It didn't start out with Rukia, as I had thought it would. Instead the first scene to surround me (I was watching it unfold before me like a disembodied spirit) was me at seven years old looking behind me at the Barai house and being a little sad that no-one had come to see me off. It was my seventh birthday after all, and I was starting out on my own. Still, Barai House was a busy place... I watched as the younger me walked down the pathway before him and out into the harsh streets of Hangdog. The scene changed to my first meeting with what later became my family.
Haru, the short skinny kid with the leopard print yukata, was lively and quick. He grinned and laughed and got a kick out of flirting as close to danger as he could. He was a good kid, but not real long on common sense, he'd been something of a dreamer, always living half in this world and half in another in his own mind. There had been times when I'd envied him his ability to drift off somewhere else, I'd wished I had someplace to go that was better than that place. He had needed looking after, someone with a speck of common sense to keep him from haring off into places and situations that would get him killed. It hadn't been long before I'd become something of a surrogate big brother to him.
We were joined next by Tomi, even half-starved he somehow managed to have a larger frame than me and Haru combined. He'd been kind and gentle, some said slow, but I guessed they just didn't see the way he took his time to really think about things. And not just where he was getting his next meal from either, he thought about things like, why are certain people born in some sectors and other people born in others, and why was there wind and sun and seasons when the whole place wasn't a planet? People called him slow and dumb but they just didn't know that he saw the world a whole lot differently than anyone else seemed to.
Next came Miki, a trouble-maker from first to last. He seemed to have been born with an innate knack fer mischief and a drive to drive everyone around him to distraction with pranks and tricks, still, that was part of what made him so great to scavenge with. He was always thinking up new ways to scam merchants. Even in a world as dangerous as ours there were still kids out there who thought they were invincible. The little shrimp was lucky he had me to have his back when his little jokes went too far with some of the bigger kids.
The four of us were raiding a merchant one day, running for our lives as he chased us down with a two-by-four intent on taking our supplies back as well as our hides, when what to our wondering eyes should appear but a tiny young scrap of a girl with big dark eyes, tripping up the merchant and then to emphasize her point, dancing on top of his head. I'd been so shocked at the sight that I'd actually frozen up in amazement, a first for me. When she urged us to follow her at a run we didn't need any more prompting, we'd all followed after her. It turned out she didn't have a flop she we took her back to our place and I divided out her share of the spoils. When she took down that kid that was so much bigger than her for the sake of some justice for a little kid well... I guess it was all over from then on. She was one of us and we ran together.
The scenes that flashed next were hard to look at. Myself being called up by one of the local barmaids to see if the body of a boy found beaten and broken in an alley as the result of a brawl the past night was one of mine. I'd been thirteen and it had been the first time I'd been faced with the death of someone I cared about. Grief and sorrow clenched in my chest, bringing hot tears to sting my eyes. Being a proud young man I'd felt the need to maintain my image as a tough guy, partly so no-one else thought they could move in on my turf... I hadn't let myself cry. Even when we had been buying his body up on that hill and Rukia had been weeping hard, I'd had to stay strong for her, for all of us so had never shed a tear, but all of my crying was done on the inside. A year or so later Tomi fell to the Riverfront Ravage, despite all of my attempts to get healing and medicine for him he died there in that miserable little hovel, surrounded by us. I'd still needed to stay strong because there was Rukia and Miki to look after and due to the sickness food was harder to come by. I commanded myself to suck it up and get on with the business of living, burying my friend and taking care of the two that remained. They grieved but I couldn't, I didn't have the time or the luxury, if food had been hard to get before the Ravage, it was almost impossible after it. Then Miki died. It had happened suddenly, without warning. A year after the worst of the Ravage had finally passed over Miki volunteered to bring home dinner, Rukia was repairing a tear in my yukata and I was already out to grab fresh water, so when the news came that he'd been caught in the crossfire of a revenge-war it came as a surprise. Looked like Miki's infamous luck and cleverness had finally run out. By that time it seemed like even Rukia didn't have any tears left and we were both dry-eyed and solemn as the last of the old crew was buried up on top of the hill.
I ignored the weight in my chest at having to relive those old and still-painful memories. It was bad enough that they had happened in the first place, why did I have to be subjected to them again. I didn't see the point, they had happened, there was no changing them, and I had gotten on with my life just fine, right?
"Wrong," my young Soul Reaper self informed me.
