Lost in Paradise

by Experimental

Follows Damaged and Gone to Earth. On the surface, it's return to status quo for Enma-cho, but nothing is the same. Tsuzuki is still missing, for certain in Muraki's clutches. And this time Hisoka isn't sure the damage he caused is something anyone, least of all he, can fix. Though he will try, even if it costs him his existence.

35. Good enough

From the outside, the facade of the Hall of Judgment stood mostly undamaged.

A few meters inside, however, and it was almost unrecognizable. Entire storeys looked as though they had been picked up and dropped on top of those below them. In other places, the floors were broken and uplifted as if from a violent earthquake. Though, with Genbu roaming about, there was no "as if" about it; he was all the latent energy in the Earth's crust personified.

Navigating the mess, avoiding being scratched or electrocuted by hanging wires, was tricky; but so long as they were headed toward the center of the structure, Hisoka was not concerned.

"Stop where you are!"

The three shinigami froze as boar-headed guards surrounded them. Terazuma raised his hands, letting his gun hang in his loose grip, and Hanako lowered her bow with its nocked arrow.

Hisoka wasn't about to drop his sword, however, and not just because it was a physical part of him. He had to hope that his nonthreatening stance would be signal enough to the guards that he meant them no ill will. Though he couldn't be sure these demons—after all they'd been through tonight—wouldn't use their spears and man-catchers on the three shinigami just to make an example of them, or hedge their bets.

"Kurosaki. Why am I not surprised to see you here?" Gozu, Enma's ox-headed captain of the guard, snorted and crossed his meaty arms over his chest. "You three go no further. Until we have the situation under control, no one is to enter the Hall of Judgment."

"You're shitting me, right?" Terazuma yelled back at him. "Just how are you proposing to get Sohryuu, of all things, under your control?!"

"That is none of your concern. If you refuse to comply, I will have no choice but to place the lot of you under arrest."

No good. If Gozu was acting under Enma's command, it meant their king already had a plan for dealing with Tsuzuki. And why wouldn't he? After Sargatanas, and then the Kyoto case, Enma would be a fool to risk Tsuzuki or any other shinigami going on another rampage without some defensive protocol in place. If I don't get to him first, Hisoka telegraphed to Terazuma, Tsuzuki's as good as dead.

He heard the former detective growl beside him. "Damn it. . . . Don't ever tell Tsuzuki I did this for him!"

And before any of the guards could spring into action, Terazuma lowered his pistol and started shooting.

That was Hanako's cue to join in as well. She wasted no time asking what Terazuma was up to, just raised her bow and fired. The two failed to hit any of their targets—but that must have been the point. Force their foe to either take cover or focus all their energies on restraining the two shinigami who posed the clear and present threat.

And in so doing, provide just the distraction Hisoka needed to get himself on the other side of Gozu and that barricade. When Gozu grabbed his trident and moved to head Hisoka off, the bullet whizzing close enough to his muzzle to ping off his nose ring stopped him short. He turned to bark orders at his men to "Take those two down now—by force, if you must!" Hisoka just hoped Terazuma and Hanako would forgive him that he didn't slow down to thank the two of them, didn't even look back.

But he hadn't asked them to come with him. They had volunteered, just as they'd volunteered this distraction. They understood what was at stake. And Hisoka couldn't let the wounds they suffered as a result of his determination be suffered in vain. He disappeared down the broken hallway, where he hoped there would be no one to stand between him and Tsuzuki.

No one, that was, besides four of the most powerful shikigami to ever come out of Gensoukai.

Hisoka skidded to a halt as the floor in front of him ended in twisted rebar and a sickening drop. The rest of the hallway was gone, the whole storey opening up to an event horizon where the four guardians of the cardinal directions circled around their master.

It was Sohryuu Hisoka feared most of the Four, and not just for the dragon's awesome size. Hisoka could still recall the threat the Blue Dragon had made him, that he could make Hisoka's blood flow backwards in his veins with a thought if he so chose. Sohryuu wouldn't hesitate to make good on that threat now, with Tsuzuki to protect at all costs. No doubt he would even take pleasure in causing Hisoka pain; the dragon had made no secret of his hatred and suspicion of him.

