Fuuyutsuki couldn't help but look at Fuu as though she were stupid. Help her? No one helped her! She helped, not the other way around! Even if Fuu could possibly help her, the owl was far too gone to even try. In her constantly moving mind, the girl was dull. Not because she got poor grades or didn't know how to tie her shoes, but because she couldn't solve her own problems half the time! She seemed to just sit and cry until she figured whatever it was out; no trial and error, nothing!

"Thank you Fuu-chan, but I'm fine. I really am." Was her unlively answer, and she slid the door shut again before any argument could be raised.

"Um, okay." was all Fuyu could say before the door was closed. She sat on the floor until she saw Deitome.
"Hey." she said with a slight smile.
"You might want to talk to Fuuyutsuki-chan. Something seems to be wrong. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she said she was okay and she closed the door in my face." Fuyu said.

Saikou just stood there, even after she had spoken. She stood there looking afraid and ashamed and cautious all at once and he couldn't hear a single thought. Yet the emotions were there. After a few more moments his thin pale lips parted and he mumbled a few short words, carried on an exhaled breath. "You came back."

Against his better judgement as God. Against his every thought. His body acted and he lurched forward, his arms reaching around her to hold her close against him, burrowing his face into the crook of her neck as he breathed her in. She was back with him. She had changed her mind and she was back.

******************

Deitome looked down at the girl and nodded. "Alright. I'll go see if I can tide things over." He gave Fuyu a wink. "Why don't you get some breakfast. It's early." He offered with a bright smile at the innocent teen standing before him.

He turned them, going to Fuuyutsuki's door. "Suki-san?" He called lightly. He didn't wait for her to open the door because he was almost certain she never would. Instead he put his shoulder against it and nudged himself inside slowly. "Suki-san, I uh...brought Sanyuu back home. I was just wondering if everything's alright." One look at her face and he knew it wasn't.

Fuyu nodded and bowed to Saikou.
"Okay then. I will. Thank you." she said as she ran out of the house and to a nearby restaurant. She walked in and ordered her breakfast. She sat down and started to nibble a litttle bit. She knew she had to go home today.
"I wonder if I should ask Saikou to come with me." she thought to herself.

The arms around her nearly shocked Sanyuu and she could find nothing to say. Even when her hand came between them, throbbing and aching with the ails of broken knuckles, she did not make a sound. She just let him hold onto her until she gathered herself enough to wrap her arms around his middle and hold him back.

"I shouldn't have gone." she said in a meek manner, her cheek resting against his neck. She didn't know what to do. Her heart was in her mouth and she could barely slow her racing mind long enough to get a thought out of it, let alone something to say. After a minute, she pulled away and gave him a sheepish wince, laying a hand on his cheek and rubbing a few tendrils of his dark hair away with her thumb.



OOC; I looked back at the OOC thread posts... Sanyuu is 1 inch shorter than Saikou XDD!

Saikou frowned a little but allowed her to pull back, straightening as he did to look across into her eyes. "That's right you shouldn't have." He said rather harshly, but then he smiled softly and added. "I don't know what I would have done if you didn't come home." His voice was quiet as he took her good hand in his and led her inside and through his bedroom, exiting out into the hall and going to the medicine cabnet in one of the bathrooms, He took out a roll of guaze and a metal presser to put on her broken finger. He had once punched a wall in one of his fits of rage. Actually he'd done it three times and twice he had broken his hand over it. He knew how to set the bones pretty well on his own mostly because he had been too embarassed to ask Fuuyutsuki the second time and had done it on his own. He could take care of Sanyuu.

"Come on. I'll fix up that hand of your for you. You can't walk around like that." He grabbed a bottle of pain pills as well and lead her back to his bedroom.

She followed him like an injured puppy. It was all she could manage, unable to understand if she had been forgiven as simply as it seemed. She must not have, she decided, because she had not forgiven herself yet for how she had treated him. When they returned to his room, she sat with him on the floor and held her broken, eggplant-colored hand out for him to begin work on.

"Dei's the one that talked me out of it." the red head mumbled. Deitome deserved at least a little praise for bringing her back to him. If he hadn't gone with her, if she had just asked a maid to go with her, then she probably would have been given some kind of drug at that point and been dragged through test after test after test.

Saikou let out a dry laugh like he would never beleive that Dei had anything to do with his life but his eyes were brighter then as he shook his head. "Deitome, that fool." He looked up at her though and it was clear that there was gratitude and pride in his eyes. Maybe he could cut the lemur a little more slack from now on. "I'm going to have to thank him for what he's done."

