Oh hey there. I'm alive. Kinda. Sorta. I just got inspiration for this story again so I'm going to start posting again. But I doubt I'll ever want to edit the chapters because they're so old and I'd have to rewrite them completely just to be happy and I just kinda want to get this story done so I can rewrite it as an original. Yup. Just like I'm doing with Elephant. Hooray...

Sorry it's been so long. I'll try and get better at updating this story again because I do love the story and I know a lot of other people do. Anyway, read, review, enjoy! Not necessarily in that order ;)

~Sune

Full Chapter Title: Maybe someday you'll get it, perhaps you'll regret it, or maybe you'll find someone else who accepts it. (Typical, Tickle Me Pink)

Riku

"Riku. Come here, I have something I want to show you."

"What?"

"Do you see those flowers?"

"Yeah. What about em?"

"Do you think they're pretty?"

"I guess."

"Would you ever hurt them?"

"What are you talking about?"

"One day, Riku, you might find someone precious to you. A flower in your life. Promise me that when you find her, never hurt her, and never let her get hurt."

"A flower? Really? What are you talking about?"

"You won't understand until you're older, dearest Riku. Until then, be sure to watch out for the one you love more than anything else in this world."

When I woke up, the hospital was dark. You know, those normal dark moments where no sound is present, people are gone, and it's just so peaceful that it almost feels uncomfortable. The curtains on the window were drawn, blocking out the moonlight, so the only light came from the nasty digital clock on the other side of the hospital room.

That evil thing that reminded me of how slowly time passes when the only thing you're allowed to do every day is sit in a bed and wait for people to come in and tell you how injured you are. Which, of course, you already know seeing as it's your body.

"Mr. Strife?" A young nurse slid open my door as she asked this, glancing in hesitantly. Most of the nurses didn't like me very much, seeing who my family was, but this nurse had some weird case where she didn't hate me. She just didn't like to talk to me. I guess this could be a part of her shyness.

"What do you want?" I asked. I never caught her last name, but her first name, Naminé, kept coming to my mind as a name I should know. Maybe I could ask her what her last name was. It could spark a remembrance of where I should know her from.

"Dr. Vexen has given me orders to fill out your release form. You just need to sign them now." She held out her hand, a clipboard and a pen. Of course, this made me want to strangle her because I hated signing things. It left a paper trail which people could follow and get information about me from.

I took the board anyway, hoping that this wouldn't give people information they didn't need, and signed the paper, thinking about how weird it was that they were discharging me. Vexen wasn't exactly known for being fast with what he did. In fact, he was a little slow most of the time because he liked to experiment on his patients.

But maybe this had to do with Ellie. Every time Cloud visited me he would give me an update on her. At first she wouldn't even move, then she talked to Kairi a little bit, then she started eating, and now she'd gone back into her shell, wouldn't talk to anyone, and slept most of the time people came to visit.

Axel had been given orders to make sure she stayed alive. He hated this more than any job he'd been given before. A few days ago, he'd visited and told me that she was the most annoying non-talkative person he'd ever met.

I didn't have any room for sympathy.

"So, I can go now?" I asked, handing the board back to Naminé . She nodded and bowed her head a little, probably being stupidly shy.

"Yes. Your clothes are in the dresser over there. Your friend... um... Ms. Lockhart, brought them for you a few days back when you were sleeping. I don't know if she told you that or not."

Tifa had come to visit me? Well that's a first. She normally avoided contact with me unless we were in the bar, or she had permission from Cloud. No doubt he hadn't wanted her to come, yet for some reason she did anyway. Or maybe Naminé had gotten her name wrong. Yeah, that seemed more likely.

"Thanks." That's all I said before pushing off my covers. I didn't pay attention to the nurse at all while she backed out of the room, closing the door behind her. Instead my thoughts turned back to Ellie. The look in her eye when I entered her room, feeling as though something were wrong. She'd hated me more than before at that moment. When I'd pulled her down from killing herself.

How could anyone do that? Sure, I wasn't at all against killing other people, but they had no choice. Suicide was a choice, and not a good one. People who choose that route were stupid and probably deserved to die.

