Thank you again to those who bother to review this fic. A special thanks to sesshouUchihaLUVER for giving me suggestions on improvement. They probably wont show in this fic because it's pretty much written but I'll make sure to keep them in mind for my next fic.

"Watari-san, can I take him home now?"

Watari gave Hisoka an uneasy look. He had finished all the testing he could do for now, but he wasn't sure if it was a good idea to let the man leave the hospital yet. "Bon, I'm not sure if that's a good idea. We still don't know what caused this."

Hisoka frowned "You've done all the testing you can, haven't you?"

"Yes, but..."

"Then let me take him home!" Hisoka was almost glaring at Watari for his reluctance. Tsuzuki hated hospitals, Hisoka had known this for a while now and he could certainly relate, so he was going to get the man out as soon as possible. "It's not like I'm going to abandon him there, I'll stay with him."

"But bon-"

"I agree with Kurosaki-kun. If he is physically okay, then there's no reason to keep him." Watari had forgotten Tatsumi was here. Watari sighed, they were both sort of right, and he truthfully didn't want to keep Tsuzuki either. He had seen him depressed but never this bad.

"Fine, but stay where you can hear the phone."

Hisoka turned to leave, but paused at the door. "Watari-san, Tsuzuki's memories, we'll be able to get them back right?"

Watari gave him a soft, sad smile. "I hope so bon, I hope so." Watari watched as the boy as he went down the hall back towards the infirmary. "I wonder if bon is going to be okay."

"Like I said before, Watari-san, I think he is taking this better then we could have hoped."

"He certainly has become even more defensive of his partner."

"Which is good. Kurosaki-kun is the only person who stands a chance at getting Tsuzuki-san out of this constant depression. He's already done more in a day then I had been able to do in two months."

"Did Tsuzuki really used to be this depressed? I mean, I've never seen him this bad."

"Yes..." It was a painful recollection only kachou and himself had, everyone else had become shinigami much later. "For years Tsuzuki-san was like this." And I couldn't do anything. "More importantly, have you figured anything out at all?"

"I won't know anything until I get the test results back." He said. He decided not to mention the knot this whole situation was leaving in his stomach.

Tsuzuki seemed to relax bit now that he was outside. "So this is the land of the dead?" Hisoka just nodded. "It's so pretty." Hisoka was just glad that Tsuzuki was talking to him; he had hardly said a word since he woke up. "So where are we going?"

Hisoka pushed down the urge to snap at the man for not paying attention earlier. "Were going to your house, where you should be more comfortable." Tsuzuki nodded, as if he had known all along. The rest of the way to Tsuzuki's was silent. Hisoka knew that the man had a lot of information to sort through, but it still made him a little tense. They opened the door to see that Tsuzuki's apartment was the same as when Hisoka saw it last; messy.

He supposed 'messy' might not be the word so much as cluttered. The man's futon was out and covered in stuffed animals, trinkets lined every shelf, and scrolls and paintings lined the walls. Plants were also tucked into many a corner. Tsuzuki usually ate out, so the dishes were almost all done. Hisoka was so used to his sparsely decorated and slightly larger apartment that Tsuzuki's always seemed sort of messy.

Tsuzuki looked around the place curiously. Both of them kicked off their shoes, and Tsuzuki started looking around while Hisoka moved to the kitchen to make some tea.

"So I live here?" Tsuzuki was being so cautious, which wasn't strange considering his current condition, but it was strange because it was Tsuzuki. Tsuzuki usually dove into things head first, seeing him be all careful was just...odd.

Hisoka nodded "Sit own and relax a bit, the tea is almost ready." Tsuzuki did as he was told, selecting the beat up couch as his place of rest. Moments later Hisoka emerged from the kitchen, two cups of tea in hand. He slid the one laced with sugar across the table to Tsuzuki.

"Thank you." Tsuzuki told him and he took a sip. "Wow, this is good!" Tsuzuki seemed honestly surprised the tea tasted okay.

Hisoka gave him a look "Only you would think something with that much sugar in it tastes good."

Surprisingly despite Hisoka's attitude, Tsuzuki seemed to relax a little more. "Ah, but sweet things are so good! You don't like them?"

And of course, the more relaxed Tsuzuki was the more relaxed Hisoka was. "I hate them, yet you always seem to try to shove them down my throat." Hisoka grumped.

Tsuzuki frowned a bit "It doesn't seem natural to dislike sweets; It can't be healthy."

