A/N: chapter dedicated to sohmamomiji: hope the 10K lives up to the rest!

#1 Ring:

There was a doorbell next to Tenpou's door, but it was unused; the marshal hated the sound (although, in typical Tenpou fashion, he'd never quite got around to removing it), and nobody who valued their life would ever ring it; the ones who didn't have to fear his wrath never bothered with the whole politeness thing anyway.

#2 Hero:

'I'm no hero,' Kenren said, shrugging; 'I've no great cause, nothing to live for, and you're no damsel in distress,' and Tenpou laughed and told him that he was an idiot with principles, and that was the main precondition.

#3 Memory:

He fought when the memories of Tenpou were stripped from him, fought with the rabid ferocity of a wounded animal to keep them with him, fought with all his immortal soul; each memory held fast to himself – laughing in his office, fighting, arguing, plotting, lying in bed, drinking, sneaking out of meetings – and the taste in his mouth as each of those memories were inevitably stripped from him was bitter, bitter.

#4 Boxes:

Kenren lived out of boxes; he was transferred so often and led such a nomadic lifestyle that he rarely bothered to make himself feel at home in any of the quarters he was assigned, but his things slowly gravitated towards Tenpou's office and rooms: pens, bullets, chewing gum, spare uniforms, the odd book or two, a toothbrush, a comb, the indispensable hairspray, the work he couldn't actually be bothered to do unless Tenpou reminded him, the few pictures of memorable times that he chose to keep……in a while, it became an open secret that Kenren almost lived at Tenpou's, but the general was probably the last one to realise it, so quietly and unnoticeably had it happened.

#5 Potatoes:

After seeing Tenpou have strong coffee instead of a square meal for the seventeenth time because he'd been distracted during mealtime, Kenren irritably enquired whether he was just planning to starve himself to death – 'I can mash potatoes,' Tenpou offered with a bright smile, and Kenren groaned and learned to cook.

#6 Hurricane:

Kenren was like a hurricane, fierce and savage and allowing for no covering, no concealment, harsh whipping wind and lashing rain; he believed this firmly until the day he stopped struggling and let go, and discovered that the wind that could lash could also caress, that the need for openness was matched by the desire to protect, and the rain that stung like needles also gave life to dying things.

#7 Wings:

Birds had wings, and they could fly where they willed, alight where they willed; they were free as even gods were not, and Tenpou resented that so very fiercely at times.

#8 Cold:

Both men hid their true nature within its opposite; Kenren's apparent superficiality and wild, unrestrained imagination concealed a quick and calm mind, while behind Tenpou's cold and collected exterior lay a hotter temper than the dark-haired general could dream of having.

#9 Red:

'Maybe I'll dye my hair,' Kenren said playfully, 'What would look better, bright blue or green?' Tenpou eyed him and corrected, 'Red. It suits you,' and it was unfortunate that the two who would have found that the funniest thing in the world were five hundred years away.

#10 Drink:

'I love you, you know,' Kenren said casually as they drank together, and the look he gave Tenpou was part bold, part questioning, part fear and part raw, open need, and Tenpou smiled at him and replied, 'Likewise,' and they continued to drink, both relieved that that was out of the way.

#11 Midnight:

The first time they slept together, Kenren had rolled out of the bed and crept through the darkened corridors out of sheer habit, quite sure that it was the last time, not waiting for Tenpou to throw him out; and every time he stayed a little longer, a little longer, waiting for some reaction, some rejection, until one night he slept very deeply and woke up to find Tenpou latched onto him like a limpet, clutching him with both arms, leg thrown over his, chin against midnight hair, breath ruffling dishevelled spikes, almost smothering his face in his throat……

He was even more surprised when his only reaction to Tenpou's possessive grip was a sleepy damn, what took me so long?

#12 Temptation:

He tried to resist, really he did, but Tenpou had never been good at controlling his impulses or denying himself pleasure, and Kenren was temptation incarnate.

#13 View:

There were a few places where they could observe Down Below directly; Tenpou never visited them, since letting his preferences be known so clearly was dangerous, but his library was filled with their literature, their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams, and sometimes he dared to share them.

#14 Music:

Tenpou hummed when he worked, soft and toneless and strangely haunting; Kenren often found himself pushing his chair closer, close enough to smell the faint ink-paper-tea scent and hear those wordless songs, and later closer still, once it became clear that Tenpou didn't mind at all.

#15 Silk:

There were three distinct impressions Kenren had of Tenpou's bed; first, it took him nearly a year to realise it was a bed, until Tenpou swept the books off it in the middle of a hurried disrobing; second, almost immediately after, when he was surprised to find the covers made of fine silk as they slid against his back; and third, a few weeks later, when he discovered the small, deadly-looking daggers buried under the bed; it seemed a fair summary of the man himself.