Even with this mindset, though, I'd saved her. I wanted her to be alive, and I made sure that she stayed that way. It'd almost killed me, but I still saved her from dying. The woman in my dream... that's who Ellie reminded me of. Not because of the attitude – no way in hell was Ellie's attitude like hers – but because of the way they looked. The same brown hair, same pale complexion, same face shape, same eye shape... the eyes were different colors, but they still looked exactly the same.

I'd been having dreams of that woman since I came to the hospital. Probably because that woman had been there all those years ago when I had to go to the hospital for falling off the roof of Terra's house. Well, falling. He actually pushed me, but no one believed it.

I always dreamed of her when I stayed in hospitals. Always.

Once I finished getting dressed, I made my way out of the hospital, glad to be leaving. They freaked me out just a little. They reminded me of death; of my job.

Again I thought of Ellie. Her expression when she pressed that towel to my stomach. The way her hand felt when it touched mine... I couldn't let that go. I even grabbed her hand. Granted, part of it was make sure enough pressure was on the wound, but when I pulled her hand away, I just wanted to touch it. Hold it.

Just the thought made me feel sick.

I finally made it home around midnight. Even though I'm pretty sure Roxas had been there to pick me up, I decided to walk. Avoid people who I didn't want to talk to. Walking home from the hospital hadn't been fun. Even though the wound had healed enough that I didn't really need to worry about it opening again, it still hurt a little bit.

Okay, a lot, but I managed to ignore most of it.

Let's just say it was a huge relief when I finally entered my house. All of my plans went to going straight to bed and sleeping for the next twenty-four hours, but the moment I passed by Ellie's door, I stopped and stared at it. I could tear my eyes away.

A part of me wanted to go in and talk to her again. Tell her that she's an idiot who needs to stop feeling sorry for herself. Tell her that suicide isn't the answer to anything.

Granted, only one part of me wanted to talk. Another part of me wanted to do much different things.

It didn't make any sense. How could I be so attracted to someone I hated so much?

And that's when my phone rang.

"Hello?" I answered, not bothering to look at the caller ID.

"Ignoring me and walking home wasn't the brightest idea, Snipe. What if someone had hurt you again. You of all people should know what goes on in the back streets at this time of night," Roxas' annoyed voice said. I rolled my eyes.

"Getting the car with you might mean rape. I think that's worse than anything else out there at the moment." I just had to say it. Piss him off a little bit. Remind him that we all thought it was hilarious he had a relationship with Axel. Maybe he would learn to shut up about it one of these days. We didn't care it happened; we just hated hearing about it.

But nope. Roxas didn't get pissed, and he didn't shut up about his relationship.

"Sorry. Don't think Axel would appreciate it. But if you really want it that much, maybe we can make a deal or something."

Yeah. He annoyed the hell out of me. His cocky little tone and inability to understand the concept of shutting the fuck up were so frustrating.

"You only wish I wanted it," I snapped. "But whatever. What do you want?" I still wanted to go in and "talk" to Ellie. Who knows if we'd actually talk or not. Depends on how well I could control the other half of my brain.

"I have orders for you, from the boss."

"And those orders are...?"

"Tomorrow your little hostage needs to be clean, dressed, and at the boss' house so she can have dinner with him." To be perfectly honest, I felt a little sorry for her. Having dinner with the boss could be compared to eating live rats in a sewer.

"Alright. So what? Just get her clean and put her in some of Kairi's clothes. That's not that big of a deal," I said, tearing my eyes away from her door. "Why do you sound like it's a death sentence?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end, before Roxas sighed. "Because there's more to it. The boss wants you to make sure it happens. Which means you have to be in the room when she showers and changes. Basically you have to emotionally torture her a little bit before she goes there. Maybe the boss'll do something nice to her when she gets there. Show her that you're the bad guy and he's not."

I didn't move. Or speak. I could barely think straight. For one thing, I was tired. For another, my uncle decided I needed to be a pervert toward a girl I barely knew. Who I had unnatural attractions to.

