Title: Balance
Pairing/Characters: Ozuma/Hilary
Status: (4/4) - Complete
Disclaimer: Beyblade (c) Aoki Takao
Time Line: Post-Season 3
Author's Notes: The final part.
CHAPTER FOUR: STAYING
He told her the rest of it. About lost teammates and fallen leaders, about an accomplished mission, about all of it when she had been on pins and needles to stop herself from asking him about it outright. She hadn't needed to.
Hilary found ways to get away from him after that little talk.
She'd stop talking about the past after he had told her of their mission being fulfilled, about everything, and would only ask him in that formal manner if he could please pass that bread at dinner She stopped helping him with his injuries too, and would conveniently be asleep by the time he got back late at night.
He'd noticed, of course. And she could tell it wore thin on him – she's come to recognize what every little detail meant, when he was upset and when he wasn't; she'd memorized him.
She almost wished she hadn't – maybe then everything would've been okay, not full of tension and discomfort, and maybe everything could've gone back to normal –
Hilary stops her train of thought, and pulls the sheets a little over her head as she snuggles deeper into her little space on the floor. Normal. She didn't know when it started, but she had started considering Ozuma as being normal. As being a part of her life – someone she's grown to see everyday, almost as if she expects him to be there everyday from now on
Like the Bladebreakers. Her eyes widened a bit, the words echoing in her head like chime bells. She wondered if it would be bad of her to take that step over the line to call him a friend.
How in the world had that happened?
There was a storm brewing outside – the rain poured heavily against the roof, and she entertained the thought of it collapsing down on her under all the weight before she berated herself for thinking of something so horrible.
Despite that, Hilary turned and looked out the window that was cracked open on the other side of the hut that she had grown so used to over the past two months. She could see the flash of lightning, and the rumbling of thunder became louder and louder as she sat there and watched it.
Hilary's stomach felt as if it had just jumped into her throat, choking her. She suddenly felt ashamed of her childish behavior. Some class president you are. She remembered last night when she had gone to bed early – she had practically felt his eyes burning into her back, a silent question that she refused to answer. She wondered if he had managed to wrap the bandages around himself decently. It was such a sentimental thought, and she waved it away because she knew there had been a time before now when she hadn't been here to help him. But his teammates were.
She shook her head, and turned away from the window and a door where a potential blader may have walked through any moment. She still listened intently, however. Just in case.
This animosity she felt towards him was entirely new ground for her – it felt awkward and scary and it was like taking one step forward and two steps back. Had she really been wasting her time here, waiting for people who wouldn't come back? The thought that he had been keeping such a secret had upset her – after all, hadn't she shared everything about herself with him?
No. Hilary clenched her teeth and growled, finger nails digging into her palm. He wasn't a Bladebreaker. He would never want to be a Bladebreaker. She had to stop thinking of him as one of the guys. She had to stop touching him as if he needed her support, had to stop acting as a coach, had to stop crawling towards him as if he were some kind of replacement to the old memories.
She could've been sick.
It gnawed at her. Was she really such a lonely and bitter person? Could she really just not let go? She'd always thought very highly of herself, but as she sat there lying in bed with bugs and a storm and a vague sense of deja vu, she realized that she was scum, scum, scum.
Everything suddenly seemed to push down on her until she was crushed under the guilt and the knowledge and the feelings and the desire to just go home.
She was just so tired. Had this been the reason why the boys had never mentioned their old travels and adventures beyond what was necessary? Had it worn them out? Hilary remembered one specific video out of the many she had watched on Kenny's laptop that one night, and her heart quivered with such a sense of remorse and frustration and love that it was all she could feel as she practically threw herself out of bed and onto the hard wooden floor.
Reaching over to blindly search for the first aid kit on her side, she barely even let herself put her shoes on before she was sprinting through the rain and the need to make things right.
"Are you proud of yourself now, Ozuma?"
Whenever Ozuma would unleash the full power of Flash Leopard, he would hear the whistle of battle and the yells of old ghosts in his head. The only other people who knew what the strain did to him was the elder and the other Saint Shields, and as more and more of them screamed and burned at his brain, he was fully determined to keep it that way.
He realized he was angry at her. Furious, even. Maybe that was why most of the voices were hers, and why he was suddenly remembering things of her from the past when he had barely even recognized her all those months ago when she had shown up at the village. He didn't like being ignored – his pride and his skills weren't meant to be disregarded in that way.
Ozuma could imagine Dunga, Joseph and Mariam in his head. He could picture them all sitting around a campfire in some far-off land that he didn't comprehend, talking with each other about him. About how pathetic he had become.
"Man, what happened? I've never seen Ozuma this down before – he's like some kinda zombie. Should I punch him in the face?"
"He's really lost his edge."
"I told him he needed to get over it. We should just leave him alone and let him work it out by himself for now."
His friends didn't need him. Something about that bugged him more than he would ever let on.
Flash Leopard gave a strangled roar as a flash of lightning came rolling towards him. Ozuma couldn't tell if the flame in front of him was from the storm or from his bit beast.
