Disclaimer: I don't own Beyblade or any of its characters, merchandise, TV rights, ect… (I think you get the point.) Do however own Alexi, so paws off if you don't mind.

Summery

ONESHOT - Simple acts, a decision made in the heat of the moment. But years on you can come to realise the far-reaching consequences of what you did. (Kai/Ming-Ming)

Like all of my work this is just something that happened to float through the empty void inside my head. Like it or hate it please R and R as honest opinions are always welcomed, as are random acts of worship.

Lamb: All I can really say is sorry that it's been so long since I posted anything for Kai/Mimi, I guess I'm just fickle giving my love to another pairing so easily. But these two will always be my favourite in the Beyblade fandom.

Muse: Why did you have to give a speech? It's bad enough you're writing this crap never mind giving long-winded explanations as to why you haven't been.

Dedi: It's so nice to have them bickering again, isn't it? This fic is dedicated to Iluvbeyblade, the best beta reader Lamb could have. No one else could cope with her. So Iluvbeyblade, this is for you.

Lamb: As always sorry for any bad spelling and if you feel the need to throw things at me please wait until I've hidden behind the sofa kay!?

Muse: On with the fic!

If only I could turn back time,
If only I had saved what I still had,
If only I could turn back time,
I would stay for the night, for the night,

You Never Said

"I don't know you." The voice startled Kai who had thought he was all alone in the main foyer of head quarters of the BBA, and he turned swiftly to come face to face with … nothing. "Down here, silly."

A small girl of around seven with pale skin was staring quizzically up at him through a pair of impossibly large smoky grey eyes. Very similar to his, since he had long ago given up wearing coloured contact lenses. Small hands were resting where - doubtful though it was, looking at her stick like figure - in years to come her hips would be, her head tilted to the side like some small bird.

"I said, I don't know you." There was a note of accusation in her voice, as if he had turned up just to annoy her with his unfamiliarity.

"No, you don't," Kai agreed, wondering whether to ask what her parents would think of her talking to strangers, but thinking better of it, settled for, "But why should you?"

"I know all the other beybladers." The child paused, and tilted her head to the other side, obviously, thinking hard about something. "Well most of them. But even the ones I don't know I still know who they are."

Oh the joys of a child's logic, Kai thought, as she continued to look at him owlishly her hair, azure streaked with navy, forming curtains to her small face. "If you don't know me, how d'you know I'm a blader?"

"What else would you be? Everyone here is a beyblader, they're all coming for the party thing. Or that's what my Mama says." Her look said that if Kai dared to say that her Mama was wrong then she might just have to kick his shins.

"How old are you?" Grey eyes narrowed, as if the question had been some sort of challenge and Kai watched as the girl's stance subtly changed. She pulled her self up, trying to stand taller, and stuck out her chin defensively.

"Nearly eight!" was the defiant reply, which Kai accurately translated to, turned seven about two months ago but is already scouting the next lot of presents.

"Well, your Mama's right. I am a blader and I'm here for the reunion." Not that it was much of a reunion, Kai reflected, most of the teams still lived in each other's pockets. But there were a few people he hadn't seen for a long time and it would be good to catch up, there were also a few he could do without seeing but sometimes you just had to take the good with the bad. "I'm Kai, Kai Hiwatari."

He mentally sighed, as his introduction got no reaction from the girl, she simply took his out stretched hand with her own small paw and shook it solemnly. There had been a time when the mere mention of his name was enough to drive a crowd into a frenzy, but it seemed those days were long gone.

"I'm Alexandra," she started, mimicking Kai's own formal introduction. "Alexandra Matilda P-"

She broke off as, slightly muffled, the sound of someone calling out filled the cool air of the lobby. "Alexi…? Alexi, where are you?"

"Meh, they're looking for me," Alexi said, but gave no indication of who they were exactly. "I should go. See you later Kai."

And with that she was bounding off across the floor, looking like some sort of absurd overgrown rabbit in her white jumper and light blue jeans. "Alexi?" The voice came again and she paused at the bottom of the stairs just long enough to wave before vanishing from his sight.

