Once he felt the rise and fall of her chest against the side of his body slow down, Iori knew she had fallen back asleep. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. Why had he agreed to letting her stay in his hotel room, to pretty much live there with him until Ash's little tournament was over? It was another question to add to the pile of unanswered questions he already head. When she asked him, the first thing he was going to say was a flat out no, but before he realized it, his brain began to fight with itself. Or, -was- it his brain? Maybe it was more like his brain on drugs, because that's what it felt like, what with the constant drowsiness and light-headedness when Leona was around.

The problem wasn't that he had agreed to let her stay, the problem was -why- he had let her stay. He didn't know why. It, like everything else for the past month, confused the shit out of him. At first, he thought that maybe it was just the sex, that he wanted her to stay so that whenever the mood caught him, he could just grab her and fuck her into oblivion. But right after thinking it, he shook his head and nearly hit himself. Leona was not like all those whores he had slept with. In some strangely, animalistic way, he -had- come to care for her, and while he certainly enjoyed sleeping with her, "fucking her into oblivion" was something he would do to a whore, not Leona.

He was beginning to realize that despite the fact they both had the blood curse, she was ten times more pure than he was, and for some reason, he wanted to make sure she stayed that way. He was also beginning to see that Leona was what he had always -wanted- to be. His training, at a young age, thanks to his father, had been to harden and steel him against anything and everything, and he had lost his innocence at a young age because of it. Leona, however, despite being almost the same age as him, still -had- her innocence, despite having fallen into the Riot and killing people. Iori wanted to -protect- that innocence. While he also wished that he could obtain his own once again, he knew that was impossible. So rather than try for the impossible, he would do what he could to make sure Leona was protected.

In a way, Iori wanted to slap himself for having such sugar-coated, pansy-assed thoughts. But, it was the truth, and it felt right, especially since it was beginning to answer some of his questions...

I want to apologize to those of you that actually read this story. Not long after I posted the last chapter of this story, the end of the semester was creeping up on me. Shortly after that, I had to graduate, pack, move and get married. When I finally had the chance to sit down and start working on this fic again, I found out that the WordPad file was corrupt. The only thing I can think of that happened was that something happed to my CPU when I had it shipped by UPS from my previous home to my current. (Many of my written files were corrupt as well, which royally sucks.) Once finding out my writing had pretty much gone down the crapper, I basically gave up on it.

Recently, a friend of mine figured out how to fix the file so I could at least read it, albeit messy and with a ton of random coding mixed in with it. Either way, this is what I could get out of the mess. I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back in the swing of writing, but I have not yet given up on this fic.

Again, for those of you who have been reading this story and enjoying it, I apologize. I also thank you for taking an interest in what I've written. I'll try my best to get back to work on it.