CHAPTER FOUR
Let's Die Together

The Moon Child, more indolently dreams to-night than a fair woman on her couch at rest, caressing, with a hand distraught and light, before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. Upon her silken avalanche of down, dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh.

She watches the white visions past her flown, which rise like blossoms to the azure sky. And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, some pious poet, enemy of sleep,

Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow whence gleams of iris and of opal start, and hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.

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"Why would you want to kill yourself?"

She'd started humming some time ago, a low soft tune that would have been pretty but for the pauses she placed in it at inopportune places. Her fingers tangled in the ponytail that hung over her shoulder and her gaze studied the shadows that bunched on the edges of the sidewalk all around them.

It was things like this that made her feel like a wraith. Like a singing ghost that no one could touch. Why should she want to kill herself?

"Why not? Have you ever died Sohma Yuki? It must be a feeling like no other. The one thing that someone could teach me. Humans are just atoms and protein you know. And when we die that's what our body becomes again. The dirt and rock beneath our feet are made of millions and millions of human corpses, all turned to earth again. That's what'll happen to us, but…"

"But?"

"But I wonder what happens to out mind. Those patterns and waves that make us, us. I wonder if that's in the rock and dirt too."

She nearly bumped into him when he stopped walking. His back was ridged and he radiated anger in an almost tangible manner.

"So that's it? You'll play with death like an experiment. There are people who die everyday when they don't want to and you can be so flippant about living?"

How dare he? How dare he be able to make her so angry. To make her more resentful when she thought she was already as bitter as it was possible to get. What did he know? What could this perfect boy understand about anything? She hated his perfection, because it wasn't an illusion like hers. If she were to press against his goodness her hand wouldn't pass through it.

"Don't speak to me like an adult. Or do you want to try it to? How about it?" She smiled invitingly, impossibly pale eyes gleaming star fire against the backdrop of night. "Want to try to fix me, Sohma Yuki? Do you want to solve my problems and make me into a happy young girl? Want to try and show me how wonderful life is and why living is worth it? Then you can show the world how you reformed the wicked Miss Amatsuka. I'm sure that'll reflect well on your perfect reputation." She tugged at her ponytail thoughtfully. "I always got bored with previous attempts but maybe yours will be entertaining, for a while. So?"

He was chilled. The feeling raced through everything he was. Her words sounded uncaring and indifferent but there was so much behind him that he couldn't even guess at. A feeling that kept just a step ahead of his power to name. He frowned, a half lidded expression, and a shrug.

"If you're not interested in life I'm not going to try and show you."

"Poor sport." She stared at the truck that moved down the block, its headlights shining, silver length gleaming like a prince's blade. "Or maybe you can't. Maybe you just cling to life because you're afraid of dying."

"No."

"Let's do it then, together." She stepped forward softly, hands going out. "Let's try dying, together."

She just wanted to scare him really. She hadn't had any real intention of killing him or herself just then. All she wanted was to see that Adonis mask fall away for just a moment. She had angled herself based on his perceived weight and perhaps because he had never expected her to do such a thing, he didn't move in time. Her chest pressed against his back, her weight against his form and her arms moving to tangle about his waist like a restraint. And then he wasn't there, and she was grasping air as she fell, tumbling up short and only landing at the edge of the curb. The truck roared pass, deadly close but without brushing her. The wind wiped her hair around her face violently but she didn't even feel the lash of the tawny strands. Instead she was staring at the rodent that squirmed about in Sohma Yuki's clothing.

Yuki had felt his skin puff away into smoke the moment her form came about his. He hadn't ever imagined that Amatsuka would do such a thing. Of all the people he'd met, besides Kyo, she'd been the last he'd suspect of attempting to embrace him. It had been foolish to let his guard down and now he'd no doubt pay the price.

It was odd that he always fell from the same height when he changed. From the same level as where his heart was in his human form. He'd noticed it before and wondered if it was the case that the zodiac form came from the heart in some way. The descent was quick and he landed with his tail at an odd angle so that it sent a brief jolt of pain through his tiny form. He focused on the pain, for it gave him a moment to gather himself before he faced her.

He was waiting for a scream, for flight. Instead she sat on the ground, palms flat against the concrete. Eyes like miniature moons were widened in surprise and her body trembled—with fear or tears? He could tell.

"Impossible. This is impossible."

