Hello, everyone! Post exam posting, yey! :D

Well, after that cliffhanger, I ought to give you something... this is kind of a filler chapters, really, only a slight insight to Rei's past and a little... psych problem.

Without further ado, here goes nothing!

Chapter Eleven: Aftermath

Where was he?

Lavi didn't remember much. But he knew he had walked away from Rei and the Owl, back to the town halfway on fire, and –

He had fought the Akuma for who knows how long. He had burned himself with his own Innocence while he was at it, too, out of exhaustion. He had used his last strength to put up Fire Seal's barrier around the town hall and the hospital, and there's that.

He opened his eye, only to see Rei – bloodied and bandaged – looking down at him through her bangs. Her lower face was covered in medical mask, and when she looked at him, she sighed in relief.

"Thank god you're still alive." She said, turning her face slightly to the side and talked to someone he couldn't see. It seemed he had been strapped into the bed –

Wait, wait, what the fuck –

Sensing his twitches and unease, she placed a hand – gloved, bloodied and through green, thick piece of cloth – on his shoulder, exerting enough force to stop his movement. He looked up, and soon realized that he had a tube down his throat. So he struggled more, trying to cough, to vomit the damn thing out, but his little attempt had been put to a stop when Rei pressed a bit harder.

"Lavi, listen to me." She said sternly. He saw shadows dancing at the edges of his visions and cranking sounds of something metallic. He turned his eye to her, calmed down slightly now compared to a moment before. "You have got a lot of injuries, and right now you're halfway to your grave. Try to stay calm; I'm doing everything I can to keep that from happening."

Halfway to grave? What –

"Oh fuck!" Someone shouted, and a shadow to his right went away. He raised his head and looked down, only to see that his right leg was a complete mess; there was this large piece of wood – probably from the broken building – in his thigh, and there was so much blood pouring out.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rei snarled, walking over to his leg and threw her equipment at the nurse she passed by before shoving the man out with her foot. "Jesus Christ, I told you to be careful!"

"Hey, I'm your senior here, Akihiro!" The man snapped back, wiping the blood from his face. Ah, so it hit the vessel and it ruptured in the man's face?

"Seniors and Juniors mean nothing when a life is in our hands!" She snapped back. He got tired and returned his head to the bed he was strapped on. Lavi looked around to see intravenous lines, probably two of it, linking up two packs of blood labeled O Rh+.

The man snorted, "You need to learn to respect your elders."

"And you need to learn to admit when you're doing it wrong." Her voice was the most severe he had ever heard. It was cold, and very, very angry. He saw nurses scooted back, and even the defiant "Senior", as he had called himself, cowered. He saw her eyes, glaring at the man through her bangs. "This is not the time to be petty. If you don't want to help, get the hell out of my sight."

"This is my hospital! You have no rights!"

"Do you want to walk out by yourself, or do you want to be carried out in a body bag?"

She said it so evenly, so calmly, that Lavi could feel his nonexistent spine grew cold. That's when he realized she must've put him under a spinal block on top of – what was it called, putting him to sleep? – Because he couldn't feel a damn thing under his ribcages.

"…fine." The man relented, his shadow returned to the field where Rei used to be. He then heard someone cussed. "What?"

"This blasted thing!" Rei hissed. He heard more sound of metallic pieces being thrown. And then there was a surprised yelp as something hit the far side of the room. He looked up to see a metallic mallet embedded into the wall, and there was this posture she was in –

"Why would you do that!?"

"Because this thing had no weight behind it!" She snarled. Oh damn, she's super scary in the OR. He had heard some doctors and nurses discussed this a few times back at the Order. To actually witness it for himself, though…

There was a pregnant pause. Surprisingly enough, the working hands didn't stop or even slowed down in the slightest.

"Where did you order this equipment from?"

"Um…"

"Black market?" She inquired, this time not leaving her eyes from his leg as she raced against time to save whatever remained of it. Without response, she assumed that her remark was accurate. She let out a sigh. "Which one?"

