Over a month later, Seiya stood in the crowd and watched as the awards were given at the end of the racing circuit, the result of all the points they had collected with each race. A couple months ago, he had thought that he would feel happy for Haruka, knowing that she would be standing in that winner's circle at the end of it all. But he couldn't help but feel put off by how she had been treating him, and even a bit angry at still not knowing what had caused the return of all this hatred. As Haruka was handed the trophy, Seiya went off to join his two brothers as they prepared for their final performance on the tour.

Taiki looked up from the guitar he was toying with, giving a small grin toward his raven-tressed brother. "Always knew she'd be getting that trophy."

"Yeah."

"Hey, what's wrong with the two of you recently? For a while there you were almost inseparable, and then all of a sudden, you were shooting each other death glares again." He tilted his head to the side with a teasing grin. "Have a little lover's spat?"

Seiya almost growled over at him, causing Taiki to laugh. "Take it easy!"

Yaten soon joined the two of them, tossing a copy of the local paper's entertainment section on top of a nearby table. "I'd say that might have something to do with it."

The two darker-headed brothers looked down to the paper, scowling immediately as they saw the same headlines from over a year ago staring back up at them. Apparently, old news had become new again, and they were dredging up everything about Michiru's death and the murder that had never been brought to trial, finding some nonsense way to connect it all with the recent events with Seiya and Haruka. Seiya grabbed the thing and tossed it into the nearest trash bin. "Ridiculous piece of trash... They may as well quit being a newspaper and be a tabloid."

Yaten lifted an eyebrow at him before shrugging. "I can't really say that this return of old ways between you and Haruka is a bad thing. I mean, you finally gave up on Usagi after she and Mamoru married... It's just less that you'll have to let go of when we finally leave this planet. I can't understand why you bother with connecting with anyone in the first place. You know it's going to end as soon as we find Kakyuu-hime."

Seiya glared and stalked over to his silver-tressed brother, glaring down at him. "Not everyone is as emotionally bereft as you, Yaten. Some of us actually have feelings and have a need to connect with people on some other level than just complete disdain. Quit acting like you're the intelligent one and you're so much better than me just because I keep finding myself in pain over losing a friend... At times, with how you treat people, I wonder how you can even consider anyone to be connected with you, much less someone like me, who needs human contact, to be your brother, or someone like Taiki, who expresses his emotions in poetry. Just because you lack the capacity to actually care, doesn't mean you have to look down on those of us who actually do!" With that, he turned and headed out the door, but froze briefly as Yaten made his retort

"You do realize that Haruka is almost exactly the same way as me when it comes to that sort of thing, don't you? She has her friends, and she has the people she cares about... but as soon as someone begins to get close to her, she pushes them away. She's a loner, Seiya, even more of one since Michiru died. She's pushing you away because you threatened that status. She likes not having to be too attached to anyone but Nina, the same way she was with Michiru. She's going to stay that way, and I'm not going to start changing my ways and start letting other people get close to me that I'll just have to eventually leave behind. I'd rather save myself that discomfort, thank you very much. Besides," he paused briefly in his calm response to make sure Seiya actually turned to look at him to get the full impact of his next words. "I don't think I'm the person you're really mad at and wanted to say those things to."

Seiya scowled, but realized the truth in his words as he headed out the door.

"Be back in fifteen minutes, Seiya! We still have a performance to put on."

Seiya gave a small wave to let Taiki know that he had heard him, but didn't slow his pace back outside to where people were still milling about and discussing those who had received awards that day for their performances in the races over the past few months. Trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, Seiya scanned his blue eyes over the crowd until he caught sight of the familiar head of blond hair making its way away from the crowd of people and toward the parking lot. Scowling again, Seiya hopped down from the makeshift stage on which he had been standing and quickly made his way in the same direction. He managed to catch Haruka just as she was unlocking the driver side door after putting the trophy safely into the trunk. He caught hold of her shirt and slammed her up against the nearby fence that separated the parking lot from a large field. "You're not leaving here until I know exactly what is that made you throw up that wall around yourself again, Haruka." Haruka made a move to shove him away, but that only made him pin her even harder against the chain-link fence. "I sort of thought our friendship was a good thing, even with all the crap they were blasting about in the media. And don't even try to pass that off as the reason that you walked out on our friendship, because I know it's a lie. I'm tired of you pretending that you don't need anyone else in your life. You've never let anyone but Michiru get that close to you. Even Nina will never get to know you that way because you have obligations to her as a parent. And I know you'd give anything to have Michiru back, we all would! We all miss her, Haruka, you aren't the only one. But she's not coming back!"

