Okay, so this first bit is a really loose adaptation of Loveless episode 12, which was really the only episode of the anime I enjoyed. I didn't want to try to recreate the entire nightmare, so instead I rounded it off and had Soubi react accordingly. Here's where Ritsuka's symptoms get bad! Poor little neko! Regardless of our poor suffering Ritsuka, I hope you all enjoy chapter four!

I woke up screaming.

Soubi was at my side in an instant, urgently reaching out for me and exclaiming frantically, "Ritsuka? Ritsuka, what is it? What's wrong?"

His fingers brushed my shoulders and I recoiled so violently away from him that my stomach lurched dangerously. "Don't touch me!" I gasped, horrified to find tears spilling over my cheeks.

"Ritsuka?" Soubi asked, startled by my reluctance. "Ritsuka, you won't get me sick, I swear," he promised, too calmly. He was trying to hide his concern.

"It's not that! Don't touch me!" I repeated, shaking as images from my nightmare replayed in my head. Particularly one, which eventually dominated my whole mind.

This wasn't happening. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be real. How could they all be dead? Dr. Katsuko… Miss Shinonome… Yayoi… Yuiko. Oh, god, Yuiko.

My fault. All my fault. Seven Moons had caught up to me and they were doing everything in their power to make my life miserable. To make me snap. And there were only two people left out there that I cared about.

They wouldn't get Soubi easily. But my mom…

I burst into my house in a frantic rush, praying I was in time. Praying that wasn't… blood… on the walls…

"NO!" I screeched, throwing myself onto the floor beside the mangled, bloody mess that was my mother's body. "Mom! No! MOM!"

"Ritsuka," a calm voice said from the door. I whirled around, expecting no less than an angel, my savior. Soubi.

I burst into tears, racing for him and wrapping my arms around my fighter, sobbing into his chest. "Soubi, they're dead! They're all dead! And it's my fault, it's all my fault!"

"Ritsuka…" he sighed, placing his hands over my arms and prying them away from his body. I looked up at him, confused. What was wrong? Was there another fighter close to us?

He's never pushed me away before. And he's never looked so frigidly at me before.

Slowly, he raised his hands towards my face, and I felt a moment's relief, preparing myself for his kiss. He'd take my cheeks in his hands… slowly press his lips against mine…

I shut my eyes and smiled, waiting.

His fingers never reached my cheeks. I felt them instead close around my throat. My eyes flew open and I made a choked noise of mixed protest and horror.

"I've been given my orders," Soubi said icily, tightening his grasp on me. I couldn't breathe – more than that, I could feel my windpipe collapsing.

He was going to kill me.

"Semei is my god," Soubi told me stonily. His face was blurring in and out of focus. "His word is absolute. I follow his every command… and Semei wants you dead."

"Ritsuka… please," Soubi whispered, stretching out a hesitant arm to me. I flinched and he withdrew his hand. "What's wrong?" he repeated. "Do you feel worse? Do I need to—"

"No!" I exclaimed, wiping at my eyes. "Don't do anything! Just… leave me alone right now! Please! I want to be alone!"

"No, Ritsuka," Soubi said firmly, reaching out for me and gathering me up in his arms, no matter how much I trembled and recoiled away from him, thrashing against his embrace. My struggles grew weaker the longer they endured; my strength was sapped by fever and sickness.

"Let me go! Soubi!" I whined, giving one last feeble squirm before giving up, exhausted, resting my head against his chest. "Let me go," I repeated.

"I won't. Tell me what's wrong."

I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut. The idea of asking him scared me more than the dream had. "I can't," I mumbled, blushing. "Please, Soubi, just leave me alone right now. Please."

His silence was enough to tell me he wasn't letting go. At last, I took a deep breath and whispered, "If Semei… came back, and he ordered you to… kill me, would you?"

I felt him tense up and then his hold on me loosened, and I took the opportunity to roll out of his arms back onto the mattress, scrambling away from him. "Well?" I demanded.

He was staring into his lap, frozen, refusing to look at me. It took a long time, filled with tepid silence, before he answered. "Probably."

I gasped, not expecting that answer. Well… expecting, but not wanting. "I knew it," I whispered, more tears rolling down my cheeks as I got to my feet and stalked to his door, despite the fact that the room was spinning. "I'm going home."

"Ritsuka!" He was behind me faster than I could comprehend in my state, his arms wrapped around me in an embrace, not meant to be my prison.

"No! Forget it, Soubi! I don't care that I'm sick, okay? I can't even look at you right now! Let go of me!"

"Ritsuka," he murmured, cupping the back of my head and placing his other hand between my shoulder blades. That jerk has figured out that I love it when he holds me like this. "I'd die before I ever hurt you."

I couldn't take it anymore. I was weak and could barely even stand. Although I'd probably been sleeping for hours, I was exhausted from the excitement of the last few minutes. My knees buckled and I collapsed into him, and Soubi plucked me off the ground mid-fall and swept me into his arms, holding me the way I love, as I fell to emotional pieces. "I'm sorry," I apologized over and over, unable to bear the memory of the incredible pain I'd seen in Soubi's eyes when I'd tried to leave.

"Hush, Ritsuka. It's all right," he murmured, slowly reseating himself on the air mattress. "I understand."

I shook my head and attempted to wipe at the tears on my cheeks, trying to swallow down a watery bout of hiccups. "I don't want to hear that! I'm being so awful when all you've done since I got sick is take care of me! Why don't you ever get mad at me? I'm a terrible person!"

