Dare You to Live

By ElveNDestiNy

- 9: Revelations -

Riku had been so completely focused on Dark that she only caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye and heard the squeal of tires before everything seemed to happen so fast. Suddenly a car with tinted windows had pulled up alongside the sidewalk curb, stopping so forcefully that she froze, another day and another scenario coming to mind—

But before she could get caught up in her flashbacks of Risa, the door nearest to her opened and a solid figure dressed all in black came out. Riku instinctively tried to stumble back but hands darted out to grab her. She didn't even have time to scream before she felt herself being torn away from Dark and pulled toward the waiting car.

"Riku!" Dark had caught hold of her too and for a moment Riku felt like she was going to be torn into two between them. She tried to kick at her attacker but only ended up losing her balance since both of her arms were being held.

It was probably what saved her. Neither the person nor Dark expected it when she stumbled and went down hard on her knees, suddenly becoming a dead weight in their grasp.

Pain tore through her shoulder as the man frantically wrenched at her arm, trying to get her up and moving again. Riku gritted her teeth and realized that the best thing she could do was continue to sit on the ground. The window of opportunity was closing now that the advantage of surprise was wearing off. She heard curses in a masculine voice and tried hard not to whimper even though it felt like her shoulder was about to be dislocated.

Seeing that she was not going anywhere at the moment, Dark let go of Riku and came around in front of her all at once, defense turning into aggression. His fist hit the black figure with a satisfying thud but before he had gotten more than a few punches in, the man had retreated into the getaway car. Dark tried to prevent him from going in, but something caught the light and the man slithered out of his grip.

Riku watched from the sidewalk as the standard dark-colored car zoomed off, dazedly noting that it didn't even have a license plate.

"Are you okay?"

Dark was crouched next to her, his face at her eye level, and Riku gathered herself enough to give a small nod. If she had tried to smile, she was pretty sure she would have started crying just out of sheer shock.

"W-what was that?" she asked shakily. "Why did he try…?" She didn't even know what to call what had just happened. One moment they were walking along a normal street and the next it was all chaos.

"Shh, we'll talk about it later. For now, let's just go home and get you cleaned up, all right?" Despite his calm words, Dark looked grimmer than she had ever seen him before and he was breathing hard, his eyes still a little wild. He basically looked pissed. She was just glad the look wasn't directed at her.

He helped her up and Riku looked around, realizing that the street was empty except for the two of them, so there were no witnesses. In fact, it all looked just as normal as it had been ten minutes ago and made her almost want to believe that she'd hallucinated it all. There was only the throbbing in her shoulder and around her forearms to tell her that it hadn't been imaginary.

"Can you walk?"

"I'm fine, Dark. I'm just more…shocked, I think, than anything else." Riku took a deep breath, her stomach doing a few flips from anxiety.

Dark didn't look convinced, but clearly he just wanted to get them back inside before anything else. "Okay, but tell me if anything hurts, Riku. I'll carry you."

Under ordinary circumstances, she might have bristled at the suggestion, but as it was, she didn't even comment. They weren't even that far from her house. Riku bit back a wince when they started walking, her knees scratched and bleeding from her sudden fall to the concrete pavement.

She didn't object when Dark's arm came around her back, his hand resting firmly on her hip. If he hadn't been so close before, she realized, she might be tied up in some dark room somewhere right now. Even the best reflexes couldn't necessarily save someone from being kidnapped. If she had been walking alone, she wouldn't have had a chance.

They were walking up the front steps of her lawn when she realized that she was faintly trembling. Well, it explained why Dark kept looking at her worriedly. "I'm all right," she said again. "Just some scrapes and bruises. Nothing a little first aid can't fix and I have a kit in the closet."

He escorted her into the kitchen, where she took a seat at the dinner table and began to clean her skinned knees, biting her lip against the sting of the disinfectant. Both kneecaps looked horrible and it was clear she wouldn't be wearing dresses that came above the knee anytime soon.

"I'm going to call Daisuke and Satoshi to tell them to come over," Dark told her when she waved off his help. As he had a quick conversation with Daisuke over the phone, Riku checked herself for any other injuries. She had a feeling that her shoulder was going to bother her for a very long time, but it thankfully didn't seem too seriously injured—she just had to keep her arm very still, because movement aggravated it and it really, really hurt.