Well, Hisoka had to concede that Sohryuu had been right about one thing: Hewasdestined to be Sohryuu's enemy. Just not for the reason the dragon had predicted.

Staring up at that circling monster, Hisoka said to Kurikara, "Think you could occupy Sohryuu long enough to keep him off me?"

Hisoka could feel Kurikara's grin in his mind. His eagerness to be set loose upon his old nemesis. "I believe I should still be a match for him."

With Hisoka's permission, Kurikara's qi left the Sword of Night, expanding and rising in a pillar of flame that soon took on the appearance and mass of the fully-formed Dragon King.

When Sohryuu saw it, he immediately went in for the first strike. Steam hissed in the sky above as Water clashed against Fire, claw to claw and tooth to tooth, their sinuous forms entangling until the two became a spinning maelstrom against the sky.

One down. But that left three still standing between him and Tsuzuki. Hisoka still wasn't sure what Genbu and Byakko would do when they saw him, but he was certain that, whatever love she may have professed for Hisoka, Suzaku wasn't going to let him get anywhere near Tsuzuki. Not if she could help it.

"Rikugou."

The sunbird snapped to attention as it waited its turn from what remained of the roof.

"How big an area can you stop time for? Could you freeze everyone down there except for myself and Tsuzuki?"

Rikugou hesitated, but only to be sure of his answer. "Five shikigami, and two of them dragons? I may only be able to slow them down, and I can't say for certain for how long."

That was better than nothing. "If you can't get everyone, concentrate on the three down below." Slowing Suzaku to a crawl might just give Hisoka enough of an opening to reach Tsuzuki's side. She wouldn't hurt her own master, not even if he ordered her to, so she couldn't touch Hisoka then. "But not before my signal. I want you at full strength the moment I need you."

This is suicide, Yatonokami, his sword form reabsorbed into Hisoka's body, put in his two yen. Do not forget there are two of us in here, at least one of which is not so eager to cease to be.

Not that Hisoka needed reminding of that possibility. It wasn't even just Tsuzuki's shikigami he had to worry about. For his part in this, Enma might decide to err on the side of caution and obliterate Hisoka's soul, too. As he began to pick a path down the side of the crater to the ground below, Hisoka's heart felt like it would beat up out of his throat with fear.

But he had to try. Before anyone else had a chance to arrive, and try to stop him.

"TSUZUKI!"

Through the cyclone of wind and fire and earth and his own raging thoughts, Tsuzuki looked up at the sound of that voice. "Hisoka?" This wasn't how things were supposed to go! He's not supposed to be here!

But there Hisoka was, just visible through the veil of Suzaku's swirling flames—sliding down or leaping across the broken slabs of concrete and granite as quickly as his feet would carry him. Tsuzuki would have been lying if he said his heart didn't warm to see Hisoka's dedication in reaching him.

But the feeling soured with the memory of the last time they had seen each other face-to-face, just hours ago. Tsuzuki wasn't ready to face Hisoka, not after what he'd done to him. And he really didn't want Hisoka to see him like this, at the lowest of his lows.

"Get out of here!" Tsuzuki shouted back at him at the top of his lungs. "This is between me and Enma! I don't want you anywhere near here!"

"Why, so you can blow yourself all to hell without a witness?!"

"Please. Just go. I don't want to hurt you any more." Tsuzuki knew it didn't matter if he made his voice heard over the inferno. Hisoka would hear him in his soul.

Just as Hisoka could feel everything Tsuzuki felt. Tsuzuki was beyond hiding it from him now. A thousand Swords of Night impaled him from every side—one for every soul he had taken, one for every life he had ended, either because he'd been told to or just couldn't help himself. God, how it ached. The guilt and self-loathing were almost impossible to bear.