"The one by the waterway near the coffee shop," The man replied.

She paused for a fraction of second. There was a huff, and she spoke in a language he didn't know. But judging from how it sounded, he would say that it was a series of curses and profanities. Then she said slowly, threateningly, at the entity outside of the town. "I'm going to talk with those men once this stupid fight is over."

The work on his body resumed in silence. But the serenity lasted only for a few minutes when he started having difficulty breathing – not because he was intubated and having air pushed into his lungs by the bag, mind you. It took him a few moments later to start using the only hand he felt – where was his right hand? – and claw it at his chest.

She tied something at his leg and walked to his side, checking his lungs with her stethoscope. The frown on her face deepened, but still she remained as calm as she had been.

"Of course this is going to be a thing." She muttered, turning to the foot end of the bed. "Give me number 18 needle! Can you put in the ICD, senior?"

"Yes."

"Right Pneumothorax." She said informatively as she took the sizeable needle from the nurse's hand and uncapped it. "This is going to sting a bit, Lavi."

Without pause, she stabbed him, and he gasped (if he could call doing that through an endotracheal tube that).

His breathing became much easier, however.

"You shouldn't have missed that." She reprimanded, calling a nurse to get her a new pair of sterile gloves before getting back to the leg as he saw the man entered the room with two glass jars and sets of tubes and lines he couldn't name. "The class covers this topic, you know."

"I don't remember. Not much use in a small town."

"A doctor who doesn't sharpen his knowledges is no doctor." She said calmly, pulling something out of his leg while putting a pack of gauze in. "If you are content with living in remote villages, it's fine, but at least keep yourself sharp; you never know what's going to hit."

"Yes, mother."

Something flew at the male doctor's head.

"Being stupid like that one more time, and I'll request your permit to work as physician be removed by the University of Copenhagen."

Oh wow, he hadn't realized she could do that. Could she? If she could, that would mean Rei had quite the connections. If that's not the case, then Lavi could assume that she had blackmailing materials.

The doctor didn't retaliate this time, only nudging his non-feeling arm up beside his head and pushed a needle to his side. Then her voice came when he started feeling funny. "How's his conscious?"

"Still good." The nurse responded, peering down at him. "He seemed too lucid, though. Do you want to –"

"No, leave it like that." Rei said, looking up at the ceiling – and was that blood on it? Oh his god, what the fuck – and then at him. "Lavi, I know you can't talk right now, but I'll have to ask you something. Answer with a moss code by tapping your fingers is fine; I understand those."

He responded by exactly that, tapping moss code with his left hand. The soft knocks on the operating table didn't disturb others much, he noted.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Getting owned by Akuma, I think. Can't remember.

That took him a few whooping minutes to get across. He hated the tube so much. She didn't stop her hands even when he was tapping, relying mostly on her ears to discern the signals. She seemed to have interpreted then correctly, as she hummed in respond. "I figure as much. Head trauma tends to do that."

He grunted and tapped, a bit faster this time. Why the tube?

"Your… posterior nasal cavity – the end of your nasal canal – had the cartilage cracked and cut at the arteries there. You were unconscious, plus you were bleeding pretty badly elsewhere, so I had to intubate you – because it's faster – first before applying the nasal packing." She explained, reaching up and pulled at a white string which caused him to want to sneeze. "This connects to the packing."

Okay. He did not want to know that.

"Ma'am, tachycardia on the graph – one hundred thirty five!" Someone called, and for a moment her hands stopped. He could see concern written all over her as her head turned to the monitor by his head. Her eyes narrowed, and she clicked her tongue.

"Lavi," She said calmly. "I'm going to put you to sleep… whatever I'm doing next, you don't want to be awake."

Before he could ask his question (through the damn moss code), he felt the sting of pain in his left arm as something flooded his system. He heard someone called her, and after a few seconds, his vision went black.

Lenalee carrying them over by the sky was inconvenient, to put it lightly.

Hell, he hated being touched by anything belonging to the idiot beansprout, even less so when he had to do it for an extended period of time.

