Chapter four

Shivering and left out in the snow and freezing cold, Ritsuka pulled out his phone, his hands shaking as he dialed Kio's number. He had a huge gash across the bridge of his nose and cheeks that was still bleeding. Misaki had been extremely bad tonight. She had screamed hurtful words at him while shoving his face into the cold water in the bathtub until Ritsuka could no longer breathe, thinking she could bring her Ritsuka back by drowning this one. She had thrown broken glass and heavy books and anything else she could get her hands on at him, causing multiple lacerations and bruises. She had hit him with her fists as well, and then thrown him off of the balcony in his own room. He had landed hard on his back in the snow, freezing and hurting everywhere.

Soubi had always told him to call him or come to his house when this happened. That was exactly what Ritsuka had been doing lately. He would show up at all hours of the night at Soubi's house in tears and would ask in a shaking voice if it was okay to come in. He trusted Soubi. He could always count on him to take him into his arms, no matter what time it was, and show the child that he loved him. Soubi would take Ritsuka into the apartment and bandage his wounds, always talking with Ritsuka during it, no matter how angry he was at Misaki. It was comforting, and Soubi was always overly careful and gentle with him. He usually refused to take Ritsuka back home, but, if he did, he would always stay with him until morning.

If he got the chance, Ritsuka would call him while Misaki was beating him, but that was extremely rare. Now that Soubi was in the hospital, Ritsuka hadn't been sure if he could call Kio. For a few minutes, he simply sat in the snow, freezing, in just a t-shit. His mother had stripped him of all his clothes when Misaki had tried to drown him. He had managed to grab a shirt before thrown off the balcony. It wasn't even his shirt. Ritsuka had grabbed one of the ones Soubi had left at his house when he had begun spending the night more often.

Kio answered, sounding sleepy. Ritsuka told him that he had been thrown out of his house, but nothing more, and Kio agreed to come get him. Ritsuka sat on his front lawn, knees pulled up against his chest and his arms around them in an attempt to keep warm. He waited, shivering harder than he ever had before. He was too cold to even cry.

While he waited, Ritsuka distracted himself by thinking about Soubi and how he had helped Ritsuka in times like these. His mother had been getting worse and worse and her delusions were becoming more vivid to her. She was never sane anymore. She lived in her dream world every second of the day, now. Before, there were times where she was nice and caring, but those times had slowly begun to lessen until there weren't any more. Ritsuka had mentioned once to Soubi that maybe he deserved it because he had absorbed the other Ritsuka. That was the only time Ritsuka ever remembered Soubi raising his voice to him.

He hadn't yelled at Ritsuka, per say, but he had gotten somewhat angered and he did raise his voice, but not to a yelling level. Ritsuka had been taken aback by it, all the same. He still remembered exactly what Soubi had said to him that night and the exact way he said it. He had gotten straight to the point, immediately telling Ritsuka 'No!' after Ritsuka had said the remark. He had told him that this was Ritsuka, that he wasn't just some imposter, and he was the same person he was two years ago, he'd just changed a little. Ritsuka had stared at him in shock and told him 'thank you'. Soubi had apologized for raising his voice, and that was the end of the discussion, though Ritsuka lay in bed later, staring up at the ceiling and back at Soubi, who was fast asleep beside him, and wondered if he had been right.

Ritsuka looked up every time he heard a car go down the road that his street branched off of. Every time his hopes were killed, though. How long had it been? Ritsuka checked the clock on his phone, sadly noting the dying battery. It had only been ten minutes. From Ritsuka's house to the hospital was at least that. Hopefully, Kio would be here soon.

He would give anything to go to Soubi's apartment right then and curl up into the man's arms, warm and safe from his mother. He couldn't even walk to the apartment, since he had left his key inside and the only thing he had on was the oversized t-shirt. Misaki had locked every door, making it impossible to get into his own house.

Frowning, Ritsuka looked down at his fingers, wondering how long it took for a wet, young teenager to get frostbite. At least his fingers weren't blue. Yet. His wet hair clung to his head, visibly frozen into clumps. He glanced up at the sky just in time to see a large, thick snowflake fall. Down the street, a horn blared, but Ritsuka didn't look up. It was too far away. He rested his head on his knees, hoping the wind wouldn't blow his frail body away.

He must've started to fall asleep, because the next thing he heard was Kio's shocked yell of his name and him running towards Ritsuka. Ritsuka didn't even open his eyes, too tired from the late-night/early-morning beating.

"Ritsuka!" Kio was suddenly beside him, putting his warm coat around his cold body. "Good god…why the hell are you out here so late? You're wet! Why didn't you go inside?"