But Hisoka had to bear it. He could not shut himself off from Tsuzuki now. Just seeing Tsuzuki's anguish, the tattered tuxedo he still wore, and the trauma of earlier that night threatened to stop Hisoka from going any nearer. If Hisoka thought about it for even a moment, he could still feel Tsuzuki's hands on his body, on his skin, holding him down, and his heart leaped into his throat, on the brink of panic.

So Hisoka couldn't think about it. Not right now. He had an eternity to heal from what wounds Tsuzuki had opened within him tonight. At any moment Gozu and his men might catch up with Hisoka and hold him back, and then this one chance he had to stop the inevitable would be lost forever.

"You say you don't want to hurt me—but can't you see that's exactly what you're doing?!" Hisoka railed back. "How do you think I feel, Tsuzuki, watching you destroy yourself and everything around you like this?! You're my partner. And this is my home—our home! Think about all the people here who care about you. Don't you think what you're doing now is hurting Chief Konoe? And Tatsumi?"

Like it or not, Tsuzuki had to face that! This was where the people who loved him were. How many decades did he have to endure before he allowed himself to acknowledge that?

But Tsuzuki shook his head. If anything, Hisoka's words only confirmed that he was making the right choice. "They're better off without me. And they all know it. When I'm gone—you'll understand, too. When you're done missing me, you'll wish I'd done this decades ago. You'll wish I'd spared you from ever knowing me."

He has a point, Yatonokami mumbled.

But Hisoka couldn't believe that. He refused to believe it.

"You want me to let you go so badly—fine! I'll let you go. If you really think that will put an end to your suffering. But what about my suffering, Tsuzuki?" Hisoka's voice broke, torn between his anger and the fear that nothing he said was working. "How can you think it doesn't kill me to see you do this to yourself, over and over again?! What makes you think you alone have the right to decide to throw it all away?!"

"You wouldn't understand—"

"THEN MAKE ME UNDERSTAND!" For fuck's sake, Tsuzuki, I'm an empath! If you won't even let me in, what hope for us is there?

But Tsuzuki was deflecting again. Hisoka could feel him slipping away. Grasping desperately for the arguments that had always given him the most comfortable discomfort—arguments of pure emotion. Anger, betrayal, the misery of guilt and self-hatred. Always with the guilt and self-hate—the cancer that never stopped gnawing his bones. Even in those brief moments he and Hisoka had had fun together—those times they had just been happy to share one another's company, that cancer was there. Reminding Tsuzuki he wasn't worthy of such happiness.

"How could you possibly understand?" he sobbed, clutching at his shirt, if he could not reach the hurting inside himself. "It doesn't matter what I do, all I ever do is cause you pain and suffering. If I kill myself, you suffer. If I stay, you suffer. I didn't even have to know you to hurt you. I'm the reason Muraki exists. If not for me, you'd still be alive."

Not this again. It wouldn't be living, Hisoka wanted to shout back, but the words stuck in his throat. Even now, he was afraid to tell the truth.

"You deserve better than me, Hisoka. You all do. You deserve a partner that's more than half-human, not this demon-spawn abomination that curses everything I touch."

"You being half-demon has nothing to do—"

"I'm a plague! I'm a weapon! Muraki was right. All I'm good for is making everyone around me miserable."

No. Hisoka shook his head as Tsuzuki's memory of the assault threatened to overwhelm him. That isn't all you're good for. That wasn't all of it. They weren't just their worst moments. You made me happy, too. The best years of my existence have been the ones spent with you.

Even if Hisoka couldn't dredge those words up high enough to say them, he could make Tsuzuki feel how wrong he was. His feet took him forward—

But Tsuzuki's self-pity became a physical force in its own right. Suzaku responded to her master's distress as if to an explicit command. She flew at Hisoka with a scream, her claws bared.

Hisoka flinched back. Rikugou!

Now.

