Inexplicably, Kuwabara stepped out of his slice through the dimensions into a grove of trees. He moved slowly, hesitantly, as the sight of it was so far out of his expectations that he wasn't quite sure if they represented safety or danger.

"These were definitely not here last time," he thought out loud. All roughly the same size, the trees looked healthy; all blooming with friendly white blossoms that shed petals as he brushed past. The air that so typically smelled like electricity and death instead carried a faintly dusty aura of summer and left him expecting to hear the chatter of birds and the idle buzzing of insects.

"June?" he called out, following the tingle of energy against his senses. He circled the trunks of a few trees just in case she'd fallen or rested there. Deep roots extended down into the vast open space below his feet - showing that even though he walked on what felt like solid ground, he was quite far from home.

The trees followed no predictable pattern, but their placement didn't feel entirely natural either. Identical tree after identical tree rustled even without wind to move their branches. Kuwabara moved slowly through them, his senses began screaming that he was in danger even as step after step revealed only more trees.

Through the interlocking branches and drifting petals, a harsh yellow light began to shine through. He knew that color. The sound of the hum, breaching the calming rush of leaves on leaves, had been ingrained in his memory years before.

Kuwabara stepped out of the odd grove of trees, and with one sweep from left to right he instantly spotted the irregular knot of blue energy in the yellow weaving of the barrier.

"June!" he cried, darting towards her.

Suspended a foot or so above the ground but locked into the barrier, half-corporeal and half-blue, she looked like the time she'd healed Maggie, but there wasn't any sign on her face that she was aware of what was happening. Silent, eyes-closed and breathing even. Her blue weaving looked tied into the golden yellow of the barrier, like a patch that didn't match the fabric.

The shuttle sat weightlessly in the air, spinning gently like a discarded pen in outer space and tugging against its cording when it drifted a little too far from June and came to the end of its tether. It glowed a soft gold; enticing, daring, mocking.

Kuwabara started to reach for her. To pat at her face, or to touch her arm, but he jumped in surprise as a voice interrupted. "That would be unwise."

Kuwabara whirled, sword blazing, ready for a fight. The tip of his blade stopped just inches from the neck of a new face, though it sat… a little lower than he'd expected.

Deep-set brown-green eyes flickered with the light of his sword, and long brown hair that desperately needed a wash had been caked on one side with blood. Knotted portions of wood from a tree kept him bound in a seated position at its base, but he clutched at his left arm, staunching heavy bleeding from a stump at his elbow that had once been an arm. At least, the black sludge oozing from the stump could be said to strongly resemble blood.

"We meet at last," the Spider greeted coolly.

Kuwabara menaced the Spider with his sword, starting to close the small air gap that separated the Spider from decapitation. "Did you put her in there?!"

The Spider looked slowly at the sword, then tilted his head to the side to look up at Kuwabara's face. "I paid my price." He leaned his head back to rest it against the tree's rough bark and closed tired eyes. "The weaver took her revenge, but I still intend to witness the end."

Kuwabara's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "June did this to you?"

"No need to feign surprise; weavers are dangerous creatures." Making a sound somewhere between a snicker and a sneer, a part of the Spider's face disagreed with the motion required and seemed to lag a little behind, stretching lazily. "Though not usually in lethal fashion."

Kuwabara withdrew his sword. As much fear as he'd caused, the Spider seemed almost… harmless. "Don't move an inch," he warned, "or I'll cut your head off, you hear me?"

"You are heard," the Spider confirmed with an annoying smirk, like something he'd said was funny.

Kuwabara let his sword vanish to free up both hands as he went to check on June again. As far as he could tell without touching her, she seemed to be breathing. Her eyes flickered from side to side under her eyelids; like dreaming.

He stepped closer and his shoe crunched against something on the ground. He glanced down, checking under his shoe, and found a little scattering of blood-red crystalline dust smudged there.

