A.N: Annnnnnnnnnd, here's the next chapter. ^.^; Sorry about the long wait, you guys, but between the harshness of this story and a small bout of illness (damn it, what the hell is wrong with my health?!), it was hard to write. Kit-chan said it was good, but my sicky-goggles may still be clouding my faith in my writing skills.

So... I've been hearing these pleas for a happy ending. Uh... I think I'm just going to keep downing my Tylenol PM and drinking my Snapple and hope for the best.

Many thank-you's and great hurrah's to Kitsune55 for beta-ing for me! I think I'm gonna go beddie-bye now...

Title: All the Rest

Chapter Two: Your Story

Raito felt his heart drop to his feet as his book-bag dropped down from his shoulders, ear pressed closely to the hospital door slightly opened beside him.

"… … You heard me, doctor."

No.

No.

No.

No.

No…

Nononononononononono…

Tell me I didn't just hear that, Lawliet.

Tell me I didn't just hear you say those words…

Standing outside the slightly open door, the teenage student could swear his heart began to palpitate as the ringing within his ears continued on with no end in sight…

What's going on?

"Are you telling me that you're actually refusing anymore treatments?"

This was…

This was not happening.

'Lawliet…'

"But… but just because you haven't been responding as well as we would have liked, doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue until we reach a definite answer! You may still have a chance!"

A chance.

They still had a chance.

And Lawliet was just throwing it all away?

Why is this happening?

"Of what?"

Raito felt himself slide down the wall as his boyfriend's familiar voice echoed within the room emptily, sounding nothing like the man that had been speaking so tenderly to him just minutes before.

"More chemo? Future bone marrow transplants? Failed recoveries? I think I'm done, sir. I think I've been done for a long time, and we've both known this."

Why are you speaking like this?

Where did your hope go?

A familiar nurse he'd seen a few times before came towards him, but stopped as she heard the conversation inside the hospital room. Looking into Raito's eyes, she somehow knew…

This wasn't something that could be treated as easily as an illness.

How could you be giving up on me like this?

"And your family and… friends?"

I thought we were more than this.

What did I do wrong?

Another nurse blinked, ready to shake the poor brunette out of his shock-induced stupor, but was stopped by the first nurse. Ushering the second aside, the young dark-haired woman sat beside the shell-shocked boy as he felt himself begin to shake.

What did I do wrong?

"What do you plan to tell them?"

The Earth seemed to stand still for the 17-year-old teenager as he listened intently, his raking shivers coming to an immediate stop just as the ringing in his ears ceased. The booming thumps resounding from his chest calmed themselves as hands that weren't Raito's own rested themselves on his right shoulder, the cold hospital wall behind him chilling him to the very core.

'Tell them that you don't mean it, Lawliet. Tell them that you're happy right now, and that you can see yourself getting better. Tell them about all the plans that we've made, and all of the years we still have together. Tell them, Lawliet. Tell them, so that I can believe it too.'

"I'll deal with all that when the time comes."

"You weren't… supposed to just give up like this." Raito whispered as the nurse beside him squeezed his shoulder, giving as much comfort as she could.

"Yagami-san…"

"For now, I think we should speak of other options, doctor…"

After that, Raito knew that staying where he was, was not an option.

The nurse frowned sympathetically as the teenage student struggled with the torrent of feelings (feelings he had always tried to hide away, just so he wouldn't he have to feel them to begin with) overflowing within his chest.

'I can't stay, I can't stay, I can't stay... after all this time...'

So…

How could you forget about me so easily?

Haven't I done enough?

Why can't it ever be enough…?

Why can't I stay?

He ran.

When we first met, it was indeed very awkward.

But not in the way most people would guess.

You were different… and new.

I'd never met anyone like you before; someone so willing to push everyone else's wants away for your own, and not care who was offended by that fact in the least. You were someone who refused to be ignored, and kicked up a fuss whenever you thought you weren't the center of everyone's world, shining brilliantly among all the dulled out glimmers of light that surrounded you without even knowing it. You were my complete opposite in everyway, and even as I pondered just why we seemed to be so magnetized to each other, you didn't seem to care about such trivial matters in the least.

You were Raito, and I was Lawliet, and that was all that really mattered to you, and steadily, that became my way of thinking as well.

