If anyone is still paying attention to this account and doesn't want to stone me to death - this was written like forever ago as a personal favor to audi katia, who is the best, loveliest, most wonderful girl in the world (pleasedon'thateme) and deserves a lot of praise and stuff. Shiny stuff. I figured I should post it.

She raised the white porcelain cup, rimmed gold and spotted careless red by her lipstick. Her small, elegant fingers curved expertly and she smiled at him absently, her cranberry lips shimmering faintly. She turned out to be a leggy red head with too much black in her wardrobe, but that was perfectly acceptable and a little amusing, and they laughed over her pomegranate tea. Pomegranate, he half joked as she urged her order in a soto voice. She looked at him, a little blank and a little hurt and he realized they were not made for the commodity of familiarity anymore. Her diamond dyed onyx irises turned translucent in the sunlight and he saw the shimmer shine of scars dusting her arms.

"You shouldn't have let that happen."

"I shouldn't have let you happen," she laughed a little, clasping her fingers to her jaw line, her hair, braided, falling over her shoulder. Her elbows were tinted dark, starkly contrasting with her otherwise sterile appearance.

He should have agreed but simply did not. There was something so tasteless about lying to someone whose lips were chapped with the art of it. The attraction of wanting her because he couldn't have her was a thing of the past. What they had now was the attraction of someone who was acquainted with the person they were before the fantasy emerged and persisted.

He didn't answer her for a moment, focused on the slight indentation in the middle of her lips, so symmetrical that it struck a nerve in him. Those were the lips of the little girl he'd passed in the hallway, the girl-woman he'd fought for on the rooftop. The lips of a comrade. The lips of an almost lover. How they had covertly seduced him in pitch sunlight, freckled by the shadows of branches as they ran, hands clasped in apocalyptic fashion. How desperately beautiful they had been, believers of a cause, noble and whole - and violently tempered to serve and sacrifice.

His eyes swept the halo of her head with something that was remarkably similar to distaste. "I don't like it," he commented. "Why'd you dye it?"

She looked at him owlishly and then smiled, said,

"Things change, and people have to change, too."

Wasn't that why they were friends, having a conversation meant for strangers?

The next time they saw each other was so conspicuous it was nearly inappropriate. She threw her raincoat down on his floor, and threw her arms around him. A million words tinted his mind; pompous, domineering, sweetly desperate, and why? Her hair was damp and dreamy, slick at her shoulders and her long, inhuman eyelashes were strung together like a string of coals.

Her shoulders stood straight, Versace and something unremarkable on her skin. He didn't know what to think, what to say.

He had her out of her clothes and into his within the hour. She insisted on one of his dress shirts, and folded the cuffs thrice so that she could move her hands freely. He felt that he should have wanted her, should have accepted her half invitation, she was half dressed but that's all they ever where - halves. So instead, he ordered some Chinese food and they watched television. She spoke in excited, girlish whispers and he responded in soto; the world was dead, she the only point of light and reason bright enough to matter. He found he didn't mind forgetting, it was remembering that was the problem.

As far as he was concerned, she was dead the moment she turned her back on him. She'd done it so capriciously, as if she had him in reserve, if she cared to wonder to want something different. Now she kept showing up and laughing and existing and it creeped him out. It was hard to ignore the dead when they kept trying to talk to you. So, instead, he played house with her whenever she came. He deliberately treated her like a guest so that she wouldn't run the danger of becoming a staple in his life, and she treated him the same (the same! something in him bristled with indignation and quiet, sad fury).

He wanted to ask her why she had chosen him and why she was now bending backwards over her choice and into him. These were desires that he only thought of and never acted upon and that suited him just fine. As fine as her leaving in the first place, but those were details. He could rub them out of the story with his fingers if he tried hard enough.

Everything was fine, excellent even, until she opened her pretty little mouth and said,

"He asks about you, you know."

He paused, and wondered, not for the first time, why he felt no resentment, no bitterness or anger at the mention or thought of him. He shrugged.

"I know," and strangely enough, he did. He more than knew, he expected it, because if anyone was going to be paying penance for what had occurred it was going to be him, because he got what he wanted...