Far, far in the distance, like hearing a thunderstorm roll in from the sea, a musical chime cut through the eternal stillness and drew his attention up again; two notes of a simple chord. The barrier rippled, eager waves preceding the storm.

"What's going to happen?" Kuwabara asked, knowing the Spider would be listening intently.

"It will finally be over," the Spider answered with a sigh. "Two ends of a single thread at the end of their length; no more endless cycles."

"But… no," Kuwabara shook his head, "what's going to happen? If June doesn't fix it, will the barrier fall? If she - I don't know - fixes it, what does that mean? What happens?"

"The answers you seek have all been erased."

Kuwabara puffed his chest, ready to yell in frustration, but something in the Spider's face made him pause. A distracted flickering of eyes, a pursing of the lips. Hesitation and uncertainty, and just a touch of fear.

The Spider looked younger at that moment, like a child ready for the angry rage of a frightening parent, and the quick movement of his eyes only accented the sagging skin around the Spider's eyes; like worn-out clothing hanging in an empty closet.

"Are you tired?" he asked, softening his tone.

"I have moved beyond feeling," the Spider snapped.

Kuwabara gestured to the Spider's bleeding arm. "You lost a hand. That's gotta hurt."

The Spider didn't reply. His sullen silence only served to further accentuate the youth in his face that seemed to ordinarily be hidden by the deep shadows around his eyes and the grimy condition of his skin. If not for the longevity of demons, Kuwabara wouldn't have put the Spider's age at much older than his own.

The uncertainty, though; that was the expression the Spider seemed to be trying the hardest to conceal. In the grove of strangely perfect trees, cast in the barrier's malevolent yellow light, and with nowhere else to run now that he'd reached some form of the finish line, the Spider was uncertain.

Kazuma took a deep breath, letting a new thought roll around for another minute. "You've been doing two different things - letting weavers try to fix the barrier, or killing them before they even get a chance. Like two opposite goals, but you don't know which one you really want. So… you don't know, do you? What's going to happen, I mean; you have no idea."

The Spider sneered at him. "You believe you have discovered me, have you?"

Kuwabara shrugged nonchalantly. "Every bad guy we've ever gone up against has been really specific about what they want - I mean they talk about it nonstop - and you're just… not."

Closer now, but still in the distance, like hearing the rushing approach of powerful ocean waves, two notes became four broke the conversation in two. The barrier shook, trembling like fear or anticipation. The loose weaving of neon yellow flexed and bent, some gaps large enough to allow through two men side-by-side, and some too small for even a churchmouse.

Thin yellow threads from the barrier snaked further through June's skin. The glow from the shuttle seemed to intensify by minuscule increments with each passing moment.

Kuwabara clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together as he fought against an increasing storm surge of fear that threatened to rob him of reason. "If I asked you how to save her, would you tell me?"

"Take the shuttle," the Spider hissed. "The weaver cannot discard it, but it can be taken. Take it, and she can be cut free from the net; free from bonding servitude. Her soul may be empty but it can be refilled."

"Just like that?" Kuwabara asked. Too simple to be true, as nothing in his experience had ever been such a perfectly easy way to save someone's life.

"It is a simple task," the Spider promised. "Quick, quickly, make your choices and beg the universe's fortune. At the edge of the cliff, there is no time for indecision."

His hand hovered over the shuttle. He could feel the warmth of the gold energy pouring from the shuttle pulsing like a small fire. He didn't know if that warmth meant touch me or stay away. What did it feel like normally? He could add that question to the lengthy list that he'd wished he had asked before.

Before. A time when pleasantries and hesitation and embarrassed smiles had been the greatest of his concerns. It was too hard to change gears to this - quick decisions made in the dark, no better than tossing a coin and hoping for a reasonable outcome. Was it too late to pray for guidance? The Spider's advice couldn't be counted as reliable, and how many Weavers had he seen make the same mistakes over and over?

And where had that advice begun? A thought occurred to him; from experience? "Is this what happened to you?" Kuwabara asked suddenly, turning to look as shock spread across the Spider's face.

