Natsuki sat in the waiting room of a therapist's office waiting for her first appointment, an appointment made for her by her mother after Yukino called her the night that she fell apart. As much as she wanted to be angry with her mother, after what happened she was expecting it. "Natsuki Kuga." Her name was called by an older woman with sharp lines on her face, brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She stood, pushing herself off the chair with her one unwrapped hand, the other still bound after she broke it, and followed the woman back into the office, her head hung and her shoulders sagged as she shuffled after her.

She stepped into the office and noticed the comfortable smell of oak permeated every facet of the room. The bookcases, chairs, walls and the large desk that dominated the room where all made of the stuff. Behind the desk sat a woman, no more than forty years old and still attractive, her long dark hair was tied behind her in a ponytail, her glasses made her seem more severe than she was. When she spoke it was in an oddly comforting voice. "Ms. Kuga, I'm Dr. Rachel Dreyfus, it's a pleasure to meet you."

Natsuki didn't respond to her, didn't even acknowledge her, Natsuki's eyes never left the ground.

"Ms. Kuga, may I call you Natsuki?" She waited for a response that she wouldn't get. "Natsuki, I understand that someone very important to you has just passed on."

"She's not dead." Her voice was quiet, Rachel had to lean forward to hear her. "She's just close to it."

"I'm sorry about that." Rachel used her most compassionate voice and made her face to match. It was wasted effort. "It says here that you believe it is your fault she's in her condition. Is that correct?" Natsuki nodded, Rachel wasn't fazed. "You know that isn't true, don't you?"

"If I had been there I could have stopped it..."

"It's not your fault, Natsuki."

Natsuki's breathing became more labored. "But..."

"It's not your fault, Natsuki." Natsuki finally looked up with tears in her eyes. Rachel gave her a warm smile. "There you are." She reached across the desk and cupped her cheek with her hand, looking into her deep emerald eyes. "You have beautiful eyes." Natsuki looked away, Rachel let her go and leaned back in her chair. "Who is the person who has such a lovely young woman in tears in my office?"

"Her name is Shizuru and I'm in love with her. She's the most important person in my life and I don't think I can live without her."

"She sounds special." Natsuki brushed a stray hair from her face and Rachel noticed a flash of metal on her finger. A ring. "That's a pretty ring, did she give it to you?" Natsuki nodded and absentmindedly spun the ring on her finger, a simple ring of silver with a yin yang pattern, in the center of one ring was embedded an emerald and in the other a ruby. "Tell me about her."

Natsuki got a distant smile on her face. "I remember the day she gave me this ring."

-IPR-

As was usual then, I awoke to an empty bed. Shizuru has always been an early riser, me not so much. It was a Saturday and I didn't have to go to work so I lay in bed for at least a half an hour, until Shizuru came back to the bedroom to check up on me. "Were you planning on getting out of bed today?"

I smirked, my head full of dirty thoughts. "No, am I going to spend all day in bed alone?"

"Not a chance."

We spent a few hours exploring each other and afterwards, when both of us were exhausted from our efforts we lay in each other's arms. I always loved how warm she felt when she would snuggle up next to me, the way her hand would brush my thigh, the way our heartbeats would sync up until it seemed like we were one person. "So, what do you want to do now? Because I'm pretty hungry." Shizuru was usually hungry, but never more so than after we had made love.

"Me too. Why don't we go to the mall today? We can eat, then spend all day walking around and looking in all the stores."

"That sounds fun."

We reluctantly got up and dressed, then argued over whether to take my bike or her car. My bike won and so we rode to the mall. It was rather small, not a huge mall like in some large cities, but it was still nice. It being a Saturday the mall was a little more crowded than I would have liked, I hate crowds to this day. Shizuru knew that so she held my hand, which always had a comforting effect on me. I miss that.

Our first stop was the food court and Shizuru chose an oriental restaurant, like she usually did. I gravitated towards a burger place next to it, I have a thing for mayonnaise. We sat together at a seat that was relatively secluded for my comfort and ate. I always ate faster than her, she used to tell me I would make her feel bad, like she was holding me up, but I reassured her that I didn't mind. In fact I used to love watching her eat, how she would savor every bite as if it were the greatest thing she had ever eaten. It would always make me smile.

After we ate we walked around the mall, checking out various stores that interested us. I remember walking by a jewelry place where, in a display case, sat one of the most beautiful rings I had ever seen. Shizuru and I admired it for some time, and I decided then and there that I was going to buy it for her but I needed to slip away for a bit.

One of my hobbies is collecting lingerie, I just love the feel of the fabric and how it makes me feel beautiful when I wear it. Shizuru loved my hobby, she told me it made shopping for me so much easier. When we walked passed a Victoria's Secret I had to stop.

I could spend hours in that place, and I would have too if I didn't remember that I was on a date. I set the slip I had been looking at back on the rack and turned around to find myself alone. I looked around, thinking that she was looking at something, but she was nowhere in sight. I turned a corner to leave the store and she came walking up, slightly out of breath. "Where did you go?"

She handed me an ice cream cone, "To get us some ice cream. I got you vanilla."

I was desperately searching for a way to sneak off when Shizuru practically pulled me into an electronics shop. Shizuru sat in a massage chair and turned it on, I could hear the loud hum as well as her comfortable sighs. "I need to go to the bathroom, I'll be right back." Perfect.

