The Shadow of You

A/N

This is meant to be a continuation of my previous story In The Bitterness. I highly recommend that you read it before you start this one.

I have decided to separate it out from the original story mostly because my writing style has changed significantly since then and that it needs to be weighed to an extent solely on its own merit.

I hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Its not mine.

Kamitari stood by his desk and contemplated ripping out his beautiful dark hair from the roots and stuffing it right back into his ears.

All morning his bloody telephone had been ringing off the hook. The two culprits were a one night stand gone wrong and a so called artist who didn't understand the meaning of the word was only so much stress a good looking agent could take before the frown lines started to become permanent.

Gabbing the phone with his perfectly manicured nails, Kamitari did what came naturally to him. He hit it where it hurt.

"Listen up here you nutbag. If you don't stop annoying the fuck out of me I will be forced to inform everyone I know that your feet smell, you are hung like a baby carrot and hump like a blind, deranged, rhino. Am I making myself very clear, or do I need to go down to smaller words for you?" Kamitari refused to raise his voice beyond its normal timber, but anyone who knew him, recognized the deliberate way he pronounced his words as a death threat.

"…I think that's a little too much info there Tari." That voice was anything but expected.

Kamitari's well built up ire deflated, the instant he registered that unique voice. In its place different kind of ire bubbled up.

He took a moment to let the recognition wash over him, before returning to planet earth.

"I demand at least 21 roses and a card delivered to my desk by this time tomorrow." Kamitari monotoned. He glanced briefly at his nail polish to see if there were any chips on the bright violet paint. On the outside he was cool and collected. On the inside he was stuck between jumping up and down for joy and throwing the phone out of the window.

The average person would be terrified of the way he went from one extreme emotion the next without so much as wincing. It was one of the reasons why this particular caller and he were friends at all. They functioned at the same frequency.

"Err Tari, I think you've got me mixed up with someone else. I'm Makimachi Misao, we went to university together?"

Kamitari rolled his eyes, "I know exactly who you are Mi-Chan. But I am going to need those roses to forgive you for your neglect of me for all this time. A gal needs her TLC, and you up and disappeared without so much as a goodbye. I deserve some compensation don't you think?"

Kamitari's secretary turned looked up from her paperwork strewn desk and frowned at him. Mrs Lipzwich, the living embodiment of propriety, prized silence above all else. It was a great universal injustice that her boss was the loudest thing in the country, most days.

Kamitari gave an exaggerated wink to his secretary who looked positively scandalized.

"Do you know how hard it is to find a decent girlfriend in this town?" Kamitari continued without a pause, "Its like a bimbo convention all year round! Every girl is all 'oh my gosh isn't he so hot, or am I getting fat, or point me to the nearest toilet I need to go puke out my dinner', after a while it kills a gals appetite,"

There was a weak chuckle on the other end of the line. "I'll give you the roses just to put a stop to the details of your not so stellar evening with Mr. carrot-who-humps-like-a-rhino."

Kamitari twitched and gritted his teeth at the memory. "Don't put it that way. You make it sound like I was fucked by a vegetable while fantasizing about a 200 pound mammal. Even I have standards darling, and Mr. Carrot fell far, far blow them."

Mrs Lipzwich was fast gaining a coloring of a ripe, juicy tomato. Kamitari grandly stuck his tongue out at the frowning woman and wiggled. The tick on Mrs Lipzwich's eyebrow was a thing of beauty.

"I did warn you that flirting with random men who may or may not be gay might not the best way to get laid. Did he freak out when you stripped or did he try to get a grope in and find an empty padded bra?" Misao asked.

"Darling," Kamitari threw himself into her large padded leather chair and thrust both feet onto his large office table, "you know that a straight man is only straight because he's far too dull to be gay. I give all those stiffs out there a chance to live life on the fun side! Nothing wrong with that. I now only go for men who swing my way, so his lack of prowess in the bedroom was not brought on by shock."

At her desk, Mrs Lipzwich twitched. She was very much aware of what important documents were currently receiving the not so tender ministrations of her bosses' feet. She also had no desire to know what her transvestite boss did in his spare time. As far as she was concerned life was paperwork, tea and the odd afternoon nap.

The sound of chuckling came again from the phone. "Why am I not surprised that you haven't changed an inch?" Misao asked.

"That's because you know me that well darling. And speaking of stiffs, I take it that our icicle is not in the area at the moment or I wouldn't be having this delightful conversation with you. I keep telling you babe, keep an eye on the repressed ones. They are the ones that go nuts, wax their legs and suddenly become violent drag queens with a thing for leather. Trust me I know. "

"…something like that. Though I think the stick up his ass is a little too thick for him to unbend like that."

