Okay, I was in a hurry to get this chapter up, so I apologise if the standard's dropped. After many protesting reviews on the subject, this fic is not going to be yaoi centered, but friendship (mainly Kai, Kai and more Kai) centered. So,I hope you all enjoy reading this!
Mariah yawned softly and opened her eyes. She smiled affectionately at the sleeping Ray, who was dead to anything and everything. It was a damn good job it was a weekend, or she'd have had to phone in sick for him. Wait; was she working today or not? Stupid part-time jobs...stupid constantly changing days...no, she wasn't. Thank goodness for that! With a sigh, she snuggled up to Ray's warm, muscular body and prepared for a long, luxurious lie-in.

Suddenly, her acute hearing picked up quiet sounds of distress. Instantly alert, she sat up and listened carefully, trying to determine which of her daughters were having a nightmare. The sound came again, along with realisation of who it was. Feeling more than a little guilty, she settled back down again. Let Kai suffer. What did she care?

She might hate him with a vengeance, but her highly developed mothering instinct was not making it easy to lie there and listen to somebody in distress...

She held out for a good fifteen minutes, guilt squirming like a live thing in her stomach. Finally, she growled softly and sat up, shivering as the cool air hit her exposed flesh.

"Fine!" she snapped to no one in particular, and walked as slowly as possible towards Kai's room - no, it was the spare room! She couldn't allow herself to think like that! He would become a permanent feature in this house over her dead body!


She nervously pushed the door open a little and looked into the room. Kai was sitting next to the window, still fully clothed, with his head buried in his folded arms. Distracting herself purposefully, Mariah scowled and tutted at the marks in the carpet where he had dragged the armchair over to the window. A soft moan pulled her reluctant attention back to the figure in the corner of the room. Slowly, she walked up to him and stood next to him, struggling with the powerful emotions of concern, her obligations to Ray, and her deep-rooted hatred for the man in front of her. Finally, she made a decision.

"I hate you." she murmured, then punched him as hard as she could on the arm. "Wake up, Hiwatari!" she ordered loudly. "You'd better have a fucking good reason for this!" Nothing happened. She hit him again, wondering whether he had awoken and was simply playing with her. Yes, it sounded like the sort of thing he would do. "Don't you dare ignore me!" she snarled. When that outburst provoked nothing more than another moan, she hissed in annoyance and stepped back. As she did so, his head shifted positions, making his face visible. She opened her mouth to let loose a tirade, then stopped, something unexpected tugging at her heartstrings.

It took her a good two minutes to realise that what she felt was...pity. The man in front of her wasn't the arrogant, strong, untouchable teenager that she had hated for nearly half her life. He was gaunt, haggard, worn out by a world that had dealt him too many hard blows over the years, his mind shattered by a past that no one had been more than vaguely aware of until it had blown his world apart.

She reached out to...to what? She didn't know. He was...he was...Kai. The person who had redefined the word megalomaniac.

He had stolen her bit-beast, ripped it mercilessly from her and laughed as she died inside, held up his beyblade and crowed in triumph at his inhuman deed. He had annihilated two teams, left them reeling as he wrenched their bit-beasts from them and added them to his little collection. He had showed himself time and time again to be faithless, unreliable, uncaring about promises and others' feelings. Ray would surely testify to that.

He had rightfully earned her hatred. If he wanted anything else from her, he was going to have to do far more than turn up on their doorstep and demand shelter on the strength of events from when they were little more than children.

Feeling much happier with her mind-set, she reached out and shook his icy-cold shoulder, hard.

"Wake up, Kai." Her voice was curt. He moaned again, his eyes flickering underneath his closed eyelids. Gradually, his eyelids rose. Dazed, confused violet gazed at her, through her. "Are you awake or not?" Still mute, he raised a shaking hand and dragged it wearily across his eyes.

"Yeah, I'm...still here..." His voice was weak and rasping. Mariah frowned at the strange comment.

