Lost in the Dark

By E.M. Megs

Chapter 22 - Safety

Kyoya stopped the five of them in a small town as soon as they had ridden far enough away from the border that they wouldn't be followed. Dawn was starting to break. His temper was going to be worse than normal. He dismounted near a lodge. "Shouldn't we just keep riding home?" she asked him. He didn't answer. Shit, he really was angry with her this time. "Kyoya?"

"I'm not going any farther until I have a good meal in my stomach," he grumbled. The lodge was obviously already open and getting ready for business. He strode in, ignoring her once more to get food for his small party. "Biscuits and gravy alright?" She nodded, hearing three other murmurs of assent. She waited outside with the three guards as he ordered five plates of biscuits and gravy from a very shocked woman behind the counter. Apparently, she hadn't been expected a Narian Prince to walk through her door. "You three can wait inside," he said quietly to the other men. They obeyed quickly. He turned to her after the door had closed. "What were you thinking?"

"That if we didn't get Yuki out of there, then she was going to die."

"No, Haruhi. What were you thinking when you let them take you?"

"It's better that you bargain for a life when it isn't your niece's. She wouldn't get hurt that way."

"Were you thinking about yourself? Were you thinking about what that would put me through? Were you thinking that there was the possibility that they might torture you? No you weren't."

"Kyoya I-"

"I knew the moment that they took you that they were going to find some damn reason to torture you just so that they would make me make a hasty decision."

"You didn't have to free me!"

He stopped like she'd hit him in the face with a 2x4. A glare came over his glasses. She felt a chill come over her entire body as he hissed furiously, "Friends don't do that." Her stomach dropped. Dammit, she'd never meant to make him upset with that sort of implication. "You obviously weren't thinking. Though I'm surprised they didn't kill us both."

"How was I not thinking?" she asked, seething in her own way. "Yuki's safe! That was the whole purpose of us com-!"

"They tortured her!" Haruhi froze mid-sentence, feeling sick to her stomach. "I saw the burns on her arms. Much smaller than the ones you got, but still there. They tortured her for some kind of information that she probably doesn't even have. That's how I knew they were going to torture you." He was breathing heavily as he stared at her with fiery eyes behind his glasses. He grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her toward him. She winced, feeling tears building up in the back of her eyes as pain shot up her arm. He still held tightly to it as he pushed it up to her eye level. "These won't heal before you go back to Kira."

"So I'll hide them. I'll wear long sleeves."

A bark of harsh laughter left his lips. "It's almost summer, Haruhi. No one wears long sleeves in summer unless they want to burn up. You weren't thinking of this-" he shook her arm, she cringed, "-when you decided it would be a good idea to give yourself up. You may as well have turned yourself in to be hanged."

She pursed her lips, hating him at that moment in time for everything that he was saying and doing. "Will you let go of my arm now? It's actually quite painful and it doesn't make it any better when you're holding it like that," she asked quietly. He released her with a look of contempt.

"I knew I should have left you at the palace."

This time, she laughed. "What? And leave me as prey to your brothers? I'm sorry that I acted on instinct, but that was what happened in my Witching Dream and I wasn't about to let it come true in even the slightest sense of the idea. Even if I got hurt, it doesn't matter to me because she's safe."

He pursed his lips and turned toward the window where he could see his guards being served their meal. He didn't speak to her again as he let himself back into the lodge to eat. She followed slowly behind.

~o~

By the time they reached the palace, both Haruhi and Kyoya were exhausted. And Haruhi was getting fed up with being ignored by the Narian royal. She stopped her horse right outside the gate and stared at the back of his head until he turned and looked at her. He stared at her, as if trying to get her to keep going purely by looking at her in a slightly threatening manner. He turned his horse back around and headed back toward her, waving the three guards on in the process.

"Stop shutting me out," she muttered in a low voice, glaring at him.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, Haruhi," he replied with a slightly icy edge.

"Buwoshybrar, you don't know what I'm talking about!" she hissed, "You haven't spoken to me since we left the inn." He opened his mouth but she cut him off. "I understand that you're angry about what I did. But I still think you're overreacting. Yuki's safe and that's the entire reason that we went."

"I'm not shutting you out because of that."

"I don't care why you're doing it. Just stop. You're putting me at arms length so that I won't get too close to you or your family. You're pushing me away where you previously tried to get me closer. Stop contradicting yourself." She looked away from the angered look in his eye.

"I'm not-"

"Yes you are. Don't you even dare deny it. You don't want your family getting too cozy with me because then they might discover secrets that would be dangerous for them to know."

"I don't want you hurt."

"I understand that," she murmured gently, "But that doesn't mean that you have to be such a prick about it."

He pursed his lips, unable to retort due to all the emotions bouncing around inside of him. He decided it was best to ignore her for now and navigated his horse around her carefully. The annoying part was: She did nothing to stop him.

