Towards the Within

By Kouri and Kira

A fic! By Kira and I! Warnings for spoilers for the whole series, probably including arcs in the manga, because we like to scatter references around. Warnings for yaoi (duh), mostly Tsuzuki/Hisoka, major ANGST, maybe violence and blood and gore, oh my! Fukuoka is in the Kyushu region, but given that we are both Gaijin and have never been there, we are flying by the seat of our pants. Please forgive any and all errors.

Disclaimer: If Yami no Matsuei belonged to us, we would be writing the real thing, not fanfics, wouldn't we.

Prologue

They think it's easy.

Why don't you just forget it?

It's easy for them to say it, but I can't do it. How can I? Forget everyone that dies, everyone that comes into my life? How can they think it's so easy just to forget all of them? Everything that happens, all the people I meet, all the things I experience… everything that hurts me and hurts the people close to me…

Forget it all?

I can't.

My first assignment as a Shinigami… the one after that, and the one after, and the one twenty years after that one, and the one forty years after that one… I won't forget. All of those images are still burned into my mind. All those faces, those voices, their stories, their sadness…

I know. It's a heavy burden to carry. It's so heavy even I don't know why I do it anymore. Tatsumi tells me I'm going to kill myself someday. The guilt will swallow me whole, he says, that I should let it go or be destroyed.

Hisoka looks at me the same. He doesn't understand why. Why I carry so much pain when he knows and I know, we all know, how much it hurts me.

Especially now, they want me to forget. Now, because… I almost killed myself just a week ago.

I feel so stupid about it… and guilty. I was so willing to go, I didn't even think about the people that would be hurt if I died. I can't be that selfish.

If Hisoka hadn't pulled me back…

I don't know. I don't know…

I'm so grateful to him. He has no idea how much. He saved me, and for that… I don't know how to thank him.

Just as long as he stays with me. If he stays with me… that's all I need.

But I'll mess it up. God, I know I'll mess up…

* * *

He thinks I don't realize. It's stupid of him, really. But then again, being stupid seems to be his favorite pastime, next to sweet things. I can't count on all the fingers in the Meifu how many times I've called him idiot, stupid, moron . . . all those words. Sometimes I wonder if he realizes that I'm really just wishing he would be more careful. That he would take better care of himself.

No. He doesn't realize. Nobody realizes, and I like it that way. Some small part of me wishes that I hadn't told him how much he meant to me . . . but the thought of losing him was too much. Too much to bear. I would have done anything for him to stay with me.

Anything.

But that's where I start being stupid. He wanted to die, I know that. I could feel it in every nerve of my body. His weariness, his utter and complete despair, trying to swallow me up. Sometimes in my dreams, it's still trying.

He probably hates me for saving him. I know that Tatsumi apologized, but I can't. I won't. He means the world to me, and if I apologized for that... it would remind him that it was true. And I don't think I can take that right now.

All my life, it was just me, alone. I was self-sufficient; I took care of myself. I had to. I had no other choice. But all that changed when I met him. Tsuzuki, that moronic, scatter-brained, sweet-toothed, purple-eyed, masochistic, beautiful, beautiful idiot.

I pushed him away, and pushed him away again, but he just kept coming back. And something about the way he looked at me cut somewhere deep inside, reopened old wounds that I hadn't even realized still hurt.

I don't know if I love him, but I know that I couldn't exist without him.

Does it amount to the same thing, in the end?

Sometimes at night, I get cold, and I wrap the blankets around me and pretend that they're his arms. But then I feel stupid, babyish, and I make myself stop. He'll never care for me, not that way. Not after everything that happened.

I should be content to be his friend, his partner. I'll make myself content. I won't let it hurt me, not any of it.

No matter how much it really does.

* * *