"Not healthy?" Hisoka asked critically, pleasantly ignoring the fact that they have had this conversation several times before. "What's not healthy is the way you eat your weight in them daily!"

Tsuzuki cocked his head to the side. "Do I really eat a lot of them?"

Oh yeah, Tsuzuki had forgotten his entire afterlife. Hisoka hid his dejection "Yes..." He pictured the apple pie he had gotten for the man a week ago, for another (failed) attempt to confess his feelings. He smiled a bit at the memory, for Tsuzuki had been so shocked that Hisoka had bought him an apple pie that he had immediately glomped him, and planted the smallest of kisses on his forehead (which was actually why he had been unable to confess). "If you want I can run out later and get you an apple pie."

"It's been so long since I've had apple pie, I hardly remember it. Not since Ne-chan made one for my birthday when I was 16." Tsuzuki did his best to stay at peace with the happy part of the memory and not let it flow into something that didn't need to be remembered. Being with Kurosaki seemed to make that easier.

"Really?" Hisoka was surprised, and he loved hearing about Tsuzuki's sister. The man had slowly been revealing her to him, usually with a soft warm smile while they ate the dinner Hisoka had prepared for them. Tsuzuki nodded, but didn't say more. "There's a bakery nearby in Chijou, I could run out later, or you could come with me." Part of him was slightly surprised that it was him inviting Tsuzuki to a bakery.

"I'd like that." Tsuzuki said, but fell silent for several moments "Ne, Kurosaki," Hisoka was glad Tsuzuki was looking down; it gave him a chance to hide the pain of hearing the new level of formality from Tsuzuki. Shame he couldn't hide it from himself. "We were pretty close, weren't we?"

Hisoka just stared for a moment, and then closed his eyes trying to relax. 'Close' wasn't quite the word for their relationship. "Yes Tsuzuki, we were very close." And he still wanted to be, no matter what became of the current situation.

Tsuzuki continued to look down but the slight pull of his lips was reassuring. Tsuzuki had not smiled since he had woken, but this was close; and if close was the best he could do, then for now Hisoka would take what he could get.

Watari had been on his computer for eighteen hours straight and, thanks to the four pots of coffee, was still going strong. All tests he performed had been normal; in fact they had been perfect. This only worried Watari more. Tsuzuki's body could not possibly be in better health, which shouldn't be the case of someone who had been unconscious for two and a half days after a bad run in with a demon; even if it was Tsuzuki they were talking about. It had to be a trick; some sort of spell the demon put on him or something like that.

He had been scanning the digital records for hours, looking for those that had similar symptoms (if you could call perfect health a symptom). But Watari was beginning to doubt that they had been uploaded on the computer yet, JuOhCho had existed long before the computer and while they were trying to put all the records on the computer, medical records were not a high priority, so there were only about three-thousand uploaded now. The Gushoshin were going through the remaining paper records now.

Another three hours and he was out of coffee and his caffeine high was running low. He was about to get up to try and find sugar in the break room so he could keep going when Tatsumi walked in with two hot cups of coffee and three strudels. "You've been at it all night so I figured you might need an energy boost, Watari-san.

"Tatsumi-san!" Watari said, gratitude dripping from his voice "Thank you, I ran out of coffee two hours ago." Tatsumi gave him a small smile and sat across from him pushing a mug and the plate towards him. "But what are you doing here so early it's only..." he glanced at the clock "Oh it's already five in the morning, but that's still early for you."

"I was helping the Gushoshin. I figured if this has you so worked up that you needed to stay the night, it must be more dangerous then a simple bump on the head."

"I hate this, Tatsumi-san, none of this makes sense. Tsuzuki's health is so perfect. The tests I did show absolutely nothing is wrong with him."

"What?"

"It makes no sense. You have to understand that his health is absolutely perfect, it's completely flawless. No living thing has such perfect health naturally. Living things always have something out of whack. Its proof their responding to their environment. No ones body is ever not fighting something off, and thus there is a range in every statistic you take, rather blood pressure or pulse or anything else. Tsuzuki is not really in the "range" for anything though; he hits all the numbers dead on. He is in completely optimal health. "

Tatsumi looked down as if in thought, but he sighed "Well I haven't found anything. Have you?"

"No, and I can only pray that there even is a record for us to find. If we have to go into this blind..."

"There has to be a record of this somewhere." Tatsumi said with a strength that the scientist was grateful for.

"You're right," Watari said with a sigh "and we will find it."

