Disclaimer - I don't own anything other than this story idea. As for having it beta read, Zip's been on vacation and I got anxious to upload this baby. So, if you find anything wrong, misspelled, or out of character, it's not Zip's fault. Not that she would be, otherwise, but, I'm uploading this with out my 'safty net'. I'm…a little nervous. LOL Enjoy! Bwahahaha.

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Chapter 5 - Wintertime

In his dream state, Don felt a presence, a very evil presence. Yet, before he could wake himself and almost as if someone had poured living fire over him, his eyes shot open. In that moment that he found himself rudely awakened, he realized an extraordinary truth.

He was in horrific and almost mind-numbing pain.

Despite the restriction of his shell, he tried to bolt upright to a sitting position in bed. However, he found his right side strangely weak, which puzzled him. In the darkness, he couldn't see very much, not where his eyes tried to focus from his abrupt waking.Nevertheless, to compensate for the shift in his physical balance, Don's left arm took his full weight, forcing himself to push up from that direction as a result. Now, as his left arm propped himto a sitting postionand at an odd angle, his breathing came in short, ragged gasps. His eyes went wide with half-crazed panic, a panic that threatened to suffocate him. The strange thing was he didn't know why. Don was certain he was having a nightmare, but then something seemed to tell him otherwise. Instantly, he tried jump out of bed, to focus his eyes in the dim darkness of the room. Withthe only illumination coming from the city outside and which seeped in around the edges of the drawn blinds, he saw thewalls around his side of the room splattered with something, something dark and all too familiar.

Blood? He could smell the coppery scent, nearly tasting it as he gasped in surprise.Then, in shock, he slumped back down into the bed once more,feeling again the strange weak sensation. It was in that moment when he realized that he was not dreaming at all. Quickly, Donshot a concerned look towards his wife's side of the bed.

He saw…nothing. She didn't seem to be there.

With her bedcovers shoved aside, a thought came to him thatshe might be up again, restless, just as she had been earlier.

Nevertheless, the unbearable searing pain brought him back to his present torment far too quickly. He looked to his right arm and saw, to his horror, that it seemed barely attached to his arm.

Yet, before he could wonder why it was so,a sudden noise from beside him distracted his attention. It was almost a snarl, a growl even. In a slow, lethargic arc, and feeling strangely weak, he tried to bring his head up to seek its source. However, as he tried to do this, a sudden nausea swept over him. He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed, trying to push back the gagging response.

Once again, overwhelming pain jarred his very being; a pounding, throbbing torment that rivaled anything he had ever experienced before. As a result, it mercilessly forced him to abandon any notion of getting sick – or moving, for that matter.

Immediately, his concern for his arm consumed his thoughts.He snapped his eyes open, his attention now for his right arm. With his vision quickly adjusting to the silhouetted blackness of night, what he saw, now, shocked him to confusion. His entire being seemed to scream in horror as he assessed his stricken body. Utterly confused, Don saw that his once strong arm now lay nearly separated from his shoulder, a few tendons still keeping it attached, yet the appendage hunglimp on blood-soaked bed sheets. A a pool of the red liquid seeped under his trembling body and, not too surprisingly, he could feel himself going into shock. In response,he slumped back down on the bed to lessen the affect.

Don shut his eyes and quickly tried to assess his condition. The brief glance that he took of his injury, before he collapsed back against the bed, told him that his arm appeared barely attached to his shoulder. He recalled the tendons seemed torn and exposed to the air, with the bone and deltoid muscles cut almost clean through. It was easy to conclude that someone had attacked him.

He would have fainted in that moment from the pain, itself,had it not been for his ninjitsu training. Trying desperately to compose himself, he realized that, other than the severe cut to his arm at his shoulder, he had absolutely no feeling in it at all along the limb. His damaged appendage 'felt' as if it belonged to someone else entirely.

A sudden, spastic movement caught his attention next. Like a geyser of red and to the rhythm of his heartbeat, blood squirted from the main artery of his arm, with each spurt weakening him further. Panic now began to overtake his mind, since he knew what that meant. Instantly, Don's warrior instincts quelled it, replacing the panic with a need to act. Yet, with each eruption of his life-blood weakening his body, he could only lay there in a stunned stupor, completely helpless.

Don knew, then, that he was dying.