Where did those days go, Raito?

I have to admit, it was a peak of interest that first made me want to get to know you, tinged with just a tiny bit of loneliness. Then, as time went on, it evolved into something I can admit felt reminiscent to affection. The years then seemed to take what fondness I held for you and it grew into something… more.

Would most people classify what we have as love? And if so, could this be considered a run-of-the-mill kind of love story? How does a normal love story actually go anyway?

Boy meets girl.

Boy and girl fall in love.

Inexplicable circumstance pull boy and girl apart.

Boy and girl reunite after arduous trial.

Boy and girl live 'happily ever after'.

If that's all true, what does that say about us?

Is our love worth less because it's a bit different than everyone else's?

Whenever I lay awake at night, bored with the mountain of books you always supply me and the infinite hours of painful brain-killing television the hospital has me endure, I wonder these things.

Tell me, Raito…

Do you wonder about these things, too?

"Sometimes… I can't remember a time when you weren't there with me. It's kind of scary, actually." Raito whispered as he stared up at the hotel room's ceiling. Lawliet blinked as he grabbed a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt from their bag, other miscellaneous items hanging off his arms as the jumbled utterance left his partner's lips. "Is that weird?"

Flawless features contorted into a relaxing visage of comfort, glossy locks of sandy gold hanging off the other's tanned forehead in a stylish disarray as the boy laid sprawled out against the bed, looking elegant even whilst doing that. The orange glow of the ceramic lamp just beside him intensified the aura of innocence surrounding the teenager as Raito sighed, closing his pretty eyes as his head lolled to the side.

'No one should have the right to look as perfect as that and still have not gotten laid yet.' The 18-year-old thought to himself humorously.

"Of course not, Raito." The slightly more sloppy of the two scratched his head as he shuffled his feet, dumping down the items within his hands within the chair right next to him before jumping back onto the bed, ignoring the muffled shout sent his direction as Raito grunted out in what seemed to be pain. "There are a lot of weird things about you… but I wouldn't consider your memory to be one of them."

"Gee, thanks." Though the tone of Raito's voice was irritated, a tiny smile rested upon those thin lips Lawliet loved to envision upon his own, sleek gray eyes darkening to a near translucent pewter. "I'm glad to know that I'm so strange. Yay for me."

"If it makes Raito feel better, I am not exactly the most first person in the world to be considered the most stabile in a normality contest, either." Ignoring the boy's pointed glance, Lawliet rolled over on his side and stared at the younger boy with a small smile on his face. "We're… two peas in a pod!"

"Uh…"

"We're a matching set of bra and panties!"

"Lawliet…"

"We're peanut butter and jelly!"

"Lawliet, I think I get it…"

"We're Laverne and Shirley! Lucy and Ethel! George and Wheezy! Felix and Oscar! Romeo and-"

"Lawliet!"

"Yes?" Large gray eyes blinked as Raito sighed in exasperation, fighting the urge to push his boyfriend off the bed within his mind as those laughing orbs betrayed the amusement the older of the two hid behind his perpetually straight face.

"Are you feeling better than before, ass-clown?" A spark of… something flashed behind Lawliet's eyes as Raito felt his eyebrows furrow without realizing. "Hey… are you-"

"I heard you, Raito-kun. I'm just… tired." Rubbing the bridge of his nose, the dark-haired jokester scrunched up his face before rolling off the bed, moving towards his now rumpled clothing as Raito sat up and leaned forward, his concern dripping off his face. "Maybe a little bit of a headache. Nothing too bad."

"Are you hungry?"

"… … … Not really." Lawliet waved off the other's unease as he made his way to the bathroom, the agitation at his friend's slightly emotional display bothering him more than usual. "I'll be fine, Raito. Stop being such a mother."

Letting the insult slide, Raito sighed as the other teenager ignored him once more.

"Lawliet?" The pretty brunette whispered, trying once more to simply get Lawliet to listen.

The pale-skinned teen paused a second after, hand on the bathroom doorknob as Raito gave him a radiant smile, his face glowing as brilliantly as any star in the open night sky. Lawliet felt his breath get stolen away, never sure how to take in the other boy's beauty all at once.