It wasn't until she had finished up and was about to close the first aid kit that she saw the drop of blood on the polished golden wood of the table. Riku stared at it in puzzlement for a moment, unable to recall any injury she had that would have actually bled that much. It wasn't a smudge; it was clearly from an actual drop. Had she been cut without realizing it? Sometimes things didn't hurt until they were noticed.

Dark came back just then, the corners of his mouth decidedly showing his unhappiness. "I'm sorry, Riku. I wasn't paying attention as I should have." His gaze shifted away from her briefly. "I let down my guard and let you get hurt."

"What are you talking about?" Riku was still staring at the table and suddenly she remembered the flash of light she'd seen right before the man had gotten away. Dark would not have released him without a good reason. Her eyes darted to Dark's body and skimmed it quickly, her mouth dropping open when she found what she'd suspected. How had she even missed it to begin with?

He was actually dripping blood and she hadn't even noticed. Riku's hand shot out and grabbed his, and then she was rolling up the sodden sleeve of his button-down black shirt. There was a four or five inch gash across his arm that was bleeding profusely.

"Oh my God, Dark." It looked serious and she was positive it would need stitches, a lot of them, unless… "Can you still heal? You know, like before?"

Dark smiled wryly. "Don't worry, Riku. I don't heal as fast as I used to, but there are still some perks that come from being not completely human. The bastard pulled a knife on me and I was a little slow." His words seemed curiously flat.

She bit her lip. She could tell it was deep and despite Dark's nonchalance, Riku couldn't help remember that Risa should have been fine, too. It had just been a small accident. She'll wake up and we'll laugh about it. Everything will be fine.

Then the doctor telling her parents that Risa would never wake. Riku overhearing it all, seeing the truth of it in her father's eyes when he turned to her, before he even said anything.

Dark saw her expression as these thoughts filled her mind. With a soundless shudder, Riku wrenched herself back to the present reality, shoving those memories to the back of her mind again, where they had been untouched since that day. Dark touched her non-injured shoulder lightly. "Hey. I'm serious. I'll be okay."

He probably could guess where her mind had gone in those few moments. "Still, you should at least clean and bandage it, right? What about stitches?"

"I'm more worried about you right now," he said, although she still led him to the kitchen sink and was pouring the disinfecting liquid over his arm. It had to hurt like hell, but he just gritted his teeth and waited it out before he continued. "There's someone out to get you and he's real, Riku. I don't think he was trying to hurt you outright. He was trying to kidnap you."

"But why?" Riku was still frantically working as they spoke. She unraveled the rolls of gauze and securely fastened it around Dark arm, where the bandaging looked absurdly inadequate, especially since the blood soaked through the first layers almost right away. It actually hurt her shoulder, but she was just glad her fingers weren't clumsy.

"That's what we have to figure out." Seeing that she was still fussing with the bandaging, Dark looked up to meet her eyes. "Don't worry about it Riku. Like I said, I'm not all that human." Was it just her, or did he almost sound slightly bitter?

Riku studied him briefly without him noticing. If she hadn't still somewhat been in a state of shock, her senses alternately heightened and numbed, she probably wouldn't have noticed anything to what he said. Dark's expression yielded nothing more to her scrutiny though, so she filed it away in her mind like so many other puzzle pieces of himself that he had given her. Since he was so against it, Riku finally stopped messing with the gauze bandaging. She just hated thinking that he'd gotten hurt because of her.

"I don't understand though. I'm not worth much, so why bother to kidnap me? I mean, I'm sure my parents would pay some sort of ransom if they asked for it, but even though we're pretty well off, there have to be better targets." She clasped her hands in her lap while Dark got up to make them both tea. When he came back and put a steaming cup in front of her, Riku was still lost in her thoughts. "Why go after me like that?"

Dark sat across from her, not so much drinking his tea as looking at it. "I'm sorry, Riku," he said again. "So much for being a security expert, right?"

She didn't like how that sounded, the way he looked like he was blaming himself. It caused a small spark of anger inside Riku, similar to what she had felt when she had accused him of killing Risa, and he hadn't even defended himself. In fact, he'd looked like he had believed it. She was starting to think that maybe Dark disliked himself sometimes, which went against every impression she had initially had of him—confident, arrogant, even somewhat careless in the way he approached life.