Kamitari took notice of the pause. People were his business. When you worked as an art agent, you learnt to pick up on small hints and squeeze a story out of it.

"Ooh, trouble in paradise is it? Come tell mama-Tari all about it" Kamitari cooed falling right back into their groove of friendship without skipping a beat. She had missed this connection for so very long. The feeling of having someone who was able to have a full fledged conversation without asking him to explain himself was like getting high on something dangerous. And just as addictive.

There was the sound of a sigh, followed by shuffling. "I don't really want to talk about it. Let's just say you were right all along and that he was an arse-head and leave it at that."

"Bollox!" Kamitari slammed his fist onto the table, "Darling, if there is anything you need, it is to talk. Are you still in K-? We can meet up in this delightful place I know that serves the best chocolate Sundays. We can sit down and gripe about men and how they are all arse-heads, just like old times."

There was a pause for a moment as Misao thought over the offer. "Yea I am still here, but you don't have to go through all the trouble. I just wanted to call to catch up, really. I know you'll be at work and I don't wanna bug that. This was just meant to be a short chat to let you know that I'm not dead.

Kamitari snorted inelegantly, if there was anything that the girl needed, it was a debriefing session that involved chocolate. "Shut up now. For me it will be a working visit. I need to know how many canvases you want and in what sizes you want them in. Think of it as a working tea, if it makes you feel any better."

"C-canvases? Tari, we have gone over this a thousand times. I don't paint anymore!-"

"Oh no, you don't! This is the perfect time for you to pick it up again. Think of all that untapped rage floating about in you. I will have all that on canvas and you will be my artist, so help me god. What are you waiting for anyway? I know the moron you were dating couldn't tell the difference between good art and his left elbow. This is the perfect chance for you to rub just how amazing you are in his face!"

"Tari I am out of practice, I'm not even sure I can paint anymore!"

"Its like riding a bicycle babe, I'm sure you'll be back to your old standard in no time! So I'll see you in say, an hour, at the corner of Moffems and Pine? There is a desert shop there that makes the most heavenly chocolate cake."

Misao mumbled something unflattering about the thickness of Kamitari's scull, but Kamitari ignored most of it with practiced ease." Ok, I'll come. But I'm only there to meet up an old friend, not to sign up an agent. Am I making myself clear?"

"Perfectly darling, simply crystal clear." Kamitari ruffled through his desk looking for his sheet of contracts. They were generic reprints that was used in all agent-artist relationships, unless specified otherwise by the artist. He always kept a few of them on his desk for situations like these.

"I am serious Tari!."

Success! Kamitari pulled out a slightly rumpled sheet of paper that was yet to be signed or doodled on, and would do nicely. "So am I babe, so am I. So see you in an hour, unless you have a more convenient time in mind?"

Misao sighed into her phone once again. "No, an hour is fine. Sometimes I swear Tari-kun, you are like a pit bull when it comes to something you want."

Kamitari threw his head back and laughed. "Darling, if there is something out there that I want, I get it. It's just that simple. And more often than not, what I want ends up calling me God when I do the thing with my—"

"STOP! Too Much Information!" Misao interjected before further details could slip out "I'll see you in an hour. And please refrain from telling me sordid details of your love life. I am traumatized enough, thank you very much."

"You spoiled the best part! Fine I'll see you in an hour, but no promises about my choice of conversation topics. Cheers babe!" Kamitari ended the call with a flourish and turned to look at his secretary who was in turn trying her best to look like she was not eavesdropping.

"Well Litz, it seems like we are going to sign in the hottest young thing on the market! Crank out the bubbly!"

"No." Mrs. Litz did not bother to tear her eyes away from whatever it was that she was pretending to read, "You strip when you are drunk. I enjoy my eyesight too much to have to gouge my eyeballs out with my letter opener, should you decide to do the 'nude tango' again. You will not drink alcohol in the office, or anywhere near my paperwork. Are we clear?"

Kamitari pouted. "You are just no fun Litz.! You should unbend a little!"

"I do have fun." Mrs Litz answered. "So long, as it is only at your expense and nowhere near my paperwork. Now please get back to work Ms Kamitari. You only need half an hour to get to the bakery and till then you are expected to get your work done."

"NO FUN!"

There was a point, Kaoru thought, that the human body could no longer function under the influence of pain. It was a point beyond tears.

One single moment where the mind says enough, fuck this shit, I don't want this anymore. And all that pain, all that crippling burning throbbing pain, just faded away to a white nothing.

All you had to do was stop thinking.

Eventually you would stop blinking.

Ultimately you would stop breathing.

