Disclaimer: Veritably not mine.

A/N: Yet another one from As Deep as the Sky that went beyond the time limit. The idea of that ficlet collection is you put your music play-list on random and have to write a fanfic based on whatever song pops up, but you only have the duration of that song in which to write it. Since I didn't follow the rules and spent far longer than just three minutes on this one, I decided to upload it separately.

Connect and Separate

© Scribbler, October 2008.

There you are, giving up the fight.
Here I am begging you to try.
Talk to me, let me in.

-- From How Far by Martina McBride.

Anzu sat on her bedroom floor, knees drawn up to her chest. Downstairs she could hear the erratic thump-thump-thump of Daddy's suitcase rolling through the door and down the front step. She listened carefully for the clunk when he opened his ancient hatchback and shoved it inside, then slammed it … and paused, like he was waiting for something. Or someone.

Anzu could also hear Mommy in the garden, crying.

Anzu pulled herself in small. She wouldn't break. She wouldn't go outside.

Yes she would.

"Daddy!"

He was standing next to the driver's door but he hadn't opened it yet. Anzu flew into his arms. Despite being half his height she managed to smack him against the bodywork. Her father was shocked. She missed the slight disappointment in his expression, as though he'd wanted someone else to appear on the path, but he quickly fell into a familiar clasp of arms and stroking the crown of her head.

"Daddy, please … please don't go."

"I'm sorry, pumpkin," he murmured, tucking her hair behind her ear, untucking it, retucking it, like he couldn't decide which way looked prettier. "I can't stay."

"I'm sorry. Whatever I did, I'm sorry."

"It's not you. Your mother and I … we've grown apart. You'll understand when you're older."

How Anzu hated that phrase. She wanted to understand now – but in the same instant she didn't want to understand, because that would mean acknowledging the reasons why her parents' marriage had failed, and why her family was breaking apart. She buried her face in her father's shirt, staining it with her tears and trying to commit his smell to memory. She couldn't get past the feeling that she was never going to see him again.

"But I want you to stay."

"You can come see me in New York -"

"I want you to stay here!"

Gently, he prised her off him. "It's for the best. You'll see." He kissed the top of her head, leaving his lips there a second longer than when he was just seeing her off to school or into her dance classes.

Then he shoved her away from him, got into his car and drove away without looking back.

Anzu's heart broke so much that the next day at school she took it out on some kid's Gameboy and smashed it to pieces in a temper. She hadn't ever seen the kid before, though he'd been in all her classes and had the kind of hairstyle that should've been impossible to ignore. She didn't try to justify what she'd done, or even say sorry. She just looked at the broken pieces and then ran away to hide in a of the girls' bathroom where nobody could see her cry.

Nobody said anything about it. Apparently Gameboy Kid was one of those students who was routinely ignored by everyone, including the teachers. It should've made Anzu feel better, but instead she felt even more awful – though nowhere near as awful as when he came to school the next day, searched her out on the steps to the P.E. equipment room and presented her with another, brand new Gameboy.

"You look like you need to step out of reality for a while," he said in a funny, weirdly mature way, even though his voice was higher than hers and he was absolutely tiny compared to anybody in the whole playground.

"What?"

He held the Gameboy towards her. "My name's Yuugi."

"Um … hi." Gingerly, she took it, even though it felt like a peace offering, and if anyone should've been giving one of those it was her, since she'd smashed the first one. "I'm Anzu."

He smiled. It was warm and understanding, even though he couldn't possible have known about her mom and dad. She hadn't told anyone about that, not even Mikata, and girls in Mikata's gang were supposed to tell her about everything. Anzu was usually all about following the rules and staying on Mikata's good side, but this time she just hadn't been able to get the words out. Mikata would never understand how deeply this hurt.

But apparently this Yuugi kid did, if his smile and the look in his eyes were anything to go by. "I know. Hey, I have the new Pokémon game. Would you like to play it?"

Anzu hesitated. Actually, she wanted nothing more than to sit here and feel sorry for herself, but he looked so earnest that she found herself accepting - and not only that., but actually moving over so he could sit beside her on the narrow step. His little body was warm against her side and ... comforting?

Really?

"My Grandpa says games are great escapism if you don't like what's going on in real life," Yuugi said softly, without looking up from the screen where she'd just got creamed by a Metapod again.

Anzu looked sideways at him. "Hm," she said, not sure what else she could say. If Mikata caught her hanging with a nobody like Yuugi Mutou, she'd be deader than road-kill.

Still, sitting there with him, playing a game she had no interest in playing and listening to him talk about his grandfather, Anzu realised with a start that she didn't actually care. For a little while she was able to forget about her mother sobbing at bedtime and spilling red wine on herself when she fell asleep on the coach during her soaps, and the raw aching hurt at her father's empty golfing closet. For that she was grateful.

The next day she shoved a small paper bag into Yuugi's hands. "Here."

"A tee shirt?" He held it against himself. Pikachu beamed at the world from the centre, apparently having come through the torn background like a cuter, much less deadly version of an alien chest-burster.

"I didn't know your size. I can take it back if it's wrong. I just wanted to say sorry for breaking your game, and ... and thank you." She scuffed her foot. "So ... um ... thanks."

Yuugi grinned. If his smile was warm, then his grin was like standing three feet away from the surface of the sun. "Hey, you want to come over to my house and play on my Playstation?"

Mikata would kill her. She barely even knew this kid. He was a nobody. She'd be a laughing stock. And she should go home to tend her mother, or at least pretend to tend her to make herself feel less helpless about the whole miserable situation.

"Sure," Anzu said with a smile of her own. "I'd love to."

Fin.