Fighting back the need to sleep, Tsuzuki sat by the occupied hospital bed and watched Hisoka's slender chest rhythmically rise and fall. He could hardly believe that it had already been two days since that battle against Muraki. It had felt like forever. Tsuzuki had spent his days by Hisoka's side, waiting for him to regain consciousness, and his nights at home blaming himself and worrying. Such a routine didn't exactly make time fly.

Tsuzuki leaned back in his seat, staring up at the ceiling and blinking. Hisoka was only alive now thanks to his impressive healing abilities. However, even with his healing powers, he still hadn't woken up. Tsuzuki closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I should have been there to protect you."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Tsuzuki," came a voice from behind him. Tsuzuki jumped and whipped around in his seat.

"T-Tatsumi," he stuttered. "What are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to check in on the two of you," Tatsumi replied, smiling gently at Tsuzuki.

Tsuzuki eyed Tatsumi's suit. "Are you sure you should go back to work so soon?" Tsuzuki asked.

"I wasn't hurt that badly," Tatsumi replied. "I'm free to go back to work today. Speaking of which, you should probably go back to work soon yourself. I heard you've been skipping."

"What's even the point of going back to work if I don't have my partner?" Tsuzuki muttered.

Tatsumi opened his mouth as though to say something, closed it again, and then sighed and pushed up his glasses. "I know you're worried about him," Tatsumi said. "And I know you blame yourself for what happened. But if anything, this was all my fault. The moment I saw that bastard, I couldn't help but attack him. If I hadn't been so rash, Hisoka wouldn't have been hit by Muraki's counterattack. So stop blaming yourself and blame me if you have to."

"If I'd been there-" Tsuzuki started, but Tatsumi cut him off.

"There's still no way you would've known that Muraki would have done something like this on your day off, alright?"

Tsuzuki was tempted to mention where he had gone and why, but just thinking about his idiotic blundering into that obvious distraction was getting himself worked up again.

Tatsumi waited for a reply, but then sighed when Tsuzuki was just silent. "At the very least, can we agree to blame Muraki?"

Tsuzuki struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. "Is... is he really dead?" He asked.

Tatsumi shrugged. "The last thing I heard, they had found a body at the scene. They're currently testing it to see if it's really him, but it's hard to say for sure. According to your reports, he's awfully good at faking his death in order to escape."

"Yeah, but he hasn't left a fake body behind yet." Tsuzuki said dismissively.

"True. It wouldn't be good to get your hopes up too high in this situation," Tatsumi said.

"Right." Tsuzuki sighed and leaned back in his seat. He then sat forward with a lurch as he remembered something. He stared at where Hisoka's bare chest peeked through the gown he wore, and saw that it was bare. Muraki's marks were gone.

"Tsuzuki? Are you alright?" Tatsumi asked.

"Yeah," Tsuzuki said. "I'm just pretty sure that he's dead."

"How?" Tatsumi asked.

Tsuzuki remembered how secretive Hisoka had been regarding those marks, only sharing them with him to prove that Muraki had truly survived Touda's fires, so he wasn't sure Hisoka would appreciate him sharing their existence with anyone else, even if they had faded. "It's just a feeling," Tsuzuki said with a shrug, leaning back in his chair again.

"I see," Tatsumi said, tone slightly skeptical. "Anyway, I should head to work. If you're feeling up to it, you should come along too. At the very least, you should go home and rest. You look like you're about to pass out."

"I'm fine," Tsuzuki insisted. "I'd rather be here with him in case he wakes up, but I'll at least walk you to the office."

Tatsumi smiled warmly. "I'd appreciate that," he said. "But I'm sure he'd prefer it if you were taking better care of yourself." He turned and started out of the room. Tsuzuki got up and followed him, hesitating briefly at the door to take one last look back at Hisoka's sleeping form before joining Tatsumi in the hallway.

"Don't use him to guilt me, Tatsumi," Tsuzuki muttered.

"I'm not," Tatsumi replied. "I'm using him to try to keep your self destructive behaviors to a minimum."

"You're still using him," Tsuzuki sighed. "You know," Tsuzuki said after a short silence. "I'll probably just come right back here after I walk you over there."

"That's fine," Tatsumi replied. "I'd prefer that you go home and rest, but really, I'm just glad you're finally taking a break and leaving the room when visiting hours are still in effect. It's not good for you to sit there and sulk for so long."

"I'm sort of surprised you're not pressuring me to work," Tsuzuki said. "I'm the only one who wasn't hurt in that fight."

"Well," Tatsumi answered with a grin. "We don't have to pay you if you aren't working."

