It's funny, really, how I thought summer vacation would actually enable me to write more than usual. Haah. Laugh with me, reader-people. Sure, it gives me time. And how do I use that time?

To slack off! Every minute of every hour of every single DAY! Of course, I never believe that's what's actually going to happen until it...actually is happening. *Dramatic sigh.* The trials of summer vacation...T_T

Anyway...I hope more of my old reviewers come back once I'm regularly updating again ^^; And I'm truly grateful to the people who reviewed for chapter 5. @_@; I'm not sure if this new chapter would have come nearly as quickly if it weren't for your support. It actually could have been up a few days earlier, but I was fussing over the length of it for a while, so....^^;;

Anyway. Enjoy!

(Also: Note the super-original chapter title.)

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Daybreak

Chapter 6 - The Fourth Morning

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And so the days passed by, slowly and peacefully for some...and horrifically quickly for others.

Dom belonged to the latter camp. Neal had been very helpful, he really had - and that in itself was quite an astounding feat, in Dom's opinion - and Yuki had certainly been just as willing to help, if not more so. But still...

Could he really be that sure that Kel would like it?...This question had nagged at Dom relentlessly, and because of it he had spent the last day and a half switching from gift to gift - under Yuki's supervision, of course. So far, though, this process had only succeeded in making him even more uncertain.

'What am I so worried about?...' he asked himself, giving his bowl of bread pudding a searching gaze, as if expecting the answer to appear there before his eyes. 'Kel's my friend. She'd still be my friend if I gave her a bad present. She's not petty. You're overreacting.' he thought firmly. He continued to stare down into his pudding, defying it to argue with this fine logic. Satisfied at its silence, he began to dig into it with his spoon.

It was the fourth morning of the Midwinter Festival. The mess had been tastefully adorned in red and gold for the week, and small bushels of holly had been hung along the walls; Dom had admired the decorations when he had first seen them. Now, they were only a grim reminder of his situation.

And what exactly was his 'situation', anyway? He wondered about this, spoon hanging from his tightly closed mouth. This was Midwinter, a time of year he usually rather enjoyed. And yet, for some reason, his brain had decided to drive him completely crazy over a single present this year.

'Or rather, over a single person,' a small part of him couldn't help but think. As a follow-up, an image of Kel's face immediately popped into Dom's head. He blinked hard, took the spoon from his mouth, and quickly returned to his pudding, trying very, very hard to focus all of his attention on eating what remained of it. He had found that the lady knight was in his thoughts far too often to be normal these days, and he could not for the life of him figure out why.

Well, that wasn't exactly right. The truth was that he didn't want to figure it out.

Completely absorbed in his pudding, Dom tuned out the many conversations going on around him; Neal and Yuki's voices faded into the background, as well as those of his squad. In this state of mind he completely failed to notice the person approaching their table, all the way up until she slid into a seat straight across from him. Looking up in surprise, he gave Kel a welcoming smile as she greeted a groggy Neal with a brightness that didn't seem to set with him all that well. Seeing Dom, she smiled back at him, already starting on her breakfast. "Good morning, Dom."

"Good morning." He replied, reaching for his glass of water.

"I still don't see just what's so good about it." Neal told them, looking cross as he rubbed the sleep out of one of his eyes. This received a glare from Dom, and a rather pronounced eyeroll from Kel.

"Stuff it, Meathead."

"Quiet down, Meathead."

Surprised, the two of them turned to stare at each other. Slowly, they both started to grin.

"Picking up a few new habits, I see?" Dom asked wryly.

"You're a bad influence on me." Kel replied, though her grin only broadened as she spoke. Dom pretended to cringe, putting on a pained expression that was almost convincing. "That hurts, Kel," he informed her, throwing her the most pathetic-looking gaze he could conjure up at the moment. The reaction was a good one; Kel was clearly fighting not to laugh. Composing herself, she smoothed her face out, raising her eyebrows skeptically at Dom.

He blinked at her, losing his pitiful look. "...You know, you really do look like My Lord when you do that." he said after a while.