Riku couldn't help but think that the insights she was gaining unsettled her almost as much as the attack had. It was easier for her to keep a little distance between them when she thought of him in a certain way. She had been getting too close to him already anyway and just thinking about this made her feel strange.

"Stop apologizing, Dark." Her voice was sharper than she had meant for it to be, so Riku softened her words. "If you hadn't been there, who knows where I would be right now? I'm the one who's sorry for giving you such a hard time about protecting me. I just couldn't take it seriously because I never would have imagined there would actually be someone out there."

He looked at her, violet eyes oh-so-serious. "I didn't want to tell you this, but I think you should know. I think all of this may have something to do with Risa."

She heard the words clearly, yet for the first few minutes, it was as if they had not penetrated her mind. Riku's thoughts seem to spin around and around in her head, a hamster on an exercise wheel, no destination actually possible. It always came back to Risa, her twin's sudden and so unexpected death.

She felt the meaninglessness of it all envelop her again, until she almost screamed against it. Why? If Risa had died of some disease, she might have been able to accept it. If Risa had developed some rare cancer, or even if Risa had died in a normal car accident, some drunk driver or someone running a red light… But the way she really had died, it was so pathetic.

Like you are pathetic, refusing to give up your grief for her… Selfish, really. Your tears don't comfort her. Your cries don't reach her ears. She's in peace, and yet she left you in complete turmoil… And you hate her for it, don't you? Just a little bit.

Senseless, pointless, a car accident that wasn't even an actual accident, and then the person who had done it all just left, like a phantom that had simply entered her life, destroyed it, and then had flown away again. She couldn't remember his face, the same way that she hadn't even screamed when Risa went down—it hadn't looked so bad, almost as if her sister had just stumbled, but Risa's pretty dress had spread out over the dirty ground.

The horror hadn't been in that moment, it had come after, in realizing the significance of that moment. The last time Risa's eyes would look at the world. The last moment Risa had ever been awake. Her twin had died in that instant, but Riku hadn't realized it until much later…

Then, what she hadn't told Dark, hadn't even told Daisuke. What she couldn't talk about to any of the counselors and psychologists, even though they probably had all read about it in her file. She had tried to erase the memory from her mind altogether, but now it was back.

The endless shrill whine of the machine, before the doctor finally, mercifully, reached out and turned it off completely. Because Risa hadn't died, not really—not at the scene of the accident, not even in the hospital. No, she was there and at the same time, she wasn't.

The pain of her nails digging deep crescent moons into her palms finally jolted Riku out of the memories before they could progress further, to the next painful sequence, just before the last. Riku looked at Dark, numb fingers coming up automatically to wipe away the warm, salty liquid on her cheeks.

He looked like he wanted to ask what was wrong, but the answer was obvious, even if he didn't know exactly what memories had risen to overwhelm her. She shook her head in response to his mute question, finding it too difficult to talk about it. The look in his eyes told her that he hadn't given up yet, but was willing to put it off for now, given how much it clearly affected her.

Riku guessed that only a minute or so had passed, even though the vivid flashes of memory had made it seem like so much longer. Rather than worry Dark even more, she tried her best to concentrate on the current threat. The past was over and it could not be changed. But maybe, just maybe, she could make her own future, and she wanted the chance to do so.

"What do you mean when you say it has something to do with Risa?" she asked Dark. Riku was surprised to hear herself sounding almost normal and thanked the fact that she was still kind of numb from the sudden terror of the attempted kidnapping earlier.

"There's not much I can actually explain," Dark told her apologetically. "I know just about as much as you do. But the reason why Daisuke and I were so adamant that someone had to be with you at all times was because the night you thought you saw someone outside the house—there really was someone, and he was trying to get in."

"How do you know?" She didn't actually doubt him, not anymore, but she did want to know how he could be so certain.

Dark pulled out something and offered it to her, but when she didn't actually take it, he laid it down on the table beside their tea cups. Riku hesitantly reached out to pick it up and look at it, only to drop it back onto the table with a muffled clink when she guessed what it was.

"Yes," Dark confirmed, reading her thoughts. "It's part of a set of lockpicks. They're old-fashioned but still effective. Thankfully you have a fairly modern lock and I installed and activated an electronic alarm system. I mean to tell you earlier, Riku, but I just didn't want to worry you for nothing."

