Disclaimer: I do not own To LOVE-Ru.

To LOVE-Ru
Empty Memories:
True Heart
Chapter 2
The Place They Call Home

The ground was still riddled with ashes. As the captain knelt, his knee and feet indenting upon the gray surface, he reached down and grasped a fistful of the dust.

"So this is where it happened?" His iris colored eyes swept the area, finding nothing but the gray ash.

"Yes."

He sighed and looked up at his golden-haired companion. "How did you find him?"

Her crimson eyes gazed at the point the ash stopped short of. "He was lying in the ash."

He followed her gaze and examined the area. There were uneven indentations and spots of dried blood in the gray mounds. "A blow to the head like that... it's amazing he's still alive."

"He is very fortunate."

He glanced back at her from the ground. "And the assailant..."

Her crimson eyes narrowed just a little, enough for the gray-haired captain to know he had offended her. "Dealt with."

He nodded and rose to his feet. "What an unfortunate fellow," he murmured. Golden Darkness is a tough opponent as it is, but for her to be angry... He shook his head. Only a fool would attack someone targeted by her.

"How is Mikan-dono?"

"...Unsettled," she said, her gaze flickering to the remnants of the wooded area. A clearing now, whole trees had been reduced to the gray ash they now stood on. She rest her gaze on a tree at the edge of the clearing with a hole the size of a fist buried in it. A dark green color bathed the hole and trailed down the tree's trunk. "But strong. There is no need for you to worry about Yuuki Mikan."

The captain raised a brow at the last part of her statement, but nodded wordlessly. "I see. Thank you for your assistance, Golden Darkness. You seem to be helping her highness a lot more often these days."

"Perhaps I wouldn't need to if you did your job better."

Words leaped from his throat, but the captain bit his tongue and closed his eyes. "I'll try to do better from now on," he strained through gritted teeth. "Regardless," he continued, opening his eyes once more, "you have my thanks."

"I see."

He sighed and ran a gauntlet-ed hand through his hair. "I must pay my respects to Rito-dono. Is he still at Mikado-san's?"

The golden-haired girl shook her head. "The doctor is allowing Yuuki Rito to return home today."

"Home," Zastin contemplated. "If he can call it that."

"He is still Yuuki Rito," she said, turning to him.

"Perhaps," the captain consented as he walked towards her, "but he is not the same Yuuki Rito we once knew. You visited him him yesterday." He came to a stop beside her, his gaze sweeping the woods before him, and spoke his next words quietly. "Surely you can see that."

"I am not blind. He is my target." A hint of bitterness sounded through her voice, causing the captain to tilt his head to the side.

"I wonder which angers you more- the fact that someone else got to Rito-dono before you did, or that someone actually hurt Rito-dono while you were on this planet."

Her eyes narrowed as she turned to him. "What?"

"Well," he began, a small smile pulling at the corner of his lips, "it's just a thought. But..." He started forward again. "The wheel will not stop spinning, Darkness. The brief peace we are living through will not last forever. The continued interruptions of her highness's suitors are proof of that. The instinct of an assassin tells you this just as the instinct of a warrior tells me. Eventually you will have to choose." He spoke no more as he faded into the woods, leaving the crimson-eyed girl to stare after him.

She stared into the darkness of the trees that had swallowed the captain's form, then she, too, turned and walked away.

o0o

"This is it."

The door opened before him with hardly a creek. The man who had opened it nodded to him and gestured for him to enter. He supposed the man had done it to reassure him, but it made no difference. This place felt no different than the white room had. He stepped through the doorway. The wooden floor beneath his feet continued on into a single step, then flattened out again to lead further into the house. There were four sets of shoes lined neatly beside the wall next to the step. He stared down at them in silence for a moment, then slid his shoes off and set them down at the end of the line. He could hear the door close behind him as his foot touched upon the step. When he glanced back, he saw the man and the girl doing what he had done with their own shoes.

