A/N: Here's the second one! I don't have much to say...other than KaitoxLuka always makes me think of cotton candy because the two most common colors for cotton candy are blue and pink...maybe I'm just weird?

Also, this story is loosely based off a Vocaloid song; can you guess which it is? (I'll tell you at the end).

Dedicated to: LukaKanon

"I'm going to jump. Please don't stop me."

The wind whipped through the cold December air and snatched her words away as soon as they left her mouth. But he could hear everything she said, almost as if his ears were tuned specifically to her voice. He heard her words, but more importantly, he heard her desperation.

On the surface, she was assured; she was going to jump. There wasn't a right or wrong choice any longer; the only thing that existed was her duty to move her feet back a few inches and allow gravity to work its course.

However, underneath the words there was the desperation – the pleading.

"Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me there's an option where I don't have to jump off this bridge."

That was what he told himself; he wanted to convince himself that the pleading was there. It simply wouldn't make sense otherwise. Did she really want to die? Did she really not want him to interfere? Was the desperation he sensed hers or his own?

He found himself taking a step towards her and he watched her flinch is response as she flicked her eyes below her. Even without looking, he knew what was down below the bridge: cold, dark water.

He quietly calculated to himself and watched her face as she stared down. He could tell that she was also running the numbers in her head.

At least, a fall from this height would break a few bones. Of course they both understood that if she broke her leg or her arm, she would die of hypothermia or drowning due to the fact that she would no longer be able to viably swim.

At most, a fall from this height could instantly kill her on impact. It would be like hitting a concrete slab. One moment of spectacular pain and then everything would fade away into a cold nothingness.

The two of them finished their calculations at the same time and she turned to face him once more. Apparently, figuring the reality of her situation has given her some sort of answer she had been searching for. Her blue eyes had been carefully drained of all emotion. There was no spark of determination or resolution – not even of bitter acceptance. There was simply nothing.

It was as if he was staring into the eyes of someone already long dead.

"I'm going to jump," She stated in a voice as dead as her eyes. This time there was no hesitation, no 'please don't stop me'. She stated it as a fact, as if it were as natural as stating that the sky is blue.

He wanted to move, he wanted to do something, but he found himself paralyzed. When he had gone out to grab some ingredients that his mother needed for dinner, he had though it was going to be a simple affair; he would take the short-cut home in order to save some time. He had been prepared to deal with the biting cold and harsh winds.

What he hadn't been expecting was a young woman standing on the wrong side of a bridge's railing informing him that she had every intention to jump.

As he looked into his eyes, he felt something finally click in his brain; he was looking at a girl about to kill herself and he was quietly analyzing if the fall would kill her. He was looking at a girl about to kill herself and he was doing nothing to stop her.

A shock of disgust at his completely indifferent analysis of the situation ran through his system. He felt rather than saw the grocery bag that had been hanging limply in his hand fall to the ground with a quiet thud that sounded like a gunshot tearing through the quiet of the moment. Her eyes shifted to the fallen object and he took the opportunity to take several steps in her direction. The moment she saw the movement out of the corner of her eyes, her gaze once more shifted back to him.

For some reason, he found himself unable to move once more.

"I'm going to-"

"Please don't!" He blurted out, finding his voice for the first time, "I don't know all the details, but it isn't worth throwing your life away! Once you're dead it's all over!"

His earlier paralysis had quickly fled and he was flooded with a panicked sense of duty. He wanted – no, needed – to make up for his earlier inhumane analysis of the situation. He had been lead to this bridge for a reason: he was going to save her.

However, if his pleas had any affect, it certainly didn't show on her face. He eyes remained as hollow as before.

"Please don't try to stop me," She stated once more using the exact same tone as the first time she said it. It was as if she had recorded her two phrases in preparation for this moment and now she could play them over and over again as many times as need be.

It was like talking to an emotionless machine.

"I can't do that!" He responded as he heard desperation creep into his voice, "I'm not going to just walk away now that I know what you're going to- what you're attempting to do! If I walked away, it would be the same as if I murdered you myself! I can't…I just can't do that!"

By the time he finished his speech, he found himself short of breath. As he took a few quick gasps of gulping air, he looked up at her face, but her expression remained unchanged. Silence settled heavy upon them and he felt the tension in the air increase exponentially.

