You're Mine

Summary: AU "Just remember that you're mine." It begins with those words, but rapidly becomes something deeper and far more complicated than a mere promise to get back the boy of her dreams...YohxAnnaxHaoxTamao.

Disclaimer: I own… one Shaman King fanart posted online, and loads more not. Harhar?

Author's Note: Finished my really really too-long RenxAnna entry for Every Pairing Under the Sun! Next is supposed to be RenxNichrome.. Wah..

Anyway, this chapter is where… things go wrong and things go right for our beloved characters. Since I've written it, it's no longer my favorite chapter, but I'm still rather fond of it. Please note that when gateways of light are mentioned, they are strictly metaphorical (i.e. imagined) and therefore Yoh's not going anywhere. Do not yell at me because you are confused. :D

Enjoy!

(Note to readers of Every Pairing: Shall post up RenxAnna ficlet shortly. At the moment, however, am busy with a variety of things and I still want to trim it a bit before setting it loose online.)

Chapter Nine: What Must be Done

"Yoh?"

Unconsciously, the dark-haired boy glanced up towards his companion, eyes liquid with weariness, arms folded over his stomach. "Manta?" He murmured, the voice a pleading summons rather than an acknowledgement. "Manta, is—"

"Are you all right?" Manta could have bitten his tongue the moment that the statement left his lips, for in that moment, Yoh withdrew into himself again, producing the effervescent smile that had ever characterized him. Only someone as dedicated to his study as Manta could have noticed the tiny fractures in his smile, the way he wavered a moment in hesitation before standing. The Yoh that he knew and understood did not hesitate, but took steps and took everything in stride, with the assurance that everything would always work out.

This was not – could not be – Yoh, this dark-haired phantom with the hollow eyes and the fissuring smile.

"Hai, I'm fine." The boy said forcibly, and grinned laconically at his companion. "What, don't I look like it?"

"No." Said the shorter of the two, bluntly. "You look terrible."

"Ouch." And Yoh pressed a hand to his chest, laughing with his eyes half-shut so that—

"Don't laugh like that." Manta spoke a little more venomously than he had intended, leaning forwards to press his palms firmly against the engrained wood of Yoh's desk. "You look like your brother when you laugh like that."

Abruptly, the laughter vanished, leaving an acidic tang to the air. The shaman slumped a little, shoulders folding inwards. And when he raised his head again, his eyes were once again gently dead things, rotting rosepetals beneath sunlight.

Yoh said, quietly, with none of the rancor that another being might have employed, "If I were my brother, none of my problems would be mine."

"What problems?" Manta looked infuriated at having things withheld from him. But, as though he had not heard his diminutive friend's outraged query, Yoh rose dreamily to his feet and moved out of the room with steps so soft that they left no sound behind him, though his voice trailed back; a tangible trail that hurt far more than his passage ever would.

"Don't follow me, Manta. I need to be alone."

And the tiny boy was left, stranded, in the path of Yoh's passage.

"Is Yoh-kun all right?"

The wispy murmur drifted out from behind him, but despite its quiet, the boy leapt into the air in startlement, whirling to deliver a stinging glare to its speaker. "Don't sneak up upon me!" He snapped at the pink-haired figure, though his anger rapidly dwindled upon seeing how she shrank away from his fury. "And no, Yoh's not all right. I don't know what's wrong with him, but—"

"Does it have anything to do with…" She glanced away, so that the rose that stained her features could be mistaken for maidenly modesty, rather than a deep flush of anger – of possessiveness over the first and only love that she had ever harboured. "Anna-sama?"

Manta pondered this. "Possibly." He said.

"What's going on?"

"If I knew," said the midget waspishly, "I wouldn't have to follow him to find out. Come on."

"Yoh-kun said not to follow him." She pointed out humbly, lagging behind.

"Well, we're certainly not going to find anything out about what's wrong with him if we hang around here." He retorted. Seeing that she was still drifting in hesitation, however, he added, persuasively, "Besides, if you hang around here much longer, the administrators of the school will come to check around the classrooms and yell at you for still being in the building."

That got her moving.

