Paradiso: Chapter Six-Illusions of Paradise

A/N- Well the muse struck again. Here's the next chapter of Paradiso. Many thanks to Darkchild, youko-love,Luki-Dimension, Mousewolf and Boredom is my middle name for reading and reviewing. Not sure where this is going, but it's bound to be an interesting ride...

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"Where did I leave off?"

Toboe tipped his head toward Cheza. "You called it fate and Cheza said it was destiny that you two met again."

"Right." Leon paused and rolled his eyes with a half-amused sigh of exasperation. He raised his voice. "You might as well come out. I can sense you lurking in the rocks, y'know."

"I'm not lurking!" Hige protested, rising from the cluster of rocks and brush he had concealed himself in. "Tsume lurks. I hide with dignity and skill."

"All the skill of a half-dead puppy, porky." Tsume growled from behind him as he trotted openly up the hill, Blue following close behind.

"He's right, Hige." Blue commented with a laugh as she loped up to her mate. "Your tail was sticking out." She nipped the appendage in question as Hige looked offended for all of three seconds. Then he suddenly developed an itch and sat down for a scratch, pointedly ignoring Tsume's laughter.

Leon chuckled. "I feel like I'm a librarian with a bunch of preschoolers for storytime." He muttered to no one in particular. Not that any of this bunch would get that reference, he thought wryly. It wasn't like wolves went to libraries anyway.

Blue ignored Hige's theatrics in favor of trotting up to Leon. She sat in front of him and stared into his face for a long moment. "You remind me of Pops. I like the way you smell. You smell like him and like Cheza, too. It's nice."

"Thanks, I think." Leon said uncertainly, staring into her bright blue eyes. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"It is." Toboe hastened to assure him. "Blue loved Pops."

"Pops? He was human, right?"

Blue shivered and nodded, a tear leaking from her eye. "Pops was all I lived for after Ruus died. I wanted to stay with him always."

Leon reached out and rested his hand on top of her head. His eyes fluttered shut as he absorbed what she could tell him of the human she adored. At last, he looked up, blue eyes meeting blue. "He loved you too. It's there in your memories. Even when he told you that you weren't his dog anymore, it was so you would have a chance to be happy."

Blue trembled and abandoning her human form, flung herself into Leon's arms; desperate for the reassurance he gave her. Leon grinned and let himself be human again, digging his fingers into her thick, black fur and scratching her ruff and behind her ears. Blue shivered in bliss, her eyes closing as she squirmed in his lap like the puppy she was once. Leon held her until she calmed and then released her.

"D once told me, if two creatures are bound by love, they would always find each other again. It may take centuries of separation and many lives, but they will be drawn together again. Believe that." Leon told her seriously. "Someday, you and he will meet again."

"Do you really think so?" Her voice trembled.

"I know so."

Toboe grinned. "That's great, Blue. Someday you'll be with Pops again." His eyes were a little sad, Leon noted.

"Someday," Leon said. "One thing I learned, it's where there's love, there's a way. Sometimes, it might be a long time, centuries, maybe-but love comes back."

Toboe lifted his head, eyes sparkling with tears but smiling.

Leon sighed. God, he hadn't done this much emoting since he had finally come to terms with loving D. That had been a roller-coaster ride and a half, especially when it came to confessing to D. "Well," he said brightly. "Now that the gang's all here, do I finish the story?"

"This one would hear the rest." Cheza smiled. "It is not often that a Kami takes a mate. In all the memories passed to this one by the ones who have gone before and by the tree of ages, it has happened only once."

Toboe brightened. "Hey, yeah! Finish the rest!"

Leon glanced around, noting the others looked either interested or bored, depending on their nature. Kiba watched him with the calm, intent stare that Leon was coming to think was his favorite expression.

"Right. So, after searching for him for a long time, we sort of stumbled into each other. Things didn't go well at first." Leon laughed shortly, remembering the cornered expression that had flashed across D's normally imperturbable face for a bare instant before he broke and ran. "He ran from me like a rabbit would run from one of you guys. You've never seen anything run so fast. For someone who claims to have no endurance, he nearly ran me into the ground." Leon shook his head. "But I'd lost him once and I wasn't about to do it again."

He chuckled reluctantly. "I chased him all the way to his pet shop, which, by the way, we're inside. Don't ask me the logistics on that, cause I have no idea whatsoever. I've explored this place a hundred times and I still keep finding places I've never seen before." Leon laughed. "I wound up on a glacier once. If D hadn't found me, I'd be a ice cube now."

"He ran inside, and I followed, right into the teeth of a really bad-tempered, man-eating goat from hell who hated my guts from the first. He started chewing on me while D stood there like a cornered deer and stared at me like I couldn't be real. I was fighting with the goat when Pon-chan pounced on me."

He grinned at the memory. "Pon-chan is a little raccoon-looking critter that used to play with my little brother when Chris stayed at the pet-shop. Don't know exactly what she is, but she's been here since before I knew D and she still looks the same, so I'd venture to say she's not your typical raccoon. I'll have to introduce you guys sometime. She climbed all up my arm and started chattering at high speed about missing Chris and I and wondering where Chris was."

He shook his head and looked out past the gathered pack. "Now, mind you, I was still just a human at this point. To me all the animals had only ever looked like animals. I had only seen their human forms once in what I had thought was a crazy-assed dream at the time. I had started to understand Pon-chan, but never realized it. I'd only seen her human once, that last time I saw D. Now suddenly, here she was, clinging to my shoulder, looking like a little girl in frills and curls and talking away a storm." He chuckled. "I was a little startled. I wound up falling on my ass and staring into the face of the man-eating goat and realizing that he looked human too. Still chewing on my leg like I was the main course, but human-looking." Leon chuckled.

