All right, people! ::kicks a stray tumbleweed: This is it -- the last chapter! An even ten chapters, as I planned. It sort of has a happy ending, if you ignore the fact that Gi is pretty much invisible. I hope you enjoyed this fic, and I really had a lot of fun writing it. Vahn/Gi forever! ;_;

In some instances, Vahn was right that he could live with Gi being completely invisible to almost everyone. In other instances, he was completely wrong. Every night as the sea breeze blew the curtains in, flapping noisily in the silence that came with everyone leaving the two alone, he would curl up tighter and tighter to Gi to be his brace against the wind. He would lay there for around two hours because his mind was filled with thoughts and questions.

How -had- it been possible that he could pull someone from Noaru? If other people were able to, they would be tripping over invisible people left and right. He had just done what his gut instinct told him to do. Every time he thought about Noaru, he thought about how he was alive there and how many laws of nature he was breaking, and then he quickly changed the subject.

"Go to sleep," Gi would mutter, massaging his tense shoulders. Vahn's eyes would spring open almost as if he were trained to do so at a voice command, and realize how tightly he was holding on and how violently he was shuddering from internal pain. And then he would say something like, "You go to sleep first," and pull him even closer. When he could feel Gi's heart beating next to his, knowing that he was there and breathing calmly, that's when his entire muscle system would relax and he would finally sleep.

One morning out of the rest, Vahn was shaken awake by a pair of unfriendly and cold hands. It was Gi's startled cry of "Hey!" in his ear when he was squashed as well that he realized Mei was standing over him. She probably didn't hear Gi, or was just pretending not to care.

She pulled him up to a sitting position, not feeling that she was tearing the two apart. "You've been in here for days by yourself, Vahn!" she yelled, her cheeks flushed with anger. "Nobody's told me what's going on yet, so I figured I would get to hear this story straight from you." He paused for a second, stammering and blinking. She sure wasn't as nice as he remembered she was.

He looked at Gi, pretending to look past him to the wooden cabinet, and then stood up. His rise pushed her back a little, by all means intentional. "You want to know what happened? Well, Lu and Che are here because they lost their brother Gi. So I went back into Noaru for him, and I pulled him out with Meta's help. You just can't see him or hear him because he's pretty much a ghost. He was right next to me when you woke me up, thank you very much." At that very second, her rage died and she looked completely crestfallen. "If you didn't get that, let me put it in simple terms. Gi is here with me because I wanted him back. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, even if he's invisible to every one. Yes, Mei, I -love- him."

It took a few seconds before she even moved, but it wasn't one that he expected nor welcomed. She rose a hand up and slapped him viciously across the cheek, the sharp sound bouncing off of the walls for a moment. His head snapped to the side and his vision blurred, but when he looked straight again, she was crying.

Her shoulders were shaking, and it never even occured to him once that she was just trying to sneak some pity out of him. *Too late for that now.* "You left me here in this boring little village all by myself for all of that time just because you were on some personal sidequest? Did you ever once think of me and how I felt for you? I don't understand you! I thought you cared, Vahn, but no -- you're as selfish as the next one! Why did I even waste my time on you --"

She was stopped abruptly when she was suddenly shoved back and went crashing into the opposite wall. She couldn't see it, but Gi was standing next to Vahn with his arms extended and palms flat. When she recovered from the shock, restraining an incredible urge to either scream or cry, she stood upright and left the house immediately, slamming the door behind her.

Vahn let out a sigh of relief, then walked to his chest of drawers and pulled a shirt from the bottom drawer. "You didn't have to push her, you know," he said, pulling it over his head and sticking his arms through the sleeves. "But I'm glad you did." He took Gi by the hand and lead him out of the small hellhole he called his home.

Lu and Noa happened to be coming from one of the newer houses that were built now that Rim Elm's protective stone wall was down, and ran towards them (well, Vahn, as far as they saw). "Mei just ran past us in hysterics," Lu sneered. "What did you do to her -- break her the news?" Vahn nodded, and she couldn't help but laugh.

"Hey, wait a minute ... how come you sound like you've known her your entire life? Did you talk to my dad?!" Noa, who had a thing for stating the obvious, giggled and nodded so fast that Vahn thought her neck was going to snap. "He said you used to be in loooove with Mei!" she giggled, twirling in circles.

They just watched her spin around, until Lu reached into the human tornado and seized her wrist. "We're going to the festival by Drake Castle, if you can guess whose idea it was." She rolled her eyes, and Noa straightened herself out at the very mention of the festival. "Festival! Let's go, Lu, let's go!" And so, she sped off with Lu calling, "Bye Vahn, bye Gi!" over her shoulder as she was pulled along.

As he watched them run off into the distance, Vahn got an idea. It wasn't a very good one, but it was something to do. "I bet you haven't seen all of Legaia yet. Come, I want to show you it. I want to show you everything!"

Gi was dragged as well, but managed to pull him back. "You know that people will still look at you like you're talking to yourself and pulling at the air?" he asked, frowning. Vahn kept on going, much to his surprise. "I don't care!" And then he echoed, laughing. "I don't care... The world needed me, now they don't, but I don't need the world. All I need is you, because you're the only thing keeping me hanging on here. Even if the rest of the world can't see you! The Ra-Seru hero Vahn is completely drunk with love and he likes it!"

It took a minute before Gi smiled broadly and they began running off hand-in-hand. "I don't need the world, either, because they can't even see me! Hah! I'll watch you grow old until the end of time! And then we'll exist outside of time and life itself and we can finally be together! Right?" That's when he realized that they were running as fast as they could across the field, and the castle was getting closer and closer.

All of Legaia must have thought that he was strange from the start, to have awakened a Ra-Seru and cleared the lands of what they had been hiding from the whole entire time. And now that he was madly -- at this rate, he was stark-raving mad -- in love with one who had once stood in favor of the Mist and the chaos it brought, he wasn't any more sane.

Did he care?

"Right!" Vahn exclaimed. Laughing and sprinting as fast as they possibly could, which was pretty fast due to their heightened abilities, they stood at the beginning of the front courtyard where everyone was gathered.

He panted and nodded, watching everyone dancing in pairs. Doing everything with a ghost would be fun to watch, if not horrifying. "It all begins here," he said breathlessly.

Gi took him smack in the middle of the jovial crowd, holding his hand high in the air so all could see it. "And it never ends," he added, fixing their arms to all the right places.

Maybe if all of Legaia squinted really hard and focused, they would be able to see the imaginary friend that Vahn was dancing with. Or maybe they just chose to ignore the fact that they were all stark-raving mad in one respect. Either way, nobody present that day made a single noise about it -- except for Lu and Noa.

Whatever way it went, it didn't matter if the world was crazy or not. Something new happened every day, and he wouldn't be very surprised if someone somewhere was still talking to dead people.

It made Vahn happy to think that, as he danced with virtually nobody and rejoiced for once in a very long time, he wasn't crazy after all. Just in love.

And he didn't want to admit it, but he felt normal for once.