"I-I know it may seem bad," He began, if only because he was fairly certain that if he said nothing she would simply jump and it would be all over, "but things can get better; trust me on this Luka!"

Her eyes suddenly sprung to life as a jumble of half-formed emotions flashed across her face as she continued to meet his gaze. He wasn't sure if this new development was an improvement or not.

"How do you know my name?"

"We've met, well I suppose we didn't really meet. It was more like we were in the same place at the same time. Although it's not as if it was an accident. I mean…" He trailed off as he realized he was rambling, a habit he seemed to pick up whenever he was nervous. If she had any opinion on his stuttering she didn't voice it. Instead, she simply stood there, waiting for him to speak in a coherent sentence.

"…You're in my little sister's dance class; I saw you at the dance studio a couple times when I had to take her," He stated finally.

At the words 'dance class', he watched her stiffen noticeably. The nebulous emotions in her eyes solidified into one strong, burning emotion: hatred.

He could understand why; at the dance academy his sister had just started attending, Luka was a famous young woman – or perhaps infamous, depending on whom you asked.

Behind her back, she was known simply as 'The Failure'.

"Then you know what I am," She spoke, breaking into his thoughts, "You should leave; forget you ever saw me."

"I just can't do that!" He responded instantly as he took another step forward, "It doesn't matter who you are; I can't just let you kill yourself!"

"Of course you can," She responded, her voice slow and level like she was chiding a dull child, "We don't know one another. We're complete strangers. The only thing you know about me are what you're heard from the stories."

Her voice grew unexpectedly harsh on the word 'stories' and he couldn't help but cringe. Of course he had heard the stories; anyone with a son, daughter, brother, or sister in the academy had heard the stories.

Luka, 'The Failure'; the girl who had been in the dance academy for the past ten years.

The twenty year old woman who was still in the beginner dance class – the girl who hadn't improved or moved to a higher level in ten years.

"Well, yes, I've heard the stories," He stammered out, "But that doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't kill yourself!"

"You have one chance."

"…Huh?"

Her voice was so sudden and unexpected that he was half convinced he had simply imagined it. Wasn't that what people did when faced with a situation like this; imagines what they wanted to hear?

"You have one chance to convince me not to jump."

Even though he didn't think it was humanly possible, he felt his level of panic increase exponentially. One chance? Was it even possible to dissuade someone with one chance? What one phrase had the power to stop someone from killing themselves?

He didn't have the answer to the question. Even if he did, he could feel his tongue turn to lead in his mouth and all rational thought fly out the window as his mind flew about in complete and utter panic.

"I-I…" He heard his voice say as his mind scrambled for the phrase that could save a life, "I want to be friends with you Luka! That's not possible if you're dead!"

The moment the phrase was out of his mouth, he wanted to take it back. Even to him it sounded like a weak reason to want to keep living. However, despite himself, he found himself wishing fervently that it would be enough.

The two of them stood in silence and he looked up at her face. Any anger she had was gone once more, hidden away, and the dead look had returned to her eyes. He heard himself gulp audibly and felt his muscles tighten as he prepared to spring forward and save her when she inevitably jumped off the bridge.

"What's your name?"

Her voice came so unexpectedly that he couldn't help but twitch as he reflexively took a tiny step towards her in fear that she would jump. But instead of moving, she simply continued to stare at him as she held onto the railing of the bridge; she was waiting for his answer.

"It's, uhm, it's Kaito."

"Kaito," She said with a courteous nod of her head and a slight smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Kaito felt hope leap into his chest as he took a few more hesitant steps forward. Instead of flinching like before, the smile on her face simply spread.

A flash of pink; a soft exhale of frosty breath.

She was no longer there.

She had jumped.

It didn't make sense to him.

She asked for his name and then jumped off the bridge…she asked for his name and then jumped off the bridge…

He kept rerunning that phrase through his mind as he sat staring at the hospital floor. He tapped his foot over and over again as he kept glancing up at the emergency room she had been taken into.

She had told him she would jump off the bridge and she had done just that.

What she hadn't been counting on was him jumping in after her.

Now that he was out of the situation, he could really stop and think about what he had just done. As soon as he saw her jump over the edge, he had jumped after her; he hadn't been thinking about surviving or his future. The only thought going through his mind was that there was a young woman who was going to die unless he did something.