"I'm not sure who was more startled at that moment; me, Tetsu, Pon-chan or D. I freaked and started yelling at Tetsu." Leon interrupted himself again. "That's the man-eating goat, by the way. You'll meet him later.

"I pried Tetsu off my leg and shook him, yelling something at D-I don't quite remember what exactly, but something about what the hell drugs he had in his incense-when Tetsu bit me again." He paused and rolled up his sleeve to reveal a perfect bite scar, white against his tanned skin. The wolves looked on it with respect. Whatever had made that had teeth as formidable as any of them. "I pulled him off and told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn't stop biting me I was going to pull off one of his damned horns and shove it right up his harem-pants-wearing-ass.

"Those were my exact words," Leon added, holding up a hand. "They all stopped and stared at me like I'd flipped, which at that point, I wouldn't really try to deny. Tetsu glared at me and said, 'You can see me?!' I don't know which one of us was more startled, but I said, 'You've been chewing on my leg like it's a drumstick and you want to know if I can frigging see you?' Right about then I realized what I was yelling at and sat down hard." Leon shook his head with a rueful chuckle.

"D, looking like a scared kid, took a couple of steps toward me and asked, 'You can hear Tetsu, then?' I started laughing. I guess it was a combo of exhaustion, giddiness at finding him and just plain lunacy, but I caught his wrist and pulled him down in my lap and hugged him, bleeding arm and all. 'I found you!' I kept repeating. 'I finally found you.' I must have said it a dozen times if I said it once-"

"And I do believe that is what convinced me I was not seeing things."

They all turned to see D padding soundlessly up the rocky hillside, a large creature at his side that looked like a combination of tiger and sheep with curved horns and a mouthful of sharp teeth. The wolves all tensed, but D waved a hand. "This is Tetsu, my friends, and he will not bother you." The strange creature shimmered and became a lean young man with curved ram's horns peeping through his unruly cloud of reddish hair. True to Leon's description, he was dressed in a pair of oversized harem pants and a short vest. He scowled at Leon and nodded politely to the pack.

D settled down beside Leon and smiled at the pack.

Leon mock scowled at D. "What was it that convinced you? Me babbling like a loony or the blood all over your silk dress?"

D sighed. "For the umpteenth time, it is a cheongsam and not a dress. And I was referring to you holding onto me like I might vanish."

Leon snorted. "Yeah, well, you did that once and I wanted to make sure you didn't do it again."

D offered him a tender smile and reached to brush a lock of blonde hair out of Leon's eyes. Tetsu growled under his breath and looked like he was contemplating biting Leon again.

Tsume snorted dust out of his nose and lay down next to Toboe. "If you're through going off on tangents, you wanna finish the story?" He asked pointedly.

Leon flashed him a grateful look and Tetsu stopped growling, though he still gave the impression of wanting to do serious harm to the blonde man.

"Right. D, you want to help, or do I subject these poor guys to more of my lack of story-telling skills?"

D chuckled. "If I leave it up to you, the story will not be finished by the time the earth awakens."

Leon scowled at him. "Ha-ha-funny."

D just smiled at him and settled against his shoulder. "When Leon could be pried off of me and convinced that he was not, in fact, going crazy, I made sure that he understood that all of the stories his little brother had told him were actually reality. His little brother was gifted with seeing and understanding my pets, perhaps because he could not speak. I asked him why he had tracked me down. You see, when we parted, I was sure we would never see each other again."

"Not my fault," Leon said with a scowl. "You're the one that said I hadn't earned the right to be there. And by the way, you're still not forgiven for pushing me out of the damned boat. I hate heights!"

D slanted a small smile at him and Leon shut up. "And you had not earned the right to be there. None of your race had." D paused. "But you had tracked me down, across three continents and myriad Chinatowns. And you told me-?"

Leon chuckled. "I said I had to return something you had left behind. Something that you treasured, even when you were running away."

"What was it?" Toboe asked eagerly.

"You remember I mentioned my little brother, Chris, who stayed at the pet shop a lot? Well, once he drew a picture of all of us. Me, him, D, Tetsu and Pon-chan all together. D took that picture with him when he left, but lost it in the mess that followed. And no, I'm not going to comment on that, because if I do, D will be right and we'll never get to the end of the damned story. I carried that picture with me all the while I searched for him."

D smiled softly. "You gave me the picture I had left behind and I could not believe that you had come so far for such a thing."

"It was an excuse to find you again."

"I know that." D smiled again and wrinkled his nose playfully at the man beside him. Tetsu growled softly. "I took him in and bandaged his wounds and spoke to him of what had driven him to seek me out again. It was a long conversation."

"Call it what it was-an argument." Leon added with a smile.

"Yes, well, it was that too. You seem to bring that out in me." D added wryly. "But neither of us had reckoned on just how little time was left to us." His face darkened and Tetsu and Leon both reacted with distress. D waved them off. "It is all right. It is long in the past, and the pain is tempered now by your continued presence."

Tetsu subsided, but Leon touched D's face gently. "What he means is that I was already dying. I had pushed myself past my limits and, well…"

"Your body was broken past all mending. You had just come back to me and you were already leaving me again."

Tetsu chuckled meanly. "You could say he was dying to leave again."

D leveled a glare at the Totetsu. "T-chan!"

Leon touched his arm. "Easy. He may be a bastard about it, but he's right. I was dying." He scowled at the Totetsu. "But I didn't want to leave, fuzz-butt."

Tetsu harumphed but subsided into silence again.

"Anyway, to make a long story short, in the middle of our fight, I started to fade in and out. And then I collapsed. I remember D holding me and thinking kinda fuzzily that all the red clashed with his outfit. And then it all went blank."