His eyes shifted back to the room. To his left sat a long couch with an armchair sitting on either side of it. They seemed to be situated to face the black television that stood against the wall. Straight ahead of him, past the couches, was a set of stairs and a hall. The banister was of a deep brown wood, and the stairs disappeared from view above the ceiling. Beside him on his right was a round, wooden table surrounded by five chairs. A white counter stood beside it, and beyond it was a stove and oven sidled up between a cabinet and another counter that bordered the wall. A large white refrigerator sat along the wall opposite the end of the counter. Its surface was covered with papers and magnets.

"So what do you think? Does it feel familiar?"

He gazed down at the girl as she stepped beside him. She looked up at him quietly, her hazel eyes searching his, for what though, he did not know. He said nothing, and instead gazed around the house once more. His eyes settled behind the girl, on top of a shelf behind the table. He stepped around her and walked to the shelf. Framed pictures lined the wooden surface; they showed people laughing, or spending time together. One picture showed a little girl holding out a pink scarf and a pair of fuzzy earmuffs with smiley faces on them happily, while a boy stood beside her, smiling sheepishly with a hand scratching his head.

"That one was of Christmas a long time ago." She smiled warmly as she picked the picture up. "Our parents weren't home. They worked a lot. You thought I'd be lonely, so you got a small tree and decorated it." She laughed fondly at the memory, and held the picture out to Rito. "You gave me those as presents. Said that Santa had left them for me."

He took the frame from her, but try as he might, he couldn't remember the memory the picture represented. He couldn't feel the happiness this girl obviously felt when she looked at it.

"And this was last year's."

He looked up to see the girl holding another picture. It showed a group of people standing in front of a Christmas tree. He recognized everyone except for two of them. There was a woman standing beside the man who had claimed to be his father, and in his own hands was a little girl with long green hair and a flower on her head.

"Who are they?" he asked, pointing to the anomalies.

The man smiled. "That's your mother, Rito. She's overseas working in the fashion industry right now. And that little girl is-"

"Celine," the girl said quickly, casting her father a severe glance.

"Celine." Rito repeated the name, oblivious to the exchange.

"Yes... She's upstairs if you would like to see her. So are the others."

"Others?"

She nodded. "Do you remember the three girls with pink hair? They live with us."

Pink hair... He looked down at the photo again. They were all there. Even the girl who had run out of the room. She was standing right beside him in the photo, her arms wrapped around his waist and a red hat atop her head. There was a smile there too, as if she were truly happy. He shook his head. It was hard to imagine her very happy, not after the look he had seen on her face.

"Hey, why don't we go see your room?"

He glanced at the man quietly and nodded. He set the picture down as he followed him to the stairs. The girl did not follow though, but simply stared at the picture in her hands, and Rito could only glance at her as she disappeared from view. His gaze lingered on the walls that blocked her from sight for only a moment before he turned away. The stairs broke at a landing before leading them briefly to the left. They stepped off into a hallway where a small number of doors lined the walls, and an odd, white pad sat. The man led him past all of them, however, one after the other until they came to the last door at the very end of the hall. The man turned to him then, and motioned towards the door.

Rito stepped forward slowly, glancing at the man briefly before reaching out for the knob. It turned smoothly in his hand. He pushed the door open.

A simple bed. A closed window with drapes drawn back. A nightstand. These were the first things he saw. His eyes looked over each of these things slowly, searchingly. But nothing came to him. They meant nothing to him beyond the functions served. None of the things he found in that room did, not even after he entered and took in what stood around him. A dresser. A desk. A bookshelf. A clock on the wall. He could hear it ticking so clearly as he looked around. There were shelves on the walls next to the desk, a closed closet in the corner of the room, and a ceiling fan with a light hanging perfectly still above him. And nothing felt familiar. Not the possessions that lined the shelves, or the papers that lay stacked on the desk, or the books lining the bookshelf. Not even the pictures scattered about the room in frames.

"Does any of it seem familiar?"

His gaze slowly moved across the images on the shelf next to him, their frames both small and large, but he said nothing. The pictures drew his attention, but not for the reason the man might have hoped. They all showed the same people. Sometimes only one or two of them, others in groups, and he was with them in more than a couple of the pictures. Most of the pictures seemed to have been taken in a city, but there were some that were clearly taken at a beach, or a house. And all of them, all of them were of people he recognized. The people who had visited him in the hospital. Those girls, and that man. Only a few of them included people he didn't recognize. A man with gray hair, a woman with orange-brown hair, a young man with black.