Well there was no point in delaying any longer; he was here now so he might as well get the initial unpleasantness out of the way. Then, more slowly Kai followed the path the child had taken across the polished floor and started the long climb to the top floor of the building.

-------

"Kai!" The call was an ecstatic greeting and he was no sooner through the door and a small figure had dashed across the floor and was hugging his leg tightly, being too short to reach any higher. One slate brow rose as he looked down at the top of her head. This seemed rather an intense greeting for someone he had last seen five minutes beforehand.

"Hey Alexi," he said, managing to firmly, but not unkindly, disengage her arms from the top of his leg before his circulation went completely AWOL. "Long time no see."

"Don't be silly," she shot him an incredulous look, "I only just saw you downstairs!"

"Yes you did, didn't you?" This time the look said she wasn't impressed at all, and Kai couldn't help but smile. It was why he liked kids, they were never afraid to say what they thought or to let you know when you'd been knocked off the top of their Christmas card list. "But it's good to see you again."

"Really?" A smile practically split her face in two.

"Really, really." Kai agreed throwing back his head and laughing, and from the corner of his eye a flash of vivid red caught his attention. The look Brooklyn was giving him could have killed at fifty paces, and it clearly said there were things he hadn't forgotten and there was no way in hell was about to go forgiving.

"Alexandra Matilda, where are you?" A voice called across from the other side of the room.

"That's my Mama," Alexi said proudly, beaming up at him. "Will you come and meet her?"

There was such a hopeful look in her eyes that Kai could not bear to disappoint her, so he nodded and let her take him by the hand and tug him across the crowded room. People called out greetings and waved at him, and then smiled when they saw his guide. Though in one or two of the smiles he noted a slight look of concern and when Salima chanced to look his way she looked downright shocked.

All the while he could feel Brooklyn's eyes burning into his back.

"Mama!" Suddenly the girl pulled her hand from Kai's and disappeared from sight, slipping in between the trio of Johnny, Matilda and Tala. All of turned to face Kai, the girl smiling warmly if a little nervously, the former barely managing to hide his disdain and the later remaining stony faced.

"Hey, bèbè, I was wondering where you'd got to." The voice was familiar, and Kai felt his mind racing as he tried to place it. Tension was filling the air, but for the life of him he couldn't work out why.

"I was off making friends," came the bubbly response as she appeared tugging someone along behind her as she had so recently been tugged him along. "And I want you to meet one of them. Mama this is Kai. Kai this is my Mama."

There should have been something to mark the momentous occasion, Kai felt. A flash of lightning and the accompanying roll of thunder. All conversation to fade and a deep silence to fill the room. There should have something more than just Ming-Ming Pellow's warm smile turning into an icy frozen mask as she looked at him for the first time in over seven years.

"Hey Min, long time no see." It was a stupid thing to say, but his mind was complete blank except for the greeting he had used only moments before to her daughter. Her daughter, fuck!

It was incomprehensible, that Ming-Ming could have a seven-year-old child. But looking at the pair standing together, a blind man could have seen the similarities between them. The shape of the face, with its small neat features and large eyes. The mass of bright azure hair that both had.

"Yes, a very long time." Ming-Ming could see his steal grey eyes flickering from her to Alexi and back again and something in her gut clenched. All the signs were there if he looked hard enough, but for over seven years it had just bee the two of them and she didn't want to have someone walk in and ruin both of their lives. Certainly not someone who had already smashed her world apart once before.

"Hey! D'you already know each another?" the girl demanded pushing navy strands out of her face and looking up at the pair enquiringly.

"You could say that." Kai said smiling down at Alexi, her expression one of deep irritation because her new friend already knew her mother and therefor she was robbed of the chance to do the introduction.

"Bèbè, go and find Sal, Ok? We," Ming-Ming's eyes flitted over Kai and her expression hardened, "need to talk."

"No! I wanna stay here!" Her arms folded across her small chest, her chin jutted out aggressively and grey eyes turned stormy and cold as she tried to glare a hole though her mother.

Click, click. The sound of pieces of a puzzle slotting into place filled Kai's head. There was something so familiar about the girl's stance and expression, but they were not characteristics he had ever associated with her mother. As he watched, Ming-Ming did a personality 180 and begged her child to go and keep and eye on Salima who she was sure was up to something. Curiosity piqued, Alexi bounced off in search of her redheaded godmother leaving the two bluenettes alone.

