Day 21

In Darkness Buried Deep

(Hikaru/Kyouya)

Hikaru loved her job as Ryo's assistant. Yes, she dearly wished that she could go back to blading, but it was fun being behind the scenes and watching everything from afar. Helping out with the administration of the World Championships had promised to be the greatest thing she had ever been involved in.

Until he happened.

Oh, she didn't really blame him. After all, she knew how powerful Ryuga was. There was no way that Tsubasa could have really won against him. But to realise that the Darkness had utterly corrupted the beautiful silver-haired man... that had been an awful day. It just got worse and worse as Tsubasa's control was eroded by the Darkness that was swallowing him whole until he even turned on his tag-team partner and friend.

It had made the World Championships one long string of terror, never knowing when the Darkness would crack through those golden eyes and come shrieking out into the full light of day, dimming the sun and tearing the earth apart with its strength – and her mind apart with memories.

He had got better eventually, and no-one had been happier than she had to see the real Tsubasa step up to fight at long last. But even that hadn't been the end of it. Even as she walked down the corridors of the stadium, looking for Gan Gan Galaxy so that she could give them the most recent updates from the hospital before the final battle, Tsubasa and Yuu were lying unconscious, missing the Championship they had fought so hard to reach.

Reaching the right floor, she opened the door to the team room, expecting to find at least Madoka there, if not the rest of them.

Instead, she came face to face with her worst nightmare.

He was even taller than she remembered, his white coat bulking his silhouette out until he was a terrifying wall of power that made her whole body freeze up. Her fingers clenched instinctively around the door handle as her mind shrieked at her body to run, to get out of there, to move!

She managed to step back and turn away, but she hadn't even taken two steps when -

"You. Girl."

His voice sent shudders up and down her spine.

"Come back here."

Every instinct she had was screaming at her to run, to get away from this man, this thing which had destroyed her will to blade. But his voice was utterly compelling. Just as it had once ordered her own destruction, now it ordered her to turn.

She compromised, keeping her body still and only turning her head. He was still standing in the doorway, golden eyes fixed on her. She felt like the rabbit before the snake, except that this snake was a dragon.

"L-Drago knows you," he said finally. "L-Drago knows you, but I do not."

She stayed silent. Not that she had much choice; her mouth was completely dry.

"So we must have fought at Battle Bladers," he continued. "Yet I remember the other opponents. You aren't Kyouya. You aren't Tsubasa. You certainly aren't Gingka. Who are you?"

With every scrap of courage she could find, she swallowed. "I was your first opponent. You destroyed me in one hit in the first round."

His eyes seemed to flicker red for a moment, then faded back to gold. "L-Drago says you faced him... me... us without running. He commended your bravery, and then destroyed you as quickly as possible." Again his eyes burned. "Ah. Hello, Hikaru."

Her blood ran cold. That was not Ryuga speaking.

"Hikaru?" Ryo's voice had never been more welcome. "Hikaru? The team's just gone that way, they..."

For a long moment, there was complete silence in the corridor. Then, as Ryo stepped forwards to stand in front of Hikaru like a shield, Ryuga whirled on the spot and slammed the door behind him as he returned to the room she had found him in.

Ryo immediately put an arm over Hikaru's shoulders, noticing how badly she was shaking. "It's okay, it's okay," he said quietly as he led her into one of the empty team-rooms. "He's gone, you don't have to worry about him." He found one of the blankets that were stored in the cupboard for bladers who fell unconscious in battle and wrapped it around her shoulders. "Hikaru? Say something."

"Why was he even there?" she whispered, huddling into the warmth of the blanket. "I thought he left straight after the end of his match."

"The officials had to examine L-Drago," Ryo explained apologetically. "Every blade is examined to make sure that it's tournament-legal, and because he came in late he didn't have it examined at the beginning. If he hadn't surrendered his blade, the victory would have been discounted." He wouldn't look at her. "It's the rules. I'm sorry."

"L-Drago spoke to me," she said, staring at the floor. "He spoke through Ryuga. I didn't know constellations could do that."

