity, otherwise the image would have me undone.

As I crept closer my concern for him gave way to curiosity. Just what had Junji done to him? The blood that slicked his thighs was drying in the warm air making the image all the more grotesque, made his body seem much more deteriorated than it really was. I followed the coalesced trail up the hem of his kimono and shuddered when I saw how much of the dark red congealed near the apex of his thighs, and it was plainly obvious that the kasha had neglected to replace his undergarments...if he had ever worn any at all.

"Kaoru-kun, get him down!" And there was my grandmother. She must have been shouting at me for some time, but I hadn't heard her above my own conscience. "What happened to him!?" She wailed, sounding much more like an old woman than I remembered. "How could someone do such a thing!?"

She wanted to say, 'How could someone ruin something so beautiful?', I could see it in her face, and I was thinking it too, but neither of us dared to say it aloud. Because it was out of place, because it was vain.

Instead of answering I put my hands on his waist, determined to pull him from the gate, but completely unsure of how he was attached at all. Thankfully I didn't have to figure it out. As soon as I touched him the sticky blackness retreated inside his skin as though it were being absorbed by his body and then he fell and I was left with no option but to catch him and take him to the ground with me.

He was an amber colored doll in my arms; a breathless idol that resembled the model but did not possess the life or the charm. I hadn't the state of mind to hold him protectively so for a moment he lay limp in my lap like a rag doll, my hands not supporting him, but stretched out above him, unsure of what to touch, or if I should touch anything at all. It seemed impersonal and rude, but I was afraid to actually feel him, knowing what he was, and knowing the effects he'd had on me before.

His fiery hair covered my leg like a blanket, spilling down against the earth. Since it was the safest place to touch I ran my fingers through it, awestruck at how it was every bit as warm as the color suggested. He really was a gorgeous creature. Hating him had never dissolved that fact and accepting him had only brought it more attention. I wondered if it was the only reason I was ever so threatened by him at all. Could he really have been the generous person that Hitsugi claimed? I wondered which of us was right. It wasn't any new idea...to think that he had it in him to be protective. I'd seen several small instances, fleeting though they were, that offered some proof of it. Shinya told me that he had saved his life, and even amidst all the ill he'd done against me, he had managed to do some good to the things I'd been most fixated on.

It was awkward, the way he laid, almost face down, chest resting on one of my thighs as his head hung limply off to the side. The rest of him was turned, his lower half curled backward against my stomach while his legs draped over my other thigh. There were no cuts on them, implying either neglect or favor. It couldn't have been comfortable, the way his tails were pressed up against me, but there was nowhere else for them to go. His topmost tail was bleeding again, soaking through the back of his short robe. With my fingertips I carefully peeled back the bottom of his short kimono, absorbed with discovering the damage to his tail first hand. The wound was gruesome, and his kimono had become so completely blood soaked in the back that it stuck fast to the lesion. I didn't dare pry it away.

Amidst my study I found myself faced with the plains of his voluptuous body. I had no emotional desire for him, but I would be lying if I said the physical prospect hadn't crossed my mind at some point.

"Oh, I can't even look at that." My grandmother said, her fingers clinging to my yukata as she shoved her face into my shoulder but she couldn't look away for very long, her tiny eyes peering over her own fingers.. I left my hands where they were for a moment longer, which was exactly how long it was before Kozi opened his eyes.

"I appreciate the interest, kitten, and normally I'd be encouraging your curiosity, but I'm a little self-conscious about that little, bloody stump back there and much too sore to smack your hand away, so please..." K?zi groaned, voice slurred and rough, implying the hours he must have spent screaming. Shock forced me to withdraw my hands as fast as I was able. I felt like a little kid caught doing something improper.

"I was only looking over your injuries." I said sternly, making clear my innocence.

"Oh, I'm sure, but don't let me stop you...unless you can only be medically useful while I'm unconscious."

"I think it's that he's more comfortable with certain parts of you being dormant." My grandmother said, being in no way as helpful as I had hoped.

Choosing to ignore the taunt in both of their comments I replied, "It would certainly help with the pain."

