OH HOLY HELL ON EARTH WHAT IS THIS. Are pigs flying? Yes, this is an actual update, and the last part of What Is Eternal? The next part will go up at a time in the future (I refuse to make promises, I'm sorry; I just don't trust myself, seeing as I'm worse than Sugisaki herself when it comes to updates).

I'm pretty sure this is roughly the same length as the last chapter. I felt I had written myself into a corner with the last part (and, to be honest, also fell a bit out of the pairing), which may or may not influence the way this was written. I also had trouble with the idea of vilifying the Harada twins; as such, things may not go as you expect, and this chapter is more about exploring their feelings than those of Dark or Daisuke.

As an extra advert, if anyone who reads this also likes Ace Attorney (specifically, Apollo Justice), I am taking it upon myself to continue Third Time's the Charm once this is taken care of, so please go take a look!

DISCLAIMER: Obviously not mine.

Chapter 4: What Is Eternal? (Part Three)

The look on Riku's face was nothing short of anger, and maybe a little confusion. When Daisuke mentioned he would be busy, she didn't think that meant being chummy with the biggest pervert in town.

On his end, Daisuke tried his best to keep up a smile, though he couldn't help but bring his hand up behind his head. He was a little embarrassed to be caught not just by Riku, but by the whole gang. As soon as he was within grabbing distance, Riku snatched up his hand in her own and dragged him off to a section of trees on the other side of the lake.

Dark watched the entire scene in silence, only then realizing just what he was about to do . . . especially in front of a full audience. He nearly smacked himself on the head for being so careless.

"Oi, Risa. You and the Saehara brat can come out now." He stood up and brushed the dirt from his pants. Risa and Takeshi sheepishly revealed themselves to the crowd, though it didn't take long for the two of them to regain their composure.

"Dark-san! You know Niwa-kun?"

"Pfft, know? Just know?" Takeshi laughed while fishing around his back for his camera. "Did you see how ridiculous they were with each other? I wish I wasn't so shocked, else I would have taken a few pics! It's not every day you get to see the great Phantom Thief Dark smiling like a dork!"

Risa had the decency to smack Takeshi for his remark after seeing the slight smirk on Dark's face. She slowly walked over towards him, hands behind her back and head toward the ground. "I was hoping for an invitation from you, Dark-san."

"Listen, Risa . . ."

"But you looked like you were having fun." She finally brought her head up to show Dark a true smile. "He must be important to you. I never would have guessed," she said laughing.

This time Dark looked a bit embarrassed, though it wasn't because he didn't try to hide it. He was just a little too flustered from earlier. "Ah, well. I guess you could say that."

The further away Riku pulled Daisuke from the group, the faster she seemed to go. It took all Daisuke had to keep up with her and not wince from the slight pain in his grabbed hand. Though he thought Riku's reaction was a little too much, he couldn't exactly blame her for being angry. He never mentioned "being busy" meant "going with someone else"—if he did, she would have asked what that meant, and he had already lied to her about so much that he couldn't handle doing it again. It wasn't until they were on the exact opposite side of the lake and into a small tree grove (Riku thought being out of sight of everyone else was much better) that Riku finally stopped. That didn't mean she let go of his hand or turned around, however.

"Niwa-kun.

He flinched, and there was no doubt in his mind she felt it.

"I've figured for a long time that there are things you're not telling me. Things that I was too afraid to ask about. Some of those fears…might have been proven wrong. But I don't know what to think about the alternative."

Daisuke swallowed. His instincts were preparing him for some insane fight-or-flight response. He had a feeling he wasn't getting out of this unscathed. "We…I mean, Dark and I…we're just frie—"

"Even if that was the case!" She dropped Daisuke's hand like it was poison and spun around. The faint light of the flames highlighted the few tears that had managed to escape from her eyes. "E-even if that was the case…that's a pretty big secret to keep."

"U-um, I'm probably going to regret it, but . . . 'even if that was the case'? What do you mean . . . ?"

Though it had been there from the very beginning—albeit masked by anger—Riku's confusion started to show more and more on her face. "His face! He was about to say something really really important to you!"

Daisuke thought back on the words he had said before their interruption. And then blushed at the unfortunate part at which Dark had broken off. He was sure there were other words that could have fit there—there had to be!—but the implications pointed at only one . . .

"No! No, no no no. That, that was. That was obviously nothing! I mean, there's no way Dark of all people could—"

"Niwa-kun . . . could you lower your hand from your mouth?"

"Huh? Oh, I was doing that?"

