Disclaimers: I don't own Beyblade; I'm just using the characters as my puppets.

Notes: This chapter is angsty, though I'm sure not my best work as I kinda rushed it to get the first chapter done…

It's Not Me

He braced himself, his amber eyes wide and panicked as he screamed at Kai to turn the wheel faster; there was no way they were going to completely avoid the collision.

Within seconds, glass was shattering, metal crunching, and bones breaking as the mini-van collided at full speed into the side of Kai's SUV. And not just any side, the passenger side.

Rei was now holding his breath, hissing against the pain coursing through his body as blood escaped his many wounds, his head on Kai's shoulder, knees crushed and trapped beneath the dash and smashed door with glass all over his lap, cuts all over his face from the glass, a broken arm and a few more injuries.

But Kai couldn't see it; he was in too much pain from glass shards now in his eyes that were closed tight. He could, however, feel the warm blood oozing from Rei's head into his clothes and onto his skin.

"Rei!" he called out, his voice shaking as he reached over blindly to his friend. "Are you okay?!"

"No!" he cried in paid, tears finding his eyes.

Thankfully, help had just arrived.

They quickly pulled Kai from the vehicle and into the back of one ambulances, immediately tending to his eyes and broken left arm.

"How bad is he?" he ground out against the pain of the shards being removed from his eyes.

The medics glanced to each other, neither wanting to tell him how bad his friend was.

One finally gathered the courage to speak up. "He may not make it."

"No…" Kai breathed, tears brimming his eyes, rage building inside of him at the driver of the other vehicle that had ran the red light and hit them.

It took much longer than expected to get Rei free from the SUV; the mini-van had to be moved away from Kai's vehicle, and then the door cut out to even get to him. Then there was the tedious task of getting the dash off his legs. Nearly an hour after the accident, Rei lay unconscious on a gurney, covered in blood and hastily bandaged.

Kai was already being treated at the hospital before Rei even arrived in his ambulance, struggling against the doctors and nurses to get to Rei.

"How will you find him?" one of the doctor's snidely commented as he was settled again onto a table, slumped over in defeat.

Kai's eyes had to be covered in order for them to heal properly, so he wouldn't strain them or injure them further.

It was at least two hours later that Kai was finally wheeled to Rei's room. Had his eyes not been covered, he would be blinded by tears for sure at what lay in the room.

Rei was a mess of bandages. The wounds had been stitched shut or scabbed over, the dried blood cleaned from him, his legs in casts, various IVs hooked up to him in his hands and arms, and some machinery was hooked up to him as well.

"He's stable for now," a nurse told him as she pushed him to Rei's bedside. "But we don't know if he'll recover…"

"What do you mean?" he mumbled, feeling for one of Rei's hands and gingerly taking it in his own, avoiding the IVs as best he could.

"He's on life support right now. He had a lot of internal bleeding and head trauma, not to mention the obvious blood loss."

Kai licked his dry lips, fighting back tears.

"I'll leave you alone, just yell if you need anything," she said softly, placing a hand on Kai's trembling shoulder.

No sooner than he heard her footsteps fade away, he was bent over the bed crying into his own bandages.

"You can't die on me, Rei!" he sobbed. "You can't!"

Rei didn't respond to his calls or his hand, making Kai cry harder. This was supposed to be something that only happened in the tragic movies; in the good ones, the person always responded, so why wouldn't Rei?!

He stayed there for a long time, holding onto Rei and calling out to him in strangled cries of anguish, hoping to wake him and speak to him, to tell him not to leave him.

The nurse had returned to check on them some time later and he could tell as soon as she spoke that she was crying too.

"Kai," she breathed shakily, trying to steady herself. "Rei's parents have made the choice to," she sobbed loudly a couple times, her voice choked and hoarse as she spoke through a constricted throat. "They want to take him off life support."

"They can't do that!" Kai cried, releasing Rei's hand and reaching out for her, his fingers wrapping a bit too tightly around her thin arm.

"They can," she sniffed, Kai's grip slackening. "They can't afford the medical costs and there's no telling if he'll even make it through the night with the support; if he does, there's a high probability he'll remain in a coma or wake as a vegetable."

"I'll pay for it!" he growled in anger. They weren't taking something precious from him!

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's not your choice to make…"

Kai was boiling with rage. "Get them on the phone, right now!" he demanded, the nurse jumping away from him in shock and fear.

"I can't. I don't have the authority."

"Then find someone who does!"

"Kai, calm down!" Max yelped as he entered the room, keeping the boy in his wheelchair.

"I won't!" he sobbed, broken once again. "I love him, Max! If they do this...he'll never know!"

While Max and Takao worked to calm a seething Kai down, knowing they were fighting a losing battle as far as Rei was concerned, a couple of doctors came in and began unhooking Rei from the machines with solemn faces, one of them scribbling things down on his chart.

"At least give him the night!" Kai pleaded, but to no avail; they wouldn't even glance at him.

"They made the right choice," Max said sadly. "Rei's in no state to…He looks terrible, Kai, like his body is begging for rest, for death…"

"I don't care!" he said, shaking his head, gripping his wheelchair arm with his good hand so hard that his knuckles were pure white. "I feel like a kid that's having something important taken away for no reason!"

"I'm sorry," was all one of the doctors offered as they then filed out of the room, closing the door behind them.

