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Title: A History of Them: Reminiscing

Author: Faelady

Pairing: Haru x Rin

Disclaimer: Neither the characters nor the manga are mine. Natsuki Takaya owns them both. I'm just borrowing them from her.

AN: Spoilers for anything after the current English release, particularly chapters 104-107. Mainly covers the aftermath/fallout of those chapters, so spoiler references are inevitable. Also, some of my conjectures about their past relationship are probably not canon, but unfortunately there are many details in that area that Takaya never filled in. So don't get horribly upset with me if you spot something that isn't canon, though please do point it out so that I can correct it. This may turn into a chapter fic gulp but if it doesn't, this should be able to stand alone as a one shot.

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"Isuzu's upstairs." Kunimitsu didn't even bother to glance over at Haru as he said it.

"Hnn?" Haru's normally placid expression briefly creased into a frown before smoothing back out, the only indication of his worry.

"She overdid it a little in cleaning today, trying to help around the dojo, and Kazuma convinced her to lie down and take a nap."

Haru nodded briefly in acknowledgment as he removed his shoes in the entryway before heading upstairs to where he knew the guest room was. In the few weeks since Rin had moved in to live with Kazuma, Haru's visits had become a daily event. Usually in the afternoon Haru would appear at the house and wander around until either he found Rin or someone directed him to her. Today he managed to find the guest room without mishap, his building sense of familiarity with Kazuma's home enabling him to navigate it more easily.

He quietly slid open the door, and walked over to sit cross-legged on the floor beside the bed. Haru didn't mind watching Rin sleep, partially because he knew she needed the rest—she was still weak after all she'd gone through, and tired easily—but also because he knew the he was seeing a Rin she let very few, if any, others see. His Rin didn't like being vulnerable. Granted, she minded it less so now than before, but trust still came hard for her.

Haru slid his hand underneath the one she had tucked up near her face; even after two full weeks he needed the contact, the reassurance that she was really here with him, and not one of the despairing dreams he had so often while they were apart. Curled up into a ball, with her hands near her face, Rin still slept like she was protecting herself from any blow life might try to land on her.

'But given her history--our history—I can't say I blame her,' Haru mused, as he looked at his love and thought back to all that had passed between them before now. Before times like this, when he could look at her and not have to wonder when it might end.

Haru could remember a time when he didn't know Rin, when he wasn't aware of her as more than the cursed of the Horse.

He couldn't remember a time that he didn't love Rin. When they were children, it was the love of one friend for another. They had been playmates but not confidantes, though he had begun even then to make it his habit to observe people, to read their inner emotions from the subtle changes of their face and body. He knew then that this quiet, self-contained, doe-eye girl had some terrible secret, though he couldn't guess what—and then one day he didn't have to try and guess anymore.

He remembered the chaos of emotions he felt when he found her collapsed on the sidewalk and then raced to Kazuma for help. First and foremost was intense fear for her, but mixed in was wonder that she had somehow managed—even in her condition—not to transform, along with the first stirrings of worry and anger at whatever had caused her collapse. Plus a faint sense of shame that he needed help, that he couldn't save her on his own.

His anger had exploded when her parents came—the very ones who had put her in this condition were now compounding their crimes by abandoning her without a second thought. The dark side of his nature that was born when his own parents laughed at him for being dumb, slow, stupid, came out again in her defense. He raged at them on her behalf, for she was too broken to do anything other than cry. He became her protector then, wanting to shelter her until she healed.

She had mended, much as a broken dish is mended—whole again, but never the same. The cement between the cracks hardened, scarred over, and she matured into a remote, cool beauty whose smiles came only fleetingly. The pain of her rejection evolved into a disinterest in the opinions of most other people. A disinterest that manifested itself in her outrageous clothing choices and lack of friends. He tried to remedy the lack of friendship as much as possible, knocking on her window and dragging her with him on any of his various "adventures" around the city.

He remembered looking at her one day when he was about twelve or thirteen and realizing something had changed, that she had become something more to him. Something as necessary as breathing. She had become his heart. He knew she didn't feel the same at that point. To her, he was still just a friend—younger, shorter, someone who could distract her from her loneliness and isolation. Definitely not a potential boyfriend or lover. So he waited, biding his time until he grew as tall as she was. In the meantime he reveled in being her only friend and confidante, basked in the smiles she gave to only him, and held his words of love locked deep inside.

At fifteen, he finally told her, and watched love battle fear in her face. It was a close thing for him, and seeing that internal battle plain in her expression made him almost catch his breath in the worry that fear would win. Then she smiled at him through her tears, and he bent his head and tasted their salt on her lips. He remembered the joy that rushed through him then. She had become his Rin. His. They were together, and they loved.

And for a while, it was beautiful...

Their little islands of time together had been tiny miracles for both of them. Their stolen nights together when Kagura's parents would pretend they didn't notice his presence in the room down the hall and they could sleep all night, wrapped in each other's arms, enjoying the physical closeness that only one Jyunnishi can give another. Those nights were almost more important that the ones spent in passion, because they only served to cement the bond between them. Event to the point where they became so accustomed to one another's presence, so acclimated to each other's touch that if failed to register as something unusual—which in itself was unusual for the Jyuunishi, who touched so rarely and so carefully.

Then Rin had ended up in the hospital. He hadn't known what happened at the time, and he didn't like to think about it for too long now. The ugly hate and anger he felt for Akito was not something he wanted to touch Rin. All he had known at the time was the woman who was his heart claimed to no longer want him, and he had begun to slowly break apart.

They had survived apart. Survived, but not been whole. Rin's sudden and complete rejection had made him doubt—not his love her, but his belief in the fact that somehow they could make it work. That they, despite the curse and all that it entailed, could find a connection with each other, those bonds of love and belonging usually denied those of the cursed.

He believed again now. Knew with certainty that she was his heart, as he once had before she made him doubt.

It still didn't prevent his lingering sense of anger and disappointment with her for valuing herself so little when he valued her so much. Nor did it prevent his anger with himself, his lingering sense of shame.

'Why did I blind myself then to what I was asking of you, love?' Haru wondered to himself. 'Maybe Akito was right, and I didn't want to see, didn't want to know, because that meant acknowledging both the risk I asked you to take and your fears that I ignored. Love, I was so close to throwing you away—throwing away your sacrifice and dragging her into Hell with me. If Kureno hadn't said what he did, we both might have been lost.'

Rin stirred restlessly, startling Haru out of his contemplation and making him finally notice that his hand had gone to sleep. Her eyes slid open and blinked drowsily for a moment before focusing on his face.

She gripped his hand, smiling sleepily up at him, and it struck him again how much she had changed since he picked her up off the sidewalk and welcomed her home. Changed in ways that even he, who knew her best, was just beginning to see.

Her eyes were warm and calm. The fire that made her Rin, the one that he loved, was still there, but subtly changed. What once had been an inferno, a rage of need and want, was now a carefully banked blaze—as hot as before, but slightly more controlled. None of her fierce determination had been lost, only tempered, refined to rest more easily beneath her skin.

He suspected that it wasn't completely over for them—the trials they had gone through. They were different people now than they had been, changes forged in separate fires of loneliness and pain. Those new people were going to have to learn each other anew, and learn to mesh what had been with what would be. It wasn't going to be easy for them, he knew, but it would be worthwhile.

'I always did like a challenge,' Haru mused to himself as he looked into the face of the woman who was his past, present, and future.

'Why else would I have fallen in love with her?'