"I think it's a little beyond the realm of remedy." K?zi panted. "I've felt it for awhile now...so I think I might be a little numb." A pause brought time enough for a meager smile. "I would suggest a little hands on distraction but..."

Ignoring him, I sighed in frustration. "You can save some time and pain by just telling me where you're injured."

K?zi tried to lay his head back down lightly, but it ended up falling hard against the ground. He winced and merely shrugged his shoulders, as if all the soreness were a daily routine. Yumi chose to play to his attention, shuffling her knees underneath his head for support and stroking his hair as though he were a child to be taken care of. "Aside from the evident, you mean? Same general direction, except lower and...more internal."

I huffed, turning my head to the side, unhappy with his casual awareness of the situation and a little impatient with how unhelpful he was being. "Why did he do this to you?" I asked, but I already expected him to redirect the subject yet again as per his usual custom.

"I was let go. I would think that would have been an obvious sort of thing since I am, in fact, here and not there. " I don't think there was a state of being, no matter how miserable, that could kill K?zi's incredible sarcasm. "He decided to see if I could survive him. It was nice to see him sticking so graciously to the terms of my release, don't you agree? The son of a bitch."

"Looks like he didn't make it too hard for you..." I noted skeptically. It was true that the kitsune was gravely injured, but...it was almost disappointing, the lack of gore. I would have expected a great deal more from someone as disturbed as Junji.

An attempt to laugh turned into a painful whimper. "I'd singe your leg hair off right now for that comment, but I'm sadly lacking any sort of will...momentarily." he hissed. "Let's just say I'm a superior healer. He knows what's within my ability to recover and he compensated beautifully." K?zi groaned, slowly turning to face me. "Last night..." He opened the top of his robe and exposed his chest. His sleepy hands ran along over a foot worth of blackened bruising, fingermarks still imprinted on his skin from an immense amount of force.

"He broke every rib one by one, then waited long enough for me to heal before he did it again."

When he'd finished explaining his chest he'd pulled one side of the robe down lower and exposed his stomach and sides which were, at present, still a mass of deep scarring and dried blood. The wounds--which seemed like stab marks-- were closed and not at all threatening, but there were so many that the purple color here was just as omnipresent as the rest of his injuries. "And these..." he explained, running his fingers over the once deep cuts. "These were from his fingers. I could feel them touch in my stomach from both sides while he fucked me."

I realized I was staring at the blood on his thighs. "He raped you." I stated. It wasn't a question.

K?zi tried to laugh, but it hurt and he settled for smiling cynically. "It's arguable as to whether or not a kitsune can be raped to begin with. Especially if you're considered a property of the other person." he said breathlessly. "You have similar laws I think, can a jorou be raped?"

"What are you trying to do?" I asked. "Why must you always play in airs?"

"What would you rather me say? Should I thank you for your gracious concern of me?"

"I could have walked out and let him take you as payment for your bastard deal, but I didn't and I..." I started to say, but he cut me off with a scoff and turned his head away.

"Maybe you should have." he shook his head. "I don't know why you didn't."

"Is that what you wanted!?" I raised my voice at him, not quite yelling, but enough to get my point across. "Me to leave you so he could rip off the rest of your tail and fuck you with it?"

Yumi raised up on her knees and smacked my face, not hard enough to hurt but it was enough to startle me out of my complacency.
K?zi, though satisfied by Yumi's reaction, still looked as if he could be human enough to cry. "That wasn't a very nice thing to say."

"You want him to feel guilty?" She asked, shaking her small head at me. "He can't. He doesn't understand that sort of thing and it's better if he doesn't." she yelled at me. "You have no right to expect him to act like a human, to understand the kinds of things you do. It's unfair to ask such things from yokai."

I bowed my head, letting her words spill over me because there was nothing else I could do. She was my elder, she was my family and the only woman who's opinion had ever been valid to me. And maybe she was right, maybe it was cruel of me to expect humanity from a creature that wasn't human.