He put pressure against her wrist and looked at her in a way that told her to brace herself as he straightened one of her fingers out and secured it with the metal circlet and some guaze. She was so strong. It was scary in a way. Saikou was jealous of her bravery though. He fixed her next finger quickly, not wanting to prolong her pain as he did. "Sanyuu...you know....there's nothing wrong with you." He began, knowing they had to talk about this sooner or later. Now seemed like a good time. She needed a distraction from the pain. "You...don't need a doctor to tell you that."

It was the worst feeling she had ever felt, having her fingers set. She let out a shriek when the first one was snapped into place, not having been ready for that much pain, but the second she just bit down hard on her lip and tried to think of something to distract her. Saikou did a good job of this when he spoke next. She said nothing to it, instead just listening intently until something came into her head and she nodded.

"I think..." she mumbled. "... I think I know, but..." she shrugged and looked up. There were no words there to explain and she let out another squeak as he pulled her last finger right and it let out a snap as the bones re-aligned. It brought her chin down and she looked at him in a very frank manner. Her lips were very still until she spoke again. "I love you... you know that, right?" she cocked her head. "I love you so much that it scares me... and I run from it."

In truth, she had always been running away from anyone she could ever think of being close to. Her mother and father had instilled in her well that she was only hurting them by living. She had loved them since she was small, whatever they had done to her, and whatever she did she had always seemed to hurt them.

She didn't want that with him... She didn't want to make him angry or sad or scared like she had her Mama and Papa.



OOC; Decided to revise it :3 Sorry~

Saikou looked up at her as he finished wrapping the guaze firmly around her hand and popped two pain pills into his white palm, just holding them, staring at the little orange capsules. Her words wafted around inside his head. She loved him? Loved him like a friend or...

He blinked, confused.

Love. It was a foreign word to his lips, foreign to his head. Something he hadn't dared admit to himself much less anyone else in his life ever before. Yet here was Sanyuu, the girl that he was supposed to be saving, telling him bravely that she loved him. Telling him with her eyes that the artificial bond that was inherited to them was so much more than blood. Telling him that she cared for him past this damn curse and into the boy he was. Not the god but the boy. Sanyuu had always been brave. He knew that from experiance. She had always been strong. There was no doubt in that. But he had been so sure that him being god and her a follower that she would never be able to be the one to save him...

...he had been wrong.

"Love me...?" It took him a moment to realize that although his lips had moved to speak, no sound had come out.

In the silence that followed her confession, Sanyuu felt very awkward and began to inspect her hand. She had nod read Saikou's lips when they moved, instead pretending that the bandages and clips on her fingers were severely interesting.

Even the kind of girl she was, what had been said had not been an easy slip of her tongue. It had taken more courage to utter than she thought she had and now, with the silence surrounding them, she was not sure that she should have said anything at all. Biting her lip to impend her own silence, Sanyuu found that she could only feel her heart beating. She could think of nothing to say or do except sit there, perfectly still, trying to swallow her heart out of her throat.

Saikou didn't realize how silent he had been till he saw Sanyuu avert her eyes uncomfortably. He hadn't even realized at all that his voice wasn't working. It still wasn't working nearly a minute later when he decided to make his move, a move he decided would either make him or break him. He was confused at what she was feeling towards him but he knew what he had been feeling. He knew what he had wanted but had been too scared to admit.

Very slowly, Saikou moved closer, still silent, near entranced as his thoughts were a buzz and whir of bees, confused and rambled as his hand trembled. That could have been due to his severely low blood sugar, or it could have been his severely high nerves-either way, he could see the shaking in his fingers up until he pressed the hand against the side of her face, tilting her head back up to look at him where she was staring at her bandaged hand. Their eyes locked.

"Sanyuu?" He whispered, lips very close to hers. He could feel her warm breath on his. He wondered if she would pull away or if she simply was too afraid because he was god. It didn't matter at that moment. "You want to know something?" He leaned a little closer, just a little. "You've finally saved me." And he closed the distance, pressing his lips lightly against hers.

The pain pills fell out of his hand and clattered on the floor next to him.......

As his lips touched hers, Sanyuu felt like a jolt of electricity had turned her inside out. Her heart was fluttering where it had finally fallen into her chest and her eyes went wide for a moment. Then they fell shut and she leaned forward to kiss him back shyly. Sanyuu was rarely shy, but this kiss was so timid of her. Her own hand came up to lay on his wrist in a gentle manner, not pulling it away from her face.

Sadly, the poor, little panda forgot to breathe and had to pull away after a minute of holding her breath. She gasped in and coughed and when she had regained her composure, she blushed rather brightly at this mistake. It made her smile, though, and she did not realize that she was beaming so for a good few minutes. Then she blushed harder and fidgeted in nervousness.