"The boss is a perv. Messed up too. There's no way in hell I'm doing that." Before Roxas could argue with me, I snapped my phone shut and glared at the door. Ellie Routh would be the death of me, whether she knew it or not. The Boss would make sure of that, and I wouldn't be able to stop it at all.

But why was he doing this? What about her did he find interesting?

When my phone rang again, I threw it against the floor and headed upstairs, not wanting to be bothered at all for the rest of the night.

Unfortunately I woke to Axel sitting on the bed next to me. Naturally, my first reaction was to grab something on the bedside stand and throw it at him. I didn't bother paying attention to his reaction to being attacked. Instead I grabbed the blankets and pull them over my head, hoping that the sunlight would vanish. One thing I missed about the hospital was the lack of people bothering me when I wanted to sleep.

I got a lot of sleep while I was there.

"Dude, Snipe, get your ass out of bed. You have a job to do. Didn't you get it memorized?" He snickered at my grunt. "Come on. It's not going to be easy to get the little girl down there to comply, so get up and get down there. Otherwise the boss'll think you're incompetent and get rid of ya."

This got me to sit up rubbing my eyes. Oh how I hated Axel. More than anyone else. He just got on my nerves no matter what he did.

"Shut up, Pyro. I don't need you to lecture me. Besides, it won't take that long to deal with that little girl. She's probably too depressed to argue."

"I dunno, she has a lot of spunk. When she doesn't want to do anything, she'll do everything in her power to fight against you. She tried to do that yesterday," Axel said, shaking his head. I glanced over at him, completely confused.

"What did she do?"

"I tried to bring her out of the room to get her to talk to Tifa again. Cloud wouldn't let Tifa go into the room, saying something about too much blood being in there. When I tried to pull her out she bit me, scratched at my face, and kicked me a few too many times." My vision cleared a little while he said this, and I noticed the scratch marks on his face. I flinched a little at the sight. If someone could do that to Axel, then she had guts.

Which, of course, I already knew about Ellie, but still. Cloud had been wrong about her when he told me what she was doing.

"Whatever. I'll be fine dealing with her. It's just getting her showered and dressed. It won't be that difficult to accomplish. Just because you got injured doesn't mean I will," I snapped, hoping that he would leave me alone after this. He'd woken me up already. I wouldn't be going back to sleep and he knew that.

"Whatever you say. I think you're stupid, to be honest," Axel said, laughing. "Anyway, here's the dress she has to wear. The boss was insistent she wear it, though I'm not sure why. I'm beginning to think he's something of a pervert."

I cracked up at this. The boss could only be called a pervert. I remembered the times he would come over and try and force himself on my mom. He didn't know I watched, of course, and I don't think Mom every knew either, but it happened. Quite often. I'm sure Dad hated it, but he never did anything that I know of.

"The boss is nothing but a perv," I snapped. "The fact that you're only realizing this now really shows how little you know about this family." At this I climbed out of bed, grabbing the box he had held out to me. "Ask Blondie about it. He should know a few things that you don't."

"Roxas doesn't like me asking about the family," Axel snapped. It surprised me that he used the real name. "Not that I want to ask. Whatever. The car to take the two of you to the main house will be here at five. You obviously won't be driving, so the boss provided a car for you. Be happy." He turned to leave. "Hurry up and get her dressed. You only have two hours to do so."

Then he was gone. I could only sigh.

Curious about the box, I opened it slightly to see what he'd put in. A shimmery, light turquoise dress rested inside, along with a pure white shawl. The dress didn't look new, but at the same time it didn't look used. I wondered why the boss had chosen this dress in particular. What was special about it? It had to be special. The boss wouldn't choose a dress almost the same color as our eyes for no reason.

After closing the lid to the box, I myself got ready, knowing that it would be better to be clean and dressed when dealing with Ellie. She was a psychologist. And a female. Female psychologists usually had more willingness to comply when dealing with guys who don't look and smell like they'd been in a hospital for a week and a half.

When that ended I finally made my way downstairs. News from a maid let me know that Kairi had left earlier that day, and I wasn't to bug her. She'd been going out more and more recently. She'd only come to visit me once in the hospital, even though she's definitely the type to see me every day.

