A/N: Thank you for joining me! This story will be in seven parts – this is the first. Updates will be roughly every three or four days, possibly more frequently down the road. Enjoy!

The first time that Yuki turned Touya down for sex, Touya was surprised. Yukito's carnal appetite, like his appetite for food, was three times that of an average man, and he wasn't shy about demanding more from Touya if he felt he wasn't being satisfied.

The second time that Yuki turned Touya down, three days later, Touya was worried. He began watching Yukito carefully, with anxious eyes, concerned that his lover was sick or ailing and too afraid to tell him.

He did not like what he found. At first, his mind rebelled against what he was seeing. He and Yuki had lived together for over eleven years, had lived alone together for almost nine. Surely he wasn't purposely trying to hide his body from him? Surely he wasn't purposely avoiding his touch?

Surely he wasn't purposely averting his eyes when they kissed?

Surely he hadn't meant to avoid responding to Touya's anxious "I love you" by having a sudden, inexplicable coughing fit and then feigning deafness when Touya asked him if he was all right.

The third time that Yukito turned Touya down, he was suspicious, but hardly surprised. For the next several days, two competing instincts raged behind hooded eyes. His first instinct was to respect Yukito's privacy. There was probably a perfectly logical explanation for his strange behavior, and he should trust his lover enough to wait for him to come to him. The second instinct was entirely a jealous one, which told him to pin Yukito down on the bed and demand an explanation and an apology for his strange behavior, never mind that if his lover began to feel even the slightest bit threatened he could transform into an ancient magical being and beat all sorts of shit out of him.

What Touya eventually decided on was a compromise. He waited until he knew that Yukito would be undressing for his shower – they had showered together enough times that Touya knew his lover's morning routine almost as well as he knew his own – and then "accidentally" barged into the bathroom. Touya was a crummy actor, and Yukito knew him very well, so he didn't try to pretend that it had been a real accident. Even if he had wanted to come up with one, any excuse he might have made died on his lips as soon as he saw what Yukito was hiding from him.

Deep, angry bruises ran up and down Yukito's back. Some were so dark as to be almost black, some were the sickening yellowish purple that appeared when a healing bruise was reopened. He had bandages wrapped around his forearms – neatly on his left, haphazardly on his right, a sure sign that he had been trying to ministrate to himself – and the circle of bandages on his upper thigh was beginning to ooze a nasty, crusty rust color.

Touya gulped, and raised his eyes to Yukito's. He was expecting pain, embarrassment, guilt, relief, something – maybe even the too-innocent expression Yukito wore when he decided, for the sake of his own sanity, to pretend that he actually believed one of Touya's tissue-thin pretexts for a blatantly obvious action. What Touya got was sheer, brute steel and simmering anger.

"Get out." It was a flat command. Touya licked his lips nervously, eyes flicking between Yukito's injuries and Yukito's eyes.

"Do you want me to help you with the bandages?" he finally asked, his voice coming out tense and strained.

"Get out," Yukito repeated, this time with a glacial bite in his voice and an icy glint in his eyes. Touya left, more shaken than he wanted to admit. Yukito had never before threatened him with the possibility of Yueh.

He made his way into the kitchen, calm from shock, and clattered some plates around as he threw together a quick breakfast, like he did every day. He heard the water of Yukito's shower turn on, and then later turn off. He washed his dishes, grabbed his briefcase, and headed out the door. It never once occurred to him that Yukito's injuries might have come from anything besides an affair gone horribly, horribly wrong.

What he did next was shameful. He left their apartment building, for all the world like he was headed for his Friday clinical, but instead of turning the left at the corner that would take him to the bus stop, he turned right, crossed the street, and doubled back. Five minutes later he was sitting stiffly at a window table of the coffee shop directly across from his apartment building. He had bought an over-priced, designer coffee for the look of the thing, but he was too tense to drink it. He knew that in that moment, he looked exactly like the half-crazed, jealous boyfriends that you sometimes read about in criminal cases, and the thought made him sick.

