This chapter has so many revelations! I think it will be very startling... Especially in the details. I'm pretty excited to be posting this one, actually! It really has only been several days since the last update, but this isn't exactly a chapter. That is my terribly odd excuse. Ahaha, instead, the truth is that I really felt like writing, and I did want to clarify that I don't need anyone to write my essay. That was actually a joke... Hahaha. But, I am hoping to make this an 18 chapter story in total. Let's just see what happens, then? Tell me how you like it?

Rating: Pg-13. Slash - sensuality - violence - light incest.
Category: Angst/Romance
Pairing: Kyou/Yuki
Length: Interlude/18

Ache
by Lanie Kay-Aleese

Chapter Interlude: Sequences

- - - -

The room had faded around him. Petals, petals, petals.

Reality faded into a linear dream. The dream faded into a memory. A flash of light burst and distorted the shadows of the clotheslines on the wall, and they rose and they fell like waves. Kyou knew this, consciously, that the world and the light had shifted around him. But mostly, he knew the petals and the longer he stared, the less real everything else seemed by comparison. Everything in the entire world but those three, glorious petals no longer mattered and blurred into a hypnotic life without meaning.

And then it became clear:

- - - -

"Kyou-kun, is... is everything all right?"

A fuzzy sequence with sharp edges. Time didn't move correctly from one state to another, but in jolts and clipping shocks of emotion.

Was everything all right? Was everything normal? Kyou clutched at his forehead and suddenly he--

"I'm... I'm fine, Tohru. I just..."

A pause.

"I couldn't keep it down," he said, and she made some sort of choking, worried noise. He watched the shadow of her feet shift from the glowing crack underneath the door and above the bathroom tile. And then her feet tapped away, and then he turned to the toilet seat. One of his arms extended and the elbow bent crookedly to hold him up. Slowly, he bent himself over the throne.

"Not like that," he said, hoarsely. "Don't like that, don't..." And then he stuck his hand down his throat.

And then it became clear.

- - - -

Talking to raddishes. Chastising them with harsh and bitter words.

It would be so easy to mock Yuki for something like that, for speaking with plants, but somehow Kyou couldn't move. Crouched - hidden - exposed- even revenge didn't feel right, anymore. Whatever it had been, whatever caused those strong feelings that couldn't be placed into the regular continuancy of his emotions, it had to do with him and that weird smell. And-

The rat was talking, talking, talking. Until, suddenly, his murmuring voice raised too high, and he rose to his feet and his voice became filled with anger and something deeper.

There was brokenness, to make him scream like that; and even though before, Kyou had been there, somehow so enraptured that he'd been unable to move forward and attack. In spite of this he now couldn't move back to get away. Kyou just stared: enthralled, hypnotized, at the feet that trampled and the hands that flailed and threw and tore everything up, up, and the dirt that spewed forth from all sides and covered him, until it was as if the Prince had become one with the very ground.

And then Kyou realized that his shouts had become sobs, and he had crumpled into the grey, grey earth.

And then it became clear.

- - - -

Kyou was clutching him tightly at the wrists.

"You don't really mean it, do you..?"

"What-"

Yuki was pressed against the ground underneath him. His lips were parted and full... His hair was tousled and fell against the floor. And he was beautiful.

And then it became clear.

- - - -

"How dare you," the woman seethed as she ambled towards him, so smoothly that it was cruel, "Do you really think that you can deny the curse? It's there, and there's nothing to be done."

"It doesn't have to be like that!" he shouted back. Then the woman flashed, and he fell to the ground, just - Just taking the hit, not even trying to care.

A stinging on his cheek, and then, her lowest voice, "Where did you get those books?"

"What does it matter about them? You're already losing us."

A terrible smirk, and he rubbed the side of his face with his hand. She stepped back, and throatily, her voice struggled from deep within, "No. You're lying. They're still... mine. He's still mine, isn't he? You're still mine, aren't you?"

He tossed her a resentful glare. A challenging one. She bent down, and crept to him. Her mouth moved up to his ear, and with a moist and shaking breath, she murmured,

"Cat, I will never let you love him."

And then it became clear.

- - - -

The good witch, Zeniba, at her spinning wheel. She says with a smile:
"Memories are never completely forgotten, even if you don't remember it."

Leave me a review, and I will not forget it.