AN: My sincerest thanks for the support. It is, as it always is, greatly appreciated.

Just to quickly address a comment, I have no intention of abandoning my other stories. This little line is just an exercise to re-familiarize myself with the characters and writing fiction again.


Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven.
I'll find my way
Through night and day
Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven

-Eric Clapton, Tears In Heaven

A Dog Chasing Her Tail

She wasn't real.

Natsuki cursed a million times in anger. She should've known better. It was too good to be true, it was too promising. The wind was completely taken out of her sails, and she didn't know what to do anymore. She fingered the week-old pack of cigarettes sitting on her knee and contemplated having a smoke. She didn't really miss the habit, it was too early since her very first puff for her to be addicted, so she felt no desire to feel the nicotine flow through her system when she had something else to occupy her mind and her time. Something else to distract her and give her hope.

But she was giving up on that occupation now. She'd spent the past week searching out for her riddle, her very own Atlantis. She'd spent an entire day out in the cold, scouring the bustling University streets for the chestnut-haired woman; she'd spent every night on the University website looking through directories and articles; she'd spent all class hour searching through social-networking sites, looking through any page she could think of; she'd stayed overnight in the Student Union, where she first met the woman. Nothing. It was difficult without a name, but she should've gotten a lead by now. She couldn't find a god damn thing on this woman, this ghost.

That's what she'd decided the figure from that night was: Another ghost. Another figment of her imagination; an illusion; a hallucination; a lie. It was an aggravating thought more so than a disconcerting one. After all, it wouldn't be the first time she saw something that wasn't, and shouldn't be, there. Despite feeling as if she should've known better, however, she desperately wanted, or perhaps needed, this girl to be real-and she was nearly willing to do anything to see that end met. She would reach into the heavens and rewrite history if she had to. There was just no choice in the matter. It had to be.

Bleary, redden eyes blinked, but didn't open back up right away. It'd been three days since the last time her obsession had allowed her the tempting tug of sleep. Three days of fruitless searching accented by gallons of cold coffee, instead of the sleep she'd had the luxury of the first four days of searching.

But how could she allow herself rest when she had so much to do?

More importantly, how could she sleep when the looming possibility of dreaming about "It" hovered about her?

Since the night she'd messed up her hand, her dreams had taken a dramatic shift from what they once were. She had a dream about the tawny-haired woman the night after she'd encountered her. It was nothing special nor exciting, but it was different. Just a calm, snowy night, standing and staring at the retreating back of her obsession. All that mattered was that it was different. It wasn't the dreams of "It" anymore. She didn't see familiar bare, smooth curves twisting before her, flushed in a beautiful shade of red, underneath a hand of fingers, too short and wide to be her own. She didn't see that all too mesmerizing body being worshipped in the most personal, vulnerable ways she could imagine. She didn't feel her own body weighed down to the ground as cries of ecstasy and passion from the couple before her filled the air she breathed; stifling her, suffocating her, killing her.

Oh, but she did. She saw it all once more, but a few nights ago. She hadn't slept since. As the optimism that came from the encounter she'd had a week ago dwindled, so did the visions of tawny mane that temporarily blocked out cocoa strands. But the lovers were back, boasting their relationship before her in the most primal style.

Natsuki punched herself in the forehead with her still bandaged hand, not caring that the bruised and battered knuckles throbbed in protest on impact. She didn't want to think about it, she didn't want to see "It" anymore. That part of her life was over, and the mystery woman was the key to the lock on the door of the next part of her future. She had to believe that, or else she had nothing to continue fighting for.

She pushed out from her desk and grabbed the pack of cigarettes she'd been playing with before. She flipped off the desk lamp, plunging her entire apartment into blackness, and shuffled through the piles of clothes strewn about the floor to the front door, where she kicked into her tennis shoes. She blindly fumbled with them a minute before they were on. She opened up her door, flooding the room in light and allowing her to locate her coat, before stepping out into the hallway. She nearly tripped down the hallway, both from pure exhaustion and mal-use of her legs. Stumbling down the stairs and lighting up the stick between her lips nearly proved too much for her, for she pitched forward as her lighter was flicked aflame just before catching herself. A deep growl of frustration at her clumsy motor skills followed, and she opened up the door to welcome the cool night air.