"Nature needs to remain unchanged for this world to balance." She said sagely, her wise, slanted eyes regarding me kindly. "The abnormal must exist and we shouldn't have any authority in changing them. We cannot give them emotion any more than they can take ours away. That's just the way it is and there is nothing to be done but to accept it." She glared at me, pushing my shoulder a little more roughly than I thought she was able. "Now do that and help him."

The only problem was I didn�ft know how, and I hadn�ft the time to figure it out. I heard Kyo before I saw him, his dismal exhalation and the slow, ominous clacking of his geta against the stone.

Kyo looked like the world before a storm. A living interpretation of dreary skies and biting winds so forewarning that I found myself half-shielding Kozi in case he decided to keep his word and show me a little of the cruelty he had promised. I expected it, of course. Kyo had a manner of harboring grudges that bested my own, but I hadn't been prepared for how far he was willing to go to facilitate it.

If you've ever, in your life, imagined a sunny sky inexplicably darkening and the warm weather around you suddenly chilling and it all seemed to begin in one person's cold eyes, that's how it felt to me in that instant. And Kyo didn't look like Kyo, but a ghostly porcelain likeness suspended in much the same way as a person standing by their own means, but it seemed unreal and supernatural as though his feet were dragging the ground by his toes, but they were flush against the earth.

"What is he doing here?" A flash of menace in his eyes as a raw, barbarous tone impregnated his voice. I shivered as it fell into the open air, it was that powerful.

I explained to him how I had found him, how he had been hanging on the gate, but there was no indication that his expression would soften.

"And so you should have left him where you found him!" he bellowed, as though my pulling him down had caused a sort of impendent calamity that neither he nor I could withstand. "String him back up if you can, but throw him away. I will not have him in this house!" The hatefulness of his tone left me fostering disbelief, because Kyo wasn't a cruel person and even he himself had made excuses to me for K?zi's bad behavior. But, that was past, and to Kyo...it meant that the instances of it completely ceased to exist.

"You don't think he's mad at me, do you?" K?zi whispered at my side, and even bleeding the way that he was he still managed to retain the sense of sarcasm he was famous for. Maybe my grandmother had been right, I thought as I stared down at him, maybe he was simply incapable of seeing things the way I did. Maybe he interpreted the seriousness in Kyo's eyes only as an insouciant sort of gamble, not dangerous, but challenging, because any creature capable of humor, no matter how tired it was, after withstanding such a sick sort of pain was definitely beyond the realm of human behavior.

"Not very much, no." I mumbled quietly in response, attempting for a moment to mimic the sardonic tone in K?zi's voice, just to see if I was able.

Only a brief hesitation was held, and then Kyo passed the distance between he and I, haste unmatched, all of his focus drawn to the bloodied kitsune hidden beneath me, and it didn't take me half a second to grasp his intent. If I wasn't going to let him go by order, I was going to do it by force. "You will listen to me!" he commanded and I braced myself against the ground. "Throw that whore out of my house before I kill him!"

"Stop it." I told him in a voice not loud enough to offend and not soft enough to ignore. "I'll take him out of your sight, but I'm not going to throw him out in this condition. You know I don't have it in me. You can suffer him with your temper all you like when he's well enough."

But he wouldn't listen to me, attempting instead to pry the kistune from me, his hard nails scraping through my kimono as he clawed at my arms, trying to pull them away. Since he looked as if he wanted nothing more than to snap the skull from his spine I silently took the assault, never letting go of the fox, instead almost shielding his weak body, even with the knowledge that doing so would only make Kyo madder. It did, of course. He shoved my shoulders and grabbed my forearms in an attempt to dislodge me. It was surprising, I�fll admit, how calm I remained, even as I pushed Kyo away from us roughly.

"What is wrong with you!?" I spat and he trembled, not from intimidation but from utter rage.

"Me?!" The slight clenching of Kyo's jaw caught my attention. A faint sign of his anger's legitimacy. "Even after he betrayed you...here you are, concealing him from me. I'm disappointed Junji didn't finish him off. I was hoping he would save me the aggravation."

