Hiatus break! Hopefully I'll get this one off the ground…Thank you to everyone for reviewing and encouraging me!

WARNING! DO NOT READ ON UNLESS YOU HAVE READ MANGA VOLUME 12.

Please, I have some spoilers in this chapter for Volume 12, and if you haven't read it, I suggest you wait. I don't want to ruin the story for you. And since I'm here, I might as well warn you I have some hideous spoilers planned through Volume 17 in future chapters, and it's some real serious stuff…

The Days I Lost

Chapter Three:
The Days I Wished

The sun spilled pale, dying light past the unopened curtains of Kagura's bedroom window, and she moaned as she woke slowly from her restless mid-afternoon nap. Her throat was scratchy, dry and sore, and she didn't need to touch her face to know her eyes were swollen from crying. Everything felt stuffy and achy from the tears that refused to cease, and Kagura flopped listlessly onto her back to stare at the blank ceiling through dull brown eyes. Even as she lay there, thinking about trying to think about nothing, the tears welled up as they had all day, trickling down her face and into her hair.

There was nothing she could do to stop them.

Her head throbbed with the slow beat of her heart, and Kagura sniffled, swallowing the sob that built in her throat with an unbearable pressure. She slowly sat up, bracing her feet against the bare wooden floor, letting the icy shock flow up her legs. Her eyes fell upon the ripped wrapping spilling off her desk and onto the floor; shifted to the portable DVD player she'd taken from the living room and hadn't yet returned. The sob slipped past her lips on a whimper, and she curled her legs to her chest, hugging her arms around her knees and rocking herself for comfort.

I don't know if you want to remember me as if I were alive…

"Kyou-kun…" It was a broken whisper, a nearly soundless entreaty, and Kagura's body shook with the effort to control her tears. "Kyou-kun…"

"Kagura?"

The knock on her door had Kagura's head jerking around, but before she could deny entrance to whoever was calling, the door slid open, and Yuki stood in the doorway. His dark gray eyes were filled with sympathy, and he held a single flower in his hand. "Oh, you're awake. That's good." Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

Trapping her.

"…I don't want you here." Kagura turned her face away, struggling to ignore the shame that burned bright in her heart as she forced the hurtful words out. "I don't want to see you. Go away."

"I'm not going anywhere." True to his word, Yuki pulled over the desk chair and sat, facing Kagura. His face was sad but set, and he twirled the flower idly between his fingers. "How are you doing?"

There was a gentle inquiry in his voice, and Kagura had to fight the urge to respond in kind. "How do you think I'm doing? Leave me alone, Yun-chan." It came out as a desperate plea, and she buried her face against her knees. "Just leave me alone."

Yuki didn't hesitate, laying the flower on his vacated seat as he moved to sit beside Kagura on her bed, wrapping his arms lightly around her shoulders and drawing her against him. She stiffened for a moment, but he murmured reassuringly in her ear, and she gave up, gave in to the sobs that shook her body as she clenched her fists on his back and held him tight.

"Rin was worried about you," Yuki said as her tears abated slightly and the tremors wracking her body lessened. "We all are, Kagura. You haven't come out of your room since the funeral. Your mom said you aren't eating, either, and you haven't been to class all week. We're worried about you," he repeated. "We don't want you to hurt this much alone."

"Isn't that how it is, though?" Kagura turned grief-ravaged eyes on her cousin. "Isn't that our fate? To be alone? To hurt so much, so much, and to have no one there…To have no one care…Isn't that what happened to Kyou-kun? Isn't that what will happen to us all?"

Hysterics weren't going to help either of them any, and Yuki battled down the desolation that swamped him at her words, swallowing hard before replying quietly, "That's not true. You know that's not true. Are we really alone? If we were really alone, if nobody really cared, would we be worried about you? Hey." He drew her attention to him, reaching out to gently wipe at the tears that ran down her face. "We're here, together, Kagura. We're right here, with each other. We're not alone…Not anymore."

She merely turned away, and Yuki was silent. Why had Rin asked him to come? What did she think he could do? He, Yuki, who didn't know how to deal with his own emotions, much less anyone else's. What did she think he knew about helping Kagura heal?

His eyes focused on the portable DVD player on Kagura's desk, and Yuki glanced over at her still form. "Rin said you took the DVD player and locked yourself in the room the night after…the night after. What was it you wanted to watch?"

Kagura lifted those haunted eyes to him and whispered, as if in a trance, "He says he doesn't hate you."

Yuki's eyebrows lifted. "What? Who?"

"Kyou-kun. He says…He said he doesn't hate you. That it died when we put him in the ground. He told me." She tried for a smile, and nearly broke Yuki's heart. "He sent me a DVD. It came the day after the funeral service. It…It's in there, if you want to see." She gestured with one limp hand towards the player, then simply flopped backwards onto her bed. Yuki stood, wavered, then turned to straighten the tangled blankets and tuck them securely around her. Kagura, her eyes closed, didn't acknowledge him as she curled into the pillow, isolated in her solitude and grieving.

