Well, here I am again! Sorry about the long wait, writer's block was horrendus! Thank you to everyone who's reading this!

Enjoy!


Kai rubbed his forehead restlessly, the dull thump throbbing through his whole body depressingly familiar. That, fatigue, and the constant feeling of nausea was the price he had paid for recovering, for the inhuman amount of drugs that had been poured into his system for the past month and a half. There had been times when he had seen from the nurses' faces that they weren't expecting him to survive the night, especially when he had an allergic reaction to the penicillin. Intubation had been a frighteningly vivid possibility. Dying had also been on the cards. But he had clung on despite everything. That was what he did, he reminded himself with a thin smile, he surpassed people's expectations, pushed through the wall of reality and came out the other side to point at them derisively.

Flinging the covers off, he slowly got out of bed. His head gave an extra painful throb as he attained verticality, but he ignored it and walked over to the window, staring out pensively. The rain pouring down matched his mood perfectly.

He had lost half a stone in the past ten weeks, a dangerous amount of weight considering how thin he had been to start with, and had been forcing extra food down in order to try and gain weight again. Hospital food wasn't a patch on Ray and Mariah's cooking, though. He had discovered the joy of eating again the first time that they brought him a homemade meal, an experience that he had thought would never happen to him again.

They had also brought him clothes. Very important. Hospital gowns were demeaning, ridiculous, and showed his neck. Absentmindedly, he tugged at the collar of his short-sleeved shirt, the first one that he had dared to wear in six years. The mauve lines that criss-crossed both wrists could be covered up with powder or foundation if he was feeling uncomfortable, but as everyone who came in to see him had seen them all before, he had decided just to try and put them out of his mind. Ha, out of his mind. Ironic. His lips twitched into a bleak, sarcastic smile. Damn right he was out of his mind. Who would want to be stuck in there?

His left hand found his necklace and he gripped it tightly, the edges of the box cutting into his palm. The sharp pain jolted him back into reality again, and he blinked a few times. Suddenly, something pink fastened itself round his leg with a shriek of delight. Bewildered and fighting the instinctive urge to lash out, he looked down to see Rosa's heart-shaped brown face beaming up at him. Smiling - the expression felt strange and unused - he bent down and let the five year-old fling her arms around him and squeeze as tight as she possibly could. Coughing, he eased her away a fraction, giving her a reassuring smile in response to her look of confusion.

"Be gentle, Rosie!" Mariah scolded from the doorway. Rosa rolled her eyes in an unmistakably Kai-like way. Kai let out a swift bark of laughter and stood up, lifting Rosa and putting her on the windowsill. She grinned happily and swung her legs playfully at him.

"Hi, Kai!" she yelled joyfully. Kai winced inwardly as his headache increased.

"Hello, Rose." he replied, smiling a little. Rosa grinned back, then started tracing a raindrop down the window with a look of intense concentration.

"Your hand's bleeding." Kai blinked and looked at the older female.

"Is it?" He distractedly wiped his cut palm on his jeans. Mariah stepped further into the room. "Where's Ray and Lyn?" he asked suddenly.

"Oh, we're not good enough for you, are we?" Mariah demanded, a smile pulling at her lips despite her best efforts. Kai shrugged. Mariah sobered up slightly and cast a quick look over to where her youngest daughter was humming happily to herself. "Dog scare." she whispered.

"Yeah, Daddy and Lynnie got scared by a dog," Rosa informed them from her window seat. "I'm not stupid, Mummy!" Mariah looked flustered. Kai laughed softly, and received a heated glare for his mirth. "And they had to lie down, and Lynnie was crying and Daddy was all yucky and white." Rosa pulled a face and pouted unhappily. "I don't know why they were so scared, either! Mummy wasn't!" She gazed trustingly up at her mother. "Were you, Mummy?" Mariah smiled reassuringly.

"Of course not, sweetie." Rosa grinned and went back to staring out of the window. Kai looked at Mariah and raised an eyebrow. Mariah mouthed "I was!" nodding vigorously. "It was quite a big dog, though, wasn't it, darling?" she said carefully. Rosa shrugged.

