A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks to Zain and Kage for the reviews! I'm thrilled you guys liked the previous chapter - it was one of the scenes I'd been daydreaming of from the beginning, so I'd hoped I'd get it right. Harsh words were said, condemnations were made, and Naoi and Yuri are too stubborn and proud for their own good. Now we'll have to deal with the aftermath. ( Kage, good question! Whoa, with a shared heart, true love's kiss between them would be some powerful magic.)

Schedule reminder! Like a fireworks finale, Chapters 26-28 will be posted today, tomorrow, and Monday. I figured it'd be nice to wrap up this season on Christmas. Haven't decided when season 2 will start, but my hope is March or April. Just gotta get writing! I might post another AB fic or two during the hiatus though.

Enjoy!


[Chapter 26]: Guilt


It was ominously dark, but he had never felt more illuminated.

He had fallen into a strange sense of consciousness, as if he'd been having an out-of-body experience and now his spirit had very abruptly dropped into place. All around him, there was little light... but Yuri, lying underneath him, was so clear she might as well have been glowing.

His mind had reached a state of baffling lucidity. It was so surreal, his senses couldn't handle it. Everything was happening too much, shifting back and forth between clarity and chaos. This must have been how Kanade had felt with one hundred personalities inside her head. A swirling storm inside where everything and nothing made sense. He just wanted one thing – one stable thing – to make sense. One thing to placate his warring minds.

Yuri. Yuri was common ground.

"You," he heard himself saying, and when she murmured it back in quiet disbelief, this scene started to feel achingly familiar.

He felt keenly aware of her body against his, her wine-colored hair splayed out on the couch, her chest rising and falling in anxious breaths. Her eyes were wide but glazed, and he had the vague suspicion that she was trying to hypnotize him.

She angled her neck in such a way that made him look at it longingly. The purple marks on her throat – he had done those, and she had let him... and maybe she would let him do it again.

Their eyes met briefly, hers searching his with just as much intrigue. She licked her lips and his brain short-circuited. For a blissful moment the war inside his head died down and all he knew was that he wanted her...

And then he was watching the scene from a distance, as if the short-circuiting had simply split him into two beings. He looked on from a corner of the room just as Ayato was leaning in, and he registered the sight before him... He was succumbing to her, as if her leader-like charm had lured him back in under her reins. As if he could ignore everything they had and hadn't been.

The room flickered and hazed like an illusion. He looked on, staring in odd fascination at what was about to happen. The sheer passive acceptance... Somehow, from this angle, he could see real love in Yuri's eyes. And Ayato... Ayato was really going to do it.

It wasn't like before. He looked less conflicted, more content. His nose brushed against Yuri's.

What was happening? Could he really accept this life's happiness just like that? With her of all people?! He felt a sharp surge of confusion and anger; clenching his fists, he glared out the window in anticipation.

Lightning cracked almost instantaneously, with a rumble as monstrously thunderous as his frustration, so blinding and loud that it knocked both Ayatos back. The whole room shook from its intensity. Ayato fell off the couch and stumbled to the corner opposite him.

Yuri stood up too. He met her in the middle, and they began to argue. Senseless bickering for a senseless situation. Yuri stammered meekly, something he hadn't noticed before. He snarled in her face, and she recoiled and went silent. Relentless, Ayato stood there and told her in no uncertain terms that their love and anything that came from it was false and he wanted nothing to do with it. He felt the seething words forming silently on his own lips. He couldn't stop it.

Then Ayato turned to the window. While he wasn't looking, Yuri's face crumpled. She looked at him despairingly – the real him – as if she could see him, betrayal glistening in her eyes. Before the tears could break, she tugged off the ring and threw it at him. It passed through him like he didn't even exist. And then Yuri was gone.

The door slammed seconds later. Ayato should have followed her to the hallway by this point. Why didn't he go after her? Why didn't he try to stop her?! He glanced towards the spot by the window, but Ayato was gone too. Vanished into thin air.

The room plunged into total blackness, and it was so seeping cold he thought Yuri must have let in a draft. But at once the air around him felt so stifling it was like he was slipping away from himself. When he turned around, two small white orbs glowed at him in the darkness.

They were predatory eyes, unblinking and strikingly familiar. If possible, the shimmering space around them looked even blacker than the rest of the room.