In the instant I opened my mouth to answer, K?zi interrupted my thoughts with a raspy laugh, unmoved by the anger radiating from the blonde. "Is that really where you want to take this, Kyo-san?" he cooed, "Do you really want to start shouting 'betrayal' when you were the one that buried yourself inside of me a thousand times in his absence? Willingly! How can I possibly betray him anymore than you have? I was never anything to him to begin with."

I threw a hand over K?zi's mouth and suffered through the searing heat of his skin as his temper flared, knowing that he was treading onto territory so dangerous that even I couldn't pull him back from it. I didn't want to say it, content to suppress even the thought of it with my hand, but it was true...even I had to admit that.

"Don't be hypocritical." I countered, riding out the slow burn in my palm and trying my best to divert Kyo's attention to myself and give him less acidic words to concentrate on. "You're the one who was telling me to let it go all along, that it was just in his nature to do those things. I'm not any happier with decisions made, but I must live with them. I've hated too many people lately, I'm exhausted from it. I'm done."

Shifting my weight jostled K?zi and he let out a low growl through my fingers. "But if you honestly want me to throw him down and condemn him to die for what he's done then, he's right, I'd have to condemn you too. You think I would have to stomach to throw you to Junji? Because I don't."

His reaction was not at all what I was anticipating, but it should have been. I knew Kyo's temperament well enough that I could have read into it more, expected more. He was going to take it personally. I realized only after I had said it.

Squeezing his fist so tightly that his nails broke the skin of his palm, Kyo bared his teeth, blood weeping down his fist and onto the stone walkway below. "Is that how it is, Kaoru? Someone you've spent your entire life with is equal to a whore you know nothing about?"

I turned my head to the ground, regarding it as my enemy -- better it than Kyo --and silently smoldered. Is that what Kyo thought? That I was holding him in equal stead? The implication made me furious. "I never said that you were equal." My eyes flicked up, honoring his every predatory movement as he paced back and forth impatiently, his regard of me intensifying with every bit of out of place sand he kicked up.

"You imply it." he spat, hating me more than he could stand in that contrary sort of second. We'd fallen into a twisted moment, he and I, where everything we were became inversed and I hated him just the same. "You involve me with him in such a way that you say I betrayed you no less. This trull, Kaoru!? This firestarter!? Should I ignore your entailments of treachery in such a phrase!?"

Fed up with the pressure my weight was putting on him K?zi sat up cautiously, tearing my hand away from his mouth and he wrapped a black arm over his bruised waist like a tourniquet, his crimson waves, full of debris, cascading down over his torso. "Why is it that I'm always the firestarter!?" The irritation on K?zi's face completely dominated his usual teasing nuance. "Does casting the blame on everyone but yourself spark your passion, little lord? Stop feigning innocence and just admit you're every inch the catalyst I am."

"I am nothing like y-!" Kyo growled, but before either of them could escalate the argument further I, focused solely on the admirably unmoveable ground, roared in a voice as loud as I could muster.

"Enough!" I cried. My god I'd had enough of them both. Completely ignoring their useless feud I addressed the comment that had wounded me before. "Treachery!?" I repeated in disbelief. "I have given my entire life for you! I have given up my family for you! I�fve bled for you, I've killed for you and you have the nerve to accuse me of throwing you down to the same level!?" Because what I had I really done for him after all? Saved him, yes...but not knowingly.

Enraged, I let K?zi have more slack within my grip so I could avoid hurting him further, and he took the opportunity to slip a little toward the floor, squatting a little uncomfortably to keep his tail from hitting the ground and bending any further. "Even dealing me over to Junji he hurt me less than you ever have, because he had no obligation to me. He has the luxury of not caring what happens to me. I don't expect anything from him but trouble. I thought we were past this!?�h

The sweat that beaded on my forehead was hurriedly slinking into my eyebrows, the salt in it stinging my eyes.

