Trust;
how much are you willing to give up for love?

"I'll wait for you.

"Even if you never come…

"I'll still be there for you.

"I love you."

It seems like an eternity since you said those words, but you are still holding true to them. And damn you for it.

You're outside, standing in the rain. The water is drenching you, your hair is plastered to your face and your figure is barely visible through the torrential downpour. But you stand there like you had said those words a few days ago, not a few years ago.

I ask you the question and you blink in amazement.

"You want me to operate on your wife," he says flatly. "You want me to save her life."

I nod. "You know my father's research just as well as I do. Better, even," I reply. "You're the doctor, not me. I can't ask anybody else to do this."

"Do you trust me to do what is morally right, Kazune?" he asks wryly.

I turn away from him. "Trust has nothing to do with it. I don't have another option."

He looks at me with his different-colored eyes. "I don't want you to ask me to do this if you don't trust me to do what is right," he tells me firmly.

I stare him in the eyes, matching two identical cerulean blue eyes together, and a mismatch of blue and regal violet. "The interest I had in my father's research was minimal, only what I needed to protect Himeka," I inform him. "You…you were into that kind of thing. In that perspective, then I suppose you were more of his son than I…It said in his notebook that Karin's body would probably eventually break down after her span as a goddess, probably five to ten years after she turned twenty and lost her ability to kamika. He made half a cure, but…"

"You want me to finish the cure," he finishes simply.

"Yes. I trust you…and if I can't trust you, then I don't know who to turn to."

You turn, your damp hair still sticking to your face. "I'll see what I can do."

I know this to mean that we have a deal, and if I know you, then you will probably succeed.

Karin's body deteriorates quickly, but you work even more so. In two blessedly short, uneventful weeks, you have come up with a hopeful cure.

The surgery is quick. It only takes an hour, and then both of you are back, looking peaceful (and in your case, relieved).

"It went well," you inform me simply. "Although this is the first cure that I came up with, if my research of Professor Kujyou's papers is correct it should work." You continue with more medical, scientific things. I couldn't care less as long as Karin is safe. For all I know you could be saying, "Guess what Kazune, I'm going to sneak into your house and kill you all. Of course, I'll rape you first because you're special like that. Oh, but I'll merely kidnap Suzune and raise him as my own" and I wouldn't be paying attention.

"I don't understand how you can do it—did it," I say numbly, my emotions obviously getting the better of me, as those words weren't supposed to be said.

You push back a few strands of hair and turn around. "That's okay," you reply. "You love Karin. You shouldn't understand."

Karin dies a year later. Your cure worked perfectly…but nobody expected that she had cancer, but she did, and she's dead.

You are at the funeral. It is raining.

I am suddenly reminded of how you gave me another year with her, only to have her die now.

After all is said and done, you walk over to me. "I'm…so, so sorry," he says, biting his lip anxiously, as if he expects me to lash out at him. Personally, I can't blame him for making that assumption. Suzune is holding my hand, tears mingling with the raindrops (he's too young for his mother to die, much too young…then again, I was younger when my father died).

"I'm grateful," I mutter, "that you did what you…did, and for coming back too." I hesitate. "But I didn't think you'd save her just to have this happen."

You look at me for a few seconds and tell me, "I told you that I would still be there for you…and you came."

He walks away and I'm not sure whether I should follow or not, but Suzune keeps me anchored firmly to the memories of Karin, still fresh in my mind, but somehow I know that you never wanted me to follow.

Ending Notes: Mm, I leave it to you to make your own implications, but I know my interpretation. I don't own, and I'll be seeing you in another story soon, hm?