A/N: Greetings, AB section! Due to laptop problems again, I'm on an iPad as well as a time crunch (and this keyboard is being really weird and unruly) but I did promise an update today! Close to the five year anniversary of me uploading this fic. But I do want to say a big thanks to ZainR and Jdog4161 for the reviews! I definitely agree that the first love doesn't have to be requited, though I do still wonder along with Souma if you have to be aware of those feelings at the time. A curious concept…

Anyways, hope you enjoy!


[Chapter 68]: It's Complicated


Ayato was sitting on the couch in the Nakamuras' TV room, paperwork and photo albums spread out over the coffee table. He noted there were more pictures of the Endo side of the family than there ever were for the Naois. And when it came to how they reflected his mother, the difference was plain. No one would believe the cheeky-looking girl with the bright eyes and hopeful smile would become the demure housewife to the stiff-looking man standing next to her.

Holding the photo in his hand, Ayato stared at it for a moment before growling and cutting around his and his brother's head, literally removing Kimito from the picture with a few aggressive and decisive snips of his scissors.

"Careful," came Yuri's voice from behind him as she entered the room. "He already cut you once trying to bring you down with him. Don't give him the satisfaction of taking one of your fingers from beyond the grave."

"Oh, I've got a finger for him," Ayato muttered, reaching for another photo to slice up.

Yuri came around the edge of the couch and sat down next to him. Reaching over, she swiped the scissors out of his hand in one swift motion and set them down on the end table on her side.

"Hey! You be careful – haven't you learned your lesson about grabbing sharp objects?" Ayato scolded.

"You could be doing something more productive," said Yuri.

"This is productive." Ayato considered reaching over her to get the scissors back, but knew not only would Yuri run interference, but it would probably hurt his injured side. Instead, he found where he'd hid the hole puncher and started putting holes in Kimito's face.

"What about working on the thing with your dad's shop and the house and everything?"

"The paperwork's right there," he said, nodding toward the table. "I already got it started. But it was stressing me out and I got angry about how he put a burden on my mother after I was gone, and how he somehow still manages to put this huge one on me, so I started doing this."

"Okay, so take a break, then. This is just riling you up." Yuri held out her hand patiently this time, and he begrudgingly offered up the picture and hole-puncher. She set both aside, nicely putting the photo on top of one of the albums with the rest of his handiwork. "Masuda said he'd help you with some of it anyway. How long do you think you'll be staying in Akuma?"

Ayato frowned, picking up some of the paperwork and stacking it neatly. "I don't know. I might want to be back in Mizuzaka by Saturday afternoon if we're still going to meet up with the Battlefront for Operation Songbird."

"Right, Iwasawa and I still need to meet up and talk about that…"

He looked over at her while setting the paperwork aside. "What about you, when do you think you're going back to Noroi?"

"The same," Yuri said with a half-shrug. "Maybe tomorrow evening or something. Can't stay too long, or Hisakawa might try to meet up for lunch or get our nails done or something."

She said this with a sniff, which made Ayato quirk an eyebrow. "So much disgust, even after your little chat today," he observed, with a snickering scoff. "I thought you two had finally made peace. What did you two talk about anyway?"

"Like she said – makeup and boys, same as you," Yuri replied, making him smirk. Souma had ventured the same question earlier, and when Hisakawa threw it back at him, Souma had said "the same" with a shrug. The exchange had stayed in Ayato's head primarily for the way Hisakawa had beamed back at him. There were only two reasons to smile so hard at a joke that dumb – an exceedingly simple sense of humor, or hopeless and brain-melting love. He was still trying to decide where Hisakawa fell on that spectrum.

"Boys, as in Souma?" he dared to ask.

Yuri scoffed. "Don't even get me started," she said. "The way she was talking about him? Going on and on about second chances and fresh starts and crap. How of course he'll find love again, he's cute, he's funny, he's smart, a guy as sweet as him with his whole life ahead of him shouldn't have any trouble at all. She says, 'Who knows? Maybe his second chance at love could be right around the corner.' So of course I have to chime in with, 'Yeah – or, you know, living in his house.'"

This got Ayato cracking up, shaking his head at her gall. Of course she couldn't help herself. She was Yuri. "She had to have seen that one coming," he said, smirking at her.