"Watcha mean wrong?" I demanded. "I'm here aren't I? I ain't bawlin' my head off on top o' that hill, or wasting away in an alley somewhere, so then what's the problem?"
"You only think you're fine, and that you've put it all behind you," my young doppleganger said. "But in reality you've only pushed your grief down so you wouldn't have to deal with it. They were your family Renji, the closest thing you ever had to one since yer Onee-san's had to push you outta the nest. You couldn't shed one little tear for them when they were gone?"
"Yeah so what? I done my best for 'em, what more d'ya want from me?"
"You have to acknowledge that deep down, you still grieve for them because you never let yourself grieve properly when you lost them."
"I do not," I muttered.
What, he thought I was gonna start crying like a little wuss or sumthin'? Che! Not likely. I was a man dammit.
"Men grieve too," he replied.
I looked over at him caustically. Yeah, sure they did.
"Your boss does it, he just does it quietly, and with ice," myself pointed out.
Well that was his problem then.
"You do too, you just push it down so no-one else can see it, but it's still there, a canker beneath the surface. It's not going to go away unless you face it, and until you do, you'll never love freely."
"I love plenty!" I snapped. Wasn't she reason I did anything?
"Sure you do, no-one who can say they know you could possibly say otherwise," myself agreed with me. "But I didn't say you don't love, I said you can't love freely."
"What the hell's the difference?" I demanded, really irritated. The other chakras were bad enough, makin' me deal with fear and guilt and regret but for some reason this one made me more uncomfortable than the other ones combined. It kinda seemed like he wanted me ta, I dunno, start bawling like a brat or somethin'.
"You have to sever your ties to grief before you can freely, truly give and accept love," myself said.
I snorted. It all sounded like a buncha new-age hippie crap ta me. I wasn't no damn wuss that was gonna hold hands and start bawling his eyes out reciting poetry and talking about his feelings.
"I'm not tied to grief," I protested.
I was fine. I felt fine.
"No, apparently you're still stuck in denial," myself said a little facetiously. "Otherwise you'd be aware that that little pang you get in your chest whenever you think about family, either your own or someone else's, is the echo of those unresolved feelings you have for your own lost family."
I crossed my arms and scowled. This was stupid. There was a long drawn-out silence as my younger self just looked at me, waiting. Okay, so maybe there was a little something there. Maybe. I mean, it wasn't like I was jealous of Rukia or that brat for having a family or anything. It was okay ta miss yer friends if they were gone, it didn't mean that there was some part of me somehwere that was still hung up on it.
Did it?
:Bugger.: I thought in annoyance as the thought occurred to me that maybe it did. I really didn't want to do this.
"Fine," I gritted. "Maybe I do still miss 'em all. Maybe I am still a little sad about them dyin' on me, but that was a long time ago. What am I supposed to do about it? I got on with my life so it's over with, right?"
"Is it?"
I was startin' ta get seriously irritated with me. That guy kept turnin' all my questions back on me.
"If you still hurt whenever you look at other people who have all that you have lost, then can you really say you're as over it as you want to believe?" he asked next.
I scowled. He had a point, and it really kinda ticked me off.
"I.." I didn't want to admit it.
"All you have to worry about in this place is yourself, there's no-one else to see or judge you. The only person holding you back here is you, so then where's the harm in admitting it, in acknowledging to yourself that you feel grief over what you've lost. What does it harm you to grieve a little bit for love and loss?"
"I ain't gonna cry," I mumbled, even though my throat seemed to want to tighten up all on it's own.
In reply, my doppleganger pointed his index a finger at me and tapped my chest. A strange glow of green welled up from my torso and that tiny little knotted ball of grief and misery that had been where I'd shoved all that sorrow I'd felt at loosing my family, put it aside and away from me to get through the next day and all the days that followed loosened itself, uncurling like a flower and spread. Now I had to face it. I gritted my teeth as a terrible grief welled up in me, entwined with great rage against the world and with destiny for taking the people I loved from me. It hurt. It hurt a lot. I was pretty well used to physical injury but this kinda pain wasn't something that anyone should ever be able to get used to. I gritted my teeth and felt the strength drain from my body as I sank to my knees. I curled around my pain and misery in a way I'd never let myself before, having no choice now but to just ride it out.