#16 Cover:

A few days after he met Tenpou, he'd challenged him to a sparring session, hand-to-hand, confidently stating that the thin, pretty-looking man hadn't had a day's exercise in a few centuries at least; the result was a very pointed and painful lesson in not judging books by their covers – Kenren was appropriately apologetic, and Tenpou forgave him before the bruises finished healing.

#17 Promise:

There were no promises, of course…they both knew who they were, what they were, knew that the games they played with the world they hated would eventually lead to their death, and it was unfair to drag the other down with them as well.

#18 Dream:

The marshal was pretty, yeah, pretty like a girl, but better, and he could out-drink and out-think Kenren, and the more he watched Tenpou the more sure he was that he'd fallen madly in some sort of lust with him, or maybe it was worse, because since when had his head taken precedence over his libido? – but it had, and it was, and Tenpou was different, somehow, was something else, was……definitely never going to pay him any attention, because he'd have to get his head out of those goddamn books first, which was never gonna happen, so he just watched the man, because hey, a guy could dream.

#19 Candle:

Tenpou once lit a tall candle in the library (pooh-poohing Kenren's nervousness over the sea of things catching fire) and stared intently at the flickering flame for a full hour; when Kenren finally snapped and asked him what the hell he was doing and what was so damn interesting about that candle, he only replied, 'This is life; this is what we are,' and then he leaned forward and blew the candle out with a very gentle breath.

#20 Talent:

Tenpou prided himself on his unflappability, and Kenren on his ability to annoy anything breathing; they were equally talented at it, and practiced extensively on each other – as a result of which the half of heaven that didn't think they were lovers thought that they were blood enemies.

#21 Silence:

It took some familiarity for him to have a real conversation with anyone, but he only allowed one person to see his silences.

#22 Journey:

'Don't you get it,' Kenren snapped, and left we're going to die unsaid as they sat together, under siege; Tenpou smiled, serenely and in a way that suggested that he knew something more even when Kenren knew there was no reprieve after this – and all he said was, 'You know, I believe our journey's just beginning.'

#23 Fire:

Watching Tenpou practice shooting always reminded Kenren why he followed the man; the absolute concentration, the care – he could even say, the love – he put into each movement, the precision, the detached calm with which he acted, every motion deliberate and flowing and innate, culminating in that brief moment when he fired; and then it would pass, and the harmless scatterbrain would return, but Kenren never forgot, and his breath never failed to stop dead.

#24 Strength:

He hit Li Touten, a cracking punch with all his strength, and cursed himself while he did it, because there under the sincere outrage there had been an element of cold calculation; while he had struck him because of his anger at what had happened, others would think it was because of the insult, and he and Kenren could have a brief reprieve, at least, before the rumours began again – was there a moment, he wondered, when that rationality would ever leave?

#25 Mask:

Kenren had no use for masks and pretences, said precisely what he thought and did precisely as he said; it attracted Tenpou as north calls south.

#26 Ice:

Calculation ran bone-deep in Tenpou, despite all his recklessness; he was cold and clear and soundless as ice, and it chilled Kenren at times how easily he was able to make himself a pawn in his manipulations.

#27 Fall:

Kenren had never had much interest in what was Down Below, reasoning that it was bound to be as boring as heaven was, until the day Tenpou dragged him down to the lower world on what he claimed was a mission (the entirety of it seemed to consist of walking through crunching fall leaves), and they threw handfuls of red and gold and brown leaves in the air, and rolled in it, and laughed like little children, relishing a change that their world would never experience; 'We're doing this again someday,' Kenren declared, sprawled on the ground, panting with an excess of hilarity, a red leaf resting on his cheek, and Tenpou's eyes softened as he lay next to him, and he said, very quietly, 'Yes.'

#28 Forgotten:

He'd had odd fragmented dreams all his life, of smoke and armies and piles of books and a laughing devil of a man, and wondered why Gojyo reminded him of those dreams when it was perfectly obvious that he didn't have blue eyes.

#29 Dance:

It was easy to tell when Tenpou was truly interested in something; his body would still, as if he were conserving his interest, his hands would fold, index fingers tapping slowly, and his eyes danced.

#30 Body:

He wanted to be the first to die – he, the survivor, the manipulator, wanted to be the first to die, because he was utterly, completely selfish, and he wanted to die with his pride intact, his sanity undamaged and his heart in one piece, and he was fairly sure that seeing Kenren's body would not permit any of those.

#31 Sacred:

Tenpou had long become immune to the word sacred, for too many things were given that name in Heaven that were anything but – but still, when he felt Kenren gain that rare gentle touch, forsaking passion for tenderness and pleasure for fulfilment, there was simply no other adjective he could apply to the emotion those hands, that mouth, those eyes radiated.

#32 Farewells:

There was no time for elaborate farewells, the end exploded upon them almost before they were aware it was coming; but that didn't matter, because in lives like theirs there was little room for farewells, so filled with second meetings were they.