That was right. Ritsuka had forgotten that Kio knew nothing about his mother's constant delusions. "Mom…" Ritsuka tried to mumble, raising his head slightly. He heard Kio gasp at the bad cut on his face, which was still bleeding lightly.

The next thing he knew, he was being thrown into the backseat of Kio's car and blankets were being piled on top of him. He finally opened his eyes, still shivering, and he realized just how much his body ached.

"Ow…"Ritsuka said quietly when Kio touched his head, swabbing something that stung on the cut. "Hurts… stop…" He couldn't seem to think straight. It was almost as if the cold wind had blown everything out of his brain or a layer of snow was laying on top of his mind, preventing him from reaching what was in it. Whose car was he in? Why did he feel so much pain? Where was Soubi? Why was Kio here and not him?

"I can't, Ritsuka," Kio told him gently, using the same tone of voice that Soubi had used when he would take a broken Ritsuka in and treat his wounds. "Tell me what happened."

"…Can't remember," Ritsuka said, his voice shaking and his teeth chattering uncontrollably. Cold, cold, cold. Why was he so cold? He could remember what had happened, though not clearly. He wanted something, something that he missed so badly. There were arms around him, but he couldn't remember whose. Kio's? Soubi's? Soubi; that was who he wanted right now, but was not there.

"Are you starting to warm up?" The arms that were around him now had a voice, and then a face, and then a name. Ritsuka was starting to come back. His freezing body was starting to feel the warmth of the blankets and the body heat from Kio, who had him pulled close.

Ritsuka nodded, his eyes finally seeing sharp again, and not blurry faces and shapes. He was in Kio's car under layers of blankets and the heat turned up as high as it would go. His frozen hair stuck to his face and the cuts and scars his mother had made bled and stung. Soubi was in the hospital, unable to do anything more than blink to communicate, and Ritsuka missed him and wanted to see him.

"Tell me what happened," Kio said again in a little firmer, yet still soft tone.

"M-mom," Ritsuka's teeth still chattered and he still shivered, but less than before. "She cut m-me and tried to…to drown me. She t-threw things at me t…too." Ritsuka swallowed, trying to stop his speech impediment caused by the cold. "Then she p-picked me up, took me up to my room, and p…pushed me off the balcony."

Ritsuka honestly couldn't remember whether she'd pushed him off or thrown him off. He just recalled hands on him and then slamming onto the ground. Damn gravity. Why did it have to hurt so much?

Kio looked thoroughly shocked and disgusted. He stared at Ritsuka with wide eyes for a few more moments before going back to treating the cut on his face. He seemed to have a first-aid kit underneath the seat. "When you called me, I thought your parents just got mad at you for staying at Soubi's too much and kicked you out. I thought they knew you were hanging out with a guy so much older than you. That's what I always thought…" Kio spoke quietly as he dabbed something else at the cut that made it numb. "Soubi used to say that he hated your parents, but I would just roll my eyes and get back to my work. I…I thought he just didn't like them because they knew about you and him and didn't approve of it. I never imagined this…"

Kio stuck a large band-aid across the bridge of Ritsuka's nose and mopped up the rest of the blood with a piece of gauze. Embarrassed that someone else had to take care of him, Ritsuka pulled his arms out of the cocoon of blankets, showing Kio the bleeding irregular scars going up and down them.

"You didn't do this to yourself…did you?" Ritsuka shook his head, answering the older man's question. Kio breathed a sigh of relief.

Ritsuka glanced down sadly at the new scars, as well as some faded older ones. "She thinks that if she cuts enough that it'll drain all of my blood out and the Old Ritsuka will come back," Ritsuka decided to elaborate. It was part of the bathtub ritual Misaki had started to do recently. He hated it and was even a bit afraid of bathtubs, now. When Ritsuka had been sick with the flu and wet the bed and then threw up on himself, Soubi had tried to give him a bath. Ritsuka had fought him, though, afraid in his sick filled haze that Soubi was going to do the same thing that his mother did. Soubi had forced him into the bath, though, which had cleared Ritsuka's mind. Ritsuka later told him why he had tried to get away from Soubi and apologized for trying to hit him and fight him. Soubi had told him that it was alright and that Ritsuka hadn't hurt him at all.

"Why didn't you go back inside?" The way Kio was talking to him really reminded him of Soubi. He closed his eyes, letting him go to work at the cuts on his arms, still able to feel his mother holding him underwater for longer than he could hold his breath and then being held down in the empty bathtub as his mother cut scars on his arms, trying to drain all of his 'bad blood'.