He was exhausted and wet, but that had never stopped him from training before. Days like these were almost normal for as long as he could remember his childhood.
It's always been that way, hasn't it? Always with a Beyblade in his hand, always preparing for that next step. He was a warrior. He was powerful. How could he have imagined himself for a second without his Flash Leopard? Had he really been so lost and alone without his teammates? If they could actually see him in person this very moment, burnt and insane, what would they think? The different scenarios spun around in his head like a broken record.
He never wanted to get so close to her. He'd never had any intention of letting her stay with him so she could worm her way into his mind and pull him down memory lane. But he had to admit she was stronger than she looked because she sure had pulled him down more than he ever expected her to –
Flash Leopard cried out suddenly and dissolved into it's blade.
Too much, too soon, tipped the scale again.
Ozuma picked it up and gazed down at it for a second, and wasn't particularly surprised to find out most of the parts had melted.
Almost as if he had melted along with it, he could feel the rain against his skin and hear the boom of thunder in the distance. He winced. It hurt his wounds and drenched right through the bandages he had half-heartedly applied.
Sitting down in the mud to take off his harness – that sharp, sharp harness which constricted his movements and bit through his flesh – Ozuma was annoyed to realize just how much he'd come to depend on her constant attention towards him. Oh, he was fully capable of taking care of himself, he was a big boy, really. But he had come to let her into his life, and he had become used to her, just like his teammates, his friends. Now that she was decidedly upset with him, he actually found that he... missed her.
Ozuma never thought he'd ever feel bad about keeping Saint Shield matters to himself.
But perhaps that was what was wrong with him. She was too much girl, not enough blader, and he found he really didn't mind all that much after the whispered words and the loneliness and this strange friendship that had been forged between them.
He pulled himself away from it all then – the rain had already soaked him to the bone, and by now he doubted even the cloak he had left further up the hill would help him now. It was probably just as wet as he was.
His blade was practically falling apart in his hands, and he picked himself up off the ground and began the trudge up the path that had led him down to the training grounds and the graves of his ancestors. He could recall with a small smirk the day Hilary had accidentally taken a seat upon one of the gravestones during the first couple days of her stay, and he had yelled at her. He also remembered the swift leap she had taken to the dirt and the frantic apologies afterwards -
And almost as if him thinking of her was like some sort of signal, he was practically run into the ground with a lot of brown hair, wet pink clothes, and Hilary in his arms.
Ozuma gave a grunt of pain as the back of his head slammed against something. He guessed it was a rock.
She still held him tightly, voice muffled against his chest as she whispered soothing words that he almost didn't hear. "Sorry," she said, "So, so sorry."
He steadied himself against her by putting a hand on her shoulder, and she looked down at him with a horrified expression.
"You look awful!" she cried.
He'd noticed. But he couldn't say anything because he couldn't stop staring at her. She was rumpled and in her pajamas and wet and still hugging him. Which was probably why he had let her guide him back up the hill, and hadn't protested at all when she had tugged him down so she could look at the result of his recent training.
"I'm so sorry, Ozuma." She kept saying it, and he hated her for it.
"It's not your fault." It was the first thing he said back, and that seemed to have blocked out the next string of apologies she had prepared to blurt out because there was now no sound coming from her except the hinge of the first aid kit she had brought and the slap of her clothes against the ground.
He had eventually found his cloak before she had went to work, and had let her wear it, despite it being dirty and wet. The image of something long and faded looked different and oddly right.
He stayed quiet, not wanting to interrupt the sudden peace between them.
She was never one for long silences, however. "You could've really hurt yourself, you know," she chided.
He wondered if she noticed the older bandages, and quickly shoved the question away. There was no doubt that she did. "This is nothing."
There was a swift knock at the back of his head, and he turned slightly to look over his shoulder at her.
She still held her shaking fist up, looking like she was about to cry.
Ozuma tried not to let it bother him by turning away, but it did. "Hilary," he started – tone light, posture straight, slight slip of his pride, "I appreciate this." It was the closest thing to a thank you he had ever given her.
He didn't look back at her to see her expression, but he knew it had softened greatly, and that the fist had been put away and had been replaced by the gentleness she would display to him on several occasions.
The rain had died down at bit, drizzling lightly on top of their heads.
"I've been thinking," she said, tying the last knot before standing up.
He stood up too, and frowned at her. "Thinking about what?"
She looked pale. Nervous. "I think it's about time I should be going. Home, I mean." Leaning against a tree, she shivered.
Ozuma shivered, too – with a sudden anger that swelled up and boiled in his throat. "What?" he asked, trying to control the urge to shout. He didn't want a replay of his friends leaving him – startled and a replica of his other self; the one that had seen better days. "Why?"
The last part came out as a demand, and she flinched a bit, but kept her ground and looked him full in the face, determination apparant. "Because I need more time. I'm not strong enough yet to handle it. I'm tired."