But even shocked, shaken, and drunk on jealous rage Touya was clever and Touya knew his lover. Yukito panicked easily and often allowed his judgment to get clouded by insecurity or emotion. Sure enough, Touya had only been sitting there for half an hour when Yukito, looking preoccupied and disheveled, strode purposefully out of the apartment building and began heading south.

To Yukito's credit, he never once entertained the notion that Touya might be following him – a realization that twisted the white-hot knife of guilt that had gotten lodged half-way down Touya's gut at his shameful, dishonest behavior. While Yukito led Touya a merry chase, dodging through alleys, ducking down side streets, and cutting through playgrounds, he never did anything to purposely hide his trail. As he worked his way through the maze that was the underbelly of Tokyo proper, he began picking up speed. By the time Touya had been following him for an hour, Yukito was nearly sprinting.

At this point, all Touya could do was try his best to keep up and pray that Yukito wouldn't lose him. Touya had been hopelessly lost for at least the past three miles, and they had left the last possibility of a taxi cab in the dust long since. They were in the true slums now, areas where people kept their heads down and gangs were a fact of life. If Touya got lost here, he could probably make it home in one piece. Probably.

Part of Touya's brain – the very small part that was preoccupied with neither keeping his lungs from giving out nor with keeping a lid on his jealous wrath – fussed and worried at the ease with which Yukito was navigating the grimy streets. To Touya, they all looked the same, and the fact that anything that could have possibly been construed as a street sign had been stolen or destroyed long since helped matters not at all. But Yukito was running down a street where any sudden movement was like asking for a bullet in the back with the confidence and self-possession of ownership. Yuki's work as a medical anthropologist had taken him into some rough parts of town, he knew, but surely the foundation wouldn't ask him to spend time in a neighborhood like this?

Touya had a bad moment then, when he turned a corner that Yukito had darted behind fifteen seconds earlier and met an eerily deserted street. His heart thumped painfully in his throat, and his hands shook with panic – until he noticed the alleyway, hidden in the grimy shadow of the nearest building. Some vestige of his long-gone sixth sense made Touya tread stealthily up to the alley, keeping his back close to the brick, and peer carefully around the corner. He wasn't sure whether he should sigh with relief when he saw Yukito or groan when he saw who he was with.

The alley had probably been basketball courts once, or a concrete park, but public works projects of several generations had pushed the buildings around it up so close that now it looked almost like a grey, dilapidated courtyard with only one exit. Yukito was standing at its center, back facing the alley and Touya, arms crossed and spine hyper-extended in defiance. He was completely ringed by a motley group of street urchins and teenage cut-throats – the kind of kids that would grow up to be thugs, but whose voices hadn't changed yet. As Touya watched, one of the ring stepped forward with the arrogant swagger of an insecure leader. The grubby kid spat elaborately and made a big show of looking down his nose at Yukito as he nonchalantly lit a cigarette – no mean feat when the kid was half a head shorter than the encircled man.

"Look, fellas," he drawled blandly, flicking a greasy hunk of not-quite-black hair out of shallow, calculating eyes. "Faggot's back. And he's nearly a week early, too. What an honor." The inflection on the last word made Touya gulp. We might be kids, it said, but we can still kill you. And you'll be too surprised to even put up a fight. "Did you miss us that much, Faggot?" the ringleader snapped. His eyes crinkled in fake, cruel humor. "No. It's your boyfriend that you missed. Boy, he must really be good. You just keep coming back for more. You just can't get enough."

Touya closed his eyes in horror. For a few sickening, dizzying moments he had to focus every iota of his willpower towards breathing, towards staying upright, towards not making a noise. He told himself it had been what he had been expecting, that he had known it all along – but it was a lie. Part of him, some inner, deeper Touya had firmly believed, even as he was chasing Yukito through the very lowest dregs of Tokyo, that it was all some giant misunderstanding. Desperation and panic making him strong, Touya managed to control his shudders, and forced his conscious mind back into the position of control. It would be a long time before Touya realized that taking this crazed kid's testimony as proof of Yuki's infidelity might not be the best idea.

"Squirmer!" the boy screamed suddenly, flicking the lit cigarette lightly – almost lazily – at Yukito's face. "Get shit-sucker. I'm sure Faggot here wants to see his boy toy."

