Sorry it’s been so far. Thank you for waiting.

Europe

Going to Europe had been Asuka’s idea.

“I don’t care which country, so long as we just go! It’s so romantic, isn’t it? Europe?” she’d clung to his arm in a way which she hadn’t done since before they were married, and her eyes had been filled with desperate hope as she gazed up at him. They could both afford to take a few weeks off work, and it would be good for their marriage. Good for him. “You need to get out of Japan for a while – maybe then your ghosts will finally leave us alone!”

He’d been willing to give it a shot. Hell, he felt so guilty about the way things had been between them recently that he’d been willing to do anything she asked. He’d even thought it might work.

The fighting had begun before they even stepped off the plane.

By the third day of their vacation, they’d stopped speaking to each other all together. Leaving Asuka alone in their hotel suite with a ‘headache,’ he took to the streets the moment the sun began to set, hoping that losing himself in the unfamiliar streets would bring him some sort of perspective. Surely drowning himself in the sea of unfamiliar faces – uncaring strangers who spoke a completely different language and lived lives nothing at all like his own – would bring him a new appreciation for the sweet woman who had so selflessly helped him to build a new identity out of the shadowy remains of the old.

Nothing guided his feet, save a depressed sort of boredom. There was no pull of instinct, no draw of destiny – mere chance, and chance alone, led him to enter a small, noisy pub about three miles from his hotel.

No one took much notice as he entered. As he approached the bar, he drew his small tourist phrasebook out of his back pocket, hoping it had an entry in it about ordering drinks in English.

As he was taking a seat on a bar stool, however, a flash of red from the corner of his eye caught his attention. As if stuck in a dream, he turned his head.

The man sitting alone at the other end of the bar was the singularly most beautiful creature, male or female, he’d ever seen in his life. Those vibrant, violet eyes, so inexplicably familiar to him, were large with surprise. His perfect face was pale and frozen.

He approached the strange man like a sleepwalker, impossibly drawn to a person whose face was not even a memory, and the man remained, frozen and staring, even as he drew near.

“You’re…Aya…aren’t you?” he asked, and knew it was true even before the words escaped his lips. His hand reached of its own accord, fingertips brushing the strange beauty’s cheek. He knew even before he touched him that his skin would be unbelievably soft.

The man only stared at him, unanswering, hardly appearing to breathe.

He found himself smiling.

“You wanna get out of here?”

End.

I was asked to give some kind of timeline for these. The best I can come up with is: Lover, Breakfast, Notice, Questions, Reunion I, Reunion II, Momento, One Moment, Ownership, Comfort, His First, Hopes, Worry, Longing, Ghosts, Dreams, Duty, Rain, Europe – although some could be interchanged.

I know I promised a sequel, and I’m planning one – but it’s not coming to me as easily as I thought it would, so I can’t give you any estimate on when you might see it. In any case, I thank all of you so much for reading my oneshots, even when they became not-so-oneshots. I apologize again for long wait between chapters.