I was reading Chicken Soup for the Soul and generally feeling pretty content when Serge decided to pop into my face and ask when I was going to finish "that one where I was a king and Lynx wanted to kill me." I told him not to bother me, of course, but there's little use telling that to Serge, and what resulted was the promise of a one-shot. So here you are: Reincarnation, or Chicken Soup for the Soul Chrono Cross Style!

Disclaimer: I do not own Chrono Cross, nor Chicken Soup for the Soul, but I own everything else besides and you're going to have to ask me if you want to use the idea of a four-year-old dying. So there. XD

Reincarnation

I ran into her late one night on the street, in the pale light of a guttering streetlamp. I was coming home after a night on the town, mainly to browse the shops and look for bargains. Of course, fresh out of college and recently packed into a cubicle, I wasn't in a position to spend freely. So I was looking for a bus that would take me back to my apartment and muttering in the cold as it pinched my face and turned my nose a bright pink.

At the corner, I caught sight of her as she started for the crosswalk. She was swaying drunkenly on her feet, eyes glazed over, and I realized she was utterly hammered. I knew right away that I wasn't going to get involved. In passing, she tipped up a floppy hat—Australian, was it?—and nodded in my direction. "Evenin', mate."

Inclining my head politely, I moved on. The scanty clothing she was wearing screamed "Slut!" in almost every possible language, and I knew Leena would skin me head to toe and every sensitive place in between if I dared to chance a pass at her. My step quickened as I struggled to control my thoughts to keep them where they belonged. At least she was none of my concern. So I continued home.

She, on the other hand, swaggered into the road and got hit by an oncoming bus.

They weren't the best of terms for a first meeting, but I guess they would have to do. I'm still not sure how in the world she managed to live through a head-on collision, and apparently she wasn't either, since she didn't remember a thing afterwards. I met with her again in the hospital, and she grinned at me through the wires and machines that kept her alive. "Funny how life is," she muttered, and then went into a coma.

Leena wasn't happy about it, but the poor girl didn't seem to have a family or anywhere to stay, so I offered her a place while she recovered. She accepted wholeheartedly, shooting me a wry little smirk with the comment of, "Don't you dare try nothin'," and settled in rather comfortably. I would come home after work to find her there, sharpening a dagger that I found it unnecessary to have or busily whittling or making something. It seemed like she was always making something.

Even after a heated argument, I didn't come up with a name. She insisted that I call her "Kid," even though everything about her body told me she was far beyond that, so I finally relented, figuring it wasn't that important. Kid had it rough—what family she had was gone, and her last house had burned to the ground. She attributed it to someone named "Lynx," which I assumed was a code for a member of the Mafia or something. In spite of this, as well as the trials and tribulations of living on the streets, it seemed like Kid never could stop smiling. Or smirking, more or less. There was a special glow about her that I'd never seen before, as if she'd gone and stolen the stars.

There were problems to begin with. Monetarily, we were pretty much covered, but it was Leena who raised Cain most often. After Kid came to live with me, she started visiting more often than I felt was necessary, and she made sure to stage any kissing while in full view of Kid. Girls have this need to stake their claim on us guys. But when this didn't seem to bother Kid, she moved on to criticism. She'd ask to know when Kid planned on getting a job, and whether she had any income to rely on at all, and why she was mooching off me when I clearly couldn't support her. This erupted into fights and yelling and ordering of one another out of the apartment, which I generally ignored since it was, in fact, my apartment. It ended up that I arranged to meet with Leena on dates and safely away from Kid, and Leena arranged for Kid not to sleep with me under any circumstances. By this point I was morbidly convinced that Leena would electrocute me in uncomfortable places if she thought anything unholy was going on.

She shouldn't have worried. Somehow, I didn't see Kid that way. I saw her as a beautiful person, but I don't think anything would have come of it even if she hadn't kicked the door open one day and strode up to the guest room with a bosomy brunette.