The corners of Kel's mouth twitched slightly. "I'm flattered. Really."

"You know what I mean!"

"No. No, I don't think I do. Care to explain?" she asked him cooly. Dom just shook his head, looking exasperated and heaving a dramatized sigh.

Neal and Yuki, meanwhile, had been watching this exchange with great interest.

"...Well, isn't that cute." Neal drawled, a lazy smirk spreading across his features. Yuki put a hand over her mouth to hide her grin.

This was received with identical blank stares. "...What do you mean?" Kel finally asked, blinking in confusion. Dom could only stare at his cousin, several different emotions playing over his face.

Neal blinked, then watched them thoughtfully for a moment, considering. A moment later his smirk returned, wider than ever. "...Oh, nothing." he said lightly, and was fascinating himself with his meal a moment later. Yuki smiled cryptically, glancing at her husband and quickly following suit.

Dom scowled, annoyed; his cousin's lofty attitude was extremely tiresome, especially so early in the day. Kel, meanwhile, looked amazingly unruffled, and she fixed Neal with a suspicious glare. "Is that so?" she asked placidly. "It didn't sound like nothing to me."

"Well, then, you must be short of hearing, my dear." Neal told her pleasantly, flashing her an angelic smile. This provoked a much icier glare on Kel's part, at which he shivered and shrunk down in his seat. "Oh, I'm so frightened." he cried in a loud monotone, much to the entertainment of his wife and several other people sitting at the large table.

Kel observed him silently for a moment, her expression ominously calm. A cold, tiny smirk touched her lips, and she reached for her fork. "You should be." She said, brandishing the silverware like a deadly weapon.

Dom laughed, marveling at how formidable Kel managed to look armed only with eating utensils. "Got any last words, dear cousin?" he asked, giving Neal a sinister-looking grin.

"...Yes..." Neal began in a quavering voice; his green eyes were wide as saucers, and he gazed up at the fork as though it were an executioner's axe. Not for the first time, Dom was struck with the idea of how successful Neal would be if he had become a theater player instead of a knight. "Please don't kill me! I have a wife and three children! And a dog, too!" he begged, clasping his hands together. "Have mercy!"

Yuki cuffed him lightly. "Liar!" she accused, her eyes crinkling with hidden laughter.

Neal turned away from the fork and the others, snatching up the Yamani's hand in his and patting it reassuringly. "Come now, love, you knew we couldn't have kept this a secret forever." He coaxed, staring into her eyes soulfully and somehow managing to keep his face straight through it all.

The surprise attack got a laugh out of Yuki, but she sobered quickly, drawing herself up and slapping Neal's hand away. "I don't know why I ever married you." She proclaimed hotly, tossing her head back slightly and glaring down at him.

Neal grinned crookedly. "Because of my good looks, charm and obvious intelligence?" he suggested, running a hand through his hair for effect. Dom coughed, quickly putting a hand to his mouth to keep the water he had just drank from escaping. Kel shook her head, laughing silently, still holding the fork directly over Neal's skull.

Yuki rolled her eyes. "...Probably only the first of those three, I should think." She said after a while, thoughtful, then watched for his reaction.

Neal gasped quietly. Bringing a hand to his chest, he clutched at his tunic, right over the spot where his heart would be. "Your love for me was all a lie?!" he exclaimed, shrinking down even further and staring up at Yuki in disbelief.

She didn't say anything, and gave him a slightly better glare than before. Neal bit his lower lip, and turned sharply back to Dom and Kel. Before she could react, he snatched the fork out of Kel's grasp and held it over his chest with both hands. "Then...I cannot go on living!" he cried out dramatically, and drove the fork down until it touched cloth. Moaning quietly, he toppled over onto the table, his head falling against his outstretched arm. His tongue lolled. Several of Dom's men applauded; they had clearly enjoyed the show.

Soon the clapping died down, and the squad returned to their breakfasts. Dom, Kel and Yuki stared at Neal's corpse, completely silent. Finally, Kel reached down, took the fork from his open hand, and poked him curiously with its unpointed end a few times. "If only he were always this lively in the mornings..." she remarked quietly, giving him a final prod in the back for good measure. He didn't move.