This made me wonder, but not enough for me to stop and call her. I had other things I needed to do.

Like deal with Ellie.

When I entered her room, she was doing exactly as Cloud told me; sleeping on the bed in bloody clothes. You'd think that someone would get sick of sleeping after a while. Then again, her depression probably helped with how she was acting. Or, I guess she was depressed. I don't really understand the way females work at times. Or how hostages work. That's usually Sephiroth's job.

After a moment of just staring at her, I walked over and grabbed her arm, not bothering to be gentle as I yanked her of the bed. She immediately opened her eyes, flailing to keep herself stable. This didn't work for her, however, but I kept her upright, holding her body up and against mine so she didn't collapse on the ground.

The moment she got her footing, she pushed me away, and to my odd delight, her face had turned red.

"Well hello there, Princess," I cooed, wondering how far I could push her. "Weren't expecting to see me, were you?" The look on her face made it clear she hadn't been. No one had told her, obviously, that I would be released from the hospital last night. Of course, they also wouldn't have told her that she had a date with the boss tonight.

Or maybe they had told her and she just refused to think about it.

Carefully, I reached forward and grabbed her wrists, not wanting to push her too far at the moment. Maybe a little, to see if she would attack me, but that's about it. I didn't want her to hurt me, so don't think that. I just wanted to see if Axel had been telling the truth about her. So far, things weren't in his favor.

"Let go of me," Ellie muttered, pulling against my hands. "You shouldn't be here. You should be in the hospital still. I know it takes longer than that for bullet wounds to heal. It'll open again."

"Actually," I replied, leaning down so I could say this in her ear, "I'm a fast healer. Plus, with today's technology it doesn't take nearly as long as it used to." Of course it still hadn't healed completely. Vexen said it wouldn't open anymore as long as I didn't do anything harsh to it, but something like this should be fine.

Ellie's reaction to my sentence was to grin, then stomp on my foot. Let me tell you; getting your foot stomped on by a runner isn't fun. Even a weak one.

I immediately let her go, backing away slightly.

"What the-"

"If your fine now, then I can't feel guilty for hurting you," she snapped. "So I suggest you don't touch me unless you want to end up like that Pryo guy who tried to get me up yesterday." Her eyes were narrowed, and she seemed more calm than anything else. Despite the pressure of me being here, with a deadly look on my face, she managed to stay completely calm.

How the hell...?

"Oh please," I said, trying to control my emotions. I just wanted to smack her. "You couldn't hurt me if you tried." I smirked. "Go ahead and try, Princess. I'll just overpower you. You're small, and weak, and I'm not."

"You're also injured," Ellie said slowly, before grabbing the back of my head. At first I thought she was going to do something weird, and sexual, because her finds tangled in my hair, which felt really good. Then she rammed her knee into my stomach. The pain was worse than I'd felt before, mostly in the part of my chest where the wound used to be. I coughed, then backed away, holding my stomach. This girl... I swore that she would die by my hand one day.

Who cares what the boss thought? She needed to die. And I wanted to kill her. So badly it wasn't even funny.

"You think you're cute?" I snarled, grabbing her collar. Still, she didn't flinch. "Don't try any shit like that again, Princess, or I'm going to have to kill you. I don't care what my boss says. When you piss me off, I will kill you, no matter what you think." After my threat, I shoved her back, which caused her to squeak and fall on the bed.

Before she could speak, I grabbed her shoulder, pushed her down and climbed on top of her. Finally I got a reaction. Watching her eyes widen was probably the best thing I'd seen in a long time. All the blood drained from her face, and even though she tried to control her breathing, I could easily hear her labored breath and escalating heartbeat. Either I made her nervous, or embarrassed.

"But I'm not here to kill you right now," I whispered, "because I have orders to bring you to the main house alive." My hands were wrapped around her wrists, keeping her from hurting me with them. Luckily, she didn't try to knee me again, probably freaked out that I would do something perverse. Which half of my brain was telling me to do.

"Why do you have those orders?" Ellie asked in a whisper. "Why do I have to go to the "main house" with you?"

