I got this idea when I was thinking 'hmm… I wonder where Kobato got those six pieces of wounded heart from?' at the bazaar. So this is my wacky idea on what happened.

It was with quivery, apprehensive hands that Fay opened the letter. He didn't have a letter opener handy so he looped a finger under part of the envelope that hadn't been sealed properly and tore. It was sloppily done, something he would usually abhor, but for some reason he couldn't bring himself to care. All that mattered lie inside that letter.

Quickly he read the letter, skimming over the technical jargon that littered the paper, searching for one very important word, one word that would decide his everything.

He dropped the paper. His hands shook. Tears threatened to fall, but he held them back. He wasn't worth crying for, he knew, after all he'd done. It was his curse, his destiny, but he would not allow it to hurt anyone else.

Stumbling towards his door, nearly blinded by the wetness in his eyes, Fay pulled on his shoes and turned the knob. He took several faltering steps towards his car, finally pushing himself into the driver's seat and pulling his key out of his pocket.

His hands shook so badly that it took him three tries to get the key into the ignition. Carefully, because he did not want to be the bringer of any more death, he pulled out of the driveway and headed down the road to a familiar house.

He took a deep, shivery breath, preparing himself for what he had to do.

Kurogane vainly tried to ignore whoever was knocking on his door like it was the most important thing on Earth. After what seemed like the hundredth knock, Kurogane realized they weren't going to leave him alone like he wanted them to, so he wiped the sweat from his face with a towel and headed toward the door.

He didn't expect to see Fay there. Fay never came to his house in the middle of the day. It was too dangerous for both of them, being who they were: Kurogane, a police detective, and Fay, the son of a Yakuza leader.

Fay lowered his fist, which was raised in preparation to knock again, and spoke so softly Kurogane had to tilt his head to hear.

"Hello Kurogane."

As astonished as Kurogane was by Fay's use of his full, proper, non-mutilated name, what Fay said next shocked him even more.

"I just came by to say that we shouldn't see each other anymore."

Fay wouldn't meet his eyes.

Kurogane grabbed him roughly by the arms. "Is this about your father?" He asked.

Fay didn't answer, only hung his head so that thick blond strands of hair hid his face. All Kurogane could see were his thin, frowning lips and smooth jawline.

"Answer me!" Kurogane demanded, tightening his grip on Fay until the man grimaced in pain and tried to pull away. Kurogane was angry, like he always got when Fay was dishonest with him, from their first interview in the police station to the last time Fay covered for his father. Kurogane had always known they were standing precariously on the edge of what was right and sane, but he had always figured that somehow, someway, they'd make it work because they loved each other.

"It's not that," Fay's voice sounded hollow. He laughed; It sounded as empty as wind echoing through a cave. "I'm bored with you, Kurogane."

He jerked his right arm out of Kurogane's grasp. "At first I thought it would be exciting, running around with a police detective behind my father's back, but you're just not exciting."

Kurogane could feel his heart crumbling under the weight of Fay's words. It felt like there was a ragged piece of glass digging into the muscle, and with each one of Fay's words, it dug deeper and deeper. Kurogane was afraid he'd never be able to pull it out if Fay said too much.

"You're lying," he growled, gritting his teeth. "I don't know why, but you're lying." The just like you used to was left unsaid.

Fay stiffened for a second, but then he relaxed. All the tenseness left him, until his shoulders sagged. Then Fay lifted his head and gave Kurogane a brilliant, fake smile.

"Never smile around me unless you mean it," Kurogane had told him as Fay tied off the gauze he'd wrapped around Kurogane's bleeding bicep.

Fay looked up at him, and the smile dropped off his face. "Okay."

"Get out," Kurogane demanded, pushing Fay away from him harshly. Fay didn't seem to be expecting it, and the usually graceful man fell backwards onto the cement path that led up to Kurogane's door. Kurogane's heart lurched with guilt, but that faded as Fay got to his feet, gave Kurogane one last smile, and left, his scraped and bleeding arm hanging by his side.

I love you, he thought, but he didn't say it. Fay was too far gone.

Kurogane waited until Fay's tiny blue hatchback turned the corner and disappeared before punching his door so hard it fell off its hinges, tearing the frame in half.

"Damn it!" He shouted, ignoring the stinging in his eyes.

The first time they'd ever had sex, it was in the evening at a public park in the back of Fay's tiny blue car. They'd been looking for something, neither of them could quite remember what, when the door slammed shut behind Kurogane, forcing them even closer to each other.

Kurogane had been irritated, Fay had laughed, a genuine, amused laugh, and then their eyes had met, and no force could have stopped them from going at it like starved hyenas upon a banquet of flesh.

It had been a tight squeeze, since neither Kurogane nor Fay was the smallest individual, but Kurogane was horny and Fay was flexible and willing to compromise.

