A.N.: Don't bother lecturing me for starting a new story when I haven't finished the others, people. This was just another piece that I'd written a long time ago and forgotten about, so I'm really not taking any time away from "Soulmates." Anyhoo, don't forget to read and review!

Summary: Malachite has spent his entire life looking for something…or someone. Will a chance encounter at a bar bring his search to an end? MinaXMal

Disclaimers are evil. I refuse to admit that I don't own Malachite, but I'm so poor that nobody's going to bother suing me anyway.

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"Dream Girl"

This wasn't his kind of place. The air was too heavy, carrying with it the unpleasant tang of sweat and smoke. Music blared from speakers situated in various parts of the club's only real room, and that wasn't at all to his taste, either. It was more screaming than singing, the words sometimes punctured by drum or guitar solos that lasted too long. Of course, he mused as he listlessly sipped his drink, the music—or whatever this was—hardly mattered, not when the people around him were even louder. They were a little too close for his comfort, occasionally pressed against him by the crowds, laughing and talking with voices made shrill by the alcohol they'd consumed. A few of the ones closest to him glanced his way, the women with appreciation in their eyes, the men with faint curiosity, but he ignored them. They weren't what he was looking for.

He sighed, wondering again why he bothered coming to these places. He didn't enjoy them, didn't feel comfortable in them. This was the kind of club college students would visit, coming here to forget their troubles and maybe drink away their intelligence and their futures. This was a club for the young and the careless, sometimes for the jaded and the bored. It was a place to lose yourself, to drown out reality with loud music and scantily dressed women and too much alcohol. It was a place meant for forgetting, but he wasn't trying to forget.

He wasn't one of them, and he knew that fact must have been fairly obvious to everyone else. He wasn't here to party or to forget, and he didn't even look like he was. He was dressed a little too nicely for that, in a pair of dark slacks and a plain white dress shirt. His long, silver hair was pulled back from his tanned and sculpted face, and his equally silver eyes were shuttered and apathetic. His only concession to his surroundings was the wide, amber-filled glass held negligently in one hand, but even that didn't make him seem as if he had a legitimate purpose for being here. Maybe he didn't.

He grimaced, disgusted with himself. When he was being completely honest, he could admit that he didn't really know why he was here at all, didn't know what he was looking for. He never had, though the search had defined his entire life. He only knew that he'd spent too many years feeling dissatisfied, feeling incomplete. Something in his life was missing, perhaps always had been, but he'd never been able to identify whatever was lacking. He didn't know if it was a person or an object, if it was merely an idea or an emotion. He didn't know if he would ever find it.

He also didn't know why he continued haunting these places in search of it every night. He certainly wouldn't have, had it not been for some deep part of himself telling him that he'd find it in a place like this, somewhere amidst the writhing bodies and excessive noise. It was here, or in someplace like this, and so he found a new club every night and continued what had thus far proved to be a fruitless search. He would come, perch at the bar and watch the crowds, wait for hours for someone or something that never came. He was beginning to believe it never would, that he was wasting his time, and a little more of his hope faded with each night. And yet, perhaps his search hadn't been entirely pointless, his hope entirely wasted. Perhaps whatever gods there were had gotten tired of watching him become more and more despondent with every night that passed, because as he paused at the exit that evening, taking one last look around, just as he always did, he finally found the one thing he'd spent his entire life looking for.

She was leaning against the far wall of the club, a perfect woman who didn't belong here any more than he did. She might have been dressed a little more appropriately than he was, in her short skirt and low-necked top that somehow didn't look trashy on her when it would have on nearly every other woman he'd ever met. Her hair was long and blonde, partially pulled away from a face both stunning and a little too blank. She was shapely and slender at the same time, her features delicate and even.

She was also the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen.

He found himself moving almost involuntarily towards her, his eyes glued to her, completely unable to look anywhere else. He felt lightheaded, as if he was moving in a dream, as if none of this was real. Part of him recognized that it was probably because he'd stopped breathing the moment he'd laid eyes on her, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Nothing mattered, in that instant, but reaching her side and making himself whole in her.

She'd been surveying the dancers with eyes the color of cornflowers, of the morning sky, and he wondered at the amused weariness in her gaze. She had the look of someone to whom this was all too familiar, but she didn't have the bored expression he might have expected would come with that. She only looked…detached, in spite of the amusement, as though she wasn't really here, or as though none of it really mattered to her. Why was she here, then?

He was closer, now, close enough to smell her perfume, close enough to see the way her eyes caught what little light there was. He was close enough to see how pale and flawless her skin was, and he thought that he might be falling in love. Where had she come from? He hadn't believed a woman this beautiful could exist, and he certainly wouldn't have thought he could be the first one to notice her, if she did. She should have been surrounded by admirers, by men just as caught in her spell as he was, but she was completely alone, isolated even in this crowded room. She didn't look at though that bothered her, didn't look as though she wanted to join the dancers, but he couldn't read her expression at all, so maybe he was wrong.

He was only a few inches away now, not so close that he'd be invading her personal space, but close enough that anyone else would have been turning to see who he was and what he wanted. She didn't so much as glance his way as he came to her, though she must have sensed his presence after all. Her body had suddenly tensed, her lovely features scrunching up in a grimace that didn't even remotely suit her. She still wasn't looking at him. "Don't waste your time," she told him curtly, her voice as beautiful as her face in spite of the hard edge in her words. "I'm out of your league."