Kid, though, was probably the most extraordinary girl I'd ever met. She'd grown up with nothing, but it hadn't made her bitter. I'd see her on the couch complaining about payments to the less fortunate, and moments later she'd be on the street, handing a home-cooked meal to people that had none. "Listen ta me," she said once to the youngest daughter of a tiny, impoverished family, "ye're gonna grow up and make somethin' of yerself, all right? Go out and do somethin'. Anythin'. Make yer papa proud, ya hear me?"

The child nodded, blue eyes wide. "I'm gonna grow up and be just like you," she said shyly.

For a moment, Kid didn't say anything. Then she reared back with that coarse laugh of hers, shaking her head so that her golden braid swished back and forth. "Nah. You don't wanna be like me," she said in a quiet voice.

It took me a while to put together the pieces, but I eventually found out that Kid had lost someone—someone very important. While she shed her special light on the people around her, her entire purpose seemed bent on a complex notion of revenge. I wasn't sure who this Lynx guy was, or whether she even stood a chance at finding him, but I did everything in my power to keep her away from him.

One evening I came home to find her joyously telling me that she'd found someone who could tell her where Lynx was, and she was going to meet him the next day. In addition to my fear of her dying at his hands, I smelled a trap, so I argued fiercely with her about it. "I'm goin', and that's the bloody end of it!" she said finally, moving toward the door. But I got there first, catching her slender frame in my arms and forcing her away from it. We grappled our way through the living room, knocking a few things off the mantelpiece, and then I managed somehow to get her into a chair. Seizing the bandana from my hair, I used it to tightly bind her wrists behind her. Kid wasn't going anywhere.

She struggled, of course, but I did my best to ignore that and went around to clean up the apartment. The muffled sounds soon gave way to a bout of screaming, which died slowly into sobs that wrenched my heart. Even though I'd already decided that I wasn't going back to speak with her until she'd calmed down, I couldn't help but go to the door. She heard me and looked up, piercing me with a look of such icy hatred that I almost retreated. But then I retaliated just as severely, the two of us locked in a sizzling blue glare. We held for a while, and then she turned hers away to the floor. "Ye're right, mate," she said finally. " 'Course ye're right. Bloody hell."

I nodded once and went back to finish cleaning.

I didn't hear anything else about Lynx after that. Kid slipped into depression, drowning her sorrows in tears and liquor. There wasn't much I could do about it at the time, since Leena was adamant about seeing me practically every day, but I did talk to her when I had the time. A few weeks after our fight, I hesitated on my way to bed. Kid?

"Eh?" she asked in a voice slowed with alcohol.

I love you, I said. I didn't mean it in a romantic sense—it was a different kind of bond. But somehow, we both understood.

There was a silence.

"Yeh. You, too."

Figuring that was the best I was going to get, I went up to bed. The next morning she told me that she had planned to kill herself that night, but something had stopped her. I took her back to the hospital.

We grew closer then, not to the point of romance, but more like siblings or close friends. I took her out to restaurants and the occasional bar, and played chauffeur most of the time, especially since Kid usually managed to get drunk almost anywhere she went. Until that night.

It was just a short drive back to the apartment, so I told Kid she could drive if she promised not to go over the tipsy stage. But she wasn't good at keeping promises, so I sat down with some apprehension as she sang out blatantly off-key and nearly disemboweled herself with the steering wheel. Maybe I should drive, I suggested quickly.

"You promished, Sherge, now," she reminded me in a drunken slur. "Don't be breakin' yer promishe, mate." Hiccuping, she fumbled for the keys.

I started to remind her that she wasn't one to talk, but she was already starting the car, and I figured she probably wouldn't kill us in such a short time. At least, I would be surprised if she did. Or maybe not. It depended.

You'd better buckle up, I told her when I didn't see her doing it.

"Buckle up, fuck up," she mumbled almost incoherently.

Kid, I said sharply. Come on. Put on the seat belt.