So he had jumped after her and tried to protect her as the two of them fell. Despite his best efforts, she had taken the brunt of the fall. He had managed to get away with a few bruised ribs and a broken arm. She, on the other hand, was currently in the emergency room and from what he gathered from the doctor's chatter, she wasn't doing well.

After the doctors had finished treating his minor wounds and insisting that he should stay in bed for the night, Kaito had snuck out to wait outside the room where there were operating on her – where they were attempting everything to save the life of a girl who didn't want to be saved. He had been keeping vigil for, from his assumptions, about twenty minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

What would have been the right phrase? What could he have said to save her? The thought that he had been there and he hadn't been able to stop her continued to plague him as he squeezed his eyes shut. He knew if he opened his eyes again, he wouldn't be able to stop the tears.

"…Are you praying for her?"

The voice startled Kaito so much that he jerked his broken arm and felt pain race through his system. Tears sprang to his eyes, but he wasn't sure if it was from the movement of his arm or his worry for the young woman in the operating room.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize you weren't aware I was here; I didn't mean to startle you."

When his pain ebbed away enough that he could think clearly, he saw an older woman looking down at him, smiling gently. She seemed out of place in the dead quiet of the hospital.

"May I sit down?" She asked kindly, gesturing to the seat next to him.

"Oh, o-of course!" Kaito responded as he scooted over slightly to give her more room. She responded with another kindly smile as she took her seat and folded her hands in her lap. As the two of them settled into silence once more, Kaito couldn't help but steal glances at her.

She looked to be in her late forties or early fifties and there was something about her face that was eerily familiar. It must have been at least the tenth time that he glanced at her that he finally realized what it was; she looked almost exactly like Luka. It took him a few seconds longer to realize that he was looking at Luka's mother.

"Are you the one who saved my daughter?" He heard her ask as she turned to look at him. As their eyes met, Kaito couldn't help but compare her eyes to her daughter's. Whereas Luka's eyes had been dead, her mother's eyes looked kindly, if not worn out.

"I…didn't really save her," Kaito responded as his eyes trailed from the woman to the floor, "She gave me one chance to stop her from jumping and I completely screwed it up."

"You do realize that nothing you said could have persuaded her; she was simply toying with you. She had already reached the resolution that she was going to jump no matter what anyone said."

Kaito felt his heart twist in his chest. He couldn't believe how calmly he was discussing Luka's suicide with this woman – her mother. It made bile rise at the back of his throat.

"B-But there had to be something I could have done! And I…I just screwed up…" Kaito said as his voice dropped down to a whisper. He felt the woman place a consoling hand upon his shoulder.

"I know that's what you want to believe – and I wish I could tell you it's true – but unless you were going to tell her you could fix her legs so she never had to wear her leg braces again, she was going to jump."

"Her…leg braces?" Kaito heard himself echo back dumbly.

"Yes, she's had them since she was ten years old and she positively hates them."

He found himself wracking his brain. The few times he had seen her at the dance studio, had she been wearing leg braces? It only took him a few seconds to know the answer to his own question: no.

"So…she's been trying to dance without them all these years?" Kaito mumbled, almost as if to himself.

"Rather stubborn of her, isn't it?"

When he turned to look at her once more, she was standing and had begun to head down the hall away from the operating room. Kaito watched her go for a few seconds before he quickly scrambled out of his chair.

"W-Where are you going?" He asked, which caused the older woman to stop in her tracks, "Aren't you going to wait to see if she's alright?"

"She wouldn't want to see me," She responded without turning around. Kaito couldn't help but notice that her voice sounded just like Luka's when she had been preparing to jump. "I leave her in your hands. Please take care of her."

Without a further word or glance backwards, she walked down the hall and disappeared around a corner. For a few seconds, all Kaito could do was stare dumbly down the hall until he felt the strength rush from his legs and he collapsed into the chair behind him.

Angry questions began to buzz through his head; just what was the relationship between Luka and her mother? Why had her mother entrusted him with her daughter? Why did Luka never wear her leg braces when she danced?

So many questions and no answers.

However, even though his mind was filled with a multitude of questions, one kept ringing louder than the others; over and over again.

What was going to happen to Luka now and what part would he play in her life; after all, the two of them were complete strangers; what could he possibly do – what could he possibly say – to save her life?

A/N: If you guessed "Double Lariat" for the song this is based on, then you are correct!

Also, hooray for non-resolutionary endings!