A/N: OMG I'M ALIVE.

With that said, this chapter is kinda boring and iffy and crappy, but I really, honest to God love this story, so I couldn't give up on it yet. I've had most of this chapter written for months now and just finally finished it.

So... I hope you all enjoy either way. I'm sorry about the wait, and thanks so much for all the reviews!

what is the purpose if you feel so incomplete?

what is the reason if it beats you to your knees?

chapter eighteen

two months later

If she didn't know any better, she might not even recognize herself.

A long, fluffy blonde wig covers up her shaggy dark hair; brown contacts cover up dark green eyes that blink at her reflection. She thinks for a moment that it's a sad mockery of Shizuo's own light hair and brown eyes. What feels like pounds of makeup clog her pores – but most importantly, enough of it covers up the unsightly looking scar left by Orihara Izaya.

She puts the finishing touches of makeup on her lips and eyes before putting on a pair of fake glasses, flipping the light off in the bathroom, and grabbing a light jacket before leaving the cheap motel she's been renting out for the past two months. Mayonaka had entertained the thought of moving to Shinjuku, closer to Izaya, but she has the feeling that if she gets too close, he'll know.

She had left her own apartment for good that day - the last day she saw him. Shizuo. He'd called and called, and she had simply hit the reject button with hesitant fingers everytime. She'd seen him from afar on occasion; he was almost always getting into fights, or following around his dreadlocked co-worker.

Everytime, she had felt like approaching him. Sometimes she'd visualize it; she'd rip off the wig and rub off the makeup til it smeared and revealed her true face. She'd tell him she was sorry for leaving like that, and-

Mayonaka shakes her head. There's no point in visualizing if it's something that will never happen. And she needs to stay disguised; it's the only way she can get around without being recognzed by the informant, or being distracted by Shizuo. It's really silly, actually – she's been in hiding in order to exact revenge upon one Orihara Izaya, but she hasn't the faintest idea of how to do so.

She still has nightmare. All red and gory, people with gaping eyes and mouths and missing tongues; but the worst nightmares she's had, she thinks, must be the ones with Shizuo in them. Maybe even her subconscious can't desecrate the idea of him, make him into a monster – instead, those eyes of his just stare at her with disdain and disappointment, and she often wakes from those dreams with a phantom weight in her chest.

And glimpses in her other dreams escape her, flashes of a young man who looks familiar but isn't, his fearful face – a body plummeting, the disgusting smack of flesh and bone against pavement. She sees his face, Izaya's, smiling.

She supposes she's doing okay otherwise. Mayonaka's cut out the drugs; she needs to be on point and sharp at all times, just in case. Now she's just a waitress at a tiny little cafe in the heart of Ikebukuro, and that suits her well enough.

Tonight, she'll do something about him. Because two months hasn't done her any good, and she thinks it's been more of a waste of time than anything.

Her shift is boring, just as all the others before were – but her mind quickly changes and her heart starts pounding when she sees two familiar faces enter the cafe, taking a small table by the window. The sun gleams onto the one man's light hair, and he takes off his sunglasses before slipping them in his vest pocket and nodding at his companion, the man with dreadlocks.

She doesn't realize she's been staring until her boss nudges her. "Are you gonna take your table, or what?"

"R...right." Mayonaka fluffs her hair so it lays around her face and covers some of it, pushing up her glasses. She heads over, and oh God, she's so nervous he'll figure it out; but the nametag on her shirt reads Momoko, not Mayonaka, and so she takes in a deep breath before she strides to the table.

"Hey there," She begins, making her voice so high it almost sounds squeaky. "What could I get for you two today?"

They both order coffee; Shizuo looks up at her, and his lips stop forming the words as he stares at her.

"Sir?" She prompts him and averts her eyes to her notepad. Deep down, she might want him to recognize her. If that happens, she tells herself, maybe she could just give this whole stupid thing up. Because Izaya is Izaya, and he is both unbeatable and invincible – thinking otherwise is simply folly. It would be so lovely to just be around Shizuo and forget-

"Ah... extra sugar."

Her thumping heart drops, and she nods and walks away.

For a single moment, he swears he had seen her. The shape of her face, the structure of her nose and lips and cheeks – but the eyes and hair are all wrong, and no scar is to be seen. Her voice is high and almost intolerable, nothing like the soft, quiet voice he remembers her having. Something seems familiar about whatever scent is wafting about her, though, that stumps him.

It's probably just some cruel joke, the kind that life loves to throw in his way. Tom notices the subtle change in his demeanor and looks at him with poorly concealed worry.

The first week, he'd been angry. The second week, he had been angry and miserable; by the third, he had decided to just try to push everything into a dark corner of his mind, and chalk it up to a sequence of events he doesn't think he'll ever forget ( but he'll try his damndest to never remember ).

The waitress comes out with two cups of coffee, setting them down gently before asking if they need anything else. And Shizuo, he just mumbles a no and stares at the hot steam swirling up to his face. She begins to walk away, when he places it; almonds.