God was kind that way, she hoped.

Curled up into a fetal position on her overly large bed, Kaoru stared blankly at the white underside of her perfectly cream comforter. She could count every thread that made up the blanket. So it must be morning, she thought, because you couldn't see the threads at night. At night all you would see was shadows where the streetlight couldn't penetrate the cotton.

Who needed clocks?

Or daylight.

Or air.

The human body definitely didn't need all that rubbish. All it really needed was a soft place to rest and melt down into a single thread, in a perfectly cream comforter.

How free.

Kaoru giggled. So this is what it felt like to be unhinged. It was quite liberating, really. She should have done it years ago. All those sane people had no idea what they were missing out on. It was like flying without the takeoff.

Kaoru shuffled around so that her back faced her blanket and her cheek rested on her overly flat pillow. Her pillow smelt like unwashed hair. She idly wondered about when she last washed her hair. Would it be too much trouble to go do it again? Or would she rather go for the clean shaven look that seemed to be so popular with asylums now days?

She hated long hair.

She hated red hair.

She hated long red hair.

STOP.

Don't go there.

You don't want to go there.

Don't think, don't think. Thinking hurts. You hurt enough, a voice reminded her. She nodded.

Perhaps a nice clean shave is in order.

Eventually. But for now, the world was her blanket.

"Good morning sunshine!"

A swift tug by alien hands, and her world was pulled away.

Kaoru mewed into her pillow at the sudden bright intrusion of unfiltered sunlight. This shouldn't be happening. The world was her blanket. She shouldn't have to move from her world, because it was hers god damn it!

"Rise and shine!" another voice chimed in. "It's a new day, which means you have a new project!"

No it wasn't. It was still yesterday in her blanket. It could be whatever time she wanted it to be in her blanket.

Kaoru was making a stand, or a lie in to be more specific.

"Oh dear Misao, it looks like Kaoru doesn't want to wake up! Whatever shall we do?" The first voice vocalized in the most condescending way imaginable.

"Well Megumi, I have an idea, but I don't think she will like it…" The second voice chimed in, if possible, even more condescendingly.

"I suppose we have no choice now do we. Let her have it then." The first voice ordered.

"Don't say we didn't warn you."

Kaoru didn't have the time to register what happened. One minute she was cuddled up with her pillow, and the next she was sitting up wide eyed and gasping.

Misao's cheerful face was the first thing that greeted her wide eyes. The young woman's hands were still gripping the damp bucket and it was notably empty of its liquid contents.

Around Kaoru her sheets were soaked with water that probably came directly from the artic circle form the feel of it.

"Wh-What?" Kaoru mumbled, still trying to get up to speed.

"How nice of you to join us," Megumi chimed from the other side of Kaoru's very wet bed, "now that we have your attention, it is time to get your ass out of bed and off into the shower. I don't know how you are living with yourself right now. I could smell you all the way from the front door."

"B-but." Kaoru tried to cut in, but her shivering was coupling up with her frazzled brain to make clear thought impossible.

"No need to thank us. We're just doing a community service. What have you been doing to your hair? I must tell you it looks like a bee hive tried to mate with a poodle and failed spectacularly. Smells just as bad too." Megumi briskly folded the comforter in her grip and refused to meet Kaoru's gaze.

This was all business.

"Now that you're somewhat awake, you may congratulate Misao on her success." Megumi continued, and dumped the folded comforter on a nearby chair that was out of Kaoru's immediate reach.

"Huh?" Kaoru looked back at Misao, who looked a little embarrassed and frazzled herself.

"There is nothing to congratulate. I was bullied into it completely against my will." She clarified.

"But that doesn't change the fact that it gives you something to do and room to grow, which is more than I can say for sleeping beauty here." Megumi crossed her arms and arched a delicate brow.

"W-wh-what?"

Misao rolled her eyes at Megumi. "I was bullied into signing a 6 canvas contract with one of my art agency friends from university. I was totally against it, but Kamitari always gets her way, no matter what she wants."

The name rang a bell in Kaoru's head. "K-Kamitari? The b-boy from u-uni?"

Misao shrugged. "He is a woman now. But he was always more woman than either of us anyway, so it hasn't changed him any. I think it seems to have made him worse. We need to get you out from these wet things before you shiver yourself to death."

"Yes, yes. We need to hurry up if we want to make Misao's appointment with the hairdresser. In fact I think I will go make a second appointment for Kaoru as well. That beehive on her head looks positively feral." Megumi poked the tangle of hair around Kaoru's shoulders as though she expected it to up and bite her back.