So she still had the guts to speak, huh? This made me smirk, though I really just wanted to bash her head in at the moment.

"Dunno." I got off her, then stood, towering over her with crossed arms. The only thing she seemed to be able to do is stare up at me with those odd gold eyes of hers. "The boss wants to have dinner with you. So that's what's going to happen."

"If I say I won't go?"

"There are ways to force you to do what I want." My reply clearly didn't please her. But before she could speak, I continued. "Not that it matters. It's easier if you comply and maybe you'll learn why you're not allowed to die yet. So here-" I reached down and grabbed the box off the floor. "-shower and wear this."

I didn't think it would be good to mention at the moment I would be in the room with her while she showered. Might turn her off the idea of cooperating. I know I would be turned off. This entire thing made no sense to me.

Ellie got up off the bed, glaring at the package in my hand, and sighed. "Fine. I'll do what you want. Right now. But this is the only time I'm going to go along with what you say. And only because I'm curious." When she looked up at me, made eye contact, I felt something in my stomach turn. "I just want to know why your boss is keeping me alive. That's it."

She reached forward and grabbed the package, then pushed past me, heading to the bathroom. It took me a minute to react, but finally I did, turning around and grabbing her arm. The glare she shot my way startled me.

"What do you want?" I swear she wanted to scream this at me.

"Nothing," I stated calmly. "Nothing except to follow my orders exactly. And those orders made it clear I have to be with you when you get ready."

Her eyes narrowed. "Stay in here then. That'll be good enough."

"Doubt it." I dragged her through the room, despite her protests, then shoved her into the bathroom. When she turned to yell at me, I myself went into the room and shut the door, then grabbed a towel and threw it at her. Honestly, I hated this bathroom. Mom used to use it all the time when I was younger. She would bring me in here to watch over me, saying that the nannies hired weren't good enough.

It did not bring back good memories.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ellie asked, backing away, the towel in her hands. "Get out of here!"

"Sorry. Wish I could, but I can't. So hurry your ass up."

"W-What? No! I'm not going to change in front of you." Her voice rose in volume and pitch with every word.

"Too bad, Princess."

Ellie threw the box and the dress down on the ground with the towel. "Stop calling me that, and I refuse to do this until you leave."

For some reason this frustrated me beyond all belief. I didn't even realize I'd moved until I had grabbed Ellie's wrists and pulled them over her head. She gasped, and struggled, though based on how easily I've been able to physically manipulate her in the past, I don't quite know why she was stupid enough to fight me.

With ridiculous ease, I grabbed the bottom of her bloody shirt and yanked it up over her head, not at all caring that I happened to be stripping a girl in the middle of a bathroom. The implications of this action hardly even occurred to me.

Ellie, on the other hand, got those implications I'd missed, and she flushed.

"What are you doing?" she asked quietly, still trying to pull away.

"Getting you to behave. What does it look like?" My eyes slowly traveled to her mostly exposed upper body. She didn't have a bad body, I had to admit.

"Stop it! I'll do it myself. Just let me go."

"Nope. It's too late for that. You had your chance, and you blew it." I flipped her around, holding her hands behind her back now, and finished taking of her clothing. I could tell that her face burned, but it didn't matter to me. A sick part of my mind was having fun with this. Who cares if she got a little embarrassed? It's not like this would never happen to her in a different sense.

Then again, if she had to live with us for the rest of her life, it never would.

I tore my eyes away from her the moment I finished getting her clothes off. For some reason the idea of looking at her made me feel slightly sick. I associated that with the fact she reminded me of that woman I used to hang around as a kid.

"Let go of me," Ellie whined, tugging away. I tightened my grip before dragging her across the room, then I opened the shower door, threw her in, and turned on the water, not caring what the temperature happened to be.

She yelped and moved to the back of the shower, then I slammed the door shut and walked over to the other side of the room.

"Hurry up!" I snapped over the sound of the rushing water. No reply came from the other side, but I assumed she heard me.

