A/N:

Hails: Okay, first and foremost. An apology. I owe a massive one to you guys. Writer's block kicked my ass but muses are singing again. I should thank Alfirza for PMing me because otherwise, I don't think I would've finished this. I've got some new motivation and it feels great. Thank you, babe~ ;)

Second off, I'm gonna try and pump the last few chapters of this out and finally figure out what the hell I'm doing with Rosebud. In the meantime, enjoy the chapter.

Rin's vision was blurry, but faintly he could recall bright lights and shouting people. Somewhere along the line, he thought maybe he'd stopped breathing, that his heart had stopped pumping. An electrical shock, he thought had happened somewhere in there before all he could witness in his line of sight was a blinding white light. In his blistering solitude, he began to wonder if he would meet his father. Did his prayers go unanswered? Or was he simply foolish to stray too close to the Devil's Teeth? Perhaps it was both and perhaps those queries would haunt him well into the afterlife. In Rin's mind, one phrase stuck out.

'I'm dead, aren't I?'

Shura paced in the hallway lobby not twenty yards from the emergency room, bikini straps feeling just a little too tight around her shoulders and the linoleum floor beginning to harshly bear her weight, making the pads of her feet ache. She bit her plump lip until she drew blood, ignored a migraine beginning to buzz behind her eyelids, and repressed the urge to find the nearest trash can to retch her guts out. These past twelve hours had been the most stressful, terrifying hours of her life. The hours she waited with forced patience for an update on Rin's status; on whether or not the boy she had adopted as a little brother, her precious little monkey, would make it out alive.

"Pacing like that isn't going to ensure his survival," Egyn murmured just loud enough for Shura to hear. The woman paused for a moment, loose and wild cerise hair falling at her side as her muscles tensed, her fingers curled in on her palms. She whipped around with the blackest glare she could muster, marched over to where Egyn leaned against the wall and snarled her most furious words.

"Yeah, well leaning against the wall like that ain't' gonna ensure his survival either, dumbass!" She didn't pay attention to the way Egyn winced at how harsh she had made her words. She was far too lost in her own emotions, the concern she held tight in her body for Rin, that she didn't care either. "How can you remain so calm when Rin is on his death bed? We have had no update on his condition since yesterday, Yukio actually bawled his eyes and threw up because he might lose his only remainin' family in this next little bit, and the surfing contest starts tomorrow! How are we gonna break to all of Polu Kai beach that Rin Okumura is dead!?"

"He's not dead," Egyn snapped. His piercing gaze made Shura squirm. The man was capable of so much emotion in so little expression that just seeing him scowl was enough to coerce a person to stand down immediately. Fortunately, Shura knew him well. She would not back off. So much rage floated in the space between them, between their little shouting match when Egyn sighed. "He's not dead, Shura, you know he isn't. Rin's a tough kid, tougher than Fujimoto ever was. And Rin had us, remember? He didn't go under and drown, we got him out of there and you performed CPR. He'll make it."

Shura still kept her gaze trained on Egyn, nearly shaking her head as it seemed her eyes lost even more of their spark. "How? How can you remain so calm?" She whispered.

"Years of practice," Egyn shrugged. Because really, the King of the Akuma Kahakai contest was panicking underneath his husk of tranquil serenity. His heart had climbed up to his throat and he was rigid with dread. He had broken out in a cold sweat a while back, but he needed to be the better one here. He needed to remain unruffled, to be the leader in this dark time. It was all in his demeanor to do so. He could break down crying where no one could see him. That was more his style anyway.

The rain had been going all night long and yet it still persevered, hammering the hospital with all its might. Fat droplets of water pounded against the windows- plinkplinkplinkityplinkplink -and unholy thundering could be heard every once and a while. The storm would pass eventually, but keyword being 'eventually.' God decided when the rain would stop, or maybe mother nature did, but the end of the ceiling of gray would certainly last a while.

In the moments that lead up to this, Egyn sought another way to comfort Shura whilst submerged in his own thoughts of the boy he considered a brother.