"Yeah, I s'pose." Kai bit back laughter at the little girl's careless reply.She jumped down from the windowsill and went over to Mariah, holding her arms up in a silent plea for a hug. Grumbling good-naturedly, Mariah bent down and hoisted the child up.

"You're getting too heavy, Rosie!" she complained. Shifting her daughter to a more comfortable position, she stared at Kai, who summoned up all his remaining strength and glared back. Mariah narrowed her eyes calculatingly, nodding in grim satisfaction when Kai dropped his gaze. "How are you holding up, Kai?" she asked quietly.

"Fine. Who said I wasn't?" he snapped.

"Your face." Mariah replied, matching his sharp tone with her own.

"Faces can be misleading."

"I'm sure they can, but yours isn't!" Kai muttered a curse in Russian and turned away as he began coughing. He stopped, breathing raggedly. Nausea swelled in his stomach, hot bile burned in his throat and it took everything he had to stop himself retching.

"Kai? You okay?" Rosa asked anxiously, her large golden eyes fixed on the tall, gaunt figure. Kai nodded, not trusting his voice yet.

"Like hell you are!" he heard Mariah mutter angrily under her breath. Seconds later, he felt a soft, warm hand on his forehead. "Kai, go to bed," Mariah ordered. "Right now."

"I'm not a kid, Mariah!" Kai protested.

"Am I supposed to care? You'll do what I say, right now!"

"What if I don't?" Kai inquired, smirking through the pain in his stomach and head. To his shock, Mariah didn't come back with a snappy retort. Instead, she put both arms around him and held him tightly. He squirmed uncomfortably, but she ignored him.

"When will you learn?" she asked in an exasperated whisper. "It's not a crime to feel ill, Kai."

"I don't," Kai had one, last try. "It's just a headache, and I feel sick, that's all." Brushing aside his feeble protests, Mariah physically pushed him back into his bed. Grumbling audibly - but secretly glad to feel the soft pillow under his head - Kai rolled over to face the wall. He closed his eyes and was asleep in seconds.


Kai yawned as he headed towards the toilets, coming out into a ward and contemplating covering his ears at the sudden increase of noise.

Why did they have to put the toilets straight through the paediatric ward? he groaned silently. Suddenly, the sound of running footsteps reached him. Oh…sh-

"KAI!" The delighted shout silenced the constant babble and made children and adults alike look up. Kai nearly overbalanced as two children-coloured streaks wrapped themselves around his legs. What is it with kids and my legs? he complained mentally, remembering Rosa's identical assault on them two days ago. Does everyone under the age of ten cherish a hidden desire to watch me fall over?

"Morning," he said to the ward at large. "It is morning, right?" He addressed his question to the limpets that were attached to his legs. The two girls nodded enthusiastically. "Come on, shrimps, I need to move!" That seemed to be cause for every mobile child in the room to burst out into giggles and mob him.

"Well, now you can't move!" a triumphant eight year-old announced, grinning evilly. Kai looked down at the red-headed boy and then at the eleven other children all clustered around him.

"You think?" He raised an eyebrow. Twenty-four eyes stared at him challengingly.

"Yeah!" one of them yelled, before bursting into a fit of the giggles. Kai shook his head in playful despair.

"Oh, stupid little shrimps…" He sighed. "So, how old am I?" There was a universal silence and wrinkling of foreheads.

"Twenty-five!" came a squeak from somewhere amidst the pile.

"Good, that puts me at about two decades older than most of you annoying little brats down there. Ow!" He glared down at a tiny boy who had promptly sunk his teeth into Kai's leg.

"Me not brat!" the boy declared. Kai glared at him silently. It wasn't the full-on, arctic glare that had reduced people worldwide to cringing tears, he would rather be humiliated a thousand times over than use that on anyone under the age of sixteen, but still enough to make the boy back away very slowly.

