Disclaimer: I don't own it.

A/N: thanks to my reviewers
bffimagine: Kai is not going to be an alcohol addict, nor does he take other drugs and he isn't smoking. But drinking is a suitable setting for the kind of thoughts he has.
tsunami-girl(whooptidoo-basil): Yes the dialogues are from the breakup. And this story is still going to be Kai-Rei, there was just some background needed. Even Kai would have gotten to know some people in six years...
M.S.K.: You are right. I think I will put that at the end of second chapter.

Enjoy reading!

(--) female, (-) male

- We both failed.

-- I'm sorry.

- Me too.

…

--It was worth the risk.

- Despite the hurt? The disappointment?

-- Yes.

Chapter 4: Memories and Darkness

There is only one piece left, the memory of Rei. Rei… I smile at the thought of my best friend, if I could call him that, and I grab the pendant to take out the memory I keep of him.

It's a…

It's not there.

What!

The beyblade pendant is empty.

I look again. The piece is not there. But… how could it be gone? It was there when I last looked. No one except of me has ever so much as touched the pendant. No one.

I feel little flames of panic tickling my nerves. It can't be, my memory can't be gone; my memories do mean so much more than a simple piece of something I keep in my pendant. They are the last connections to my friends. The last possibility to keep them alive in my mind. I have not seen them for so long, and I don't know if I will ever see them again. So I do need the memories. If I ever lost one… I don't dare to think of it. It would mean the same as losing the friend.

I might have abandoned them, but I keep them with me. I carry the memory pieces on my body. Always. To know that I am not completely alone. To know that there are at least some people out in this world that matter to me. So I simply can't lose a memory, particularly not the one of Rei. I cannot lose my best friend. The memory must be here somewhere. I know it! I believe it! I have to believe it.

But where is it?

Where is it?

Calm down, Kai, I tell myself.

I am calm! I yell back.

Yes, of course, comes the sarcastic reply. You won't find the missing piece if you are freaking out. Do some breathing exercise or whatever…

For once listening to my own advice, only out of my slightly desperate situation, I lean back on the uncomfortable stool and close my eyes. I take some deep breaths, filling my lungs with spent, suffocating air. The inn room is full of heavy smokers. It does not help much, but enough for my racing thoughts to slow down to an acceptable speed.

I consider where the memory of Rei could be. It can't be gone. I just know it. I don't lose my memories.

…But…

Fear again stretches its spidery-web fingers to close in on my mind. I ward it off. So much self-control I still have.

I open my eyes and my first gaze lands on the dark brown table, where the necklace and the pendants lie, surrounded by the memories. And there it is!

Rei's memory.

Good.

If I were Tyson I would jump out of happiness, but, being me, my outer appearance remains as calm and composed as ever, betraying nothing of my inner turmoil. Someone watching me wouldn't even have noticed something going on.

If I can say to have ever achieved something perfectly then it would be hiding every emotion from showing on my face. The few people who know me learn to read my mood otherwise. Sinamé had been very good at this. The Bladebreakers not really, except of Rei, who was left the ungrateful duty of translating my mood to the others. I have to admit, I did not make it easy for them purposely, because I enjoyed Rei being patient with the dunderheads.

Sometimes, only sometimes I would let down my mask for my friends and for Sinamé as well. She too had deserved of my trust. Even if I couldn't bring myself to trust her love. Not because I didn't trust her, but because I didn't believe in love, because I still don't believe in love.

I wonder how my memory of Rei has gotten wrapped around the name-tag of Sinamé. It must have fallen out of the pendant without me noticing it, when I was retrieving the other pieces. But still, it's strange. Sinamé and Rei, the two persons that matter, mattered most to me. If I did believe in supernatural esotericism I would have called it a sign, one wrapped around the other. Since I do not believe in it, it's a coincidence. What kind of sign should that be, anyway?