"Well, you certainly didn't go anywhere while I was watching you." she said acidly. Kai chuckled feebly and closed his eyes for a brief moment. Dark, bruise-like shadows under his eyes indicated exactly how much sleep he had got during the night. A catch in his breath warned Mariah of the coming explosion, and she automatically stepped back. Kai bent double and began to...cough was the wrong word. It was harsh, violent, jerky, almost as if he was choking.


An unbelievable forty seconds later, he was still going, his face showing the faintest flash of panic with each new bark. Moving quickly, Mariah grabbed his shoulder and pushed him upright.

"Stay upright, you understand that?" she ordered briskly. "Now, just try to breathe. That's it...deep breaths now...there, see? So much easier if you'd just stop attention seeking." She smiled nastily. Both of them knew that Kai had never looked for attention in his life. Kai, his breathing ragged but more or less normal now, looked up and stared calculatingly into her eyes.

"You pity me." he remarked hoarsely, smirking at her stunned look. "I've always been good at that," he said offhandedly. "I've got better recently." A hint of self-deprecation crept into his rasping voice. "I suppose losing your mind makes you better at reading other people's." His expression hardened. "I don't need your pity."

Any vague thoughts of softness towards him in her mind disappeared at his stiff, hard tone. Almost relieved at the return of the familiar hot rush of anger, she drew herself up, eyes blazing defiantly.

"Who said I was offering it?" she retorted crisply. Kai gave her a darkly amused look and stood up unsteadily, grasping hold of the arm of the chair with both hands to keep himself upright. Swaying and stumbling, he made his slow way over to the bed and crawled under the covers.

"No one." he whispered, his voice already slurring with sleep. "No one important. Now, if you don't mind, I intend to finally get some sleep." Fuming at his insolence in ordering her around - in her own house - Mariah ground her teeth together and left the room.


Hearing Mariah coming down the stairs, Ray looked up guiltily from the computer monitor and quickly exited what he was looking at.

"You shouldn't be up! You were completely exhausted last night - or should I say earlier this morning?" Mariah scolded, pulling up a chair and sitting next to him, her clear, bright amber eyes sweeping his own, darker-coloured ones intently. "What's the matter? What were you looking at?" she asked, a hint of suspicion creeping into her tone. Still somewhat drowsy, he couldn't hold her gaze for long.

"Nothing." he mumbled, averting his eyes. She placed two fingers under his chin and tipped it up until their gazes met again.

"C'mon, tiger. Talk to me." she pleaded softly. Ray looked away.

"Nothing important. The girls want you to help them make a tent. I'd imagine you know what that means?" Mariah nodded impatiently.

"Yes, yes, now tell me what you're so jittery about!" she ordered, her eyes betraying a hint of fear. Ray sighed in defeat.

"The day after he arrived here, Kai told me his exact...problem...condition...I don't know what to call it. So, I looked it up." He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and shook his head slowly from side to side.

"And?" Mariah prompted quietly, laying a reassuring hand on his knee.

"And all I can think about is: why on earth did nobody spot it before?" Ray whispered miserably. "He displayed some of the most obvious symptoms from the very first day we met him. Difficulty expressing emotion, overly focused on orderliness and perfection, setting us and himself ridiculously high targets then making us feel like so much shit if we didn't obtain them, distrusting of everyone, constantly cold and distant-"

"Ray, there's no way you could have known," Mariah soothed. "He hid it from everyone. Two different teams, constant media attention, Mr Dickenson, Judy, no one ever noticed, did they? We just accepted it as how he was."

"Yes...but..." Ray protested wretchedly. "I should have guessed."

"No, Ray." Mariah said, softly yet firmly. "Even given your somewhat...special relationship with him, why would he have told you?" Ray hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. Leaning forwards, he hugged her tightly.