And fuck his luck, he had to be bounded by Clown Belt for hours.

"Kanda, stop wiggling or I'll drop you." Allen said, looking down at him.

"Shut the fuck up, Beansprout." He snarled, but stopped moving. He was not afraid of height, but he hated the feeling of broken bones. He might still heal, but it still hurt. And he isn't a masochist.

"How long will it take?" Allen asked Lenalee, tightening his grip on her hand a bit as he did. The girl looked ahead, her eyes narrowed in focus. Then she took a look back at where they came from.

"At least ten minutes. We're almost there." She called. "Alexi-san, are you still there?"

The doctor had his free hand over his mouth while the other tugged the emergency equipment tightly. His face was definitely green, and his look was enough to give Kanda the clue that he can vomit at any given moment.

The man looked up and smiled forcefully. "Yep. I'm okay."

"You so are not." Lenalee murmured and sped up slightly, enough to be noticed but not enough to aggravate the doctor's symptoms. The landscape was hard to navigate without moonlight, and in such a remote area, seeing any light at all was a miracle.

About fifteen minutes and two set of vomit flying in the air later, they arrived at the town.

And the sight was just unsettling.

The outskirts were destroyed; some buildings smashed to pieces while others got burnt to crisps. There were dead bodies – probably of the townspeople – all over the place. And among those were Akuma parts, some in ashes, others in pieces, cut and tore apart by a great force. There weren't a single active Akuma about, and the surviving townspeople worked to recover both their deaths and alive inside the ruins.

"What happened here…?" Allen breathed to them, his gray eyes frantically looked about. He found neither Rei nor Lavi in the vicinity, much to his relief. It took Lenalee a long time to get the disgust building up in her (Kanda thought, since the girl's face was rather grave) out and landed.

One of the dwellers looked at them and, upon seeing the Rose Cross on their jackets, lit up and ran to their landing zone. She was quite aged, but still had some stamina left in her as she crossed the distance quite easily. Once she was within the earshot, she said. "Exorcists! Your friends are up there, third floor!"

They followed her finger to find a rather crowded building, with injured people flocking outside the door. Nurses were treating them the best they can, but with so many casualties and little resources, it was becoming a challenge. Alexi quickly led the way, with Kanda following suit. Before they left, Lenalee asked if they needed any assistance, in which the old lady only said that they will be alright, and their friends (Lavi and Rei) required their attentions more than the townspeople themselves.

The hospital, as it turned out, had blood everywhere, from the floor and to the ceiling (how it got there, Kanda just did not want to know). Some nurses in green shirts, unlike the ones outside who wore pure white, walked up and down like ants stuttering for food during winter. Alexi followed one of them up, and so did the three of them, a bit surprised by the situation.

There was a room, closed off from all the rest, and nurses regularly went in and out of there. Alexi walked up to the nurse who was waiting for something outside and asked. "Hey, sorry, where's the exorcists?"

"Miss Akihiro is operating on her companion." The nurse said. There was a trace of fear in her voice at the mention of Rei's name. Alexi seemed not so surprise by that, but the rest of them (no, not Kanda… okay, maybe a little) sure did. "Who might you be?"

"Her first assistant." He said briefly, walking to the door and peered inside the window. His eyes traced up, and he gasped. "God, what happened?"

"Our doctor, Mr. Edmund, tore an artery further while he attempted to repair it," She replied, hands busy preparing square gauzes and equipment, all of them bloodied, before sliding it towards the waiting worker.

"How's Lavi? The patient, I mean." He asked, taking off his necktie and rolled up his sleeves. He asked the other worker about something Kanda couldn't understand as he took the equipment case he brought with him, put it on the table, and opened it almost too quickly.

"Blood loss, severe head trauma, cuts and burns, piercing wounds… the list goes on, but most of the serious ones are treated just moments before you arrived." She said. "I heard from Miss Akihiro you might be coming. She'd been operating for sixteen hours straight now, so you might what to switch."

"Six – what?" He snapped almost instantly. "Wait, how long had she been up? Since the attack and all?"