One of the ring, one of the smaller boys, Touya noticed vaguely, detached himself and scrambled through a broken window in one of the adjoining buildings. Touya made a point to watch the boy carefully as he gingerly picked himself over the broken glass, but Touya doubted that he would have recognized him again if he saw him. The grime, the hunger, and the malice on each boy's face was as disfiguring as any mask.

"So, Faggot," the ringleader turned those lazy, unconcerned eyes back to Yukito. "What do you want?"

"I want to finish it. Today." Yukito's response was a shard of ice that could have punched through steel. The ringleader's face went carefully blank as the answer washed over him, a sure sign that he was fighting back a shiver.

"Oh? You got a death wish?" The boy drawled, but the glint of fear in his eyes would not have been lost on Yukito. Yuki said nothing, standing his ground, and allowed his silence to make the ringleader uncomfortable.

The kid spat again. "And what makes you think that I'll agree?" he hissed finally. The circle of kids had surreptitiously been pulling closer as their ringleader spoke, and now some were barely an arm-span away.

"We had a deal," Yukito said flatly.

"Oh, a deal," the ringleader said dismissively.

"It's in the rules," Yukito continued, a very faint note of triumph in his voice. "A substitute can pay the price, instead."

"But that's not the only concession you had me make," the boy shot back, fake smile slipping off his face to reveal hate glittering in his eyes like a black diamond. "It's against the rules to break up the blows. Do you know why we chose a thousand blows with a lead pipe as the price to leave the gang?" Yukito said nothing, but the silence was neither a yes nor a no. "Because you can't survive it. But you, now, we've been giving you an unfair chance. How many blows are you at now?"

A small, weaselly looking kid darted up from somewhere in the ring behind the leader. "Five hundred forty," he said nervously, keeping his eyes carefully on Yukito as if he was afraid of what the petite, unarmed, surrounded man might do.

The leader whistled in mock-surprise. The pause had given him a chance to recover his swaggering mask. "Five hundred forty blows, broken up in five sessions. Y'know, that's not bad. Usually when we have to administer the thousand blows, our guest is dead after 70. But still, Faggot. But still, Tsu-ki-shi-ro Yu-ki-to," the gang leader fired every syllable like it was a missile, and this time he got the reaction he was looking for. Yukito stepped back as if struck, and just for a moment, his silhouette was outlined in fear. The leader grinned. It might have almost been an attractive smile, if the eyes above it weren't marinated in crazed loathing.

"That's right," the leader whispered, as if he was trying to caress or reassure the man in front of him. "You shouldn't have told shit-sucker your real name. You shouldn't have told shit-sucker so much about you. I wonder what else good ol' Uncle Blackjack knows about you now."

Suddenly, the kid whipped around, his expression turning to hard lines so fast that Touya decided he must be insane. The punks directly behind him jumped back, and then shuffled nervously amongst themselves as he surveyed them with a look of disgust.

"Squirmer! Where's shit-sucker?" the ringleader screamed. There was an explosion of broken glass from further down the building, and a strangely-shaped heap tumbled out of a first-floor window and hit the ground.

Yukito jerked forward as if to run towards where the disfigured pile lay on a bed of broken glass, but was brought up short by the ringleader, who stepped forward and cleared his throat politely. In his right hand, he had materialized a battered length of leadpipe.

Touya's dizziness returned three-fold as part of the scene clicked into clearer focus. His mind's eye wanted to skitter across the dirty heap under the broken window, but as the figure groaned and whimpered, he forced himself to stare at it until his brain sorted out the images. He had to swallow down the bile rising in his throat.

It was a kid. A teenager, actually – Touya would have placed his age at about eighteen, and he was possibly the oldest one there except for the ringleader. He was filthy, and naked except for a soiled, frayed blue tarp that had been carelessly draped over his shoulders. His strange shape, Touya realized with a jolt that went way beyond horror, was caused by a heavy crossbeam that lay across his shoulders. His wrists were tied to it with what looked like bike chains, and his face had been battered beyond all recognition.

