It's been years since I've set foot in this city. Which is strange because at one point in my life I didn't think that I'd ever leave it. I had everything here; what was left of my family, close childhood friends, those who came later but grew to mean the world of me. Sixteen years of happy memories. But here was also where I ended up losing everything, where we all lost everything. When it ended there was nothing left but charred memories and deep wounds which still scar to this day. Throughout it all I never thought that he could be capable of some thing like that; my oldest friend. He became the symbol of hope for so many people, of escape; they would have willingly laid their lives down for him. And so many did.

It's a cool evening and I pull the collar of my coat closer to my neck. I'm not worried about being recognised, too many year have passed and we were nothing but kids then. I was coming up to my seventeenth birthday when I left this place, and so much has changed, in the city as well as my looks. I'm a little taller, my dark blonde hair is shorter and I have dirty blonde stubble on my cheeks. I used to have a sweet face, but there is barely any of that left, not with the ageing of the horrors I faced. Many have told me that I'm handsome, but I don't see that. All I see when I look in the mirror is a man I barely recognise, so much pain in his blue eyes, age on my face which makes me look older than the twenty two years I am. Other than that, I have another reason to not fear detection. I was always the one that went unnoticed, who ended up stood in the back, a mere shadow of a man, always in his shadow. But he knew I was there, and when my true skill, my true road started to show he was the first to encourage me to fulfil it all. I know the saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but I never doubted that he pushed me as anything other than a friend. I wasn't, I was a threat, a powerful threat. I should have seen it sooner, it happened before with those we defeated, Sora and Nike and all the corruption of power. How naïve we were to think it wouldn't happen again, that we could rewrite history.

A couple of laughing kids rush past me on AT's, swirling up leaves of discarded newspaper and litter as they pass. I remember that thrill, that freedom, that laughter and friendship, it was there when I put on my first set of AT's, when we fought side by side and drew more people to us, created friendships I thought nothing could ever break. But we were all under his wing, supporting him to become the one person we needed him to be, the one person in the end he just couldn't become. Who could have known that the path we would have ridden when we decided to innocently slip on that first pair was one straight to hell? I shake my head, it does me no good to think of that now. I'm here for a reason, and that reason it to observe, to see how I can atone. I was too weak when I was needed to be strong. The story of my life. I denied it all to the last, stood defiant at his side until everything lay in tatters around me. And then battered and bruised I ran.

There is a commotion down the street, and looking behind me I see what it is that has people running for their homes, for the nearest shop to claim safety. It's a gang of storm riders, and by the uniform I know that they are minions of the storm king, barbaric and lawless. This is why I am here, this kind of thing can't go on, these people shouldn't have to live in fear. Pulling into the shadow of an alleyway I watch them pass me, progress down the streets, attacking anyone who didn't manage to scrabble to safety. How is this the action of a king? These people are innocent. Yet I know why, this a reminder of his dominance, almost threatening anyone to challenge him on his throne of corpses, the bodies and souls of all those who have tried to take him down. The new teams are weak, and after that terrible battle the current Kings are all scattered to the winds, just ashes and whispers.

Following their progress I see them approach a kid on the opposite side of the road to me. He isn't wearing AT's, just a pair of beat up sneakers. His back to me he looks to be a teenager, of average height and slender build, lank raven blue hair shaggily cut, obscuring his face. Each thin arm holds a full sleeve of ink and he looks so vulnerable in simple white t-shirt and skinny jeans. Headphones are clamped over his ears, probably blocking out all the sounds of the street. He has no idea what's going to happen, what threat is behind him. Everything cries out for me to help this kid, warn him, save him. But I'm not that person anymore. It's not time for me to get involved. I can only stand and watch in sadness as they get close, the first rider raising a baseball bat ready to hit. It doesn't connect, the kid kicking backwards surely as though he sensed them coming. It's a vicious blow right to the chest and with the riders momentum and the force of the kick I hear his ribs smash.

'What the fuck? That's it you little brat!' Another yells, only for the kid to jump up, using the wall as leverage to get both height and speed into his next kick, right into the face of this second rider, a perfect placement which smashes his nose into his skull. As the kid continues to fight I feel my heart stop, senses so alive as I watch him with an almost analytical intensity. I've seen such a brutality before, only that was encased in a weaker body, that of a small, fragile boy with all the will and motivation in the world. I want to see his face, assure myself that I'm once again mistaken. I've seen his face in so many others since I left. It can't be him this time... The riders are all down on the ground, dead or severely wounded in a matter of seconds. The youth stuffs his hands into his jeans pockets, leaning back on his heels nonchalantly before turning to look straight at me.