Kyo stumbled back a few steps, caught off guard by the intensity in my voice, yet still his eyes shrank down to slits in warning when I began to yell. His mouth twitched, his perfect nose wrinkled with hate and he took in my words with all the cold detachment he could apply. "If you really loved me you would have left him crucified. Instead I find you cowering over him in my courtyard." he growled.

"That word simply cannot exist in the way you're wanting to use it." I grumbled. "'Love' isn't the same as 'obedience'."

Kyo tossed his head back as if he were wanting to vaunt his high quality. And high though it was I felt it carried no merit for my submission. "If I've given it that meaning it's only because you provided me with the definition. " he excused.

Further fueling his argumentative nature, and indeed not helping his case in the slightest K?zi opened his mouth and interrupted me. "And you've certainly abused your rendition of it enough." he scolded. "Oh, but I see a pretender in you and does that mean, Kyo, that your very blatant disobedience of him incriminates you also? Because I think it does. If you loved him then you would resign your pride and let him have at least one victory in his lifetime. If you find yourself so incapable of submitting to him you should give him up to someone better equipped for the position. If he really does see us as equals I'm sure you'd find no argument from him."

K?zi's sly smirk faded to an expression of defense as Kyo lunged at him so fast even I couldn't catch hold of him in time. With one swift motion there was a flash of silver and Kyo had sliced clean through the fox's hanging appendage. Blood flushed the ground like a heavy wave, sweeping away the bits of twigs and dust on the ground and Kyo fell back, dripping tail lifelessly dangling from his hands like a trophy pelt.

"No!" screamed the wind behind me, but when I felt it pass beside me, heard it's footsteps upon the stone, I knew it was a yokai and not the wind that had howled. Both Hitsugi and my grandmother had pulled K?zi all the way to the ground, worrying over him as I might have done for Kyo.

In fact, the whole physical ordeal had happened so fast that I hadn't had the time to actually witness the thing motion for motion, dwelling instead on "if you loved me" in that obsessive way I had' and wordlessly seething at the blonde in front of me.

The aversion to being held as he was contaminated the kitsune's face, but even that displeasure couldn't tempt him to move from the embrace. He lay as limp as a doll, bleeding thinly on the nekomata's leg. Not a word left his lips, no sigh, no breath, no whimper to show his pain. Everything he said, he said with his eyes and the way his mouth moved softly as though he were trying to form words but couldn't.

It was easy enough to translate the hurt without knowing the actuality. I had felt my share of it since I'd met him. He had my sympathy.

The short haired yokai was fixated on me, the grace in his expression begging me to do something to help, only I could think of nothing.

Kyo was the first of us to move, his hand curled around the red tail he'd severed, entirely too proud of himself to make me calm. "That's two you've lost now." He teased, holding the bit of fur where K?zi could see. "Two hundred years of a history of uselessness."

K?zi laid a shaking hand across his eyes, Hitsugi's arms offering no salvation from the excruciating burn in his lower back. But it would go away soon if he was lucky, and he always had the other two crumpled beneath his body.

I had hoped Kyo would have been as satisfied as the smirk on his face suggested but it wasn't so. Maybe it was the way Hitsugi stayed by K?zi's side, stroking his long hair protectively that offended him so much, or was it the unspoken reminder of the few times I had done the same to him? Something he couldn't stomach in his prideful rage.

"I want the yokai to leave." Kyo ceased his taunting and slung the tail over his shoulder as if it were a conquest from the hunt. Bloody hands were wiped against his kimono as if it were only the sweat from his palms and when he was done he pet the thing again teasingly and plucked the tiny hairs at the top until the inner bone was exposed, his eyes hollow and empty, the once ice blue irises now as translucent as glass.

I could feel the roughness on my fingers softly scratch my skin as I dropped the hand I'd placed on my forehead sometime in the last few minutes and I narrowed my eyes. "Too bad because I don't." I wanted to tell Kyo what Hitsugi had told me, that K?zi had only did what he did because of a ruinous human emotion. The same that had caused such friction between the two of us, and I had more sympathy than anger left. I wanted to tell him that I was only marked because of what I had done in my youth, but I was unable to say a word. I had promised Hitsugi not to speak a word to K?zi that I knew, and aside from that I didn't have the stomach to break my promise and make him more vulnerable than he already was in that instant. And then there was the matter of my own past and I wasn't at all ready to bring it out into the open. So I was left completely unable to fight him without giving something away.

