A/N: *cheerful humming* I feel good today. Time to write some confusing angst. =^__^= I'm about to go on vacation, so I thought I'd post before we left.

You know, I haven't watched this series since they stopped airing it on Cartoon Network (brief pause to mourn), but I still love the characters so much. After all, this is the series that taught me what shounen ai and yaoi WERE. XD I hardly ever read fanfiction for it, which is a shame, but I have a hard time finding good ones- part of the reason I don't write more for the fandom. By the time I got an account up here, my obsession with the series was mostly worn out, and nothing I'd written beforehand was really worth posting. It's just hard for me to think of ideas that haven't been done already, since GW always seemed to be such a varied fandom. *sighs*

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"The Allocations of the Soul"

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A memory . . . a nightmare!

Daddy don't die Ilea please don't leave me I've only just met you I want you to stay with me I know so little about you but you're my family I love you how dare you die for me I'm not WORTH it you're the good one I'm a murderer!

Don't die don't die I didn't mean to hurt you I wasn't aiming at you why did you get in the way don't leave me don't you KNOW me you said you'd never forget me again!

And that girl . . .

Give him BACK, give him BACK, he's fucking MINE!

He's supposed to be mine . . .

His face, his voice, his hands and lips and touch and taste and blood, blood, MY blood, am I dying I don't want to leave him please don't let me leave him my heart hurts too much is it the real heart or is it the meat that shares its name I want him back I want him back I don't want to leave him!

He's supposed to be mine . . .

Forever.

My fingers are itching for my violin.

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I wake up screaming the name of a person I've never known, and when I can see straight again, Binary smirks at me from across the room.

"Good dream?" he asks with a giggle, closing the bottle of nail polish in his hands. "You've been up here all afternoon- the others said that you passed out in Hao's arms at the police station," he explains, blowing on his nails.

I call him something- another name I don't recognize- but I can't quite hear myself.

Binary pales and drops the bottle, and then he SCREAMS.

The door bangs open behind me (where ARE we, anyway?) and Yuu bursts in with his gun drawn and sweeping the room; then he blinks and gives Binary a strange look.

"What happened?" Trust Yuu to come in guns blazing and not worrying about the details until he's sure nothing important has recently exploded.

"Nothing!" Binary shrieks, snatching the alarm clock off the nightstand and throwing it at Yuu. He blocks it with the door and gives me a questioning look.

"Don't look at me," I say with a shrug, holding my hands up. "I didn't even touch him!"

"Yeah right," Yuu says dryly. "God, you're both such whores. Just keep it down and try not to wake Ailin and Hao, would you?"

"I'm not a whore," Binary says defensively, crossing his fishnet stockings and red leather boots.

"Wake them?" I ask blankly. "What time is it?"

"Only about six, but Hao passed out on the couch as soon as we got back and Ailin fell asleep in the kitchen," Yuu reports. "You know how she is- if you don't give her something to do, she'll go comatose on you at the drop of a hat. As for Hao . . . well, I get the impression he's been running around a lot lately."

"Yeah," Binary agrees with a slight nod as he inspects his bright red nail polish (really not his color- I'd try purple if I was him). "He was asleep the whole time you guys were gone. Got really pissed when we woke him up to bail you out, too," he adds with a smug snicker.

"He would," Yuu mutters. "But whatever- just keep it down, okay?"

"We weren't DOING anything!" I yell after him as he shuts the door. "Believe me, I wish we HAD been!"

"I don't like blondes anyway," Binary grumbles. "Too airheaded."

Oh, look who's talking.

"Gee, thanks: feel free to start insulting my manhood while you're at it," I tell him sourly. "Since you're having SO much fun at my expense and all."

"Do you remember the day we met?" Binary asks me, his usually light voice suddenly uncomfortably calm. "When I flipped out on you?"

"Vaguely," I reply flatly. "Seeing as it was just yesterday and all."

"Wanna know why?" He gives me the most serious look I've seen on his face all day, and I forgo the usual million other things I'm thinking about at any given moment to give him my full attention- something I hardly ever need to do.

But he's Binary, and I probably trust him more than I should.

"Shoot," I say with a classically "me" grin: wide and insincere, but at least an attempt at friendliness.

Binary gives me a wan smile of his own, and I see it in his eyes. He's lonely too- not just a shallow loneliness, but the deep kind, that scars the heart and spans lifetimes. Like I am, like Yuu is, like Hao was before he got his sticky fingers on that little statue of his.

He is also looking for his soulmate.