"Rito?"

The word echoed in his mind. Rito. This was Rito. The boy in the pictures, with all of these girls who clearly felt dearly about him. That was Rito. But him... no, he was not Rito. He couldn't be. He didn't know how. He couldn't remember. For him, Rito was just a name. Not an identity. Not a life. The memory of Rito remained only in those who had known him, and he...

"Rito, would you like to meet them? The girls who live here with you?"

He turned slowly, almost mechanically, and gazed upon the man who was to be his father. His eyes, his hair, his face, even the headband, he searched them with his eyes. The Rito in the pictures, the Rito everyone seemed to care so much about, if he could be awakened by anyone, it would be by his own father, right? The man who had helped raise him, the man who had been a primary influence in his life, surely Rito would know him, even without his memories. Right?

"Come with me, Rito," Saibai said. "Just to get reacquainted with them. You don't have to stay with them for long if you don't want to, but I think it would do you some good to spend time with your friends again."

But no. There was nothing.

The man led him into the hallway again, but he stopped at no door this time. Rather, he stepped in front of the pad. Rito glanced down at it briefly before stepping onto it with the man. It was encircled by a white ring, but he could see no more, for the next instant it disappeared. His vision was filled with emerald light. It lasted only a moment, and the next he was staring down at the pad again, in all its whiteness. But it wasn't the only thing that was white. The floor was white. And as he followed the floor he realized the walls were white too. They arched slightly as the rose, meeting to form a dome above the room. A room of nothing but white.

"Rito-san..."

He dropped his gaze from the ceiling. In the center of the room lay two long couches with a table sitting between them. On the couch facing them sat four girls, all of who had pink hair but one. Two of them had visited him in the hospital; their violet eyes stared at him with concern. But the third... His gaze halted when it landed upon her. It was her. The girl he had first met when he woke up. His heart began to beat faster, but only slightly so. Not enough for him to notice. He stared at her silently, taking in the curves of tresses that draped over her shoulders, the gentle curls of her lashes, and... His head tilted ever so slightly, as if he wasn't sure what he was seeing. It soon came to him though. Her eyes, they were pools of jade that seemed so deep... But there was something in them that gave him pause. It took him a moment to recognize what it was.

Emotion

She met his gaze only shortly, but he was not mistaken in what he saw. She looked away from him then, and rose to her feet. His eyes followed her as she left the room, and did not leave the door she disappeared through until someone spoke his name.

"Rito-san."

When he turned back to the couch, one of the girls was standing. The one with short hair. Her twin sat next to her, an unsure look on her face. She flinched and turned away when his gaze met hers. The small girl that sat next to her smiled brightly and cried out before she hopped off the couch and ran his way. Or as much of a run as a girl whose legs were that short could make.

"Mau!"

She came trundling out from behind the other couch and latched onto his leg.

"Mau," she cooed softly as she buried her face into his pants leg. She hugged him tightly and smiled up at him. "Mau!"

"Do you remember her, Rito-san?" the girl asked.

Rito looked up at her quietly. She had told him her name when she visited him. It was one of the only names he knew in this world. He knew all of their names. Momo, Nana, Saibai, Celine... He looked once more to the door. Lala.

He had seen it. That look in her eyes, the look that had appeared when he met her in the hospital, they were the same. And he knew what it was she was finally upset about. He knew why that look had touched her eyes. She had been hurt. And it was his fault. Not Rito's. Not some medical condition. His. And his alone. Because he couldn't remember. Because he wasn't Rito.

-END Ch. 2-

~~~~~ooooo00000ooooo~~~~~

Anew, he opened his eyes to this world.

The people, strangers.

The place they called home, a building foreign to him.

They told him his name, but he did not recognize it.

They told him his past, but he did not remember it.

They showed him his love, but he did not know her.

"Surely," they lamented, "you will remember!"

But alas, the answer was unknown.

~~~~~ooooo00000ooooo~~~~~