And then he knew he was right. The thought rolled along with a life of its own, gathering facts and brief memories as it rolled down an increasingly steep hill of reason. "Weavers can't break the rules or they get pulled apart on the inside. That's why your friends converted you with a demon core, right? You were all empty because they pulled you out, because they panicked."

"I know all the weavers are supposed to be girls, but Spirit World has messed with enough stuff before that even I know you can't always trust the paperwork." And there was a feeling, too; a repetition of time and time again that he could almost taste in the air. Did deja vu have a smell? Was it something that lingered in a place and forced history to repeat for its entertainment?

Kuwabara chewed on his lip, looking up at June's peaceful expression and hoping beyond hope that it was truth written on her skin. "I know I've got it right." Kuwabara lowered his head. "Because that's what I wanna do right now."

He sat down slowly, crossing his legs and hunching over slightly as the exhaustion of the day caught up with him. It would have been so much easier to just come through swinging - cut down a few demons, interrupt a bad-guy-monologue with a flourish of his sword, and rescue June right at the brink of disaster - but now he was relegated to waiting. Waiting was the worst. Waiting was for hospitals and rickety chairs outside of Principal's offices and nothing good ever happened.

"Your weaver," the Spider offered somberly, "she is so odd."

"Her name is June." It was quickly becoming an automatic response.

"I have seen a hundred weavers come and go, through ebb and flow of time." He sighed and shifted slightly, grimacing as he jostled his bleeding arm. "She looked at me in fear, as they all do, but your weaver was filled with…" he trailed off but stared past Kuwabara - presumably at June's trapped form. A little fear, a little yearning, and so much exhaustion. "Many weavers have been lost to the river."

"She's not-" Kuwabara strangled the emotion that tried to color his words, "she's not my weaver. She's not anyone's."

The Spider dismissed his statement with a wave of his remaining hand, dripping black sludge-like blood against the tree roots that bound him. "All weavers belong to their own."

Kuwabara blinked. He squinted as his brain tried to process the statement. "... what?"

The Spider grinned maliciously. "Of course, as such, you will know the very instant that she fails."

Kuwabara flushed, feeling like the butt of some sick joke. "Stop trying to fuck with me!"

"All of you are so quick to anger; a fascinating common trait." The Spider chuffed, short of a laugh. "Had we met sooner I could have prevented all of that suffering."

"All of who?" Kuwabara pressed. "Is it impossible for you to give me a single straight answer?"

"Weaver-kin," the Spider drawled slowly. "All of you are angry, all of you useless and ignorant." He spat it like an insult, but his face swiftly changed to one of compassionate sadness as Kuwabara argued his point.

"I'm not one of her totems," he said, running a hand against the back of his neck, "that's just Aria and Maggie. I'm just… I just want to help her."

"No, I supposed weavers have been without true Stars for some time," the Spider agreed. "It's not your fault. History forgot to mention you and those ways were lost."

The barrier shuddered tightly, if a weaving of energies could shudder. Calm waves had become teeming tides but furiously agitated beyond description.

Kuwabara frowned. "Something's happening…"

A musical awakening of an orchestra gearing up for performance - chords layered on chords - rattled the air close enough to taste.

June's ghostly form took a deep breath, shuddering, and as she released it the weaving of her body stretched, locking into place with the barrier. The effect rippled outwards, golden kekkai fading from gold to green to Tkadlec blue.

And then June started to fade.

"June?!" Kuwabara cried, scrambling to his feet.

She started to unravel at the edges, losing the distinction of her hands and feet.

"You've gotta wake up and tell me what I need to do! Tell me what to do!" Panic colored his tone and he didn't care. She had faded up to her elbows and knees, unraveling in lengths as she was swallowed by the new oceanic blue of the barrier. "Stop, June, stop, please! Fight it!"

"It is done," the Spider sighed. "The suffering of the Tkadlec line is ended."