And Rikugou's wings and tail outstretched even Suzaku's, expanding and arching over the crater like a rainbow shadow. Suzaku slowed and seemed to stop in mid-swoop, her flames that a moment ago had been licking along the drafts of Byakko's whirlwind frozen in tendrils of radiant red and gold plasma. Byakko became a roaring statue surrounded by visible shockwaves of wind. Genbu's destruction was halted in mid-stomp, chunks of concrete suspended like snowflakes in the air. Even Sohryuu and Kurikara's spinning seemed to slow to a gentle spiral. Each shikigami had become a near-stationary figure in a magnificent diorama of destruction.

It was such a beautiful sight, it actually hurt Tsuzuki's heart to look at. Rikugou, he cursed his old shiki in his mind, you traitor. Was there nothing Tsuzuki could do to make this night go according to his plans?

He tried to reach out to his Four with his thoughts, urge them to fight back against Rikugou's power, just move, damn it—but to no avail. It was like being drugged with Muraki's poison all over again, only it was the world around him that wouldn't respond to his commands. For all Tsuzuki raged, for all he suffered, he could do nothing.

Now was Hisoka's chance. He wasn't going to get another like it. He raced toward Tsuzuki, dodging Suzaku's beak and feet.

But her flames still encircled Tsuzuki, a protective bubble of plasma. Even at a near standstill, Hisoka could feel the searing heat of them. As far as he could see, there was no break in them large enough for him to pass through unscathed. But Hisoka had to get inside that bubble. He had to show Tsuzuki the truth, somehow.

Maybe there was a way to do both at the same time. In order to pull it off, Hisoka would have to become as tempered as the Sword of Night. If Yatonokami really cared about his own preservation, surely he would do his part. . . .

When Tsuzuki saw what Hisoka intended to do, he panicked. "No, wait—Hisoka, don't! Stop!"

But there was nothing he could do to stop it. He couldn't stand to get near Suzaku's flames himself, let alone freeze Hisoka in his tracks as Rikugou could. Only watch helplessly, heart in his throat, as Hisoka put his arms up in front of his face and stepped into the fire.

It was almost so hot it was cold. Hisoka hardly felt the flames licking at his skin at first—until that skin started to blister under his melted clothes and peel away, and Suzaku's fire touched the raw flesh beneath. Hisoka wanted to scream. He wanted to leap back, out of harm's way, but instead he bore down on the pain, let it fuel his defiance and kept pushing through. Along with the flesh the fire burned away the marks of Muraki's curse from his arms. This, like that curse, was just a different kind of pain to endure.

When he was through the fire at last, Hisoka had no way of knowing just how bad the damage was. Did he still have a face? Hair? He couldn't bear to look down at his own body and see the rest for himself.

But he knew by the confusion in Tsuzuki's horrified expression that he must have seen the marks of Yatonokami emerging from underneath. The slick black scales that sheathed Hisoka's vitals just below the skin, and the radium-green glow of his irises. Tsuzuki had been terrified that Hisoka would disintegrate before his eyes. He couldn't be sure this wasn't worse.

Hisoka wanted to assure him that it was alright. He wanted to take Tsuzuki's hands and make him touch his ruined face, feel the smoothness of the scales underneath, see that that touch didn't hurt him. Not anymore. Hisoka wanted to force Tsuzuki to understand him, to love him for what he was, hoping maybe, just maybe, in doing so, Tsuzuki might find a reason to stop hating himself.

But when Hisoka came within arm's reach, Tsuzuki quickly stepped back.

"Look at me, Tsuzuki!" Hisoka commanded him. "This is what I really am! I'm the offspring of a snake god and his human captives. Do you still think I can't understand what it's like to be born a monster? To feel like you're cursed? To wake up every day knowing that everything I was raised to believe about myself was a lie?"

Pity was what he received back, more than revulsion or fear. Pity, and more guilt. Hisoka wanted to blast them away.

"You didn't do this to me. Okay? You didn't. Because I've never been fully human. Yatonokami made me in his image, to do his evil—"

"But you've resisted him! Haven't you? Don't you get it, Hisoka? That's the difference between you and me. You're strong enough to rise above your nature, but I'm not! You think I want to die because I hate destroying everything around me? I love it! This monster inside of me can't get enough of it. It will never have enough—that's the problem!"