Afterwards, when they were lying half on the car seat and half on the floor, their limbs tangled together, and neither or them with any idea what might happen if a park ranger came by, Fay had run his hands over Kurogane's muscular chest and tucked his head into the crook of Kurogane's shoulder.

For once in his life, Kurogane hadn't complained about the closeness, only pulled Fay closer, wrapping a strong arm around his waist. Kurogane had never felt so loved; neither had Fay.

Kurogane growled as he pounded the new door frame into place with his trusty hammer. Damn idiot, always lying and running behind Kurogane's back. He should have listened when his partner, Souma, one of the select few who knew about his relationship with Fay, said that nothing good could come of it.

He'd trusted Fay. At first he had thought the man was a lying idiot, but slowly their relationship had changed. He'd gotten a glimpse of the world Fay had been pulled into, the world of drugs and killing and abuse, and became determined to pull him out, where he was safe. It didn't help that he had run into the idiot everywhere; it was like fate had decided to tie the two together so that could could watch their misery and laugh.

And then there were the smiles, and the pain, and the lies. It hadn't been easy, but they'd survived two years by clinging to each other as if there was nothing else—sometimes Kurogane wasn't sure there was. And then Fay had to go and do this.

Kurogane knew Fay wasn't bored with him. He could tell from the set of Fay's jaw, from the look in his eyes, from the tilt of his smile. Still, Fay had lied to him, after they promised each other they'd never lie again. Kurogane had worked so hard to trust Fay, but it seemed he'd been mistaken. His mother once told him you can never truly trust someone who doesn't trust himself.

And Fay trusted himself about as much as one trusts a stranger in a back alley.

The last time Fay had lied to Kurogane, it had nearly cost both of them their lives. He'd told the detective that his father's friends, fellow Yakuza members, were nowhere to found, when in reality they were staying in his apartment, drinking sake and laughing about their conquests.

On the second day of their stay, Fay had stumbled into a conversation he was never meant to hear. They were planning to overthrow Ashura. Everyone was sick of him and his rules, and how he treated everyone like they were lesser beings.

Fay, standing in the hallway clutching a fresh load of towels to his chest like a shield, might have gotten away in order to call his adopted father, but his creaky floor boards sold him out and captured the gang members' attention.

Fay was a good fighter, a great fighter actually, and by the time the last two members had gotten to their feet, Fay had already knocked their associate unconscious. Still, no matter how well you fight, when you're staring down the barrel of a gun held by a trained killer, your strength tends to leave you fairly quickly.

Fay didn't know what would've happened to him if Kurogane hadn't appeared at that very moment, as if he'd had some sort of eerie power that notified him whenever Fay needed him. Kurogane had distracted the men long enough for Fay to knock the gun out of one's hand.

Kurogane dealt with the other member, and everything seemed fine. Neither of them counted on the third man regaining consciousness and grabbing a fallen gun.

The next thing Fay knew there was an earsplitting bang, Kurogane was clutching his arm in pain, and he was seeing red.

Gun or not, the poor Yakuza member never stood a chance.

Fay glared at his freshly bandaged arm. It had been six days since he'd fallen. His arm still hadn't healed.

Fay wondered if it ever would, and decided he didn't much care. He felt like he was an observer watching a stranger who happened to share his body struggle through life. Emotionlessly, he pulled his sleeve down to hide the injury.

Presently, he merely strolled down the street, looking for something to interrupt the dull pattern of his life, the empty pit of nothingness which had swallowed him the day he'd walked away from Kurogane's house. His heart twisted and broke at the thought. He. Had. Left. Kurogane. Somehow, he'd always imagined it would be the other way, that Kurogane would wake up one morning and decide the blond wasn't worth the time he'd given him, and then it would be over.

"Please!" Fay stopped when he heard the voice of a young woman. She was a pretty little thing with long, layered hair and a fashionable hat on her head. In her purse she carried a blue plush dog. "Please come to our bazaar!"

The girl waved her hands around frantically, but most people ignored her and walked on by.

"Fay!" The little boy yelled. "Fay! Someone Help him!" But nobody paid attention to his screams; they all just passed by hurriedly. Fay was bleeding, and it wouldn't stop, and the little boy didn't know what to do except scream.

Nobody ever stopped.

"Hello," Fay smiled in the girl's direction. "You were saying something about a bazaar. Where might it be?"

"Oh! The girl smiled. "It's at Yomogi Nursery School."

Fay tilted his head to the side curiously. "I've never been to Yomogi Nursery School."

"Really?" the girl asked, as if she was in shock that any person could have lived their life without knowing the nursery's location. "I'll show you the way then!"