Kuwabara's gaze fell to the shuttle, the last thing still glowing gold in the great expense of blue. It spun lazily in the air, like a confused compass arrow searching for true North.

Breathing heavily, uncertain of the right move but too terrified of missing the moment to give up on his last chance, Kuwabara reached out slowly. His hand trembled as he closed in around the shuttle like a cage, shaking in fear.

Was this the right choice? He'd only get to make one and he was pretty sure there wouldn't be any chance for a do-over. That oppressive sense of time pressed against his skin, closing in around his fingers to move him closer to grabbing the shuttle. He could grasp it tightly, pull with a swift movement, yank it into the open air - it sounded right.

But it felt familiar, too. It felt like that taste of deja vu in the air, that moment repeated over and over through time that had never managed to climb out of the ever-deepening rut it had formed.

Kuwabara opened the cage of his fingers, releasing the shuttle to spin lazily in the open air without ever touching that warm surface. Maybe, Kuwabara thought, reaching for June's face, it's time to change.

Holding his breath as he prepared for the worst, Kuwabara cupped her cheeks with both hands. The smooth skin of a scar that ran along the corner of her jawline that he'd seen so close only hours before seemed to tickle along the pads of his fingertips. When he'd kissed her he hadn't known the right words to express himself and he'd hoped that would do. Now, as he found each second passing without death running him over, he'd found the words he'd needed before.

The sensation of energy running through June and passing over and through his hands made them tingle in a not entirely unpleasant way. He'd been expecting to be zapped or struck down by some powerful energy, or maybe something else entirely from the Spider's warning.

Emboldened, he stroked June's cheeks with his thumbs. "Kotonok," he murmured as close as he dared.

Out of his range of vision, the shuttle's motion began to slow.

"I know I'm not enough." Kuwabara pressed his forehead to hers and the buzzing sensation of the barrier's new energy moving through him tapped along his teeth. "But could you come back anyway? It doesn't have to be for me, just… come back."

He took a breath to steady himself; to force down the fear and the desperation that was trying to spur him into action. He was a man of action, and sitting by and just praying that everything would be alright just felt so wrong.

He'd been forced time and time again to sit by and watch terrible things happen. He'd vowed never again to let inaction be his vice, but at this moment he was having to choose it. He had to trust June. He had to trust in her will and the promise she had made.

"I'll wait however long I have to and we'll go home together. We're gonna go to festivals, and we're gonna go back to the arcade and try that night over again." He would do it properly if he got a second chance. He would do a lot of things better, if only he got a fighting chance.

June had promised. I will come back, I promise. She's grown to love the temple and called it her home. I will always find a way back. So what could he do but wait? He could only trust in her promise and her will. He would let go of his fears even as they washed over and through him, to let them go past without forcing him into action. To fulfill his half of the promise; for her to come back he would have to be waiting there.

The shuttle snapped into stillness. Tense, held tight against the grain of gravity, it had found whatever magnetic source it had been seeking.

The acceptance of his resolution calmed him. A single steadying breath washed away the last of his fear, and the tingle of the energy through his hands and running through his face served as a reminder that June hadn't vanished yet.

"I won't leave without you." It felt right, saying that. Not a revelation or earth-shattering truth, but a simple promise from his heart to hers.

Quivering, humming with a frenetic vibration, the lazy motion of the shuttle had yielded entirely to some iron certainty. As Kuwabara shifted slightly, the leading point of the shuttle followed him. A compass arrow, pointing North.


A/N: JFC THIS WAS SO HARD TO WRITE. It changed over and over, huge chunks of content and dialogue moved around, deleted, re-written as the Spider was more or less helpful, more or less chatty, UUUUUUUUUUGH (It's almost like the spider has a spectrum of behavior that flips with no notice lol why ever could that be) and Kuwabara is smarter than people give him credit for. He's also so, so kind.

I love my reviewers! PondRiverWilliams and typiicaltaylor!

PLEASE REVIEW!