Yay! Did I ever tell you that I love reviews? Well I do. Oh, and Amara Corbin, I do have a life. I just take time out of it to not do homework, and that's when I do this :) I try to update every other day or so…

Two of my best friends are going out, and one of them is only doing it out of pity. :(

Anyway, enough of my life.

This chapter doesn't have much Akito Mahiru stuff in it, WHICH I PROMISE WILL HAPPEN SOON, but it's still important. Yay chapter about Mahiru's past!

Nozomuloverilovecrescentmoon: OMFG ME TOO! Mitsuru is totally the best though

There's Beauty in the Breakdown

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Mahiru walked home with Haru most days. At the moment, though, he was caught off guard by her sudden graceful spinning, and the way she seemed to not be listening to anything he said. 'Maybe Akito did something to her… or maybe she's in love or something. How are those turns even possible? She looks like a ballerina…'

"Haru-kun!" He jerked when he heard his name.

"Yeah?" He turned to look at her, a good twenty feet behind him, still at the intersection.

"Where are you going?" She cocked her head to one side, looking quizzically at him.

"Uh… Home. You?"

"Home. But we live that way." She pointed down the street he had not taken.

"What? No, we live…" he trailed off, looking around. "Wait… never mind. You're right." He trudged back to her, smiling half-heartedly "That's the spirit of the Ox for you. Dumb." He passed her and walked down the sidewalk.

Mahiru caught up with him easily "You're not dumb, Haru-kun."

He snorted.

"…I'm the dumb one." Mahiru said softly, looking at the sidewalk.

"How so?"

"Did I ever tell you I was a dancer?"

This definitely caught him off guard "Well… no."

"I was. Ballet. But I screwed up my audition for the Astral Troupe."

"The who's?" Haru had never heard of them.

"Astrals. It's complicated."

"I've got time. I could even get us lost again if you want." Haru grinned at her. She grinned back, catching on to his enthusiasm.

"Well, my mom was a dancer too. She wasn't very good though, and her dream was to join the Astrals. My dad was sort of their star dancer at the time, and he fell in love with my mom. She slept with him so she could get in, but later on found out she was pregnant. It kind of put a damper on her career…"

"I bet." Haru said evenly. He had never heard of any of this before.

"He promised he would stay with her. After I was born, my mom worked hard to get back into shape, but she still wasn't very good. She slept with my dad again, and I guess they were just a match made in heaven, because out came my brother. What are the odds of that, right?" She laughed. "My mom didn't love my dad, though. He kept hoping that one day she would, because he was whipped. But then my mom found this guy she really liked. The last time I ever saw my dad was a day fourteen years ago when we all went to the park. I have this great picture of it. The only picture of all of us. Mom's boyfriend took it, so my dad doesn't look very happy, but what can you do?"

"So… what happened?" Haru ventured, not sure if he'd gone too far.

"Well, my dad disappeared. I have no idea where he went. I was able to get his name out of some old dance programs, but other than that, I don't know anything about him. My mom got a job after her boyfriend turned out to be married, with six kids, might I add, and was picking up my brother from school one day when they were both shot in a robbery. We lived in a kind of low income area."

"I'm sorry…" Haru really didn't know what to say.

She smiled at him. "Don't be. I've come to terms with it. After my mom and brother died, I didn't have any other family, and my mother didn't have much money to leave me, so I just fended for myself. I have a Social Worker who's supposed to put me in foster care if things get too bad, but I haven't seen her in about a year. I devoted myself to my mom's dream, but once I spent through all her money, I dropped out of school and got a job, so that I could keep dancing. I was always told I was better than the Astrals, but it's what I want to do with my life, do the things that my mom could never achieve in hers." She stopped at the intersection between the path to the Main House, and the path that eventually led to Haru's house. "That day I met you, I had just come from and Astral's audition. I screwed it up so badly. I was so nervous. I felt like both my mom's and my own dreams were riding on that moment, and if I messed it up, her whole life would be in vain. So I choked. I fell and twisted my ankle. And then I ran away. Right into you." She grinned "Which didn't turn out so bad."

"No, it didn't." Haru looked at his 'sister' with newfound respect. This just proved that she was even more the amazing person he knew she always was.

"I'm thinking of taking it up again, though. Akito made me dance for him, and I was surprised at how it made me feel. Not sad, or angry, or really anything negative. I just felt right."

