Four Weeks Later…

I didn't think about much in particular as I looked out into the horizon, the cool breeze keeping time with the ocean waves going back and forth across the sand and causing me to need to push my hair out of my eyes. Similar to last year when my team and I fought in the world tournament, it was an uncanny feeling to conclude that everything was coming to an end. We were home; we were safe…

Although my friends celebrated in the background, they had long ago accepted not to bother asking me to participate. They knew I wouldn't, they knew I had little worth celebrating. Our victory over Team PsyKick did nothing to fix what had happened weeks prior and it didn't make it any less painful. We had been successful, but in some ways it was irrelevant. The revenge that I desperately wanted did not fix the outcome of the mistakes that I had made.

Not bothering to turn around as the sound of footsteps approached me lightly, I did my best to ignore acknowledging Rei until I felt his hand on my shoulder. I was still refusing to look and face any of them, not after what had happened, not after the state they had seen me in.

"Are you doing okay?" He asked, taking his hand off me and leaning his arms on the railing in the same way I did. Rei had always been rather mature for his age in a strange sense, growing up in a way where he had not exactly been expected to take care of himself, but where everyone instead took care of each other. He had lived the life Yasha had promised me years ago, a large family where relation was irrelevant. In their eyes they were all brother and sister.

I didn't answer him. I already had to bite my lip in order to hold myself together, talking would just make me feel worse. Talking would break me. I knew he was staring at me, I could feel his eyes burning through to me, hoping my acknowledgment might do something to help open me back up, but it wouldn't. Wyatt was the only reason I had opened up; without him I had returned to the safety of the bricks I had once laid down and hid behind.

My walls were up again.

"You shouldn't feel ashamed of having emotions." Rei continued, lowering his own expression so that he no longer smiled. I hated this feeling… even as I continued to avoid eye contact. I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't even want to listen to him talk about it. For a minute I tried to work up the courage to tell him to leave, tell him I wanted to be alone, but the words refused to form. Instead I went back to my old ways, turning away and walking back toward the dirt path. They should all celebrate, we had an impressive victory, they didn't need me converting the atmosphere.

"Kai?" He called after me quietly. Like a coward, I continued to ignore him, not even bothering to lift a hand or shrug a shoulder to acknowledge that I had heard him. I was being rude. Something that for awhile I had gone out of my way to try and stop.

That battle had drained me, though.

What should have been a moment of pride in regards to my own victory against Goki had instead been the straw that broke the camels back. I had worried them, and rightfully so. Outside of a few moments with Tyson I had never been one to show true emotion in front of others, yet in that moment I had allowed everything that had happened within the past few year pour out and onto the stadium. Team PsyKick were the reason that Wyatt was in the hospital, they had used him for their own selfish needs and then carelessly tossed him aside. I didn't relate it to myself at first, I wasn't like them, but what I had done couldn't be seen as anything other than one and the same and nothing that Cecile had told me weeks earlier could change the way I viewed my role in it even when I tried.

Cecile hadn't pushed Wyatt toward Lydia the way I had pushed him toward his demise. She hadn't hurt him so badly that he felt the need to prove himself.

He could have died that day and it would have been my fault. He could have died right in front of me. His blood was still stained to a pair of pants I didn't yet have the stomach to wash, fearful that it may be the only piece of him I would ever have left.

"That was an incredible battle, Kai! I don't think I've ever seen you that intense before!" Tyson had yelled after my victory. All of them, Hillary and Kenny included, had gotten onto their feet and run to me. I wish they hadn't.

"Kai? Hey… are you okay?"

They paused suddenly as they saw my face, hands dropping to their sides. I had my lip pinched tightly between my teeth in some useless attempt to stop myself from shaking as I clenched my fists. I didn't want any of them to see the tears in my eyes.

"Kai?" Max now spoke as well, softer than Tyson had. "Hey, you did it. You won."

I couldn't really remember falling to my knees, suddenly not able to breath properly and instead gasping for air. They were all watching me, their concern failing to mask my humiliation.

Don't look at me… please don't see me this way. Don't watch me break.

I had nowhere to hide.

The tears fell whether I wanted them to or not, my hands shaking as I touched the ground in front of me, trying to stop myself from falling over, trying to stop myself from doing what I was currently doing. They all knew the truth, even if they pretended not to. Had Goki not made the mistake of uttering Wyatt's name to me, mocking him as though his life was no more than a joke…

I should not have won that battle. Max hadn't been the one fated to lose that day.