The moment the girl was out of sight, Kai seized hold of the young woman's arm and almost dragged her from the room, so blinded by fury that he failed to see the apprehensive looks of those they passed. Brooklyn made to come after the pair but Ming-Ming waved him back just as she was propelled through the door.

"She's mine, isn't she?" Kai snarled, rounding on the honey eyed female as soon as the door had shut behind them. It wasn't a question despite being thinly phrased as such, but a statement and Ming-Ming pulled her arm free of his grip before answering.

"Wrong! She's mine, but I suppose that yes, you could say she was yours. Biologically at any rate." There was nothing warm or friendly about the smile that was twisting lightly glossed lips. On the contrary she looked as if she was getting some sadistic pleasure out of seeing him so shaken while she leaned casually against the wall.

"Why didn't you tell me?" His voice was a low hiss, more dangerous and deadly than any roar of rage could have been but Ming-Ming looked on unconcerned.

"How? Telepathy?" The smile turned into a sneer of derision. "Oh I did try and tell you, Kai. But most of the time you never picked up the phone and when you did you hung up as soon as you knew it was me. So what was I meant to do? Huh? Send a message by carrier pigeon? You didn't even want to know me."

The fire in his eyes died as swiftly as it had burst into life. All those times when he had hung up the phone when he recognised the voice on the other end of the line to be Ming-Ming's. She had tried to tell him, time and again, but he had been too wrapped up in his own problems to pay attention.

Even by his own standards he had treated her badly. Kai had chased her relentlessly, determined to have her for his own. She was the little spitfire who didn't want anything to do with him or anyone else, the girl who wanted so badly to make it on her own. She was a challenge that he refused to be defeated by. So he had done everything in his power to catch her but once he had got her, the thrill seemed to fade. It had always been the hunt that thrilled him the most, the prise at the end meaning little.

In public he was dismissive of her, treating her with little more than contempt, yet expecting her to come whenever he clicked his fingers. It was not a position that the pop star was really compatible with, it was not in her nature to be subservient to anyone or anything and it was a given that it would only be so long before she snapped. Their trying three-month relationship had come to an end when Ming-Ming had found him, unrepentant, in bed with someone else.

And just like that his world had fallen in to pieces before his eyes. In just the twelve months since the end of the BEGA association the female bladers had gone for thinking of Ming-Ming as the super bitch who had be defeated at all coasts, to her being their baby who would be protected no matter what. In Kai's more self-indulgent moments he had thought both Tyson and Rei whipped, for siding with their respective girlfriends rather than with him. But in truth he knew it was because this time he was squarely in the wrong.

Almost immediately, twenty-four hours to be exact, Ming-Ming had headed for Paris and her cousin, Oliver, Brooklyn hot on her heels swearing blue murder. The pair had left behind two teams that were rapidly falling apart at the seams. G-Rev and the team formally known as BEGA were all living in a compound under the coaching of Hiro Granger. Crusher, thankfully had been staying with his sister who was just out of hospital, if he had not been he would in probability ripped Kai limb from limb. Garland had settled for breaking his nose and cracking three of his ribs before he was dragged away from the semiconscious Russian.

Max and Mystel had avoided him like the plague. Kenny started to effectively live in his room, rarely coming out even for meals. Rei tried his best to keep things going, but at times when he thought no one was watching, Kai could see the disgust in his best friend's eyes. Tyson and Hilary were spending as much time away from him as they could and whenever they spent too much time together Hilary would end up screaming at him. And Hiro was struggling to keep together two teams that were slowly yet surely self-combusting, while at the same time trying to maintain his fragile relationship with Brooklyn.

But of all of them, it had been the reaction of Daichi that had struck the deepest cord. It had been less than a week since Ming-Ming had run for Europe when the small redhead confronted him. Not that that was the right word. Forest green eyes had been sad and dull as he looked up at his captain. "I used to really look up to you Kai."