"You're whatever I want to call you." he said dismissively. He returned his attention to the fact that he was immobilised. "Now then, I'm older than you, stronger than you and taller than you, so you all have exactly ten seconds to move before I start using physical force. One, two, three four, five, six, seven, eight, nine..." Children ran, screaming delightedly, to the four corners of the room a split second before he said "Ten." Smirking in a satisfied way, Kai walked quickly through the ward.

Entering the large room again on his way back, he noticed a boy of approximately twelve years staring at him belligerently. Intrigued despite himself, he walked over.

"Am I that interesting?" he asked challengingly.

"Yeah, you wish!" the boy shot back. "You anorexic or summing? You look like a scarecrow!" He laughed at his own joke. Kai remained silent, folding his arms across his chest and settling against the wall. "What, you need the wall to hold you up now?" Kai rolled his eyes.

"I'm not in the mood to be insulted by some puny little worm who thinks that verbally abusing people is clever, just so that you know." he said coldly. The boy shrugged.

"Not my problem." Kai could feel his temper, never very far from the surface nowadays, rising slowly, like a massive shark emerging from the depths. Turning away with an annoyed sigh, he began to walk back to his room. "Everyone said the great Kai Hiwatari went mad," the boy called after him. "Never thought I'd see it for myself."

Kai stopped dead. Shock whirled through his mind as he stared blindly at the wall. How did he know, how could he know? He would have only just started school when…it had happened. Impossible. he thought dazedly.

"Pity you quit blading. But then, Dranzer was never really all that powerful, was she? More like a parrot, all show and no substance."

Before Kai knew what he was doing, he found himself back by the boy's bed, one hand flat on the bed either side of the boy's chest, his face bare inches away from eyes that were slowly losing their cocky gleam. Fury unlike anything he had ever felt thrummed through him and he found himself wishing for Dranzer back, just to share this wonderful new source of power with her. Blood started pounding through his head.

The entire ward was silent. Tension hung so thickly in the air it could almost be heard, a faint, high keen on the edge of hearing. Kai stared into the terrified boy's eyes, fighting the urge to rip him to shreds. Finally, he found his tongue. Rage slowed his speech, made him stumble and search for the correct words.

"When you can…cope with part of your heart being…ripped out of your chest, with knowing that the one thing that you…love and treasure above anything else in the world is gone…then, then, you can say that to me." Tears stung his eyes. Every muscle in his body was rock-hard, his biceps standing out like ropes against his pale skin. The boy made as if to say something, but Kai cut him off with a threatening movement. "You talk to me again, you so much as look at me again, and I'm going to make you regret it for the rest of your miserable life. Got that?"

"Y-Yes…" The boy looked as though he was debating crying. Turning away with a violent, jerky movement, Kai walked as fast as his legs would go towards his room.

Inside the security of the room, he paced from end to end. Fury flowed like lead through his veins, making everything feel heavy and slow. There was a horrible, tight feeling in his chest that had nothing to do with either pneumonia or bronchitis. His hands were clenched into tight, shaking fists, rapid, violent tremors that shuddered up his arms until his head rang and buzzed and felt as though it was being squeezed in a vice. Dranzer…oh, Dranzer… Coughs exploded like gunfire from his mouth, his raw throat, and threw him to his knees.

Breathing heavily, he slowly stood and surveyed his room with something close to loathing. It was too small, too sterile. Too familiar, and not in a good way.

"I want out of here." he murmured. The notion flashed through his mind to simply walk out, leave this dreadful place behind him. His eyes lit up as he considered it, considered walking through the door and going home. He took a step towards the door, then stopped, his new-found enthusiasm draining away as if someone had just pulled the plug out. He couldn't…he wouldn't dare. Not after what had just happened; the mother of that boy was probably working up to confront him, and so she should. He had made so many mistakes in his life, run from so much and hidden it behind a mask of cold indifference. No more. He didn't have the energy or the control to make another mask. "I can't hide anymore," he whispered. "I know what I am. Maybe it's time everyone else did as well." A bitter smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth. "Time Ray knew what he got away from."