Saikou was horrified. She didn't move for the longest time and he nearly pulled back, thinking angrilly that she was too afraid to kiss him back. He was her God after all. Thinking maybe she was just trying to make him happy by not yanking back, wiping her mouth and slapping him across the face. Then she kissed him back and he relaxed eyes shut peacefully as his lips moved softly against hers. She was the one to pull baqck, catching their breath as they sat there together.

Saikou felt a small smile touch his lips and spread across his face. He wasn't a big smiler but it was easy to see he was happy by his eyes. Since he was a kid he had never smiled a real smile. Like it was something he simply had never been taught. Sitting there with her was the closest it ever came to hitting his thin pale, lips.

"You know..." He said with a sigh, unable to look away from her. "...this beats running away by a mile, Sanyuu."

"I'm fine Deitome... really." She told him flatly, the blanket barely covering her jaw and muffling her voice a little. "I'm just tired, I suppose."

She really didn't want to be talking about her weaknesses with anyone! Not even Deitome, who seemed to know her as well as anyone else... although she felt Saikou might understand her situation a little more. He seemed to have things handled now as well. She knew it would happen eventually; the owl could see it comming. The day when Saikou was finally ready to assume full control of the house and leave Fuuyutsuki holding the bag... Worthless and out of place amongst the up-and-comming generation of Akari family members.

Deitome tilted his head, eyes filled with imagined understanding. "Hey...Suki-san...you should know by now you can't lie to me. I know you." He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him so they wouldn't be disturbed. He knew how Fuuyutsuki liked to keep her share of secrets from them. She liked to be strong and brave but Dei knew that she was only human. He stepped up to the side of her futon, kneeling down at her side. Very carefully he reached and brushed some red hair from her face and he noticed she had removed her make-up. "Fuuyutsuki...you look different without all that paint hiding you." He smirked. "Beautiful..."

"Liar!" She yelled, finally sitting up and revealing her full face. Plain, scarred at the chin on the left below the lip and very very pallad. "You don't know anything about me! You've hardly seen me in the past ten years, and you think you know me?"

She pulled the blanket to her face again and laid back down. "Just leave Deitome, you're about as comforting as a cactus." The owl was perfectly content with her last statement; however, it wasn't altogether true. The thought that he saw her as beautiful, even without the concealing mask of makeup was a little comforting. More so than anything else that had been said today.

IOOC; I don't know where the scar came from yet, but I figure I'll know sometime during the other rp)

Sanyuu blinked, unsure of what he meant by them having beat out her running away. For a moment, she thought it might be a bad thing and her hand came up to cover her face. She was blushing like mad and unable to decide what she should do. Peaking through her fingers, she blinked her mahogany eyes in his direction.

"Please tell me that I didn't just over-step my bounds?" she pleaded, though it did not save her from her embarrassment and confusion.

((No problem^^ I think it'll be a nice addition to our little story.))

Deitome was shocked when she sat up fast, shouting at him to go away. The hurt clear in his eyes. He stood, moving towards the door. It was always like this. Every time she pushed him away he would find something to say before he disappeared, something to make her think. Deitome had learned early that Fuuyutsuki rarely gave a damn unless you spiked a curious hit., It had become somewhat of a habit to leave her thinking in his wake, just in case she didn't want to call him back in the morning.

"Fuuyutsuki..." He mumbled, using her full name as he glanced at her back where she lay, turned away from him. "I wish...I could take back those ten years...everything...the traveling and the jobs and the adventures...I'd take it all back if it meant spending it here with you... getting to know you...Suki-san. But you know what? You can push me away all you want and lock your door and build your wall but I'm always gonna find a way in. That's what people do...when they care for you." He sighed and walked out of the room, sliding the door shut so very silently behind him.

It didn't matter if he spent the last ten years under this roof or a million miles away. He loved her all the same...

****************

Saikou blinked at her as she asked quietly if she had outstepped her boundaries, looking utterly confused. "Sanyuu, if anyone outstepped anything it was me. I was the one who kissed you." He flushed a little, a vibrant pink on his usually colorless white face. "I don't think it was a crime or anything but you tell me this time. Have I out stepped MY boundaries?"

Tears squeezed from her eyes as she shut them tightly, denying their existance and wrenching herself from the sadness. The were evil, imaginary things; although all-too real in her concious mind. The salt-water on her face was real enough to taste, and she pulled the cacoon of sheets and blankets around her tightly.

She didn't like thinking about how much Deitome cared for her. The owl found it so much harder to pick up and move on when he said things like that. Hardening herself to the elements was made more difficult when he told her he loved her.