"Know what a peacock is?" Binary asks, kicking his legs slightly and not quite looking at me.

"'A male peafowl with a crested head and large, fan-shaped tail; known for its elaborate and somewhat gaudy plumage,'" I recite obediently. "They use the tails to get laid," I add with a grin.

Binary gives me a dubious look. "You WOULD know that." I grant him a beguiling smile in return. "There's another definition," he tells me after a brief pause to roll his eyes. "You might know it too."

"I'll assume you mean the archaic," I reply promptly. "Peacocks were effeminate male prostitutes who used to get dressed up like women and taken out and around by gay men."

"Yeah." Binary smiles mirthlessly. "That was me."

Honestly? I'm not surprised. But I get the feeling that this isn't the usual spill-your-guts affair. Something bad is about to come out of his mouth.

Something really, really bad.

"There was . . . this guy," Binary says slowly. "He liked me. He liked me a LOT. And he wasn't a very nice guy. But he paid extra, so I let him have me, even though I knew he was bad news. And then he stopped asking . . . and I ran away in the end . . . But he came back today, while the others were out. I don't even know how he found me. But what you called me when you woke up- that was what I used to go by, when I was around him."

He looks up at me, and for the first time, I actually understand that he's just a kid, even under the leather and the make-up and the flirting- and even though I called him seventeen, to be honest he's probably at least two years younger. And when he wears that expression, and casts off the bravado . . .

I can feel it in my heart. He hurts. He thinks I'll hate him, laugh at him, use him, throw him away. But he's in so much pain, and so afraid, and he needs someone to understand.

I remember, when I fainted at the scent of Hao's cologne . . . my heart hurt then. And I was thinking of that cheap green telephone on my desk, and the green in . . . somebody's eyes while I fell. There was the kind green, and then another, icier one- hateful and cruel and wanting bad things.

"Did he do anything to you?" I ask.

Binary shakes his head. "I hit him with the phone, then Yuu and Hao dragged you into the lobby and he left before they could see him," he explains quietly. "He's a coward, but . . . he's stronger than I am," he adds with a faint shudder. "I can't stop him from doing what he wants to . . . and he has the coldest eyes."

And Yuu tells me that there's no such thing as a psychic.

"The worst part is, he always leaves the money," Binary adds after a moment, voice trembling.

"If it makes you feel any better," I tell him, "I really DO know exactly how you feel."

"How can you?!" he yells back, jumping to his feet and glaring at me. I can see repressed tears in his eyes. "How can you POSSIBLY- ?!"

I grab him and yank him down until our foreheads are pressed together.

"The first time I ever had sex," I begin slowly as I let my . . . soul, I guess you'd call it- as I let my soul leak into the cracks of his, "I was fifteen. It felt so good, so fantastic, that I couldn't understand how just one person could feel like that. And I was so happy, because I loved him so much, and I thought we'd be together forever."

"What happened?" Binary asks, slightly breathless as my feelings, my memories wash over him.

"I died," I reply bluntly, releasing him. "And the next time I was born, I couldn't find him, and it hurt SO bad."

" . . . you can really remember your past lives?" he asks a little doubtfully. Not doubting reincarnation, though, just that I can recall what is supposed to be forgotten.

"Yes," I answer with a quick nod. "It is . . ." For a moment I fumble for words, and then, slowly, feel a phrase enter my mind. "It is the Soul of Outer Space," I say, feeling my lips curve in an instinctive smile. "That is my ability. And it follows me through my lives, so I cannot forget . . . "

"Do you remember everything?" His eyes are large and dark and needy- like he wants something to be confirmed or denied. "Like, when you're dreaming?"

"Sometimes," I reply with a slight shrug. "Sometimes not. Usually, it's just a memory I've always had, but lately they've been coming to me more often. I was thinking of one when I passed out."

"What was it?" Binary quizzes.

I close my eyes. "That first time," I say softly, unable to prevent the nostalgic peace that washes over me. "It was somewhere metallic . . . in a car, I think, or a truck . . .? I don't really remember- it's much too vague."

"The way I felt . . . when you described it . . . " Binary puts a hand to his forehead, giving me a questioning look.

"Those were my happy memories," I explain simply. "Of the way sex feels with the person that you love the most."

"Who do you love the most?" he asks. Blunt little bastard, but no surprise there.

I want to tell him that I'm not sure, but a name that I can't hear crosses my lips anyway.

He looks surprised. "Oh. Really?"

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* tbc . . . *

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. : who is it that you love? : .