Hisoka couldn't believe that. He heard the desperation behind Tsuzuki's words, felt it squeezing his own heart. Like a lost and confused child, shrunk down into itself, who saw any hand reaching out to it as sinister, not to be trusted.

"You felt it yourself, when I tried to . . . force myself on you." Revulsion pulled Tsuzuki's face into a grimace, but under the play of those flames it warped into a sadistic grin. "I would have, too, if you hadn't escaped—"

"It doesn't matter." This was just another mask, another bullshit part for Tsuzuki to play to convince himself he was beyond help—to justify his self-destruction. Hisoka wasn't going to fall for it.

"Of course it matters! I was going to do to you what Muraki did—because we're the same, he and I," Tsuzuki sobbed, laughed. "Just the same. How can you possibly believe you can fix a thing like him? Like me? Just give up, Hisoka. Save yourself. And your energy. I'm just too broken."

No. Suddenly Hisoka saw. You're not. Not yet!

He dashed forward, and before Tsuzuki could dodge him again, seized Tsuzuki around the middle and held him tight. Tight as the serpent within Hisoka could manage, so Tsuzuki couldn't escape him—couldn't escape the emotion that Hisoka poured into Tsuzuki like water into a cracked vessel, hoping the force would be too much to withstand. Hoping Tsuzuki would shatter from the pressure. As Keijou had shattered Hisoka in his final moments of consciousness.

"I forgive you," Hisoka whispered into Tsuzuki's chest, but he screamed it with his soul. Let it erupt from within him like a supernova, obliterating Tsuzuki's defenses, his pretenses, along with it. I can't forget what you did. I can't erase the pain you've given me. I'm not sure I would want to.

But I can understand.

I understand why you did it. I understand why you're doing this right now, and how you feel. Because I know you. I know your heart.

I know what you are. And in spite of it—because of it—I love you.

It doesn't matter if you think you don't deserve it. It's still true.

"I forgive you."

And the final barriers crumbled beneath Hisoka's fingertips.

"I forgive you."

And Tsuzuki's naked soul shuddered in Hisoka's embrace, releasing all the fight still in it until there was nothing left to do but surrender.

Slowly, Hisoka felt Tsuzuki's arms encircle him.

But with his touch, the sting of Hisoka's burns rushed back over him like a wave of fire, and the roar of Suzaku's flames deafened him, bright white light blinding him. Rikugou's time must be up. There was nothing more Hisoka could do now—and no way of knowing if his gamble had succeeded or failed.

He reached for Tsuzuki with his thoughts, with his soul, but couldn't find him, couldn't feel him in his arms. Couldn't feel himself, not even the peeling away of his own flesh. A moment of panic.

Then, a realization: This was true Peace.

Don't fight it. There was no desire to. There was no point.

There was nothing.

---

Hisoka opened his eyes.

The first thing he registered was that he was whole, undamaged.

The second: that he was alone in a dim chamber, standing on a floor of smooth black onyx that was definitely not ruined. It was just like that room within his dream—the one he was afraid to enter, afraid that what he found would be too awesome, too terrifying to withstand.

And now he was there. He was afraid to speak, afraid to even breathe for fear it would echo loudly and give his presence away. But even just thinking to himself What is this place? was enough to make his head ring like a struck gong.

"Somewhere we can speak at length. Somewhere that exists without space or time."

Hisoka heard the soft footsteps approaching long before he saw the speaker. He turned and turned, but the owner of that voice eluded him.

Until suddenly he was there. Standing right in front of Hisoka.

Enma. Hisoka had never seen him in the flesh, but he knew instantly that this man was his King. The fine silk robes of visceral red, the long blacker-than-black hair and deathly pallor. The way he moved like the whole weight of the world lay across his shoulders. . . .

He smiled when he knew that Hisoka recognized him. You're in my mind.

"Speak normally, young Kurosaki. It will make it easier for us to converse as I hope we can. Like equals."