Nevertheless, he realized in that moment that someone had attacked him while he slept, someone who had obviously compromised his security measures. Briefly, he allowed a bit of anger to override his feeling of panic, indignant that anyone could successfully bypass the safety features he himself had invented. Yet with Don's ever-weakening condition, his rage quickly dissolved to concern, as his blood loss worsened.

What good would it do, now,to vent,he asked himself derisively; in less than a minutes, Don knew that he would be surely be dead.

However, with his focus so centralized on his present condition, he had not noticed the figure standing beside him and a step away from the bed, next to where he lay. He would have recognized her in an instant, too, had he been more aware of his surroundings.

Now, though,he was in shock. Although he could feel some relief from his painful torment, with his endorphins rushing to their appointed tasks,Don still had enough presence of mind to look over at Bara's side of the bed for her. He knew that if someone had attacked him, then it was certain that Bara was in danger. His frantic need to know if his wife was safe overshadowed any concern for his present condition. Forgetting about the noises he had just heard seconds earlier, he quickly tried to roll over to her side, to see if she had fallen onto the floor. Don's greatest fear was that Bara had been the first strike and was now lying dead or dying there.

Despite his earnest attempt, though, he was unable to stretch even his head to see if she was in the room. In that moment, another wave of nausea washed over him,forcing him back onto his pillow, once again, as he groaned.

In desperation, he gasped as loudly as he could,"Ba-Bara",trying to call to her. Howerver,the pain and his weakened state brought him closer to fainting once again. Forcing back his delirium, Don shook his head desperately to clear it.

Again,that same noise that he had heard earlier, when he had first woken up, came to his ears once more. It was almost in answerto his calling for Bara. It seemed to be…right beside him…right by…his head.

As Don turned to glance upwards towards the noise, a shock greater than he was prepared for met his eyes, a new and confusing terror now loomed over him.

Standing there dazed, with her arms hanging limply by her side and with a bloody sword grasped in her right hand, stood Bara. Initially, a slight sneer seemed to crease her face, marring her beauty and confusing Don. He had never seen such a hateful look on his wife's face before; it almost seemed - alien to her gentle nature.

However, in the next moment, when their eyes met, the hate and spite melted away, replaced with confusion and a pained, grief-stricken expression. It was as she had suddenly realisedwhat she had just done. Bara now looked down upon her broken husband, her eyes pooling in grief as her own body began trembling in shock.

In horror, Don recognized that the sword she held inher hand was the very one she had complained about, the one she had begged him to remove hours earlier. It wasLeo's sword, the one he had used many years before to slay Oruku Saki. In that moment, Don chastized himself for being so stubborn about it. In that instant, the dreams his wife had had, the strange, tone-saturated phone messages suddenlyy came back to him. He knew then, what they were about. Now, however, that knowledge seemed to be too late in coming.

Suddenly, he noticed a single tear course its way down her face, and then Don watched as she attempted to speak.

At first, Bara's lips tried to move, but no sound came forth. As she tried to talk, her face grimaced in despair, as if in pain. She finally uttered a garbled mangle of words, but they were so unintelligible and so raw with emotion, that it was near impossible for Don to understand what she was trying to say to him. Nevertheless, her lips continued moving as she tried to form words, seeming to repeat the same phrases, over and over again. Don tried to understand what she was attempting to tell him,buthe foundit difficult as unconsciousness threatened to overwhelm him once more.

Suddenly, like an epiphany, he figured out what she was trying to say.

With her expression showing extreme distress and grief, as well as confusion, she uttered, "I – m, sorry, I don't understand," he discerned from her, "…I love you, I loved you, how could I….Oh, god, I –m sorry, I don't understand this…I love you, loved you." With each mumbled attempt, Bara's body continued to shake and tremble, as if in shock.

Nevertheless, Don sensed his life force weakening with each passing second. Then, without warning, like a fice a new terror clutched him. He watched in helpless horror as Bara brought the sword up in front of her. However, with blood now pooling in his throat and constricting his own voice, Don was unable to call out for her to stop. As she made her next move, he thought for sure that this would be her killing blow.He felt his heart break.

