Author's note: Something to put out while I hit my head against a wall of writer's block.

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Hide and Seek

by Silver Miko

So this was how it was? After all the searching I did...after travelling all over this coutry...this was how it all ends up?

It's such a miserable twist of fate I could almost choke on laughter. Almost. I could look at the sky and keep asking God over and over why?

Where are we? What the hell is going on?

How did we end up like this?

It seems like everyone around me is hanging their heads heavy...that everything is totally lost. I always thought myself as an optomistic person, always looking on the bright side...but right now I just want to crawl into a dark hole until it's all over.

Jiya looks like he was dead. He wasn't, but there was so much blood. All over. I had to wash out my clothes three times over to get it out, it still doesn't feel like it's all out.

Hide and seek. That's what this whole thing felt like in a way. Aoshi-sama and I used to play it when I was a kid, but he made sure not to be too difficult to find. Japan was our playground and he had hid too well. And instead of getting a pat on the head for finding him, I got betrayal and cold words.

It's like oily marks on walls where pleasured moments once were in my memories. There is no laughing now. It's all been taken over by the sweeping insensitivity of those words.

"Get lost. I don't ever want to see your face again."

What?

Was it that he meant well? Well of course he did. It's all for the best. Of course it is. It's just what I need, you decided this. You never did like me being part of this lifestyle.

Aoshi-sama...you always speak no feeling, but I don't believe that you don't care a bit.

So why are you doing this? Why have you betrayed us, me? Is this all some big plot to get to Shishio? No...you would never nearly kill Jiya for something like that. So you're betraying us all and cutting us all out of your life, I guess. For revenge, that's what the others are saying.

I can't make a decision about this. I declared myself Okashira but I can't make this decision. It's too much. I can only declare him an enemy...I don't want to decide what his fate is. I can't. It's too much to ask.

Because even though he's destroying himself and has betrayed us and even though he was so cold and unfeeling to me...I still can't help but have a part of me that holds out that Aoshi-sama will return to us. And everything will be okay. That he's just hiding behind the face of a demon waiting for me to find him.

Hide and seek.