A/N: Angst, sweet angst. And canon angst, no less! These are Yuki's thoughts as he beats the holy daylights out of Taki after Hiro informs him of what he did to Shuichi. Hope you enjoy it!

Rated for language and suggested violence

--Yuki's POV--

Love is a very powerful thing.

Don't get me wrong. I do not in any way, shape, or form mean this in a good way. I may be a romance novelist, but I have no delusions of grandeur about love. Perhaps that is why I'm good at what I do – I can write love as people perceive it, not as it really is.

People perceive love as this wonderful emotion that fills you up and completes you in every way possible; something that gives you power by the simple magnitude of the emotion, something that is so powerful it is worth dying for. However, in reality, it could not be more different. In truth, love takes over your life no matter how hard you fight it. It doesn't necessarily complete you, it just adds more to your life and allows more chance for loss. I do agree with one thing, though – it does give you power. Not power in general, that I-can-take-over-the-world feeling that most people would assume it gives you. No, the power love truly gives you is the capacity to hurt the one said love is for and yourself beyond anything you could have previously imagined.

Unfortunately, it also has the power to make you do some rather stupid things, which would explain why I'm facing off to the lead singer of ASK at the moment.

I can see the raw terror in his eyes. I can almost smell his fear, but I feel no pity for him. He felt no pity when he hurt Shuichi; ruined him, used him. Why should I pity the man now?

Correction. This thing here before me is no man. No man could degrade another human being like that and retain his own humanity. He is nothing now; a shell, the shadow of what might have been if he had not given into the siren call of fame and power, and used Shuichi, or more specifically, Shuichi's love for me, as a means to an end. Therefore, knowing that there is in fact no soul behind that face worth preserving, I feel no guilt as I ram my fist into his face again.

I remember how it felt. The pain, the humiliation, the shame that I felt after he was done, even when I knew that I could do nothing to stop it. Usually I shove those feelings back into the dark corners of my mind where my consciousness seldom ventures, but knowing that Shuichi felt those things, is possibly feeling them even now, prevents me from taking the coward's way out and pushing those feelings aside. Instead, I use them to fuel my anger.

That idiot. . . why did he do it? Why the hell would he try to protect me, even after I kicked him out, told him I didn't want him? Other than the sex, I never gave him any reason to think I cared for him. How could his love for me grow in an environment like that? And yet it did – only to be used against him.

Why would he protect me anyway? I don't need protecting. He is the one that needs protecting. He's the young, innocent, naïve one. Well, he was naïve, until this bastard took that away from him. I liked Shuichi like that. I'd never admit it to him, but his naivety inspired an enthusiasm in him that was a tangible force whenever he was near me.

I don't know how long he could have gone on like that, with his rose colored glasses tainting his view of the world, but now that innocent view of life is gone, taken from him by the man before me. Now, chances are that he'll be more like me. He won't trust as easily, he won't be able to tell people how he really feels. Or worse yet, he will not be able to feel at all.

Perhaps that's what he needs. Particularly in the business he is in, a hard outer shell is helpful. Being too open can be dangerous in the entertainment business. But, as selfish as it may seem, I don't care. Even if it means that working in the music industry will be more difficult, I don't want him to grow hard and cold like I did. I want him to retain that warmth, that smile that could light up a room, the same smile that somehow managed to reach even me, through the walls of pretended carelessness that I had built.

Without even realizing it, I have become attached to that smile, and the personality attached to it, and I am going to do everything I can to keep him from closing himself off from the world like I made the mistake of doing so many years ago.

As soon as I get done beating the shit out of Taki Aizawa.