The DVD player hummed quietly as Yuki turned it on, adjusted the volume, and pressed 'play'.

Kyou's face blinked on screen, staring so intently out at him Yuki glanced over his shoulder involuntarily at the point of Kyou's focus. The orange-headed teen's face was lean and drawn, the lines of stress and fatigue clear to the eye—now, Yuki thought bitterly. Only now, when it's too late to see. Too late to do anything, to try…There were shadows under those ruby eyes, in them, and his skin was pale, eerily translucent with a sort of luminescence that seemed to radiate hopelessness and pain as he started to speak.

Hey…Kagura. Please, don't turn this off. I'm sure this is the last thing you need now. When you get this, everything will have ended, for me, and just begun for everyone else. I guess, in the end, I really was just a burden and an inconvenience to everyone, wasn't I?

Tooru once said that DVDs were great things, because you could see people as if they were really moving and talking. As if they were really alive. I don't know if you want to remember me as if I were alive…I can't imagine why you would, after everything I put you through. After everything wrong I did. But if you would just hear me out…It's the last thing I'll ever ask of you, and then, then I'll leave you. If not in peace, at least I'll leave you.

I think you're probably…sad right now, aren't you? Maybe I'm just selfish, thinking like that. But maybe you're hurting, maybe you're missing me. Maybe you're wishing…I gave up wishing a long time ago. It doesn't change things, does it, wanting things to be different. They aren't, in the end. They're the same as how they started, just older, more tired, more worn out now. I guess that's a sad thing to say, after all.

I told you thank you, that day. I meant it. I meant it then, and I mean it now. I'll never stop feeling grateful for what you did for me. For loving me. Despite everything. Because of everything. I didn't tell you then, but I will tell you now, I'm sorry. I mean this, too. What I said that day…I don't know if it was true. Ah, all I'm doing is hurting you anyway, aren't I? Even though I'll be dead. I'm hurting you, even in death. I must really be a monster…

I don't know if it was true. I said it, but…I wanted it to be true. I wanted it to be real. But it might not have been. It might never have been. Because if I never loved you, I never loved anyone else. You were my first friend, and for a long time, you were my only friend, and for that alone I could never do enough to thank you. You showed me what sunshine and happiness were, the warmth of friendship and a smile, the hope in a summer's sky. You took me from the shadows and played with me. You stole cookies from your mother's cookie jar and shared them with me in the shade of that big old oak tree in the park. You read to me, you played with me, you held my hand. You loved me…For whatever the reason, you loved me. And I said I couldn't—wouldn't—and it might have been a lie…

Now we'll never know. I'm hurting you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. To everyone. But mostly to you. Because even now, I'm leaving you with the biggest burden of all.

Everyone might wonder what happened, why I did it—why I'm going to do it. What went wrong, right? 'What went wrong, Kyou?' Everything went wrong. Everything is wrong. Someday, you might make it right. But me, I'm just wrong, about everything. About everyone. You tell that to the kuso nezumi, all right? You tell Yuki, I was wrong. And when they put me in my grave, my hatred for him ends. Just like I said. 'I'll hate him 'til I die'. And after that…Maybe it'll just float away, like smoke on the breeze. Or maybe it'll just disappear, just like I will. Just gone.

I learned something, something horrible. Something worse than me. And I can't stand it. I can't bear it, and I don't know what to do. So I'm going to do the only thing I can now, and that's to leave it all behind. I'm taking nothing with me, and I'm leaving it all for you to take care of. Yuki's thought of that, I'm sure. Tell him I beat him to it. I won, for once…I won.

There are too many things left undone, and nothing I can do to end them now, so there's only one thing left.

Good-bye, Kagura.

The screen went blank, and was as empty as Yuki, and he stared at the screen, numbness spreading through his heart. I'm sorry…

"…If you were sorry, why did you do it?" Anger spurted up out of nowhere, and Yuki whirled on Kagura, who had turned to lie on her side and was watching him soundlessly. "Why did he do it? That says nothing, it tells us nothing! It gives us nothing! He said he took nothing with him, he said he left it all behind. So why do we have nothing!"

Kagura's response cut Yuki's tirade through the middle. "We have each other, Yun-chan." Tears were flowing down both their faces, and Yuki slumped heavily into the chair in defeat. "We have each other."

7.17.05

To Myukiori-san: Akito's up next. Or soon. Depends on how well I stick to my plan…

Glossary:

kuso nezumi: lit., 'shit rat'. What Kyou calls Yuki when he's most irritated

Yun-chan: Kagura's term of address for Yuki