I curled around my anger and grief and tried to keep the sobs from wracking my body. Strangled noises, whimpers of pain like a whipped pup, escaped my throat but my eyes at least remained manfully dry. I had that much at least, but the rest of me was given over to it. It didn't happen all at once either, but it seemed to come in waves, one tide of grief ebbing for a bit, long enough to let me breathe, before then next one came again and knocked me sideways. I grieved for those I'd loved and lost and for those I hadn't allowed myself the chance to love out of fear of losing them. It felt like an eternity later when the last of the suffering dried itself up and I could uncurl from my fetal position and climb back to my feet like a man. I was going to ignore the fact that my cheeks had somehow managed to get wet, it had been the dew.
:No it hadn't,: and inner part of me whispered.
Well, no it hadn't, but it was enough for me that it had happened at all, there was no need to make a big production out of it. My heart seemed to know the truth, that the greif was no longer a weight in my chest and that I had relinquished its silent hold over me.
But it seemed that love wasn't quite done with me yet. Myself was still standing there waiting for me, and once I had pulled myself together he pointed behind me. I looked back to see a familiar form step out of the mists. Rukia.
"Aw c'mon," I grumbled. "Ain't it enough ya had me on the ground bawlin' my eyes out, why ya gotta start in with her?"
"You won't get anywhere unless you face it," he said.
"Face what?" I asked. "I love her, she see's me as another older brother. What's ta face?"
"Your despair," the doppleganger replied. "The feeling of inadequacy that prevents you from offering your love to her straightforwardly and accepting that she might love you in return."
"She doesn't though," I said flatly. "She loves that brat."
"The fact that she loves another does not change the love that you give," my doppleganger said to me.
He had to be kidding me. What, I was just supposed to go through my life, doomed to an eternity of unrequited love? I wasn't a masochist.
"What I mean to say is that, it doesn't change the quality of the love you give, it doesn't change the fact that the love you give is a good emotion that finds its source in a worthy man with a true heart. It also does not mean that you, who give love, is unworthy of receiving it in kind."
I stared at him for a long moment, trying to wrap my mind around all that he'd just said. Oh, so I was a worthy man huh? If I was so worthy, then why did she seem to love everyone else but me so much more? She spent more time with the brat, who hadn't even known her for a year in mortal terms than she spent with me. And as for that kidnapper brother of hers...
"Well what good does that do me then?" I asked. "Is my being worthy and true or whatever suddenly supposed ta make her fall in love with me?"
"I think that you underestimate the depth and importance of the bond you share with her," myself said. "Hasn't it lasted all this time, through all those mistakes and misunderstandings?"
"But that's because I've loved her all this time," I grumbled. It was embarrassing, and a little pathetic, to have to say it out loud.
"And who is to say she hasn't loved you in return?" he asked me. "More importantly, does the fact that she may not love you as you love her automatically mean that you should stop loving her?"
"Well doesn't it?" I asked.
In the world I knew and had grown up in, only an idiot gave something away for free. The only people who survived were the people who got for what they gave.
"Does love work that way?" he questioned me.
I stopped and stared at him, confused. Well didn't it?
...Didn't it?
:No, y'know I don't actually think that it does,: I realized.
I recalled snippets of conversations and commiserations of what everyone around me, including my close friends, said about love. Some had compared it to madness, others had called it the most wonderful thing in the world, the only thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that it has a will of its own and that they couldn't help but follow after it. There had been other people besides myself who had been put in doomed or one-sided relationships because of that fickle thing. At least with me there was a rock-solid foundation as to why and how I loved her so deeply. There were so many reason's why I couldn't help but love her. Because I couldn't help it, I knew. If someone else, no matter how wonderful and perfect a woman she might be, walked up to me tomorrow and offered me everything in life I could possibly want if I'd leave behind my love for Rukia and choose her instead I already knew that I'd refuse her without having to think about it. The heart did as the heart did and my heart loved her, even if she loved another. I felt the sinking weight of depression gather in on me again.
:I'm doomed,: I thought.
Doomed to an eternity of one-sided, unrequited love. To be close enough to talk to her, even to touch her if I reached out my hand, but never to have her realize how I felt about her or return my feelings. The fact that she was part of my life at all was a pretty small consolation.
"And we're back to the drawing board," the younger me said, in exasperation. He was looking at me with disbelief and shaking his head.
