Albert, he begins.

Though Barok knows there's nothing significant about it, Dear Albert feels inappropriate. He can't remember if he'd addressed his letter from prison that way. Before then they'd never written. When Albert Harebrayne left the country Barok had simply let him. And then, in the time when loneliness and sentimentality might have set in, his thoughts had been overcome by other things.

Albert,

I find myself beset by many emotions of late,

He moves his pen back over the inkwell while he thinks. Can this confession be easily swept aside? Barok has no desire to derail this letter with discussion of his emotions, be there two of them or twenty, but it feels necessary to say. Albert cannot be allowed to believe that Barok truly is the unfeeling creature he's been made out to be. He simply cannot. The trust of a friend is a distant feeling to Barok, and he intends to safeguard the dregs of it he has left. Albert's stubborn, nostalgic affection for him has remained in spite of the odds. A sprig of greenery poking through the sidewalk.

I find myself beset by many emotions of late, but among them is relief for your sake. The Reaper of the Bailey has been apprehended. The man at the operation's helm has been incarcerated, his network of co-conspirators has been dismantled, and presence on English shores will no longer threaten your life. I can personally guarantee your safety if you choose to return.

He thinks this over, then lifts the chalice at his side and drinks deeply. For a man desperate to express his feelings, he certainly doesn't write like one who has them. Speaking like one will be easier, he thinks. If he gets the chance.

"Prosecutor."

He sets down his drink and looks up from his desk. His apprentice bows politely in the doorway. Barok gives him only the briefest of glances. Of the emotions currently besetting him, the sight of Kazuma Asogi sets off a good many.

"Mr. Asogi," he replies.

In a sharper way than Dear Albert had, this man's name feels wrong on his tongue. It belongs to a different man. One Barok has cared for and loathed with equal strength for many, many years. Kazuma carries his father's burdens now, in the way that Klint had feared his daughter would carry his. In the way that he had feared Barok would carry them too. This is what he and his apprentice are to each other now: reminders of the past. The weight of generational pain on shoulders desperate not to be too weak for it.

All the same, Barok cannot claim to have preferred him nameless and faceless. That image strikes on different nerves. His blind obedience to Mael Stronghart rather than his blind obedience to his own misguided hate, and remembering both of them aches.

I can personally guarantee your safety if you choose to return. He turns the phrase over in his head, waiting for something to flow naturally next. Little that he wants to say to Albert seems to be in words.

Barok looks up again as Asogi's footsteps echo off the stone. The young man's gaze has fallen on the blank wall.

Klint's portrait no longer hangs there. It was a swift order of business in a government building, and the frame now lies propped against the balustrade in Barok's own entrance hall. He can't decide what to do with it. Discarding his brother's memory wholesale seems callous and disrespectful of the situation's nuance, but the sins Klint had chosen were still too grievous for Barok to be comfortable under that lofty gaze. If only the canvas had been smaller.

"I may look into finding you an office of your own," says Barok softly. He is sure Asogi's feelings toward the van Zieks brothers are no less distracting than his own toward the Asogi men have been.

"I've told you I'm perfectly happy where I am," says Asogi. He's said this many times, it's true, but he'd said it from behind a mask. Barok has been unsure how much of what Asogi said in those months can stand unchanged.

They've had the chance to speak very little since the trial. Little more since Asogi's identity had been revealed. Just briefly yesterday, when he'd asked Barok to continue his apprenticeship.

"You'd work under a man you cannot forgive?" Barok had asked him. Though he'd accepted those words when he'd heard them as gracefully as he could, they'd found the chink in his armor and run him through. They echoed in his head still. A continued association sounded like a cruel thing for them to put themselves through.

"I am a man I cannot forgive, Prosecutor," Asogi had replied.

"This is a punishment, then?"

"No, of course not." His face had been set, his eyes aflame—the same way he'd looked whilst arguing Barok's guilt. "Just the opposite. What better man for me to learn from?"

Barok could understand that. There was only so much guidance one could take from a man different from oneself, whose strategies one could not apply, whose thoughts one could not follow. He could see what Asogi sought from him. An alliance of unforgivable men, leaning on each other to move forward against the worst of their natures.

In practice, their alliance of unforgivable men is looking to be floored entirely with eggshells. Barok clears his throat uncomfortably and searches for the least painful conversation he can start. "…Did you meet your friend before his departure?"

"I did," says Asogi with a nod. "They've left Dover safely."

"Good."

He smiles lightly. "The return train with Sholmes and his ward was an adventure."

"Everything with that man is an adventure," says Barok, as disapprovingly as he can. The detective may have saved his life, among a hundred other things, but just the thought of him is still exhausting. All of a sudden he remembers their last words at the courthouse. "I—suppose I'm due for tea soon," he mutters.

The trepidation must show in his voice. "Oh, no need to fear," says Asogi. "Not the tea, at least. I was offered some of Iris's latest blend; it was very good."

Barok does respect a person who knows their beverages. Perhaps when Iris gets older she will have interest in his vineyard.

"You'll be fine," continues Asogi, more seriously. "Personally, I look forward to hearing what she decides to name you."

He's forgotten she does this. God help him. He'll be Uncle Barry. "And has she christened you?"

"I'm Zuzu."

Barok gives an undignified snort.

Asogi seems unbothered. "If I were a little English girl confronted by a Kazuma, I think it would tempt me too." He gestures to the paper on Barok's desk—moving on. "Not another case?"

"Not yet," says Barok. "I am writing to a friend."

Asogi nods. "Professor Harebrayne."

"…Yes, in fact." Barok turns to him, the question in his gaze.

Divinatory powers would hardly surprise him now, but it is more mundane than that. Asogi jerks his head in a small shrug. "You don't seem to have any other friends."

