Edit: ah! I forgot! Past, present,present!

Chapter 8: Departure

People chatter all around them as she follows him through the airport, his luggage clicking along the tiles. Outside the large windows the sky is a crisp blue with puffy white clouds interspersed across it; a lovely day for flight.

Reaching the gate he turns around to face her, his expression a carefully constructed mask of ease and cheer. "I guess this is it," he says with a smile. It doesn't touch his eyes.

She feels behind the words, the deeper meaning, and takes in a bid breath of air to steady her spinning head. Tears prickle at the back of her eyes and for a moment she envisions a different path, one where she throws herself at him, clinging, not letting him go. It what she wants to do, but one look upward sends a plastic grin across her face and a robotic giggle from her mouth.

"Yeah, good luck," she says and tilts her head, the epitome of happiness. Don't make it harder. Don't make it any harder than it already is.

He looks at her for a moment before dropping his bag and pulling her against him with one arm, his chin resting on top of her head. She barely stifles a gasp. The contact is merely kindly, a bitter-sweet farewell gesture between friends, but all the same it sends shuddering shivers down her spine; the reminiscence of touches in the past.

He holds her there for a second, not saying anything, and she feels his chest expand with every breath, the air trailing down the back of her neck. She can smell him, feel him, see him, and it finally dawns on her that she may never do such things again. After this, this last moment, what is keeping him here? What would ever be the reason to return to the small-town life when he could live one of grandeur and adventure? What was she anymore? A memory? A painful one? Perhaps one that would be easier to forget?

She forces her hands to stay by her sides, not reach up and dig into the material of his shirt, the contours of his shoulder blades, and touch just one last time the boy she had grown up with. Her neighbor. Her best friend. Her…

Neighbor. Her best friend. That is all he is now, isn't it?

He pulls back from her finally, any light behind his eyes shutting off and going far away. "Keep in touch," he whispers, his voice sounding surprisingly small and gentle. The words echo around Luka mind, banging on doors half-closed, grazing over wounds still bleeding. She closes her eyes, regaining composure, and sending the thoughts to the back of her mind. They don't matter. It doesn't matter.

She smiles once more as he picks up his luggage. "I will. Be safe." The last words come out her mouth before she can stop them and she instantly wishes she could pull them back. They sound too final, too bleak. With a nod and a wave he turns away from her and strides down the pathway, handing his ticket to an attendant. She watches as he becomes a distant shadow and turns entering the plane. Even afterwards she stands there, gazing after him as if waiting for him to come back.

The gate empties of people and she wanders to the window, watching as the plane pulls itself away from the building and trolleys to the runway. As it passes she squints, trying to see in a window, but sun reflects off the glass and she has to look away.

The machine charges forward, gaining speed until it lifts into the sky, cutting across the blue like a knife. Her hands clench against the window as it speeds away, fading into a tiny dot before vanishing completely. The sounds of the surroundings beat dully in her head as she leans it against the glass, the sleek surface blessedly cool.

One tear drops to the floor without her consent. She watches it, holding out for a moment, and then deciding that she doesn't care. He's gone now. There's nothing to lose. They fall more rapidly now, though she makes no sound, focusing instead on a phrase going over and over in her head.

That didn't mean anything.

That won't change anything.

These feelings can't matter.

Luka sighs as she plops herself under a tree, spreading her legs far out in front of her. The sun beats down surprisingly heavy for a spring day and she is radiating heat from the exertion of the baseball game that just ended. The twins had jumped her on her way home from the library and roped her into a game, which turned into two games, which turned into three. It seemed as if they had pushed every available person they knew – and there aren't many people they don't know – into the games to do battle under the flaming sun. Len's scowl made even the metal bats feel cold and Rin pitched with a vengeance; Luka wonders what's going on between them.

She sits back and studies the field, dusty from lack of rain. She's quite fortunate to have actually known how to play the sport – unlike a few unlucky souls who wound up running towards the opposing players or getting a ball to the head. All around, players recline in the grass, dusting themselves off and rubbing sore muscles. She finds herself focusing on a group of three, younger than herself, as they goof around and push each other into the dirt, eventually getting into a playful wrestling match. The scene is familiar; she played here with her friends long ago.

She hears someone call her name and turn to see Kaito waving, signaling that he's about to leave. Behind him a small figure is already trotting away, an array of grocery bags hefted onto one hip. Luka smiles, waving back, and he turns chasing after the retreating girl. At her side, he takes the bags from her and walks ahead. Her feet step down in the shadows of his last paces. Luka feels her smile falling and suddenly a breeze whistles through the park. She shivers, holding herself close, finding the wind way colder than it should be. It seems to bite to her very core.

It hurts.

Or is it really the wind that's stinging?

A stack of papers is plopped down on Gakupo's desk. He stares at them disbelievingly, raising his eyes to the girl standing above them. She gives him a curt nod, her magenta curls bouncing, and gestures to the various files.

"These are copyright agreements, permission slips to use your image," she lists out the papers, sorting them into piles and pointing to each as she names them. Gakupo sinks down in his chair, rubbing a hand across his eyes. He had just gotten back from a concert no more than ten minutes ago. He had been looking forward to a long hot bath and a twelve hour nap. Instead, Teto had bombarded him the moment he stepped into his apartment, bringing orders from his manger and stacks of paperwork like some kind of form-filling demon.

"These all have to be done by tomorrow," she states in her usual machinelike tone. "I will pick them up then. You have a meeting at eight o'clock tomorrow morning." Without another word she turns and exits his office, leaving him alone with the papers covering his desk.

He groans and stares around, noting the late hour on his digital clock. He flips through the pages, wondering why he has to be the one to do this and annoyed at the fact that he distinctly remembers signing almost these exact same agreements not a month ago. Are they constantly in need of renewment, or does his manger just like giving him a hard time?

He pushes back from the desk, standing and pacing around the room, running his hands over the keys of the upright piano, aimlessly plucking at the strings of a guitar. The notes dissent with each other and bounce around the room, doing nothing to calm the tempest in his mind. There's a strange roar in his head, like the pounding of a thousand horses. He can't put his finger on what's causing it or where it's coming from, but the notes of the plucked strings seem to amplify it, the stacks of paper cause the whole room to shake.

He puts his hand to his head. What is this? He closes his eyes, meaning to take solace in the predictable darkness, but instead finds images flickering through mind, painting themselves across the inside of his lids. His eyes flash open, his hand reaching out to steady himself on a bookcase.

The room goes quiet, the roaring a distant echo, at the edge of his senses but ready to come back if he does not follow the path laid in front of him; the one bit of amity in an upside-down world.

"So that's it, huh?" he murmurs to himself, unconsciously striding across the room. His hand wavers over his desk, shifting through the papers until he contacts something cool and metallic. He sighs, feeling an icy wave of calm wash over him followed by an even stranger giddy warmth.

Even as he lifts up the device he feels a tingling starting in his fingers, spreading all throughout his body and igniting something he hadn't realize had died. He punches new numbers in, ones he barely remembers, not the ones he originally planned, but seeming even more needed than the first idea.

This is it. It can't go on like this.

"Skyline International, how may I help you?"

"Hello, what openings do you have for departing flights?"

A/N: I can't seem to write this fic recently. I think in the future I'll have many stories going so that if I'm not feeling one of them I can just do another. Anyway, this is where the storyline really starts to tie in with To Live in Forever.

Review! Constructive criticism? Compliments?