Opening notes: Huge thanks goes out to my Muse, Asha, from whom I most likely lifted whole lines and characterizations. Huge thanks also goes to anyone who read this and managed not to laugh their ass off.

Warnings: Beware of heavy sexual themes. This fic is rated R for them, so I'd appreciate it if you turn around right now if that stuff doesn't work for you. This fic also has shounen-ai, but if you don't like shounen-ai, why are you reading a Clamp series? Finally, character death. And perhaps the fact that clichéd plotlines abound also deserves a warning.

It was one month...then two, then three...

For awhile he counted. And then, slowly, he started to lose track of how long it had been since she'd died.

The months dissolved into years...the first year, then the second, the third.

They lied when they said the pain would go away over time, but it did lessen.

It would never stop hurting, though. There would always be that empty space inside of him where she'd been.

Slowly, he regained his old cheerful sparkle. If it was perhaps a bit duller than before, well, who would notice? The shift from the walking zombie back to the cheerful boy was enough that no one would notice if that boy wasn't quite as cheerful as he'd been before.

What was missing was, perhaps, the cheerful innocence he had possessed before. He now knew that bad things happened to good people, seemingly at random.

He knelt at her grave, offering a smile to her headstone. She would have wanted him to smile - and to mean it. He absently brushed a bit of dirt away that had collected in the letters before placing the flowers he was carrying.

"Here's to my third year without you," he whispered, pressing his lips lightly against the headstone. "I miss you."

He stood and left the graveyard, leaving behind him the tombstone.

OGAWA UTAKO

1977-1999

BELOVED WIFE OF ONE MONTH OF IJYUIN AKIRA.