"Then—what does this have to do with Risa?" Riku wrapped her cold hands around the tea cup and stared down as if she could divine answers from the liquid.

"Well, we're not sure yet, but it probably has something to do with her," he said. "You said yourself that there would be no reason to do something like this. It could be a stalker or something, but you haven't even been here long, so it's more likely that whoever it was followed you here."

She shook her head in denial and disbelief. "So he came here because…Risa died? I don't understand." Her thoughts suddenly took a leap to the most logical extreme and Riku gripped the tea cup so hard that fiery pains shot down her arm from her injured shoulder. "Do you—you think Risa was murdered? That it wasn't an accident?"

Maybe it had been a kidnapping gone wrong. But even as she said the words, Riku felt the sick twist in her stomach, because now that the memories couldn't be tamped down, she knew with a painful clarity that even if the driver had started the process of Risa's death, she and her parents, and the doctors, were the ones who had seen it through to the end.

Rather than denying it outright, Dark shrugged. "We really don't know, Riku. We're just guessing, given that everything else in your life seems fairly unremarkable, in the best sense possible. The only major thing that's happened is your twin's death. It seems unlikely that this means she was deliberately killed, though, given how you described it."

"Why would anyone possibly want to kill Risa? And how could the cab driver have been involved?" Once Riku started questioning, she couldn't stop the torrent of words that had built up around her fears and frustrations. "She shouldn't have died from the accident, except she hit her head just so… Everyone said so. Everyone. It was a tragedy, but just one of those freak accidents. They said it's like being bitten by a dog and dying from rabies. People aren't supposed to die from things like that, not any more!"

She only stopped because the lump in her throat had made her swallow all her words. Over it all, a voice in her head whispered: liar, liar. She knew exactly how Risa had really died. She had been there.

She'd fallen into a coma, the bleeding in her brain so bad that there'd been no hope. But her heart had still beat and the machines had breathed for her—until they had been turned off. Riku watched Risa take her last breath and then she heard the heart monitor sound its continuous alarm.

How many hours had it been after the accident when they finally killed her?

"Riku, calm down," Dark shushed her, seeing how she had gone painfully rigid in her chair. His voice brought her back a little, pulling her slightly out of her trance, but she was only paying a little attention to him and he could see it was not enough. "It'll all be okay." He reached across the table to take her hand and she looked at him through blurred vision.

"Hey," he said a little more sharply, when she was still unresponsive. "It will be okay." His hand came up to cup her jaw and he suddenly kissed her, passionately but not lustfully, more comforting than dominating.

Dark's lips were hot, warm, tender—his tongue tangling with hers gently, leaving behind a sense of spice that she could just barely taste, but could not identify, if it was even a flavor. More likely than not, it was simply Dark himself that tasted that way, completely unique and completely enthralling. She found herself responding to him, everything else suddenly rendered secondary as her pulse began pounding in her ears, her entire body warming from that intense, intimate contact.

His kiss pushed away the nightmares and memories, giving her another outlet for the emotions that churned inside of her. He offered himself up quite deliberately for distraction, even though most would not have given themselves over to be used in such a fashion. But he would, because it wasn't a matter of her using him, or him using her, not at all. He understood that.

His lips on hers and the sensations it produced grounded Riku back into her own very physical body—one that had gone both soft with heat and tight with want. Her hand came up to tangle in his hair, while she caught his bottom lip in her teeth for a fleeting moment, biting just hard enough for something primitive and wild inside her to sigh in possessive satisfaction.

Blinking away the tears rapidly, Riku took a deep breath and then tensed as the sound of loud knocking at the front door resounded through the house.

By the time Satoshi and Daisuke saw her, she was almost alright again. There was no real need for them to be coming over but it did make her feel better and Dark wanted to fill Daisuke in on all the details of what had happened. Satoshi also promised to put out a bulletin for a car matching the description they gave, although with such scanty concrete information to go on, none of them were putting their hopes in getting a tip.

She did not want to admit it, but their presence also helped as a slight buffer between Dark and herself. She was falling much, much too fast, and she had no idea if there was even a bottom that could be reached. Part of her felt more alive than she had ever felt, but her other, more rational side wanted to draw back in fear.