Seiya was wholly unprepared for the fist that made contact with his jaw a moment later and made him release her abruptly. Unwilling to give up, but knowing words just weren't getting through to her, Seiya retaliated and tackled her to the ground, the car keys flying loose from her hand to get lost underneath the car. This went on for several minutes, rolling on the pavement and every now and then someone managed to elbow the other in the side until finally Haruka won out and pinned him forcefully to the ground. "You want to know why?!"

His glower faded slightly as he let his head fall back on the pavement, only to realize that at this point, his messed hair provided very little cushioning. "Ow!" He lifted his head back up to rub the back of it. "Yes."

Instead of responding, Haruka released him and got up and moved away to retrieve her keys. She found them a moment later, then stood straight as she watched Seiya climbing to his feet. "I walked out that day because I had never played along with someone like that besides Michiru. I've never been able to connect musically with anyone but her, even though she had this... way about her that let anyone be convinced that they could play even half as beautifully as she did." Haruka paused briefly to smirk and shake her head, looking down at the ground. "I think that's a big part of the reason I started off hating you... Because Michiru joined you in concert that night, it was sort of like she was sharing part of herself with every person that she played with..." She stopped again to lift her gaze back up, this time to point it at the sky. "It sort of scared me more than made me jealous. I don't know why... I suppose it was because I always thought that she was too good for me... I never could believe that she passed up on being with all these other people, and just settled for someone like me who was doing her best to escape her fate, to get away from everything that might be able to hurt her. In her, I found this peace that made me feel like that all that hurt I was trying to avoid simply didn't exist... Then the night she died, I found out it did..." She smirked once more before lowering her gaze back to meet with his. He was faintly surprised to see tears threatening in those midnight blue orbs. "You want to know why I ran away? It's because I was afraid of being hurt again." With that, she turned and unlocked the car, got in, started the engine, and drove away.

Seiya was still standing in what could only be described as shock when Taiki came running up to find him. His eyes widened when he saw his brother's disheveled state. "Have a good heart-to-heart?" He smirked faintly before throwing an arm around the raven-tressed man's shoulders. "Don't answer that. Come on, Yaten's trying to keep the audience entertained until I found you... That is," he paused, looking down at his expression, "if you feel that you're up to it."

Seiya finally shook himself free of the shock and gave a small nod of his head. "Of course."

Taiki grinned. "Good. But let's get you cleaned up first. The way you look right now, the audience might run away in fear."

Seiya offered a small grin up to his brother for all his efforts to cheer him up as they headed toward the stage. "Nah. I think the girls will be too busy staring at Yaten to even notice me up there."

Taiki chuckled and shook his head. "True." With that, the two disappeared backstage to get Seiya washed up and into a new set of clothes, then went out to perform.

When they got back to the hotel late that night, Seiya watched his brothers get off on one floor, then rode the elevator up the extra two floors before walking off. He went down toward the end of the hall and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he knocked once more. After a few minutes more of waiting, he was about to knock again when a bellboy caught his attention. "Are you looking for Ms. Ten'ou?"

Seiya gave a brief nod of his head toward the boy.

"Well, she got back here a few hours ago and checked out early."

He thanked him before heading back to the elevator. It wasn't like Haruka to run away like that. It was then that he saw Yaten headed toward him. "She's gone, right?"

Bewildered, Seiya nodded. "How did you know?"

"She must have got the same message we did. Tokyo was attacked earlier today." The two ran the rest of the way to the elevator and got on as Yaten continued. "The senshi were able to fight them off, but Usagi and Hotaru were pretty badly hurt." They got off the elevator and ran to their own room to help Taiki with the rest of the packing. They rushed in silence to finish. They went to the ground floor and as Taiki and Seiya took the luggage out to meet a cab and put it in, Yaten checked them out. They were able to make it to the airport in time to catch the next flight to Tokyo.

"I'm just glad that we're not half a day away and this flight will only last a couple hours..."

Seiya nodded in agreement with Taiki, gazing out the window. "I wonder what made her leave without even trying to leave us a message..."

"Well... from what I gathered from the letter we were left, Hotaru was hurt really badly to the point where she's in the hospital. Usagi is too, but that's because Mamoru made her check in to make sure that there's nothing wrong with the baby..." Yaten explained, pulling out the note to look at it once again. "Oh... no wonder they had lasting injuries... they were attacked before they had a chance to transform."

"Oh, man... This is the worst time for enemies to show up... not when they're getting to go on with their lives after Galaxia..." Seiya sighed, but settled back in his seat to at least attempt to rest while still on the plane, his brothers following suit. Once they landed, they knew they'd be in a mad rush once again to get to the Tokyo hospital and would probably be there for a long time.