A/N: I do not own or profit in any way from what Kazue Kato has created.

Since that day there was a feeling of wrongness about everything. There was something wrong in people's eyes, something wrong in how the air tasted, something... wrong. Shiro mourned the casualties of the barrier failure, like everyone else, but for him there were harsh, red streaks of anger mixed in with the grief. The six dead hadn't been "innocent victims" nor had they been "valiantly fighting to protect the school and their school mates". But Shiro was the only one who knew that.

He hated the lies, hated how they clung to his skin like filth he couldn't wash off. He felt like tearing the truth right out of his chest and show the assembled students from his own memories what the six casualties had really been like, how they really had died… because pretending like this… pretending that their deaths were tragic accidents…

Shiro attended the ceremony in the great assembly hall of the Academy and felt that soon, very soon, lightning must strike through the roof and vaporize him. Teachers took turns giving speeches, and each word grated on his nerves like knives on porcelain. Paragon students, responsible adolescents, respected by their classmates, bright futures and promising careers – bull, shit.

The susurrus hymn of weeping students floated through his consciousness like noxious mist and made him chew the butt of his cigarette to mush. Plenty of tears for paragon assassins and promising murderers – wonder how many would be dead if they weren't? How many would have survived if Mephisto hadn't raised the barriers and driven the invading demons out?

Mephisto… Samael… tch, what did names matter, anyway? He'd been the same guy all along. He had done good things… regardless what his true intentions were.

And Shiro had made his choice. A good choice or a bad one…? He didn't know. He did absolutely not know, and every time he tried to sort it out his thoughts tangled until his head was as knotted up as his chest. On one hand: for over a century, Samael had been nothing but an asset to the Order. He had saved the school, helped expand the Order's influence... on the other hand:

"He's Satan's son." Shiro let the thought sink into his consciousness and felt the sharp edges scratch and prod his doubts. "Why would such a big fish join True Cross?" There was a hidden agenda; there had to be. There was no way Satan's son could harbour any honest desire to help huma- "Oh, listen to yourself, you sanctimonious ass!" Shiro had very few fundamental beliefs he lived by, but those he had he held onto firmly. One such belief was that you create your own path in life. "That you have a crap dad doesn't mean you're crap, too", he reminded himself. Judge a tree by the fruit it bears, and so on. Samael might be Satan's son, but that didn't mean he took after his father.

At least, Shiro hoped he didn't.

Fresh air, at last! Bright sunshine greeted the sobbing crowd that milled out of the hall, caring only to warm the singing birds and coax the next round of flowers out of their buds, now that the cherries blossomed mostly on the ground. Shiro had to take care not to look too relieved as he diverted from the throng, picking his way towards a small staircase and a bridge that-

"Hey, where ye goin'? Sayin' farewell is this way, ye know."

Circumstances softened Shizuku's tone, yet it cut through Shiro like a banshee screech. Right. Saying farewell and paying respects before the bodies were taken to the crematory… He halted his steps and turned around, and everything felt wrong.

"Sorry man, I just can't", he said, running a hand through his hair out of habit. "I know we were in the same class and all, but… I just can't."

There are some things you just don't do. There are some things that are fundamentally wrong to do, and paying respects to somebody you had murdered - it was self defence - was anything but respectful of the dead. Shiro had no right to go there. He had no right mourn Agari, or any of the others, and he'd had it up to what he could take of putting up a mask. But Shizuku didn't know that.

"Shiro-san. I know you two didn't get along, but fe' Chrissake, she's dead", he said sharply. "And ye're putting ye' grudges on hold te go an' pay her ye' final respects or I'll fuckin' kick ye there, ya hear me?"

"Agari-chan wouldn't have wanted me to pay her respects", he explained as calmyl as he could. A feeling of tightness had grasped his chest that was cold and hot all at once, as if his very being was telling him that he should not go to see the dead.

"Midori-chan is going." Shizuku's voice was hard and unforgiving like a block of granite as it drove the final nail into the coffin. "And if she can let bygones be bygones ya don't have any fuckin' right in the world te bail."

This situation shouldn't exist. Cornered in a dead end like this, caught between the secret behind his back and Shizuku's unwavering sense of right and wrong in front of him, Shiro saw no way for time to keep ticking. If anything, it should rewind and restart on another track. One that didn't lead here.