"I told you that if you didn't finish this fast enough, we would give you incentive," the leader purred, now tossing his length of pipe from hand to hand. Touya had to close his eyes when he realized that the pipe was stained with dried blood. "But boy," he continued, positively glowing with sick glee, "I sure don't know what keeps you coming back to the kid. We've all had a turn with him by now, and he's just no fun at all. All whimpers and cries and 'please-not-agains.'"

Yukito was shaking in what the ringleader probably thought was fear, but Touya could identify as rage. Rage, and the effort of keeping Yueh at bay.

"We're finishing this now," Yukito said, his voice clipped from the effort of control.

"Didn't you hear me, Faggot?" the gang leader drawled, still tossing the pipe from hand to hand. "I don't take orders. And I'm going to have to be in a real good mood to let shit-sucker go even though you've broken the rules."

"We had a deal about that," Yukito said, voice still clipped, eyes following the pipe as it travelled back and forth. Its trajectory stopped.

"And I call foul play," the leader snarled, once again losing his cool in the heat of his insane anger. "My boys are good knife throwers. Ten minutes of target practice and you should have been mince meat – no way am I gonna believe that they hunted you five times and only hit you on each arm and the thigh." He took a breath, and the calm mask schmoozed back over his face. "But who knows," he continued lightly, going back to tossing the leadpipe. "Beating shit always puts me in a good mood. And besides, even if you can survive a hundred nine blows at once, no way can you survive four hundred sixty."

At a motion from the leader, the kids lounging near the far wall scattered, leaving a large open space.

"After you," the leader said sarcastically, using the pipe to indicate the wall. Yukito stood his ground for four seconds – just long enough to prove he could, just long enough to make the kid uncomfortable – before striding over to the wall, still with that air of self-possession and ownership that Touya had noticed as they ran.

Yukito pulled off his shirt and left it in a heap at his feet. Then, planting his feet firmly, he placed both of his hands on the slimy concrete and tucked his head down, leaving his bare, bruised neck and back exposed.

"Who wants to go first," the leader said cheerfully, turning to his crew. "Squirmer, turn shit-sucker around. I want him to see this." He waited expectantly, but the only motion was the luckless Squirmer, trying to heave the heavy beam that the poor kid was tied to up off the ground.

"No one?" It was nearly a whisper, but he managed to make it carry. All the kids were staring resolutely at the ground or at their hands. Some were shaking. They were terrified.

"Fine," he hissed, hefting the pipe as if testing its weight. "Then I guess I'll start." He crossed the courtyard in two strides, lifted the pipe above his head, and brought it down on Yuki's unprotected back with all his might.

Yuki's knees buckled, and he jerked under the force of the impact, but he didn't fall and he didn't make a sound. The ringleader spat and brought the pipe up again.

Touya dropped to his knees and grabbed the wall beside him. Horror was drowning him, swirling through his mind in eddies and currents, swamping his brain, clogging his mouth, suffocating his consciousness. He allowed himself three seconds to be overwhelmed – three blows of that madman's pipe, he forced himself to think – then caught his breath, pushed the dizzy disgust down, and stood.

He didn't have a plan. He didn't stop to think. He saw a pile of rubble lying forlornly near the corner, picked up a medium sized brick, said a prayer to any god who might be listening, and heaved it into the courtyard.

It was pure luck that the heavy, poorly-thrown missile glanced off the far wall and shattered. The sound was like a gunshot, and for one instant, time froze – the leader with the pipe still raised above his head, Squirmer still with his hands on the heavy beam, frozen in mid-exertion, the rest of the kids frozen solid, as if carved out of ice.

The lead pipe dropped from limp hands, and the spell was broken. "It's the Master!" The ringleader shrieked, fear turning him into just a small, scrawny, high-voiced kid. The gang scattered like rats, running in dirty clumps, diving for holes and openings that Touya hadn't even noticed – but even in their frenzied fear, a group of four had the presence of mind to lift the poor kid and his beam off the ground and hustle him back through a window.

Yukito, moving stiffly through the pain, took four uncertain steps in their direction, trying to reach the boy before he disappeared, but halfway across the courtyard his body gave out and he fell to his knees.

"Soichiro," he gasped in a carrying groan that reverberated off the walls and came back louder from the echoes.