"You're really pretty amazing, I gotta say," he said. "You were so close, and yet you'd rather wallow in your little courtly love drama than see what's staring you right in the face."
"And what's supposed to be staring me in the face?" I asked him, irritated and depressed. The only thing I saw staring me in the face was that I was doomed to a twisted sort of loneliness in the future.
"You keep treating love like it's this precious commodity and there's only so much of it you have. You keep thinking that if you give it away it's lost forever. That's not what love's about."
I stared back at him blankly.
"It's not?" I asked. This was a new one on me.
"Love is infinite in it's capacity to expand and regenerate itself," my doppleganger informed me. "You can love lots of people in lots of different ways and none of those ways has to be inferior to any of the others."
Really.
"You are free to love Rukia with an open heart, even if your feelings aren't returned, because how can anyone tell you what to feel?"
"One problem with that bub," I said. "Rukia doesn't feel like she deserves to receive love, so if I let her know how I feel about her, she'd just feel burdened by obligation. That's not supposed to be what ya do ta someone if ya love 'em."
"And people call you insensitive," he noted dryly. "But don't you love her anyway and want to be there for her anyway? In any way you can?"
Well, yeah, that was why I was pretty much doomed.
"Maybe you're looking at this the wrong way," my younger self said to me. "The fact that your bond is still unbroken and as strong as it is should be celebrated. Lesser feelings in lesser people have certainly changed for smaller reasons before."
Okay, and that was supposed to help me how?
"It's not about getting repayment for what you put out there, it's about the capacity in your heart to love selflessly."
I did, but that didn't mean that it didn't hurt like hell sometimes.
"Opening your heart to other people will always carry the chance of being hurt or betrayed, but that doesn't mean you should keep everything you have to offer to yourself just because you're afraid of getting hurt. What would your life be like if you hadn't taken in your friends and made them family? If you hadn't cared about Kira and Momo? If you hadn't made friends in the squads you were assigned to? How much more lonely would your existence have been if you hadn't forged bonds with people, however tenuous?"
In short, love could hurt but it could heal too. No-one ever said it would be easy. I sighed, why couldn't life be simpler than that? I guessed that life wasn't meant to be simple either.
"And your love for Rukia?" my younger doppleganger pressed.
"What about it?" I asked.
Yeah I loved her, so much that it hurt. And okay, I was kinda starting to get that the love I was able to give didn't need to be returned ta be valid. It'd be nice, but there was a weird sort of strength in selfless love too.
"You of all people can say that you have been shaped by love."
I shrugged, not getting what the hell he was trying to get at now.
"Can you honestly say that you'd be the man you are today without that love?" he demanded.
"O' course not!" I grumbled.
Every single fucking decision in my whole god-damn life up until now had pretty much had her at it's heart. Join the Academy why? Because Rukia said "let's go be Soul Reapers." Make myself miserable for decades why? Because I want to girl I love to have the best of everything, to have a family to love and support her. Work my ass off to become a Lieutenant in the shortest amount of time possible, why? Because I want to stand beside her with my head held up. Defy the whole damn Soul Society and just about everyone in it, get my ass handed back to me by a brat and then kill my pride to beg for his help why? Because it was the only way to save her life. My feelings for her were more important than anything to me; pride, status, ability, none of it meant a damn without her.
But along the way my world had become larger because I'd accepted other people into my life. My two best friends (aside of Rukia) Kira and Momo had been an unexpected blessing. Kira with his sharp mind and quiet strength, always ready with an observation or a quick word to help me out. Momo with her sweet disposition and pure kindness had become the little sister I'd never had, always cheering me up in her way. Ikkaku Madarame, my sempai, with his brash temperament and loud attitude understood me and my own hang-ups perhaps better than I did, he too had guided me in his rough way when I needed it. Aizen, a man I had looked up to and admired, I'd gone to him for advice and counsel with problems I couldn't see an answer to... he had betrayed me in the end, betrayed us all, but the fact that I was one of many, and that some hurt from it more than I did didn't change the fact that I still hurt from it, even though I wouldn't admit it.
Matsumoto, Hisagi, Yachiru, Rikichi...
Even Kuchiki, the stick I used to measure my self against and the stone I used to sharpen my edge... ours was a complicated relationship, I wanted to hate the man for stealing Rukia away from me, but I couldn't because he had given her so many opportunities that I couldn't. I was pissed off at him, still, for falling short when Rukia needed him most, but he'd redeemed himself here and there by saving her life.