Barok sniffs. "No less than you have, Mr. Asogi."

Asogi laughs openly. (When is the last time this office has heard laughter?) "You may be right."

Finally, he sits. As he kneels on his cushion by the casks, Barok finally thinks to notice that only one blade, the European saber, now hangs at his belt. "You've misplaced your sword," he says, unable to keep a hint of surprise out of his voice.

Asogi turns back on his cushion and gives one decisive shake of his head. "On the contrary," he says. "I believe my sword is exactly where it should be, for the time being."

"Your soul, if I recall correctly?"

Barok recalls this, not from Kazuma, but from Genshin. The notion had seemed so romantic to him back then. Even after the pedestal had broken, he hadn't been able to forget it. In his softer moments he'd wanted to believe something similar of Klint's Prosecutor's badge. His own Karuma. His own metal vessel for the van Zieks ancestral soul, worn lovingly and honorably close to his heart.

The love and the honor is different now. He won't remove it, but he realizes that he can't expect Asogi to have come to the same decision.

"You do," says Asogi, lowering his head. "I've left it in the care of someone who's done a better job with it than I have."

Ah. "Naruhodo."

"Yes." When Asogi looks back up, his dark eyes glitter in amusement. "My only friend, as you might say."

Just to hide his faint embarrassment, Barok shakes his head. "I apologize for the assessment," he says. "It was not my intention to insult Miss Mikotoba, at the very least." He pauses. "I hear doing so is—unwise."

Asogi's eyes slide up him appraisingly. "I would like to see her try to flip you."

(Can she flip Asogi, Barok wonders? The young man is far smaller, but they were trained by the same man, after all.)

"We'll need to find you another friend soon, then," says Asogi, voice businesslike. "To keep ahold of the joke. It's one of the few I've heard you make; I'm afraid I'm fond of it."

Barok blinks. Greenery in the sidewalk.

In the silence that follows, he looks down at his letter again. The ink has dried and his words are still stuck behind his tongue. He's almost forgotten the mystery of the missing sword. Asogi has not.

"I left Karuma because the will frightened me," he murmurs, unbidden. "Your brother's."

Barok's head snaps up, but he does not speak. He cannot.

"His description of that helpless rage that had driven him to evil. Of willingly occupying the darkness in service of the light." Asogi shakes his head. "If I'd found it years ago as I was meant to, I'd never have come so close to following his path." He draws in a deep breath. "Even at this I feel it. Fury at the system that could keep my father's last words from me so—arbitrarily."

"That's nothing to be ashamed of," says Barok, gently. "It deserves our fury,"

"Not my fury," replies Asogi. The heat is rising in his voice. "Of a man who's come so close to murder for its sake. It deserves the fury of those with the ability to control it. To use it for good."

Ah. "Naruhodo," says Barok, again.

"When I met Ryunosuke I admired him," Asogi admits. "I wanted to be like him and never succeeded."

Barok nods. The heart-wrenching pull of a good man; he knows it well. He's befriended it, grown up alongside it, lived a decade now in its shadow. He'd felt it in Ryunosuke Naruhodo the day they met.

"Until now I had thought of him as someone who'd never confronted the things I had, who hadn't been forced to adapt to them. An innocent. I thought that was the difference between us." Asogi's fingertips lightly brush against his hip, where his father's sword used to lie. "But after all this, I see that… confronting evil hasn't turned him dark the way it has me." He lifts his head and looks up again. "Ryunosuke is no innocent. He's simply stronger than I am."

They hold each other's gaze across the office for a heavy moment.

"We may have an unfortunate amount in common, you and I," says Barok from behind the rim of his goblet.

Asogi arches his brows. "Unfortunate?"

"The unfortunateness is precisely what we have in common." The foolishness. The coldness, the darkness, the pain and the rage and the weakness. The unworthy love for a better man. Barok knows Asogi understands. It was why he'd sought him out, convinced him to stay, taken this position. The pair of them are unforgivable in kind.

After a hesitant pause, he raises his chalice. "Would you like some?"

"Of the wine I'm not permitted to touch?"

"Yes," says Barok. "It may be mine to care for, but it is also mine to share as I see fit."

Asogi bows his head. "In that case, it would be an honor."

Barok stands to retrieve a second glass and his half-empty bottle. Asogi stands to meet him at the center table. The miniature Fresno Street room has been cleared away; the empty surface is a gulf between them. Barok pours; they drink. He watches as Asogi makes a split-second face, and realizes suddenly how young he is. Beautifully, tragically young. Full of such promise that it's his responsibility now to guide.

God help him.

Asogi inclines his goblet toward the letter abandoned on the desk. "You should tell—your friend to visit," he says. Barok does not miss the stumble where he almost called Albert the professor—here in Britain they're all long used to the whole profession being ruined. Asogi shakes it off. "He didn't get to see much of London this last trip, after all."

"He did not," says Barok. "Given his experience, I'm not sure he will wish to."

"Of course he will," Asogi replies. "He will for you, at any rate." He shakes his head with a hint of a smile. "That man speaks of you like you hung the stars."

Barok snorts softly. For a man of science, Albert had always had a foolish streak.

"Likewise," he says, "if you wish to visit your friends, you need only ask."

"I'm sure I will someday," says Asogi. He takes another sip. "Perhaps you might like to join me. I think Japan would suit you."

This is not the first invitation Barok has received. This is not the first man who's told him he might enjoy Japan. The echo of the honor and pride from all those years ago makes his chest ache.

"Perhaps I might," he says.

Asogi smiles and raises his glass.

They retreat to their sides of the office. Barok watches his apprentice kneel again, single sword at his side. Then he brushes aside his half-finished letter and takes out a fresh sheet of paper, purposefully inks his pen and begins again.

Dear Albert,