"I love you," he reminded me, his lips grazing my hairline. "I don't care how you act. I love you. I want to care for you. Always." He glanced at his clock and added, "Speaking of which, you need to eat again. And I finally found the Advil…"

Just like that? Subject dropped? Nothing else about me and my inexcusable behavior and my irrational emotional breakdown?

Wow. He really does love me.

He let me feed myself this time – I have to admit, I almost fell over out of shock – and I choked down a slice of buttered toast and an egg. I may have been delusional, but it was almost like I could feel the food hitting my stomach, which made me nauseous. Afterwards, Soubi set down two small white tablets of Advil next to me, much to my excitement, and made me take them with a tall glass of water. He started dropping hints that there was a possibility that I was getting dehydrated, so I agreed to his request that I drink some water each time I woke up.

I decided that I wasn't going to be difficult anymore. I was just going to go along with what he told me to do and stop resisting. It was easier that way, and it made the knot of guilt in my stomach slowly unfurl.

At long last, I was curled up in his lap with the thermometer beneath my tongue, the promise of sleep waiting a beep of the small machine away. When it chimed, Soubi took it and frowned. "It's gone back up. A little over 103 degrees."

I sighed and held my head. I loved the way I fit in his lap perfectly, but I couldn't bear it even a second longer. "I'm too hot, Soubi."

He gingerly moved me off of his lap and onto the air mattress, and didn't even cover me with the blanket. I don't know if he's trying not to tread in dangerous waters and make me snap again, but I kind of liked the minimal freedom I was getting – feeding myself, sleeping without a blanket. "You'll feel better when you wake up," he promised me, and then added under his breath, "I hope."

"Well, that's encouraging," I smiled, amused, allowing my eyes to close. Sleep took me with little effort at all.

I did not feel better when I woke up. Not even a little bit.

I jolted awake when I felt the bile leap to my throat, threatening to force its way out of my stomach. I snapped into alertness, convulsing over the side of the air mattress as I tried desperately to stand up, praying I wouldn't get sick, tangibly sick, all over the floor. I almost kicked Soubi, who appeared to have been sprawled out on the mattress beside me, fast asleep.

I struggled to my feet and clambered blindly for his bathroom in the dark, falling to the floor halfway there when my legs gave out. I pulled myself up and raced as fast as was physically possible for me in my state and collapsed next to the toilet before promptly emptying the contents of my stomach into it.

I was gasping for air at this point, unable to fill my lungs as I dry-heaved over the toilet. My stomach hurt so bad I was afraid it had spontaneously combusted. Whatever else remained in it decided to make its reappearance then, and I choked and coughed it up as well, setting my already burning throat ablaze. Agonized, distressed tears began to trickle down my cheeks, and I let out a choked sob as I rested my head on the edge of the tub, knowing for sure that my stomach wasn't through expelling everything it possibly could.

"Ritsuka?" Soubi's voice came from the door, and it strained my eyes to look up at him. He had a look of sympathy and alarm on his face, frozen in the doorway as he took in the whole lovely picture of my trembling body slumped across his bathroom floor next to the toilet.

I sniffled, simply not caring that he could see I was sobbing because it might produce an embrace, and whispered, "Soubi?"

He didn't move, replying in a quiet voice. "What is it?"

My bottom lip trembled and a fresh wave of tears spilled out of my eyes, cascading onto the tile floor. "Now my tummy hurts."

"Oh, Ritsuka," he sighed in relief, like he had thought I was going to tell him I had just literally coughed up a lung or something, before he crossed the bathroom to me in three strides and sank to the floor, leaning against the tub and gently wrapping an arm around me, stroking my hair. I hiccupped and, losing all sense of dignity, threw myself at the floor in front of him, using his leg as a pillow, and curled my knees into my chest. Soubi murmured sympathetically, rubbing my back as I tried to stifle my sobs. "It's okay, Ritsuka. It's going to be okay."

I gasped and barely managed to rocket into a sitting position, straddling the porcelain base of the toilet with my legs, vomiting again. I didn't even know what was left in my stomach to throw up. I was having trouble breathing again, this time because I was crying so violently with humiliation. Soubi looked pained, as though seeing me in such a state was hurting him as well. "You're okay, Ritsuka. It'll all be okay."

"Soubi, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I managed to choke out before everything else I tried to say became incoherent to even my own ears.

"It's not your fault." He sighed, worried. "I thought you were getting better," he admitted, combing his fingers through my hair. "Is it over?"

The throwing up? It felt like it. I hoped so, at least. "I think so," I whispered.

"Do you feel any better?" he asked hopefully.

"No. Worse, much worse," I moaned, burying my face in my hands and breaking down again, shocked I had any tears left in me to shed.

He began to rub my back again, trying to offer me a little bit of comfort. "Hush, Ritsuka. It's all right."

"The medicine didn't help at all?" he asked, and I shook my head. He nodded slowly, drawing an accurate conclusion. "That's probably because you threw it up."

"That doesn't make me feel better!" I groaned, wiping at my eyes with a clumsy, trembling hand.

Soubi gathered me up in his arms and lifted me up off the ground, sighing. "I know. It'll be fine, I promise. I'll take your temperature in the morning and we'll figure out what to do then."

"Why not now?" I whispered.

"It's three a.m. I think it's be in both of our best interests if for now you had some water and went back to sleep."

"'Kay," I mumbled, sniffling as I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his chest.

Well, what'd ya'll think? I agree with the statement in one of the reviews I got… this fic is cute overload, isn't it? But I don't mind because it's better that way! Soubi really would take care of his sacrifice like this… wouldn't he? (hmmmm…..) Review, please? Love you all!