She muttered something about me being a dickhead, but I was willing to let that slide when I heard the reassuring click of the restraint.

We started out, and it seemed like she was doing fine. She was slow to register the turns, which made me nervous, but I could see the apartment building now and we were only about a block away.

Kid, you missed that stop sign!

The screech of tires rang out as bright light flashed across my vision, and then there was a nightmarish crunch. By the time I was fully conscious again, there were already police sirens going off in the distance. I turned to look at Kid, and saw her blinking at me owlishly, a trickle of blood running down her forehead. With a startled exclamation, I took her into my arms, searching her quickly for other external injuries. She started to say something, but then fell unconscious. I put a cloth to her forehead and managed to get out of the car to see what had happened.

It turned out that we were the lucky ones. We had somehow escaped any death or serious injury, mainly as a result of wearing seat belts, but the other car had held a mother and her two sons. The infant in the carseat had survived miraculously, but the other one, a young boy of four, had died almost instantly upon impact. Their mother escaped with minimal injury.

I don't really remember much about being sued. I think they must've settled or something. At the time, I was more worried about Kid, who had gone into another coma and didn't seem to be waking up. Once she did, Mom was able to handle the legal matters, and we returned to our apartment with the absence of her license. She didn't complain, though. She woke up with no memory of the accident, but when she found out it was her fault that the little boy was dead, it must have almost broken her. The parting with her license was brief and without tears or pleading.

I found her in the kitchen later that night, her arms wrapped protectively around her legs as she stared vacantly at the fridge. "It's all my fault," she whispered. "Killed a little boy. Coulda killed another one, and all cuz I'm such a drunk idiot…"

Kid—

"It's all my fault! That poor little squirt's never gonna see the light of day again, never talk to his mum about the important stuff, never gonna see his sister again…" She let out a little moan and buried her face in her knees. "I took all that away from him, Serge! I stole his life from him!"

I stopped her hand as she reached for a bottle of alcohol, and she looked with askance into my eyes.

Do you really think you can erase it with this poison? Do you think it'll all just go back to how it was if you drink like this? Because it won't, Kid. It won't do a damn thing.

Her eyes stayed on mine for a few moments, and then went back to the bottle. "Yeah. I know." She seized it and took a swig, setting it back on the table as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "And that's the part that sucks."

I watched with a sigh as she got up from the table and sat in front of the open window, her hair fluttering a bit in the breeze.

The next morning, I couldn't find her. I looked all over the apartment, and finally went out into town, my heart beating fast in my throat. The man at the ice cream parlor had said she got on a bus with a stranger and headed for a spot outside of town. Even though I was afraid of what I might find, I took the next one out there, and I found her.

She was lying on the floor of a small shack, face pale with death and hair stained by the pool of blood. It looked like a clean stab, right through the midsection, and the offending weapon was lying to one side—her own dagger. At first, I wasn't sure what to do. I crossed numbly to a spot next to her face, and ran my fingers tenderly over her hair. But she was already gone.

As I straightened, I caught sight of my reflection in the shattered mirror across from me. From where I was standing, it looked exactly as if I had stabbed her and dropped the dagger just now. I hadn't—I knew I hadn't. But somehow, it was my fault. A faint memory tugged at the edges of my consciousness, and I knew that I had stood here a thousand times before. Each and every time, I was somehow cryptically responsible for her death. Each and every time, she died for me.

I looked down at her, feeling a strange sense of regret. I missed you this time, I said as I walked toward the door. The police would want to know what happened. But, I added, turning took look at her one more time, that won't happen again. We'll see each other next time. And…this time I'll save you.

Dai: Weird, twisted tale, that. I tried to make it make sense and not corniness, but I guess there's enough of both.

Serge: And while you've had fun making me look like a broke idiot, would you mind getting back to the king idea?

Dai: Actually, yes. Very much so.

Serge: …You've been talking like that for too long. You're starting to sound British.

Dai: Tally ho!