I slipped away and nearly ran down to the jewelry store. When I got there I noticed the ring was gone. My heart melted, I was too late. I walked in and asked the cashier, an older lady with a box in her hand, if she happened to have another. She looked at me quizzically and opened the box in her hand, inside was the ring that I had seen. "This is the last one. We had two but the someone just bought the other one."

"I'll take it."

She rang it up and I gawked at the price tag. I looked in my wallet, it was every dollar that I had. After handing it all over I ran back to the electronics store with the ring in my pocket and a smile on my face. Shizuru was still sitting in that chair when I got back, I think she even noticed I was gone. "Natsuki, try this chair. It's soooo good." I didn't think it was anything special, then we continued our walk around the mall.

When we finally got back to the bike we were both pretty tired. Shizuru suggested we to out to eat, but, considering I had just spent the last of my money on the ring that now rested in my pocket, I instead suggested a candlelight dinner at home. She seemed to like the idea, even smirked and commented on how she would have to do all the cooking since I was terrible at it. I took it all in stride as we rode back home.

She cooked a casserole while I practically covered our small table in candles, Shizuru had quite a lot of them, and dimmed turned off the lights to set the mood. She set the casserole down in the middle of the table then turned to the room. "I'm going to slip into something more appropriate."

When she returned she was wearing an elegant dress that made my jaw drop, I was lost in her. We sat down and ate in comfortable silence, the kind of silence that only people in love ever experience. She dabbed at her face with a napkin, then promptly dropped it. She knelt down to pick it up only she never picked up the napkin. Instead she held her hand up to me, a hand that had a velvet box in it.

My heart was pounding in my chest. "Natsuki, I bought something for you today. I think you'll like it." I knew what was in it before I even opened it. I opened the box and laughed aloud, she seemed hurt until I pulled a similar box out of my pocket. "When did you have time to buy that? The only time I wasn't with you was when I snuck off to buy it."

"It was while you were in that chair. Are you telling me that you didn't even notice?"

"I guess not."

We laughed together and put the rings on each other's fingers.

-IPR-

Natsuki pulled the ring off of her finger and handed it to Rachel, who looked at it closely. "We've since had then engraved." Rachel looked for the engraving inside the hand. I promise.

She handed it back to Natsuki, who returned it to it's rightful place on her finger. "That's lovely. The woman who gave you that ring, do you love her?"

"With all my heart. She means everything to me."

"And does she love you?"

"Of course."

Rachel leaned forward, resting her head on her hands. "Now if your positions were reversed, would you want her feeling sorry for herself? Or would you want her to be strong?" Natsuki hung her head. "Do you have any dreams, or visions where you see what happened?"

"I do dream about it a lot. We're standing out in the rain and I can't hear what she's saying. I see headlights coming and reach for her but I end up pushing her into the road and she gets hit. I scream and wake up right after that. I've also been losing time, like it passes but I've forgotten what happened."

"So you're reliving the memory of the accident, which you wrongly feel was your fault. I think you might have PTSD."

Natsuki had never heard of the term. "What is that?"

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, usually occurring after a significant loss or traumatic event. The major symptom of PTSD is constantly reliving the traumatic moment, and since you mentioned your dreams that feels like what's happening. It could also explain why you seem to have taken all the blame onto yourself, even though you had absolutely no control over the situation."

"Is there something I can do, like take medication?"

"There are a few pills I can proscribe, but they will only treat the symptoms of the problem, not it's root cause. To treat that, we're going to have to go into your memory of that event and force you to face what happened. It's not going to be easy, but remember you're not alone." She put a hand on Natsuki shoulder to illustrate that point. "There are a lot of people who care about you; your mother, Ms. Shizuru and me to name three. We will get you through this. Okay?"

Natsuki nodded and Rachel returned to her chair behind the desk. "Now, I'm going to schedule you for another appointment this week. How is Friday for you?"

Natsuki left the therapist's office feeling much lighter than when she had entered. She hopped on her bike and drove to the hospital. On the way she passed a flower shop and decided to stop and buy a dozen roses. When she got to the hospital she made her way up to Shizuru's floor. The nurses eyed her warily when she approached and were relieved when she apologized for how she acted. They assured her that they understood and that no one had any hard feelings towards her then she continued to Shizuru's room.

She set the dozen roses on the bed near her and kissed her on the cheek. She sat down on the bed and took her cold hand in hers. "I'm a mess without you, but I'm going to try and be strong. For you, for me and for our friends who are still there for us." She put her arms around Shizuru's waist, resting her head on the chest that barely rose with her breathing. "I love you."

-IPR-

Shizuru is sitting in her office behind her desk, a tidy affair with near stacks of papers near the pictures of her husband and daughter, as well as a picture of her and Natsuki from graduation. Her parents had wanted her to get rid of it, but she couldn't bring herself to box it up.

A knock on her door sounded and in walked her assistant, who handed her a dozen roses. "These just came for you, Ms. Viola."

Shizuru thanked the girl and smelled the roses. She opened the card and tears fell from her eyes as she read it.

I'm a mess without you, but I'm going to try and by strong. For you, for me and for our friends who are still there for us.

I love you,

Natsuki