"What of it?" I asked.
"The source of your greatest strength is how you feel for the ones you love, not only Rukia but for your friends as well."
I could see that now. I guessed I wasn't so bad off; maybe it wasn't what I had aimed for, and what I wanted, but I had a lot of good things going in my life. I was stubborn, but... it wasn't like I was settling for less. I cared about my friends, after all in the old Rukon proverb "friends are the family you can choose." Maybe I should take my eyes off the star and start looking around me for a change. I felt another little bit loosen inside of me.
"So... I'm done here, right?" I said hopefully. "Sure, my love for her makes me stronger, motivates me, and gives me something to aim for, but actually getting what I want isn't the point. Love isn't about being selfish, but about caring enough about the other person who matters to you to do what right for them."
I'd given her up once before because I believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was what was best for her and what would make her happy. I could give her up to someone else, even if i didn't like it, if it was what would make Rukia happy. I'd already had plenty of practice with suffering in silence, if it would hurt her to know the truth about my feelings for her, then dammit I'd keep shut about it.
"I've stepped aside for her sake, so I'm all done here, right?"
"Not quite," the younger version of me said. Then he stepped in front of me and the rest of his tatoos filled in and his face took on that indefinable quality that spoke of age. In short he became a one hundred percent accurate copy of me. I stared at him for a long moment as he looked at me expectantly.
"I don't get it," I said after a long silence in which we looked at each other.
My doppleganger gestured to himself and said
"You've accepted love and greif, love and loss, love and letting go and love and acceptance from those around you now the last thing you have to learn about love is how to love yourself."
I stared.
"Oh, he-e-e-ell no," I said flatly.
"Would you rather hate yourself?" he questioned me in my own voice.
"I don't hate myself," I replied. "I just don't get what you mean by loving myself. I get what you said about love not being limited and that there's always more of it fer me ta give to others if I want to and that I can't let grief keep its hold over me or it'll hold me back forever but I don't really understand what you're lookin' for here."
"Honesty," my doppleganger said approvingly. "You're learning to ask yourself the right questions, so I guess I'll give you a helping hand so you can come to understand it. Close your eyes..."
Feeling a little wary because all this chakra nonsense had me waaaay outside of my comfort zone (especially this love one) I did as he instructed. At first I saw nothing but the darkness behind my closed lids but then a vision began to form. It was a smaller image of myself and Zabimaru, immediately surrounding us was Rukia, Kira and Momo, Ikkaku, Yukichika, Hisagi, and Captain Kuchiki, all tied immediately to me with strong bonds of light. A bit further back were some of the guys from eleventh and a few of the other captains, connected to them with smaller threads made of light were friends of theirs that I also considered to be important parts of my world, Lieutenant Matsumoto, Captain Hitsugaia, Ichigo and the Brat Pack, Urahara and his two brats Ururu and Jinto, Hanatarou, Nemu and so many others. All tied to them and tied to each other in a web of light. Each of them, however minor, had touched my world for the better and they were tied to each other by that bond of caring. it was like I was part something bigger than I had ever taken time to realize. I'd always considered myself as being someone rather minor in the grand scheme of things; a good fighter, and I cared about Rukia and my friends but I'd always felt deep down, that if I were to die, I'd only be mourned by a handful of people and they'd get over it rather quickly. Seeing this I realized that it simply wasn't so, my life had been touched by so many...
I wondered if I was worthy of being at the center of such a vast interconnected web. I wondered what they all saw in me that was so special that they'd waste their time. I was just me, sure I thought I was pretty important but I pretty much expected that no-one else felt the same, so I had to prove I was something remarkable. I felt tears welling up in my eyes at the realization that the whole time I was the only one who felt that way about it.
The veiw of the individual people and threads panned out and I found myself looking down at a massive spiderweb of interconnected threads. I intrinsically knew that those threads represented not only bonds of friendship and loyalty but also actions that had been taken, words said, smiles, lessons, little touches of light here and there that people had carried with them and passed along. It sparkled back at me in a beautiful ever growing pattern, lighting up the dark that surrounded it with me at it locus, determined to shine as brightly as I could. Each of the threads that touched me seemed to make me stronger and brighter.
:And it works both ways: I realized with surprise.