"Last I heard she woke up three in the morning yesterday." She said. Kanda took a quick look at his watch, and it was ten in the evening –

"Holy fuck that was forty three hours already!" Alexi snarled and knocked at the door. Someone opened it, and he yelled inside. "Chief! Why the fuck don't you rest! You could've slipped!"

Her voice, tired but still dignified (and pretty pissed, Kanda noted) came from the inside. "I don't trust this guy with Lavi's life. Someone else might've gotten it wrong. And that's the first thing you said to me? Really?"

"Real-fucking-ly, you workaholics!" He snarled, his eyes scanning the room and he quickly made way for the sink. He shouted inside as he cleaned his hands rapidly (but thoroughly. This must be doctors' thing). "We're switching, and I see you have wounds! Get that looked at, too!"

"I k – holy hell stop poking at his artery!" She snarled at someone else. Kanda could've sworn there was death mist leaking out of the room. "Get your hands off, Edmund. I don't care if you're this place's owner or not!"

"And you stop operating!" Alexi snapped. "You're too tired to be performing surgery!"

"And you're too slow!" She snapped back.

"…I've never seen her like this before." Allen said as they backed away. The bickering continued, its intensity increased steadily, and he could clearly see that the male doctor, Alexi, was becoming both irritable and dreading his so-called insubordination.

"I've heard from brother." Lenalee said, looking outside the window, making doubly sure there's no Akuma outside. "He used to be in the same operating theater as her a few times. I never believed it when he said she killed everyone at least three times by yelling."

"I definitely do now." Kanda muttered. "Hell, the vibe I'm getting…"

"Worse than General Sokalo's." Allen finished for him.

"Yep."

After Alexi was done cleaning his hands, he pushed the door open further with his back and kicked it close. There were a few more angry remarks, shouts, and cussing later, Rei walked out –

Her face, still with anger burning in her eyes, was grim and covered with blood everywhere, from hair to her entire face. Despite her fury, her eyes glazed over, the lids half-close, and her hands were shaking badly. She looked up and only made a surprised sound when she saw them. She shook her head and blindly grabbed a towel by the counter.

"Keep him under close monitoring." She said, draping the towel in the water and squeezed the excess water out, keeping it slightly wet, but not soaked. "If he dies because of your negligence, I'll make sure you can never find a decent job ever again."

"Roger that, ma'am." The nurse said without looking at her.

"I'll… go watch out and help the civilian." Allen offered. "Some Akuma might be like those in Chita, so it's best if someone keep watch."

"I'll join you, too." Lenalee said, turning to look at Kanda.

Despite his urge to get away, he shook his head in refusal as he watched Rei wiping off the blood from her head and face absently, her mouth still spilling out a lot of orders. The nurse had a hard time noting it all, but she just didn't care and keep on ordering. He turned to look at them and shrug. "I don't think she's going to make it to bed without help."

They looked at each other and nodded in approval after a while. "Alright. Call us if you want anything."

"Hopefully I won't have to." He muttered. "Now get your asses out there."

They left without another word, leaving him in the room with a few nurses, a rather distraught head nurse (he assumed. That woman still took orders from Rei) and his fellow exorcist. He crossed his arms and watched in silence as she put her hands under the steam of water and rubbed it together too fast and too hard, as if she was aiming to peel her skin off.

Her orders finished the moment she poured soap into her palms, and the nurse quickly went into the room, only to come out after five minutes or so. During that time, she remained still, cleaning her already spotless hands, still rubbing until her skin turned red. Her eyes weren't really seeing anything, by the looks of it, and if that kept up she might bled into the sink.

So Kanda stepped in and carefully laid his hand on her shoulder, she jerked her head up and whipped in his direction. Her mouth hung slightly ajar, with her breaths uneven and shallow, and her gaze –

She finally came back to her sense, and she looked at his hand, and then down at hers, still shaking. She fisted them and opted to grip the edge of the sink instead. She exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, in a pattern Kanda used all too often under pressure.