"Oh, no, it was a total deer-caught-in-headlights thing with her," Yuri replied, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Ayato turned more toward her, all thoughts of photo destruction completely obliterated. "I haven't seen her that flustered since Kurimu burned her during truth or dare at the ski lodge – were you there for that?" (Ayato nodded with a grin and waved her on.) "Good, you know what I'm talking about. Trying to defend herself but floundering so hard, so I had to call her out on it. I said, 'Chitose Hisakawa, are you actually in love?'" For dramatic effect, she put a hand over her heart as if scandalized. "Naturally she gave a non-answer at first, but you know what she told me?"

"What did she tell you?" Ayato asked, still grinning despite himself. This sure sounded like gossip from friends who got their nails done together. But perhaps it was safer not to voice the thought out loud.

Yuri propped herself sideways against the couch with an elbow. "Okay, do you remember or were you there after graduation when Nezumi came up to Souma and gave him that big hug, all touchy-feely and adjusting his gakuran for him? And then after Nezumi went back to his friends, and the rest of us were like, well that was weird, Souma realized his second button was gone?"

"Yeah, he was going to give Kurimu his second button because she was his girlfriend," Ayato recalled. "He ended up giving Kurimu the rest of his buttons like it was some sort of grand, meaningful gesture. It was really just ruining his jacket."

This earned him an appreciative snort from Yuri, before she lifted her eyebrows and leaned in a bit more, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "Well, apparently Nezumi did steal the button, but not just to be a jerk, like Souma thought. Turns out Hisakawa used to say nice things or defend him whenever Nezumi talked crap about him, and Nezumi started teasing her about it and saying, 'If you're in love with him, just say so!' He turned it into a running gag for their entire friendship, which is why he stole the button to give to her."

Ayato had a feeling he knew where this was going. "Let me guess. She still has it."

"She kept it in a jewelry box for years," Yuri confirmed. "But recently she made it into a necklace, which she hides under her shirt. As a reminder of what almost happened this winter, to keep him close to her heart."

After letting all of this sink in, the concept made Ayato chuckle and shake his head. Those two were living under the same roof and they still had no idea of the other's affections. What idiots. Though in fairness, he did understand some of Souma's reluctance and uncertainty. "I never thought she of all people would fall in love."

"That's exactly what I said!" said Yuri, gesturing emphatically. "I mean, other than all that sappy shit about waiting for the one, which if you ask me was just an excuse to focus on nothing but the EMT thing."

"It probably was," Ayato said. "Is that so bad?"

She squinted at him. "Okay, you're starting to sound like her now," she noted. When he shrugged indifferently, she conceded with a shrug of her own. "I guess not. It just seemed like she was protecting herself from something."

Ayato regarded her with a carefully contained expression. You'd know all about that, wouldn't you? he thought, noting that Hisakawa had never taken any potion.

She must've noticed him staring, as well as his expression change, because she broke her thoughtful silence and looked back at him guardedly. "What?" she asked, with a nervous chuckle.

He shook his head. "Nothing." His voice came out sounding soft and unsure, so he quickly added to his defense, "I agree with you. She did move far away for college and not come back for years."

"Even though we all knew she always had a job waiting for her at her family's aquarium…"

"Maybe she thought she had bigger fish to fry," Ayato said with a smirk, and then immediately wished he hadn't. He buried his face in his hand. "Oh, that was…"

Yuri had already burst into a peal of unbridled laughter, breathless and half-shrieking, probably more at his expense than the joke itself. "Hisakawa would kill you if she heard you say that," she teased between cackles. "She had this ginormous old catfish, Mamoru—"

"Her protector," Ayato recalled, nodding, and still grinning sympathetically.

"I already told you, didn't I?" Yuri's laughter died down, the only remnants a sheepish twitching half-smile. "Yeah, I guess I must've told you everything… Funny of her to talk about needing a protector when she's always had a savior complex herself."

His own grin faded after that. "I guess I get it," he admitted. "She spoke to me alone after you and Souma went off ahead. She brought up my mother, and how she wished she could've been there, how she could've done something. Started saying stuff like she never understood why Ayame stayed with someone like my dad. How if she were her, even if she had loved him, she would've left years ago, knowing what or who was out there waiting for her. A real life, with me."