Riku thought the strength of whatever hovered in between them surprised Dark as well, despite his usual role in relationships (or so his image presented, and the gossip went) as the confident seducer. When he'd greeted Daisuke and Satoshi, his smile appeared the tiniest bit strained, as if he hadn't decided himself whether their presence had inconveniently interrupted something that might have progressed farther, or whether he was relieved that there was an excuse not to explore those possibilities quite yet. It was almost as if this was all kind of new to him too, although she could not begin to guess why that would be so.

After she had told Daisuke and Satoshi everything, exhaustion had caught up with her. She should have called her parents at least, given what had happened, but Riku just couldn't. She loved her parents and thought they loved her, but since losing her twin—and truthfully, long before that, too—she had become distant with them. She had always fought her own battles in any case and really, what could she tell them at this point?

Hi Mom and Dad, I was attacked today and almost kidnapped, but my own personal angel—even though he has black wings and he's actually more of a thief—saved me, so I'm okay.

It was ridiculous to even think about it. But for some reason it made her realize just how alone she had become. Aside from Dark and Daisuke, she had no one. In school and with friends, Riku had never been very conscious of her natural popularity. She liked doing things for other people and was comfortable both by herself and in a group of people. What bothered her now was her realization that after the accident, she'd given up on her friends just as much as they had given up on her.

They were depressing thoughts and Riku did her best to push them away. At least she had been relieved to hear Daisuke's reassurances that Dark would be all right, although his explanation for it hadn't been what she had expected.

"He keeps telling me that it's not a big deal," she fretted, "but that kind of cut needs stitches. I didn't even know what I was doing when I was cleaning it. What if it gets infected?"

"He's survived way worse," Daisuke said with a laugh. "Honestly, Riku, that's practically a scratch compared to what he's been through. You know, Krad once even put his sword straight through him." Seeing that the new information wasn't doing much to make her feel better, Daisuke gave Dark an apologetic look, while Dark rolled his eyes at both of them.

Since they were all over already, they had dinner together and for once, the house didn't seem so big and empty, not when it was filled with three young men. Riku knew the others were constantly on the alert, so it wasn't a totally relaxed gathering, but it was nice to be together like they were normal teenagers just catching up with each other.

She told them about enrolling in the university and Daisuke was predictably delighted. Mostly, Riku just sat and listened, letting the conversation comfortably flow around her. Between Daisuke and Dark, she heard a lot more about their security company, and found out that it was actually also a benefit to Satoshi as well. Satoshi had grown into his role as the Police Commander and although his youth worked against him all too often, it was clear from Daisuke's stories that the older men he commanded respected him for his ability, if not for his experience.

It seemed that in the four years that Riku had been away, Satoshi had become a little more open to other people, a change that she felt sure could be traced back to Daisuke's influence. Satoshi even joked that Dark and Daisuke's company, Byakuya Securities, was putting him out of a job because crime rates were down due to better security. Daisuke responded by saying that since the police department's solve rate for cases were so high, it discouraged people from even trying to break the law.

Listening to the talk between the three young men, Riku felt like the threads of her life were starting to come together again, because suddenly she could see her future, and she could see theirs too. Nestled in the couch besides Dark, Riku watched a movie with them and found that it was surprisingly easy to not even be really concerned that there was still someone out there who wanted to hurt her. The worry could be saved for later. The memories didn't haunt her every breath. It was enough, for now.

She found her head leaning against Dark's shoulder and breathed in his warm scent. It still had the ability to make things liquefy low in her body, but overriding it all was a fragile sense of peace, of protection. He gave her security, even though playing with him, flying with him, kissing him, was dangerous in another way. In his presence, she could let herself be exhausted, aware again of her stinging knees, scraped raw by the concrete pavement. Dark's arm tightened around her as if he could sense the slight pain, but the strength of it, the sheer masculinity, made her feel more feminine than anyone else had ever made her felt. She had always been the tomboy, even after she had changed her appearance to become more ladylike, but somehow with him, she could be a normal girl.

They were silly thoughts, but special ones. Unaware of Daisuke and Satoshi's all too knowing looks at Dark, and of Dark glaring back at them as he stubbornly kept his arms around her and lent her his shoulder for use as a pillow, Riku began to doze off. Her heart felt so full with a kind of contentment that had been missing from her life ever since she had left.

The only thing that made it less than perfect was Risa's absence.

A/N: Please take a moment review before reading the next chapter!