Ryo froze. "Neither did I," he said slowly. "Hikaru, I'm..." He stopped and looked away for a horrible, silent minute. "There's something strange going on here. First, you try to launch your beyblade just after you get out of hospital and almost immediately shriek and call it back to your hand and never pick it up again. Then Tsubasa starts to act erratically and then completely loses control. Now a constellation starts to use his blader as a mouthpiece and speaks to another – recognises another blader. You said that Ryuga didn't recognise you but L-Drago did?"

She nodded. "He must have been taken over when he fought me and we didn't even realise."

Ryo looked stern. "L-Drago is one of the strangest creatures I have ever come across, and the Darkness that possessed him is clearly more of a threat than we thought. It definitely affected Ryuga – we all saw that. It almost destroyed Tsubasa from the inside out. And you..."

"It stopped me from blading," she said. "The moment... the moment I launched that first time, I-I saw it behind my eyes. It wanted me t-to attack Kenta." She tugged the blanket closer. "So I ran. I ran and never looked back."

How can I blade when I can't trust my own reasons for doing it?

"We can't get to Tsubasa right now," Ryo said grimly. "We need to talk to Kyouya. I'll put out some contacts, see if we can find him. He can't be that hard; if we found Ryuga all that time ago when we needed to examine L-Drago, we should be able to spot Kyouya no problem."

.

As it turned out, tracking Kyouya down was downright impossible. It wasn't until the green-haired blader miraculously appeared outside Hades City that anyone managed to get a lock on his position, and by that point most of them were preoccupied with getting onto the swiftly-rising flying city. But after the brilliant light of Pegasus had scattered the power of Spiral Force across the stars and then descended back to the earth cracked and worn, Ryo and Hikaru finally succeeded in cornering the elusive Leone blader.

"So you think that the dark power is in me and Hikaru as well?" Kyouya asked, folding his arms and looking more than a little irritated. "The dark power Ryuga had?"

"Yes," Ryo said. "You just need to take a couple of tests at the hospital, the same as the ones they did for Tsubasa, and then we'll know for sure."

Kyouya shook his head. "Don't bother."

Ryo looked shocked. "What do you mean, Kyouya? We need to do these tests, so that if the Darkness has infected you, we can work on dealing with it now that Tsubasa has managed to master it. We can't risk another powerful blader going out of control."

Again, the green-haired man shook his head, strands of hair flying everywhere. "And I said you don't need to bother. I can tell you right now – yes, the dark power caught me."

A stunned silence met his words, and Hikaru stared at him in horror. "You knew?" she asked, aghast. "But... that battle against Gingka? Or against Tsubasa? You could have gone out of control any time and the damage could have been catastrophic! Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I didn't have to," he said calmly, fixing his eyes on her. She tried to hold his gaze, but it was too intense and she settled for watching Ryo over his shoulder. "I knew the second that I launched Leone in training that something was wrong. So I found out how far I could go before the reaction would start to trigger, and then locked that part of my strength away. That's why I had to train so hard for the World Championships. I'd lost a bit of my power to the Darkness, sealed it away within Leone so that not even I could retrieve it, even if I wanted to. I want to defeat Gingka, but I won't do it using borrowed, chaotic power. I will beat him on my own terms."

There was a long pause, and then Ryo nodded slowly. "I've seen how much power you put into your battles against Gingka and Tsubasa in particular," he said. "I know you're a blader of honour who wouldn't lie about something like this. So I'll believe you. But – and you must listen to this – if you lose control of the Darkness, you must tell us at once. I won't have something that dangerous being unleashed."

Kyouya seemed to be appraising the older man. "I told you," he said eventually. "I can't access that corrupted part of my power. But if it gets unlocked, I know how to defeat it now."

And with that, he turned and walked away, back straight and head held high.

"And there goes the lone lion," Ryo sighed. "Come on, Hikaru. Let's go and get Gingka and the others." He strolled off, not even looking back.

Hikaru, however, hesitated. After all, this was an opportunity she might never have again.