~o~

The moment Haruhi saw Yuki she dropped the small bag she'd previously been holding as the 5-year-old jumped into her arms and buried her face in her neck. It was what she expected a reunion between a mother and daughter to look like. Except Haruhi wasn't Yuki's mother. She wasn't even related to her in the slightest. Surprise caused her to catch the small girl, holding her as close as she possibly could without hurting herself. Kyoya looked back at them while, further down the hall, Yuiichi looked at them too once finding his daughter in safe hands. "Yuki," Haruhi murmured, "Yuki, Yuki Yuki." Her uncle kept walking, turning straight into his room.

"I'm happy you're okay," Yuki mumbled.

"So am I," she replied quietly, carrying the girl toward her father and carefully placing her back in the older man's arms. The 20-year-old pressed a kiss to the forehead of the girl and nodded at Yuiichi.

"Thank you," Yuiichi muttered to her. She merely nodded. His eyes trailed down to where her arm were hurt. "I can heal that for you after Yuki goes to bed in an hour."

"That would be nice since Kyoya's..." She shook her head, glancing briefly back at the room that she shared at him. "He just... Doesn't agree with what I did. He's angry with me." One look from the oldest Ohtori sibling showed that she no longer had to worry about having problems with him, for which she was glad of.

"Sometimes... It isn't worth trying to reason with him because eventually he'll reason it out all on his own." Yuiichi sighed all the same though and added, "He's a smart man. He'll figure it out."

She nodded mostly to herself and asked, "How's your father?"

He shrugged but didn't provide an answer. At that moment Fuyumi appeared at the end of the hall, having been called to the Narian palace for Yuki. The little girl kicked her way down from her father's arms and straight out ran to her, yelling, "Auntie Yumi!"

"Yukima Ria Ohtori!" Fuyumi scolded lightly, "Why would you go missing like that and scare the crap out of your father?"

Yuki scowled at the use of her full name, to which Haruhi chuckled a bit. "It wasn't my fault," she scoffed, "And you know I hate being called Yukima."

Haruhi, with a small smirk, turned away from the Aunt-Niece duo and turned her attention back to Kyoya's oldest brother. "Your father?"

Yuiichi swallowed. "He's... healed. Physically anyway. He's still in a coma though. Dunno when he'll recover from that. Could be days, could be years..." She nodded, looking away from him. For the sake of the Ohtori family, she hoped that it wouldn't take years for Yoshio to come out of the darkness. His three sons were all strong, but she wasn't completely sure they could hold a country as big as Nari together through a war in their patriarch's absence without turning against each other. "Akito may walk again though if he keeps up his therapy."

"No one actually told me... what happened to both of them. The specifics I mean."

Yuiichi stared at her, searching for something. After several moments he finally spoke in a quiet low voice, obviously to keep Yuki from hearing. "Akito was stabbed in the lower spine, slicing his spinal cord but not severing it, thank God. He also had a few other bruises and contusions. For some reason that I can't seem to figure out his entire upper body was also in pain for weeks, most likely caused by a few blows to his head." He took deep breath. "Father was stabbed several times in the torso. Hit at least 3 times in the head, probably more which is the most probable cause of the coma."

Haruhi winced involuntarily at this bit of news. She looked away from Yuiichi, back toward where Yuki was chattering the head off of her aunt. "She's a chatterbox," Yuiichi muttered, "Just like her mother." She glanced back at him just in time to see the look of anguish and pain on his face before it disappeared beneath his façade. The way that he easily shifted his outward appearance to appear completely fine reminded her of the way Kyoya guarded himself. A thought flitted through her head for a brief moment.

"I'm... sorry about your wife. I tried..." she struggled with her words for a moment but Yuiichi waved her off.

"If I couldn't save her then there's no way that you could have." He turned back toward his bedroom, motioning her with a single beckoning finger to follow him while his daughter was being distracted by his sister. She obeyed his motion tentatively, looking back at Fuyumi and Yuki a moment before ducking her head the rest of the way in. He took her left arm in her hands gently, trying not to upset the burns. He examined her arm carefully. The browning blistered skin glared back at him. "Frigus. Cruor Tela," he whispered under his breath, starting the basics of the healing process. The sharp tingling in her skin from the burns subsided after a few minutes of the cooling spell. She sighed under her breath with relief. Now all that was left was the scalded tissue surrounding the cuts. Yuiichi hummed under his breath. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing. "I think I'll need to remove some of the tissue," he muttered under his breath mostly to himself. He released her arm long enough to stride across the room and pick up a pair of glasses and a small knife from his nightstand. He placed the glasses on his nose and concentrated with the knife in his hand.