Touya took a steadying breath and stepped out into the courtyard. Yukito was faced away from him, and he was unsure how to get his attention without scaring him or hurting him.

He shouldn't have worried. No sooner had Touya stepped into the grimy light that Yuki's entire body tensed, shoulders hunched in the unmistakable grim line of someone who has seen something impossible through the back of their head.

"Oh, no," Yukito said, his voice grey and shaken. "Please, God, no. I can't – I can't lose you both on the same day."

Touya walked over and knelt beside him. Yukito flinched and turned away, as if afraid that he was going to be hit – a gesture that managed to disturb Touya more deeply than all the nightmares he'd seen already that day.

"Am I going to have to carry you?" he asked finally, making his voice as soft as he could. A moment of stillness, and then Yukito nodded his head fractionally. "Can you direct me home?" Another nod. "Can you make it so that we won't be seen?" A longer pause, but Touya was rewarded with another nod. "Okay. We're going to do this nice and easy…"

It took Touya about a minute and a half of gentle coaxing to get Yuki to wrap his arms around his neck from behind. He had a bad moment then, when his legs buckled under the combined weight of both of their bodies, but he gritted his teeth and made it to standing. He had to bend forward slightly, using gravity to keep Yuki resting across his back, and hooked his arms behind Yuki's knees.

"Do you have the invisibility spell up yet?" Touya asked when they were up and steady.

"Yes," Yukito mumbled through gritted teeth.

"Okay," Touya muttered. "This is going to be a long trip, so pace yourself."

And that was all they spoke for the next few hours, except for the occasional "right" or "left" Yukito gave him in a voice pushed ever-higher in pain. For Touya, the trip was interminable. Each block looked like the last, and each plodding step sent jolts of exhaustion up his spine to his disbelieving brain. For the first hour, his mind swirled and spun the day's events around sickeningly. After that, Touya welcomed the white, yawning nothingness of shock with open arms.

Yukito passed out after two and a half hours. Luckily by then they were only a few miles from home, in an area that Touya knew, in a good neighborhood. The invisibility spell had petered out with Yukito's consciousness, but Touya kept moving straight ahead, avoiding people's glances and ignoring their questions. A few cabs passed, their plush interiors invitingly lit, but Touya ignored them. It would raise too many questions, and anyway his wallet, which had been tucked inside his briefcase, was long gone, lost on that morning's first lunatic chase.

The sun had set by the time Touya found himself standing in front of the inviting, creamy door of his apartment. In a day of nightmares, this moment was the most dream-like of all, and for a few long heartbeats Touya just stared at the familiar numbers, relief and disbelief coursing through his veins like adrenaline. Finally, he managed to fumble the key from his pocket without dropping the load on his back, and pushed the door open.

Touya was blankly surprised that everything looked exactly the same as it had last night - as it had that morning. His briefcase was even there, sitting on the coffee table, a sprig of sakura blossoms tucked conspicuously in the clasp. His entire world had changed, had come crashing down around his ears, so there was no reason to be met with the comfortingly familiar scent of the cleaning agent Yuki always used, no reason to be met with the familiar, frozen faces of his many photographs. There, in the corner, the vase that Sakura had given them for their fifth anniversary, dried pussy-willows and red-buds arranged in an artistic curve. There, on the mantel, was the metal figurine of an angel embracing a man that the two had stumbled upon in an old junk shop on their last vacation. Laughing, they had decided to buy it on the spot. It's a sign, Yukito had teased, smiling prettily up at Touya through silvery-fine eyelashes. Obviously, we were meant to come here, he had said in a tone of voice that meant that he didn't believe it at all. But still, they had bought the trinket.

Standing here, surrounded by the familiar, comfortable sights and smells, Touya felt more betrayed by the happy memories than he did by the man still lying across his back. Happy memories shouldn't lead to this, he thought furiously. There should have been more warning that something like this was coming – depression, fighting, substance abuse, anything.

Walking lightly, trying not to jostle Yukito, and without bothering to turn on any of the lights, Touya picked his way carefully to their bedroom and laid him down gently on the bed. The sudden motion – or rather, the sudden lack of motion – brought Yukito to his senses.

