We stayed in our tent for nearly five days. The storm that blew in was so strong, snow kept piling up and crushing the tent. I had to go out and clear it almost every three hours or so. Kanda's leg healed at a phenomenally fast rate, going from 'side of beef' to 'almost human' to 'looking like a leg' in about three days. I admit, I'd looked at him a little funny, but it only took him a single glare to dissuade me from asking questions.

He'd been largely silent after our first conversation the night we'd come to the ice lake, and I was about to lose my mind in the silence. I wasn't one to keep my mouth shut for long periods of time, and I wasn't used to being without at least three or four people with me every minute of the day. Being alone with him was driving me up the wall. Luckily, I had plenty to do so I didn't wander off into the snow for stimulation and the sweet release of death. I'd cataloged our food about three times over, divided it up into rations seven times, counted the amount of silverware I had in the side pockets of my bag ten times, and folded all my clothes into my pack so neatly that I actually had extra room. Kanda, meanwhile, just sat there and meditated. For a while, I thought he might be dead considering he was sitting so still, but the rise and fall of his chest said otherwise.

Now, he was about ready to crack on the fifth day, though, because he suddenly started to teach me about strategy using rocks and his sword's sheath. That somehow devolved into us talking about rabbits and how they must be liquids, and eventually wandered into the subject of my family.

"Don't get me started on Lily. Lily... dear Lord in Heaven above help me, but if she isn't the very thing that turns my hair gray," I said, holding a very one-sided conversation.

Kanda tended to just grunt in affirmation that he'd heard me, though he did manage to keep me in sight rather than fall asleep or ignore me completely. I toyed with a rock, looking back over my shoulder at the door to the tent. The snow was piling up again. I hated having to go out and clear it away. I already had bandages all over my hands from cutting fingers on sharp bits of rock.

"What's it like to have family?" Kanda suddenly asked.

I looked at him, surprised. Of all the questions I would've expected him to ask... that definitely wasn't one of them. I licked my chapped lips before entering a coughing fit. After I recovered, I said, "Uh… crazy. Hectic. Tiring. Loving. An uphill battle. It's… a lot of things."

Kanda raised a single, sarcastic eyebrow. Yeah, he probably already knew that.

I scooted so that my back was to the wall of the tent, and I told him, "It's... chaotic and comforting all at the same time. We all share the same experiences, and we support each other to the end of the earth."

"Unless someone dies," Kanda muttered under his breath, and I chuckled morbidly.

"Or leaves. That, too. Families aren't perfect," I added.

Mother had been… less than picky. Each of my siblings had a different father, besides the twins for obvious reasons. My own father, her first husband, was lost in some expedition to his homeland Sweden, trapped in a squall, and every person after that left behind a child…

The thought sobering me, I grabbed my bag, and I dug around for my pocket watch. Mom had left each of us a little token - or, more like, we'd grabbed a token of hers and kept it. Violet had a hankie. The twins each had an earring with her silhouette. Lily kept a harmonica. Ava had a worn-out fan. Other people had other things, too, to remember Zelda by.

I popped open the pocket-watch, and he held out a hand for it. I looked at him like he was crazy.

"Are you joking? I'm not handing this to you," I stated bluntly.

This was one of my few, earthly prized possessions. It wasn't leaving my hands, not unless they were stiff with rigor mortis. He deadpanned at me and made a half-hearted grab for it, but I evaded it.

"You can look, but you can't touch," I warned with a matronly tone, almost out of habit.

How many times had I told that to my siblings the minute they walked into a china shop? More times than I could count. Reluctantly I turned the pocket-watch towards him.

"This is all of us. Before Ava," I explained.

From a small photograph, my family stared. I was only fourteen when we'd taken the picture, so Ava hadn't been born yet. As I stared at the picture, I almost forgot where I was, and I brought the pocket-watch closer to me, contemplating each and every face. The photograph was worn and scuffed on the edges, but each face was still clear. Violet had been so chubby as a child, and she actually wore decent clothes back then. The twins had looked so much more mischievous, too. Their hair was a mess, as always. Lily stood behind them, so much taller than the rest of us, pretty black hair in ringlets. My mother stood in the middle with a hand on my shoulder and the other hand on-

The picture had a hole in it where another person once stood. My hands shook as I felt tears prick my eyes. I hadn't realized just how badly I wanted to go back home. Though my family no longer worried about starving and everyone was clothed and mostly happy, I almost wished we could go back to those beggar days with my mother when we used hand-me-downs and lived in a two-room tenement. Everyone was together. Everything had been stable. All had been normal.