Egyn cringed as he watched Rin tumble off his board for the nth time that day, the ocean's waves washing over him. It seemed that no matter how much he tried to get Rin's attention, the boy refused to listen to his advice. It was almost as if Rin was still a bit spiteful towards Egyn, an emotion both the boys exhibited towards him. It seemed, although Egyn didn't want to admit it, that Rin and Yukio blamed him for their father's death. He had blamed himself too- 'what would have happened if I hadn't stolen Fujimoto's wave? Would he still be alive?'

Egyn sighed once more as Rin popped out of the water, screeching obscenities that he didn't even think an eight-year-old should know; it made him wonder if he spent too much time around Shura (with a mouth like hers, it was a probable theory). He paddled over to Rin and effortlessly pulled the boy from the water onto his own board.

"Rin-"

"Put me down, Kishi!" Rin snarled and swat Egyn away in a flurry of limbs. "I don't need yer help, I can do this on my own!"

"Rin, stop struggling-"

The two continued their pathetic wrestling match, Egyn in his attempt to make Rin focus - being his babysitter for today - and Rin in his endeavor to make Egyn go away. At some point along the way, Rin kicked Kishi in the face, causing the result of Rin falling into the water with a massive splash! Egyn grumbled and rubbed his nose. At least it wasn't bleeding or broken. Still, Egyn was rather put up with Rin's attitude. The child pouted bitterly, blowing bubbles in the water. He went under for only a moment, then emerged and climbed onto his surfboard.

"Honestly, Rin," Egyn grumbled, crossing his arms. "You need to cut that out."

"What?" The young prodigy bit back. "Telling you to 'screw off?'"

Egyn yanked at the Rin's ear, eliciting pitiful yelps from him. Kishi chastised him. "First off, watch your language. Second off, no! Stop trying to disobey everything I tell you. I'm upset that Fujimoto is dead too, so stop taking it out on me."

Rin sniffled, ducking his head to avoid eye contact. Egyn released a huff of air, then whispered Rin's name again.

"Hey, brother, I know you're upset," Egyn said in a tone of consolation. Rin stared up at him questioningly, wondering why on earth Egyn would refer to him as his brother. Perhaps it was a familial thing. After all, Fujimoto and Egyn had been close. "You lost someone rather important to you, a role model, and that hurts. I understand, I really do. Your father means the world and beyond to you. But taking your bitterness out on the waves ain't gonna fix anything. You have to let your emotions carry you with the waves. If you fight against her, the ocean won't want to carry you."

"The ocean isn't alive." Rin shot Egyn an unimpressed, unamused look. The King knew that look all too well, he had seen it on Shura, on many of Shiro's pupils, he'd even seen it on himself when looking in a mirror. He used to doubt such words of wisdom when he was young and foolish.

"Au contraire, brother," Egyn soothed, dipping his arm into the water to his elbow as he leaned forward. "The ocean is alive. She is the slipstream, she is the coolness, she is everything you feel when you surf - everything unexplainable. Put your arms in the water, feel the undertow, she is there and she will help you. Go with her, don't fight against her. That is the number one rule of surfing."

Rin was compliant, so he dipped his arm in the water, however rolling his eyes as he went along to entertain his mentor. He steadied his breathing, letting his arm rest where he felt it should be. All was silent, neither party making a sound as they waited for the ocean to feel alive as it had always been. Rin suddenly moved coming to a realization.

"H-hey! I feel something!" He exclaimed ecstatically. Egyn beamed proudly, little did he know that Rin didn't have the same exact, chilling sensation he did. "It feels like... sucking. Like there are multiple tiny suckers all over my arm. Wait a minute..."

Rin pulled his arm out of the water roughly. Both he and Egyn stared, almost mystified as a juvenile Great Pacific Octopus latched all eight of its arms onto Rin's limb, tasting his skin with its neuroreceptors. The surfers were surely silent. Then the octopus made a gross squelching noise and Rin screamed. He flailed around wildly, begging his nanny to 'getitoffgetitoff get. It. OFF.' With a little help from cackling Egyn, they managed to gently pry the octopus off Rin and release it back to its habitat.