By the time he recognized the shadow, it was too late. It pounced on him, engulfing him entirely and burrowing inward. The shadow's essence was so thick he was choking on it, but there was something more to this monster. It seemed to be bringing his misery to the surface, feeding on it, drowning him in it, and at this point he was certain he'd rather suffocate—


Ayato woke up gasping for air. It was the same room, but the darkness that had fallen wasn't as advanced as in his dream. He was grateful for the one light he'd left on, even though initially it was blinding when he'd pulled himself up from the couch pillow. He sunk back into it with a groan; his head was killing him.

It had been bothering him since the bridge, and started pounding right before Hinata and Otonashi left. Now it was driving him mad. He wasn't sure how he had fallen asleep like this, only that he was in no mood nor condition to move. Still, he hoped he wouldn't fall asleep in this position again.

That dream…

His mind was so masochistic, forcing him to relive that night after all of this. If it had gone the way it did in his dream, the divorce really had been one-sided. Had he truly been so blind?

Then again, Yuri was just that type of woman. Too stubborn to let anyone see her tears, an expert at masking weakness. The more vulnerable she felt, the harder she fought back. He should have seen right through her.

But how could he have, the way she'd blocked him out? As soon as the word "divorce" escaped his mouth, she'd hit him with the Kyogi Rikon papers. There was barely any time for him to breathe, let alone change his mind. If that hadn't assured him she was just as horrified at their union as he was, then—

Ayato closed his eyes, pressing his face deeper into the pillow.

That was just it. He had been horrified, and he had made no effort to hide it. The things he'd said… they were very straightforward. He'd been quite clear on what he wanted and didn't want. She'd just been characteristically fast-paced at fulfilling his demand.

If he'd responded differently that night, they would still be together – probably even with a child on the way. The thought was still mind-boggling. Even with her Afterlife memories restored, even after knowing who they truly were to each other, she had loved him. Just as his dream reminded him, there was a moment where he'd felt a sense of curious acceptance and almost made a move. A move he now knew with certainty that she would have reciprocated.

If only that damned thunder hadn't…

The thought made him pause. His dream… wasn't exactly a precise replica of that night. Clearly his subconscious had veered off towards the end and tweaked the scene into a more creative interpretation. Another instance of his masochistic mind at work.

The way it played out, it almost seemed as if he'd manifested the thunder and lightning himself. He'd scowled at the window in wait, and lightning obediently struck a moment later. As if he'd caused it to happen.

But why? Why would he cause the lightning?

The answer came to him as quick as the resulting thunder. It was the lightning that had shaken him, that had set him free of his trance. Like a sudden heavy fall, the type people felt when they were safe in their bed about to fall asleep, he had snapped awake and stumbled backward into panic mode. It had interrupted them; it had freed his doubt. Deep down, he must've taken it as a sign. Maybe that was what he'd wanted, a sign that this happiness was false instead of fated.

Was that what the dream meant – that he'd sabotaged himself and his happiness? Did he cause his own misery, and then let depression swallow him up?

…Ridiculous.

He couldn't accept that. This was not all on him. Yes, he'd made a mistake lashing out at her the way he did, but thanks to Iwasawa and their situation at the time he hadn't been in the most stable of conditions. And yes, maybe he was cold to her up until the night she moved out, maybe the last snide comment he'd made before he went to bed had been insensitive enough to warrant an empty house when he awoke. Maybe he pushed toward the disintegration of the marriage.

But from the moment he and the Battlefront found her, it had taken him three days to fall in love with her all over again. Three days. If she hadn't ignored him the way she did, if she hadn't fled Mizuzaka and taken the potion, they easily could've drifted back together sooner. If she hadn't been in such a goddamn hurry…

She hastened the divorce. She left him. She drank that potion, and sabotaged her own heart. There would be no metaphorical dream shadow to swallow him up if she hadn't abandoned him.

He'd tried to call her, he had. Granted, once was to chew her out for sending Ryou and Sunohara to pick up the rest of her things, and the second time was to scold her for trying to get him to come crawling back to her like a subordinate. But the second try, if he was being honest with himself, had been an excuse to hear her voice.

"You must have been worth forgetting."

Now he couldn't get it out of his head, and it made his stomach churn.

He'd caused her pain; there was no arguing with that. He had unwittingly rejected her that night in his attempt to have the upper hand, and when they were both uncertain how to act around each other for the rest of the weekend, he'd shifted back and forth between petty remarks and cold shoulders. So yes, he shut her out first.

But he didn't make her drink that potion. He didn't tell her to go seek out Rumpelstiltskin and use magic to solve her problems. The way he saw it, all magic did was cause more of them.

Was fate so against them? So utterly against them that Yuri would chance upon the concert that destroyed their marriage? That she would somehow find the very man who was powerful enough to get her a forgetting potion? Could they really be that wrong for each other?