She stared at the knife, forcing herself not to feel anything as he gently slid the knife into the cut and turned just enough to slice under the puffed up dead brown skin. She winced a bit as he cut around the browned area and pulled the thin slice of skin off the underlying burned tissue. It was raw and red. Yuiichi even flinched at the sight of it but still nodded to himself, whispering more healing spells under his breath as he wrapped her arm with a bandage similar to the one she'd seen on Yuki's arms.

"There you are," he murmured, looking up from admiring his handy work at her face. "Just be sure not to bump it too much and come see me if it starts bleeding or burning again."

"Thanks, Yuiichi," she mumbled, pulling her arm out of his grasp gently.

"Off to bed with you. The best thing for that arm will be rest. Speaking of which, I should get Yuki to bed." Haruhi nodded quietly, bowing her head to him in thanks as she took her leave. "And Haruhi..." She turned back slightly. "I meant what I said about Kyoya reasoning things out by himself. If I were you... I wouldn't even try to talk to him tonight."

"Thank you," she murmured again, exiting just as an excited Yuki brushed past her. She was exhausted and was almost positive that Kyoya would already be asleep, or at least she hoped he was. She didn't want him to be awake when she entered his bedroom. Unfortunately, the Gods weren't on her side. She could just vaguely make out Kyoya's shape standing on the balcony through the gap in the curtains. Other than that, the room was dark. She walked over to the balcony doors, silently watching him from the open doors. There was something about his form standing there, shoulders squared and eyes turned toward the ground below, that seemed strained.

She didn't say anything, just stood there and tried to put her finger on what might be wrong.

"I've lived here my entire life." His voice startled her as well as his movement when he turned to face her. She could barely make out his eyes behind his glaring spectacles but when she caught sight of them she felt something inside of her jump. He continued speaking after staring at her for several moments, "I've lived here my entire life, but I never realized how... horrifying this country is as a whole." He stopped, seemingly thinking through his words carefully. "And... My father's at fault for all of it." She could now fully see everything he was thinking in his eyes, the haunting memories, the stress, his disgust and frustration, everything. She took a soft step toward him. "My family's not even a family. We haven't been since my mother died. Father only talks to us when it's beneficial to himself or the kingdom. Akito's distanced himself so far from Fuyumi and I that sometimes I can't even see him. Fuyumi lives in another goddamn country. And Yuiichi's just... I don't even know anymore. Sometimes he's my best friend and other times I wonder if he hates me."

She remained quiet as he finally let out his frustrations on her. "And then there's you." A bitter kind of laugh fell from his mouth, causing her hopes of anything good to drop. "And you, Haruhi Fujioka are an enigma. A goddamn enigma." He didn't say anything else on the matter, just turned away from her, back toward the town lights below like nothing had ever happened. She almost felt like she had been insulted until his shoulders dropped a bit and a hand lifted to his face. The quickly shifting emotions he was showing her scared her slightly. He was never this emotional with her. She felt a tug on her heartstrings and clamped down on all emotions immediately.

Finally, after thinking about everything he had said she allowed herself to speak. "Kyoya?" He turned only slightly, indicating that he was listening to her. "I'm sorry..."

"For what?" He still didn't look at her, something that bugged her slightly. She didn't answer and he sighed a bit wearily. "Haruhi, you've become a very dear friend to me. My only one, now that I think about it. The thought of losing that friendship startles me, quite frankly." Now he did turn to look at her, his eyes still showing everything she was thinking. "I understand your actions, but I don't want your loyalty to me to put you in danger like that ever again. Are we clear?" She swallowed down the nausea that was starting to form in the pit of her stomach and nodded. His hands landed on her shoulders, his eyes staring into hers with a strict look, now restraining his emotions and hiding them from her view. "If I say that I'll take care of something - especially that has to do with my family - then trust that I'll take care of it and leave it alone."

Haruhi nodded again, feeling numb as she made the promise. "Okay... But trust me to disobey if it violates something I believe in."

He chuckled and let his head bob in agreement. "Fair enough." He nudged her back inside gently and she gladly obeyed in favor of curling up in bed and going to sleep with his comforting and not angry presence next to her.

~o~

She was falling. Hard and fast, falling. Through the dark and unable to see where exactly it was she was falling to. Her arm stretched out and suddenly, something grabbed at her. She drew back quickly, a shudder passing through her as her skin tingled from the cold touch. A light turned on somewhere high above, barely reaching the depths that she had reached. She hit the bottom and coughed slightly as the hit rattled her body. She looked around from where she was laying. A skeleton, it's dead black eyes staring straight at her lay next to her. She suppressed a scream of horror. When it shifted slightly and opened it mouth she gasped. The voice that came from it's throat mimicked Kyoya's almost identically as it formed her name, "Haruhi."

It was then that she realized that it was lying in a pool of blood.

"No!" she yelled.

"Haruhi! Dammit! Wake up!"