He did not remember this bridge, but then, he did not remember many things; many things that Anna had once assured him that he had not done. (And had proceeded to punish him for, causing him to suspect that somewhere along the line, he had been had.) There were no memories that attached him to it, and so no memories that pained him as he approached it, felt the scrape of the metal beneath his fingers, and leaned over to peer into the murky waters beneath.

The scant few people who passed along that road during such a time of day regarded him with only a little curiosity, this adolescent boy leaning over the bridge to look into waters that had long ago been tainted with mortal filth. There were more beautiful sights to be had in the city – anarchy's capital in the world – and certainly this would have never been a tourist's selection. But he did not deign to tell them of his designs; indeed, he did not look to them at all. And so, belittled with the status of invisibility, they passed away, and he never knew the difference.

For he had fallen into some amalgamation of dreams and nightmares again, and, wandering in that twilight realm, there was no room for mortal contemplation…

"What's he doing?" She inquired nervously, fiddling with her hair in an unconscious gesture that she had adopted since beginning to go out into the city with Yoh on the excursions that had, somehow, only involved the two of them. It was a sign that she reserved exclusively for anxiety-regarding-Yoh, though Manta, being less faithful a Tamao-studier than a Yoh-studier, did not know this.

"How am I supposed to know? He's just standing there staring at the water."

Her mouth clenched a little in confusion before pursing to say, "I-is it very beautiful water?"

"Water is water!" The small boy bit out the words singularly; he liked Tamao, but not to the extent that he would tolerate her stupidity. There was no one on Earth who could prompt him to do so. (Yoh didn't count; he was not so much stupid as unmotivated to bring himself up to Manta's level, though he ensured, each time, that the midget would know this, and would not be offended. Manta had yet to comprehend how he did this; another captivating trait in the boy's persona.) "He definitely couldn't drink it, if that's what you're asking. It's been polluted since 1957, when"

Hastily, she interrupted the beginning of his lecture: "Wait, wait! I think he's moving!"

"..He's not moving. He's standing there staring at the water like there's no tomorrow. There's nothing to look at."

"There's him to look at." The rose-haired girl contended, lips curving into a smile.

"..Besides him."

"Well, we could always go up to him and stare at the water with him until he tells us what he's doing."

"I thought the whole point of this mission was not to let him know that we were here to watch over him? Remember, he told us not to follow him."

In an unusual moment of lucidity, she pointed out, with a wry smile, "He told you not to follow him."

"It would apply to you, too, if he'd known that you were going to."

There was, she thought, something a little hurtful in that implication, as though Yoh had not considered her daring enough, intrepid enough, Anna-like enough to follow him. But Manta did not mean it in that sense, and so she did not take it so. Nevertheless, there was a tiny shard of her thoughts that indicated this with a ferocity that she kept strictly reined within her own mind – she could not become as Anna had. There was simply some restriction within her persona that did not allow it.

"We're not exactly on the same level any longer, though, so you cannot be certain of that."

"Can too." Manta looked irritable – though he had not followed Yoh for all of his life as she had, nevertheless, there was a spark of passion in his research regarding the would-be shaman that she could not touch; it was something exclusively masculine that Manta, small and childish as he was, possessed nevertheless. "We're equal."

The side of her mouth curled upwards very slightly. "Really? Are you dating him?"

Instantly, as she said it, she regretted the deliberate, cutting manner of its speech, and flushed a brilliant crimson in regret. "Sorry, sorry, Manta-san." She whispered, ducking her head and risking a quick bow before peeking around the corner again. (He had not, yet, moved; nor did he appear to have heard any of her arguments with Manta.)

"It doesn't matter to me." Manta said gruffly.

No? She thought. It would have, to me. It would have hurt if someone had reminded me of that. And that was something to be said about Anna; in all the years that she had been Yoh's fiancé, she had never once pushed this fact into Tamao's features. She had simply… been so, in a way that the fortuneteller had never wholly comprehended. It was as though she had taken the fact and rendered it part of her as nothing else could, enabling it to last as long as she did. It was one of the reasons that the pink-haired girl had not understood when Yoh had appeared to select her instead. How could he, when Anna still radiated everything that said that Yoh was hers?

But she had trusted in Yoh. And now, there was something wrong, and not even Anna could heal it.