She reached out to grab his left arm and pull him along, but as soon as she touched him Fay let out a hiss of pain. The arm he had fallen on still throbbed.

"Oh! I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" The girl asked, jerking her hand back.

Fay nodded, pale and shaky. "I'm fine." He had to be fine. This was just the beginning. It would get worst and worst, and if he could not handle the suffering now, he wouldn't be able to handle it later. It would, Fay knew, be much easier with someone by his side, but he couldn't put anyone through his pain. He'd watched someone die once, and he knew that it was much, much easier to go through pain yourself than it was to watch somebody you loved suffer.

Kurogane…

Fay knew he had hurt him, badly, but not irreparably. Kurogane was not broken like him. He was not weak; he would recover. Maybe one day a pretty girl in a yellow sun dress would knock on his door and it would be love at first sight. Fay did not know, but he did know that Kurogane had a protective streak a mile wide and that, despite his gruffness, he was kind, and that if the people around him hurt, he hurt.

Fay had thought, in the beginning, that a dalliance with a police officer would be frivolous, that it would pass and neither of them would find any substance in the other, and that would be that. He had drawn lines: I will not kiss him. I will not sleep with him. I will not love him. He had crossed every one, destroyed every border between the two of them. This was his final attempt to save Kurogane from their union.

Fay grinned at the girl, who was watching him with wide, lovely eyes.

"You remind me of somebody I know," she told him. "He smiles a lot too, even though I think he doesn't want to. I don't really like him much though!"

The girl slammed a hand over her mouth so quickly Fay was surprised she didn't knock a few teeth out in the process. Fay could have sworn he heard some sort of monster whisper 'Dobato!' but he didn't see anyone suspicious around.

"I like you though. I think you're a nice person!" She smiled at him, and it was unlike any smile Fay had ever seen on his own face. It lit up her face, like someone had shined a heavenly light down, and it made Fay's heart warm.

"Thank you," Fay whispered. His eyes felt hot, though he didn't know why. He hadn't cried in years; not since his brother had died.

He allowed the girl to lead him down the street to the nursery, making wild turns that Fay didn't really pay attention to.

"I'm sorry, mister," the girl bowed once they were standing outside the humble building, "but I have to go now."

She left him, but the warmth remained, and so did the wetness around his eyes. He walked around the bazaar, watching the laughing kids and smiling adults and wondering how they could be so happy. It felt like his heart, warm as it was, kept shattering with each step he took.

He paused at a stand that was selling what seemed to be bizarre, unidentified plushies. In a weird, slightly creepy sort of way, they were cute. Fay smiled to himself. They were just the sort of things Kurogane would hate. If they had been together again, out in public, close enough so that their hands brushed when they walked, Fay might have pointed them out to the gruff detective. Kurogane would have made some snide comment, probably about how they looked more like leftover meat buns than any actual animal. Fay would have bought the plush anyway, just to annoy him.

His eyes were so hot they felt like they were burning. Despite his best attempts, one tear slipped out, and then another, until they were splashing down onto the bizarre, unidentified plushies like drops of rain.

"Oi," Fay whipped around quickly.

"Kurogane?" He whispered.

The first time Fay kissed Kurogane, he had missed horribly and ended up kissing his chin. They'd been bickering over Fay's latest nickname for him, and Kurogane had been red and flustered and horribly sexy in his annoyance, and Fay felt drawn to him.

They were standing, and Fay leaned forward on his tiptoes, because Kurogane was too tall to be normal. Kurogane moved at the exact same instant, and he ended up getting a kiss on the chin.

Fay blamed it on the fact that Kurogane was built like a behemoth; Kurogane blamed it on the fact that Fay had about as much hand-eye coordination as a drunk six year old.

Fay decided to kiss him again. He didn't miss the second time.

If you had asked Kurogane just that morning what he'd be doing with his day off, he never would've guessed he'd be scrounging around a child's bazaar like some sort of pedophile. However, while he had been walking through town in order to visit his favorite restaurant, he'd seen a girl running around, looking like a hooligan and shouting for everyone to visit the Yomogi Nursery bazaar.

It hadn't seemed like a bad idea at the time, so here he was.

While he was wandering around the toy section (for no other reason than the fact that there was a crazy guy with some sort of new-age mullet and glasses standing at the entrance to the bazaar with an old wooden broom, looking like he'd pound anyone who left empty handed) he saw him.

Fay stood in all his skinny blond glory in front of a stand filled with rather unusual plushies. They looked kind of like meat buns that had been hit with unknown amounts of radioactive particles. The first thing Kurogane noticed was that Fay was even paler than usual, which was downright frightening, considering Fay's usual tone was somewhere between a fresh sheet of paper and virgin snow.

Then he realized Fay's shoulders were shaking and he was…crying? In the two years since they'd met, Kurogane had never seen Fay cry, not even when Fay's father had put a price on Kurogane's head.