... and he got this - Malibu Barbie dressed up and pinup perfect on his couch, because she wanted some diversion and maybe a little peace.

"Oh," she seemed shocked. He supposed she expected him to be surprised and flattered, if discreetly. Or maybe... He didn't know, he didn't know her much anymore and his head hurt. He felt supremely human when she was around.

"I... I thought about you too."

He looked her in the eye and knew it to be the truth which was worse than any lie she could have spoken.

"It's getting late," he replied, reaching for his coat. She stood still, unmoved by his commentary. Plied her pliant lips open and whispered, "It's been late for a while."

He grabbed her by the arm, knowing he was hurting her, not caring that he was hurting her. She was saying something but he couldn't hear over the supplication of a dead promise, nauseatingly telling him that this was just borrowing, and she had somewhere else to be.

She was gone. He wasn't sure which was worse: that he'd instigated the separation, or that it didn't matter. He wondered if the wound that had scabbed over was petty now, or if he was trying to rationalize her back into his life. And why? She was just a sliver of gold, pixie dust shimmering and barely lifting him, impossibly charming to the point of exquisite pain. He had never found someone as difficult to eradicate from himself, so heinously fossilized in his bloodstream.

She sought him out. It had been a miserable day to begin with; there was lightning and thunder zigzagging across the skies, almost aesthetically pleasing in its virulence. The car had refused to wind up, waterlogged. After turning channels for an hour, he abruptly rose and made his descent into the bathroom. He wasted time with contempt in the shower, concentrating on the black lining in the tiles, trying to diverge his thoughts from the end they had sought for years now. Years? The realization of how long he had obsessed over her bled through his senses, and he let out a long, self pitying sigh. He pulled a towel absentmindedly and tangled his fingers through his hair briefly.

His feet paused of their own accord, stilling in the doorway, not quite catching the signals his brain were sending him. She sat on the foot of his bed idly, perfectly manicured nails bitten to the quick, hair curling at her nape, eyes wet. She took him in with nonchalance, lingering at the towel, eyes unreadable.

"You've been in there forever," she whined without any real feeling behind her complaint. He played her game, he was always playing her game.

"Sorry to keep you waiting."

"It's okay, I don't mind."

She smiled in tandem with his monotone, they were both horrible liars.

She rose unceremoniously, raising her arms over her head, twining her fingers in a stretch.

He watched her warily, unsure and incomplete; they were always like this, she had the upper hand and he had ... nothing. She walked towards him, clumsily, like a marionette. Her movements were choppy, strange. He wanted to ask her what was wrong but found it didn't matter. They were all fucked up. Only children believed they could tangle with life and death and not scar like everyone else. It was a youthful indiscretion that had outlasted their youths. She ended up brushing the pads of her fingers against his cheek; he flinched and she laughed. She sounded sad, broken down. Her torment pleased him in a sick, degenerating way.

He imprisoned her wrists with his fingers. Holding her this way made him feel strangely alive. He was causing her pain because she had caused him pain.

"Wha - What are you doing?" She asked, incredulous.

He wasn't really sure but he was enjoying it. He toyed with the idea of holding her until she begged him to let her go, but even all the molten rage that simmered in his veins did not propel him to carry out such an end. He released her arms, watching as they flowered with bruises. When had she become this delicate? Where was the un-tamable girl he had sworn his loyalty to? Why was she cheating his memory this way?

"You should leave." He ground out. He hadn't allowed himself this kind of loss of control in years, but she had a tenacity for making him forget who he and what he stood for. Her large, round eyes pleaded with him. He reached over and opened the door casually. Her eyes darted from the door to him and she bit her lip in indecision. She was such a child, still. She walked over the door and rested her fingers on it.

"I think we need to talk," she said at last.

"Isn't that what we've been doing all this time?"

"No," she argued. "We've been talking about nothing when we have important things to say."

He raised an eyebrow, "You have important things to say to me?"

She sighed, "Don't you?"

He didn't respond. His fingers were itching to tear something apart. All these years and distance had done absolutely nothing for his self control. He wasn't sure how much longer he could entertain her with useless prattle. He wanted to strangle her.

"Answer me."