"I told you the ocean was alive!"

"THAT WASN'T FUNNY, EGYN!"

Yukio lied supine position on his bed, staring up at the dark gray sky as rain cascaded from its lips and hit the glass ceiling of his, and Rin's, shared tiny room. Thunder could be heard through his muffled solitude. He had an arm draped over his eyes, memories flashed between here and there as he tried to block out the images he'd seen - both as Shura yanked Rin's lifeless body out of the water and within his nightmares. He hadn't slept at all, yet he still found the time to mumble to himself.

"It's okay..." He whispered. "Everything's fine, Rin's fine, I'm fine... I'm not fine."

How could he be? How could he be 'fine' knowing his brother was in the hospital, under anesthesia, with chances of survival diminishing a little bit more every second. The longer Yukio was separated from his brother, the deeper he fell under the impression that soon he would be the last remaining member of the Fujimoto-Okumura family. He had received no texts from Kishi or Shura, no alerts from anyone at the monastery, and had refused to see anyone from school at all.

Solitude was a lonely, ominous kind of company, usually joined by sorrow or sometimes content. Not Yukio's case, however. The poor boy was so lost in his imagination of how it would be to stand at his twin's grave, of how lonely he would be, of how pitying whispers on the street would follow him with every step he took that he didn't hear the wooden rungs of the ladder being climbed by his closest friend.

"Yuki?" The teenage boy didn't need to uncover his eyes to know it was Shiemi coming to comfort him. His bed dipped as the young blonde seated herself close to him. "Yuki, are you okay?"

Yukio didn't say anything, didn't even acknowledge her presence. How she was here was beyond him - perhaps accompaniment from one of the priests? Did she pick up a buddy and follow the rules? Or did she come alone? Either way, he didn't care to respond.

Shiemi, on the other hand, couldn't bear to see her closest friend so... what was the word she was searching for? Depressed. Sure, Shiemi had seen Yukio distant, regretful, embarrassed, furious, every emotion under the sun with the exception of this. Then again, she didn't really know Rin like Yukio did. She didn't know her way around the surfing prodigy nor had she memorized every part of his body through years of experience in the form of sharing beds and comforting hugs after nightmares. Yet she went unperturbed: Shiemi Moriyama was determined to make her best friend smile again.

"Yukio, look at me," Shiemi insisted.

The boy reluctantly uncovered his eyes, only to be met with an incredibly silly faced Moriyama - her tongue was stuck out, she pulled at the corners of her mouth with her pointer fingers, and she crossed her eyes. He snorted, a smile sneaking its way onto his lips as he quickly blackened his vision again.

"Don't you dare mister," The girl scolded in a chiding, 'I'm gonna make you laugh if it's the last thing I do' timbre. "I see you smiling. You can't escape it, Yuki~"

"Shiemi, stooooop," Yukio moaned comically. It wasn't long until the girl was over him, her fingers digging into his ribs in a valiant attempt at a tickle attack. He nearly curled in on himself, shrieking with laughter. At some point, he lost his glasses but was far too distracted to even think about them with a certain gardener coercing an inadvertent grin from him. At the end, both girl and boy were gasping with laughter and Yukio somehow felt much lighter than he did two minutes ago. With a tired groan, he sat up in search for his glasses.

"Here they are," Shiemi chirped, placing the spectacles over Yukio's eyes.

"Ah, thank you," Yukio smiled, but his frown was swift to return. Shiemi sensed it before she saw it. She gingerly took Yukio by the hand in a comforting gesture.

"Yuki, I was talking to the priests at the monastery," She started out shakily. "I figure they aren't the first people you want to speak to, but they want you to know that they have a firm belief that your brother is alive and that he'll recover. It's okay if you worry, but they hope you're comforted by their knowledge. They also encourage you to pray." There was a beat of silence and Shiemi bit her lip. "I'll pray with you if you want."