There wasn't any sound in the room outside of my own uncomfortably loud sobbing, breathing unbalanced as I attempted to regain some form of control over myself. Emotionally, I had given it everything I possibly had, allowing my rage to be the thing that controlled the outcome, screaming as loud as I could muster because I couldn't think of any other way to get it out. Suddenly the battle had gone from one sided, Goki near victory, to me realizing that the only thing I could currently do in order to avenge Wyatt was to make them pay. He had been the one to mock him, ergo he would be the one to feel my wrath.

We had believed Goki and the rest of Kane's team to be our friends, we had trusted them and they had broken it, they had betrayed our trust. How could he stand there the way he had while mocking the person he knew I cared the most about? How could he laugh at Wyatt's failure while not even knowing if he had survived his fall? Was he really that heartless?

He hadn't been there, he hadn't witnessed it, none of them had. They hadn't been the ones to run to his side at the bottom of the walkway, unsure what they would find. They hadn't held his hand as he apologized for events that couldn't possibly be his fault.

I didn't just cry… I sobbed.

I couldn't see through the tears, my eyes stinging as they fell. My nose was running and a line of drool ran down my face, I sat there looking like no more than a large toddler as my friends knelt by my side and watched me break in a way I never had before. My chest was tight and it felt like I couldn't breath, the loud gasps that came through my throat causing me to feel dizzy.

Hillary had actually been the first one to hold onto me, wrapping her arms around my neck and allowing me, without words, to cry. They had all followed suit, the deep pressure of my friends wrapped around my body in unison, a warm embrace I normally never would have accepted.

I still looked an absolute mess now that we were back home, eyes red and puffy in a way that was normally reserved for when I smoked too much pot. My face paint was smeared and I wished I had a way to just wipe it off, embarrassed by the obvious tracks that my tears had made.

A small part of me had hoped that maybe someone, be it Rei or any other member of my team, would follow me as I continued to wander, hands in the pockets of my pants and dirt crunching beneath my feet. Wyatt would have come after me eventually, even if he first gave me some time to myself, he would have eventually come in order to make sure that I was okay.

It had been something I didn't do nearly enough for him, never bothering to give it anything other than the bare minimum of thought before deciding that he needed space. Whenever he told me to leave, I never allowed myself to just stay silent and sit with him, doing something as simple as being an extra body to assure him that he wasn't alone.

Continuing down the nearly empty road and into town, I took a moment to lift my head, trailing back and forth at everything that had played a part of my life this year. I hadn't gone into town with my school friends very often, something I never realized would someday be a regret. Something that it was now too late to change… I would never get the past year back.

The small window shops could have held so many more memories for me, memories where we could have laughed together or walked hand in hand down the sidewalks without giving a shit what anyone else thought about us.

"It's too bad it isn't your boyfriend you're fighting." Goki had laughed at me. His eyes were bright and awake, but still hollow. It didn't feel like he was really who I was talking to. "It wouldn't have been much of a battle, though."

Boyfriend… it was a decision I had been too much of a coward to decide on, fearful of the reaction the rest of the world may have. We hadn't been together in a way that was completely true to who we were, taking away an opportunity for us to truly break up.

Maybe if he needed to break up with me he wouldn't have simply left me. Maybe we would have sat down and talked it out first, maybe he would have considered giving me one more chance that I couldn't possibly have deserved.

Maybe we could have had some sort of closure…

Closing my tired eyes, I continued recalling the days events, not yet realizing how close to victory we were.

You could have saved me, Kai.

The voices… the echoing voices as the past year replayed itself over and over in my head. The reality of what I was facing and the power that it had; the fear of what that power was capable of.

It was supposed to be you.

What was supposed to be me?

You were who I came to fight that day.

Wyatt's false words continued to implant within my brain, forcing the setting of what had happened that day to come forward the same way it had within my nightmares. I was who he had been chosen to face, I was who was destined to take that battle. Dunga was a good opponent, not lacking in either power or in skills, but he didn't have the history that we did. What would have happened if everything had played out the way it was supposed to?

You're a coward. A pathetic coward.

Would you have faced me, Kai? Had he not intervened?

Would you have gone easy on me?

Would you have pushed me over the edge yourself?