Despite the fact that it had been nearly a week, despite the fact that Kurogane was sure he'd hardened his heart to the moron, despite the fact that he'd almost convinced himself that he'd never loved the idiot anyway, Kurogane felt drawn towards him.

His feet moved without his conscious permission. He was closer now, close enough that he could see the dark circles under Fay's eyes. He could see the glistening tears trailing down Fay's cheeks.

"Oi," he said, trying to ignore the tiny voice in his head that was telling him to run for the hills.

"Kurogane?" Fay's usually mischievous voice sounded tiny. If voices were tangible, Fay's would've been no larger than a hummingbird.

For a second, Kurogane thought Fay would bolt. That would be troublesome, as the blond had always been faster than him, and Kurogane didn't know if he could summon up the courage to drive to Fay's apartment.

"We need to talk," Kurogane growled.

Fay opened his mouth and then closed it, looking a bit like a fish.

"I still love you," it sounded like an accusation, even to Kurogane's ears, and he wondered if maybe he meant it that way. "So I'm not letting you go until you give me a better excuse than 'I got bored.'"

"I'm sorry if you can't accept the truth," Fay's voice sounded shaky.

"Idiot," Kurogane didn't want to let go of him, because he was afraid that Fay might bolt more quickly that a hare that had been cornered by a fox. He allowed his eyes to rove over Fay's body, from the curve of his jaw, where Kurogane knew was his weak spot, to his thin arms—the ones that Fay used to wrap around his shoulders when he just wanted to be close, to his long legs, the ones Fay always used to tangle with Kurogane's own. He could see Fay's pronounced collar bone peeking out from underneath the v-cut of his shirt; he could smell Fay's shampoo, the flowery one that Kurogane claimed he hated, that they both knew he loved--but only when it was on Fay.

"I should go," Fay said softly. Their eyes met. Kurogane held the connection. Fay turned away.

Then Kurogane saw his other arm, the one he had fallen on before. Peeking out from underneath his long sleeved shirt was the hint of bandages.

"You're still bleeding?"

Fay became as tense as a bow string. "I'm fine," he insisted, but his calm, defeated tone told Kurogane everything. That was why he was lying, why he was running away from the best thing in both their lives.

"What is it?" He asked. He let go of Fay's arm and grabbed him by the shoulders, turning Fay to face him. There would be no more hiding. After two years Kurogane thought they deserved at least that much.

He stared deeply into Fay's eyes. They looked dead, even worse than when they had first met in that cramped interrogation center with the double sided mirrors. Fay had had circles under his eyes then too.

Fay said one word. One word that was more important than anything. One word that drowned out Kurogane's pounding heart, one word that determined his future, his everything.

"Leukemia."

The glass shard in his heart pushed through, and Kurogane thought he might die just from hearing that one word.

"It's okay," Fay told him, enveloping him in a hug, as if he were the one that needed comfort. "I've known for a long time that one day I would get it. I think I'm ready to die."

Fay smiled at him, calm and complacent and ready to give up his life.

"No," Kurogane told him, even though his heart was racing frantically. Leukemia wasn't a bad guy brandishing a gun that he could protect Fay from him. It wasn't something Kurogane could defeat on his own. It was something that came from inside of Fay, that Fay needed to fight. "We'll fight this together."

"We," Fay's voice was muffled by the fact that he had buried his head into the crook of Kurogane's neck. "It's my body."

He pulled away again. Kurogane thought maybe Fay had jerked his heart out as well. "No," the police detective demanded angrily. "It's mine as well. I thought I told you a long time ago that you are mine," just as I'm yours, "so even if you don't want to live for yourself, you better damn well live for me."

He pulled Fay back into their embrace, nearly crushing him. He felt Fay shaking in his arms, and then he was being hugged back, squeezed with such intensity that it seemed Fay was impossible of generating it all.

"I love you," Fay told him.

"Idiot," Kurogane returned, and pulled him closer.

From behind one of the stands, Kobato wiped her wet eyes. "Do you think they'll survive," she asked Ioryogi.

The stuffed dog's crude face had melded into something that resembled maturity and wisdom. "I don't know," answered truthfully.

"I think," Kobato answered, her voice low with hope, "that when two people love each other, anything is possible."

"Dobato, that's not the way the world works at all," Ioryogi growled. Kobato stared down at him with glimmering, tearful eyes.

Ioryogi's heart melted at his charge's crushed face. "But I'm glad you think that way. Somebody has to, even if that somebody is a Dobato."

Kobato smiled as the tears rolled down her face. "Didn't I tell you not to call me that?" She asked.

Meanwhile, in Kobato's glass jar, two small pieces of wounded heart joined her collection.