Daisuke was sure Riku's eyes couldn't get much bigger than they were now. It appeared that her anger had all but disappeared, but something about the morbid curiosity accenting her features struck him as something to be more afraid of.

"You're smiling." Everything on front of Riku pointed her to a single direction, and it was a direction that any normal female in her position should be at least slightly miffed at. But it struck her that, more than anything else, she felt curiosity. Just by the brief glimpse she had of them, she could tell Daisuke and Dark were close. He had never seen Dark that relaxed around Risa. She wondered idly if Risa would feel the same in her situation, and came to the conclusion that she probably would. "Was that a confession? Was he . . . was Dark going to—?"

Riku had seen her share of Daisuke-blushes, and none had ever gone this deep a shade of red.

Daisuke swallowed nervously. " . . . I think so."

"And is it mutual?"

To his credit, the blush didn't get any darker. "It's complicated?"

Riku sighed and kneaded the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger of her right hand. "Daisuke, there are very few things more complicated than love."

He brought his hands out in front of him and waved them with great enthusiasm. "No, that's not what I mean! Ah . . . how do I explain this?"

The blush soon subsided, and Daisuke's face instead turned to one of contemplation and worry. This clearly wasn't a simple issue.

"You two have something special, don't you? I don't mean in the 'lovey-dovey' kind of way. I mean in the 'Dark is clearly something more than human' kind of way."

Daisuke slowly nodded, and he began to talk.

Satoshi had quickly grown bored of the festival. He considered staying and watching the aftermath of Riku finding Daisuke, as she most certainly would at some point (Daisuke's luck was never with him in times like these, he observed), but he felt it was best if the embarrassment he was forced to suffer was kept to a minimum. Krad felt differently, and it took over fifteen minutes of straight arguments to convince him to just leave it already.

Now Satoshi was sitting on his own bed, playing around with the small blue charm around his neck. Though his room was never the cleanest in the world, it was far messier than usual; papers, journals, and even old parchment scrolls were scattered on the floor and littered the top of his desk. It had been a long road—one Daisuke is only just starting to figure out.

Neither he nor Krad can remember just how the Nijuu Jinkaku came in their possession. Satoshi woke up one morning to find the full piece around his neck and found out how it worked through very little research. After all, it was as if he already knew how they worked. He figured that particular fact had something to do with Krad's response to the object; for the first time, he felt trepidation from his other half. Krad's violence and outright interference with his life increased ten-fold when Satoshi figured out how the item worked. At the time, Satoshi had only thought it was a normal consequence of Krad finally being able to taunt and torture him without anything holding him back.

He later came to learn that Krad was trying to protect himself from the inevitable, as foretold by the strange "artwork's" appearance. And the more he probed, the deeper he found himself in the history surrounding the Nijuu Jinkaku, the more Satoshi came to finally understand—and maybe even accept—the strange being he shares his life with.

At that moment, with his usual grace and airs, Krad traipsed into Satoshi's room with two cups of tea. "You look rather bored, Satoshi-sama."

He quietly took the cup. "I might be. Or I could be thinking."

Krad scoffed and made a show of sitting on the other end of the bed. "Satoshi-sama, if you have to resort to introspection it clearly means you are bored." He scooted ever-so-closer. "I still stand by that this night would have been even more enjoyable if we remained behind to watch the Niwa boy and that bastard get discovered." Satoshi couldn't miss the smirk on Krad's face, though soon shifted his attention to Krad's free hand, which was moving to caress his face.

"Ah, Satoshi-sama. I am rather glad that neither you nor I ever fell into such idiotic emotional traps. It only makes the discovery of this artifact more fruitful." He slowly moved his thumb against Satoshi's cheek.

It was with slight disdain—only slight—that Satoshi grabbed Krad's hand and gently threw it back in his direction. "I don't need to hear these words coming from you, of all people. Aren't your silly emotions the reason these things exist, anyway?"

"If you are to put blame on someone, please do it properly."

"Fine." He quietly took a sip of his drink. "You and Dark."

"That wasn't what I was going for, Satoshi-sama."

Satoshi's only response was a slight smile as he continued to drink the soothing tea.

He wouldn't call it love. Probably more like an amicable friendship punctuated by periods of rather strong emotion. There was understanding, and maybe even empathy now. Quiet, teasing discussions like this, unfathomable only a few months ago, were now commonplace and even welcome. Satoshi stopped rejecting Krad's presence; and Krad stopped projecting emotions of hate and sorrow, emotions that came from a source long forgotten until the necklace's reappearance, onto someone who never deserved it in the first place.