Anna…

She wondered, a little curiously, what the itako was doing at the moment.

All along the path home, Anna was deathly silent.

There was a resonant quality to that odd quiet, a depth that forced him away, warded her against even the most light-hearted of his conversational tactics. It was the sort of depth usually revealed only in moments of deepest anguish. But surely, she reasoned, she could not be all that hurt by Yoh's betrayal; he was hers, as he had always been, and would recognize that in time. And she would claim him again… as was only her right as his fiancé.

But…

The deadly thought lingered within her mind with vestiges of fragmented cold, glittering and dangerous, poised above her thoughts like a knife upon a string.

There was something so raw in the way that he had looked at Tamao; as though he were a flame that would warm her, caress her, but never hurt her.

She would not have minded so – if he had not demonstrated a complete ability to hurt her at will, smilingly, with that casual little grin that implied that It will be all right. (He had always, she thought, been so beautiful when he smiled like that; Yoh would never attain the sensual poise of his brother, but there was something lustrously charming about his own candid demeanor that had never failed to captivate her.)

When she had been younger, there had been a hypnotic spell woven into that air, and she had trusted in its promises implicitly, with the assurance that they would never be broken.

He is lazy, and a brat, but he will never break his promises.

And even as she had considered the question, it had fallen to pieces in her hands, into shards that drew thin scores of blood up through her skin, so that she could only look at them in bemusement.

Can you break a promise that was never made, only implied?

But there was no response in her thoughts.

Abruptly, she grew aware of a searing gaze burning into the back of her neck; a possessive brand whose owner had no right to place his mark upon her. Eyes narrowed in faint annoyance, she whirled back in her bus seat to meet Hao's amused, bold stare.

"Do I need to tell you to stop?" She asked, voice low with menace – and choked with what appeared to be tears. As his grin intensified, her vision burst into liquid blurs. Even as she spoke, she could see him mouthing the words back to her, mocking the childish, clumsy manner with which her tongue phrased the words, the careful restraint that had fractured, and rendered her features into a twisted mask as she fought to keep them back.

Blinded, still she snarled, "Stop it, this instant!" and cleared away the tears with two rough strokes at her eyes, though they had not yet fallen. (Yoh, said the suddenly audible pulse of her heartbeat, plaintively, and so quick that the name seemed to blur into itself. Yohyohyohyohyohyoh) Gold spilled over her hands as she attempted to push everything back, to push even the skin of her forehead back so that the tautness would restrain her eyes from blinking down and blocking the tears that were not quite there—

Abruptly, his smile faded, substituted with a look of innocent consideration, though there was a level seriousness in his gaze that implied condescension. "You're going to cry." He said, quite casually.

"I'm—not." She managed to grit out, from between clenched teeth and eyes that were beginning to water again. It had always been a source of pride for her, that no tears would alter the whites of her eyes to crimson, and no salt would be found on her pillow. "I won't."

"You're going to."

"I won't." There was a cool determination blistering its way through her words, and brusquely, she sat bolt upright, chin tilted upwards to face the front of the bus. (Hao smiled still, mouth a little broader in seeing the Anna that he knew.) Scathingly, as though she could not help but pick at the subject, she snapped, "And what would you know of tears, anyway?"

That grin vanished again, swift as the wingbeat of a butterfly, leaving him to blink at her with owlish purity and another expression that she could not interpret. "More," he said at last, levelly, "than you think."

The bus churned to a stop, groaning with the effort of ceasing its passage. Two of its passengers exited neatly through the mechanized door. On their way out, the male of the pair clasped her hand, running a lightly callused thumb over the rigid ivory of her knuckles.

Anna did not protest the intrusion. And Hao smiled.

He saw a little boy, turning to smile brilliantly at an equally small girl, though she did not look so with her poise and the arrogance that she had retained even at that age. He could not remember, precisely, what he had said, but it had doubtless been impertinent – he remembered still the sting of her hand against his cheek, and cringed at the reminiscence. (In reality, his hand drifted up to brush the pulsing crimson that served as his reminder for the day.) But this memory was too common, scattered through his thoughts with the both of them at various ages, and so he turned onwards.

