Chapter Title: Hollow

Warnings: N/A

Authors Notes: Sorry this is so... lax. I hope Kyo isn't too OOC.

Two days later, Miku got a call on her cellphone from an unkown number while she was out shopping for some ingredients for the nights dinner.

"Moshi moshi," she mumbled, answering the phone. "Miku here."

"It's Kyo," said a recently familiar voice. Miku stiffened.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," she said after a second. "Akito's orders."

"You ran away from him before. Why not this time?" Kyo asked softly.

"I... I did?"

"You don't remember?"

"There's a lot I do and don't remember, Kyo."

"How about we meet for lunch. I'll answer all your questions."

Mikue sighed, switching the side the phone was on. "I don't know, Kyo, Akito is really mad."

"Are you going to spend the rest of your life laid down at his feet?" Kyo asked, voice thick with scorn.

Miku frowned. "He's my God."

Kyo snorted. "He's an angry teenager overintoxicated with power. He is most definitely not a God."

"How can you say that?"

"Because I'm the Cat."

Miku blinked. "There's a cat in the zodiac?" She asked, pausing midstride and nearly tripping.

"Jeez, how much did Hatori take?"

Miku sighed. "Fine. I'll meet you. Where?"

"Well, I'm just outside the market. Come out and meet me, then we can talk." And he hung up. Miku grumbled something about disrespectful bastards as she pocketed her cellphone, putting her phone in her pocket. How did I ever fall in love with that? She asked herself as she walked out of the grocery store.

Sure enough, Kyo was outside, hands shoved in his jean pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold. Miku shivered at the sudden rush of cold wind, compared to the heated grocery store, and turned to face the boy she had supposedly been in love with. "So what now?"

Kyo turned around, walking down the street. "I'll buy you lunch. Your favorite." And sure enough, within a few minutes he had walked into a small dessert shop, and ordered a plate of mochi and some chamomile tea. They took a seat at one of the empty booths in the far back of the small shop, where no one could overhear them.

Miku ignored the mochi for the timebeing though. This was more important. "So here's the deal, Kyo-san," she started, but already Kyo cut her off.

"kun. Call me Kyo-kun."

"But I barely know you."

"We're best friends." Miku growled in frustration.

"To you, maybe. But I don't remember any of that, Kyo. So no, you're not my best friend. I don't even know who you are." Kyo looked taken aback at her whispered, furious rant. He blinked, slowly, sighed, then nodded, gesturing for her to continue. Sulking slightly, he nibbled on a mochi. Calming down slightly, she began again. "I've been under the impression for the past year and a half, that before I woke up, I had been in a coma for seven months after a severly disasterous meth-trip. I spent six months after that as an alcoholic. I've been having nightmares since I stopped drinking, mostly about you, and Akito."

Kyo nodded. "Like what?"

"I'm not finished yet. I have absolutely no memory of ever knowing you, as a child or in highschool. Those seven months are an absolute blank."

Kyo licked his lips, suddenly feeling at a loss. Where should he start?

Miku decided for him. "So explain to me why Akito erased my memory in the first place."

Kyo sighed, setting down the half eaten mochi. "It started about halfway through the school year. You had run away from the main house, and had shown up at Shigure's. You were pretty sick then too. Hatori talked Akito into letting you stay, and so you enrolled in the high school. It was... nice. It was normal. It was peaceful. For a while it felt like we were just normal kids, like everyone else. But you got sicker. And Akito got angry. He took you back, he... did things to you. Things that broke you. Hatori took you away again, to the Summer House. We stayed there, you, me, Hatori, Shigure, Tohru, Yuki, Hatsuharu and Momiji."

Miku blinked up at him, confused. "I know Hatori and Shigure, but... who are the rest?"

Kyo's mouth tightened into a thin line. "Your friends. Other zodiac members."

Miku sighed, putting her face in her hands. She felt empty, she felt like a whole chunk of her life had been taken away from her. But what he was saying wasn't bringing back any memories, not even an inkling. It was if she was just hearing a story, about someone elses life. Like those things had never happened to her. "Continue," she mumbled, sipping her tea.

"While we were there, you and I... we got close."

"We fell in love, didn't we?" Miku asked, looking up from her tea at him. Kyo clenched his teeth, and nodded.

"But Akito showed up. And when he found out... he lost it. He shot me, twice. And he shot you in the leg. And then he ordered Hatori to erase your memories of me. I... I hadn't realized how much he had taken, though."

Miku nodded, rubbing her forehead. She was already getting a headache, trying to digest all of this at once. She sighed, pressing her forehead against the cool linoleum of the table. "Tell me more. Tell me about how we became friends."

And so he did. He told her everything.

But no matter what, she just... couldn't. None of the memories came. Nothing felt familiar. She just felt empty.

Hollow.