Yuri had looked thoughtful at first, but gradually her frown deepened as she listened, until she gave a scoff. "Typical of her to say. It's not that easy."

"Yeah, I told her as much, and she apologized after that. But…" He sighed, turning away from Yuri and leaning into his knees while running his hands through his hair. "I never liked this town. We had our good times here, I know. Some parts of it were good. Friends, memories, love—" his voice cracked slightly on that last one, though he hoped she didn't notice. "And my mother. But none of it could outweigh the bad. All of it was tainted by him. Even our first date, he found me and literally dragged me home." He gave a scoff of his own at that memory. "I don't know why. My work never seemed to matter to him. It was never enough. In this life and the one before, all the effort I put into pleasing him and being a good son, and it never made any difference."

"There was no pleasing him," Yuri said quietly. "He had his own issues. He just took them out on you."

"And my mother." Ayato glanced over the spread of photos on the coffee table, the depressing degression from rascal to maidservant. "I spent so much time worrying about myself, but she dealt with him the longest. Her heart was too invested. She couldn't break away like I could, not even when I offered her that chance before we left." He rubbed at his temple, willing away phantom pains of a ghastly headache. "And I keep thinking, I should have done more. I should've done more to make her come with us, to give her a whole new life in Mizuzaka. If I had known there was such thing as a memory potion, I would've gotten him out of her head that way, if that's what it took."

"She never would've taken it," Yuri said knowingly. "And you couldn't force it on her. She would've been afraid of forgetting something important, like being your mother. It meant so much to her. I think in her mind, if she came with, Kimito would have had even more incentive to come after you. She was protecting you. Knowing that you were free and safe, that was enough for her."

"She deserved to be free and safe too," Ayato muttered, though he was starting to feel like a broken record. "I just wish I could've gotten through to her."

"I know." He felt Yuri's hand on his arm. Her voice had softened to almost a soothing whisper; something about it made him turn to face her again. "And… I know what it's like, to want to do something that means anything," she murmured, her eyes downcast at first, before they flicked up to meet his. "To wish you'd made a difference."

He looked at her then, searching, wondering. Wondering how she had gone from glaring at him from his couch less than a week before, to sitting next to him here and gazing at him the way she was now. Wondering what it meant when she pursed her lips like that, and if his vision was tricking him again or she had really just glanced at his own.

Wondering which of them had leaned in first...

If you asked him later, he would swear that he still hadn't a clue when it started, or who started it, or that he barely even realized what happened until well after it had started happening. He only knew that he had missed the comfort of her lips, warm and moving against his. He had missed the feel of their foreheads pressed against each other, and the softness of her cheek beneath his fingertips. The need that took over left him drowsy yet desperate, malnourished and craving, tilting his head as he opened his mouth for a deeper taste.

It was Yuri's strangled moan that brought him back to himself. His heavy eyelids snapped open at once, and everything reappeared, everything that had brought them to this moment. He broke the seal of their lips and jerked back with a muted yet shuddering gasp, his heart wreaking all sorts of havoc in his chest. He was all adrenaline and only some lucidity, as if awakened too suddenly from a deep slumber. That kiss…

Ayato studied her face, staring perhaps too hard but not wanting to blink, lest he miss any sort of hint in the span of a millisecond. But Yuri looked just as confused and spacy as he had been five seconds ago, like she didn't know where she was or what had happened either. For a moment it was like she didn't even register that he was there, her eyes glazed and distant and lagging five seconds behind him.

Then she blinked, noticing his hard gaze, and looked taken aback. At him? At herself? Her mouth fell open in an "o" of shock. Thoughts or memories, he could see something racing behind her eyes.

"I – I'm sorry," she said, getting up from the couch in a haste. "We shouldn't have— I should—"

In that moment, all his hopes seemed to break like a montage of the shattered ceramics in his past. The vases he dropped when they first met, the ceramic birthday mug thrown against the wall, plates and dishes Kimito broke during his parents' arguments – all of that at once, just because of a stammered apology. And because for a split second, before she had gotten up, he could've sworn he had seen… relief on her face.