There had been, once, a day in the snow when the both of them had been at peace, when he had turned to her with a laughing smile and had not been spurned.

"Isn't the snow beautiful?" He had said, in his usual dreamy way, never truly bringing himself out to exert himself, but nevertheless allowing his half-lidded eyes to imbibe the universe with his unwavering gaze. And he thought that she had understood, that a tiny smile had lifted her own lips into an expression of amused tolerance—

"Ara, so it is."

The voice was so familiar, so like his own that for an instant he thought that he had answered himself; then turned, startled and with a curious guiltiness towards the newcomer. He wore the same thing as he always did; beige over lego-boots, quite unconscious of the moment that he had interrupted.

"Very beautiful." Said Hao, and turned a vivid grin upon his sibling. "Your taste is impeccable, Yoh." Then his gaze drifted onwards and turned upon her—

(In the real world, Yoh blinked, shuddered a little, biting down upon his lip with an unusual viciousness, eyes hooded, dark with an anger that had not been touched for sixteen years.)

On and on he spiralled, into memories that went deeper and deeper into everything that made him himself, and still he was lost, dazed; not a little understanding of the situation at hand.

And finally, he walked to an exit in his thoughts, crossed over with black bars that would not yield. He pressed his fingers to the center, said Open, and watched as they dissipated from sight.

And walked onwards still, into the light.

"So," He was the first to speak, as his brother had been first to do everything. (Though she winced a little at the comparison, the angry cringe was subtle, and therefore of no import.) "What did my little brother say to you?"

Turning her face a little away, lips thinner than ever, she said nothing.

"I saw the bruise you dealt him." The long-haired shaman said conversationally. "Quite a lovely masterpiece; he's even bruising in your outfit's colors, did you know?" He gave a low, husky laugh of amusement, though his eyes were cool, evaluating her response. "Red and black." He said softly. "You trained him well."

"Don't be more of an idiot than you need to be, Hao." In some semblance of normality, she had recovered her usual crispness of speech – which would have been far more successful if her hand, gripping his, had not tightened subtly in restraint.

Mockingly, he yelped in an imitation of pain. "Is this," he whispered, falling into pace alongside her so that, when he tilted his head, his words fell directly into her ear, "what they mean by cruel love?"

"Not at all, since I don't love you." She retorted, supremely indifferent.

"Surely you must love someone."

She said, with only the minutest hesitance to color her words, "I love—Yoh."

"Ah—" His lips curled into a smile, edges trailing into wispy hints of smoke, "—that's easy enough, then." And when she turned her head to glance sharply at her companion, he was staring innocently at the stars.

"I would have thought that you would have noticed by now," He said, though he did not look to her as he spoke, "that Yoh and I are far more alike than can be credited to mere brotherhood."

"I have noticed," She replied scornfully, "that there are no two people more different upon this Earth than you and Yoh. One might as well compare the sun and the moon." And much to her surprise, the blonde felt the vibrations of concealed laughter travelling from his fingers to hers, through the clasped hands that she could not yet bear to let go of.

"Surprisingly," Hao murmured, raising the hand he held hers with suddenly so that she stepped towards him through instinct, "you may find that", his eyes loomed over hers, dark with a mystery that had been aged far beyond the years he had spent on Earth. "that comparison is more accurate than you…" He, too, stepped gently forwards so that they were pressed together. "think." He breathed the concluding word against the closed barrier of her lips, and laughed to see her expression.

"Doesn't it annoy you at all that my ototo's rejected you?" He inquired after the artless fashion of a young boy, though that guileless was not echoed in the age-old malice of his gaze.

Her eyes narrowed.

"Not quite as much as you annoy me." She snapped, and broke away from his touch. (Curiously, her hand still tingled a little, from where it had pressed against his, though she did not wonder of it.) "Do you happen to think that I'm desperate? I told you that I'm not interested in becoming another girl in the ranks of your fanclub, and that I love Yoh. What more validation do you need to stay away from me?"

He did not appear to be giving much attention to her words.

"You're shaking." He noted. "Is that from fear of what I was going to do, or—" a side of his mouth curved up, "from fear that you would enjoy it."

"As though anyone would enjoy such ridiculousness with you." She spat.