She didn't sound arrogant, though she easily might have, but even if she had, he probably wouldn't have noticed. It was the tiredness in her voice that stopped his tongue, that kept him from asking her name or asking if she was real. Concern welled up from somewhere deep inside him, concern for her and whatever was making her sound so weary and apathetic, concern that she might be hurting or unhappy. Who was she, and how was she doing this to him?

Perhaps his silence caught her interest, because she finally turned to him, her magnificent eyes automatically sweeping over his face. A startled expression crossed her lovely features, and she blinked in what could only have been alarm. Then, before he could react, her features settled into that blank mask once more, and she merely settled her body a little more comfortably against her wall. "Oh," she murmured, voice too quiet. "It's you."

He didn't know how to take that. Had they met before? He didn't think they could have, because how could he have forgotten the one woman he'd been searching for his entire life? He hadn't even spoken to her yet, but already he knew she was the answer to every question he'd ever had. And even if she hadn't been, she was still too beautiful for any man ever to forget.

She was sighing, but she hadn't looked away. Her eyes were intense and unreadable. "I was wondering when you were going to find me," she told him, voice still quiet but also very calm. "You always do, you know." She frowned, still not taking her eyes from his. "Do you think you might have been a bloodhound in one of your past lives?"

It was an odd thing to say, even for a conversation that was already odd. He blinked at her, startled. "Who are you?"

It was her turn to look startled, but her lips quickly curved into a tired, faintly mischievous smile. "I'm a dream," she answered softly, and he knew she was teasing him. "I'm a memory, a figment of your imagination." She tilted her head to one side, smile deepening. "I'm also the one you've been searching for, but then you knew that, didn't you?"

He nodded, not bothering to deny her words. "Yes, though I don't know why. Who are you? Why does your face seem so familiar?"

She shrugged, her eyes still drinking him in even though he somehow knew she was trying to pretend she didn't care. "Dream girls always do," she told him, and the laughter now in her voice was just as tired as her smile had been.

"I don't want you to be only a dream." It might have seemed like a silly thing to say, but he was only being truthful. Dreams are lost when the dreamers wake, and he didn't think he could survive losing her again, not when he'd only just found her.

She didn't answer, and he wondered if maybe she hadn't heard him. She'd turned her eyes back to the crowds, was now looking out across the throng of dancers as if her own answers might be found in them. She bit her lip, and her stunning blue eyes suddenly dimmed with unhappiness. "I'm sorry, Malachite," she whispered, startling him yet again. "I know this is hard on you, but I really don't see any way around it. I'm not ready to belong to you again."

Again? And how had she known his name? He'd obviously never told it to her, and it just wasn't the sort of name somebody could simply guess. His eyes narrowed, though he still hadn't shaken off the feeling that he was caught in the best—if strangest—dream of his life. "Will you ever be?" He didn't know why he'd asked her that. It was as though somebody else was speaking through him, or as though some part of him understood what she was trying to say and was responding even if the rest of him was completely lost. He only knew that it was important, that as long as she promised to be his someday he could keep living even without her.

She sighed again, seemingly unsurprised by his question. "I don't know. I can't tell the future, Malachite, and I don't know if I'll ever be ready to let you back into my life. I don't know if I can ever accept you again, after what happened." She glanced down, her fingers clenching into bloodless fists. "I need time, love," she whispered, keeping her eyes averted, "time to learn to trust again, time to move beyond the past. Can you give me that?"

He nodded, that other part of himself giving his answer even though Malachite himself hadn't had time to think about her question or even what it meant. "Yes." He would give her anything, even if it meant sacrificing his own happiness for her peace of mind. After all, that other in him murmured, that's what love is.

She finally brought her eyes back to his, and he could see the naked relief in her expression. She reached out with one slender hand, grasped his fingers in her own. He tried not to flinch, feeling the silkiness of her skin for the first time in who knew how long, already hurting from the thought that it might be the last time. "Thank you, Malachite," she murmured, squeezing his fingers in a small gesture of affection. Then, before he could react, she began pulling away again. His fingers tightened for just a moment, and then he let her go, remembering his promise.

She was turning away, moving towards the exit and obviously intending to leave him, but he found that he couldn't let her go so easily. "Minako," he called to her, not knowing where he'd gotten the name but also knowing that it did, in fact, belong to the goddess he'd loved his entire life without ever knowing who she was. "Tell me one thing, at least—have you forgiven me?"

She'd frozen when he'd called out to her, but now the tension slid out of her, and she turned to face him once more. Her eyes were shuttered with emotions she clearly didn't want him to read, but her voice held no bitterness or rancor at all, and even if he didn't know why he'd expected that it would, he was still grateful for that. "Of course I have," she told him gently. The weariness was back in her lyrical voice, and he hated himself for putting it there. "I forgave you years ago," she continued, words so quiet he could barely hear. She hesitated, then added, "And I never stopped loving you, Mal. No matter what happens to us or between us, I'll always love you. You should know that, at least."

She turned and walked away, and this time he didn't try to stop her. It didn't matter that she was leaving him again, didn't matter that he'd found her only to let her go. He knew what he'd been looking for now, had a name and a face and the love she'd left him with, and that was all he really needed. One day, he knew, she would come back to him, would tell him again that she loved him in return, that she belonged to him and would never leave him. He just had to be patient, give her the space she'd wanted, give her time to find her own peace.

He turned himself, and, still smiling, still feeling as though the weight of the world had been taken from him, turned and left, never to return. He'd found what he'd been looking for, and he wouldn't need to haunt these places ever again. He was whole again.

He'd found his dream girl.