Should he attend, should he bail, should he…? What the hell should he do…?

"I can't go there – what the hell would that make me? A murderer with a conscience? Or just a sick fuck attending his victims' funeral?" He didn't want to go there. He couldn't. "I..." His lips parted slightly, and he felt himself sink into that cold, detached state that had been his last farewell to Agari. "Shizu-san… I can't."

*whack*

Shizuku wasn't a seasoned fighter and didn't know where to place a punch to deal maximum damage; but the feeling he put behind it compensated for all that.

"I don't know what the hell's wrong with you", Shizuku grated, his clenched fist trembling from pain and anger. "But this…? Are ye even human?"

He turned sharply and stalked away, following the stream of students headed to the courtyard where the caskets were held for farewells before being taken to the crematory.

Shiro watched him go. The tang of blood in his mouth brought back nauseating memories of blood spilled and... He didn't want to think about it. Grasping the first practical distraction he could think of, Shiro ran his tongue over his teeth to check that they were all there. They felt alright. Nothing seemed loose. At least Shizuku hadn't gone for the glasses.

"…I'm sorry", he murmured to the warm spring breeze.

He walked that whole day, and burnt almost a whole packet of cigarettes in the process. Oh, he was well aware that he was hiding: still, he couldn't bring himself to go back to the Academy campus. It's funny, how it's not the dead that haunt you, but the living: and how the shadow of the past is so much easier to bear than the shadow falling on you from the future.

He went to the night market while it was still just late afternoon. The air was high, swallows wheeled back and forth with exultant cries, and the season's warmth shone from bright eyes and colourful clothes. The vendors were busy, the smell of food tantalising, and everything was buzzing with spring.

Bad move, he realised. All that merriment, all that optimistic laughter… it's only in the contrast with bright light that you notice how dark the shadows are. He felt like one in those bustling streets.

"What's the matter?" he questioned himself silently. The water carried animated voices over its comfortable distance to where he stood, slouching with his lower arms on the railing of the bridge across the pond. Ducks swam over to the ashes falling off his cigarette into the water – probably thought it was breadcrumbs. Stupid animals. "Who's stupid, really? I should just go back there and say I didn't feel well at the ceremony, or some such crap."

Oh, but it would still be there: the shadow, the unspoken pressure, as if the dead still walked the dorm corridors. It didn't matter what excuse he made up, it was still there: the mask of mourning innocence, waiting to suffocate him.

And something else. He hadn't noticed it before, busy as he was with everything going on outside his head, but now that he had time to poke around there was something there, too. Something within: mere coals of the fire, but still glowing and hot. Still there, days after Agari and the other five had died, was that faint burning…

"Is that what they call shock?" he pondered, tapping ashes off in the water. His eyes lingered on the red butt of the cigarette. Yes; something like that, nested inside his chest… "Maybe I should see someone about this…"

And say what, exactly? That he'd killed six of the school's students? Shiro huffed at his own naïveté and sent a few miserable flakes of cigarette paper sailing down to the water. To the ever-expectant ducks. Greedy idiot birds.

He had killed people. It had happened in the heat of battle, yes, and he didn't want to do something like that ever again, ever. Still... he knew that burning feeling inside. He shouldn't be feeling it now. And not this faint. That bitter, snarling anger had never been faint. And he didn't feel angry: he felt… like the clean snap of the slide clicking in place over a bullet fed into the barrel. Cocked and loaded and ready to go off if those glowing coals suddenly-

The ducks quarrelled noisily over the lost cigarette that had fallen down to them. He could hear them, but the demon had already taken his vision and was cutting him off from his ears as well; his mother's soulless, empty laughter trickled up through the darkness, and the world became his family's dinner table-

"No you don't." He seized his mother's memory by the throat, glared through her eyes and into the demon's. "Not with me, and not today, you little shit."

Yes, he felt the darkness – felt it flare like a match lit over fire. Felt it intimately, like morning mist coating skin and crawling into his lungs; felt it around and inside, part of him as he was part of it. His darkness, his to command.