What I wouldn't give for normal.

A drop appeared on the clock face, and I stared in surprise. I wiped my face quickly, snapping the pocket watch shut. I sat there, staring into my lap at the burnished cover of the watch, running my thumb over it. I took a deep breath, clearing out my mind. There was no use getting upset.

"Family hurts."

I looked up, realizing I still had company. Kanda's face was blank as ever, stoic and unchanging, and I looked away, ashamed. I coughed into my elbow, using that as an excuse not to answer.

We were silent for the rest of the day, and we took turns sleeping as night fell.


My dreams were restless and uneasy, as always, but that night I dreamed of my family, one by one, going down trapdoors I knew led to nowhere. Each one looked oddly serene as I tried to scream at them, but they just disappeared down the holes in the ground, oblivious. It took me a long while to realize I was standing on a trapdoor myself, and before I vanished I sucked in a breath to scream.

I woke up at that moment, coughing in spasms. It felt like my lungs were taking a page out of my rebellious stomach's book and trying to secede from the rest of my body. I finally stopped, breathing deeply. Behind me, Kanda was muttering in his sleep, and he didn't sound like he was having such a good time of it, either. I wiggled my way out without waking him to catch my breath, and I was surprised to find his face under a sheen of sweat, his face contorted into a look of blatant pain and struggle. I rolled over on to my hip, and I started to shake him awake.

"Kanda... Kanda, wake up... Kanda -"

He moved so fast I didn't even have time to react. His sword was pressed against the bare skin of my throat, the metal so chillingly cold that the skin underneath immediately fell numb, and I stared in horror. A razor's edge was against my neck, and I suppressed the urge to swallow. Kanda was breathing heavily, eyes wide and panicky. Only after he realized who he was pointing the blade at, he put it down as he began to cough as well.

"Don't... do that..." I chattered, so stunned I didn't have room to be angry.

He sat up and rubbed his face with a single hand. For several awkward moments, we just sat there, both of us half in, half out of my sleeping bag. His own remained a sodden, wet mess that refused to dry, so we'd resorted to using mine for the past five nights, though it was comforting to have a warm body nearby. At this point, I hardly cared that it was his, as long as it was warm.

"What was all that about?" I asked, finally managing to find some spine.

Kanda shook his head, and he threw himself back down, obviously angry.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep," he demanded, and I felt indignant.

He wouldn't talk to me, would hardly acknowledge my presence, and when he did, it was usually done derisively. Sure, we'd had a few moments where we were civil for once, but the vast majority of the time he pretended that I didn't exist. More than anything, I'd put up with it for six days.

"No. I'm not going back to sleep. You just about killed me. I think I deserve to know what's going on," I stated, sounding whiny to my own ears.

Okay, so maybe I could've said that better. He hadn't meant to nearly decapitate me after all. Nevertheless, if he was a danger to me in his sleep, he could at least warn me first.

"Mag, I'm serious. Go back to sleep," he grumbled.

I threw my hands up in frustration, shrugging my shoulders.

"Why do I even bother? For all I know, it was about your terrible childhood. But do I care? Noooo. I'm just upset because I almost had my head cut off. No big deal or anything, just a small pet peeve of mine."

Suddenly, Kanda became very stiff, and he curled on his side, hanging on to his sword tightly, sheath and all, as if it were the only thing in his world. It took me another moment to realize that I'd touched a rather raw nerve. My eyes widened as I thought about how touchy he was concerning family and attachment...

What if... what if his family was dead? I'd never heard anyone talk about Kanda's family or friends or... anyone. All I knew was that he'd joined the Order young and that was where he'd stayed. It was entirely too possible that his entire family had been slaughtered, or that he'd been ripped away from them as a child. I should have known better. Feeling like a heel, I hesitantly extended a hand to touch his shoulder, but then I thought better of it.

"I-I didn't... mean -" I began.

"Forget it," Kanda mumbled, sounding very tired all of a sudden. At a loss, I bit my lip. Slowly, I touched his shoulder, ignoring the sensation of panic that jolted up my arm as my fingers made contact. He didn't respond. Sighing and closing my eyes, I rubbed a thumb over the fabric of his shirt.