"Yes, I suppose you're right." he sighed. "It just...hurts. Knowing that he went through all that with absolutely no one to support him. I'd have even been happier if he'd confided in one of the Demolition Boys, for heaven's sake!" They both smiled grimly.

"Mummy!" Rosa whined from the lounge. "Come build a tent with us!"

"Coming, sweetie!" Mariah called. Giving Ray a rueful smile and a quick, tender kiss, she got up and went to play with their daughters. "Go back to bed, tiger. You look like hell." she said quietly from the doorway.

"Trust me, I feel far worse." Ray mumbled, rubbing his temples distractedly. With a sigh, he heaved himself upright.

"Oh yeah, and Kai apparently had a bad night last night." Ray raised an inquiring eyebrow in his wife's direction. "He happened to be moaning at a pitch that I couldn't very well ignore." Mariah informed him sarcastically. "He then proceeded to wake up, choke for a good half a minute, accuse me of pitying him - " She made a scornful sound, "-then crawled into bed and ordered me out of the room!" She finished on a note of utter outrage, her eyes wide and fierce.

"How dare he." Ray said mildly. "Now, calm down and go play with the girls." Grumbling about a house full of domineering, bossy men, Mariah disappeared into the lounge.


Kai wearily opened his eyes. Rubbing them weakly, he toyed with the pleasant idea of staying in bed for a while longer. His stomach grumbled at him disapprovingly. Cursing softly under his breath, he sat up, then swung his legs over the side of the bed and got up slowly. Fighting dizziness, he swore again at the creased state of his clothes. He rummaged through his bag and pulled out a clean dark blue shirt and underwear, and a pair of threadbare black jeans. Dressing quickly, he turned the collar up to hide his disfigurement and checked that the sleeves were rolled down. The action was automatic, he barely even registered that he was doing it.

Dragging a brush through his tangled hair, he sat down on the bed. Slowly, reaching under his pillow, he pulled out a thick silver chain, with a small, gold-inlaid box hanging on it. He gazed at it tenderly, lost in a swirling, confused blur of recollections that poured through him like water through his hands. A sudden noise jerked him back to the present. Eyes wary, he fastened on the necklace, checking that it was hidden. Inside the box was a small fragment of his bit-chip, his only physical link to his beloved bit-beast that remained. He still had his memories, but he didn't trust his unstable mind to bring up the right ones anymore.

He had fought so many people to be allowed to keep this. Muggers and grubby street urchins with his fists, psychiatrists and psychologists with stumbling, inadequate words, struggling to describe the bond that held bit-beast and wielder together.

Deeper than friendship or joy, deeper than love and yet somehow all this and more, a bond that reached right down and fastened itself irremovably to your heartstrings. No one had been able to understand him until long after his own heart had been torn in two by the separation, and even then they had only considered the fragment a nostalgic item, nothing more.

Why didn't they understand…why hadn't they given her back to him?

Stopping a sob that wanted to emerge, he kissed the little box gently, then slipped it back under his shirt. He buried his face in his hands for a moment then, composed again, stood up and went to ask Ray if he could borrow a razor. God only knew what had happened to his. That's what you get for living on the streets…he admonished himself.


"Hey, Ray?" he called softly, poking his head round the door.

"Yeah?" Ray mumbled, blinking sleepily, his eyes only half-open as he looked at Kai.

"Have you got a spare razor I could use?"

"Uh-huh…" Ray curled back up in a ball and closed his eyes. "Bathroom cupboard…top shelf…" Kai nodded in thanks and went into the bathroom to have a much-needed shave.

When he came out fifteen minutes later with a small cut on his cheek, Ray was sitting up in bed, staring at him. Kai stopped dead. Damn it, I know that look…

"What is it, Ray?" he said reluctantly. Ray gave him a small smile.

"You know me too well," he said lightly. His face hardened. "Now, don't you think it's about time we talked?" Grudgingly, Kai nodded and sat down on the end of the bed. "Why did you never tell any of us?" He looked up, startled at the pleading tone in Ray's voice.