Yuki nodded in agreement. "He had better have mentioned me in his will." She said, Yamani etiquette just barely keeping her face straight.

Dom didn't bother holding back his laughter. "Meathead: we hardly knew ye!" he relented. Kel snickered quietly, and Dom looked over at her, grinning. It was then that he noticed something rather peculiar about her, and his grin faded, replaced by a curious frown.

"Kel, why are you wearing gloves?" he asked, leaning in from across the table with interest. And indeed, stretched over Kel's hands was a pair of tightly woven black gloves, reaching up an inch or so past her wrists. Neal, feeling the spotlight had been drawn away from him, sat up now, and gave the gloves an odd look.

Kel blinked, her face going strangely still as she stared back at Dom's curious expression. "Oh...Well, my hands were cold." She explained, suddenly taking a keen interest in her breakfast.

Dom blinked, puzzled. "Inside, though?"

She nodded once, not looking up from her food. Dom and Neal exchanged looks, and Neal leaned in toward her until his eyes were level with hers. "You're lying." He informed her quietly.

"I'm not."

"...Can we see your hands, then." Neal said, and despite the phrasing, it was not a request. Kel hesitated, then gave a barely detectable sigh and reached down, yanking one glove off by its fingers.

Dom gasped. Kel's hand was almost like one giant bandage: nearly every finger was wrapped in a thick gauze-like material, as was the upper section of her palm. Blood had stained some of the bandaging, now dull brown-crimson blotches against the white. There was a sharp intake of breath from Neal, and Yuki winced, hissing sympathetically.

"Mithros, it's like the griffin all over again..." Dom murmured. Instinctively, he reached across the table and placed the abused hand palm-up in his own. Studying the wounds with worried eyes, he felt an odd sense of deja vu, though he didn't know why. Neal glared at Kel reproachfully, and she stared back at him for a moment before looking away and saying in a quiet voice, "...I fell down."

Dom blinked. "You fell down?" he repeated uncertainly, his blue eyes searching as he looked over her face. It remained unwaveringly calm, even as she looked up at him and nodded. Yuki watched her friend curiously, her expression just as unreadable.

Neal just snorted. "Oh, come on. We've both known that one since we were pages, Kel. You could do better than that, surely."

"No, really, I did." She said quickly. Neal continued to eye her suspiciously. There was another brief pause before she continued.

"...I was out on a walk yesterday, and I tripped and...fell into a thorn bush." she explained slowly, turning her head away from Dom now as she spoke to Neal. This was a relief to him; he had found it increasingly hard to concentrate on the conversation when her face was filling his vision.

Neal regarded her silently for a moment, one brow arched skeptically. "You're still lying." He said flatly.

Kel drew herself up, defiant. "I fell down." She told them again, more firmly this time.

Neal sighed, shaking his head. "Gods..." he muttered under his breath. There was an uncomfortable silence. After a while, Neal glanced down at Kel's hand, which was still carefully held by Dom. Raising his eyebrows and giving Dom a furtive look, he extended his own hand. Dom blinked in a brief moment of confusion, then colored and quickly released his hold.

Neal took Kel's hand. He deftly unraveled the bandages, and Dom felt his concern steadily growing as each new cut or puncture was revealed. And there were a lot of cuts and puncture marks. So he was incredibly grateful when Neal finally touched the wounds with his gift, leaving them with fresh pink skin.

"Now the other one." Neal murmured.

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A/N: Well! A short-ish chapter, but I rather like it. =D Neal continues to amuse me. I know I made him rather zany back there, but you know, mornings can do that to people. e_e I, for instance, am writing this author's note at 11:35 am. And, you don't want to know when I have last slept.

Eh...I'll try to have 7 up in the next couple weeks, if I can ^^; As in, if my brain will actually cooperate (for once).

And, people. I'm serious. Listen carefully:

REVIEW!!

@_@ *shouts it in your ear*

It's just so easy...Come on. Boost my ego. You know you want to.

~Pheep