Falling
By: Zutto Aishiteru

I open my eyes.and I am there, the place that haunts my nights and plagues me during the day. It is the place that I fear the most. The thick white fog surrounds my legs in the dark, never ending isolated hallway.
The quiet rings in my ears and sends shivers of terror down my spine as I turn at the sound of an eerie voice whispering in the ominous wind.
"So.you've found your way here.I've been waiting for you."
Suddenly I run, trying to escape the eerie voice that has suddenly spoken. Running, I hear the voice again.and it seems familiar; like the one I've grown up with.except harsher.
"You cannot escape me. No one can escape me. You shall die here.with me."
I turn to run again, but I suddenly see a figure emerging from the thick fog. It's him, Toya, standing in front of me with his comforting smile and deep green eyes. As I begin to run to him, the fog suddenly flares up and covers his face. When I draw close enough to touch him, the fog recedes and Toya's face has suddenly changed.
Gasping in horror, I try to turn away from him, he's tried to hurt me once before. His movements are too fast and he catches me before I can even take a step away from him and he whispers into my ear, "Where are you going?"
He grasps my arms as I struggle to get away and he pushes me towards the edge of the cliff that appeared when the fog billowed away. "Do you see your destiny? Hmmm? Do you Ceres?" Whispers my captor in my ear as he edges me closer and closer to the edge.
The sound of falling rocks bouncing off the sharp cliff rings in the wind as it howls throughout the darkness. I beg him to let me go, to let me live, but his only reply is, "So you can go back to him?" With that said I know that he will not let me go, no matter who he is, or who he once was.
"If I can't have you.no one can." He yells this time making me stiffen in fear at the sound of his merciless voice.
"No one can have you." Then a push that was far from gentle sent me off balance. When he stepped back he laughed as my arms failed to grab a hold of something and my legs shook with terror as the ledge beneath me started to crumble and break. With an almost silent gasp.
.I fell.

Jolted awake, I feel myself shaking.shaking like there's no tomorrow. My body is covered in a cold sweat and my breathing is ragged and short lived. Slowly I sit up on a bed that clearly wasn't a hard ravine bottom and glance around. I'm in someone's apartment, sleeping on their bed.
Forgetting where I was, I start to rock myself back and forth and I remember the haunting look of delight on Aki's face as he watched me fall to my death. My death.caused by him, my brother, or the façade that was once the twin I had loved.
The sound of heavy footsteps rang in my ears as someone drew nearer and nearer. They stopped right outside of the door to the dark room I was in and the knob slowly turned as the person attempted to enter. Bracing my self, I wondered if it was Aki coming back to kill me because I was Ceres or if it was because I was Ceres and I had Toya.
The person's silhouette was of a man's and I screamed in terror as he drew nearer. I could not yet see his face but when I screamed I could tell he had been startled.
"Aya? What's wrong?"
It was Toya. I suddenly remembered my nightmare in which Aki had made Toya disappear, as if he had killed him himself. While remembering my nightmare, I began to visible shake again as he came to sit next to me on the bed.
"Aki.tried.killed." My words lost among the shaking of my voice.
Toya just held me and I wondered if Aki would really have tried to kill Toya and me. Aki wasn't himself.he was someone different. He, like my self, was turning into his former self, Mikage, who had caused Ceres to kill him with her own powers due to his greed for power.
Sitting there in the quiet of the dark room, with Toya's arms around me, I felt safe. The nightmare will always come to haunt me at nights, but when I wake.he'll always be there. I may fall within the darkness, but within the light I'm free.

*The characters of Ayashi no Ceres belong to Watase Yuu and publishers. The story idea belongs to me.*

~When it Takes Place~
This story is supposed to take place during the time that Aki is undergoing his transformation into Mikage. Aki's personality disappeared and Mikage has fully taken over his body and he is pursuing Ceres. In the DVD and manga, he constantly says, "You're my woman and no one can have you," to Ceres and he refers to her as "his woman." Possessive aren't we? This is supposed to take place when Toya and Aya have their own apartment (f.y.i. DVD 6).