Everything that was in front of me began to collide together with the pictures and words from within my own head. The stadium was that same dirt walkway, Dunga and my team were nowhere to be found. I was the one who Wyatt was after, the drained and hollowed out look on his face now replaced with Goki's psychotic smirk, drunk off of the power he had never before held.

You did this to me.

Why didn't you save me? You should have saved me. You were my protector.

He shouted cruel words at me, taunts that broke down my spirit piece by piece, a small flame beginning within my chest which grew with every word he spoke.

Coward.

Failure.

Pathetic.

Useless.

You are the cause of all of this, Kai. My blood is on your hands. If it weren't for you I would be home and planning my next school year in Japan, planning my future, living the life I deserve. You've ruined it. You've ruined all of it.

It's your fault.

Forcing my eyes closed, I had attempted to block the tears that threatened to fall. I had to get a hold of myself. It wasn't real, Wyatt was in the hospital, but was he? I had no way to contact him. Had he woken up by now? Gone home? We he still alive?

"Kai!" Tyson had yelled, clearly realizing that something was wrong. He knew the battle was starting to get to me. "Get a hold of yourself!"

My fault. It was all my fault.

A sensation of dizziness had suddenly enveloped me, causing me to open my eyes shakily, blinking out the blurred image that attempting to stop my tears had caused.

The possessed look on his face was gone, yet even as I tried to fix my screwed senses it was still Wyatt who stood before me in the stadium, a ghostly image of bleach white skin and sickly eyes, dark bags protruding from under them.

"Wyatt..." I mumbled under my breath, taking in the pain his face held. "What are you-"

"Why are you doing this?" He had asked me. Only his lips had moved, the remainder of his body locked stiffly in place. "You're letting him win."

"I'm not. That's not what I… I can't fight you."

"You're letting your emotions control you… you need to let me go. You need to forgive yourself. It wasn't your fault what happened to me."

"But it was..."

Even when he had remained by my side only in spirit, it hadn't stopped Wyatt from remaining the only one. The only one who ever truly saw me. Even in anger and heartbreak, he still could never bring himself to hate me. Not after everything that we had been through.

"Wyatt couldn't handle our power." Goki laughed through gritted teeth. "His attempt was no more than pathetic. You used to be one of the best there was, Hiwitari, that kid made you soft, you should be thanking us for getting rid of him."

His words had caused the flame to burn brighter inside of me, every sentence he uttered causing it to expand, the look on his stupid face causing my fists to clench with rage.

"How… fucking… dare you..." I had said. The change in my demeanor had caught him off guard in some way as he retorted back, smile replaced with a false annoyance that masked his sudden fear. "You look at him and see someone weak, but Wyatt was the exact opposite. Wyatt was a friend who would stick by you until the end, he saved me when I didn't deserve saving, he made me into the person who you're fighting and if that doesn't scare you, then you're the dumbest person I've ever met. Wyatt was fearless and he never would have gone down without a fight." I stared daggers into him, the anger coming out faster than I can control.

He never would have gone down without a fight, so what was I doing? I had spent the entire battle in defense mode, afraid that avenging him wasn't something that I could do; afraid of letting him down once again. My friends who watched me weren't the only ones who cheered me on, though. Wyatt's spirit remained with me, reminding me of everything I had accomplished with him by my side.

He had been the one to talk me through the battle and truly allow me to fight with passion once again even when he couldn't tangibly be at my side. Through all that had happened the past year- through the nights we had stayed up talking, the mornings I had awoke with my head nestled against his chest, the feeling of electricity when we had lay drunk on the floor of my dorm room and he had given me my first kiss…

In the blink of an eye, Goki had been defeated after a struggle in which I fought both him… and myself.

It was true that I had won the battle, but in doing so I had lost the war that I spent so many years fighting. My emotions had won and I had fallen to the floor in front of them on shaking knees and cried in a way I never had before.

Now home, Tyson's words from the stadium played back once again inside my head, echoing within me as I left my celebrating team behind without so much as a goodbye, only knowing through our friendship that they would forgive me.

"You've already lost Wyatt, Kai. Don't lose yourself too."

I actually think this is one of my favorite chapters that I've written in quite awhile! It's sad thinking how close the end is now… honestly this was originally going to be the last chapter and in two parts, but something about the note I ended on feels right. It's possible and likely that Chapter 58 will be the end of Kai and Wyatt's story, at least for now. Whether you guys get some sort of one shot in the future remains to be seen, but I'm so happy to have been on this journey with you.

Thank you, everyone.