As his wife brought the sword, she turned it away from him. She then inspected it,the brilliant steel marred and dripping with his blood. Now, twisting the sword around and positioning the tip of the blade against her stomach, she looked down at her midsection, and then back down to him. This time, her words were crisp and clear, as she cried, "I'm sorry, I loved you,". As her voice broke into quiet sobs and without hesitation, Bara plunged the blade deep into herself. She cried out painfully as the blade sankin, her thrust driving it hearly through her body. In the next instant,she doubled over in agony,her knees buckling, and forcing her to collapseto the carpeted floor of their bedroom. Her body then fell hard against the side of the bed, her sudden movement jarring it and thereby jerking Don in the process. It only seemed to intensify his already miserable state, and, so, he cried out in response. Yet,it was as much in grief as it was in pain. With Bara's wound now bleeding profusely, the crimson flood poured out of her as it stained the carpeted floor beneath her body.

He watched, now, the katana – Leo's katana – protruding from his wife's midsection, her weakening heartbeat jerking the hilt as her breathing hitched. The movement of the weapon slowed,though, as her system began to shut down. It gave occasional jerks as her body desperately tried to stay alive, yet, it was to no avail. Her wound was fatal and, as a result, the hilt gradually slowed its mortal dance.

Now, as she lay propped up against the bed, the way she was angled Don could still see her face. Bara's eyes fluttered a bit as she tried to look up at her beloved one last time. She tried to smile at him, but the best she could muster was a sneer, the very same sneer he had seen only seconds earlier.

Unfortuantely, Don was too weak to help her, to embrace her, to even say 'goodbye'. He could only watch, powerless to do anything for her atall, other than watch - and grieve. Tears nowoverwhelmed his eyes in despair, spilling over as he heard her expell her final breath. As her pupils fixed and as her body slumped in death, a strangled cry came forth from the very depth of Don's soul. Like a dying beast, his voice filled the bedroom with an eerie foreboding moan, Then, as it gainedvolumne, his cry shook the bed from the power behind his screams.

Suddenly, and in that moment right afterwards,Thomas came charging into the bedroom. In his hand, he held an envelope, in the other a just-brandished Ama Goi Ken knife. Yet, the envelope that he held in his right hand was the reason why he was there in the first place. He had forgotten to bring it with him earlier when he had delivered the gift that Don had him pick up from Tiffany's. It was a card from Don, which spoke of his love for Bara. Thomas had accidentally left it behind in his car, caught up with his own wife's birthday celebration. Yet, despite Hiromi's plea to wait until later, Thomas had insisted on returning to the penthouse that night. He wanted to make sure that the card was there in the morning with the gift, when Bara spied it the next day.

As fortune would have it, he had entered Don'spenthouse just moments before hearing Don's strangled cry of grief and pain. Instinctively,he knew that something horrible had happened. In a quick assessment honed with years of training, Thomas immediately noticed the missing sword from the mantle - and quickly charged towards Don's sleeping chamber.

Now, as Thomas swiftly surveyed the bedroom scene, the look of panic on the man's face turned to desperation. Where Don lay bleeding on the bed, his breathing shallow and faint, and with Bara laying slumped alongside on the floor and up against the matterss, the man never hesitated, but leaped into immediate action.

Re-sheathing his sword, Thomas went to Bara first, but upon seeing the katana wedged deep into her midsection, he suddenly understood. The recorded tones from the mysterious phone calls over the past several weeks came back to him in a rush, and it was then that he finally figured it all out. The realization slapped him hard in the face, the epiphany he had hoped for, obviously coming too late, taunting him without mercy. He knew then, that the strange tones were messages – meant only for Bara.

However, he put that fact aside, for he had a greater worry and concern.

Don looked up weakly to meet his valet's frantic expression, the turtle's face streaked with unabated tears of anguish and supreme grief.

Thomas looked back at him in repsonse, but his expression was of that ofanger, rage and hate for Bara.

Yet, as Don's vision swam before him and as his mind began to cloud with growing unconsciousness, he watched as Thomas reached for his cell phone to call for help. As the man spoke into thephone's mouthpiece and as he grabbed up a pillow to apply pressure to his employer's grievous wounds, Don's essence began to fade. In less than a minute from waking and after watching his beautiful wife commit seppuku, Don's system began to shut down. As it did and as the faint hollow sound of Thoma's voice faded away, Don Tello's mind filled with an comforting inky blackness, as peace andoblivion finally overwhelmed him.

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