Hitsugi's amber eyes flashed toward Kyo."I'm not leaving without his tail."

"He owes it to me."

"He owes nothing!" The nekomata spat, hand set firmly in the thick blood that reddened K?zi's thigh. "All his sins are paid as of now. You have the blood you wanted, you don't deserve any more compensation than that."

"Then come take it from me, cat." Kyo brought the tail down from his shoulder, dusted it off and held it out, the crisp air of early spring gently swaying it from side to side. "Come and pry it from my cold fingers you worthless little thing." Standing defiant, head tilted back enough to gaze at everyone as though he were a towering giant bent on destruction. He took the time between his silence to rip out a few more hairs at the base, the clumps scattering into single strands once they left his hand.

Hitsugi's sweet face turned bitter. "I will come and get it." he warned, but his posture still insisted that he was afraid. I couldn�ft blame him...so was I.

Kyo's mouth twitched in fury. "And you won't even have a face afterward." he smiled, but it was horrible and even I couldn't look at him. "I will decimate you."

Almost inaudibly, K?zi laughed--no mirth anywhere inside of it. A miserable sort of sound, parodic and useless. His bottom lip was still shaking from the ache in his body, hand still firmly over his eyes as though he were pretending to be somewhere entirely different. "He's gone mad, Kaoru. You may not see it, but it's there..."

But I did see it. More than that I felt it somehow; Kyo's frantic heartbeat was quaking through my body, conductive within the shadow already braced in my entire being even though it felt as though it came in to me through the air and through the earth under my zori. It kept me still. Silent. But I hoped K?zi knew that I had at least heard his words.

He felt around his lower half for Hitsugi's hand, blindly stroking a finger and opening one eye to look up at the tiny yokai cradling him. I knew then that the nekomata had told me the truth, the evidence not provable upon K?zi's face, but in his mannerisms, the same sort of affectionate gestures...small and hidden...that I was used to interpreting from Kyo.

Hitsugi concentrated on his breathing, on the mismatched eyes below him, knowing, yet not accepting that he didn't have the strength it would have taken to suppress the blonde. And still, in the moments I kept watch on his face, he found no expression to wear on it's surface that suggested he had lit upon any alternative. It was unfortunate. stressing...because I knew that Kyo needed to lose this fight to have any chance at winning ever again. Yet as his retainer, as his lover, as my preconditioned heart warned me so emphatically, I must intervene. Without a choice or thought I would take upon myself whatever damage the little yokai could give before I ever let him touch the thing I worshiped the most.

Just as Kyo had always asked of me, the only hands I would let him fall under would have been my own and no other.

After a long moment suffering underneath Kyo's disastrous smirk the cat launched himself forward and I prayed that he was quick enough at least to avoid Kyo's sword and that Kyo was out of his mind enough to not think to use his voice. But, as they always did, all my hopes came crashing down when I realized the smug look on Kyo's face was a sign of comprehension, he knew what the nekomata was trying to attempt and I felt my knees creak as I forced them down and back, heading toward the both of them as Kyo picked up his sword again and swung it sideways at Hitsugi.

From it's placement I think he had been intending to simply smack him with the broadside of it as a warning but before it made contact I had managed to somehow move fast enough to step between the two and catch the blade in my left hand, the sharp edge digging into my palm.

Hitsugi fell sideways, having not been able to stop himself before he slammed into my back, whimpering as he tumbled into the grass. Kyo and I were nose to nose, both seething, mutely dueling for ascendency. I could tell from his quick twitches that he wanted to yank his sword back and shred my palm apart, but something in the back of his mind was keeping him from giving in.

"Why must you always interfere? This is my house! If I want to bleed that whore and his pet out on my steps I will! And you'll watch and clear them away from my sight when I am done!"

"I won't."
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May All Be Pain or Love