His mother melted from his eyes and slipped his fingers, and he was on the bridge again. The ducks had fled the ruckus, but he could still smell them. His ears twitched as the sounds of people reached them over the water with jigsaw conversations about clothes, birthdays, and the boy next door being noisy on weekends. Sounds much louder than they should have been.

"I'm… a demon…?" He stared at his claws: a tar-black, dimly glimmering variety – they looked just like the wooden handrail, which was reduced to smoking coal under his other hand. "Ngh-!" His vision was swallowed into darkness again: fierce, indignant darkness that was in no way amused by this turn of events.

He had no idea how he knew that, but it made him laugh all the same.

"I'll amuse you alright", he challenged with a sneer, feeling a rush of wolfish excitement that seemed… inappropriate.

Inappropriate, because he enjoyed it. The fight was even, and he was worn down to his bones, but the feeling of battling that demon soul to soul brought something to his lips that could have been called a smile if it hadn't had fangs. It was… relieving, in a way; to have a problem he could deal with hands-on, rather than the thorny dead end he'd faced with-

Shizuku?

Shiro veered very close to losing control over himself, but kept a firm grasp on his darkness and on the hip flask he'd just uncorked.

"Hi. Just gimme a minute", he told the shell-shocked pilgrim on the bridge, and put the flask to his lips. Bracing himself, he gulped liquid fire until he fell down on all fours and vomited: vomited a thick, oily cloud of miasma that disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

"Oh man, I feel crap…" Like riding Go To Hell backwards with a fever and a panicked horse kicking next to you in the cart.

"Holy Buddha, Shiro-san – ye okay?" Shizuku rushed over from the bridge and helped him to his feet.

"Fine, just fine…" He dusted himself off as best he could, but stopped. "Okay, that must sound completely ridiculous, but honestly… I think I'm fine."

"Ye think?" The look on Shizuku's face spoke clearly what he thought of that. "I just heard a possessed man say 'just gimme a minute' and exorcise 'imself like it's nothin'. How's that even possible?"

"Sen-chan told me how she controls her goblin", he replied, hanging on to the topic rather than ask why Shizuku had gone looking for him. "If you acknowledge the darkness you have in your heart, and learn to be the master of it, then you can master any demon that tries to feed off it. That's it, really."

"And did ye know one fifth o' the Futotsuki children that go through that rite o' passage end up dead?" the pilgrim said dryly, eyeing him up and down with a concerned look. "That's dangerous stuff, man. It's meant for bonding once, with one demon, an' not one that possesses you. Ye should wear the pendant instead."

Oh, right: that…

"Why would they do something like that to their kids?" It was a legitimate question, in Shiro's defence.

"Traditions an' values look different everywhere ya go - that crap about devil worshippers sacrificing children 's what outsiders made of it." Shizuku crossed his arms and rerouted the conversation in quipped tones: "An' the pendant?"

"I wear it – I just take it off to bathe, and I forgot it back in the dorm room." Lie. The pendant lay on the pedestal of one of the lanterns in the Ceremonial Hall, where he always left it when he was sparring with Samael. He hadn't gone back there since. Hadn't gone to see Samael, either…

"…ye know, lying is a really bad habit o' yours", Shizuku said, brown eyes nailing him in place where he stood. "An' yer gonna drop it right now, 'cause we need te talk. I didn't come t'apologise. There's a saying that goes 'neva' let the sun set on an argument', an' I don't intend fer that te happen." Shizuku shoved his hands into his pockets and shifted his weight from one foot to the other: he didn't like having to deal with this, but was determined to do so anyway. "I figure ye got yer issues. Bad ones", he added, throwing a glance at a severely singed park bench. "But if I knew what's eatin' ye, maybe we could sort this out. So what's wrong? An' don't tell me 'nothing'. That look in yer eyes earlier teday? It fuckin' scared me." Oh, if he only knew… "Carryin' that kind o' stuff inside ain't good. I'll help ya, but ye gotta take the first step an' say what's wrong."

There were moments when Shiro expected Shizuku to float up into Enlightenment and disappear from the physical world. Such a great guy: such an admirable, honest, kind guy. Now would be a perfect time for him to reach Enlightenment.