"I'll… I'll be fine." She whispered, not looking at him. He remained still, hand twitching only slightly. She bowed her head down until her face was veiled behind her hair and the shadow of the room. "I'll be fine. I'll be fine."

"You are not, and you won't be unless you get out of here." He said calmly. Why was he even doing this, he just had no idea. But it seemed like… a good thing to do. A thing he must do.

"…Why are you here?" She mused. "You hate socializing."

"Don't change the subject." He muttered. She shook her head again, her grip on the sink so tight he swore she could've broke it under her fingers. "Hey, ease up. Don't you trust Alexi?"

"Had to be me." She said. "Someone else might've gotten it wrong."

"Even if that someone else is the one you train yourself? Stop looking down on others, Akihiro." He reprimanded her, pulling her with enough force to turn her towards him. She looked… broken. Not that severely, but that was the best word he could come up with. She avoided his gaze as he continued. Her brows were half-tying themselves into a tight knot. "You have no rights to take that doctor so lightly. You're looking down on him."

"No, no, I was – I don't mean to." She shook her head vigorously. Kanda had no idea she could break this bad under extreme pressure. It was probably because the one she was forced to treat was Lavi. That would put even the best under the worst mental torture. "I – I'm sorry, I don't. Someone else might've – might not… I –"

"Hey, look at me." He said, gripping both of her shoulders with his hands as gently as he could, forcing her to look at him. "You have to trust others more. Someone else might've gotten it right."

She slapped his hands off gently and nodded furiously a few time. Her jaws were set, but at least her eyes brightened slightly. She smiled, although it was forced, up at him. "…Thank you, Kanda-san. I was… Oh god, my mental stability is gone, isn't it?"

"You are awake for forty plus hours." He commented. "I'm surprised you're still standing, Akihiro."

Her eyes widened slightly as her fingers fumbled for her watch. She looked at it, then peered past him and practically glared at the calendar.

"…That explains a lot of things." She said, her hand holding her head tightly as she fumbled to the suitcase resting at the corner. However, the fatigue finally set in, and her Innocence – Kanda noted that it was slightly bloodied, too – slipped out from her fingers.

He caught it the same time she did, and their hands brushed against each other's slightly. She was the first to retract her limb back.

"…Where do you rest now?"

"Town hall, attics." She said. "The rest of you will have to, as well. The Inn was destroyed. My travelling case is gone."

"We can ask the spare from the villagers." Kanda suggested, steadying her by grabbing under her bare arm (hey, it wasn't his fault she wore sleeveless shirt for an exorcist uniform) and tugged her with enough force to get her moving. "Or you can tell Lenalee to buy some at Copenhagen."

"…I don't dare ask the villagers for more." She shook her head as they walked (in her case, stumbled) down the steps and out of the hospital. Most of the injured were stabilized now, Kanda noted mentally. "Maybe… ah, I don't know anymore… I can't think."

"Then don't."

"It's my fault." She whispered, her voice cracked as they were out in the middle of the destroyed village. He had been careful in avoiding people as they walked to the center of it all. Even though most villagers were finding and rescuing others at the outer edge, some remained, and they all looked at them with odd eyes. Not hatred, but… sympathy? "It's all my fault."

"If you're going to blame anyone, blame it on whoever attacked." He said and quickened his pace. She followed without falling behind, which surprised him quite a bit, given her half-dead condition.

"No, no… it's all because I'm here." She denied. "It's all me. It's me. They're looking for me. I put this place at risk. I shouldn't have come here."

"Stop blaming yourself. It's getting annoying."

"You don't understand." She said, tugging her arm away from him, and it was only then that he got the feeling of fabric on his palm. His dark eyes wandered down only to see blood-soaked bandage covering from half the upper arm down to her wrist. With that brief moment of being idle, she managed to pry her arm free from his grasp. "None of you do."

"Then make me understand!" He snapped, forcefully took her arm back and yanked her with enough force to stop Rei dead in the track. She looked up, expression unreadable. "Talk. If you don't, then we can't help you."