He arched a brow. "You would be surprised."

"Aside from all the girls at school who have no idea what you're like, you have nobody who wants you."

"Except you."

"I," she said, with all-encompassing disdain, though she was all too aware – and he was, too; she could see from the slow malice of his smile that he saw as clearly as she – that a gradual heat had daubed her cheeks and she was lying through her teeth, "don't want you."

"But you could." He said, and she grew aware that he was smiling again beneath the faint echoes of starlight as the sun began to sink into the horizon. "You're afraid that you could. Aren't you." The words were a question, though they were not phrased as such, and he tilted his head to the side in childish curiosity to hear her response. When none came, the dark-haired boy said, smoothly, as though he had never stopped, "You could try it. I bind you to nothing; only to try it for a little while and see, perhaps, if it isn't worth it after all."

"If what isn't worth it?"

"Come now," he looked a little amused, eyelids lowered into an expression of indolent arrogance. The wind rustled the dark strands away from his features, exposing the fullness of his expression. "don't play the fool. It doesn't suit you. If it isn't worth it being with me, of course."

"Idiot." She said coldly, and would have strode onwards, into the house, if he had not caught at her hand again.

"Just for an evening, then." He offered, and for a moment, looked plaintive. The darkness hid his own black hair all too well, so that for a moment she saw only the stark-white features illuminated in the moonlight, and thought, Yoh.

"Wh-what?" She murmured, a little bemusedly, caught off-guard.

"Just an evening." He coaxed, laughing a little at the ridiculousness of the situation. And by then, she had quite lost track of the unwavering malevolence of his gaze.

Before she could retract herself from the spell that his eyes and smile had wound about her, she had nodded her consent, and was caught up and lost in the vibrancy of his smile.

"The sun's down at the horizon." Tamao whispered at last, breaking from her trance in time to see the setting rays of crimson flicker hesitantly over the horizon.

"Already?" Manta was incensed. "He's going to make me late for cram school. Again! What is it with Yoh and cram school; why CAN'T THEY FIT INTO MY SCHEDULE EVENLY!" His shout echoed through the streets, resonating through the walls and rebounding against them… until they penetrated the orange headphones that had been tucked neatly over a certain shaman boy's ears.

Lifting them, he glanced inquiringly towards the corner where the pair was hidden, eyeing them through the wall as though the bricks were not there at all. "Hmm?" As they ducked still further behind the wall, however, the inquiring murmur became muffled laughter, eyes crinkling into arcs of a smile. "Yo!" He called, cupping his hands about his mouth in an oddly childish gesture. "Yo, don't hide from me, Manta; Tamao. I can see you!" Seeing them sheepishly peer back around the corner, he waved at them cheerily, grinning as though nothing were wrong at all.

Their steps towards him were hesitant, small, though he appeared perfectly content to await their arrival. And Manta's movements, certainly, were quickened by his impatience with the whole situation, his confusion a factor that sped his stride still more until even the taller Tamao could barely keep pace with him.

Yoh smiled at them, and the smallest of the trio thought that it was odd; that the brittle quality to his expression appeared now to be wholly gone.

"I'm sorry, friends," He said mildly. "Sorry to have kept you waiting. But I've been busy..."

"Are you all right now?" Tamao inquired, gently, and not a little fearfully.

He did not throw his head back to laugh in false mirth, but merely allowed his smile to broaden; poised and assured in his own way.

"Couldn't be better." He confirmed with equal tenderness, and grinned.

"Now, I know what I'm doing."

"And your problems?" Inquired Manta, a little pointedly, though there was nothing but concern in his words. "Are they gone?"

Now Yoh did throw his head back, though he did not laugh. Instead, he appeared to be gazing widely up at the pinpoint stars that had filtered out into the waning twilight sky.

"If they aren't now, I'm sure they will be soon." He said, relaxedly, and grinned still more broadly at Manta's expression as he drew his eyes reluctantly to the earth again. "Don't worry so, Manta." He said.

"After all, everything will work out."

Author's Note: This was my way of 'bringing Yoh back to canon', for those who thought that he was OOC. –prods him lovingly- He'll still angst once in a while, because I love him and therefore want to make him suffer, but he's Yoh now. Well, more so than he was before.