Rei… I peel the soft red fabric from the golden piece of metal and caress it with my thumb. I always liked the feel of it. Of course I never touched it when he wore it, because…well… It is a piece of Rei's headband, the red one he always wore, the one with the yin-yang sign on it. The piece must be from somewhere in the middle, because part of it has black and white spots.

I can't remember how it actually got torn and as far as I am concerned it will remain a mystery as long as I live. Rei can't remember anything either, neither do any of the others. It had been a night, a party, with too much alcohol, alcohol that erases the letters out of our book of life, leaving some chapters without a beginning, some without an end.

I suspect that Kenny knows something about what happened that night. He never used to drink as much as we others did, because he needed to protect Dizzi. He didn't want to put her in danger, while we were passing out on alcohol, oblivious to what we were doing.

I remember, Rei also didn't drink very much, but his cat-like metabolism did react rather fast to alcohol. All in all, the four Bladebrakers were in a right mess that night. I think it's better that no one remembers what happened, judging by the state we were in when we woke up the next day. We may have had a fight or anything else, something that required a process that tore Rei's headband and left everyone of us with feline bite marks and various other bruises and blue spots.

I asked Rei then, if I could keep a piece of his headband. He glanced at me suspiciously, maybe thinking I would make a fetch out of it, but he gave it to me without any further questioning. Rei was sensitive enough to keep quiet when there was nothing to say.

----------------

I put the cloth and the other memories back in the tiny silver beyblade and stroke it thoughtfully. A memory for a memory. The beyblade was a gift from my father for my eighteenth birthday. It's a small model of the first beyblade he had developed, his greatest pride.

Besides of me, as he sometimes tells me. I'm never sure if I should believe him, when he talks like that, but in the end I always decide to. He is my father and after all, he is supposed to love me, or at least care for me. Even if he left me, when I was a child. I'm still shocked by the intensity of the hatred I felt for him. I really believed that he had betrayed me and my grandfather nourished my hatred as much as possible. I learned then, that I could feel hatred instead of pain and loss, turning the so-called weak feelings into power. I didn't know then, that it was a bad kind of power.

I learned it the hard way.

The hatred deprived me of many a pleasant feeling or experience I could have had and now I know that it didn't make me stronger, but it consumed me. Like all negative feelings, it destroys others or oneself, but it can't fulfil you. Bad feelings, hatred, power hunger or desperation, they all have a will of their own. They grow and proliferate, spreading more and more in your soul, their hunger unable to satisfy. And when time comes, you don't have any control over them anymore, because there is not so much of your soul left that could vanquish the evil that had been festering in your own flesh.

I know what it feels like. I have almost been there. At the point of no return. Almost. Some people, whom since then I call friends drew me back from the abyss my soul had become. Black Dranzer.

There is a poem I read some years ago; someone had scribbled it on the walls of the metro. I have copied it down, so I still remember it. Only recently, as I went through the collection of poems I call my own, I read it once again and the words are still clear in my mind.

What will you do

when the darkness inside you is

Red?

Red,

like the sky over the battlefield

with grey clouds of burning hazy

drafting over marred lands.

chunks of flesh ripped

out of your bloodied soul,

bleeding so much, so far.

drowning in your own blood

not your body's but your soul's

slowly choked by the venom

smouldering from your wounds

the oozing slowly, steadily,

filling the vessel that carries your soul,

your body,

until there is no escape from it

trapped in the confines of the flesh

there is no

escape for the eternal soul

no escape

it's bleeding and it's hurt

you are drowning

you won't carry no scars from this

because you will not survive

you will drown in blood

your own blood

your blood

you will drown

forever on.

I don't know the author of this one. There was a picture of a grey-white wolf howling to a clouded moon in a snowy landscape sticked beneath it. It could have been a mark of the author or some sticker a bored kid had put there.

I don't care about authors or names or histories, but I like poems. They spare me the effort of putting my thoughts into words, because someone else has done it already.