It was this kind of vulnerability he'd tried to protect himself from that night. He'd been such an idiot, falling for her this hard, that if he didn't know any better he'd say he belonged in her ridiculous Battlefront.

If he didn't know better. Especially after today.

Thinking about all this worsened his headache. His dream-filled sleep on the couch had been restless and only tired him out more, but the events from earlier had left the TV room in too much of a mess to escape and his bed was a whole staircase away. He didn't have the will or the strength to move.

Not even the sound of the front door opening was a strong motivator. It could be a burglar or one of the Battlefront members coming back to apologize. He was too exhausted to care at this point. They could either kill him or go to hell.

"Naoi, are you home? Sorry for the intrusion!"

Ryou's voice was muffled but distinctive through his pillow. He groaned in dismay with just enough energy to announce his presence, but did not acknowledge her further. In fact, her footsteps approaching made him shut his eyes tighter and bury his head deeper into the cushions.

"I wanted to see if—" A pause, then a shaken gasp and quickened steps. "O-Oh no! Naoi, what happened in here?!"

Ayato growled and tried to cover his ears with the pillow. He did not need this right now.

From nearby, he heard the sound of glass moving and knew it had to be Ryou picking up the shattered picture frame. He didn't say anything; if she wanted to play with glass, he wouldn't intervene. The last time he helped a girl who cut her finger, it ended in disaster for both of them.

Why was she here? He would think as one of Yuri's best friends, and as her former roommate, Yuri would've told her everything by now. Considering Ryou withheld Yuri's address from him up to the point of hypnotism, surely she had more respect for solidarity than this. He didn't want her here; he just wanted to be left alone.

Unfortunately for him, Ryou's talent didn't appear to be mind-reading. She sighed to herself, closer to the coffee table now, and he heard the unmistakable plunk of a ring dropping into a box.

"I should've seen this coming," she said quietly.

Ayato fumed silently into his pillow. If she was here to start babbling about what she saw in the cards, she could get out now. Considering the circumstances he had extremely low patience for her magical know-how—

And then his eyes shot open.

"It was you," he said, finally raising his head to stare at her.

Ryou paused in the middle of putting scattered photos back in the shoebox and gave him a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"You did this." The accusation in his voice grew the more his realization did. "She was living with you. She wouldn't have known if you hadn't shown her how! You did this!"

"N-Naoi, you're not making any sense…" The fearful nervousness of a trembling lip betrayed her.

"YOU!" His patience snapped and left an echo that did nothing for his headache. He was so angry he could barely think in coherent sentences, let alone speak them. "You—Yukine—your friend, she knew how to find Rumpelstiltskin! You and Yukine… you led her to him!"

She'd regressed to squeaking now, at a frequency that did not escape his migraine's notice.

"I'm sorry!" she cried, eyes wide and already watering. "She was my friend — my guest! I-I only wanted to help!"

"Help!" He laughed bitterly. This was one of those instances where he wouldn't be swayed by tears. "If you want to help, you offer food and shelter, not amnesia!"

"I did what I could, but it wasn't enough!" Ryou insisted. "She barely ate. She cried every night. Everything reminded her of you! I… I tried to give her hope, but all she wanted was a way to stop thinking about you."

How ironic that a nurse's words could make him feel so physically sick. The last thing he wanted to hear was how much Yuri had cried because of him… how terrible it was to be reminded of his existence. He clenched his jaw, willing himself to ignore the painful throb in his chest.

"And you," he said slowly, through gritted teeth, "decided that this was the best way? The only way?"

"I—I thought—"

"How could you let her do this?!" He sat up in a rage. His head was already spinning too much, he couldn't even comprehend what had possibly gone through hers when she had the bright idea to send Yuri off to some wizard. "You might as well have bought her the potion yourself! Were you so convinced I deserved this?"

"Yes!" Ryou burst out, taking him aback. "Yes, I did think so! Because all I knew was that I had my best friend holed up in my guestroom bawling her eyes out from a divorce that came out of thin air, after you dumped her and let her fall flat on her face! All I knew was that one day she had a pregnancy test in her hand, and the next she had divorce papers. It didn't make sense—"

"NONE of this has made sense," Ayato spat. He was so tired of Ryou and her little friends bringing that up. "Not since the concert. The one that you told her about."

Ryou reverted to pathetic squeaks again – another sore spot. The noise, although irritating, was the only thing giving him comfort at this point. A fleeting moment of sadistic satisfaction that her conscience was giving her what she deserved.