"She locked me out and turned out all the lights. I tried to get up on the balcony like Soubi always does….did…but I couldn't," Ritsuka finally answered.

"I'm calling the police," Kio muttered. "I'm sorry that I dropped you off here. I think…I understand now. I never used to know why Soubi would follow you home and not come back for hours and hours. I used to accuse him of staying there to watch you because he was a pervert, but now…He was staying there to help you, wasn't he?"

Ritsuka nodded, pangs of depression starting deep within him. Even if Soubi was still alive and able to think, he would probably never move again, with the exception of blinking to communicate. Ritsuka couldn't keep holding onto the thought that because it was a spell he would snap out of it or wear off. It was false hope. Soubi was going to probably be like this forever. Ritsuka made a promise to never leave him, even though he was in this sort of state. He knew that Soubi would do the same for him.

"How often?" Kio's voice was nothing more than a hesitant whisper. Ritsuka didn't need clarification. He knew what Kio was asking: how often does she beat you?

Ritsuka couldn't bear to look at him, and his eyes flickered away when he answered, "Almost every day. She's gotten worse since I started coming home less and less. She used to just hit me a couple times if I was a few minutes late, but now it's much more than that. I suppose if I came home more, she wouldn't beat me as much."

Kio shook his head, wearing the same expression that Soubi had whenever Ritsuka told him what Misaki had done. "No, you shouldn't. You did the right thing. Soubi made sure you were loved and he cared for you. You couldn't have picked a better person to stay with."

Ritsuka blinked and attempted to hold back the tears. "I know."

Kio had finished treating the wounds on his arms and wrapped the mound of blankets tighter around him. He climbed into the front seat, saying, "I'm calling the police, Ritsuka."

Ritsuka finally came to his senses. "No!" He objected, trying to sit up, but failing. "You can't! They'll take her away! I'll be sent away! You don't get it! In their book, I'm just another statistic! They'll do the same thing with me that they do with those other kids! They won't understand that it's my fault!" He shut up, then, realizing he had made a mistake in saying that last sentence. He always thought it was his fault that the other Ritsuka had disappeared. He had taken his place, after all.

Kio slammed on the brakes, looking back at Ritsuka for a long moment before telling him, "It's not your fault."

All that night, Ritsuka fell into a half-asleep state of mind. He was still cold, despite all the blankets Kio had put around him, even the heated ones that came from the hospital. Kio wanted to admit him, but Ritsuka had gone into some sort of breakdown state again and refused to go into any room other than the one that Kio had been given so that he could stay at the hospital with Soubi.

Ritsuka had always slept with something. First it was Seimei, and then, when he died, it was an old pillow of Seimei's that smelled like him. When Ritsuka met Soubi, it was the cell phone that he kept on the pillow beside him during the night. Then, when they had grown closer, Ritsuka found it impossible to sleep without Soubi's warmth pressing against him and his gentle good-night kisses that were always pressed to Ritsuka's lips. Now, without Soubi, Ritsuka held onto his shirt, his nose pressed into it, taking in the scent that was strongly there and belonged uniquely to Soubi.

Kio had tried to take it away a couple times when he thought Ritsuka was asleep in the bed, since it was cold and wet and only contributing to Ritsuka's heat problem, but each time the boy snatched it back. Finally, Kio succeed in taking it away from him, but only because he promised he would dry it without taking the scent out of it.

Ritsuka honestly tried to sleep, but he was too worried about Soubi. Kio was on the phone, talking with the police, though Ritsuka wasn't really listening. Soubi had him worried to the point where he was actually starting to feel sick. His stomach churned and he wanted to puke, feeling absolutely horrible.

At some point in the night, a doctor knocked at the door and Kio followed him out, returning after a little while. Ritsuka heard him pacing for hours and hours before he finally sat down on the edge of the bed and gently shook him awake. Ritsuka came to, rolling over to look at him in the mass of blankets.

Kio's face was a mixture of sadness and confusion as he stared down at Ritsuka. Ritsuka had finally started to calm down a little about Soubi, resolving that he would find whoever did this to him and demand them to reverse the spell. This look that Kio was giving him told him something had gone wrong.

All he had to say to make Ritsuka want to run to Soubi's side again was, "Soubi fell into a coma."

Please review for more! I swear, the real plot will start in the next chapter!

By the way, Loveless is finally getting an English dub!

Thank you so much to Lolita otaku, Bigmachine, Priscylla, Riaries, Lovelessreviewer, Vincy-Kun, Cynthia, Yell0wbutterfly, EternalTearsOfBlood, Tamer Lorika, Lollipop, and Tlcatlady for all the reviews! Please keep it up!

~Wolfie