Her audacity amazed him. She was ordering him around? She wore her old habits like she wore her pretty mouth. It annoyed him. He looked up at the ceiling and counted to ten, and then back again.

"Hey-"

"Alright, fine. Talk."

He waited for her to begin. She fisted her hands (the memory of small, worn fingers intertwined with his own, pressured by fear and heroism tickled in the back of his head like a tumor) on her hips and frowned.

"I understand that I hurt you -"

"Really?" he drawled, interrupting without pity or regret. He sincerely doubted that she did.

"Yes, really," she smarted. She was as feisty as ever. It pleased him. "I've suffered too!"

"Of course you have," he agreed in mock fashion.

She sighed, frustrated. He didn't even want to have this conversation. Hadn't that been the reason he'd severed ties with her - with them? He wished he could go to sleep and wake up back at Kadic, back to normalcy. Before her and before pain.

She gripped the door with bruising force and slammed it shut. He winced at the sound of it hitting the door frame. "Is this what you wanted? God, why can't you take things seriously for once?"

"Sure, Princess."

"I never meant to hurt you," she said in slow, soft syllables. "You gave me an ultimatum and I made a choice."

"Yeah," he remembered with startling, cruel clarity. His words were biting. "You chose him."

"You left me with no other choice!"

Liar! Something ugly and hot simmered inside of him.

"Sure I did," he replied, cool. "I told you, that if you chose me, to come see me. Or have you forgotten that? I waited for you until the last minute and even then, I sought you out. I saw you talking to him. It was clear who you'd chosen. You obviously weren't going to come to me."

"I was saying goodbye," her eyes were wet with tears. It turned his stomach. "I owe him, we all do. You know that. I had to say goodbye, I had... I had to say something. I couldn't just leave..."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He felt nauseous. She had to be lying. She had to be. Please, he was begging and he wasn't sure to whom. Please, let this be a lie, a joke. She couldn't be telling the truth because that would mean everything had been in vain. And that she -

"When I went to see you, your room was empty. Your things were gone. What was I supposed to do?" Her words were heavy with grief and torment. "You didn't tell anyone where you had gone. I thought you'd just given up on me or that you didn't care enough to stick around. Or that ..." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand but it was futile, her face was wet and shining. "... that you had lied to me. That you never meant what you said."

He wanted to scream. He felt like an animal that had been fatally wounded and was on the verge of a very painful death, of immolation. It just couldn't be true. He refused to believe it.

"Aelita," he spoke her beautiful, cursed name and it sounded like a broken prayer. "What are you doing?"

This particular question seemed to throw her off. She balanced her weight (not much, he remembered, and her, in his arms - this hurt and he stopped), on the balls of her feet with something that looked painfully familiar; guilt.

"W-What do you mean?" she stuttered. He knew she was buying time. He knew her so damn well.

"Here," he was patient, tethering on the edge of a breakdown long in coming. "Why are you here?"

Realization bled into her pupils as they dilated, and her eyes never looked as dark or as empty. They were like stars on the verge of supernova, glittering with desolation.

She faltered. "I... I don't know."

His patience grew. Something else, too. Something inside of him was unfurling, rising, stretching. He felt neither cold nor hot, only cool and in control. This feeling astounded him. He hadn't felt this way since he carried her out of the scanner, admiring her cranberry hair and her delicious, inhuman smell. Nothing was going wrong. In that moment everything was content and won. He realized with some surprise that he was winning.

He took a step forward, intent on cornering her. He just wanted to smell her again. His thoughts were in contradiction; he felt them directly focused, alert. Still, a fraction remained hazy, delirious.

"You know," his voice lowered. He wasn't sure what he was talking about, only that he was getting somewhere. A vague but desired destination. "Now tell me, why are you here?"

"I..." she took a step backwards, lost. He continued to take slow, deliberate steps towards her. She reminded him of a small animal, trapped and trying to escape without any true hope of escaping. Her spine touched the door which she had previously slammed and he wondered if she regretted the action.

"I..." she tried again. "I just wanted to..."