That kiss… the first one they'd had in months… the first time he'd kissed her as himself, with his Afterlife memories intact…

And it didn't work? If Rumpelstiltskin was to be believed, that should have been true love's kiss. That should've broken the spell, should've brought everything back.

Unless... unless it wasn't…

But then, why…?

He stood up abruptly, his brow furrowing deeper along with his frown as he turned to her. "That was…" He shook his head. "Why? Why did you do that?"

Yuri's eyes opened wider. "Me?"

"Yes, you!" Ayato shot back, adrenaline and frustration getting the better of him. "Don't do something like that unless you mean it!"

"What are you talking about? You kissed me!" Yuri insisted, but he could tell by the look on her face that even she wasn't sure that was true. It was the same doubt he'd seen when Otonashi, Hinata, and Kanade had grilled her on her memories of him on the day they first "met."

"No I didn't!" Ayato snapped, feeling his face scorch red. "And even if I had, why didn't you push me away? It's not because you're in love with me, or you would have your memories back by now. Do you?"

Yuri's features twisted with even more uncertainty. "Well, no, but…"

"Then that was a pity kiss! Don't…" Ayato groaned out a frustrated sigh, trying to calm himself down but only half-succeeding. "Don't do that. I don't want your pity. I can't handle that right now."

Yuri looked even more confused and sad, and like she wanted to say something more, but then she nodded softly.

"You're right," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper again. "I shouldn't have pity-kissed you. I'm sorry. You were vulnerable and you were looking for something, and I… I shouldn't have done that. Not if neither of us meant it. It's that proposal of yours all over again." She laughed dryly, but it faded off rather quick. "I should probably go."

Perhaps he should have said something, maybe apologized in case he really was the one who had kissed her – if he had, he didn't mean to use her – but instead he just sank back down on the couch, listening to her flee down the hall into her bedroom. When he heard a door close, he sighed and dragged his hands down his face, before touching his fingers tentatively to his lips.

He'd wanted to kiss her again for so long, part of him didn't even care that her memories hadn't returned because of it. That part wanted to jump back up and march down to her room and knock, kissing her again as soon as she opened the door. Memories or no memories, he wanted her.

"It's not true love," she'd say, just as she had in one of his dreams.

"It's something," he'd tell her, and he'd mean it. The part of him that needed her that desperately would mean it.

But the other part couldn't get over what the failure in their kiss suggested. That part kept him up the rest of the night, wondering, picking Once Upon a Time up from the guestroom nightstand and rereading for a clue or a reminder.

Maybe what Rumpelstiltskin had said about true love's kiss being magic was a load of crap. But since potions and magic were real in this world, maybe it was more realistic that she just didn't love him. But then why had she kissed him? Or, if he had started it, why did she kiss him back? Why did it take Ayato himself to end it? She didn't seem the type to kiss a person out of pity, but as she had helpfully reminded him, there was a possibility she had accepted his delirious proposal last weekend. And there was no other explanation he could think of. Why else would it not work when she kissed him the way she did?

The way she'd looked at him just before, he had almost dared to hope she was finally feeling something for him. But maybe he'd gotten so used to this fake marriage truce of theirs that he'd started falling for it himself.

He'd gotten all the way to Belle's own attempted true love's kiss on Rumpelstiltskin before he finally nodded off. Sliding off the bed, the book fell to the floor with a muffled thump, cushioned by its own bending pages.


"And when you woke up, she was just gone?" Souma asked, filling Ayato's mug for him.

Ayato nodded, raising the tea to his lips and taking comfort in the steam. "Just like last time. Packed her bags and took off in the middle of the night. There was a note, too, but this time it was for her parents."

"So, what, now it's just you staying over at your ex-wife's parents' place? I'm sure that's not awkward…"

"They said I was welcome, so at least they haven't fallen out of love with me," Ayato quipped, watching as Souma offered handouts to his cat, Satou. Kurimu's cat, originally (or Nezumi's if he was being technical, since it was his secret stray friend that had surprised him with kittens), but clearly he had wanted to hold onto the fluffy blue-grey reminder of his late wife. "But no, I decided I'd spend my last night in town at the estate, if I don't end up heading home before then."

"Your dad's estate? As in, the crime scene?" Souma said doubtfully. "I'm no chicken, but that sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen."