She had had a crush on green-haired Kyouya ever since she had first battled him. It certainly helped that he was the most handsome man she had ever set eyes on, but that wasn't why she loved him, not really. He was absolutely wild, like storm-winds shrieking over the towering waves, and she loved how utterly determined he was to defeat all those who stood in his way. She had never managed to bring herself to say anything about it, of course – first of all there was Battle Bladers and collecting all the points for that, and then -

Well, then Ryuga had happened.

But that was in the past. Kyouya was already on the far side of the open area in front of the Spiral Core tower, and in a second he would vanish into the maze of streets that led to the edge and the waiting boats.

"Wait, Kyouya!"

She didn't expect it to work. After all, Kyouya was renowned for his lack of respect for orders. But to her surprise he stopped walking and turned, letting her catch up.

She had run away from blading, in case it had changed her beyond recognition. She would not run away from this.

"Kyouya, can... can I talk to you for a moment?" The moment that the words left her mouth, she panicked. What was she doing? Yes, she didn't want to back down, but what on earth had made her think that Kyouya would like her in return even if she managed to admit everything?

"Go on." He folded his arms, scowling at her. "I have no intention of staying here longer than I have to."

"This is going to sound so silly," she said, knowing that if she stopped now she would never say anything at all. "But... I've loved you ever since we first battled. I... I was wondering if... if..."

Her nerve failed her at the last, pinned under that clear blue stare.

"You... you love me?" He sounded almost confused. "I don't understand."

She swallowed. "I... I think you're handsome and honest and powerful and... and an excellent blader that I want to get to know better. I like you a lot. I've liked you for a very long time."

"Oh."

That single syllable told her everything she needed to know. It hadn't worked. He didn't reciprocate her feelings.

He looked at her, really looked at her, and she struggled to hold his gaze against the wave of disappointment and utter heartbreak inside her. "Hikaru, you are a fine blader and one of the bravest people I have ever met. But I... I can't love you."

"What do you mean, can't?" she whispered. She couldn't speak any louder.

"I have to defeat Gingka," he said, and he was still holding her eyes so she knew he was telling the absolute truth. "I have thought of nothing else for months. I have trained in places that would have killed me if I hadn't been as strong as I am. I have put everything on the line for the chance to beat Pegasus, and I still would. You..." He hesitated for a second, then continued "You deserve someone better than me. Someone who will care for you above everything else. I can't do that. Not until I beat Gingka. Until then, you are of no use to me as a tool to gain what I desire and therefore you would be dropped as soon as possible. That's the way I work, the only way I have ever known."

"So you're saying no," she confirmed, dropping her eyes. She shouldn't have expected anything else. Not from Kyouya, the wild Lion who walked alone through the wilderness and allowed no-one to touch him.

He was silent for such a long time that she thought he might not have heard her, but when she looked up he was still staring at her with that terrible, intense expression.

"No," he said at last. "I think I'm saying not yet."

.

I know a lot of you will have been waiting for Ryuga to show up. After all, he's a fan-favourite when it comes to pairings.

But I don't ship him with anyone at all, and least of all Hikaru. Under certain circumstances I'll ship unrequited Hikaru/Ryuga pre-Battle Bladers, but that's it. This fic shows why. Ryuga is dangerous. He cannot and must not be underestimated. He cannot and must not be trusted. He cannot and must not be tamed into a life of domesticity. Otherwise he is no longer Ryuga.

Kyouya is another difficult one, hence the unrequited nature of this fic. Kyouya has a single point of focus – Gingka, Pegasus and defeating the pair of them. Outside of that he doesn't care about anything. He refused to helpsave the world because he couldn't see how it was going to help him get another battle with Gingka. Kyouya may be sexiness personified, but he's also completely unromantic, at least right now.

On another note, some advanced notice. After this story is over, I will only be updating very, very sporadically until mid-May. I have many, many ideas forming in my head for all my stories and for some new ones, but 1) I'm in my final year of university and I need a good mark and 2) I need to rest after this because it's exhausting writing this much every day.

I will come back, and I will update a couple of stories in between now and then. But there will be no schedule, no regular updates.