"I was never friendly enough with Kenny or Daichi to warrant that kind of revelation, Hilary and Tyson would have felt horribly awkward, Max would have been overpoweringly compassionate, and no one knew where you where." Kai recited. He returned Ray's disbelieving glare defiantly. "Anyway," he muttered. "I wasn't in much of a state to remember about you lot at the time."

"Kai, how could you forget about us?" He met Ray's hurt, confused gaze evenly.

"Compared to what was going through my head at the time? Easily."

"When was…did you…it…"

"I got sectioned a year after the third World's." Kai replied curtly, cutting into Ray's discomfited babble. "I got released six years later." Ray fell absolutely silent, his eyes wide with shock. "What? You though that mental institutions taken in short-term cases?" Kai laughed harshly at the thought. "I was one of the ones that was either going to get out within a decade or never get out at all."

"You mean you've only been out of there for a year?" Ray whispered. Kai nodded. He could read the thoughts flashing behind Ray's eyes easily, and they hurt.

"You're wondering why you let me in." he said quietly. "You're thinking about the safety of your wife and daughters in the same house as a confirmed madman. You're wondering whether to ask me to leave."

"No, I-" Kai stood up, every inch the icy-cold, perfectly in control boy of his teens.

"Save it, Ray." His voice was quiet, a little pitying. "I understand. It's natural that you're protective of your family. I can't expect to just come into your life and receive preferential treatment." Anger boiled up inside him. "Just a little tolerance would be nice. A bit of belief in me." He strode out, his venomous, resentful words still echoing in the silent room.


Frostily calm, he pushed at an old wooden door.

"Let me in, Ling." he muttered in Mandarin, his voice low and tight . "Right now." There was a scrabbling on the other side of the door, and it slowly swung open. A slightly bewildered man stared at him.

"Whoa, what's got you so riled up?" he asked breezily. Kai shrugged stiffly and pushed past him, sinking down onto a stool in the middle of the floor.

"Mind if I have a little stress-beating incident?" he asked, picking up a microphone and winding the cord round his hand thoughtfully.

"You look like you need it." was Ling's non-committal response. "The usual?" Kai nodded. Taking his necklace out of his shirt, he unclasped it and held it lightly in his palm as he sang softly along to the soundtrack. The tension slowly drained out of him, leaving a worn-out, discontented shell behind. His mind slipped again, and he was gone, floating in an empty void.

Why had he been so stupid as to think Ray would understand? He had been right all along…he was alone…no one could understand. He was, as he had always been, alone.


That's all for now! I've reached aslight block, butI should have the next chapter up...as soon as I've written it!

Just out of interest, I went onto the Internet and looked up OCness (that's obsessive-compulsiveness) and paranoia, and it completely freaked me out! Here's what I found:

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

People with this disorder are overly focused on orderliness and perfection. Their need to do everything "right" often interferes with their productivity. They tend to get caught up in the details and miss the bigger picture. They set unreasonably high standards for themselves and others, and tend to be very critical of others when they do not live up to these high standards. They avoid working in teams, believing others to be too careless or incompetent. They avoid making decisions because they fear making mistakes and are rarely generous with their time or money. They often have difficulty expressing emotion.

Paranoia

Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a distrust of others and a constant suspicion that people around you have sinister motives. People with this disorder tend to have excessive trust in their own knowledge and abilities and usually avoid close relationships with others. They search for hidden meanings in everything and read hostile intentions into the actions of others. They are quick to challenge the loyalties of friends and loved ones and often appear cold and distant to others. They usually shift blame to others and tend to carry long grudges.

Childhood influences
What happens to us in childhood may play a part. If a child is brought up to believe that the world is a very unsafe place and that people are horrible, this may mould their personality in a paranoid direction. Self-esteem, or lack of it, is also important.

I mean, HELLO? Does that not SCREAM Kai at you? Anyway, please review! Reviews make me so very happy!