Equals. Enma had to be joking. As if it weren't surreal enough that Hisoka was having this tête-à-tête with a god—and not the shikigami nor even the Yatonokami sort. The ancient Judge of the Dead himself, who looked as though he could be no older than thirty and spoke in a soft voice—albeit one that had been around long enough to be tired of speaking. Hisoka didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. What did one say to their Lord, anyway?

"I suppose some sort of congratulations are in order," Enma said. "After all, you have managed to accomplish in a mere six years and change what Tsuzuki could not in seventy-five."

"Tsuzuki." If this was all in Hisoka's mind, then did that mean his body was still with Tsuzuki within that maelstrom of shikigami? His heart leaped in sudden panic. "What's happened to Tsuzuki? Have you done something to him?"

"Have I let him go, you mean?"

Let him go. A fancy way of saying annihilated. Hisoka swallowed down the words he could not say.

But he need not have worried. Enma slowly shook his head. "Alas, I cannot allow him the dissolution he seeks—"

"Why? Because he hasn't earned it?" Not that Hisoka wanted to wake from this and find Tsuzuki gone, but he could understand Tsuzuki's desire for nothingness—could feel it as if it were his own. "You don't think you've made him suffer enough? You know that's what his sentence is to him!"

"Do you want me to destroy him? Is that what you want, Kurosaki, for him to be no more? Do you think your existence would be easier without him in it?"

Hisoka clamped down on his thoughts, lest they give anything away. There were times in the last several hours when what he had wanted was to never have to face Tsuzuki again. And there were times when love had made him simply want what would cause Tsuzuki the least pain, even if that should be to not exist.

But Hisoka was selfish, too. He was only that human. And even holding his feelings close to his heart, Enma must have read the conflict on his face.

"I will not grant Tsuzuki the end he desires," Enma calmly explained, as though to reassure a child—which, indeed, was what Hisoka was to him, "so long as he remains useful to me. To throw him away would be like . . . like throwing away a magnificent sword when you're surrounded by enemies. Foolish. Despite the trouble he sometimes is to me, he is an individual the like of which I know I am not likely to encounter again. The rare circumstances of his birth are what make him so.

"Yes, I know Tsuzuki is the Count's child," Enma said before Hisoka could begin to evade or deny it. "I have known that since the day he appeared before me as a castoff soul to be judged. He had no knowledge of the identity or nature of his father, of course, beyond some mistaken notion that he was cursed, and the Count himself refused to confess the truth before me, even in his thoughts. But I could see in young Tsuzuki the markers of a divine being—"

"Divine—?" Hisoka said before he could catch himself.

Enma laughed. A pleasant sound, like a trickling stream—not at all like how it sounded from the other side of his mirror. "You thought I would say a demon? But are they not just two words for the same thing? That snake that resides inside of you—it may be evil, but is it not a god? Have I not been called a demon in my own time? By my own subjects, no less?"

Of course. "Of course you knew." And it was an immeasurable relief, to know Hisoka no longer needed to hide that part of himself. Though he may still suffer the consequences of calling the Yatonokami forth, Hisoka was surprised to find in the moment that he did not fear them. The peace of Enma's presence had that effect. As well as knowing that whatever sentence Enma passed on him now was entirely out of Hisoka's hands.

"About Yatonokami's creation of you? I learned of it upon your death, at your judgment. The creature confessed it to me himself, from within his dream-state. Though I had my suspicions, given your family's history. And . . . the prolonged nature of your demise."

If Hisoka's mind was an open book to Enma, then the reverse was also true. His words took Hisoka back, to a period of three years he remembered only as a past nightmare—or, perhaps, had willfully blocked from his memory. Hisoka saw himself from outside himself—the only way he could withstand the pain he had been in then, every waking moment. The hospital bed that had also been his bier, the lonely room, the odors of a death that would not come. The parade of doctors who shook their heads in bewilderment.

It brought back a question that had been nagging Hisoka ever since becoming an officer of Summons, but that he had pushed to the back of his mind so that he could focus all his energies on exacting revenge. Now that Hisoka had been given this priceless opportunity, he seized it.