"It's not a crime scene anymore," he argued. "And I'm going to have to go back there anyway if I'm going to clean the place up enough to do anything with it."

"Okay, just freaks me out is all," said Souma, kicking back with some lemonade. "I asked Saki and the guys a little more about that Ouija board thing, and they were telling me all sorts of weird stuff. Claiming your gramps used to throttle your dad when he was younger and that's why his voice was always so raspy. If I were you, I'd be afraid of ghostly hands reaching out from behind the bed and—"

"Shut up," Ayato cut him off with a finger. "Right now. If you do not want me to have nightmares, then shut up."

Souma held up his free hand and his lemonade both in defense and surrender. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes before he spoke again. "So what are you going to do?" he asked. "Y'know, about Yuri."

Briefly flummoxed by the question, Ayato looked down at his tea and cupped it tightly in his hands. "Nothing to do, really," he said, before taking a long drink.

He could feel Souma's unimpressed stare before he even opened his eyes. To his credit, the guy did give it a few seconds before he pounced on him.

"Look, man," Souma said with a sigh, "I've been in a situation where there's nothing you can do, and this ain't one of them."

"So what do you suggest?" Ayato intoned.

A shrug and a slightly judgmental noise. "I dunno, not burying a relationship before it's dead?"

Ayato snorted. "How dead does it have to be?" he asked.

"Deader than 'you literally just kissed last night,'" Souma said, rolling his eyes. "Was it open-mouthed? If it was, that's like, actual relationship CPR right there—"

"I'm not talking about this anymore," said Ayato, though he hid an involuntary smirk behind his tea mug.

"Oh my God, it was," Souma breathed out in a little laugh of delight.

"Speaking of CPR!" Ayato said loudly, cutting off his friend's obnoxiously smug snickers. "I didn't come here just to entertain you with my romantic troubles. As long as we're covering uncomfortable territory here, we could always address the fact that you tried to kill yourself last winter."

Souma sobered at once, looking down at his own drink awkwardly. For a moment, Ayato wondered if he really had crossed the line just now. A kiss between a divorced couple was in an entirely different realm than an attempted suicide. But then Souma broke the silence.

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," he said at last.

Ayato gave a highly doubtful harrumph. "What, then? Crashing off that bridge was an accident? You're not that atrocious of a driver."

Setting his glass down on the table, Souma sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Look, losing Kurimu wasn't easy…"

Guilt dug its fingers tightly into Ayato's heart. "I know, I'm sorry—"

"No, you don't—ugh." Souma cut himself off, groaning through another frustrated sigh. "I just… I know you heard about it from us, but you didn't see her. Not during the last few months." Reaching down, he scratched at Satou's head for comfort, and the cat arched up into his touch. "We were both trying to be strong for each other, you know? Her especially. She'd been getting bad, but she was always trying to cover it up, downplay it as usual. Saying stuff like 'Oh, it's nothing, I'm just tired, I'll take a nap and I'll be good as new' and 'no, really, Souma, I think the sun lamp is helping' and 'don't call the doctor, of course I'm shivering, it's winter' even though I had the heat on, like, full blast. I could see right through her, and I played along. But we both knew she could see through me too."

"She never liked making people worry about her," Ayato said. "She was kind of like Yuri in that way. All she wanted to do was help, but she didn't want to be helped."

Though with Yuri, it was more about being seen as vulnerable. Kurimu just preferred not to be fussed over by anyone other than her mother. One of those girls who insisted they "didn't want to be any trouble," because it was easier to give unconditional love than to receive it.

"Oh, she'd let you help her," Souma recalled. "As long as she was sure it made you happy. That you were getting something out of it. Which I was. I was spending as much time with her as I could. I think that must've been my tell. Out of context, my younger self would've looked at me and in a heartbeat he'd have called me clingy. And why else would I, Souma Hejjiguchi, be acting clingy, other than knowing deep down that pretty soon she was going to be gone?"

Satou hopped up onto his lap and headbutted his chin, trying to either cheer him up or demand attention. Absently, Souma rubbed at the cat's ears.

"Do you remember?" he said listlessly. "What she said her biggest fear was?"