Snow immediately pooled around and on top of her mesh tennis shoes, allowing cold air to assault her un-socked toes. A shiver ripped through her spine, and she thought for a moment to go back inside to grab more proper footwear. The thought was fleeting, however, and she decided that she wasn't keen on taking on the stairs more than she needed to after the brilliant show of grace a few moments ago.

She breathed smoky, tantalizing death into her lungs, reveling in the knowledge of what the habit did to her psyche, her conscious. The city lights in the distance danced among the slowly fluttering flakes of frost in the air. The lights and snow seemed so in tune yet so distant. So same but so different. Natural and artificial painted within the same picture within the same human condition. How could they live and fuse together with such harmony and elegance?

The screeching of car tires in the distance, followed by a resounding crash of metal on metal, reached her ears.

Oh yeah, they didn't.

Two opposing forces could never dwell together in peace, only in war and violence. Pain and Anger.

The embers of her cigarette went out. She vaguely heard approaching footsteps in the snow, and figured that one of the apartment inhabitants was returning. Not willing to accompany the newcomer in walking inside and desiring only solitude, she pulled her pack from her pocket. Sluggishly, she pulled out a stick and went to close the packet. A hand stopped her. Her heart skipped a beat as she stared at the intruding fingers, not daring to travel up the hand, the arm, the shoulder, the neck, to the face of the person. She knew who it was. She watched the smooth, well-groomed fingers pull out a cigarette between two long nails. Still she didn't dare move her eyes from the pack. She desperately wanted to follow that hand, further examine those fingers. Fingers that sang of faint nostalgia. Fingers not too familiar, but that reminded her of a glimpse a time not long before, a length of time that spanned little more than a fleeting moment.

Did she have the courage to look up at them, where even now they were trailing up to the stranger's face, to delicately place the stick between a pair of nondescript lips?

She heard the flick of a match, but still didn't look up. She didn't even move.

It could change her life. Was she ready? She'd been searching madly all week, torturing herself and tearing herself apart in the hunt. But was now the time?

Change was frightening, and she was afraid. Terrified.

An emerald gaze looked up as the stranger exhaled a curtain of smoke.

Chestnut hair. Pleasant, breezy, light, familiar. Familiar.

The dieing flame of hope flared back to life.

The smoke dissipated, allowing a clear view of the tawny-haired woman. The first thing that struck Natsuki were her eyes. Crimson, bloody, violent, the color of hate; Ruby, passionate, consuming, the color of love. A pair of opposing forces. But which was the true color? The prospect fascinated and horrified Natsuki at the same time.

But the world was never that simple, was it? No person had a single facet to them. Hate and love could be encompassed together in the same being quite effortlessly. The world was just as easily filled with both states of human kind. Wars and violence erupted throughout while bonds accented in caring bloomed within and without.

Funny how a pair of eyes could so perfectly summarize the state of the human condition. Natsuki was immediately hooked.

Hair was tucked behind one of the enigma's ears while hair flooded over the other, obscuring it from view. Well trimmed, tawny bangs provided a fringe across a smooth forehead, bordering thin yet full eyebrows, which lay easily and expressionlessly upon her brow. A small, regal nose produced warm air to disappear into the midwinter atmosphere, and full, brilliantly red lips partnered with a proud, thin jaw line in a picture of beauty. Perfection.

Still, those pools of love and hate pulled her back, stared into her soul, bound her in chains, and stole every secret. She found she didn't even try to stop the rape of her jealously-guarded veracity. She allowed that gaze to wash over her, euthanize her in it's intensity, lull her into a state of ease.

And then the clandestine figure spoke in a voice that sang of force and greatness, humility and simplicity. "No one should have to smoke alone." Natsuki bathed in the words, the inflection, the lilt. It excited and calmed her all at once. She felt off balance and nervous, but so alive.

Alive. Something she hadn't felt in far too long.

It could change her life.

It took her a moment to realize that the red-eyed woman had removed Natsuki's previously forgotten cigarette from between the dark-haired woman's still fingers and place it between Natsuki's lips. A flame from a match seared the air before the end, and after only a second of hesitation Natsuki brought the tip deeper into the heat and breathed in, lighting the cigarette. She clumsily placed the pack back into her pocket and took a drag at the same time. Their eyes never broke contact as she did so.