It had taken all of Hisoka's control to not curl up under the covers with Tsuzuki, afraid that he might completely disappear now. He hadn't been able to leave the man, even after Tsuzuki had been asleep for several hours. So here he was sitting next to the elder shinigami, occasionally being daring enough to run a hand trough the man's silky hair.

And of course the four hours of silence had given him plenty of time to brood over the man's odd behavior. Tsuzuki would seem to calm a bit, begin to relax around him, but then he would realize it and rapidly withdraw into himself. It was horribly reminiscent of how Hisoka himself had been when he had first become a shinigami.

And it hurt not to have Tsuzuki's trust, even more then it did to know the man had completely forgotten him.

It was hard to stay strong, to not break down and cry in complete frustration and confusion. It wasn't that there was any temptation to leave the man. He would NEVER consider it, his place was by Tsuzuki's side only, and he would die before he gave it up. But the situation was so aggravating, and he had absolutely no idea of how to cope with this. It didn't help that he couldn't talk to his emotional pillar, Tsuzuki, about it. That wasn't even a option, he knew Tsuzuki well enough to know that if he did Tsuzuki would blame himself for losing his memories; not to mention that Tsuzuki had a hell of a lot of his own problems to deal with.

Heh. When he thought about everything Tsuzuki was going through he felt like such a spoiled child.

He looked at the clock; it was now two in the morning. He knew he should take out a spare blanket from the closet and sleep on the couch. He was tired; he hadn't slept in three days now, but it was still hard to pull away. Tsuzuki's apartment was small and he didn't even have a separate bedroom, so when Hisoka had worked up the determination to sleep, he was comforted by the fact he was still in the same room.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep only to be woken by the phone...oh, he had slept for six hours now. Tsuzuki stirred a bit before waking and staring at the phone. Hisoka hoped that Tsuzuki was just too tired and the phone was not a foreign device. Hisoka moved to answer it "I'll get it. Hello."

"Ah Kurosaki-kun," It was Tatsumi "Kachou needs you to come in and give a report on what happened on your last mission."

Crap, He had forgotten about the report. Now that they had managed to move him from his partner's bedside, it was only natural they'd actually want to know why the man had needed hospitalization in the first place. "Now? But Tsuzuki..."

"Tsuzuki-san should be fine by himself for an hour. You can return right after you finish giving us your report. Watari almost came over to drag you in at five thirty in the morning in hope you could give us more of an idea what we were looking for in terms of a cure."

Well that got his attention. If they help them figure out how to get Tsuzuki's memories back naturally he would tell them whatever the needed to know. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."

Twenty-five minutes later Hisoka was opening the door to Kachou's office. The Gushoshin, Watari and Tatsumi were in there as well. "Pardon the intrusion. Umm..."

"Kurosaki-kun, come in and proceed."

"Be specific bon, I need all the info I can get, my test turned up nothing."

Not what he wanted to hear, but he could deal with it. Breathe in and begin.

Kurosaki had told him he had to run into work to give a report but he would be back soon. He promised to bring muffins or strudels for breakfast. He had thanked him politely. Whatever a strudel was, it was beyond him. Ne-chan had made pies and muffins, but those were few and far between. They were also the only two western sweets he had ever had.

He felt oddly scared now that Kurosaki had left. Of course being with the boy scared him sometimes too. He wasn't used to having someone be there like the boy was. Kurosaki fussed and grumped over and at him, and it felt so right that it had to be wrong.

He did not deserve such a relationship.

There was no reason for the boy to stay.

Was he really dead?

That last thought struck him, but it had kept sneaking up on him. That was scary too. And the house was so empty and quiet now that Kurosaki had left. Now that he thought about it he doubted the boy would be back, which hurt more then it ever should. And was he really dead?

He wandered into the bathroom, his thoughts assaulting him the whole way. There was one way to find out for sure if he was dead, and if this was really his house it shouldn't be that hard to find. It wasn't in the medicine cabinet, but that didn't surprise him, that was too obvious. So he checked under the sink, and he didn't see it in there, but he wasn't discouraged. He spotted a plant on a shelf and knew. He pulled it down, and...Ah... there it was. With only a little trouble he was able to push the blade up.

"It sounds like a shadow demon." Tatsumi said when it seemed Hisoka had finished talking. "They're vicious."

"Did it make any noise? Could it talk?" Watari had been taking notes the entire time.

"Not while we were fighting it, but it did when it was dying. It screeched horribly, I suppose it could have been words, but I didn't recognize the language." and it had been burning to death.