Ayato didn't have to reach far to think back. The memory came from the truth or dare game at the ski resort, dusted off only just last night. "Leaving people behind," he murmured, his heart sinking in his chest.

"I'll never forget that," Souma said, stroking Satou's silky grey fur. "I took her seriously before, but when she said that, that was the first time I thought about actually losing her. You know, I didn't feel like I had to think about that, my mom was just kind of somewhere out of sight. But Kurimu, y'know, with her dad, she did, and…" He shrugged lifelessly. "History repeated itself. Her biggest fear came true. Except it wasn't even sudden or anything, and that's the worst part. It was drawn out. It was like a game, there was always just a little bit of hope. Maybe it would be fine, maybe she'd get better, maybe we'd get to keep each other. Like when we played with Satou and his toy feather on a stick, we always let him have it for a second and then we yanked it out of his reach." As if understanding what he was talking about, Satou made a trilling sound and jumped off his lap. Souma watched him go. "At some point we both knew… she was the feather, and she was slipping away from me."

"Would it really be better if it were sudden?" Ayato asked, remembering the morning he woke up to an empty house. "I mean, you love someone, you can remember speaking to them like you would any other day, and then it's like they've just… vanished into thin air. It's disorienting."

"Disorienting, yeah," Souma conceded. "But it'd be like ripping off a bandaid. Hurts like hell, makes your eyes water for a minute, then it's over and you can start the healing process."

"Unless you took it off too soon," Ayato countered. "At least you had time to say goodbye."

Souma scoffed quietly. "Goodbyes don't really get any easier with practice," he said. "Towards the end, every day felt like one. A goodbye with a question mark. And she didn't like 'em any more than I did." He reached for his glass of lemonade and downed half of it. "I just wish I'd been stronger for her. I wasn't throwing a whole pity party for myself, but she could tell I was hurting. And she kept acting like she wasn't, just to help me." The lemonade sloshed as he set the glass back on the table. "Can you imagine? Kurimu, the one who was actually dying, spending all her energy worrying about me. Because I couldn't show her I was going to be okay. Because I had reached a point where I didn't know how to be without her."

"And that's why you relapsed into the whole 'we never should have gone out' mindset," Ayato said, realization dawning.

"I just got this feeling," said Souma, leaning his elbow on the table to prop his chin on his hand. "Like she was gone, but she wasn't at peace. It was because of me that her worst fear had been realized. Like she would never be at rest until I was."

Ayato frowned. That still sounded like someone who had wanted to die. "So, that's when you drove off the bridge," he said, keeping his tone tentative.

"It wasn't… like that," Souma said, exhaling. "I felt so guilty, and I wished I could tell her I'd be fine, but I couldn't, and I wasn't fine, and that made me miss her more." He chewed on his lip thoughtfully. "Look, you know how ghosts do… ghost things, because it's what they were used to doing in life for a long time? I didn't know how to be without her, and I didn't know how to stop mourning her or worrying about her." Dropping his arm, he started drumming his fingers lightly on the table. "I wasn't trying to die when I drove into the river. I wasn't even thinking of anything except the time I fell off the walking bridge near your house and she fished me out. I was thinking of Kurimu. I was just… trying to go after her."

The whole time, Ayato had been listening with all the sympathy and respect of a man in mourning. At that last part, though, he couldn't hold back his sigh. "Yes, but in order to go after someone who's dead, you would have to go find her in the afterlife, and to do that, you'd need to—"

He stopped. Fell back against his seat. Brought a hand to his opened mouth as he struggled to herd the pieces of an epiphany together. They were trying to float away, like his Battlefront dreams before Iwasawa's concert, but he refused to let them. Searching, in an afterlife… Baelfire…

"What's up?" Souma asked, eyebrows furrowed. "You look like either you just had a brilliantly evil idea or you left the stove on at home."

"Nothing like that," Ayato said, briefly lowering his hand to his chin, before using both hands to push himself up from the table. "Sorry, but right now I need to talk to someone with a little more experience in outlandish and crazy ideas and actually making some sense out of them."

Souma blinked, nonplussed.

"Oh, okay," he said, giving a lazy wave of dismissal. "In that case, tell Saki I said hi."


Preview:

TBA.

[Chapter 69]: TBA.