"You know, when I said that there are times when I can't remember you being there…" Raito dropped back onto the bed as Lawliet tilted his head to the side, his milky white digits clenching against the stainless steel of the knob he was leaning against. "Sometimes… I'm glad I don't have to."

"Raito, please just, calm down." Sachiko whispered as her son laid his head down on her lap, tears stinging her own eyes as her son broke down before her. "I'm sure he has his reasons for doing what he's doing."

"There's no reason for this." The brunette barely held himself together as his breaths began to force themselves out in fast pants, "No reason at all. None whatsoever."

"There's always a reason. A purpose. A meaning. Whatever sentiment with its own source of inner-justification on Lawliet's part that you think might be insignificant is there." Sachiko laid a hand on top of Raito's head as she smiled sadly. "Just because he hasn't told it to you yet, or you may have not noticed it beforehand, doesn't mean it isn't there."

"But-"

"Raito…"

"He didn't… he wasn't even going to tell me about this." Raito felt his voice break as he clutched at the skirt of his mother's dress. "He wasn't going to. I know he wasn't. And he's just… going to float on by, and act like he didn't say the things he said to that doctor, and he doesn't care that he's going to die. Why would he do this to me? Why?!"

"Sometimes, what a person does for himself, he also thinks he's doing for another." Sachiko felt her son's body shake as the drops of water clinging to her eyes seem to burn all the more. "Maybe he thinks that he's saving you, from either a life of pain or a love that he thinks will take you nowhere. Maybe he sees it as some sort of service to the world. Or maybe he's just taking the coward's way out. The only person who can truly answer your question, son, is Lawliet."

"He just dropped it on the doctor and acted like it was nothing." Raito felt himself break even further as the sob catching in his throat finally escaped, liquid fire burning tracks down his cheeks as the boy finally let himself go after years of staving off the inevitable. "I can't keep doing this. I can't keep fighting… especially if there's nothing left to fight for."

"Do you truly believe that, Raito?"

Silence was Sachiko's only answer as Raito buried himself deeper within his mother's lap, wondering if this was nothing but just another passing daze…

Everyday with you is one more than I always think I'm going to have.

Does that sound sad, or what?

Perhaps it's my own fault for thinking so morbidly, but it's just the way I've learned to adapt, especially having you by my side for so long. You took all the bad away, as clichéd as that sounds, and made everything so much better than it should have been. Before you found out about my illness, you always asked by my propensity to look towards the dark side of life.

It's so easy to slip into the past and just remember why…

"Lawliet, stay here for a moment." The young woman smiled, albeit nervously as she ruffled her son's hair endearingly, the boy feeling so small within the physician's office as the large stuffed animals and colorful pictures hanging from he walls and lumped all over the doctor's desk overwhelmed his sable-colored sights. "The doctor just wants to talk to mommy about something for a second, and then we'll go straight home, ok?"

Nodding to his mother, Lawliet shyly ducked his head under his arms as his physician simply smiled and waved, beckoning the woman outside the hall before giving Lawliet one last bright grin.

Waiting for a solid minute and some seconds, the five-year-old boy jumped off of his seat and ran to the door, his sloppy white tee-shirt falling down one shoulder as the long end of his extremely baggy jeans nearly made him tripp over his own feet.

Pulling an ear over to the small crack of the open door, Lawliet simply listened, his mother's tone even softer than usual.

"... Doctor?"

"I think we need to talk about Lawliet's sudden bouts of illness as of late, ma'am."

"What do you mean?"

"… … There are… some tests that I think might benefit him. His symptoms along with his unusually high white blood count usually mean only one thing."

"Doc-doctor…"

"The only thing I can tell you is the sooner we can get these tests done, the better."

"You can't ignore him forever."

"But I can try."

"And for what? You know it won't amount to anything, Raito."

"Don't care."

"Like you don't care for him?"

"Don't you dare ever say that to me again, Yagami Sayu, because it is quite obvious that you do not know what you're talking about." Raito muttered as he pushed past his little sister, rolling his eyes as she huffed at his 'indecent' exit. "I'm not doing this because I don't care about him, and you know it."