#33 World:

Tenpou lived in a world of his own, in fierce denial of the one he was forced to inhabit, hating it and wanting to shape it at the same time, while Kenren took a grim, determined kind of pleasure in life, with the rationale that well, if they were all screwed, he'd have some fun before dying of boredom – and while neither would ever agree with the other, they shared a dislike of their world that drew them together.

#34 Formal:

Neither of them really bothered with the formalities of a relationship; they were, they were together, the rest they were content to leave undefined.

#35 Fever:

Those who lived in heaven did not fall ill, built as their bodies were for a different existence, and Tenpou had only the most intellectual understanding of it; but this burning he felt, the dizziness and weakness and slightly boneless sensation, it was almost a fever, but its cause was pleasure, not illness, and the results were, he decided, altogether more desirable.

#36 Laugh:

Every time he heard the rumours that Tenpou played wife to him, he couldn't help but laugh, because if anything, he was the one who played the nagging housewife to that consummate slob.

#37 Lies:

'This isn't really a permanent thing,' Kenren said almost desperately, and Tenpou agreed calmly, because the circumstances were all wrong, they would never work, and it was probably just a momentary madness after all.

#38 Forever:

They thought they had forever, but as it turned out……

#39 Overwhelmed:

His vocabulary never failed to simultaneously irritate, amuse and overwhelm Kenren, to the point where he invested in a pocket dictionary; Tenpou immediately took it upon himself to use words that the dictionary didn't contain, and as time went by, he often slipped into Kenren-speak around others, which got them both some strange looks – especially when Kenren understood him.

#40 Whisper:

As brash and loud and strikingly present as Kenren always was, it was hard to imagine the quiet, tender side of him that so rarely saw the light of day; a strand of deep thought and deep feeling that whispered within all his posturing.

#42 Talk:

Kenren was a creature of society, always willing to chat up a girl or pal with the guys or engage in quick banter; it took him several months and his first real friendship to realise that all those times he had talked to those nameless, unimportant people, he'd never actually said anything.

#41 Wait:

'Wait,' Tenpou said urgently, pressing four harsh fingers into Kenren's cheek and a thumb to his jaw as if he wanted to brand their prints into him, 'Wait,' and Kenren closed his hand over those fingers and nodded, knowing that this was all the goodbye and all the declarations they were allowed.

#43 Search:

They were all searching for something, all four of them, for some meaning, some truth in their lives; there was an emptiness in each of them that could not be filled, erased except by losing everything they had in the hope of finding everything they wanted.

#44 Hope:

Neither of them was that fond of fooling themselves as to actually hope, but they hated, and that served as an acceptable substitute, as fuel for wanting to change everything.

#45 Eclipse:

He was content to remain behind the scenes, comfortably eclipsed by the glitter of others; but he had his own brand of light, like sunlight on steel.

#46 Gravity:

'Why do you stick with me?' Kenren asked him once, in that blunt way of his; 'I'm nothing but trouble,' and though Tenpou simply smiled and said nothing, he privately reflected that it would have been easier to defy gravity.

#47 Highway:

The first time Tenpou heard of Kenren, it was when someone mentioned that the unruly general was on the highway to getting himself killed if his conduct was anything to go by; Tenpou had privately reflected that at the very least it would be more interesting than living in eternal ennui, and taken an instant liking to the man by reputation alone.

#48 Unknown:

Tenpou was a man who relished the abstract, who thought in clear logical lines, abhorred irrationality, disliked things that he couldn't analyse and categorise; being with Kenren was a daily experience in the terrors of the unknown for him, but then, he'd always relished a challenge.

#49 Lock:

Little things, little things, but with Tenpou there was always a method to his madness; such as the way his window would be mysteriously unlocked every time there was a proposal he didn't like awaiting his approval on his desk, and the way the lawn sprinklers were always aimed in there in the afternoons, and the way Kenren was always seen wandering in the general vicinity so he could laugh his head off.

#50 Breathe:

'What would it be like to live, truly live,' Tenpou whispered, 'to breathe not because I choose to, but because it is a necessity, to need air so badly that if I stopped, even for a little while, it would taste as sweet as honey when I finally surrendered and drew it into me again–' and he stopped, because one look at Kenren's eyes showed him he understood.

A/N: longest chapter yet, and my favourite among the five, with the third chapter a close second. Thanks to my reviewers, as always: Amael21, AmyLB22, Blue-eyes-green, EoS, LittleLinor, monsoonblues, moonsilver (who is definitely Best Reviewer on this fic, for making me laugh several times), sohmamomiji – and for those who review this one, my thanks are still with you. Oh, and if anyone knows of any other lists like this, please let me know or email them to me – DO NOT PM me, because ffnet hates my computer and will not be nice and send me those. You're free to come up with one, and you will be credited I think I'm getting hooked on these.