AN: I haven't read the manga yet. I fully intend to, but it just hasn't fit into my schedule. Thus, this is completely anime based. This is just a very dark look at how things could eventually work out.

Need

I don't have blood on my hands, but I can still feel it, smell it there.

We shouldn't have left them as partners. You could see the bonds of need and caring and shared pain that tied the two together. In their words, their looks, their quick touches of reassurance, always to tell the other that they were human, damn blood and birth and bastard parents… in everything they did, they made their mutual need and protectiveness known.

So of course we sent them continually into danger, into the threat of another death.

We really didn't have much choice, I suppose. Tsuzuki is hard to work with. Most people he's partnered with come slinking in, embarrassed and ashamed and desperate for reassignment, within three or four months.

I should know. After all, I was one of them.

I thought I knew what to expect going into it. He had a reputation, not unearned, for laziness. You could probably count on both hands the number of times he'd actually been on time for meetings. He was completely unabashed about his love for sugars and sweets, playing up rather than playing down the effect they have on him. He had no qualms about acting the whimpering, simpering fool to get out of something he didn't want to do, or simply to get something he wanted. Oh, yes, I thought I knew what I'd have to deal with. A bit of frustration, a bit of danger even, having to ensure that he was actually doing what we were assigned to do and watching my back.

I couldn't have been more wrong if I tried.

Oh, things were about how I figured for the first few days. He was a slacker, he was a bit of a fool, but he was kind, and likeable enough for all that. It was after our first mission together that I began to think there might be more to him than that. He was strong, frighteningly so, and his ability to focus on a mission was the exact inverse of his ability to focus in normal life… well, after-life.

I don't remember much of the mission that changed everything. Med says that's due to near-exsanguination and a few too many knocks on the head.

I think it's because I looked at him, and it's not possible to hold anything clearly against that image.

I hadn't realized until then exactly how protective he had been, exactly how much I had come to mean to him. He destroyed almost a kilometer's worth of forest that day, screaming the whole time, but he didn't singe a hair on my bloodied-up head.

We tried to go back to being partners after that, but it didn't work out so very well. I was overly-wary, afraid that if something went wrong he'd lose it again, perhaps even worse than before… embarrassed, because I could never do what he had done, and didn't even want the ability to. So I pulled away, bit by bit, responded to gentleness and worry with coldness and ashamed indignation. And each time I did he just smiled sadly, lowered the hand he'd been holding out, and turned away.

I hated myself during that time.

Maybe it was just punishment for letting him believe I hated him.

It wasn't hate, though, or even really shame. I was afraid. I didn't know fear all that well. The dead Lord of Shadows has little to fear, usually, from the things that lurk therein. But I was terrified of being needed so much, so dearly, by anyone.

Hisoka wasn't.

He thrived on the attention, soaked it in like the half-broken sponge he was. Even during those first days, when he would flinch from a touch, become angry and frustrated at the single-minded protective instinct of his partner's, Tsuzuki seemed to realize that it wasn't due to him. And after the demon, after Muraki… Hisoka didn't have the sheer destructive energy of Tsuzuki, but he would have done enough to make people remember.

Not that they'll forget now. An entire city block, devastated within minutes that felt like seconds. He wasn't screaming this time. There was too much raw hate, cold numbness on his face for a scream to have dared to escape.

His hands started out drenched in Hisoka's blood.

They ended covered in pieces of Muraki.

An entire block, because one man killed one boy. But I don't think Tsuzuki controlled that, really, not other than keeping the casualties amazingly low. He was too busy tearing apart his enemy (his murderer) to truly notice what his rage and lack of control meant.

Normally there would have been a trial. It's hard to try someone when they won't speak a word, let alone make a gesture in their own defense.

Medical kept him on sedatives, hoping that if he snapped again it would at least keep the damage to a minimum.

When I asked Watari for what I needed, he simply nodded and immediately pulled it from one of his impossible-to-navigate drawers. Trust him to be a step ahead of us all as to what has to happen.

He did hesitate before relinquishing it, his eyes asking if I could really do it.

There wasn't all that much choice. Tsuzuki deserved at least this much from me.

He's already almost limp in my arms. Trust Watari to do a task right, even if it's designing a way to kill an almost-immortal friend.

He smiles as he looks up at me, a sad, pitiful expression.

"Arigato, Tatsumi."

The whisper is barely audible, but it's enough to break my mask and bring the tears.

I don't have blood on my hands, but I can still feel it there.