A/N: Wow, talk about an unfortunate editing mistake. Thanks to DedicatedWriterX for catching it. I've fixed the accidental reference to Rin's FINGERS. D'oh. Sorry about that - I was writing the epilogue to Stone and Grace at the same time I was writing this, and the two apparently got muddled. For the record, Rin did not sprout arms overnight.

...aaand it appears that I also dropped a nice little continuity error into there as well. Good eye, Cropsy.

**********************Tuesday, November 20th**********************

The rain lasts all night, and into the next day. I call in sick for work. I tell Mr. Takahashi's assistant that I think it's the flu, and I don't expect I'll be back in this week. The Helen calls, shy and embarrassed, to tell me she's sorry. She asks me if I'm okay. I tell her I'm not, and I tell her why. She hangs up on me.

I don't blame her one bit.

**********************Wednesday, November 21st**********************

It rains the following day too. Rin doesn't call. I don't get out of bed.

It's late at night. Because I'm asleep, I almost don't hear it over the noise of the rain, but eventually I wake to the sound of something thumping rhythmically, like an unbalanced washing machine. I come downstairs, trying to guess what it might be, and realize the sound is coming from the door. I open it, heart in my mouth. Rin is standing there, dripping, teeth chattering, eyes glazed. There's a long leather tube slung across her back, droplets of water staining the cap and running down the waxed sides. She doesn't seem to have realized that the door is open, and she almost overbalances as her swinging foot doesn't meet the expected resistance. As I look down, I see that the paint on the bottom of the door is scuffed and battered. Her toenails are broken and battered, and the slight tinge of pink in the water dripping out of her sandals and puddling on the floor gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. How long was she standing there kicking before I heard her? She recovers her balance and stands there, pale as a sheet, eyes fixed on my face, her hair straggling into her eyes.

"Please Hisao," she says. "Please, I don't care anymore why I was angry. I know you've got someone else now, but I just can't... I need..." she trails off. I start to reach out, but she shudders and steps away. "Wait!" she says, "I need to... I need to find the words. The right words." I'm frozen, hovering, my hand stretched out towards her. She's going to apologize, I know. Apologize for being her, for being what I love. I can't let her do that.

"I'm..." she starts, and I place my hand over her mouth, gently.

"Please," I say. "Let me." She blinks, dazedly. I should get her inside, towel her off, and I will.

I will.

But she has to know she's stepping back into our home as an equal, as a partner in my heart and my life.

"It's my fault," I say. "Every bit of it."

She doesn't like that, starts to shake her head, but I keep going.

"I was wrong. I took you for granted. Some part of me thought that I knew what a normal life was, and I wanted us to live it. I forgot the most important thing I learned at Yamaku."

I take a deep breath to steady myself. "There is no such thing as a "right" or "normal" life. There's just life, and I never want to have to live my life without you again. I don't need you to be anything but what you are. I don't want you to be anything but who you are. I love you. I love everything about you. I wouldn't change anything about you even if I could."

I take a deep breath and ask. "Did you see what happened at the bank on Monday?"

She just nods, mute with misery.

The words break out of me in a flood. "I'm so sorry that happened. You have to know I wasn't cheating on you. I'm not seeing that girl, she just kissed me. I don't know why it happened - okay, I do, but it wasn't because I wanted her to. She was new and I was nice to her and then when I knew she... liked... me I didn't know what to do about it so I just ignored the problem and then... that... happened, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I didn't cheat on you, I never would. I feel so bad about what happened, and that things are so strained between us."

She stares at me as seconds seem to stretch out into hours, then, miraculously, she nods in understanding. The great weight of dread and guilt and misery I've been carrying around for days seems to lift as she stands, blinking rain droplets out of her eyes. Then, with sudden determination, she slips by me and makes her way up the stairs. As she climbs the steps, I can see the ruin she's made of her feet, and my heart clenches in my chest.

She's limping, but she's moving like a woman possessed, stumbling across the floor to the easel. She ducks suddenly and shakes her upper body until the leather tube falls from her shoulders to the floor. I stoop to help her, but she pushes me fiercely away with her head, almost splitting my lip as her forehead impacts my face. It didn't feel intentional - she's clearly exhausted and moving erratically. Regardless, it seems she's determined to do whatever this is, so against all my instincts, I take a step back to give her some room.

I have to watch as she struggles with her cracked and bleeding toes to open the tube, and I realize that this is another lesson I have to learn - to let her do things for herself. To let her be a complete person, not my missing piece or my responsiblity, but a whole, complete person who sometimes could use a hand washing in hard-to-reach places. A person who in return grants me the priceless opportunity to see the world through her eyes, to experience life by her side.