He's brought back to the memory of almond-scented bedsheets intermingled with sweat and sex, almonds mixed with coppery blood; his eyes widen as he swivels around to stare at her. The waitress is staring right back at him, but once their eyes meet she quickly turns away and busies herself with refilling jars of sugar.

"-izuo? Shizuo?"

"Yeah?" He murmurs, eyes still on her back.

"You alright?"

He nods and takes a gulp of the too hot, too sweet coffee, eyes never leaving her form. If he does, he's sure she'll fade away or something-

"If you say so," Tom says, and he doesn't sound very convinced. He watches Shizuo gaze at the waitress, but Tom doesn't know much of what runs through his companion's mind, so he doesn't question it. When they're done their coffee, Shizuo leaves a nice sized tip on the table before following Tom out.

Mayonaka waves goodbye to her boss and shrugs on her jacket as she steps outside into the cool night air. The incident earlier had been way too close for comfort, though at the very least, he hadn't recognized her-

"Hey."

The voice is all too familiar, but she strains to keep walking and pretend that she doesn't hear him.

"Hey," The voice calls, and it's closer now. She speeds up her pace, and goes to cross the street, but it's not safe for her to cross yet.

A hand is laid on her shoulder, and she puts a poker face on before turning to look at him disinterestedly. "Er, yes?" She asks, still in the squeaky pitch.

"The hell," He says ever so eloquently, and she hasn't realized how much she missed just looking at him, his features aglow with the streetlights. He leans close to her, and the comforting smell of smoke and cologne and Shizuo washes over her - her heart thuds so wildly she's sure he can hear it. To her utter surprise, he sniffs her.

"S-sir, that's really inapp-"

"Stop it," He stands back straight again, and her heart stops pounding for a moment to clench at the slightly hurt look he has on his face. "Pretending."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about." She tries to protest, taking a step away. "I'm sorry if you thought I was someone else-"

"Mayonaka," He whispers gruffly, and she has never heard anything so clearly despite the traffic whizzing by. His fingers raise up to her face and trace the spot where the scar is. "Stop. You didn't have that earlier," He tells her, and she realizes the makeup must have smudged up from wiping at her face.

"No, you're wrong-" She's trying to hard to cling to her lies, but with dismay, she realizes that her defenses never really stood a chance should this have ever happened. And it is happening now, and the light has changed and it's safe to walk just like everyone else is doing, but she finds her feet won't move. "You're..."

The breath wheezes out of her as she's suddenly swept up into a bear hug, her face tucked against the smooth material of his vest. "Damn idiot," Shizuo states, and he squeezes her tighter.

"I..." Suddenly, she can't find it in her to protest anymore. "I..." Her eyes start stinging and her nose gets that funny little burning feeling, and she knows she's starting to cry.

"Don't leave again." He tells her simply, voice muffled by the wig his lips are pressed to.

"I wanted – want," She corrects herself, "Him to pay. If I was with you any longer, I would have... I'd have wanted to forget. I can't forget, I've forgotten everything else, because of him, and he needs to pay for that-" She rambles, but he stops her in her tracks by lifting her face up and kissing her on the cheek, where the scar is.

"... I know." He looks at her, and she trembles at his gaze.

It would be so easy, so goddamn easy -

Before she can change her mind and turn into a simpering mess, she takes a wobbly step back, then another. Another and another, until she realizes she's turned around and she's running. Mayonaka runs faster than she ever might've in her life – because of all the things that terrify her, giving up on this is high on her list. She hears him call her name, but there's so much distance that it's nothing more than a muted yell, and she squeezes her eyes shut and keeps on running like her life depends on it.

She forces her mind to picture another face – Izaya's – and it does exactly what she hopes it will, filling her with anger and a sense that, everything, it's so unfair. Soon, she's on a train to Shinjuku, huffing and wiping furiously at her eyes. Mayonaka hasn't thought this out at all, not in the least – but this only keeps breaking her down, down, down, and she's fucking tired of it.

Once she arrives at his building, she tries to calm herself down in the elevator, but it doesn't really do shit. Then, the moment has arrived – the moment where she's right in front of his door, and she knocks. He's right inside, she thinks to herself, the bastard's so close she can already see that smirk through the damn door.

But no one answers. Blinking rapidly, maybe to ward off more tears of the frustrated variety, she peers at the crack at the bottom of the door. No light shines through, and she lets out a loud curse. She kicks the door and slaps it with her palm, once, twice.

She never heard him coming behind her, so she turns around with red eyes and running makeup, probably looking a horror - and comes nose to nose with Orihara Izaya.

A/N: Before anyone yells at me for having them reunite so soon, keep in mind that it's been two months. If there's any grammatical errors, I'm lazy so I'll get to those later...

Please review and tell me what you think, I'm curious to see how you all think this "showdown" might go down.

Thanks for reading. :)