"Just wanted to...?" His hands were flush against the door as he stood over her. He could see the marks in her irises here, jagged and punctured. He came closer still, catching that alien scent that marked her from the rest of the world, which reminded him that this wasn't a woman who was born and bred like everyone else. This was a warrior, a princess; this was Aelita. He suddenly threw his head back and laughed. It all made sense now. The maddening feeling he felt when he saw her, when she spoke. He was in love with her. Of course he was. The acceptance of the obvious only held him back a millimeter second in which he considered the consequences and disregarded them.

"Odd," she whispered. "Please don't -"

Too late. His nose found her neck, and something clicked at the back of his throat. Her perfume was no match for this, and her skin was still as soft and as pliant as he remembered. She tensed, surprised. Odd imagined she thought that he was going to kiss her, but no. That would be a mockery of intimacy, something which they had and had lost so profoundly that it wasn't even worth mentioning.

"Now," his breath was hot on her skin and his heartbeat was erratic. "Tell me, why are you here?"

"Because," she swallowed. His nose reached her collarbone, she hissed. "Because I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry!"

"Mmhmm," he almost laughed but refrained. "What else, Princess?"

"That I ..." she was losing her train of thought. "... I wanted to know why. I didn't know ... I wanted to know why you left and why you didn't ... didn't come to find me."

"I don't think Jeremie would have been very happy with that."

Aelita looked away," No. You're right. Still, you have to know that I told him that I chose you."

"Then why are you with him now?" Odd demanded.

"I had no other choice. You know I have no formal records in this country - world. I need him."

"You're using him?" Odd asked, incredulous.

"No!" Aelita exclaimed, embarrassed by the sheer thought. "I love him - you know that I do. But I also need him."

At this, something hot and furious switched on inside of him. "You love him?" His palms were pressed to her shoulders. He looked into her bottomless eyes and dared her to lie to him.

"N-not like I love you, of course." She blushed. It was so unlike her that Odd faltered momentarily. Then he realized she had just told him she loved him.

"What did you just say?"

Aelita narrowed her eyes in annoyance and punched him in the shoulder, pushing him back. "Odd Della Robia, don't make me repeat myself. You heard me."

This was more like it. His thoughts were nearing incoherency again.

"You have to leave him."

"I know."

"Now."

"I can't just leave him!" Aelita exclaimed.

"You know," Odd's fingers threaded through her bangs. He was delighted at being able to touch her this way. The resentment that had built so artlessly was dismantling at an alarming rate. "You have to, Aelita. It's a human thing we like to call learning from your mistakes."

She frowned, not amused by his humor. "I've been human for nearly three decades," she huffed. "I think I know -"

"Aelita, I'm going to do something I probably shouldn't do. But before this goes any farther, I need you to promise me that you will call him and tell him that you're leaving him."

"I can't tell him this over the phone; I'm not telling him his favorite stock crashed." Her finger pushed against the center of his forehead, and he winced, rubbing the spot. "Honestly Odd, haven't you learned anything?" She sounded annoyed and threatening and brave. He loved it.

"Please," he whispered, reaching for her again, pressing his mouth to her neck. Her skin had no real taste, and he lingered.

She gasped. "Yes, but I still have to speak to him. Stop that, it's distracting."

"Sorry," he replied offhandedly and continued.

A mewl came from the corner of the room. Aelita turned her head, seeking its source. Odd was perfectly content with the development as it gave him more access to her neck. A small dog padded forward, cautiously. It was a pup.

"Kiwi had more luck in love than I did," Odd shrugged. Aelita completely and abruptly abandoned him in favor of the pup. She knelt and scratched its head, introducing herself.

Odd watched her, wondering where this was going. Nothing made sense. He didn't know what was going to happen tomorrow or the next week or where they would stand next year, if they stood at all.

"Are you staying?"

Aelita look over at him, and the pup licked her hands.

"Yes," she replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Odd turned the bolt on his door and looked at her with a severity that they both understood.

Aelita's forehead crinkled. "What were you going to do?"

"Huh?"

"Before - you said, 'I'm going to do something I probably shouldn't do' blah blah blah," She was making fun of him in that harmless, naive way they had established when they were children.

"Oh, right," Odd helped her to her feet.

And then he kissed her.