Review replies! (Before anybody can ask what the shards I'm babbling about. -.-;; )

Koneko-Koneko: I agree, it can be cute, but in this case, it's going to be mostly sad if it works out the way I have it planned… -has already written part of the ending and is looking rather depressed at the moment- And I would never abandon this fic; the most I would do is stick it briefly up on hiatus. And certainly I'll keep consistent until May 12, where I have a rather special filler chapter planned… -evil smile-

KristiexxNguyen: Please note that they named their kid Hana. Do I see a Yoh in there? Heh. –is snerking just for the fun of it- ;D And you should be happy, right? Your pairing won, after all.

Inulover4eva: You don't know that they're the true feelings… not to mention the fact that true feelings can change. And Anna's not THAT poor; she's going to get in a lot of good slaps. I'd say more that you should pity the people AROUND her. xD And at LEAST 20 more chapters; I've planned up to that point, but it doesn't look like it'll get finished just there. The tournament, for heavens' sakes, only starts around chapter 18 or so.

asn water: I wanted to bring into play a little character development for Tamao. For goodness' sakes, as a main character she was so ignored in my fic. –guilt- So yeah; that was my whole guilt-filler-chapter moment. Hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more of her in the future. :)

Snow-girl: I don't like to define my characters by something as simple as good and evil. They all mean well (except for Ren, but he's an exception that proves the rule); they just occasionally have warped ways of getting things done.

Trisyl: Anything that I haven't already said to you before or over IM can be summarized in one word: Nyeah.

Soul: Ehe… Two weeks since my last update. –cough-

Cindy Asakura: Er. D'you actually read my author notes? Because the voting's over. –poke-

anime-obsession260: Thank you. :)

dillpops: More mixing up to come in the future. And then mixing right. And mixing wrong again. Some lovely confusion. And thanks. :)

Kawaii Koneko92: Sorry, no; voting's over anyway. And you watch. Yoh, well… -hugs him protectively and shuts mouth- You'll see.

Kaorien Otome: Hurray for full access:3 Congrats!

Rayless-Demon: …I want to see that… Gah. –wistful-

bow-down-to-keiko: Yohmao, Yao.. –imagines this being pronounced "Yow!" and snickers helplessly- You can't really blame me for laughing, can you? ;) And… I don't know, I could. Currently, though, I have the most clichéd predicament in fanfic history to happen to Anna. All for good reasons, of course. Er. Mwahaha?

He gets, not wiser, but happier. Which I think is important.

Anonymous: Thanks:D

TenkunoMeiou: I will; thank you for the encouragement.

Starwing: Heh.. yeah, I did. W00t for alternate pairings, therefore. :P

Bibliomaniac: I say 'endings' because that makes more sense to everyone. If it makes any more sense, I'd say 'arcs' – they'll split off at some point and I'll post updates to each at a time. I don't know. It depends a lot on what path it goes down.

And I know. That's why I told an earlier reviewer that any Tamao/Hao is going to be pretty sad. Hao will tolerate the attachment, but I'm not sure he'll acknowledge its importance until she dies. I'll do my best to work it out better, but so far that's the way it looks.

As for confused!Yoh, think of it this way: Anna is one of the greatest pillars of his life. In staggering, he's a little shaky at the moment, and it's only in this chapter that he's really beginning to recover his footing. And that's true; if you look back, (hopefully) you'll see that he's never actually said, "I love Tamao." Or "I love Anna" anywhere. If you do, tell me. It's not supposed to be there and I inserted it on the spur of the moment. Gah. –grumbles- So need beta readers.

Maybe you think so. You've yet to see his reasons. And those I shall keep my mouth shut on. For once.

Hana: Hurray:) Hope you enjoyed it.

cherri-chan: I see… I generally try to write deep-seated angst because I find it more fun than fluff. And it builds character! (-coughandireallyenjoytorturingthemcough-)

Ketone: Hold on to your seat; this could take a while. ;)

SK-INU-FY fans: -meekly- Yes'm. Updated.

Cam: -laughs- Hopefully it will never be my fault – or my fanfic's – if your homework doesn't get done. :) Good luck with it.