"I shouldn't have said anything, shifu," I apologized.

At the beginning of our training he'd demanded that I treat him with the proper respect and refer to him as shifu, the word for "master", but I'd never taken him up on it. Usually I just called him by his last name or as Grouchface, though never right in front of him (seeing as that would be only a little rude, even if it was true). He stirred slightly, and I lay back down.

"Mag, who's Rose?"

My eyes popped back open. In my dream, she'd been there. Some part of me still counted her as... as family. I shivered, thinking about the dream, and the more I thought about it the more upset I became.

"Nobody," I answered back with exhaustion.

I guess one blow deserved another. There were a lot of things neither of us wanted to talk about, and we kept poking at those things with big sticks in the hopes that we'd get something out of it. Thinking back on where he must've heard it, I suddenly realized he must not be the only one who mutters in their sleep.

Kanda suddenly flipped over on to his back, and he stated, "We won't be getting sleep tonight."

"You can say that again," I muttered.


I woke up dazed. My head hurt, and I felt like my trachea had shrunk to the size of a straw. I was curiously warm, and to my horror I found an arm flung over me. The arm was connected to a shoulder which connected to a man I had spent seven days with in a tent. Talk about uncomfortable. Despite the odd position, I really didn't want to move. Not only was I warm, I was comfy. I'd taken painkillers from the first aid kit, and they'd done wonders for me so far. As silently and carefully as possible, I slipped out of my sleeping bag, wondering what just woke me up from a dead sleep. It had to be five in the morning. One glance at my pocket watch told me otherwise - it was four in the morning. That was just fantastic.

I found out what had woken me up soon enough. Kanda's golem fluttered against his bag strap, trying to free itself while beeping frantically. I picked it up, and it immediately began to buzz around my head.

"Accept transmission," I yawned, stretching out.

"Hello? Hey, anyone there? Kanda, Mag?"

I just about fell over as Lavi spoke. Of course, I don't know who else would've called us, but it was still a bit of a shocker.

"Y-yeah, this is Mag. Lavi, where are you?" I asked eagerly.

It was quiet as the transmission crackled, and he answered, "On the far north side of the mountain. What about you guys? Any idea?"

I tried to think of where exactly we must be, but I couldn't even figure my way out of the Order Headquarters, much less off a mountain. I'd have to ask Kanda, which meant... waking him up.

"Hang on a second, let me get the Fire Breathing Dragon to tell you," I muttered irritably.

Last night's little chat had been less than uplifting, and I still hated to think about the dream that I'd had. Despite this, I started to shake Kanda awake. It was a pity, really, seeing as he looked so much nicer asleep, but that was probably because he wasn't capable of glaring while unconscious.

"What? Get off of me," he grumbled, pulling a blanket over his head.

"Come on, now," I sighed. "Seriously, I need you to talk to Lavi."

"It can wait," he grumbled, turning over. "Let me sleep."

I stared at his half-asleep form, and I yanked on his ponytail lightly. He shoved me over with a single hand in retaliation without a second's hesitance. I sat up with a look that would do an Akuma proud, and I dumped part of my bottle of water over his head. That got him up.

"What is wrong with you?" he roared, finally in a sitting position.

As an answer, I shoved the golem towards him. It was less than happy to be pushed around, and it slapped my fingers with its wings. All of us had woken up on the wrong side of the bed, or, rather, sleeping bag.

"I see you two have cohabitated nicely," Lavi sniggered, and if I could've, I would've punched him through the air waves.

Sighing, I said, "He wants to know where we are. I honestly have no idea, other than 'up'."

Kanda scoffed, his usual response, and he wiped the water off his face. He was very much his old self by now, though his hair was a mess. He retied his ponytail, and he said, "We're on the northeast side. We'll have to meet."

"If I can find you first. How high up are you?"

Kanda pulled out a little compass from his backpack, and he answered back, "Almost 7500 meters. What about you?"

"The same, give or take a few. Either way, there's a point where both our paths converge, I think. I've been following your progress, but I haven't been able to get any transmissions out. It looks like I'm not far from you. We can meet at a flat slope at 7900 meters. You can't miss it," Lavi answered, his voice tinny through the golem's speakers.

I looked up at Kanda, glancing at his leg.

Kanda noticed, and he answered back, "Alright. We'll be there."

We disconnected, and I stared at Kanda.

