A/N: This will be appended to chapter 9 when it is complete, as i did with parts "B" through "D" of chapter 6.

Akito was still smiling, but unhappy.

"Kagura."

Her head was bent before her god.

"Kagura!" Akito intoned his voice with a snap that made Kagura flinch and raise her head to him.

"My boar my lovely, headstrong, little boar," He poured the words from his lips as the sweetest cream while he took her chin in his hand and stroked her hair back from her face.

"I have been lenient with you, have I not?"

She just stared at him with wide eyes.

"Anything you have wanted I have given,"

Akito drew his hand along her jaw toward her ear, as the hand that stroked her hair settled on the nape of her neck, with a loving forcefulness he turned her head to speak into her ear.

"I turned a blind eye to your obsession with my monster."

Kagura shook.

"I have felt him pulling and tugging at his leash, I have felt his and Yuki's concurrent suffering and happiness. I want you to tell me what he is planning, why he is defying me."

"Akito-sama, I . . ."

Akito grasped the hair at the back of her skull and yanked, bending her neck back, forcing her back to arch and her bended knees to splay.

"Before you speak, know that I have felt you tugging too Kagura, do not lie to me. For that defiance punishment will be served, but for further disobedience punishment will be enacted elsewhere."

Kagura gasped and breathed hard, tight, little breaths.

"Yes, Akito-sama, I will not disobey again."

Kagura pulled her knees to her chest curling in on herself. She felt chilled and numb, she squinted, opening her eyes to a sea of silk. She looked up to see Akito, her head was resting in his lap and he was stroking her hair. Her body tensed; her mind was filled with fog and her head felt too heavy to think about lifting it.

"Thank you for taking this so well Kagura." Akito's voice was silky sweet again, "I am so glad you decided to warn me of Kyou's betrayal. Everything will be all right now." He smiled.

"I want you to go with him and keep taking care of my monster, you are the only one I would trust with this task. When he gets too close to breaking away from the family's love and protection, I want you to catch him close," Akito held her gaze as he pressed something into her hands, closing her trembling fingers around it, "Remind him of our love for him and his unfulfilled obligation.

"Now go home, Hatori has a message for you to give to Rin."

Kagura rose to her feet slowly and left. As she stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her it dawned on her that she had lost something.

Rin walked as quickly as she could, it was cold. She hated December. The coat she wore was voluminous, a fake leopard fur, but it was short. The coat left the expanse of thigh between her boot tops and miniskirt exposed to the elements. She wished she had a cigarette, it would constrict her capillaries and make her hands feel colder, but the stimulant would make her feel better about the walk. With a cigarette in her hand she could pretend she was some starlet, uncaring and walking blissfully into nihility, devil-may-care. With only her costume and no prop she was painfully aware that this walk was not her choice and she ws being manipulated by Hatori and maybe indirectly by Akito.

It was so chilly, the sky had darkened overhead and the winds had risen since that morning. Rin looked to the sky above, overcast, and once more lamented the absence of that cigarette. She began to imagine the feel of nicotine in her lungs and the taste of tobacco in her mouth and nose and it reminded her of Haru.

Haru had stopped smoking long before Rin had ever started "quitting" but if Haru had been standing there with her, she would have already been inhaling that sweet drug. Before leaving home she would have a stick tucked behind her ear, slipped between her bosoms, or rolled into her skirt's close waistband. She always kept one with her if she knew she would be around Haru. In the beginning she carried it as a prop, because she needed something to do to hide her nervousness around the boy who excited her so. It became a habit later on, when they had difficultly speaking and feared the things pulling them apart, it was a comfortable ritual that they could retreat to. She would raise the white tube to her lips from it's hiding place and glance at him shyly with the ghost of a smile around the cig; before she had to ask Haru would give a rehearsed sigh of defeat and light it for her. He would let her inhale a few times before asking her how the "quitting" was going or commend the redeeming fact that she always chose additive free tobacco. Then he would grasp her around the waist and say,

"Give me one more taste of my addiction."

Her cigarette would be lowered and her mouth open in surprise, ready for the tender kiss Haru would deliver.

A door creaked open. Was she there already?

"Rin!"

Yuki stood at the open door, but the noise had come from farther within the house. Hiro had run to greet her, it was amazing the level of regard he held for her when anyone else was treated like a pebble in his oxford.

Hiro stared at her a moment, before hugging her around the middle, Rin too would not have accepted such treatment from anyone else.

"It's Kisa." He whispered.

"I know, it's all right, Haru told me. She's not mad and I'll take you to see them."

"Haru." Hiro growled the name.

"Haru." Rin conceded wistfully.

The indulgent smile that graced her face slipped away as she raised her head to meet Yuki's gaze, Kyou had come to the door as well.

"Thank you, we'll be going." Rin's voice was cool water.

She nodded goodbye to them and Hiro gave his own thank you. Rin noticed how close the boys stood to one another and how the hands that fell to their sides brushed together in a way that was too tentative to not be intimate. She pointedly stared at the moment of contact.

"Be careful there. Those who know better are less likely to be forgiven."

The silence that came after Rin and Hiro left was awkward and uncomfortable. So Yuki turned to Kyou, lilac irises meeting rose and wrapped his ams around the Cat. On the inside when he felt Yuki's arms enfold him, Kyou cringed and nearly panicked. Kyou was afraid, afraid of his dream, and afraid of the warning Rin had delivered.

Rin and Hiro began the long walk back to the compound together.

She says, "You really don't have to pretend around me you know."

Something in those words was a resonate wave to Hiro's soul .

"You don't have to pretend, because I'm the same, I love him and I love him the way you do."

And there was the ugliness of it. Love and she knew what kind, Love with a capital "L" that implied more than a cousin should love his cousin. A desire that should not exist between a man and the man who was competing for his soulmate. Rin should not have felt those things she was implying for Hatsuharu and Hiro even less so.

"A person so immature and foolish as yourself could never know what love is."

Rin's expression turned hard, she stopped and embraced Hiro tightly, kissing the top of his head.

"I know enough to know that it hurts."

"If this pain is love then I don't want to believe in it." Hiro whispered into the confidence between them.

A/N: The part that really has me stuck about this is what would Yuki plan for a date? I plan for an activity where they can compete and then a romantic dinner, and a moonlit stargazing moment to end the evening. The details are fuzzy, inspiration has been a harsh mistress for this story.