Watari nodded and Hisoka checked the clock, it had taken thirty-seven minutes. He didn't like how long it had taken to give his report. He had this bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He stopped by the break room to grab some pastries that Wakaba had made and left the building resisting the urge to run.

Tsuzuki was fine by himself. Right?

The first cut was light, and he was surprised to see it heal before he lifted the blade; too fast to even allow the blood to leave the wound. Someone had said something about healing powers.

More.

There had to be more.

The second cut traced the scar that had supposedly killed him. It was much deeper; he made sure that the blade from the box-cutter completely submerged into his skin. He frowned when the blood trickled over his wrist, a few drops hitting the floor, but healed seconds latter. But he still couldn't feel it.

He hated this.

He needed more.

More!

He wanted to feel it so bad!

He raised the blade for the third cut as if he was ready to chop his hand off. His mind was both whirling and completely empty. He wanted the darkness back. He needed his darkness back. His left hand brought the blade down as hard as he could.

It didn't hit his wrist.

It took a moment to register the warm arms clutching his. His brain taking possibly whole minutes to understand what had happened, and why the blade lay broken and the tile of his sink was chipped. Two emerald green eyes full of surprised fear, tears forming at their corners locked on his as if demanding an answer. The eyes held his tightly, even as he felt hands slide down to the wrist touching it lightly as if it might start bleeding again if he touched it to hard.

And all Tsuzuki could do was cry.

Hisoka wasn't sure how they had made it to the living room. Tsuzuki had tried to pull away at first but Hisoka hadn't let him. Tsuzuki only cried harder, clutching Hisoka.

And it hurt because he could feel such a pounding rush of swirling emotions that were so blurred together that he couldn't distinguish them. It hurt, but Hisoka pulled Tsuzuki into an embrace, holding him as tight as he possibly could because he'd be damned if he left Tsuzuki to cry alone. He would never let go of the man. Eventually he had been able to focus enough to rub Tsuzuki's back, occasionally whispering the few gentle comforts he knew. It had to be somewhere around then that he led Tsuzuki to the living room so that he could fall asleep somewhere less drafty then the bathroom floor.

So here they were now on the couch, Tsuzuki lying over Hisoka's lower body, head buried in the boy's chest and Hisoka leaning against the armrest rubbing Tsuzuki's back. Tsuzuki wasn't crying even half as hard as he had been. Now the man was lost somewhere between here and sleep with only the occasional sob and hiccup.

When Tsuzuki eventually made the crossing into a dreamless sleep, Hisoka began to think, possibly too much. He hadn't known Tsuzuki did that, though he probably should have known. How long had Tsuzuki been doing that? How long since he had last done that? He stopped rubbing Tsuzuki's back and pressed him a little closer. It hurt to think that Tsuzuki had probably been doing this since he first woke in Meifu some seventy years ago. It hurt more to be forced to wonder if maybe he wasn't enough to keep the blade from Tsuzuki's hands.

And then the phone rang.

Hisoka jumped from his thoughts, startled by the sudden noise in the quiet room. He turned his head to give it a death glare, as if everything in the world was its fault, but made no other motions to acknowledge it. He didn't want to move from his position, when it stopped he assumed that was the end of that.

Not ten minutes later Tatsumi let himself in. He stared at the two for moment "I take it that this is why you didn't pick up the phone."

"...Something happened. I can't leave him now." He held the man tighter as if he as afraid that Tatsumi might tear them apart and drag him off to work.

"Then he has to come with us now." Tatsumi said in a stern but gentle voice that only he could do "Watari found out something and he's in a bit of frenzy."

Hisoka shook Tsuzuki a little but he didn't even stir. "I think he's exhausted."

Tatsumi nodded, Hisoka was pretty sure he knew that Tsuzuki had probably cried himself to sleep. "I'll carry him."

Hisoka blushed uncomfortably "All the way there?"

"We can teleport in front of the building."

Hisoka nodded and reluctantly allowed Tatsumi to lift Tsuzuki. This was one of those times where he was pissed that he not big enough now, nor would he ever, to carry Tsuzuki. Seeing Tatsumi easily carry Tsuzuki into the infirmary and place him gently on a bed with such utter ease, how could it not make Hisoka jealous?

Two minutes later a stone-faced Watari and a tense Konoe Kachou joined them in the infirmary. Watari spoke almost directly to Hisoka.

"His soul has been cursed."