His eyes flew so wide that Touya could see the whites all the way around. He shivered and gasped, and then stilled when his eyes focused on Touya's face as he leaned concernedly over him.

It wasn't the stillness of calm, Touya noted dispassionately, or the stillness of relief, but the tense stillness that comes as you wait for the storm to break.

"Let's get you cleaned up," Touya grunted, and headed for the kitchen to find the first aid kit. Yukito didn't need to worry, he thought to himself grimly as he reached for where the little white box sat on the top shelf. The storm would break all right, but some things were more important even than broken trust.

Touya stripped Yukito down with clinical precision. He rubbed salve into the bruises, washed the cuts with antiseptic, and bandaged Yukito's wounds with soft, medical hands. He helped him to dress and led him into the kitchen and to his seat, touching his lover distantly and impersonally, as he would touch a patient.

He didn't say a word as he cooked Yukito an extra-large bowl of rice porridge, and still remained silent as he watched Yukito eat every bite. As soon as Yukito was done, Touya whisked the bowl away, washed it with the care of someone who is giving a menial task their full attention, and placed it in the dish drainer.

He turned back to Yuki, who was hunched over his hands, staring dully at the bandages that now reached all the way to his wrists. "So," he said. Yuki didn't flinch.

Touya carefully drew his chair, the seat across from Yukito's, and sat down. The kitchen table, the platform of so many jokes, so many conversations, so many meals and shared moments and impromptu love-makings, was in that moment transformed into an impenetrable barricade between them.

"How long have you been seeing him?" Touya asked stiffly. Yukito sighed, a high-pitched whistle that sounded like the steam escaping a kettle.

"A year." His voice barely quavered, and Touya could tell that he was proud of it.

"How long have you been in love with him?" Touya asked, hearing the question dully, as if he wasn't the one who had spoken it.

There was a pause. "I don't know," Yukito whispered finally, barely moving his lips.

"Then how long have you been telling him that you love him?" Touya growled.

"Six months," Yukito answered immediately, still without looking up from his bandaged arms.

"How long have you been fucking him?" Touya asked resignedly, hating himself for putting that question last, for considering that question to be more important than the one that had come before it.

"I haven't been."

"Tell me the truth!"

"I said I haven't been!"

They had both shouted, they had both stood up, they were both leaning heavily on the table and shooting glittering sparks into each other's eyes from across the murky darkness.

"Why should I believe you?" Touya asked finally, breathing heavily from the force of controlling the roar of rage that was fighting to uncoil from beneath the lid of his willpower.

"Why should I lie?" Yukito shot back, eyes gleaming icy amber in the shadows. "Soichiro is a child. I would have gotten no pleasure out of it. And, believe it or not, Kinomoto-san, I honor the promise that I made you to never have anyone but you." Only Yukito could turn words of reassurance into a weapon.

"Who do you love more, then?" Touya growled.

"What?"

"I said, who do you love more?"

Yukito deflated like a life vest, and seemed to crumple into himself.

"Dear God, Touya," he whispered, looking at the ground. "Don't make me choose."

Touya moved suddenly and again Yukito flinched, but by now Touya was so far beyond his threshold of pain that he could barely bring himself to notice. Instead he walked past Yuki, through the living room and into their bedroom, scrabbled momentarily in the drawers, and headed for the front door.

"Will you come back?" Yukito asked brokenly from the kitchen. Touya already had his hand on the front door. The question had been whispered, but it had been carried across the distance on the back of the darkness.

"I'll be home tomorrow," Touya said in a voice totally lacking in inflection, and clicked the door shut behind him.

Afterward, Touya was never sure how he had managed to make it to Sakura's house. Already that day he had dragged himself over more than a marathon of miles, he had discovered his beloved's infidelity, he had seen a child so perverted by hatred that Touya was finding it hard to accept his existence, and he had heard and seen torture more brutal than anything he could have possibly imagined.

By the time he made it to the familiar front door in Tomoeda, the shock was wearing off and he was shaking.