Tsuzuki flinched, having completely forgotten about his paycheck. "Er, well, maybe I could put in a few hours this morning," he muttered.

"Don't be ridiculous, Tsuzuki," Tatsumi replied. "You'd be too distracted to focus on your work. Anyway, you should really just go home and get some rest, alright?"

"This is a total change! Just a little while ago, you were worried about me skipping work!" Tsuzuki protested.

"I said you needed to come back soon, not right away." Tatsumi said. He placed a hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder. "Seriously, though. Go home and rest for at least today. I'm sure the Chief will be understanding. You can come back to the hospital tomorrow. Just trust the doctors to do their jobs in the meantime. Okay?"

"I'll try," Tsuzuki grumbled.

Tsuzuki walked with Tatsumi all the way to the Summon's Section. As Tatsumi went to Chief Konoe's office, Tsuzuki turned to leave but was stopped when he saw that white binder on his desk, still exactly where it had landed as he had hastily tossed it during his frantic dash to Konoe's office. Fresh rage filled him, and for a brief moment he considered throwing it away. Instead, he picked it up and flipped it open. Part of him was curious as to what sort of mocking messages taunting his stupidity were inside.

However, everything was as Oriya had described. Pictures, news articles, and writings on everything from Muraki's childhood to young adult life filled the binder. The rage left Tsuzuki as he sat down at his desk to read its contents. Soon, he was filled with repulsion at what he saw. The few pages he had read already showed a clear pattern of severe abuse, trauma, and neglect, yet countless pages remained.

A pang of guilt suddenly shot through him and he realized with horror that Oriya had been right. With this knowledge, it was possible to feel pity for Muraki, to sympathize even without forgiving. In fact, ideas were already coming to him that may have been able to stop Muraki without killing him. If only he had read the contents of the binder sooner...

The door to Chief Konoe's office opened again and Tsuzuki jumped, shut the binder hurriedly, and looked up. Tatsumi blinked at him in surprise. "Tsuzuki? I thought you'd have left by now," he said.

"Right." Tsuzuki said. He tucked the binder under his arm and stood. "I was just leaving. See you later, Tatsumi!" He rushed out the door and down the hall. Once he left the building, he slowed his pace and glanced down at the binder.

Had it truly been a distraction?

Tsuzuki thought back to that day. He remembered how work had begun calling him long before his appointed meeting. He then recalled that the meeting time had been rather awkwardly situated between two train times. If he took the early train, he would have been drastically early, but taking the second option would have made him slightly late. Not wanting to miss out on this chance of information on his arch nemesis, Tsuzuki had chosen the out-of-character route and decided on the earlier train. He doubted that Muraki would have made such a gamble like that on such an unreliable person. In fact, Muraki didn't seem like the kind of person who'd place the meeting time between two train arrivals like that. Muraki seemed more like the meticulous type who would've have thoroughly researched the train times before sending out the invitation.

There was no way that Muraki could've had any hand in this.

It hadn't been a trap after all.

Tsuzuki walked until the ministry was far behind him and then summoned Suzaku to burn the binder in its entirety. He didn't need to see anymore. He already knew that he had failed more people than just Tatsumi and Hisoka that day. More than that, he couldn't risk anyone else at the ministry stumbling upon this information. Tsuzuki knew that he needed to be the only shinigami who knew the truth.

He would shoulder this burden alone.


[[I usually don't do author comments at the end because I feel like it ruins the finality of the piece, but I wanted to talk about my inspirations a little bit.

A while back, a hypothetical situation came into my head. "If Muraki were in a life-or-death situation where Tsuzuki was the only one who could save him, and if Tsuzuki knew that Muraki was redeemable, would Tsuzuki save his life?" It was a surprisingly hard question to answer. While Tsuzuki is a bit of a bleeding heart, he also hates Muraki a lot, so there's a chance he'd just let Muraki die because Muraki deserves it. This led to another question: "If Tsuzuki let Muraki die in the previous situation, how much guilt would he feel, if any?" That one was pretty easy to answer. I was pretty certain that the guilt would gnaw at him for the rest of his unlife.

These two questions eventually ended up becoming the foundation for Among the Guilty. However, I did change parts from the original scenario, like that he was merely told that Muraki was redeemable (and didn't really believe it) instead of knowing it as a fact. I just couldn't figure out how Tsuzuki would act in that exact situation. I'd love to hear people's theories, though. I don't know if anyone's written a fic on that exact scenario yet, but if one exists, I'd love to read it!

And thanks again, Experimental, for your review. I hope you've enjoyed the final chapter. ^^]]