Kiju felt himself being drawn in, pulled as he always was by that inexplicable longing that he'd never quite manage to quell. She was there, of course, as beautiful as she'd always been, as he always remembered her to be, and yet here, in the dark corners of his memory, she was somehow even more radiant than before.

She turned and smiled at him, and her smile lit up the world. "You have to be careful now, my darling."

He was a young again in her presence, and when she spoke he could almost touch the childhood he'd been denied. "Careful of what?"

She shook her head, reaching out to brush his hair- so like hers- out of his eyes tenderly. "You must be careful now. You must watch over them now, the way I could never watch over you." She pulled him close, cradling him against her smaller frame.

"Careful of what. . . ?" He breathed the scent of her, so familiar; he felt almost too peaceful to care what it was he should be careful of.

"You must be careful now. . . . " She released him and she was fading, vanishing before his eyes like a will-o-whisp that had lead its victim far out into the wilderness where he would wander in eternal circles before perishing.

"Wait for me. . . ." He was pleading and he hated it almost as much as he adored her. "Please. . . !"

She smiled the smile that was burned so irreversably into his memory. "You must be careful now, my son."

"Please, wait!"

"You must be careful now. . . "

He opened his eyes slowly, feeling his muscles tense and his fists unclench, relinquishing their hold on the bedsheets. There was no light yet in his room; the world outside his window remained still dark and forbidding.

"It's been a long time since I dreamed of you, mother," he murmured into the empty room. "I wonder what it means now."

The silence offered him no answer, so he sat up and looked out the window, where he could watch the night end. The snow was shining white, like her hair, and this comforted him more than he would care to admit. Immaculately white, like flesh in the moonlight. . . he stopped that train of thought before it went any farther. Fruitless yearning would get him nowhere tonight. True, it didn't have to be fruitless, he could seek out Varuka or Aku'un or Jin or any number of people, and thus provide himself with distraction to take his mind away from the things he would never have, but for now he preferred to be here, watching the light on the horizen grow steadily brighter. It wouldn't hurt him to be alone with his thoughts for a little while.

You must be careful now, my son. How very odd. His subconcious was offering him advice. Someone more sentimental than himself might surmise that his mother's spirit had come from the Otherworld to warn him of some impending danger, but he doubted that was the case. For one thing, there was no reason that she wasn't still alive, somewhere, and for another, even if she was dead, he couldn't see her coming all the way back to this plane of existence just to tell him to be careful. No, more likely it was something in his own mind, merely taking on his mother's form for a little bit.

That didn't mean he understood the cryptic message any better, however.

You must be careful now. . . .

He made a frustrated sound. Careful of what? And why? In the dream, it had felt as though she was asking him to protect someone. You must watch over them now, the way I could never watch over you.

How very, very odd. He wasn't really one to protect someone. He was not like Aza, who seemed to devote his life to it. No, most of the time, people could protect themselves, and he wanted no unbreakable link that forced him to do it for them. True, there had been times when he'd wanted to protect Fue-chan and Ukanai, but he thought that was rather different.

Besides, he thought, chuckling to himself, Fue-chan could get along just fine without his help. Perhaps she enjoyed his companionship, but with half the men in the hotel falling over themselves to make sure she was alright, he had the idea that she could use more help getting her numorous protectors out of her hair than anything else. Thinking of her made him smile: a princess who'd rather be a prince. She remained dear to him still. . . .

And of course, he had wanted to protect Ukanai. He had been foolish, but he'd wanted it. Not any longer, he thought. I should have known better. As always, I should have known better.

But it was too late for regrets. He would not waste his life on flimsy what-might-have-beens. He refused to. He was not like Aza, who was beautiful even in his moments of deepest misery, who seemed able to withstand any torture in the name of his fathomless love. In the name of his martyrdom.

He would never be like Aza, and he knew he would live all the longer for it. Such an irony, that beauty was doomed to die while someone as dirty as himself lived on and on.

Life was full of little ironies, if you knew to look for them.

You must watch over them now. . . .

He watched as the sun peeked out over the horizon, a testimony to the endless continuity of the world. Life and its neverending stream of ironies went on and on and on. . . .

How very odd.

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