He had barely pressed his finger to the doorbell before it was flung open in a clatter of innocent noise that was more soothing to Touya's broken nerves than anything else ever could be. Small, fragile arms were thrown around his neck, Sakura's slim frame surreptitiously bearing the brunt of the weight as Touya sagged into her embrace, before she quickly stepped back, gave Touya a piercing, appraising gaze that stripped him to his very soul, and led him gently to his childhood spot at the kitchen table.

A mug of hot green tea, sweetened with honey, was already steaming in front of his place, and he noticed a decanter of brandy sitting conspicuously out on the counter.

"I'll stick with the tea, thanks," he croaked as he sank gratefully into his chair. Sakura nodded and swept the alcohol back out of sight, the very picture of sisterly efficiency.

"Want anything to eat?" she asked, stepping towards the fridge so purposefully that Touya knew it hadn't been a question.

"No," he said, "but I need something to eat. Something kind of easy to digest," he suggested. Sakura hadn't missed a beat, and was already setting the microwave by the time he had finished speaking.

Three minutes later a hot, home-cooked – if re-heated – meal was in front of him, and the gentle bubbling of the human well-spring of joy in the room was bringing some feeling back into his battered soul.

He opened his mouth to ask Sakura a question, but she pre-empted him.

"Eat first," she said firmly, cementing the order with a look. "We can talk when you've finished your dinner."

Touya, out of habit, opened his mouth to argue, but quickly turned the movement into one worth the effort by shoving a bite of rice into his mouth. He tried not to wolf the food down, knowing both from personal experience and from his medical classes the result of pushing food too quickly into an empty, over-taxed body. However, the temptation – both to fill his body and to get whatever information Sakura had out of her quickly as possible – was almost more than he could contend with. It felt like ages, but finally he had swallowed the last bite. He laid down his chopsticks and gave his sister a hard glance.

"How much do you know?" he asked. Her mouth pressed together, as it always did when she was worried, and she shrugged.

"I know that something bad happened. I know that you followed him somewhere, and were distracted enough that you lost your briefcase. I know that you saw something that Yukito didn't want either of us to see."

Touya blinked. "Either of us to see?" he asked, incredulous. Sakura's frown deepened.

"His connection to me has been closed for – I don't know, weeks. I asked him about it when he first sealed himself off and he just said that there was something that he had to do, alone. He's kept himself open to Kero in case I need him in a hurry, and I've always believed in giving my guardians their due freedom, so I didn't press it. He's open to me again, now." There was a hint of a question in her voice, and Touya waved a dismissing hand in reassurance.

"You did the right thing," he said more firmly than he believed. He sighed, and rubbed his hands over tired eyes when he saw the question on his sister's face.

"It was horrible," he told her after a long moment. "There was this street gang of – of children. They had someone hostage. Someone that Yuki loves. He was trying to get him free."

Sakura's eyes widened in shock and recognition. It was a testament to how truly incapacitated Touya was that he totally failed to notice the calculatingly blank look that slipped over her face a moment later. "He's cheating on me, you know," he continued, looking at his hands, voice dripping disgust.

At that, Sakura sat straight up. "What?" she demanded. Touya looked up in time to see Sakura's face slip into the glazed, expressionless mask it bore every time his sister stepped into someone else's mind. She was gone for over a minute.

When she returned to her body, every line of her face and silhouette were etched with worry. "No-o," she said finally, pointedly looking at everything but Touya. "He wasn't – or at least he doesn't think he was," she continued hurriedly, before her brother's wrath, justified or not, was raised. "Not cheating, precisely. But I do think that he hasn't been very honest with you for the past few weeks."

Touya couldn't think of anything to say to that, so instead he stood and began heaving what was quickly becoming so much exhausted, dead weight towards the door.

"Thanks for the food, monster," he said gruffly, but was halted by a gust of disembodied wind caressing his cheek and the audible click of the front door's lock turning.

"You're staying here for the night," Sakura said, rather unnecessarily. "You'll be totally useless unless you get some sleep and another square meal. Besides," there was the glint of a humorless joke in her voice, "if you're planning what I know you're planning, you'll have better luck under cover of daylight."

Please review! Tell me what you think, it might make me UPDATE faster!