"Why didn't you ever send anyone to collect me?" he asked Enma. "Or at least investigate! You must have known—you must have had some sense that there was something wrong with my soul when it took me three years to die! Don't you think death would have been a mercy to me? Don't you think I would have welcomed an end to it?!"

But Hisoka knew the answer as soon as he asked the question. And it pissed him off. "You did send someone." He saw a man in a dark trench coat and hat standing beside his hospital bed. . . .

No. That was just an illusion of a shinigami, conjured up from stereotype. Hisoka, the bystander in his own memory, looked closer, and saw that the man in that hospital room with him was the one standing before him now.

The despair Hisoka had felt in those years washed over him afresh and nearly brought him to his knees. "Why?" he sobbed. "Why did you leave me to suffer like that?"

"Even then I sensed something powerful in you, something more than human. Something that desperately wanted to survive. It was necessary I keep my distance, to see whose will would triumph."

Had he done the same to Tsuzuki, seventy-five years ago? Had Enma stood at his bedside as well, and watched, unhelping, through each failed suicide attempt?

"So. I was a bet you made with yourself." And Tsuzuki? Is that what he was too? "Everything Muraki put me through, all that excruciating pain . . . You could have helped me. But instead you were testing me? And all the cases you put us on—making me face Muraki time and time again when you knew it was torture for me? Was it all just some sort of punishment—my penance, for being what I am? As if I had a choice in what Yatonokami made me?"

"No," Enma said. "If it seems so it is only because you do not yet see the larger design."

"We're just pawns in your schemes, then. Forgive me if my mortal mind fails to grasp the grand scope of them—"

"Kurosaki Hisoka."

And there was the commanding voice Hisoka remembered hearing in the throne room. It reached down into his core and stopped his sarcasm in his throat, as effectively as Rikugou stopped time.

"The cases you were given," Enma said, "the cases all of you are given, are not given to punish you, but to ensure that everything works out the way it should. Whether you endure the pain they cause is entirely up to you. If you find the work of a shinigami to be easy, perhaps you should not be trusted with the responsibility. You knew this when you volunteered for the job.

"We must all endure," Enma added in a smaller voice, as if suddenly he were in another room. "Or cease. That is simply the way of existence."

With a wave of his hand, he conjured a slowly-turning sphere in the space between them. At first it appeared to Hisoka like a colorless, lightless void, a black hole; but as Enma twisted his wrist, something began to develop just below its surface.

"I myself have endured for so long," he said to it as much as to Hisoka, "that I can no longer count the years. Even a god grows weary of being. The constant weighing of every individual's sins. But the cycle of rebirth is not an option for the likes of myself. I would like one day to retire from Judgment—to find solace in nonbeing as is the only rest for creatures like me. But I know that if I were ever to leave Meifu, I would be leaving it for good."

Hisoka could feel the exhaustion in Enma's words as he spoke. It was only a taste, but Tsuzuki's own soul-weariness paled in comparison. He did not envy Enma his burden. But something about the idea of a Judgment Bureau without him filled Hisoka with dread.

"Naturally," Enma went on, "the question of what will become of the Judgment Bureau when I'm gone has kept me awake at night for centuries. Which is why, for some time now, the souls of the dead have not been judged solely by myself, or by my ministers, but by human bureaucrats utilizing objective data."

"Humans judging humans. . . . You're referring to the Mother Project?"

"Then Watari did tell you about that." That brought a small, brief smile to Enma's lips. "Call it my insurance policy. My vision for the future of this place. For almost two decades the project's directors have been working behind the scenes to fine-tune the process that will eventually supplant me. In the meantime, my position remains an essential one. This business with Todoroki has only further demonstrated why the Judgment Bureau still requires a figurehead, one whose authority is beyond questioning, to lend the necessary legitimacy to the judgments this office passes down. One day I should like to be able to leave the Judgment Bureau entirely in human hands, but I fear humanity may not advance quickly enough to earn that privilege for several more centuries.