With a resigned sigh, I slid to the floor, placing my head in my hands. Now that I'd done that stupid thing, I couldn't believe I had. Yeah, she'd been annoying me, and been stubborn, and stubbornness bothered me, but the fact I actually took off all her clothes and shoved her in the shower was... well, stupid.

Especially since the sight of her naked body pleased me in a disturbing way.

I didn't pay attention to how long her little shower took. All I know is the moment the water turned off, I felt my heart jump. Don't know why, but I guessed it was because I wanted to get out of this place before I had to deal with the stubborn bitch anymore.

The door to the shower opened a little, revealing Ellie's bright red face, and she asked, "will you please hand me the towel." At first I considered forcing her to come out here on her own to get it, but decided that would be abnormally cruel. She already had to deal with The Boss tonight. There wasn't a need for me to torture her anymore.

I said nothing while I walked over to the place she'd dropped the box and towel, grabbed the latter, and chucked it at the shower. She flinched when it hit the glass.

"Thank you."

"Whatever."

"Why don't you just leave? It's not like I'm going to tell your uncle you weren't in here with me. If that's what he wants, I'll just lie about it."

I groaned. She wanted to talk about this whole thing. Still.

"Because he has ways of knowing when I'm not doing what he wants," I told her, wondering why I even bothered to mention it. "Besides, if I leave you in here alone, there's no guarantee you'll do what you're supposed to, and that's not allowed."

"I told you I'd do what you wanted."

"I don't believe you."

She opened the door to the shower then, the towel wrapped tightly around her body. Her skin glistened slightly from the moisture while water dripped from her darkened hair. The blood on her face and hands had been washed off, obviously, showing me the young woman I remember seeing in the van. The defiant look on her face hadn't changed at all.

"Will you at least turn away while I change?"

This sentence caused me to laugh for some reason. I mean, really laugh. I don't even know why I found it to be so funny. There was nothing funny about it.

"If you insist, Princess."

"Stop calling me that."

Neither of us spoke the entire time Ellie dressed. She didn't bother telling me when she was done, instead just pushing past me once she'd finished. I noticed that she'd avoided the white shawl, which of course meant that her shoulders were left completely bare. My first thought when I saw her was: Isn't that a little revealing for dinner with an old guy?

Of course, I remembered that the boss was a pervert, and the thought kinda vanished, leading to one where my mind kept trying to convince me Ellie was actually cute.

I hated that thought.

"Finally," I said, sighing. "You take a long time to get ready."

"It wouldn't have taken so long," Ellie growled, "if a certain perverted hit man hadn't been in the room at the time."

"Oh please. In order to be a pervert I would have had to have liked looking at your pathetic little body." Honestly, I have no idea where that came from. See, I have this nasty habit sometimes of saying things that pop into my head without thinking of how it would affect people around me. Or myself.

Ellie quickly opened the box again, grabbed when I assumed was a high-heeled shoe, and chucked it at my head.

I barely managed to dodge it.

"Hey," I protested, trying not to sound like a pathetic brat, "I speak nothing but the truth. Don't hurt the stupid shoes because you hate that I'm right."

She said nothing else, instead going to grab the shoe, then walked out of the room. I wanted to sigh, but figured if I did that she would hurt me again. My stupid stomach still felt like a knife had been jabbed into it, and of course, my head hurt from trying to figure out what these stupid feelings arising were.

"Look," Ellie said after we were in main room, "I don't want to deal with you. At all. I just want to get this over with so maybe your boss will kill me. I know this irritates you to, but you don't need to take it out on me."

"No. I do."

"Why?"

"No reason." I grabbed her bare shoulder, which was abnormally smooth, and steered her out of the room. "Now I have to warn you; you are going to be going outside. If you try to run, or scream, or do anything unnecessary, I won't hesitate to knock you out. I won't kill you, but you'll wake up with a nasty headache later on. Got it?"

When she nodded, I led her to the front door, then waited while she slipped her shoes on. The stupid things made her at least three inches taller, which didn't help at all with my attempts to intimidate her.

Annoying...

With a sigh, I opened the front door, watched her flinch at the sunlight streaming through, and finally the two of us walked outside.