A red gaze that drowned her in it's smoldering emotion. Natsuki couldn't look away even if she wanted to. If she wanted to. She didn't.

"Thank you," she rumbled out, in a voice much more raspy and uneven than the other woman's. Her throat strained from the effort. When was the last time she'd spoken? Too long; not long enough.

Without looking away from her company, Natsuki attempted to flick off the ashes of her cigarette with numbed, graceless fingers, only to the result of losing her grip and allowing the stick to fall into the ground. She didn't particularly care for the lose of the object, however. The high from the mere presence of her companion was far more powerful than that of any earthly creation, to say nothing of the intoxication of her stare.

Red remained locked with green in a violent battle and a harmonious dance, even as the mysterious woman stretched her hand out in offering of the smoking cigarette in her hand. Natsuki met her hand halfway and didn't look down until she felt the jolt of contact between their fingers. It literally made the woman jump. She could feel her. She could feel the snow-kissed skin meet with her own, she could feel the dramatic tingling of physical contact. It lit her entire body with a bolt of lightning. Her gaze lingered on the two drastically different shades of skin at the same time that their hands lingered in their touch. After years of wondering at skin-on-skin, they pulled apart at the same time, but it was many more years before Natsuki's gaze left that hand once more and darted back up to those eyes. Red irises were turned to the landscape, viewing the city lights through the haze of flakes. Natsuki was just as content watching her obsession examine something else as she was watching her obsession examine her. She took a long drag in the silence and exhaled luxuriously. The filter tasted of lavender, giving the tobacco an sweet smell and feel that flowed to the very tips of her fingers and toes, honing and dulling her senses.

"Who are you?" The question drifted through the air without the dark-haired woman realizing she'd asked it until the last syllable left her lips.

Red eyes drifted to their questioner in intrigue, as if she was surprised that the other even had to ask. "Who do you want me to be?"

Green eyes blinked back, confused by the question. "What?"

"What do you need me to be?"

A hesitant silence. "Nothing." Everything.

"The need of nothing preludes the want for something."

Instead of replying, Natsuki took another drag before holding out her hand in offering of the slowly dwindling cigarette to the other.

Tawny hair shifted as a head shook in denial. "I don't smoke. Thank you."

A dark brow went up in confusion, but she shrugged off the thought. It didn't matter. She flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the snow dismissively. "Neither do I, what a coincidence."

A smile, slight and pure, like the very first flakes of snow or the youngest flowers of spring. Untouched by human taint, natural and simple. The most hypnotizing thing Emeralds would ever see and etch into memory-to hoard possessively and secret away, all for herself. Only for herself.

It could change her life.

But for how long?

No. She shook that thought away. She needed something to live for, something to chase. In a world without a meaning to life, one had to carve out their own purpose. Her purpose was now standing before her in a white winter coat and faded jeans. She had to believe that. She had no choice. No matter how easy that made her to break, no matter how vulnerable it made her to destruction, she had to take the risk.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

With warning, the woman suddenly moved a step closer to Natsuki, bringing her within a breath of contact. Every nerve on the dark-haired woman's body hummed with desire for contact, to feel her touch, but she stayed immobile, unblinking. Long-nailed fingers pulled something out of a white coat pocket and slipped it into the black coat pocket of the other.

"When you figure out what you want of me," the silky voice murmured as fingers pulled away from Natsuki and the warm body took a step back, "come find me." Then she was turning and walking away, her tawny mane blowing in the winter air.

Green eyes stared after the retreating female paradox in wonder and appraisal. She tried to measure exactly what the other woman was doing, what she meant, but she drew up a blank. Absent-mindedly, she pulled out the object in her pocket and scanned it, hoping for answers. It was a piece of paper, written across it in beautiful penmanship was a name and the address to an apartment building nearby.

"Shizuru."

She could change her life.


AN: Dear readers of the young and/or impressionable sort: Smoking is bad, don't do it. If for no other reason, don't do it cause it makes you smell freaking terrible. Not worth it. If that doesn't convince you, it also makes your cum taste horrible. No one wants gross cum, nor does anyone want to taste gross cum.