When the realization about the situation hit her fully, Kaoru felt all the blood from her body rush into a tiny ball of nausea in the pit of her stomach.

"I-I don't w-wan-want to go an-anywhere." She wasn't ready yet. She would never be ready for that. Would everyone know? Just by looking at her, would people be able to see a brand of some kind that marked her as a failed woman? No, she would never be ready for that.

Megumi and Misao shared a look between them that seemed to pass a thousand words.

It was Megumi who sighed first. She daintily sat down on the damp mattress, not minding her how wet her white skirt would get in the process.

"Kaoru," Megumi sighed, "it's been a week, not very long in the grand scheme of things, but nearly too long for this to be healthy. We're not asking you to forget anything, or even to be happy right now. Look at all three of us; can we really say we're over anything?" Megumi grabbed Kaoru's shoulders and shook her gently.

"But you know better than anyone, if you don't push yourself now, you're not going to be moving, ever. And it's the same for us. I need to do something right now because if I stay in these four walls nothing but thinking, I'm going personally re-enact what you planned to do in your bathroom more than one week ago."

When Megumi found the bath tub filled with then lukewarm water and the damming razor beside it, she released a triad of epic proportions over Kaoru and threatened to take her to the hospital immediately. It was only with vast amounts of begging that the visit was avoided. But Megumi never let her forget what nearly happened and made it a daily duty to keep a close eye on her younger friend.

Kaoru looked at her hands. She knew. Of course she knew. She was a physiotherapist. Helping people get back to as normal of a life as they could was her job. She saw this all the time with amputees. No matter how much of physio they did, there was no way they would get their arm or leg back. All they could do was compensate for that loss. There was no way to go back to the life they had before they lost that limb. And because of that impossibility, they more often than not didnt put in as much effort as they could into their therapy. It was far easier to say, I didn't really try, than say I tried and I failed.

A broken heart was much like a missing leg. It was something you had to grow around rather than fix.

"Just come with me Kaoru. Please. I don't want to do this by myself." Misao squeezed the end of her braid with both hands nervously. "I haven't cut my hair since I was 16 years old because he said he liked it long. It is heavy and annoying. I think I want to see if there is someone else inside of me I need to meet. And I really want my sister to be there with me when I see her." Misao gave a sad, watery, smile.

If the three of them were anything, they were sisters. Blood or no blood, limb or no limb.

That night on the front lawn, when the three of them met up and held each other together was the night that three lives were saved.

If she couldn't do it for herself, at the very least she could do it for them.

Kaoru sniffed balefully. "Ok. B-but nothing too open ok? I-I don't w-want t-to see to-too many pe-people."

Megumi smiled. "That is perfectly fine." She got up and pulled Kaoru up with her, "Lets get you cleaned up and ready for our little walkabout."

"Look out world! We're on our way back." Misao cheered as she pumped her fist into the air. Her eyes were still suspiciously shiny, but at least they were now partly happy instead of totally dead.

Kaoru felt the first tinges of what might eventually become a smile.

Sitting in her car in the parking lot of her hospital, Megumi slammed her palm on the steering wheel. In her trembling hand, her tiny hand phone still displayed the message she received only minutes earlier.

SnO in HosP. He passed out b4 a gig. Docs suspect OD. Stable now. Doc's are sobering him up. Don't come. SnO orders. Sry.

Ktzu

No matter how she gasped, she still couldn't get enough air into her lungs.

He didn't want her with him anymore. He was sick, hurting, and probably dying for all she knew, and he didn't want her with him.

The realizations hit her like several sucker punches to the gut.

He chose his drugs over her.

Megumi clenched her eyes shut as a weak attempt to stall the tears that were already gathering.

Logically, Megumi knew she did what she did to help him, but part of her was terrified that she had only succeeded in pushing him deeper into the pit he was falling into.

She had worked herself into the ground the last week to exorcize that worry.

She spent more time in the hospital that was strictly legal, put in more hours than any other doctor on staff, pushed herself further that was sane. Manic work was a way to get though all the unnecessary clutter in her head.

Every time the vague whisper of worry floated by, Megumi pushed herself even harder into whatever surgery she was doing. She focused intensely on the smallest detail, the tiniest changes, driving her workmates up the wall in the process when they failed to reach her stellar standards. She focused on anything but her thoughts.

With a scalpel in her hand and death staring her in the face; it made relationship problems seem like child's play.

It was her supervisor, the ever vigilant Dr Gensai, who noticed the trend and finally put a stop to it. He had quietly asked her to his office and then proceeded to give her an ultimatum. Either she took four days of forced leave or he had her delivered to the psych ward.

She chose to take the holiday.

And Sano now was in hospital.