"But you don't believe in God," the words tumbled out of Yukio's mouth before he could stop them. But instead of being offended by his utterance, Shiemi simply beamed.

"But you do."

Yukio hadn't quite been so encouraged by an agnostic atheist before, but by Shiemi's sheer audacity to put aside her beliefs if only for a moment to support Yukio, he had never been so at peace with it. Shiemi somehow brought that peace. Yukio nodded, they folded their arms and he began to wish for Rin's safety, recovery, and well-being. No sooner had Yukio whispered 'amen,' did the chiming of his phone go off. Both teens scrambled over to check the single notification that would relieve their stress.

Shura: 'Rin is okay'

Yukio, in all his years of acting as a twin brother, had come to terms with the fact that were days he wouldn't understand one Rin Okumura - no matter how loopy on medications he was. Yet, in some foreboding, odd way, this moment clicked with him forever and he sure as hell wasn't okay with how the hell Rin could be so happy in this moment.

"47 stitches AND COUNTING!" The boy exclaimed, rather proud of himself. "Did you see that, Shura? Did you see what I did?!"

"Yeah, I saw," Shura grumbled, massaging her temples. "And I'm still wondering how yer not dead. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that you got a concussion, are high on anesthesia, and have exactly 47 stitches all over your hands, arms, chest, and back, I woulda smacked ya upside the head twenty times in a row for being such an idiot."

"Aw, Shura," Rin pouted. "Was big sissy worried about me?"

"YEAH, I WAS WORRIED!" The redhead screamed.

Rin waved her off nonchalantly, half-heartedly listening to her rant about safety and obeying orders from adults who knew better than he. Yukio's eyes traced every bandage on his brother's body, from the ones wrapped around his torso to the sprained wrist he now sported like a champ, even the white strip of an aid over Rin's nose and the white gauze wrapped around his head. While only one doctor was on observation, Yukio had taken the opportunity to read over Rin's medical analysis: 'fractured wrist, concussion, 47 stitches (torso, back, collarbone, hands, arms), cut across the bridge of the nose (will probably scar). No major injuries or broken bones will make a full recovery.'

'Thank God,' was all Yukio could think in that moment.

"Oi, oiiii... Yukio!" Said student snapped out of his haze, meeting Rin's annoyed expression. "I gotta question for ya!"

"What is it, Rin?" Yukio asked exhaustedly.

"Will compete in the competition for me?"

There was a beat of silence. One second... two seconds... three...

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH?!"

As Shura and Egyn went into shock, scaring the nurse for a second and shouting indignantly, (whilst Shiemi, who had accompanied the trio, took a moment to try and calm them down) Yukio stood there, slack-jawed and bug-eyed at what Rin was requesting.

"You want me to what?"

"Compete, duh!" Rin smirked in that charming way he had. "I can't do it. Doc says I'm getting discharged tomorrow, but no extreme sports or overexerting myself. My bandages aren't exactly waterproof, yanno?"

"Yeah, yeah, no shit, Rin!" Yukio cussed. A rare event for a 'special' occasion. "But I can't just compete for you, I've barely surfed since I was eight!"

"But you still have the moves!" Rin pointed out. "You performed nearly as well as I did during our rip off!"

"Rin, just because I'm a surfing prodigy like you, doesn't mean I can win a professional competition," Yukio groused in protest. "You can't just spring this on me."

"Actually I can, I put you down on the registration form as my legal backup."

"What?" Yukio nearly snapped. Utter silence, Rin with his smug, impish face that Yukio wanted smack so badly. In this moment, Yukio decided his brother was deserving of every single, meticulous injury the Devil's Teeth had inflicted upon him because the straight A student would never forgive his beach boy brother if a nerd like him wiped out on the first day and was subjected to abject humilation just because everyone else was better at surfing than he was, especially Shura and Egyn.

"Well, Yuki?" Shiemi asked softly. "Will you do it?"

A/N:

Hails: So I rushed the hell out of that ending I have no regrets, none.

Stay savvy, my friends.

~Hails