"You can't know." She said, shaking her head furiously. "You can't know! I can't let you! There's too much, it's my burdens to bear, not yours!"

"For fuck's sake, you tell others to share their pain while you kept yours only to yourself!" He half bellowed, somehow managing to keep his voice low enough to not alert other villagers of their conversation. She jerked at his words, but did not respond otherwise. "Fuck it, woman, stop being a hypocrite and talk to me! It's not like telling others would kill you!"

She paused, and said quietly. "It's not me I'm afraid to kill. It's you."

…What? What was she saying?

"If you know – I… I can't, I just can't!" She was more than simply broken from the pressure and the guilt. It was deeper, darker and much more serious than she had let on. This went beyond what he had imagined. "I can't! I can't! I can't let you know! No, no, no, no, no –"

"Hey, hey, calm down, Akihiro, calm down!" He tried to snap her out of it, but his questioning – one he thought harmless – went a bit too far. Something in her snap like a weak twig, and she started crying as her knees finally gave out and her mouths formed incoherent words, voicing her pain and despair into the open.

Kanda looked around, making sure no one was there, and knelt down before her, unsure of what to do. He had never consoled anyone, dammit. This was so out of his knowledge.

Rei had her head in her hands, one still bleeding and shaking violently while the other threatened to tear her hair out. Tears dropped from her eyes like heavy rain, and her whole body convulsed, her voice broke as she repeated what she had said earlier. "I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't I can't I can't –"

"I won't ask you anymore, so stop it!" He said, his hand torn between touching her and not. It hung awkwardly in between them as he continued. "I won't ask again, alright? So calm down. Breathe, like you used to, remember? Inhale, count to four. Exhale, count to four."

She heard him, at last, and started breathing as he instructed. He actually learnt that from her, the count to four technique. It wasn't to his liking, at first, but with all the things she had told him, it proved useful in many situations, but to think he had to use it like this…

Her breathing slowed, the erratic pace, the shallowness, they slowly dispersed and her pattern returned to normal. She took a few extra deep breaths more.

"…I'm sorry I asked." He said after she had returned to a somewhat normal state of mind. She looked up at him, frowning slightly, her lips ajar. She blinked a few times, and something dawned on her face.

"…It's… alright. I'm just… I'm not ready to talk about it." She murmured back, looking at the ground. "…Your uniform's ruined… sorry."

"It's fine." He said, slowly getting up and offered her a hand. She looked at it in puzzlement. After waiting for her response – which never came – he sighed exasperatedly and put his hand in front of her face. "Now get up. You need a good rest, Akihiro."

"Ah… right…" She muttered, taking his hand hesitantly. He pulled her up a bit too quickly, but she seemed just fine adjusting. "Thank you."

He felt guilty, forcing her on her knees (indirectly) like that. Swallowing his pride and stupidity down with difficulty, he muttered, barely audible to even himself. "I'll… wait. You can tell me when you want to."

She didn't respond, but her lips curled up into a slight, but genuine, smile.

The Town Hall's attic, from what the chief told him, was one used as reception for visitors. As such, it had four separated rooms, one with two beds, and each had its own full-functioning, high-end bathroom.

Once they arrived, Rei took off her shirt (without warning him, dammit), and that was the only time he saw the large slash wound across her back, from her right shoulder – where the wound was deepest, exposing a part of her bone – to her left waist.

Ignoring her half-naked state (he silently thanked Rei for using sport bras, because that much skin showing was enough to distract the fuck out of him already), Kanda approached her and stopped when he was two feet away. She turned to look at him, and he responded by gesturing awkwardly at her back. "Your back – is it going to be okay?"

"Ah, this?" She said, turning away a bit more to give him a full view of her wound. She paused, frowned, and muttered. "It… does hurt, when I think about it. Mental stress… tends to make you ignore injuries."

"I'll call the doctor –"

"There's no need." She cut him off, unhooking the belt from her pants and threw it carelessly to the sofa. She stood still for moments longer. "It'll be fine. I can have it assessed in the morning."