"Sorry isn't good enough!" he yelled, slamming his fist down onto the wheelchair, startling Max and Takao, wishing he could smash something, preferably one of their faces. "Sorry won't give him back to me!"

As Max tried to pacify Kai, Takao went over to the bed, bending over Rei and talking to him as though he were awake, though his soon tear strained voice belied him. After saying his goodbyes, the young bluenette shuffled back to his other two friends before the blonde tried to swallow the growing lump in his throat before taking his turn to say goodbye.

"This isn't really happening, is it?" Kai murmured, his mind numb. "This is just a really, really bad joke…"

"It's no joke," Max assured, wheeling Kai back to his bedside a few heavy silent minutes later, cringing as he noticed Rei's chest heaving in his attempt to breathe properly. "He's fading fast, so…"

Kai scooted the chair back a few feet, standing and walking as best he could would a badly bruised leg, arms outstretched to aid him, before sitting on the bed, wrapping his good arm behind Rei's head in an awkward form of a hug.

"I don't want you to leave me," he hiccupped in Rei's ear. "I'm sorry I even made you come with me today…I know you only did it to make me happy."

He could feel it now; Rei's chest was heaving quickly, one of his shoulders convulsing under him.

"I just wanted to make you happy; I just wanted to be with you…I love you, Rei," he said as calmly as he could through his seemingly swollen throat, moving to rest his forehead to Rei's. "And I always will," he choked out before laying a gentle kiss to the neko-jin's lips.

Max and Takao watched from the sidelines, both silently crying and holding hands, turning and embracing each other as Rei's body finally stilled completely.

The sudden stillness beneath him triggered his rage once more. Rei was gone forever…And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it!

He screamed into Rei's raven locks that he couldn't even see, wrapping his fingers in them, feeling a bit of dried blood caking some of the strands together. He wouldn't be able to see him in real life ever again...

"Kai," Max murmured as he reached out to touch the Russian's shoulder, letting him know they were there for him. He was their friend too.

The two-toned bluenette shrugged him off, however, refusing to leave Rei.

xoxoxox

It wasn't much longer that Takao had brought one of the nurses in, telling the boys that they had to leave and Kai had to return to his room for the night. It ended up with Kai having to be tranquilized to get him off Rei's body, Takao and Max wheeling him away once he was sedated.

"It's going to be rough for a while, huh?" Takao mused as he walked beside Max as they began to enter the elevator.

"Yeah," was all Max could bring himself to say, his eyes focused on Kai's hair, his hands gripping tightly onto the handles of the wheelchair.

xoxoxox

For the next few days, Max and Takao took turns coming to check up on Kai, who seemed to be eating very little and still fighting the medical attention every step of the way; so to say the nurses were happy about Kai leaving was an understatement.

As soon as he was cleared to go, Takao had pushed him to the elevator as a doctor followed up with Max about his medications and how to take care of Kai's eyes and bandages before he pulled the blonde aside to an empty hallway, his eyes darting around nervously.

It was starting to really freak Max out.

"Your friend, Rei," he began, placing a hand on Max's shoulder, creeping him out even more. "You know his parents couldn't afford to sustain him, and so they also couldn't afford any type of funeral arrangements."

Max nodded dumbly, trying to keep on his toes in case the creeper did anything strange.

"They released his body to science," he explained. "Rei is…more or less alive."

The blonde's eyes widened considerably. This couldn't be a real doctor!

"Don't freak out!" he pleaded, his face worried as he glanced around some more. "Let me explain! You see, there was a teen just a year older than Rei that was here dying of liver failure; he and Rei were a perfect match, but Rei came too late. He died too just shortly before Rei. He was in much the same predicament as Rei also as far as finances. I won't lie when I say the science department went a little 'mad scientist' and played with things they probably shouldn't have…"

All Max could picture was a group of quacks hacking and sewing body pieces from two bodies together, one of those bodies being Rei's.

"We went ahead and did a liver transplant…then someone went a step further and suggested a brain transplant. Rei had only just died, so his brain was still functioning at a minimal level with hardly any damage; his body couldn't handle the amount of pain he was in, so his brain shut him down and put him in a type of coma. And now he's alive in another body."

The blue eyed teen was absolutely horrified at what he was hearing. Who the hell let this crazy doctor in here and why was he saying such things about his dead friend?!

"I know it's a lot to take in and you probably don't believe me, thinking I'm crazy…" he sighed, turning his back to Max. "I'll call you in a few days time when he's stabilized."

As the man calling himself a doctor walked away, Max turned and quickly walked to the nearest elevator, slamming the button repeatedly with his index finger and glancing down the hall to make sure the guy wasn't going to come back with a chainsaw or something.

"What took you so long?" Takao groaned as he stood leaning up against the van to get them home.

"I was talking to the doctor about Kai's care," he smiled as best he could; he wasn't about to freak them out by telling them the story he had just heard that was, no doubt, a lie. Kai would for sure go into an all out rage once more and probably demand to kill the doctor for ruining Rei's final moments.

xoxoxox

Two weeks later, early in the morning, Max groaned as he rolled over and reached blindly for his phone, squinting in attempt to read the unfamiliar phone number.

"Hello?" he said, his voice laced with sleep.

"Max, Rei is ready to see you," came an all too familiar voice.

Max was now wide awake, a tremor running down his spine as the doctor told him what room his friend would be in and what time would be best to visit.

'Should I go?' he mused, knowing that it was either a trap or, the believing side of his mind argued, Rei was alive in some way.