'You coming wuss, or do you want to fight their reinforcements?'

Beneath the hair is the same face, slightly thinner but with the same feminine cheekbones, it's the same shark's eye resting on me, cool and calculating, the other still covered with a patch, although this is black one, not the white one he used to wear. I don't hesitate, stepping out of the shadows and walking across the street to him.

'How did you know?' I ask, had thought that I had done a good job of covering my tracks, of fading into the background.

'I heard you coming a mile away, you think these senses would dull?'

'I should have figured, how long have you been back for?' I ask, knowing that he left for a while too.

He looks behind me, to the people starting to venture back out onto the streets, casting interested glances over to us. His hand is around my wrist in an instant, pulling me into the closest alleyway, navigating these backstreets with surety. Just stepping foot back onto them and I feel at home, although know them more from the rooftop. I let him lead me into an apartment block, and I know that some would say that I am too trusting after everything that has already happened in my life. But this is him, and even to this day I would trust him with my life, with anything that was dear to me.

Into the apartment he locks and double bolts the door before dropping the keys onto the table next to it. It's a small apartment I see, one room which has bed, dining table and kitchen, although a separate bathroom. It's all but bare, the only sign that someone lives here the rumpled bedsheets and the AT part 'windchime' hanging next to the window, something he's had since I've known him. He turns to me and I can't contain myself any longer, fingers itching to touch him, to convince myself that this is real. Pulling him into a hug I feel him tense, stiff in my arms like he doesn't know what to do. It lasts only a moment before he lets his arm slip around me, resting in the small of my back. He feels so different. Before we parted we were teenagers, and the boy I held in my arms was unusually small, delicate in ways he wouldn't want anyone to know. Yes he's still smaller than me, and still impossibly slender, but I feel so much strength in him, a lean, muscular build, broader in the shoulders. I don't know what to say to him, the hug alone showing me how much time has passed, how different things are now. What can I say to him after all that has happened? I sigh, let my chin rest on his shoulder. I came here to stop running away, to make up for everything that I did wrong, everyone I wronged. I have to start somewhere, and if he hadn't wanted to talk to me he could have followed me for miles and I'd have never known he was there.

'I missed you Agito.'

His hand tightens on my side, an almost clinging hold which last a few seconds before going back to simply resting there. Does he even notice?

'It has been too long Kazu.'

Pulling apart we stand there awkwardly, eyeing the other, taking in every little difference from teenager to adult.

'You look so different I barely recognised you,' I admit, letting my eyes run over his face again, the face that still holds so much youth. Then again, he has always held his age in his eyes, having gone through so much before I even met him.

'Yeah, looks like I finally got that growth spurt you all used to joke about behind my back.' He utters, only a slight tilt to one side of his mouth. Before all of this he used to smile. We taught him to smile, in something other than blood-lust. Did we take it away from him as well? 'If it weren't for the way you walk I probably wouldn't have recognised you either without that beanie you insisted on practically living in.'

'Well, I thought that might give the game away if I came home wearing it,' I smirk, trying my hardest to act normal but still feeling awkward. How can he just stand here and talk to me? I thought if I ever saw him again he'd send me to hell. I ran away, walked out and left him to fight alone... I was such a coward, so pathetic and weak. I left so much up to others, always, but it was different between us. I loved him, both of them. He gave me so much of himself and I just left, without so much as a goodbye kiss.

'Agito I'm..'

'Sorry?' He interrupts, moving back and leaning against a table, hands and ass resting on it. He doesn't break eye contact with me, and there is no malice in it, none of the anger I was so used to. 'I know, and sure it hurt. But we were all to blame for it all and I understand why you left, why you couldn't face it, him. What's the point of being angry at other people when he's the one to blame, who engineered it all. The Storm King stands to answer for it all.'

He can't say his name and I don't blame him. If anything he had more faith in him than the rest of us, risked so much to go with him in the first place. He gave so much of himself to help him to those heights and he was betrayed. I can't say it either, his name not having passed my lips for years. That man, he's the Storm King, not my friend, not the boy I grew up with. He doesn't deserve his name.

'Where did you go?' He asks, turning the conversation, 'I looked for you after you ran, although obviously I couldn't find you.'

He looked for me! Guilt floods me again. I was such a fool. I thought he'd never want to see me again for being such a coward.

'To Russia, then through Europe. I was living in England when I saw what was happening in the news. I couldn't hide any longer.'

'And what do you plan to do?'

'See with my own eyes, figure out what needs to be done to stop him. If it comes to fighting then so be it. I ran from battle before, I won't do it again.'

This answer seems to satisfy him and he pushes off the table, moving to the fridge.