That had been more effective than anything that had been screamed at him, knocked more sense into him than any of the broken bones had. He felt physically sick. Kai didn't know why he had treated Ming-Ming so badly, but by the time he realised that more than anything he wanted her back it was too late. When it finally dawned on him that it was the fact that she wouldn't let him walk all over her that made her so attractive the window of opportunity had been slammed shut. By then the phone calls had stopped and no one was prepared to tell him where she was.

It hadn't been not wanting to know her that had kept him from answering her calls, but fear of what she would say to him. But never in a million years would he had guess that she was trying to tell him about his, then unborn, daughter.

"I don't know." His words were only just more than a whisper, as he lifted his head and met her gaze once more. "I tried to find you again, after… after everything, but no one would tell me where you were and you just seemed to vanish."

"Yeah, well I didn't think it would do much for my image if I was seen prancing around on stage at seven months pregnant with no way to explain who the father was." Ming-Ming's look was icy.

It had been one of the hardest decisions of her life to give up singing and drop out of the public eye. Singing had been her life, if possible, even more than blading had been. She only ever used to feel truly alive when she was on stage, performing in front of sold out crowds of screaming fans. But there had been no way she would have put Alexi through the horror that was dealing with the paparazzi. As they said those that lived by the press, died by the press, and that was not the sort of world she had wanted to raise her daughter in.

"No, I can see why it wouldn't. Who… who knew? That I was her father?" Kai wasn't even sure why he wanted to know.

It wasn't as if it would make anything better, knowing who had kept secrets from him, and it wasn't as if he could blame them either. No doubt Ming-Ming had sworn everyone she told to secrecy and at that time they owed far more loyalty to her than to him.

"Who d'you think?" she said raising one perfectly plucked brow at him. "Oliver, naturally, I could hardly just turn up on his doorstep and not explain why. As for the others, Brooklyn, Salima, Hiro, Hilary, and Matilda. I didn't tell Queen or Mariam cus pissed as I was I didn't want them to lower themselves by knocking the shit out of you. Oh and Johnny knows as well which I guess means that Tala knows too, though he's never said anything."

"Johnny!?" His rage was palpable; all the other names, except for perhaps the last one, were the ones he had expected. Maybe not so much Hiro, for as far as he knew Ming-Ming had not been overly close with their coach. But then again, given the relationship that he was in with Brooklyn it would have only been a matter of time before he found out anyway. And it certainly went a long way to explaining the older Granger's cold attitude towards him.

But why that Scottish bastard? "You gave up trying to tell me but you told him!?"

"Johnny's been good to me, a lot better than you ever were." The look he shot her clearly said that by 'good to her' he was thinking 'fucked her' which only caused Ming-Ming to harden her heart even further. "I wanted to be as far away from wherever it was that you were. And when Matti asked him if I could spend some time at his home in Scotland he said that was fine. They were together at that point, and unlike you, Kai, I don't screw people to get what I want."

Words failed Kai as he looked at her gloating face. Yes she was just the same as she had been all those years ago, selfish, arrogant, vain and headstrong, but she was charming with it. There had always been something magnetic about her, she was vivacious and drew people too her. But now there was something else there too, something hard and cold, something that was almost cruel, and for that there was only him to blame.

Ming-Ming gave him one last long look before pushing off of the wall where she'd been leaning and starting to walk back down the corridor.

"Wait!" Kai lunged forward and grabbing hold of her forearm pulled her round so she was forced to look into his face. "Where are you going?"

"Back inside," Ming-Ming snapped, pulling her arm free and casting him a contemptuous glance. "To be with my daughter."

"Does she, does Alexi know who… that I'm her father?" The bluenette stopped, halfway between where Kai was standing and the closed door on the other side of which the party was going on oblivious.

"Alexi knows that her father was a stupid mistake her mother made when she was too naive and foolish to know any better." And then she was walking through the door and Kai was left alone to try and make sense of all that she had said.

Lamb: What can I say? You all had to know that when I came back it would be with something angsty, but I promise there will be some happy endings.

Muse: You're writing more? You haven't tormented us enough already!?

Dedi: Bet you all missed this, did you? Well, Iluvbeyblade, we hope you liked it.

Please R and R I'd love to know what you thought.

Big love and inspiration

Lamanth