But it absolutely wasn't love.

Through what could have only been magic, Risa managed to convince the entire group to leave her and Dark alone for a while. They were now sitting under the tree Dark had until five minutes ago shared with Daisuke. His mind kept wandering back to what he was about to say. After seeing Risa and her earnest smile, maybe it was better he wasn't given the chance to complete it?

"Risa . . . listen, you know that I'm not—"

"Human?" Her face betrayed neither fear nor disbelief, and Dark didn't think she had the capacity to feel anything like that when it came to him. "Yeah, I know."

"Daisuke . . . he sort of 'keeps me here.' It's a bit difficult to explain."

"Dark-san. I don't know if this is rude of me, but . . . we were watching you two for a while. If that's okay with you, I'd much rather talk about that."

Dark closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. "What is there to talk about? I mean, if he's necessary for my existence, it means we'd be close, right?"

Though she was glad that Dark trusted her enough to be so frank about his own life, she also realized that there was something much more in their relationship than what he was trying to claim. "Dark, I never get to see you smile like that. And you were about to—to tell him something, weren't you?"

He sighed very quietly and brought his hand down from his head. Risa could be a little too astute sometimes. "And how does that make you feel?"

"I already know I can't keep you forever." That she said that with such a beautiful smile nearly made Dark's heart break. "I know that. You're the great Phantom Thief Dark, after all! But I also know you've appeared before. And before you can appear . . . you have to disappear."

Dark watched as she lowered her head and gripped the hem of her dress so hard her knuckles turned white. He offered his hand to her and she slowly took it, never lifting her head. "So, I want you to be happy. I can't know what you go through. I can never know. But just by seeing the two of you together, I can tell he's important to you."

" . . . our odd arrangement might have something to do with that, you know."

Risa shook her head vigorously. "Don't try to explain it away, please. It . . . I feel like it belittles my feelings for you in some way." She quickly brought her right hand up to her face, presumably to wipe away any tears that were forming, and gripped Dark's hand harder with her left. "So, even if that is the case, it looked like you wanted to try. With him, I mean. So, you should. And, you know? I'll always love you anyway. And it's because of that . . . well, I just want you to be happy, Dark-san."

Dark slowly lowered his head to Risa and kissed her temple, returning the squeeze of her hand. "I love you too, Risa. And thank you."

Riku cradled her head with her hands. As Daisuke's explanation ran a little long they both moved to sit on the floor, leaning against two trees and facing each other in the small grove. He avoided the most important issue—namely that he technically was Dark—due to how much longer that particular conversation would run, especially since he now had the convenient excuse of being in separate bodies.

"So, though I don't think I can do it, I'm going to try to summarize everything you just told me. Okay?"

Daisuke nodded his head, more serious that she can remember ever seeing him.

"Dark isn't human. That much is, to be frank, blatantly obvious. But because of that, he needs a human to sustain him here. That's you. Which is easy to understand so far. But then . . . oh boy. Okay." Riku couldn't handle sitting down anymore and quickly jumped to her feet, startling Daisuke. She deftly brushed the leaves and dirt from her pants and started pacing small circles around the tiny area they were sitting in.

"So, you sort of work as a blueprint for him. Like, your 'human-ness' helps him be human? Even though he's not? And because of that, some wires get crossed and you can hear his thoughts and feel his emotions sometimes, and for you those kinds of things get really confusing because you can't tell if it you or it's him feeling those things? But because of that, you know him really well?"

For the first time in their entire discussion, Daisuke started laughing. "Did you have to phrase everything as a question, Riku-san?"

She threw her hands into the air, but Daisuke was glad to see she was also smiling. "It's just so weird. And way too complicated." When she turned to him, her expression sobered. "You . . . you've really been living through all this? All this time?"

"It's only been about a year or so."

"Niwa-kun. A year is still a very long time."

Daisuke's eyes started darting from tree to tree, as he realized that this discussion was actually getting further and further from the origin of this discussion. And though he hated it, he felt obligated to return it to its proper path. "Riku-san, we're getting a little off-track, aren't we?"

Riku finally stopped pacing and stared directly at Daisuke, whose cheeks turned faintly red as he turned away. She ran her hand through her hair and sat back down directly across from him, and action that caused Daisuke to jump from surprise.

"So, I can understand the 'it's complicated' part now. But with that in mind . . . is it mutual?"

Daisuke stared unblinkingly into the ground between him and Riku. His voice was barely above a whisper. "It might be."