"But it's deep. I think –"

"Since when do you care about other people's well-being?" She half-snapped, half amusedly asked him, smiling faintly as she (painfully) reached for two white towels, a shampoo, a liquid soap and the clothes provided by the village chief. "I thought you, quote; "don't give a fuck about other's businesses"."

"Since I know you, idiot." He replied without thinking.

And they both took a long damn time before that sunk in.

His eyes must have widened quite comically at this point. Did he regret saying that out loud? No… he didn't think so. But was he embarrassed?

Hell yes.

Her eyes lingered on him, her expression unreadable, partly due to her poker-face skill and partly due to the lack of proper lighting. He thought she might freak out or something along that line, but all she did was turn her back to his, putting down the bathing wares, and balancing herself with both hands on the wooden desk before her.

After what seemed like eternity, she said. "…Please tell me you're kidding."

"I'm not." He said. And, stronger and louder, "I'm not joking."

"You and I both will regret it." She said, turning her head slightly to look at him with the corner of her eyes. There were a lot of things hidden under her rather threatening dialogue, but it was vague, unclear. It was as if Rei herself wasn't certain about what to feel.

"Why?"

"…It's not something I wish to talk about." She said, inhaling forcefully. "I'm – sorry, I'll go… bathing, now, if you don't mind… where will you sleep?"

"On the sofa, I think. You can take the bed."

"There are plenty of rooms here." She argued. "You can just pick one –"

"You can barely keep yourself awake as it is!" He pointed out, voice brimmed with annoyance. "I won't trust you with anything until you're sleep and well-rested, you goddamn idiot. So shut the fuck up, get yourself a bath, and go to fucking sleep. I won't repeat myself."

He… hadn't meant to do that.

But she accepted his reasoning with a strange, unsettling smile.

To his relieve, that smile soon turned less devious and more… accepting.

"You've made your point, and you're right." She finally said, her fingers dug into the towel a bit deeper than he's comfortable with. "I'm too good a liar, even to myself. I… need rest."

"You sure as hell do." He said, crossing his arms. "Go on in. Give me a holler if you need anything."

"Thank you, Kanda-san."

She kicked off her bloodied boots and staggered in. Once the door was locked and the water started running, Kanda sat down on the sofa, leaning back and letting his body sunk in. He rested his head against the wall and started at a certain nail at the far side of the room.

Today has been… strange. He had never seen her broken down like that, and it made him too uncomfortable. Unnatural. Before Lenalee flew them over here, he got a called from someone he didn't know through a secured channel. He hadn't told anyone about it, because whoever called him used her name – something he begrudgingly admitted was now his weakness – to compel him to listen and obey.

He had said that… she had problems. Everyone does, actually, but people handled those problems differently. Her personality and her past caused her to be, due to the stranger's words, reclusive. Reserved, desolated. She doesn't trust people easily, much less open. Kanda believed the man. He had seen it first-hand, how she masked her reservations with conversations which, if anybody was even slightly more perceptive than they usually were, would have noticed the way she directed the topics out of herself.

She handled her stress, her problems similar to how he handled his, only that she was more sociable, more… altruistic than he could ever be. And that was where it all went wrong.

Kanda had been watching, believe it or not, and the stranger's words proved his suspicions and cemented his observations; she had been attempting to isolate herself from the rest, slowly and unnoticeably. But he noticed. The way she laughed, the way she talked, they weren't meant to get her closer to others, but to get away from them.

Please, save her from herself. I can't do it, but I believe you could.

Hell, that man didn't leave him much choice.

And to the next topic; he asked the stranger who he was, and the man said he was her old friend. When pressed further, he introduced himself as a man named Aiden (he didn't know, he might've heard or even met the man, but hell, not many people here are worth remembering), and that he was Rei's old friend. When asked why he couldn't do it himself, the man simply cannot reply.

Aiden did promise he will elaborate the situation a little once they got back, but that's all he'd said.

Well, so much for asking for a favor.