She has the tube open now, and she's inching the canvas out with bloody toes. Every fiber in me wants to take it away, to help her. Instead, I wait.

Maybe I've learned something after all.

She seizes it in her teeth, stands, and with a violent swipe of her foot sends the grim coffin-and-arms sketch fluttering from the easel and sliding across the floor facedown. With spastic effort, she manages to wedge the top edge of the rolled canvas from the tube under the clip at the top of the easel, and gravity does the rest. She steps away and stares at me, eyes sharp and focused on my face, green and intense and filled with hopeless pain.

And I see.

Rin has always put her soul into her paintings, but this time she's done more than that.

Two trees stand side by side, branches tangled together above and roots below. The trees are wildly different, one tall and straight and dark, the other pale and misted and fanciful. But where the trees meet above and below the roots and branches blend together until one can't be told from the other. Between the trees is a seed, and inside the seed stand two figures, drawn so perfectly they seem like photographs. Rin is nestled up against me, her face turned up to mine, looking into my eyes as I look down into hers, my arms wrapped tightly around her. All around the edges of the painting, outside of the protective embrace of the trees are figures, some threatening, some welcoming, beautiful and terrible, angels and demons. The trees completely encircle us, extending branches out to welcome some of the figures outside, curling about to block others, both trees equal partners in protecting and nurturing the seed holding her and I.

I look for a long time, and when I look back to her there are tears in my eyes. She looks puzzled for a second, and apprehensive. I hold out my arms, and she steps in without a hint of hesitation. She presses herself into my chest, head resting on my shoulder, hair tickling my nose as I press my face into it, the damp smell of the rain failing to mask the cinnamon scent that is Rin. We stay like that as the minutes tick by, until finally we step apart almost by mutual consent.

I watch her for a moment, her hair drying slowly in ragged shapes, her wet clothes hanging on her thin form.

"Bath?" I ask. She smiles.

I let her draw the water this time, and when we sit she uses her feet to wash my chest and shoulders and even my face. When she's done, I take the soap in turn and wash her, face and hair and small, fine breasts. I take my time on her feet, cleaning each battered toe individually and then walking, dripping, to the closet to get down the first aid kit so I can put antiseptic on her feet and gently bandage them. When I finish, there's so much gauze and tape that she can barely walk without slipping. She looks down, wiggles her toes, and then smiles up at me. It feels good to see that smile.

I change the sheets on the bed while Rin goes down to the kitchen to get something to eat. It takes a while, but I just wait. I know she can do it herself, and I've got to let her. When she comes back, I take the old radio from its shelf in the studio and bring it over to the bed. I plug it in, and when I turn it on I hear an old American song from the 60's that I haven't heard in years.

We lie together on the bed, facing one another, foreheads gently touching, breathing each other's air as I rest my hands on either side of her sweet face, my fingers stroking her red curls. Her green eyes are tired and bruised and shadowed, but bright as emeralds. They seem to grow until they engulf my vision - they're all I can see, all I want to see.

I watch until her lids droop down, fraction by fraction, to hide them and together we fall into an exhausted sleep while Otis Redding croons into the quiet, still air of the apartment.

These arms of mine, they are lonely,
lonely, and feeling blue.
These arms of mine, they are yearning,
yearning from wanting you,
and if you would let them hold you,
oh how grateful I will be,

These arms of mine, they are burning,
burning from wanting you.
These arms of mine, they are wanting,
wanting to hold you,
and if you would let them hold you,
oh how grateful I will be.

Come on, come on baby, just be my woman
just be my love.
I need me somebody, somebody,
to treat me right.
I need your arms, loving arms to hold me tight.

And I, I need your tender lips, too,
to hold me.
That's when I'm all right.

*********************Thursday, November 22nd*********************

When I wake, the early morning sun is streaming in through the skylight above, shining down through the red-gold halo of Rin's hair like light through stained glass as she kisses me, softly. Her emerald eyes are open and locked on mine without a trace of darkness or clouds in their depths. She leans into the kiss, the smell of her sweat and shampoo filling my head.

Five minutes later, we're rocking slowly together, her toes laced through my fingers as she watches me, deep green eyes clear and full of warmth. She watches me as her slow insistent pace brings me closer and closer to the edge, and I have to bite my lip until I see the beginning traces of ecstatic agony on her face and I grit my teeth as her pace accelerates until we cry out together and I empty myself into her as she arches above me, both of us caught up in a single golden moment that is far more than a physical relief.

Afterwards, she slumps over and falls asleep sprawled gently across me, her hair tickling my face and her soft, even breathing teasing at my ear as we lie together, bathed in early morning sunlight.