"So I devised the idea of a stopgap. Or perhaps a stepping stone is a more fitting metaphor. I would install in my place a successor, one who is human in all the ways that matter to the dead, but possessing of the natural authority and powers bestowed on him by a divine progenitor."

"Tsuzuki." Of course. Hisoka could see it now. "That's why you refuse to let him go. You want to make Tsuzuki your heir."

But even as he said it, Hisoka could see the flaws in the plan. As if he could see the words Enma was going to say before they reached his lips.

"That was my hope," Enma confirmed. "At first. But I think you will agree that Tsuzuki has proven himself too unstable a candidate for such a vital position. I still believe he would make a fine champion, a loyal defender of this realm—if given the time and the proper guidance—"

Which is where I come in, Hisoka thought. You want us to renew our bond. He hoped that was where Enma intended to leave it, even as he knew it was not.

"What is needed is someone with a particular skill," Enma said, "a trait without which no one can be truly worthy to judge the dead."

Hisoka's heart hammered in his chest. Don't say it.

"A trait you and I share, Kurosaki."

"Empathy." The word felt dragged from Hisoka's core.

"Yes. Empathy. It is the only true source of mercy in this world. If I seem a cold and dispassionate god, it is only because I have been everyone. Only when you have peered into a man's soul, taken the burden of his loss and regrets on to yourself, can you say with certainty what fate he deserves.

"And it is an incredible burden, Kurosaki, one I would not ask anyone to shoulder lightly. If you think the anger and hatred you have carried with you this past decade are heavy, they are nothing compared to the overwhelming, suffocating weight of love. But I don't think I really need to tell you that."

And Hisoka did not doubt the truth of what Enma spoke. It wasn't just the love Hisoka felt for Tsuzuki, despite all his partner's faults. The cases he and Tsuzuki had investigated together, the poor souls whose burden Hisoka had taken on himself either willingly or un-, just in trying to understand where they were coming from. . . . Already it felt like a lifetime's worth, but it was just a drop in the bucket compared to the number of souls Enma had processed in his reign.

Never again did Hisoka think he could criticize Enma's judgment, or speak lightly of it, having some idea of what his King's daily existence was like. And now Enma was asking him to take up that mantle?

Hisoka's eye was drawn back to the sphere that floated in space between them, and he saw that it had become a perfect replica in miniature of the Earth.

This was what he was really being offered. The authority over the fate of humanity that Muraki had longed for, and Tsuzuki had longed to destroy. If Hisoka knew anything with certainty it was that he did not want it.

Feeling Hisoka's terror at the prospect, his anxiety, Enma projected calm. "You have time yet to think about my offer. It may be a century before I am ready to pass the proverbial torch to my successor."

"You think I'll still be around in a century?" After all, most shinigami wiped out after a few decades. Even Tsuzuki probably would have, if he'd been given the option.

Enma chuckled lightly, but it belied the gravity underneath. "No one can say for certain. I doubt even your friend Rikugou could read that far into the future. What I do know is your soul. The resilience of it. And the sense of duty to which you feel called, even when the burden feels too much to bear. Always you find a way to bear it."

He turned then, leaving the globe slowly spinning behind him, and too quickly began to be subsumed by the shadows that pervaded the chamber.

It was too much. Enma could not simply drop that bomb on Hisoka and leave him again, return Hisoka to the real world, with so much left unexplained.

"Wait!"

Enma stopped, and turned his head slightly, but that was all. Hisoka ought to have been ashamed to command a god, but—no, I deserve this much, he told himself. Enma had dragged him into this. The least he owed Hisoka were answers to his questions.

"You said I achieved something Tsuzuki hasn't been able to," Hisoka said, hoping that if he only knew to what Enma referred, he might be able to help Tsuzuki when he returned to consciousness.

"Surely you know what that is."

But the fact that Hisoka felt the need to ask should have been proof enough that he did not.

Thankfully, Enma relented. "You have learned to forgive yourself," he said, "for simply being what you are," before fading to black and sinking Hisoka down in dreamless, healing sleep.