A/N: This week brings another change of pace for you. It's shorter than the usual chapters, same as with the last interlude, but I like it as it is. I hope you do too.

Thank you again to my reviewers- all three of you get hugs from me, hehe.

Here's the latest, then. Enjoy.

And The Snow Falls

Interlude II – Kyou

On The Outside

We've been in the main house for a while now, and I couldn't wait to get away from that place. It's as boring as it's always been, and Akito is still skulking around, giving me these nasty looks, like he's so superior to me- it makes me sick.

Tohru's been made a housekeeper- big surprise there- and she's thrilled about it. I have no idea why. Akito watches her a lot, too. If I could, I'd kick his creepy ass right out of here. I hate the way he looks at her. It's like she's a game to him or something.

Shigure watches her, too. Damn dog. I know he thinks no one's noticed, but I have. It's hard not to. Every mealtime, he'll be watching her over his glass when he drinks, like he thinks the glass is hiding his face when he does it. It's really obvious.

I know he's up to something, but he won't talk about it. He always jumps off the subject- or just runs away. Damn coward.

Haru's been hanging around with me a lot lately. I didn't see him that much at the other house- he'd be lost three days for every day he actually spent with us, he's got no sense of direction at all, completely pathetic- but since we moved in, he's come round and we've practised together.

I thought he was in Black mode or something when he first appeared in my room, but he just said he wanted someone to exercise with.

It wasn't so bad. He's gone Black a couple of times, but he does that anyway now and again. And it's not like I can't take him. He's got stronger, though. I think that training he did with Yuki a couple of years ago made him better. I think they were planning to carry on, actually- but then the rat got ill, and they stopped. Yuki never got as strong as he used to be after that. Before, I could tell he was pulling his punches, but after the illness, I knew he was giving it more of himself and only getting the same results. Not that we fought as much after, but anyway. Haru got better, Yuki got worse, and I just stayed the same, I think.

It's really frustrating. I've tried hard for a long time now, and I still don't seem to get much better. I can't afford to get worse though. Master Kazuma's been taking on new students lately, and I really want to go and help him teach, but he hasn't mentioned it at all yet. I know he had the same idea as me, but he hasn't brought it up. I'm just not good enough yet, I guess. It's really annoying though. I just want to be out of this damn house, with Akito keeping everyone under his thumb and no one bothering to do anything about it.

This winter's been really cold, too. I hate winter. And I hate cold weather. Every day I look outside and there's frost all over the place. At least it hasn't made me turn into a cat yet.

I wasn't too impressed when Haru suggested this training trip- he was talking about camping and forests and god knows what. But I know I need the practise, if I'm ever going to go help Master Kazuma teach. And it would mean getting away from the house.

That's how I ended up here, sat by a little crackling fire in the middle of nowhere, with the moon already up and some kind of animal yowling in the distance, and ox boy sat next to me. Staring at me.

I ask why he's staring at me, and he gets this flat, 'you know why' look and tells me I have 'anger management problems'. Really rich coming from someone who had to develop a split personality to deal with his own anger issues. I tell him that, and he says I'm stupid.

So I get up to kick his ass, and he just shakes his head, and says, "I don't want to fight now."

"I thought that was the whole point of this trip!" I point out.

"Nn…" he says, looking really vague, as if I just said something in another language and he thinks he should just agree to shut me up. "But I think you just need some time out."

Haru's got a gift for being really hard to understand when he spaces out like that. I ask him what he meant by that, and he just tilts his head at me and asks, "You hate that house, don't you?"

Of course. I tell him that.

"But it's not because of the way people treated you there when you were younger. And it's not because of Akito."

It is, actually. The Akito part, anyway. I don't give a damn about the rest of it anymore. Everyone else can go to hell, including you.

He ignores the 'including you' part like I didn't even say it. "No, it isn't Akito," he insists. "It's because you can't forget about Yuki."

Haru has a really knowing look on his face as he says that, and I just can't be angry at him like I want to be.

So I just stop looking at him, and stare at the fire instead. That's one good thing about camping- fires. There's nothing as warm as a fire out in the open at night.

"I miss him too, you know," Haru says. I just grunt. I don't want to think about it.

"I wanted to ask you what happened."

I just sit there for a second, feeling it sink in, remembering how it felt, yelling at Yuki, and all the words he'd said, exactly the way he'd said them. I remember again, one more time, as if remembering it just as perfectly all those times before just wasn't enough, the sight of the car hitting his body and the way he'd been knocked clear across the street- how he'd hit the ground, crumpling at an impossible angle. It just wasn't ever enough, was it? And I get this thought in my head, clearer and sharper than anything else- will I be remembering this for the rest of my life, just as perfectly as this? Will I be carrying it in my head forever?

It fills me up for a second, but when Haru's question sinks in, it really pisses me off.

"So you only wanted to hang around with me so you could find out more about Yuki? Is that it?" I demand, pushing out all the pictures and sounds in my head, glaring at him and feeling my hands go into fists. I don't even know why it makes me so mad- I just know I feel used and second best, once again, to that damned rat. That damned rat, who always looked so smug and calm when he beat me time and time again, who always had this 'I'm better than you and you know it' look in his eyes, always so sure of himself, and so strong even though he was so weak, and so sad, and so lonely I could have killed him- who never even tried to live his life after Akito ruined it, who gave into defeat from everyone except me- who I never, ever won against, and now he's dead and I'll never win against him! I can't stand him!

Haru just looks at me, this deep look that goes right through me. It makes me feel cold and almost invisible.

"You know that isn't true, Kyou," he says quietly. "I like you for you. Same as I liked Yuki for Yuki."

Just like that, all the tension sweeps out from under us. I feel pretty empty, with all the anger suddenly gone.

"You're a perverted bastard," I tell him.

"You're an idiot."

I glare at him, but we both know I don't really mean anything by it.

He leans into me and rests his head on my shoulder.

"What are you doing?"

He lets out a little sigh. "Enjoying the fire," he says, in that really calm way that pisses me off. Except it doesn't piss me off so much this time. I think I'd already been mad enough for one day, or something.

"Do you have to do that?" I complain half-heartedly, but he just reaches over to grip a handful of my shirt, a lot like how he used to do with Yuki, as if he was afraid Yuki would vanish if he didn't hold onto him.

I'm not impressed, but for once, I think I actually understand what he's thinking. It's like we know we can't escape the house often, or for long, but there is a world outside it, where things can be different.

Outside it, we can just be a couple of guys who miss someone they were close to. Just a couple of guys missing a friend who'd died.

I can relax a bit now, when I think that. Like just accepting that Yuki had been something like a friend made it a bit easier to deal with. I couldn't stand him. I still can't stand him. But he had to have been a friend. You don't take advice from people you don't give a damn about. And I still remember his advice.

'Then live your life.' That was all. One big cliché, and one he didn't even apply to himself, but I know he was right. Tohru had been saying it all along.

And Tohru.

You don't give up the one person you care about the most to someone you hate. That's how I knew I didn't hate Yuki, by the end of it. Because I knew he was better than me, and that Tohru deserved the best. It wasn't me. In that one thing, I did accept defeat from the rat.

Haru lets out another little sigh.

"Can you still see him?" he asks.

I knew it. I can't have been the only one.

"Yeah," I admit, after a little pause.

"Out here, I mean."

"Oh. No," I say, looking around properly for the first time, and seeing only the big bright light of the orange fire, and the star-covered sky above it. "I can't see him out here."