'Do you want a drink or something?' he asks as he pulls it open, surveying the contents, 'I got soda or beer.'

'I think a beer,' I reply, wishing that he had something stronger to help get me through this.

He takes two out and hits the caps off with his palm against the counter top before moving to sit on his bed, back against the wall. Offering the other out to me I get that he wants me to sit next to him, and I guess this is his sofa as well as bed with so little space for furniture. He takes a sip before staring at the wall, ceasing all movement, and I recognise this as him having a conversation with himself. My heart flutters. Akito? I bite my lip, wonder if this isn't a conversation but more of an internal battle. I heard that the Storm King took off from Sora, desperate for the power of the first brain child. Did Lind win out? Was that promise broken, the one where Agito made him swear to end him if Lind took their body. My fingers tingle as his hand reaches up to the patch.

The eye that greets me is the same soft, beautiful golden brown of Akito, although I feel harrowed with the amount of age in them, a pained wisdom.

'Akito, I... I missed you too.' I offer, nearly choking on emotion.

He doesn't hesitate, such softness as he pushes himself close to me, holding me tight, his head in the curve of my neck. It's strange how different this body can feel depending on who is controlling it.

'Kazu, how have you been? How did you manage on your own? What have you seen all these years?' He pauses a moment and he tuts. 'I'm not overwhelming him, I'm just... it's been so long.' Those last words aren't directed at me, and I smile despite myself, feeling so much like old times I could close my eyes and happily get lost in the sensation of holding him close. This is my bed back at my sisters, and this is just another night of lying in bed with him. He was my first, well, they were my first, and the only people I have ever loved in my life. There have been affairs since, the odd sexual encounter, but there has never been any deep feeling of anything other than self loathing. Every day I thought about him, wondered if he was still alive, if he was still himselves, or if Lind had taken all the beauty and strength out of him.

'I've done okay, at first it was hard to make a living, but having worked in construction in highscool I had some skills they wanted. The language barriers were worst, you know how bad my English was.' I swallow my beer, it tastes bitter in my mouth. 'How about you?'

He gets up, like he's ignored the question, going to the fridge and taking out a soda, moving back to the bed and drawing his knees up to his chest, opening the can. Akito never did like bitter things.

'How much do you know of what happened after you left?' he asks, looking to his feet.

'Not much, Bucca was dead before I left and I heard that Onigiri died in the hospital after. Other than that only gossip and the Sky King's tales he spread himself.'

'I fought, we fought, there was no-one else left. Sleeping forest were already hospitalized and he'd made sure we'd incapacitated any remainders of genesis before he ascended. We fought with everything we had, he targeted Yayoi when we were already on the ground and there was nothing... I thought I was going to die, and I would have done if Lind hadn't...' he bites his lip, and there are tears in his eye, so expressive, so different from Agito's poker face. 'But Lind didn't care about anyone else, there was nearly a victory, Lind came so close to breaking the Sky King, fangs and thorns... but we needed numbers. There were hundreds of his followers, those he had convinced to fight by his side with the lies we helped feed them. There were too many, always more no matter what Lind did. We only survived because of Akira, a last ditch attempt at a rescue which he pulled off killing too many G-men soldiers.' He takes a shuddery breath. 'We were in a coma for three years, fighting Lind, trapped inside in a battle for this body. I...'

His hand reaches up in reflex and I'm greeted with the return of the gruffer voice.

'It nearly killed us, I thought he was going to win or we'd break the body trying. It was a bloody battle we only just won. But we did, assimilated all of his power, his memories, his being into us. I don't think he understood just how powerful love could be. I wasn't going to let him take Akito and Akito wasn't going to let him take me. Two fang kings against the first of the torn, it was too much even for him when we were no longer constrained by physical weakness.' His jaw tenses, and he stares out, hard as they relive the horror and the victory. 'When we came to Kaito was dead and Akira was a shell of the man he used to be. Like the rest of us he'd been given wings and had them ripped away. He'd spent the whole time locked away in that medical bay with me and if it weren't for him I wouldn't be as strong as I am now, taking the time to exercise my limbs so they didn't atrophy. He said it was because he knew he didn't have the ability to take the Sky King on, his nerve broken, but that he had faith that we could... that we could...' He takes a sip of the beer. 'I left as soon as I was strong enough to walk. I couldn't let myself fall into that cage again, that familiar safety. I'd never be able to do anything like that, no matter of who taught me the importance of it in the first place.'

'I... I had no idea. I'm sorry.' I say, completely shocked at the story. Filled with even more guilt at having left him behind.