Her eyes snapped open, staring up into Kyoya's own onyx ones. His fingers gripped her wrists tightly, his legs spread to straddle her. He looked down at her worriedly while she blinked away after images of her nightmare. "You were having a nightmare," he murmured, loosening his grip. "And thrashing quite violently." She gazed up at him. His hands were cold, like the touch of the thing in her dream that had touched her while she was falling.

She shuddered and turned her eyes away from him. "God," she muttered under her breath, "Why does this always happen to me?" He looked at her for a moment with something lingering in his eyes before carefully climbing off of her. She grabbed hold of his hands and used them to hoist herself into sitting position. He still knelt on the mattress next to her, eying her like she might attack him at any moment. Her hands tightened around his for a moment as the skeletal voice shrank into her ears. Carefully, he pulled her towards him. He didn't even want to know what it was about. She let her head fall to his shoulder, feeling her fear build up for a split second before she broke it back down.

"It was just a dream," he told her quietly. She shook her head and shushed him. "Haruhi." Her eyes turned to his, blinking several times. "It was only a dream."

"I fell," she whispered, "I fell down a hole right into the arms of death itself." She stopped and let her eyes trail away from him for just a second before coming back to his. "And you were death... Or... it sounded like you."

He shook his head. "It was just a dream, Haruhi." Helplessly, she felt tears running down her cheeks despite all of his reassurances. It angered her when she realized that she couldn't stop them from falling. "Haruhi," he sighed, shifting his position and pulling his hands from hers to hold her face in his hands gently. He pulled her face up even though she was trying to hide it from him, making her stare at him. "It was a dream. Nothing more. Only... A dream."

Her tears began to stop and her arms wrapped around him, tugging her close to him. One of his hands held the back of her head while the other gently rubbed circles in her back, like he used to do with Yuki when she was smaller than she was now. And that's what it felt like. Sometimes he felt as though Haruhi was a child and he was her protector. He wanted to keep her safe, even in her nightmares.

She interrupted his thoughts when she pulled away, coughing to cover up her embarrassment. "Better?" he murmured.

"Yes."

"Good." He shifted his weight off of his legs and pulled them out from under him, swinging them to the side of the bed and standing. He grabbed a robe off the wall and shoved his feet into a pair of slippers. "You put entirely too much weight on your dreams, Haruhi," he muttered, walking back toward the bed. She scoffed and glared up at him. "I understand that you are a Witch and as such have premonitions, but that doesn't mean that all of your damn dreams are such. Ones like this, you should know aren't real because it's not even plausible." She sighed and her shoulders wilted slightly, her legs falling off the edge of the bed and feet hitting the floor with a dull thud. "I'm going to breakfast. Join me if you wish."

She watched him go, feeling the formality of his words strike her. Even after everything he had said a few nights ago, he was still pushing her away. It was only slight, but she could still feel it that spreading distance threatening to gobble her up. He spoke formally as a way to scare people away. But she wasn't frightened, more annoyed.

She couldn't trust him as long as he was pushing her away, keeping things from her. And that was why she was determined to put a stop to it.

~o~

A/N: My E key and space bar are on the fritz. Ignore any missing Es and/or spaces, please. Though I think I went through and caught them all. And excuse me as I bow before you and beg forgiveness. I really didn't mean to take this long.. And I'm taking writing time out of my NaNo novel to finish this. So... I'm sorry! I'm also really sorry that this is shorter than it normally is. I ran out of juice as I do a lot in November it seems... Blargh. Writing brain is too stretched for this. When I'm working on my novel I want to write something else, when I'm working on this I want to work on my novel. NOTHING WORKS.

IB is bad for you... Don't do it. It's AP on steroids, if you don't know what that is either GOOD. I don't even remember WHY I'm testing in History and English. And being a senior is tough shiz. I have senioritis. Seriously. And it's totally a legit word since Word isn't trying to correct it. Wooooow.

Happy Thanksgiving to all in the US! I'm vegetarian now so I won't be joining you in merry turkey eating, but I'll definitely be thanking the world for everything that I have.

Ramble, ramble, RAMBLE.

OKAY. NOW MORE IMPORTANT THINGS. I AM NOT HIGH/ADD I SWEAR.

Kudos to~: Twinklefeather, BlackRose, Magpie09, JUCHKO, Toffee-Pixie, Obsessed Dreamer, Mrs. Ootori43ver, AnonymousKyoyaFan, hannachan, NoGoodDeed14, XxNightShroudxX, Nessie-san.

JEE-BUS. JEEEEEE-BUSSSSSSS. You guys make me cry with joy. For real. Not joking. Not even a little. I was typing out that list... And I literally started crying.

(Oh boy... Ignore this... high sounding author's note, I'm in pain... and it's late even though it's only 8:30. Doh... I need sleep.)