"'Might' isn't going to cut it in this situation, Niwa-kun."

He nodded his head with a large sigh and attempted to continue. "I've always been afraid of losing him. I still don't know if it's because I actually like him or if this weird connection we have is influencing it, but I grew to really like him. And knowing how he's going to disappear someday . . . how I'm going to have to see him in a future where he's barely aged and I'm a father or something . . ."

"What do you mean by disappear?"

For the first time, he looked up. "Well, you've heard stories about how he's appeared in this town before, right?"

He didn't need to say more than that before Riku understood the implications. "How did I not think of it earlier?"

"But Riku-san, none of that is the point here. The point is that if I acted on these probably silly emotions, I'd be hurting you!"

For the first time in this entire discussion, Riku could say she was genuinely surprised. "Hurt me?"

"Of course! How could you even ask?" Daisuke grabbed her hand, and she could see the sadness in his downturned eyes. "I don't think I can deny whatever it is I feel for him, but it's also true that I really care about you, Riku-san!"

"I'm sorry, Daisuke."

". . . eh?"

He barely had time to lift his head again before she slapped him.

"R-riku-san! What was that for?"

"Silly Niwa-kun. You're thinking so much about other people that you're wrapping back around to selfish." She leaned forward just enough to bring Daisuke forward in an embrace.

Daisuke slowly lifted his own arms and returned the hug. "Riku-san?"

"From what you've told me, you only have now to try this out. If you denied those feelings to stay with me out of obligation, I'd feel cheated, Niwa-kun." She slowly let go and leant back, all the while pushing Daisuke away so she could see his face; it was, as she expected, full of surprise. But despite the strength of her words, she couldn't stop the tears flowing.

"Is it okay to say that you're still very precious to me? Even that I still love you?" Riku nearly laughed at the tears slowly forming in Daisuke's eyes. He really was a very sweet person.

"Yeah. And I can tell you mean it. It means a lot to me, Niwa-kun."

Daisuke and Riku returned to the tree by the lake at a much slower pace than they left it. It was mostly because they still had to compose themselves, but it was also because they felt very calm with each other. For the first time since Daisuke found out about his family legacy, he was able to talk to an unrelated party about it without lying.

When Risa saw the two approaching she immediately perked up and waved in their direction. Dark looked up in response to her outburst and smiled, which led to a "huff" from Riku and a small laugh from Daisuke. Things almost seem normal, he thought.

Risa bounced towards Riku threaded her arm through her sisters'. "Since you two came here together, it's only right that you leave together. Right, Riku?"

She slowly shifted her head from Daisuke to Dark and back again, making sure Daisuke was okay with it. "Sure." They were about to leave before Riku snapped her head back in Dark's direction and all but snapped, "Take care of him, you pervert."

Daisuke sheepishly waved goodbye while Dark returned Riku's glare. Once they were alone again, both Daisuke and Dark could feel the slightly awkward atmosphere that was slowly developing.

It was Dark who broke the silence first. "We both had really odd conversations with those two, didn't we?"

"Ah . . . yeah. Odd might be the best way to put it." Daisuke scratched at his cheek as he tried to laugh it off.

"Can we agree not to talk about it for now?"

"Yeah, I think we can do that. But I just wanna go home now, really."

Dark stretched, which left Daisuke off-guard when he felt Dark's hand come back down to ruffle with his hair. "That sounds like a fantastic idea. Let's get the hell out of here."

"Mutual?"

"Totally and completely. I don't think I've ever seen Niwa-kun that red."

Unlike a certain other duo, Riku and Risa deigned it necessary to speak about their conversations right away.

"But, Riku . . . are you really okay with this? I've known something like this would happen with me and Dark for a while now, but it's different for you and Niwa-kun."

Riku gave a slight, curt nod. "I have to be, right? The situation here is a little stranger than normal. I can't really compete with something like that, you know."

"Then!" Risa ran in front of her and slowly twirled around before stopping , giving Riku a smirk that only she could recognize as devious. Riku thought she knew what Risa was going to say next, and she was going to fight it tooth and nail. It was something those two needed to decide by themselves.

"Does this mean we can try to be match-makers?"

That you guys were still commenting on this in the FAR TOO LONG break between chapters really did put me over the edge and led to this being written (along with a burst of writer's block defeating inspiration, of course). I cannot tell you just how appreciated your comments were. If there's anyone who put this on their watch list that came back after seeing this update, all the more love for you.

Also, this was done without much beta-ing for speed's sake, so if you notice any glaring errors please let me know!