'There's no need to be sorry, there was nothing you could have done, not against Lind. He would have killed you too in that battle against the Sky King, friendship, love and loyalty meant nothing to him.' He sighs, taking another drink of the beer. 'But he's gone now, thank fuck. It's one less thing to worry about.'

'You've been here all this time?' I ask, tentatively.

'No, I too went as far away as I could. I went to India, sent for Akira and left him there in a buddhist temple. They have no need for fighting, and he had done as much of it as he could in his lifetime.' I hear it in his voice, the regret. We've hurt so many people, although rarely by choice, more in circumstance. 'I came back a year ago, travelled through Japan to see the extent of his reach. Too many believed him at first, and those that now fight had been denied the aspirations of the kings' roads. He sees power in anyone and has them crushed before they have a chance to become a king.' He shakes his head, nearly baring his teeth in disgust. 'It makes me fucking sick, to think that we fought by his side... that we were so fucking stupid.'

I put my hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him, but glad to see some of the same anger, the same language. It makes me think that there is some left of the Agito I knew all those years ago. Although it's not much.

'We were stupid, but we have a chance to fix it. What happened to sleeping forest?'

'The butch one can't ride, broke her spine and is paralyzed from the waist down. The little one didn't survive, her body too small to take any of the punishment, and her will weaker than mine was. Ringo... when she regained consciousness and saw what happened to her sisters she blamed herself. She lives in a small monastery in the mountains the last I heard.'

'Others?' I ask, know that it's probably a useless question. So many of our friends are dead.

'None worth mentioning, none who would be able to help us against him. Most hung up their AT's, especially the less powerful.' He looks to me now, fixing me with that penetrating gaze. 'Did you.. I mean, have you stopped riding?'

'I did at first, after I ran the first time. But... I knew this day would come.' I put my bag down, take out the bundle wrapped in a tattered blanket, the one I took from Agito's bed all those years ago. Unknotting it I pull the material away, show the contents, new AT's to keep up with technology but the same regalia. Agito reaches forward, running his hand over them, they seem to glimmer, as though they sense the power of another king. 'The flame regalia, you kept them.'

I nod.

'There was too much sacrificed in giving them to me in the first place, how could I ever give them up?' I think of Spitfire and Aeon, and all they did to help me on my road, their lives the ultimate price. He moves back, standing and walking to the wall, where be pulls out a couple of bricks and reaches back for a box there. He comes back to sit on the bed, and as he opens the box on his lap I see the same old AT's, the ones which had caused me to shudder when I'd first looked on them; the fanged wheels and the fang regalia.

'I never stopped, how could I when it was all I ever knew how to do, all I was created to do?' He picks one up, holding it up the the light and I am struck by the sharpness. The fang regalia looks it's name sake. 'This was once all I sought, all I thought I needed. So much has changed since those times and now I know they will be nothing but the weapon they were designed to be.'

'It's changed for all of us.'

'I know,' he sighs, putting them back into the box and closing the lid, placing them to one side. 'With you too it seems. It feels like a lifetime since...'

'Since what?' I ask as he stands, taking both my AT's and his, putting them into the wall, his back to me.

'Since anyone other than Akito loved me.'

'Agito I...'

'I know,' he says, still facing the wall, 'this isn't the time or the place, you've probably got someone else by now, moved on. It makes sense that you have with all this time between us. I told Akito we couldn't hope for more.'

I don't like this, this almost jaded, defeated attitude. This isn't the man I knew, the one who would fight until he couldn't stand a moment longer, who had so much spirit and determination. He has been crushed, all his hopes pissed on. Years ago he wouldn't have shown any weakness to me, wouldn't have put his emotions out there on the table. Does he feel like there's nothing left to lose? Is there any of that stubborn pride left? He's so broken. And I did nothing to stop it, nothing to help. Not this time, this time everything will be different. Striding over I turn him to me, see confusion in his eyes at the almost violent insistence of my actions. I was never the forward one. I don't hesitate, done with hiding, done with being the one to wait for others. I join my lips to his.

He breathes in, but doesn't push me away. Instead he leans into me, arms sliding up around my neck, pulling me down to him. The desire almost overwhelms me and I push him back into the wall, our bodies flush. I want him, and this time apart has only reinforced this need.

'I thought of you every single day, thought it was all too late, that you would turn away from me if I were to ever find you again.' I mutter, moving my lips from his to his neck, tasting the skin, feeling him squirm.

'Never,' he gasps, letting my mouth work, head falling back. 'You were all outside of this body I had left to love.'

'May I?' I ask, lifting my hand.

He nods and I let my hand rest over the eyepatch, slipping it up, over his head and away. The other eye focuses and a smile forms on his lips. I kiss them, those delicious lips, both of them. It's been too long... I should never have run from this.