He slipped through the archways that were the entrance to Hikari's palace, any journey only ever took as long as it was necessary, and Kenshin's had passed in mere minutes from the gray spaces to the Divine Heights. Hikari's trees dappled the golden light and made it dance in strategically paced breezes that kept things neither too warm nor too hot.

He made his way to the suite of rooms he had been given, trying to remain unseen. When he made it to his bedroom, he was starting to like European beds, he pulled the curtains around to dim the light and soften the touch on his now tender eyes. The softer shadows made it easier for him to see, not that he wanted to. He climbed onto the bed and curled on his side, not sure what he was going to next or how he was going to do it. He needed to think.

"Took you long enough," said a voice near the end of the bed. Kenshin sat up immediately, and reached out for his sword, not sure who or what was at the end of his bed. He focused in the shadows there and Firrin's golden gaze met his own.

"What do you want now?" Kenshin asked, more irritated with Firrin than anything.

"How much help did you need?" Firrin seemed to ignore Kenshin.

Figuring that cooperation would release him sooner than confrontation, Kenshin replied, "Enough."

Firrin snorted derisively, "Figures."

"Are you finished?" Kenshin asked.

"Hardly."

"What do you want?"

"Who helped you?"

Kenshin shrugged, "I don't know."

"You're lying," Firrin said.

"Not entirely," Kenshin replied, "I don't know her name."

Firrin nodded, "True enough," he was even keener than Hikari about sorting out lies from truth. Kenshin supposed Firrin could spot his own. "Well?"

"Well, what?" Kenshin said.

"Aren't you going to ask me about Cairys? Isn't that what the Voice suggested you do?"

"How did you know?"

"Because we have all been there," Firrin stated simply, "It looked like paradise, then we looked beneath the surface and saw that not everything was so pretty and perfect. We have all been guided, and will continue to be guided by the Divine Will. The Voice does exactly that. How did she look to you?"

Firrin's tone was almost amicable, as Kenshin felt him remembering fondly his own guidance from the Divine Will.

Kenshin tried to describe it, "Earthy, brown, warm…" he couldn't remember exact details or features.

Firrin half-smiled, "I see."

"Will you tell me?"

"About Cairys?" Firrin feigned ignorance.

Kenshin nodded, "And you."

Firrin tipped his head back in thought, and brushed aside a curtain to let the light in. He was gentle about it, and Kenshin only had to blink a couple of times to adjust to the change in light.

"I'll tell the story backward so you can stop me when you've heard enough."

Kenshin moved closer to the end of the bed to better listen to Firrin, who, he got a strange sense, was feeling rather paternal toward him at that moment.

"I fell in love with Cairys as a child, a mortal one, in an ancient world. She was the daughter of a minor chieftan who often found his territory shrinking from his miserable leadership skills. He was a cruel man by nature, and self-serving. His daughter was no different. Widows and orphans could starve in order to glut the chieftan's family. Cairys, being a child and already lacking a moral template to follow easily outdid her father in selfishness. She was a spoiled enabled child who got everything she wanted through coercion or conversion," he smiled a slow smile, his lips curling over the memory of her childhood, " I loved her then. Not because she was selfish or spoiled, but because she was honest. She only was what she was, and she never tried to be anything she wasn't. What she was happened to be a most undesirable thing. But she was that."

"Her father was eventually routed from his position, and Cairys was taken away to another clan to be a serving girl. Something, you might well imagine, she wasn't particularly skilled at doing. Even then, she would rather have been beaten within an inch of her life then so much as wipe the sweat from the brow of a working man. And she took her beatings too, proudly. She spent most of her time barely able to move from the beatings she provoked. But she always provoked them, refusing to work. Eventually food was withheld from her, on the premise that she who earned the food ate the food, but Cairys had no desire to earn anything, since she should have everything anyway. Still I loved her."

"The Alfheim were known for stealing away children who lived in unhappy circumstances, and, without bothering to investigate the situation, they kidnapped Cairys from her home, killing her body and taking her spirit with them. She was reborn with the legendaries as an elf. I won't go into great descriptions, but let's just say that there was no change in her behavior. The Alfheim, since they have eternity, have a great deal of patience, but even the eternal have a sense of a losing battle. Cairys was sent to live with the faerie, where she should have thrived."

"She did, she was a great Irish faerie who could be fickle and wild and I loved her especially then, as she blossomed and changed. She was rewarded for her nature, not punished for it, and thrived exceedingly well. I pursued her a couple of times, only to find that she had no desire for things that were already hers, and I could only bask in her rejection. It wasn't until she was trapped on Earth that she started to reevaluate her behavior."