My impacts on the worlds of many of them (especially farther out on the edge of the net) had been rather minor, or at least that was how I'd always seen it. An encouraging word to Ururu about having some spine, a rough way of teaching Uruahara's boy respect and how one treats their gang-mates if they truly want to be a leader, a few idle lessons on how to take respect if people won't give it to him to Rukia's little healer-boy, a smile of encouragement when someone couldn't get a technique, setting someone up to take lessons or seek advice from someone i knew who would be good at giving it... all of them seemed like very minor things. They were things that came naturally to me, and half of the time I didn't realize I was doing it and I'd certainly never given it much thought beyond the fact that it felt like I was doing the right thing at the moment, but looking at the vast net of lives that had touched me and I'd touched them rippling outward with me at its center, I realized that I had a greater impact for good than I had originally thought.
In that moment I felt such a profound feeling of humility that it caused tears to spring to my eyes and simultaneously made me fall to my knees (and that was not a position I ever assumed easily or willingly). I was filled with the knowledge that they all believed in me, that they all saw in me something that made me worthy of their respect and admiration. The harder I fought to make myself "worthy" in their eyes only made me that much better and more honorable to them. I was struck dumb with shock and awe at the revelation, all this time I had been the only one who thought of myself as unworthy or lacking in some way when I was already an integral part of a love that I hadn't really even known existed. The person that everyone else saw that I had never been able to see until now existed; he wasn't a mirage or a false front, I just hadn't ever realized that he was me all along. As humble as I felt about maybe being unworthy of being the center of something that reached out so far beyond me, I was that much more resolved that I would be worthy and that I would be the man they saw. I would accept thier feelings, and my own, without flinching, and try my best to return their good with the best that was in me.
With that promise to myself I felt the remained of that tight little ball of grief warm, melting into something different, and loosening and spreading from within my chest expanding outwards until my whole being was filled with warmth and a green light of hope and healing, colored like the first leaves of spring. Just the same as i had felt a powerful goodness and peace flow out from me along those threads connecting me to everyone else in my life no matter how distant, so too did I feel my own heart and being flood with a pure love filled with acceptance and support. It had been there all along, I was the only one who hadn't seen it fluttering around like a bird within the cage of my own grief and inadequacy. It was released now and my spirit soared.
I opened my eyes faced with myself staring right back at me, knowledge and wisdom in his eyes, the sort that I myself had just gained. There wasn't anyone around to see or judge so I reached out and hugged him close, accepting the wordless condition of my release. he dissolved a second later and after that so did the mist world. I was back within the jungle glade with the tree and the fountain and Zabimaru. I looked down at the now clean bowl of the fourth chakra and inserted the point of the new form of Zabimaru into the slitted keyholeand turned, feeling the locking mechanism click over. A symbol inside of a circle of a six-pointed star with an upward facing triangle at its heart appeared, written in lambent green light, just before the bottom of the pool flowed with powerful light-liquid flooding it as the pools before it had done. The trees around me seemed to whisper for a moment and when I looked over at Zabimaru, Snakey was begining to come around and the baboon half had eyes that glowed with their usual lambent light. He radiated strength and solidity just as much as he ever had, even more so now for some reason and I felt good about that. I felt good in general, more... more myself than I had ever been before. I wasn't a perfect person, but who was? I did now feel a feeling of validity, it wasn't false pride that I wore as an armor, I knew there was something more to it, more to me. More than being shaped by love, I also shaped the world and the people around me by it, and for the better.
Oy! If you thought Renji struggled with this chapter, that's nothing compared with how I struggled with it. It's funny, I had it two-thirds of the way finished, I'd stopped at the point just as his doppleganger tells him he has to love himself and I just hit a brick wall. I could not for the life of me imagine a circumstance where a tough guy like Renji would get all sensitive and huggy-feely new-age-hippie with himself, I must have started and stopped with different scenarios three times. Some went off into tangents that just didn't work, I tried letting my mind lie fallow for a bit hoping it would come to me but it wouldn't. It was when i was doing something completely unrelated that it finally came, just in time for me to post on this Tuesday! Yay! As always thank you everyone for your wonderful support, your reveiws and encouragement are always a wonderful goad to keep me posting and I hope the wait didn't kill you all. I'll try to get the next chapter up by thursday (yeah, the next two chakra are only half written too, but all the stuff that happens after he faces down his chakra are all written out so, after this hurtle it should be smooth sailing!) See you all soon, I hope!