"I know plenty!" The young girl argued, not halting in her rant for even a second. "I know that you're just letting someone you care for kill themselves and you're not do anything about it! I know that you're taking the coward's way out and locking yourself in your room in hopes of not having to deal with your reality! I know that while I'm standing here talking to you, you could be at the hospital right now arguing your way to getting Lawliet the attention he damn deserves and not being such a little-"

"Stop." Raito felt his heart slow as his breaths began to grow shallow, the edges of his vision becoming darker and darker… "You think this is easy for me? I am going against every ingrained part of me, trying to just figure out my next move, trying to put myself together again… don't judge me. I'm just trying to find a way to save him… and myself."

"I…"

"I have to do this my way."

"And your way is killing you, Raito." Sayu finally snapped, tears clinging to her eyelashes as her brother's firm outline seemed to sag, hand positioned over his door just as his head hung down awkwardly against the plying wood of the entrance to his bedroom. "Two weeks of not seeing him, and you're dying right before my very eyes. His decision isn't right; it's not. But what you're doing now is even worse, because you are taking yourself down with him. Raito… I just want my brother back."

"Do you trust me?" Raito glanced over his shoulder as he opened his door, eyes hooded with an emotion Sayu could not name.

"… When have I not?" The girl sighed, feeling the headache pounding against her temples increase in pressure. "But Raito…"

"Just trust me, Sayu. That's all I can really ask."

When my mother first told me I was sick, I wasn't too surprised. The coughing, the fevers, the night-sweats, the fatigue…

That was what being sick was all about, from what I'd been told so many times before.

I just wasn't able to understand what it was she was trying to say to me, and why not? I was only about six-years-old at the time.

I was more than just sick.

Do you know what it's like to have someone you barely know sit you down as a child and tell you you're going to die?

Yeah…

Quite a shock, that is.

But it wasn't his words that really hit me. I was only six, after all, and being told you were going to die was like being told you were going to sleep or you had an appointment you didn't really want to go to, but still had to nonetheless.

It was the look on the oncologist's face that drilled it to me, even more than his soft spoken words and empathetic hand gestures. That panicked undertone lying underneath his taut features, topped only by the cloudy sadness lingering within his dark eyes…

This horrible feeling I couldn't describe crawled under my skin, and lingered for a good two years until I finally was old enough to realize…

I was going to die.

I was going to die.

It was the beginning of the downward spiral that I would forever come to abhor. My mother started crying as soon as we left the doctor's office, and my father held this really pensive look on his face, half sad, the other half just frustrated.

They both couldn't stand to look at me after that appointment.

Or the morning after it.

Or the morning after that.

They stopped tucking me in at night.

They didn't hug me anymore, or wish me a nice day at school.

They barely spoke to me unless it was necessary.

And the fights they had…

It was mind blowing.

I became invisible, and their anger became more palpable to them than I was. It was almost as if one day I was there, the son that had always depended on them, and whom they had always doted on, and the next day…

I was gone.

Slowly, I felt myself begin to change. I would stop wondering why they weren't paying any attention to me, or why my own parents didn't seem to want me anymore. As the years passed on, I began to take it for the opportunity that it was and became all the more introverted, not caring about who was there with me or not. I built the shell necessary for me to operate in the world, trying to hold the breakdown I knew was coming just one more day.

Slowly, I began to wither away.

All I could think of was if this was life… was death really all that bad?

I had been ready to die the day you met me.

And you, with all your bright-eyed innocence and excitable nature, took that away from me.

But you gave me something in return that day.

I still haven't decided if I appreciate it or not.

The sound of streaming of water clashing against the bathroom tiles was beginning to irritate the hell out of Raito.

A good half-hour had past, and Raito was started to get more than just a little bit worried about Lawliet's hygiene…

Either that, or he was having a water fight without him. For some reason, Raito wouldn't put it past Lawliet if he was.

'I know Lawliet's a bit on the… fastidious side, but this is just getting to be ridiculous.'

"Lawliet?" Raito called out, rolling off the bed in an elegant semi-roll. "Law-liet…"

The sound of water was the only response received as Raito frowned to himself, now quite sure something was wrong, even if the gray-eyed boy once again said differently.

"Lawliet…?"

Opening the door, Raito blinked as the steam from the hot water flowed out of the small bathroom and blew into his eyes. After a moment of swatting away the muggy haze, the young boy felt his heart drop onto the ground and shatter.

The shower was completely empty.

The now red and white bathroom floor, however, was not.

"Lawliet!"