Megumi rested her head on the steering wheel and took deep calming breaths through the sobs that were choking her. Without work to block out everything else, she felt like she was drowning in her own regrets.

Regrets about her past, regrets about Sano intertwining with the lingering regrets she had about her mother.

Megumi was often called a woman of secrets. Sano joked that if she were an onion, he would have to peel each layer for the rest of his life to get to her core. Sano had no idea how true that was.

Since they first met, it took Sano six months to find out that Megumi was in university on a full scholarship. It took him a full year to hear that she had never known her father. It took him two years after that to find out that her mother died when she was fourteen

But even with Sano, there were some things in her life she was never going to share. She simply was not built that way. Sano only ever tried to ask once about her mother, and when she refused to answer, he never asked again.

Perhaps things would have been much easier for her now, if she had answered him back then. Perhaps things would have never gone this far if he knew what she had seen growing up.

But regrets never solved anything. Regrets killed her mother. But Megumi would be dammed if it killed her too.

Or Sano.

In her mind, a chaos flickered images and regrets merged into one great shifting ball of memory.

Megumi braced herself.

She forced herself into the moment she held that packet of white powder and listened to Katsu's chilling explanation.

In sepia, she remembered finding that same fine powder as a child. It was hidden in the green tea tin that her mother kept in the third cupboard, on the highest shelf. She had thought it was a special kind of sugar that little girls were not allowed to take.

Megumi forced herself to relive the texture of the puckered skin on the crook of Sano's elbow. She pushed through the moment she recognized exactly what was revisiting her life. She felt again the sinking, stabbing, feeling it brought to her chest.

She flashed back, to a skinny pale arm, with fine blue veins and the very same puckered red scars, stretched out invitingly to her.

She forced herself to re-look into the memory of Sano's honey brown pupils, dilated to the extreme. She re-heard the increased rate of speech, the flickering of the eyes from one corner to the other like a manic butterfly.

Megumi saw maroon eyes, identical to her own, staring out unblinking and dull from the doorway of a filthy bathroom. She heard the voice of a woman who talked to fairies and ghosts as she ran in circles on the lawn swatting away at bugs under her skin.

Each memory, old and new, refreshed things she had tried her best to forget.

The memory of a woman with glazed maroon eyes, and skin that hung loose on a face that might have once been pretty. A mother, who said she was a chemist, but in reality worked in a meth lab that gave her a cut of the produce as payment.

A thin, frail woman, whose hand shook so badly that she couldn't even shoot up her own drugs anymore; A mother, who had handed a syringe to her eight year old daughter, and then calmly told her exactly how to play with this new toy.

Megumi remembered that the plastic needle had felt overly large in her inexperienced hand. She remembered how her mother had praised her as the older woman collapsed with euphoria in bed.

She remembered thinking that something was very wrong with what her mother asked her to do. The same thing Sano had asked her to do by ignoring what was fast becoming his own personal addiction. Ignoring something was just as bad as contributing to it.

She forced herself to relive his reality. And the reality he would have continued down if she didn't at least try to do something. A reality she had already lived through once before.

When Megumi slowly returned to the present, she became aware that the tears had dried into sticky streaks on her cheeks. She didn't know how long she had sat in her car seat, but she felt stiff and bone weary.

Hours, days maybe even lifetimes. But it didn't matter now, because Sano was gone and there was nothing she could do to change that.

No.

No, Sano was still here. Sano was still alive. She could still save him.

With a shaking hand Megumi tugged down her rear view mirror so that it reflected her face in its entirety. She looked at herself with the same sharp pointed look she would have used to analyze the face of a patient that was lying about their medical history.

It was in this position that she was as honest as humanly possible with herself.

She looked at her options. She could abide by her original oath. An oath that she took because she thought it would save his life. Could she live with herself if she left him now? Leave him by himself because he had an addiction that destroyed her life once before?

No.

She couldn't.

Because she loved him.

And she would fight for him. Fight for him the way she should have fought for her mother. Fight for him and with him, even if he didn't want her there with him.

This mantra, this dialog between what she called her 'inner computer' and real self did the trick. Slowly she watched he pupils dilate, her face soften, her brows even out. She watched this shattered woman pull herself back into some semblance of a real person.

Once she felt centered, or as centered as she could be, Megumi sat up and fixed her makeup. Makeup was the best shield a woman had, and Megumi wanted to go in with both guns blazing.

There were only two hospitals that Sano would ever willingly go to, his dislike of medical institutions was an open secret. Since he clearly wasn't here, it only left one other option open.

As she slid her car into gear, Megumi prayed to any God listening that she could get through to him.

If only this once.

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