Perhaps staying was a bad idea. He scrambled over the hills of his clothing intending to escape but she must have recognized his intent for her hand came out and caught him. Her grasp was surprisingly gentle but firm enough that he couldn't wriggle free. The largess of her form and the closeness of his made it so that he couldn't see her face and read her expression as she brought him to her chest and deposited him in her breast pocket, buttoning it closed. He fought, scratched against cloth and attempt to slip through the space on either side of the bottom but it was to no avail.

She must have stood up, because he had the dizzying rush or rising, like the ascent of a Ferris wheel, rolling back into the corner of the pocket before the ride started to move, a forward, up and down motion that made him feel sick. Where was she taking him? The light that he could see through the space in the seams shifted, dimming slowly till the streetlamps orange glow was no longer visible and only the champagne luminescence of the moon illuminated the shadows.

The roller coaster ended and he felt himself descend again, and then the flip of the pocket was raised and a white hand lifted him out of the darkness and onto the cold concrete of a step. They were away from the main roads, in an apartment complex. Kozue knelt at the foot of a flight of stairs, her hand capturing his tail lightly when he attempted to escape into the bushes about the house.

"You are Sohma Yuki, aren't you? Can you understand me?"

This wasn't good.

The thought drifted through him mind an instant before his fur puffed away as his skin had. The word shrank as he regained his proper form and the night wind chilled human flesh, raising goosebumps over his arm and abdomen.

Why me.

The cold reminded him he was naked and not alone and he flushed bright crimson, glancing at Kozue. She was turned away, one arm extending his clothes and her back trembling the way it had on the streets however far back from where they'd been.

"You don't have to be afraid." He took his uniform from her hair with polite speed.

"Afraid?" Her voice was cracked and it split into peals of laughter like the ringing of bells, one hand clasped over her mouth to stifle the sound. "Oh, you were a mouse!"

Yuki's head snapped up from fixing his tie in shock and he stared at her. The sound had mirth in it, no doubt, but there was also a venomous undertone that made him nervous.

"Your reaction is not usual."

"Maybe." She rose unsteadily to her feet, trying with some victory to control her hilarity. "But so are you. So Prince Yuki becomes a mouse when…you're afraid? Angry?"

"When I'm embraced by a female." He answered without thinking. She'd knocked him off guard again.

"Ah." Amusement lit her eyes. "Like a reversal of the Frog Prince. How funny!" She clapped her hands together. "Why?"

He said nothing. After all he'd already given away too much. He'd almost given away everything. There was no reason to tell her about the Zodiac and the entire Sohma family.

"Won't tell? That's alright. If doesn't matter anyway." She lifted her hands to her hair and removed the ribbon that confined it so that the copper waves slipped free to tumble around her face and shoulders in rampancy. "The real matter is, how are you going to keep me from telling everyone."

Yuki gave her a dark look. He had harbored a thought that she would turn to such a thing but it hadn't been a solid belief until then. "Have you always been cruel?"

"From the moment I was born. Have you always been a rat?"

"Yes."

"I suppose we're both just products of our genetics then."

"This isn't something you can do. Your memory will be erased and even I won't have a say in that."

She smiled, unaffected. "I supposed there was something like that." She laughed at his surprised expression. "You know I'm clever. What are the chances that there's never been an incident like this one in your life? There had to have been some means of preventing it from getting out. It was either murder or more impossible things. But I can get around both."

"What do you mean?"

"How many people do you think I can tell before you manage to erase my memory? You would have done it by now if it was as simple as that. In the next hour I could find a dozen ways to tell the entire city about you. I wonder, could you erase the memories of that many people? Could you wipe the minds of all of Japan? My mother is the head of an innovative laboratory that's constantly making discoveries. All I have to do is make a false announcement about a new find and I could have the media at my fingertips in the blink of an eye. I could make a recording of myself before you erase my memory and hide it somewhere I'd trip over it later to remind myself again and again what you are and what was done to me. Are you sure you could find the tape before I did? I promise I wouldn't be so nice afterwards."

He had gone deadly still. It was true, other had found out but in their confusion and disbelief it had been simple thing to erase what they knew in a blink, even when Yuki had fought against it. But this girl; she was calm and analytical and that made her more powerful then anyone who had found out before. And he had more to loose then just his own secret. For now she knew nothing about the rest of his family.

There was the chance that he could keep it that way.

"What do you want?"

Her smile was the tilt of a crescent moon.