Kraken stormed moodily back to his room. After his rather decided 'It just is' Vanya hadn't spoken another word. He supposed that she was angry at him, which she had absolutely no right to be in his opinion. Then again, it appeared that she was too stubborn to listen to good advice when she heard it.

"Stupid girl," he muttered as he opened his door, decidedly slamming it behind him.

On his way to his bed he kicked a cardboard box. Its metallic contents clanged and shook before it finally settled back into its spot with the rest. Kraken was something of a pack rat, a habit that Mom complained about often since his room was generally half-filled with dirty clothes and trash. She had often asked him how he could take the smell. In response he'd just shrugged and said that he didn't notice it anymore.

Once he had finished navigating his way through his labyrinth of a room he flopped down on his bed. The springs squeaked loudly and the bed sagged. He'd broken it at least two years ago, but no one had been in his room since to find out such information. That was good, since it was generally inside the mattress that he hid things.

On this occasion he dug inside it for a manila folder labeled JOHN PERSEUS in sloppy block lettering. Well, it had once been manila but months inside the damned mattress had turned it more of a brown color. The older folders in his mattress tended to do the same, and he wondered if perhaps it was something to do with the stuffing.

Ever since the incident at the bar he'd been fairly careful to keep tabs on this individual. Someone with a toss like that and being the heir to a fortune bigger than most countries' budgets in a decade was bound to cause trouble. So for the past three years he had found a few things about this particular individual that weren't as clean cut as his hair. It wasn't anything he could get arrested for, not yet anyway…

"Doesn't know what she's getting herself into," he snarled to no one in particular, "Doesn't take good advice when she hears it…"

Rifling through it he pulled out four pictures, bypassing the rather suspicious figures that 'John-Boy' hung out with. These ones were simply of girls he was with, presumably dating. They were all at the same restaurant, not exactly high-end but not that cheap either. It was called Wok 'n' Roll, a pretty good Chinese place from what he'd heard. That was probably the most likely location.

Keeping this in mind he put the folders and shoved it back into his mattress. He wasn't stalking her, something he told himself emphatically. He was looking out for her, and there was a world of difference between that and stalking. Besides, he wasn't going to follow her. Kraken was just going to casually stroll past the window and see how things were going. They might not even be there after all.

That was what he told himself again and again but it sounded hollow even to him. Deep down he knew that if they weren't there he would try the next likely location, then the one after that, and so on and so forth until he finally found him. Again, he tried to justify this. John Perseus was a shady character and he had no desire for Vanya to get mixed up in that sort of thing.

He rolled onto his side. Still, that wasn't true. Well, it was true but at the same time it was a lie. No, he didn't want to see her in any sort of trouble. That wasn't the most predominant reason. The real one was a very selfish reason and one that he would happily go to his grave with before admitting to anyone other than the rock stars on the posters on his bedroom walls.

Restlessly he got up and navigated his way to the mirror. It was time to put in his eye drops, although he doubted that that could do any good. They were supposed to stop further inflammation, and they did dull the pain that he felt daily there, but he doubted that they would bring sight back to that eye. Hell, he would settle for the eye drops making it healthy enough to be operable. After five years though, he didn't have that much hope.

Removing the eye patch he slipped a few squirts of it into the yellow, red, and gray cracked thing. There was no longer any sign of that blue which so predominated the other eye. The blue had dried out very soon after the accident along with the white and the tear ducts. What was left once the moisture was gone was scarcely human.

He didn't remember the hours surrounding the accident. The doctors had insisted that it was due to trauma and shock. Kraken did remember, however, the hours after the accident and the surgery that followed. He'd woken up in his room with a splitting headache and the feeling that his eye was on fire.

Then, without even remembering how it had, he simply knew what happened. He had most likely lost his eye and he knew that he would never be as fast as he was or even as coordinated as he'd been. This had made him hesitant to try and open the other one, unwilling to get up ever again. In the end he had, and been glad of it.

Vanya had been sitting by his hospital bed, her face white and strained. Her eyes were red-rimmed and as he opened his eyes she had just been depositing a tissue next to the bed. He hadn't known it at the time, but she had many reasons to be nervous. The first was that she was in trouble, or would be soon. As soon as she heard that he'd been injured she'd hopped a cab from her boarding school all the way to the City hospital. No one knew she was there yet, not Pogo or Space, not even Hargreeves.

Yet, there she was. He hadn't been expecting her to be there until another few weeks. Just when he was at what was most likely the lowest point in his life, there she was. The best part was that she didn't say anything. She didn't try to give him any false, optimistic slogans to cheer him up. She simply reached out and grasped his large hand with her smaller, paler one.

He'd looked up at her then, just staring. Very carefully she'd lifted his hand until it touched her forehead. Then her other hand clasped it too, and then she sat in silence for nearly an hour with him. Vanya understood that there was nothing she could say, only a gesture of comfort to give. After the first minute of shock he squeezed back so that he could see a tentative smile on her lips.

That had been the start, the absolute quiet that had sprung up between them. It was deeper than any words or anything he'd ever experienced. Then Hargreeves had come in the next morning, absolutely furious at her for leaving school with no notice to anyone and without his permission.

"Stop it," Kraken growled at his reflection.

Snapping the eye patch back on his eye he continued to stare at his reflection.

"Just stop it," he growled again.

The reflection said nothing in return as he stormed back to his bed. There was nothing left to discuss, nothing left to ponder, nothing left to even think about. He'd gone over this with himself a hundred times in the past year. Kraken had made his decision and he had acted quickly. He reminded himself of this fact as he lay down for the night.

He also reminded himself to go by the restaurant tomorrow, a rather interesting contradiction.