A few minutes later, he sat cross-legged on his bed, fingering an old friend, back from his mental institute days. A toothbrush, the end of it bitten and picked at until it was nothing more than a sharp, bloodstained point. A point that had criss-crossed his wrists and plunged into his chest until he had a big enough hole for his hand to reach in and break off the rib. His neck…now, that had been different.

Those bloodstains belonged to his beautiful beyblade. His Dranzer. The magnificent phoenix had tasted his blood, swam in it as rivers of crimson poured from slashed veins.

Idly, he turned the object in his thin fingers. He wouldn't use it; of course not. It was just good to know that all the options were still there, that was all. Still available.

There came a knock at the door. Kai's lips moved to form the words "Come in," but no sound came out. The door opened, even the slight creak sounding cautious.

"Kai, what are you doing?" Slowly, Kai moved his aching head to gaze up at Ray's shocked, fearful face.

"Keeping my options open." he replied. Concern replaced horror in Ray's handsome face, and he sat down next to Kai. A tentative arm slid around his shoulders. Kai smiled almost lazily and twirled the toothbrush round and round in his hand. "Could I do it again?" he asked himself, talking to himself. A sign of madness: a little late in coming, wasn't it? "Yes." The answer was firm, sure. Ray, his face unusually pale, asked the inevitable next question.

"Would you?" Kai let the silence stretch out, feeling Ray's arm around him getting progressively tenser. Turning, he met the frightened, uncertain eyes of his one-time lover. Ray stared back, somehow projecting a calm, reassuring aura even through the turmoil he was clearly going through. Kai smiled again and shook his head slowly.

"Would I?" he asked softly. He threw the bloodstained stick up in the air and caught it deftly, placing the point against his wrist, on top of the blue-green vein. "No. Never again." A smile spread across Ray's face, transforming it utterly and he put his arms around Kai in a warm embrace. Kai closed his eyes and allowed his head to drop onto Ray's shoulder in the same way Mariah did, the same way that Lynette and Rosa did. Silently, he slid the toothbrush into his pocket, intending to dispose of it later. "Ray?" he whispered, unconsciously fiddling with the soft, silky waves of Ray's hair in a habit that hadn't been forgotten in eight years.

"What?" Ray asked.

"I messed up, Ray." His breath caught in his throat, and it wasn't a cough. "I really messed up." Ray stayed silent, which was good. Right now, he couldn't cope with an interruption "I nearly hit a boy today. A kid. Threatened him." Ray shifted positions slightly, the movement a silent question that Kai understood instantly as Why? "He insulted Dranzer. I can't even remember what he said anymore. But I was so…angry. It felt like boiling alive, and the only thing that would make me simmer down was seeing that boy screaming. If we had been alone, I would probably have killed him." He heard Ray gasp.

"Don't say that, Kai!" Kai laughed, or tried to; the sound that erupted from his mouth was harsh and grating, bubbling with self-hatred.

"It's all true, promise. I thought about leaving, you know. Just walking out, there and then I'm recovered now, anyway, they're just keeping me in to mess around with my dosages. I hate it in here." A long, shuddering sigh juddered from his ever-painful throat. "Everyone's scared of me because I'm gay and on anti-psychotic drugs. Nurses, doctors, other patients…you name it. The only people who actually meet my eyes are in the paediatric ward, and that's because the kids in there have some kind of fascination with me. Now I've destroyed even that, no-one's going to let me out of this damn room without a bloody escort to make sure I don't go psycho again!"

He felt strange. Shaky, light-headed, nausea whirled around in his stomach. It was because he wasn't in full control of himself that he said what he said just then. The second the words had left his lips, he wanted to curl up and die. He was a coward. A pathetic hypocrite who couldn't even stick to his word for more thana few mintues.

But it was out now. No going back. No recovering his pride; what was left of that pathetic vestige of a former life. What did he have to be proud about nowadays? An image of the discarded toothbrush swam into his mind and he cringed.

"Ray? Get me out of here." His voice cracked. "Please."