"You've danced for Akito?" Mahiru turned around to face him, bewildered by his tone, which was more than a little bit hostile.

"Well, yeah. He ordered me to."

"Then he knew?" Haru's tone was unmistakably angry.

"Well, yeah, I told him, wow, two nights ago?" Haru turned on his heel and walked away from her. Mahiru stood open-mouthed for a few seconds before running after him "Haru-kun! What? What did I do?" he ignored her, and kept on in his fast, angry pace.

She stopped trying to catch up with him, and let herself fall behind. "I'm Sorry!" she called to his retreating back "Really! I didn't mean it… whatever it is! Please don't be mad at me!"

Haru's stride became less heated, and gradually he stopped, still not facing her. Mahiru ran up to him. "Sorry?" she offered again.

He gave her a lopsided smile. "It's not you. It's him. Somehow, he always manages to do it."

"…Do what?" Mahiru was completely mystified.

"Take them away." He started walking again, but realizing he was already in front of his house, sat on the steps. "Everyone. Yuki, Rin…" he looked up at her "You."

"Huh?"

"Well, why did you tell him before you told me?" his voice no longer sounded accusing, simply curious.

"Well, it was weird. Two nights ago he was on the stairs, and we talked."

"You talked?" Haru raised one eyebrow "What could you two possibly have in common?"

"Well, at the time, crushed lives. He was born to suffer slowly and painfully and then die, and I…" she giggled "messed up my audition."

"Well, it was an important audition." Haru came to her defense.

She smiled "Thanks. Wait… Rin?"

Haru looked at the ground. "Yeah… we kind of… dated. But Akito got pissed."

Mahiru stood up fluidly, and Haru berated himself for not seeing from the way she moved that she was a dancer. "Well, I'll talk to him."

"You'll do what?" Now he was worried.

"I'll talk to him. Apparently he takes a lot of shit from me that he would kill other people for. He hasn't thrown a vase at me or anything." She grinned "The one thing I don't get is why you would date Rin. I think you're way better than her."

Haru laughed. "Yeah, I get that a lot. But I love her."

"Well, I'll see you later." Mahiru waved and went back down the path and to the Main House.

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Akito lay in his bed. He had not had the strength to get out of it that morning, and couldn't see a purpose to, anyway. He was lying on his side, his back to the door, looking out his window. At the moment, he was pondering his life.

Well, mainly, he was pondering the girl.

She was obedient enough, interesting in a world full of routine and boredom, better looking than the… other girl, and she was fulfilling his master purpose. Every time the rabbit, or monkey, or boar, or ox, or even the ram, came to visit her, they would go in to see him, as well. She was like a magnet, his own Tohru Honda. She didn't have enough reach for the rat or the monster, but he knew that they would eventually follow the rest of them, and come back. Yes, having the girl was definitely a good strategic move on his part.

But then there was the problem of her personality.

Akito had never expected her to be so… he didn't even have a word for it. He was finding himself becoming intrigued by her. That had definitely not been in his agenda, and it was beginning to annoy him. Why did she care about what he would have done with his life? He couldn't understand it.

A quiet knock came from the door, but in the quiet of his room it was as though they had just fired a cannon. Akito didn't bother to answer it. By the quick nervous step as the person entered the room, Akito could tell it was a servant. Akito wrinkled his nose. He disliked what he knew the servant was doing. Food. His body immediately rejected any fatty, rich, or too hard to digest food, ending up in him throwing up for hours. Not a good thing when it was hard enough to breathe when things were calm. So for the past ten months, when his illness became much more seriously life threatening, he was forced onto a diet of plain white rice, some kind of soup, usually containing leeks, and lots of vitamin pills, mixed in with more pills he didn't even know the purpose of, although he could think of a million things. Any kind of food made him vaguely nauseous, and he found it easier to just not eat. Apparently Hatori had some kind of problem with this. Akito completely ignored the servant, only looking up when they had gone. He rolled over, seeing the tray on his night table. The bowls mocked him as he glared at the array of pills, in their own little dish next to the juice. He counted twelve, and then rolled away in disgust. Another upside of not eating was that it made him even more frail, making it easier for him to sleep. And not the fever-ridden, terrifying, painful sleep of the night, but just… sleep. Akito closed his eyes and waited for his weakness to consume him, as it almost always did.

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Love Laur