He… he was reluctance to admit how he felt. He still remembered Alma and the woman from his illusions. It was a feeling of longing of a man he once was, and he thought it was his own, too. But after knowing her –

He realized that he had, inevitably, fallen for the woman he barely knew.

There's so much strangeness about his attachments to her that it was no different than how he wished to live to see the strange woman he saw in his dreams, so long ago.

Maybe it was how she was familiar to him, or how she handled herself. How her thought processes work. Kanda didn't believe in love at first sight, but after thinking thoroughly, he believed that just might be the case.

This was ironic on so many levels.

"To think it'd be me who fell in love first, of all people… hah."

He voiced that out loud and gave out a bitter laugh. He thought it would be Lavi and his flirtatious nature, or the Beansprout and how friendly that bastard was. To think it would be him; the cold-hearted, bastardly lab rat like him. He shook his head and smiled.

He was jerked out of his thoughts when the door opened. The steams from the bathroom made Rei's figure blurry at first, and he couldn't refuse her beauty when she got out of the room.

She had changed into low-quality fabric nightgown, sure, but the way the shirt hung loosely from her shoulders and the way it accented her curves made the lack in quality negligible. Her pants were relatively normal, save for the way they hug against her hips – if he had not been him, he might have drooled and blushed. But no, Kanda had too much pride to allow such unsightly display, so instead he looked away and focused on a taint on the window before him.

She walked pass him, a soak towel draped over her uninjured shoulder while the other one was used to dry her silken black hair, with droplets of water still dropping down the wooden floor like rain. She went to sit by the table, her eyes on the candle light swaying ever so slightly by the breeze from outside, through the only opened window in the room.

From where he was, Kanda could make out her left arm, the bandage removed for showering. They were clearly teeth marks, all the way from her upper arm down to her wrist. He saw her hand shaking, too, and it wasn't out of fear. It was because she was in pain, maybe?

Before he knew it, Kanda was up on his feet, walking towards her. She hadn't realized he was closing in until his fingers were wrapped around her injured arm, causing her to wince.

"Kanda-san, what –"

"Seriously, Akihiro, these wounds are so fucking obvious even the blinded could feel it. Are you planning to leave it till morning?"

"…With the doctors having their hands full trying to stabilize Lavi? Yes."

"I can dress wounds." He said without thinking.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one taken aback by that statement. "What?"

"I can dress your wounds." He said, leaving her arm on the table and went to his luggage. Every exorcist was more or less trained as much as a field medic would, because Komui deemed it necessary. It is very handy. And he was glad Rei's piercing glare back then made him go and take the course.

"Kanda-san, it wasn't necessary –"

"Don't argue with me, woman." He snarled. "Your left arm is useless as it is. What do you think you'd gain by not having it looked at? Sooner or later you'll have to ask someone to look at it. Leave it for too long and it might get irreversibly damaged!"

"I've looked at the wounds, and it's fine, really." She argued back. So Kanda purposefully yanked the arm toward him, and pointed down at the still oozing blood and flapping skin.

"This is so not okay."

"Kanda-san –"

"Shut up." He said, propping the dressing kit on the bed and kicked the leg of her chair, causing her to give him better access to her arm. She yelped at the sudden change in her positioning, and inadvertently hit him across the head with enough force to make him see stars. "Ouch!"

She yelped again. "Sorry!"

"For a tired, almost dead-on-the-feet woman, you sure hit hard." Kanda said, rubbing his temple gingerly and prodded her arm on the table. "Now stop being so pathetic and let me take care of these… things."

She didn't try to escape, so he assumed she had finally agreed.

After minutes of silence, she said, almost too silent for him to hear; "Thank you, Kanda-san."

He replied like how he did weeks ago, where he hurled her back to the ICU. Only, this time, he elected to call her differently.

"You're welcomed… Rei."

He finally confessed (even if that was only to himself)! :D Yey? Maybe not, all things considered. Well... you guess who calls her, and I'll give you an invisible cookie! :D

Anywho, see you in two weeks. So much work to be done. Sorry for not updating more often :v