Nobody moved. Three pairs of golden eyes stared, stretched wide in astonishment. Kai let his own amethyst eyes travel over them and gave them a tired smile. Ray's hand rested reassuringly on his back, invisible to the others.

"Can I come in?" he demanded, making an effort to sound brusque as normal. Two small bodies thumped into him, nearly sending him flying. Straight at my legs again, what is it about me and children? he wondered as he reached down ruffle the two soft mops of hair.

Mariah stared at Kai. Out of the hospital, he looked even thinner, his bones visible beneath white, papery skin, dark, bruise-like shadows under his eyes showing his tiredness. Her daughters were hugging him as though they hadn't seen him at least once a week, and Lynette was crying silently. Behind him stood her husband, the love of her life, his beautiful eyes pleading with her. Yet, he stayed silent, knowing that this was not his battle to fight.

Inexplicably, the familiar, decade-old memory surged up in her so powerfully that she winced and fought back tears. Galux… her thirteen year-old self wailed. Swallowing, she blinked away a few tears.

"I'm sorry, Mariah." She jerked her head up where it had drooped, glaring fiercely at the gaunt man who stood in front of her. She didn't need his pity, and he didn't need hers, that was the deal! Her children gazed up at her, wide-eyed, bewildered as to why she hadn't let everyone inside yet.

"Why did you come back?" she demanded, forcing herself to speak pitilessly, harshly. Kai shrugged one shoulder, a faint smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth.

"I like it better here." he answered simply. Lynette turned a tearstained face upwards.

"Why?" she asked curiously.

"Nobody liked me in there." Kai explained with a dry, sardonic smirk.

"What makes you think we like you in here?" Mariah demanded. Part of her wondered what she was doing, but the rest of her was spitting with sudden anger, with maternal protectiveness, with the knowledge that this was her last stand before she gave in and let him back into her house for good. Kai raised an eyebrow speculatively.

"Well, they like me," He gestured to the girls, who both nodded furiously. "He's never stopped liking me. I don't deserve it but hey, I'm not complaining." Ray rolled his eyes and punched Kai lightly on the arm. Mariah felt her resolve tremble as Kai fixed his intense gaze on her and her alone. This was the Kai she knew and remembered. In total control of everything, manipulating people and events to suit him. "So, what about you?" Kai asked indifferently.

Mariah felt as though the floor was crumbling away from underneath her. A sudden, vicious desire for revenge welled up inside her, but at that second, Kai swayed slightly, his eyes losing their focus. In that second, he dropped all his barriers and she saw what was lurking under the weary, yet confident façade.

An exhausted, frightened little boy peered up at her from the depths of those shadowed eyes, too proud to throw himself at her feet and beg for security, for the knowledge that he was loved at last. Mariah's resolve broke in two. Shrugging, she moved aside, leaving the doorway clear.

"Get in, then." she snapped. "You didn't come all this way to stare, did you?" Without a word, Kai walked past her, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. Rosa and Lynette hurried after him, chattering excitedly. She turned to face Ray, who covered the distance between them in one stride and pulled her into an embrace. They kissed deeply. Mariah drew back and nuzzled into Ray's chest with a soft sigh. "I better not have made a mistake." she grumbled. Ray laughed and kissed her again.

"We'll see, shall we?" he asked, stroking her head lovingly. "Right now, let's go inside. I'm starving."

"And that affects me how?"

"Mariah…" Ray complained.

"Shut up. You sound like Rosie." Sliding an arm around her waist, Ray physically dragged her indoors.

"Food, please." he said politely but with that look in his eyes that she could never turn down. Sighing, she headed for the kitchen.

"Girls! Kai! I'm making food for the walking stomach here, want some?" Muttering joking curses under her breath as the orders came in, she turned on the cooker.

"Family life…what a joy…"


All opinions welcome! This is the penultimate (second-to-last) chapter, just so you all know. I would type more here, and I did, but stupid fanfiction wouldn't let me save it! (is furious)

I might split the last chapter up, have bits of it centered on all five of them in turn...(starts thinking)

Okay, please, please review!