"Raito?"

The tired brunette blinked as the familiar feminine voice sang into his ear from his cell phone. Giving his mother a small gesture in return as she waved over at him from the kitchen. Raito gently closed the open door behind him and quietly slipped off his shoes.

"Yes?"

"… … Are you busy?"

"Why?"

"Raito, please."

"Tell me, who's asking. You… or him."

"He hasn't been the same for the past three weeks that you've been gone! He refuses to eat or drink! They've had to put him on a tube just so his body can sustain itself! His health… it's declining even more rapidly than before. He… he misses you, Raito. Please…"

"I don't think I-"

"Raito, if not for him, please, please, do this for me. He's my son."

Leaning against the wall beside him, Raito felt his resolve break in mere seconds.

"If I do this… it won't be without a fight."

Raito could detect a hint of a smile on the older woman's face even through the phone as she spoke her final words of conversation.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Raito."

I don't want it.

Whatever it is that you've given to me…

This thing infecting me even more than this damn cancer.

I want you to take it back.

But I don't think that it's possible at this point.

I can't stand sitting in here, waiting for someone to seal my own fate.

I just want to go home.

What have you done to me, Raito?

Why…

Why did you have to remind me of my own will to live?

"Rai… Raito?" Lawliet whispered as he sat within the white hospital bed, half dazed by the amount of drugs being pumped within him. "Raito, what happen…ed?"

The brunette stared sullenly at a point just to Lawliet's far left, eyes narrowed in mock-concentration. The worried student looked bedraggled, as if he hadn't seen a shower in days, eyes now decorated with bags of their own as an air of sleeplessness hung over the boy's exhausted visage.

"You fainted in the bathroom… and hit your head on the counter when you fell." Raito whispered, his voice dull and rough. "You almost… they said you lost a lot of blood, and the trauma to your head caused a concussion. You wouldn't wake. Three days… you wouldn't wake up. They didn't know if you were going to wake up with brain damage or not."

"I'm al-"

"Don't." The look in Raito's eyes flared up as he began to tremble. "You're not ok, Lawliet. You never were."

The silence in the room was thick and deadly, sweat beginning to pour down the back of the hospital patient's neck as he once again felt faint and heavy.

Raito took in a deep breath before asking the inevitable question.

"Why didn't you tell me that you began going to chemo again?"

Lawliet said nothing, letting the quiet speak for him. Dark gray eyes traced the other's figure as the teenager shook his head before grabbing the coat that was sitting behind him and walking out of the room without another sound.

Why couldn't Raito just understand…?

He had never meant to say a word.

"You came." Lawliet's mother grinned as Raito walked into the hallway, eyes narrowed in thought. "Thank you… so much."

"I don't understand you." The brown-eyed 17-year-old snapped, something reminiscent to tears clouding the edges of his vision as the familiar outline of a bedridden body caught his wandering gaze.

"You never have." Watching Raito battle with his feelings, Lawliet's mother slowly moved to the side so that Raito could have a better look inside her son's room.

Suddenly, the calm atmosphere seemed to tense up between them as Raito felt his control over his emotions slowly slip away…

"I might hurt his feelings."

"I think he might need it."

"What if I tell him that this is it? That I just can't do this anymore and that I'm done."

"At least he'll have a definitive answer."

"Aren't you scared I might pull him over the edge?"

"You probably could…" The older of the two maneuvered around the younger male as she all but pushed Raito into the door he had been staring at. As he floundered into the hospital room, eyes wide with surprise, Lawliet's mother simply grinned. "But I firmly believe you're the only one who can bring him back to us anyway."

Winking at her son, who looked just as shocked as Raito, she closed the door behind her, wondering just who would come out on top.

'Please don't let me down, Raito…'

We'll make it through this…

Do you think that happiness can be measured by instances, Raito?

If so, would our love really have amounted to so much, anyway?

Sometimes… I think I loved you more than I should have.

You're everything a person could want in a lover, so it's easy on my part to see how such a thing could have happened. Still, it doesn't excuse the fact that I may have condemned you to something much worse than death.

There are always going to be things that we want in this world, that we just can't have.

I want more time than what I've been given.

You want a life I can't give you.

Maybe, between the both of us, we just weren't meant to know what happiness really tastes like…

Won't we?