"No one knows for sure what the druid did to her or with her. But she was called out on a Beltaine night and imprisoned. She wasn't released until Samhain, 30 years later. I'm told that she was made to be his bride, and his compulsion over her forced her to serve him and the forest in which they lived. When she did return, she was no longer happy being fickle or cruel. Something had happened inside of her, she had been a mother, and the overwhelming love she had felt for her child had consumed her selfish nature. She then apologized to everyone she had treated poorly. When she came to me, I made her the offer. She denied me several times, I think, until she finally realized that while she had no purpose as a faerie, she has even less purpose in Alfheim, and she would never again fit into the legendaries. She left them and wandered until I made her the offer again, and she accepted. She wanted nothing less than to serve, and her nature, both child and mother, patient and tempestuous, fit her perfectly into the role of Justice."

Kenshin had been listening, resting his head on folded hands as he lay on his stomach, and as Firrin finished his story, Kenshin noticed that Firrin had been absently stroking Kenshin's head throughout. Kenshin didn't stop him, he seemed content.

"You see, I've loved her since she walked the earth, and I loved her into the clouds. I loved her when she bore another man's child, and I loved her when she became mine. She may be selfish at times, and seem cruel, but she is mine, I made her, and I love her. I know that she has forgotten her mortal life, and has preferred the distance her eternal existence has brought her, and I'm not ever going to change that. I love her even now, as she wanders the gray places in search of you, hoping to find you and tell you whatever you need to hear to come back to her. I think she loves you for many of the same reasons. You are the honest sort, and she appreciates the uncomplicated nature of you. You did some horrible things, and rather than blame them on someone else, you simply regret them, and tried to use your life to make people's lives worthwhile as opposed to ending them. Makes sense to me."

"Then why do you hate me?" Kenshin asked.

"Hate isn't the right word," Firrin removed his hand and leaned back in his chair.

"Then what is?"

Firrin shrugged, "I'm not sure. Jealousy? Possesiveness? I don't like that I have nurtured and cared for someone for so very long only to have her turn away from me. I'm not entirely sure that it's about you. Though it does bother me that you win her attention just by existing, and I have had to fight for it every step of the way."

It was Agape's voice that interrupted before Kenshin could speak, "Do you think that might just be because she's a pain in the rear? That it has nothing to do with Redemption there or Truth? That maybe she is what she has always been? Not that I am discouraging either of you from this tête-à-tête, But I thought I might be able to contribute something useful to a conversation about love."

Kenshin sat up and instinctively covered himself. Agape saw him and clicked his tongue. Agape was male today, and very much so, easily shaming Firrin's golden features with his shining masculinity. "What have you done to yourself," he gripped one of Kenshin's wings and pulled it aside, "You should have known you couldn't do that and you should know that wounds don't heal unless you make them heal." Agape poured a bowl of water into a basin and returned to the bed to sit behind Kenshin and clean the matted feathers. The water was warm and the cloth was soft. "Of course Firrin hasn't gotten to his own story yet."

Firrin nodded, "You can stop me at any time," he looked hopefully at Kenshin, who maintained his look of oblivious innocence.

"Fine then. I was Roman, a politician by trade but not to lucky to be a senator. I was a senator's aide, though, and became a very adept liar. When my master was needed, he was attending to important business. When he had forgotten something, it was on its way. My master led a life of luxury, and I lay twisting in a bed of tangled lies that I had woven.I devoted my life to making my master look good in public, and that was the biggest lie of all. He was a corrupt man with no sense of truth, his own life was such a lie that he couldn't tell you whether he had legitimately married his wife or not. I was no better for helping him. And it was my own lie that killed me. I won't get graphic, but it was messy and bloody and brutal. And it left me hollow and seeking a way to make right what I once turned so wrong. Hence my place here."

Kenshin twisted to look at Agape who shrugged at him, "Greek. A lifetime of empty affairs and broken promises of devotion and love. Selfish and vain. Completely unscrupulous in my affairs, men, women, both at once, sometimes neither, sometimes two legs, sometimes otherwise, it never mattered to me once I had them. The chase was my desire. Then I met Him. And was spurned. I spent the remainder of my life chasing after the unattainable, and wound up starved to death under a tree somewhere. I was so consumed by love that I became it."

Kenshin shook his head, wondering how something like this could have happened, these were the embodiments of the very best parts of humanity, and they were a whore, a vain princess and a preening liar.

Firrin shrugged, "Nobody's perfect. Not even you."

Kenshin nodded to concede that point and realized that they were three men witting in a woman's house and the woman wasn't even there.