Tired. She was tired. He knew tired – he had felt it non-stop in those days of hunting the bit beasts from her team - always hurrying, scheming, watching, preparing – and he could see the dark circles under her eyes, the forlorn expression on her face. He wanted to shake her, challenge her, tell her what it was like for him to be tired and how he would give anything to have that back and she was just giving up -
A hand slammed down against the bark of the tree, right next to her face. She blinked at him, astonished at his abrupt show of anger, and her eyes narrowed as she looked at the hand so close to her. "Ozuma..." There was a low warning there. He wondered if he was scaring her.
And he didn't know what made him do it – whatever was making him tick in that moment - but with a snarl, he said,"Let me teach you." He ignored her shocked look. "If you really want to Beyblade so badly, then I'll show you."
She was shaking her head so hard he thought it might fall off. "No!" she all but yelled at him. "That's not what I meant – I -"
"Why'd you come see me first?"
Whatever she was about to say seemed to die on her tongue, and she just stared at him, long and hard. As if she were thinking about it.
His other hand came up to the other side of her head, as if trapping her there until she answered.
She looked more than a little miffed. "I..." she stopped. Swallowed. Looked at something over his shoulder. "I thought it would be a good place to start." Her voice wobbled a bit at the end, and he furrowed his eyebrows as if telling her to continue. "Your battle with Tyson at the park had been the first I'd ever seen."
Ozuma pulled back a little, surprised. There was no way he could ever remember his first look at a Beyblade battle – there had been so, so many – but he understood the intimacy of it all. How vulnerable she made herself to him in that moment. He breathed in deeply, because her honesty was making him re-analyze everything about the situation like it always did.
There was just so much adrenaline pumping through his veins then – the hurt, the loneliness, the desperation, the feeling of her skin against his, the lingering thought that maybe they weren't all that different because of it – and it all collided to the point of making him see stars. The sentimentally of Hilary's words was like a confession – deep, a personal phantom that she had shared just with him. He could've kissed her as she stood there going on about something that had to do with computers and videos, and it wasn't long before his lips found the side of her mouth, blind and just a little desperate.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her closer, tighter, and he felt her fingers digging into his upper arms, startled and trembling against the hold he had on her. She was pushed up against the tree now, the bark digging into her back - muffled sounds escaped her and tied knots in his chest, and he couldn't help but hold onto her as if she were a life line. The ends of her hair fell out of the hood against his hands, and it was all just a fumbling mess and awkward and just so crazy –
He let her go, and with a startled yelp, she fell to the ground without the support. And as she sat there in the mud, dirty and flushed, wearing his cloak, he couldn't help but find it all funny and incredibly endearing. He choked out a hoarse chuckle while still trying to catch his breath.
Hilary seemed to feel the same way, because she was laughing along with him and rubbing the back of her head until he heard her take in a gasp of air and suddenly she was laughing as if she were about to really cry this time.
"Stop crying," he ordered, slumping down next to her shaking form.
"I-I'm not crying -" she managed to blurt out at him, before she was rubbing her eyes and sniffling as if to emphasize this.
He watched her silently, a million things swirling around in his head at once – wrong wrong wrong tears can't be handled something to hold onto the leader needs to act like one more often -
He stopped. Be a leader. Mariam's words rang out to him. He wasn't really sure this was what she'd had in mind, but the more he thought about it, the more he could recall every detail about a blue dragon and a boy and a stone and a rusty old amusement park and a promise. There wouldn't be anything like that again, he knew. No more bit beasts to seal unless Tyson lost control, and so far that hadn't happened – nothing had happened for the past couple of years until two months ago, and he realized it was the most excitement he'd had in a Very Long Time.
He could picture Tyson's face in his mind, always cocky, always arrogant. He suddenly wondered if it would be the same if he saw it now, what was there to stop him. An idea slowly formed in his head.
"Hey, I'll see you again, won't I? We've got a score to settle."
"I'm sure we'll meet again someday, Tyson."
"Well..." Hilary said after a minute, looking embarrassed. "And to think I had been a little scared of you before."
Ozuma looked over to her. It felt as if his body was weightless. "And now?"
She scratched the back of her head, a shaky laugh escaping her, tears still in her eyes. "I think I still am."
"We're just full of surprises," he replied. Standing up, he shook a bit of the grime off his clothes before saying, "Think your team would be happy to see me?" Abrupt. Sudden. The old and new met at the same wavelength for the first time in years.
The smile on her face was gone now, and was replaced with an apprehensive frown. "But... didn't you guys say the bit beasts - ?"
He waved her off before she could finish. "That wasn't what I meant. This would be just for me. And I could use a little adventure."
Her eyes had widened throughout his explanation, and she only seemed to be able to speak once he had pulled her off the ground by her hands.
"Wha-but..." She eyed him for a minute in disbelief before her expression became soft. A chord had been struck. "Are you sure?"
He noticed the rain had stopped, and just looked over at her and smiled.
"Yes."
OMFG they kissed!! See, I can write them. Well? Pfft. You decide. Hopefully it didn't suck too badly...
Anyways, thanks for reading, guys. This little crack fic was real fun.