Shiro had expected Shizuku to notice something was off; he'd just hoped he wouldn't put him up against the wall about it. In retrospect, that was a plain stupid hope. Shizuku was as blunt as Shiro was when it came to addressing issues – the difference was that he did it out of genuine concern, not for code of honour or duty.

"You're a great guy, Shizu-san", he said, noticing a slight throat burn developing, "but you can't be everywhere. The one who needs support right now is Ryuuji-san, and I-"

"Don't", Shizuku bit off in steely tones, "switch subject. An' don't make me hit ye 'gain, 'cause that really fuckin' hurt, and I can't hit as hard as I want to with my left." The spark of humour fluttered awkwardly in the tense atmosphere, and went out. "Ryuuji-san's with Midori-chan and Sen-chan. I'm here fe' you."

Back in the dead end, then. He could make up a lie, maybe bring up his parents and twist it to fit circumstances, somehow…

"As if he wouldn't see through that! You're overdue anyway", a calculating part of his mind murmured. Lies are a delicate thing: like crops, they need to be planted at the right time to grow successfully. Plant them now and Shizuku's cold glare would wither them like a blizzard. "Any lie at this point would have to be elaborate, and elaborate lies have many weak links. He's smart enough to find you out: and if he does, you'll have more to explain and less lies for doing it."

And if you can't weave a credible lie, and you can't tell the truth… then your sole resort is the most blatant lie you can come up with.

"There's nothing wrong with me", he said flatly, bracing for the punch but not intending to block it.

Shizuku stared at him, taking a second to translate what he was being told. Shiro kept his face calm, horribly calm, though inwardly… inwardly, the coals still glowed in the darkness.

"Just go: get pissed and walk away and never bring this up aga-"

"Stop fuckin' lyin' ta me!" Shizuku exploded. "There's been something extremely damn wrong with you all along! Look at all the demons 'round ye! Like dogs smelling a bitch in heat!" His fists clenched tight, unclenched in sharp gestures, clenched again… but no strike fell. "An' I knew ye were stupid, but I didn't think in a million years ye'd be stupid enough ta go confide in a demon!" he snarled, eyes gone from deep brown to pitch black with anger. "But clearly, ye were – an' don't ye dare try ta deny ye did. Mephisto Pheles took you ta the hearing at headquarters; 'e selected you from Knight class, even when ye were the crappiest student there was; 'e went down with you ta the target range for practice – Midori-chan tells me ye even smell of 'im! Nothing wrong, ye say? There's something fuckin' wrong with anyone who gets that kind o' attention from a demon! Ye're not leaving till ye've told me just what the hell yer carryin', ye understand?" He grabbed Shiro by the lapels of his uniform and almost yanked him off his feet. "I'm ye' friend, ye half-wit: I can tell somethin's not right! I don't care what it is as long as ye say something, dammit! Just drop ye' stupid pride or independence or whatever the hell ye're clinging to an' say something! Anything is fine as long 's ye don't, fuckin', lie!" he growled, bearing down on Shiro like an agitated bear.

Friends. The people that have your back, come hell or high water. The people that laugh with you and cry with you. The people that are so determined to help you they unintentionally make everything worse.

Friends are the people that always try to do their best for you. And Shiro… would try to do his best for Shizuku: in a way Shizuku would never understand.

He sank deeper into that cold, detached state.

"Let go of me, Shizu-san. I'm fine."

The dark eyes flared – and died. It was the look of one throwing a rope to a drowning man who won't take hold of it.

"No ye're not", he hissed, forcing his fingers to release the uniform.

Shiro wrapped the coldness around himself like a cloak and took his time. Smoothed out the lapels. Tugged the uniform jacket back in place. Put a smoke between his teeth. Lit it.

"I'm sorry."

Shizuku watched it all, and the raw anger in his eyes made the air curl tightly around him like explosive gas. Shiro turned to leave, and hated himself.

"G'nite."

"Just walk away, coward", he growled bitterly at himself. "And let's see if you can ever look yourself in the mirror again."

"Keep telling ye'self ye're fine, ye liar!" Shizuku's snarl echoed through the still evening, through the trees; through the cold detachment. "That's the kind a' pent-up stuff that makes demons fancy ya – ye might wanna deal with that!"

He did deal with it: at the target practice range. That evening, he beat Natsuya's high score on unlimited mode.