"If you hadn't told her about that stupid concert, none of this would have happened," he continued, lying back down on the couch. He turned his back to her so he wouldn't have to deal with her weepy eyes. "We wouldn't have heard that stupid magic song. I never would have broken her stupid fragile heart, and she never would have taken your stupid magic potion. That Yuri never would've been so thoughtless."

It was… incomplete, but they wouldn't have known that. They could have been happy. At least he wouldn't be as miserable as he felt right now.

"Ignorance is bliss," Ryou agreed tentatively. Her voice wavered with worry. "But, without your memories… what about the reunion mission? What about the Battlefront?"

"Fuck the Battlefront," he muttered into the cushions. Ryou gasped, and he relished in the scandalized sound. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "If you see them, tell them to go die," he added, and laughed sardonically. "They'll know what I mean."

"I won't tell your friends to 'go die,' Naoi."

"Then you're of no help to me." He shifted around on his back, kicking his legs up on the armrest and staring up at the ceiling. "In fact, you've been quite the opposite from the start."

Ryou made a small strangled sound of indignation, but it didn't stop him.

"You told Yuri about the concert," he repeated. "When it broke us up, you had a guestroom ready so she could abandon me. When her heart was broken, you knew just the person who could 'fix' it." He made little quotation marks in the air. "Yuri tells me you even helped her leave town. And then… then you refused to tell me where she'd gone."

"Because she didn't want you to find—!"

"She didn't want me to find her," Ayato finished for her. "Yes, and you were happy to help her keep us apart forever. And then you couldn't even tell me the truth about what happened. Noooo… that was something I had to find out for myself!"

She made more shrill noises, but they were dying down. And laced with distinct traces of shame.

"But I didn't find it out for myself, did I?" The onslaught of bitter sarcasm was at least muting the bile in his throat. "I had to hear it from Rumpelstiltskin as he told her just how painful it felt to love me."

"Naoi, I'm… I'm sorry…"

"You caused all of this," he said, undeterred. "The concert, the potion, everything. I always heard that Fate's a bitch; I didn't know they were talking about you."

Silence. Maybe he'd gone too far.

"What's next for me, Ryou? Are you going to let slip my mother's phone records? Are you going to tell my father about her little trip last week?"

There… now that was delightfully too far.

"You're…" Her voice was quiet, unsteady, but determined. "You're just giving up. Don't—"

Ayato laughed derisively. That was only hurting her case more, reminding him of such a thing. Please don't give up on her the way she gave up on you. That was exactly what Yuri had done. She lost the strength of her love long before she took that potion. In forgetting about him, she had chosen weakness; he had every right to do the same.

"I give up," he said. "This isn't a fairytale, Ryou, and it doesn't have a happy ending. Yuri and I were never meant for one. You sure as hell saw to that."

Through time and space, Kanade and Otonashi were destined at the heart, and Hinata and Yui were fated through a promise. But the world had made a mistake when it brought Ayato and Yuri together, and something or someone had been trying to fix it ever since.

Call it Fate, Destiny, Rumpelstiltskin… somebody. It didn't matter. Whoever it was, it was time he started listening again.

After a moment, Ryou sighed, and it almost sounded angry.

"I know you feel guilty, but you don't need to take it out on me." He heard her stand up, then drop the shoebox on the coffee table with surprising force. Enough to make the contents loudly jostle in protest. "Fine, you can stay in your emotional purgatory if you want. Even though we both know what pushing out love does to a person."

"Love is a disease," Ayato said over the sound of her footsteps as she walked away. Then, a little louder, "Say, you're a nurse. Perhaps you've heard of a cure?"

She made another strangled sound and her footsteps smacked quicker and more heavily against the foyer. He heard the front door slam, and it made him smirk to himself. How many doors had that tenderhearted jinx of a girl slammed in her lifetime?

Making her angry had been a good distraction. But now she was gone, and his troubles came swarming back around him like the shadow monsters of his dream.

No matter where he shifted the cause, the effect was there staring him in the face. He covered his face with a different pillow than the one under his neck. And involuntarily inhaled its scent. It smelled overwhelmingly of coffee.

He swore under his breath and threw it at the wall. It landed on top of the broken picture frame with a little crunch of glass.

Life was a goddamn mess. He should've stayed behind and ruled the Afterlife.


Preview:

"I was kind of hoping we could talk."

"I'm barely even your friend."

"The only one pushing you away is you."

"It was a lie."

"What made you fall in love with her this time?"

"You have no idea what that's like!"

"We've had our obstacles too."

[Chapter 27]: Odd One Out.