"Can you hike on that?" I asked, glancing down. It finally resembled a leg, but I had no idea if it worked like a leg, too, by this point. Kanda sniffed at me, and I decided to take that as a yes.

Within an hour, we were climbing up a ridge we'd found. Kanda was making much more progress than I was, sad to say. Though he could heal up a leg that looked like someone'd put it through a wood chipper, my arm and my leg were still sore as the day they'd been chomped on. I was finding it difficult to climb, and at times Kanda had to just lift me with the rope. He suddenly scrambled up and over the ridge, and I groaned. I still had a good fifty feet of ice to climb. From my vantage point, fifty feet was beginning to look like five hundred.

"Hurry it up!" Kanda shouted down, and I looked up at him.

He was leaning over the rock face, fearless as usual. Or, rather than lacking fear, controlling it very, very well. I scrambled up several slabs of ice, barely finding anywhere to put my feet. Suddenly, Kanda cursed above me, and something clattered twenty feet below on a rock outcropping. I looked down, and I laughed with a slight hysterical edge.

He'd dropped his sword. Somehow, it'd come free of the sheath, and it was glistening down there, winking away. The wind swayed it slightly, but it looked like it was pretty well stuck. I was about to poke fun at him for being less careful, but his dark, nearly panicked expression made me rethink my lighthearted jab. My heartstrings tugged, and it occurred to me that he might be a little attached to that glorified razor blade. Against my better judgment, I shouted, "Hang on, I'll go and get it!"

As I back-climbed, I wondered at the sudden burst of charity. This was the guy who'd poked, pulled, stretched, and nearly obliterated what patience I had. I chalked it up to the fact that he was a person (if barely), and I could at least be nice.

Unfortunately, it was quite a way to the left of me, and I had to scoot to the ledge. I realized, suddenly, that there was nothing between me and the ledge that I could climb or hang on to. I looked up at Kanda, who was still connected to me via rope, and I shouted, "Can you swing me over to the other side? I can grab it and come back!"

"Too dangerous! I'll just go down and get it!" he shouted back, and I raised my eyebrows.

"Nah, it's fine! I trust you!"

He'd swung me and saved my life once, so I guess I could count on him to do it again.

It was quiet, and he finally shouted back, "Fine! Your funeral, not mine!"

I rolled my eyes, and I gripped the rope tight. Like I needed any more reminders that what I was doing was probably foolhardy and a little bit more than just dangerous. I tried desperately to remember not to look down.

Fear was something I could apparently control. All I had to do was turn off the portion of my brain labeled Self-Preservation and hope I could survive a few minutes without it.

"Ready!"

I pushed off my section of ledge, and I started the slow swing over to the sword. It winked at me in the little sunlight there was, and my fingers brushed it. It scrabbled down a bit, and I gritted my teeth.

"You knock that down, and I'll drop you!" Kanda shouted, and I sighed forcefully through my nose.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I swung again, and this time I got a better grip. It came free, and I held the blade carefully as I drifted backwards. I smiled as I realized that a plan of mine had actually worked, and I held up the sword to show him.

Suddenly, the rope twisted, and I was sent careening in a circle. I put out a hand to stop me as I flailed in panic, and I ended up pushing myself away from the wall. My arc took me back towards the rock face faster than I could correct myself, and I had all of a second to realize that I was about to smash into it before I felt a slicing sensation in my stomach. My face smashed into the rock, and I screamed as my face scraped against it.

I hung there for a few moments, breathing raggedly, before coughing. I yelped in pain, though, as a sharp, cutting agony went through my side, and I noticed that Kanda's sword was...

Oh… God.

The blade was stuck through my side, the handle winking in the light as blood dripped down the blade. Panicking, I shakily removed the sword with a short yelp, and I whimpered as tears began to dribble down my face, almost freezing instantly in the cold wind. My arms started to quiver, and I could feel hot, dripping blood stain my jacket as it gushed from some unseen wound.

"Hey, moron! I can't hold you forever!"

I couldn't answer back. Breathing was so painful that I had to suck in a breath and hold it for as long as possible before taking another breath. I was trying not to sob from pain, and I cradled the sword in my arms. I reached up to tug on the rope, but doing that stretched the gash, and I let a pained cry escape before bringing my arm back down. I didn't know how far the sword had gone, but I could tell I was losing blood fast from how cold I felt.

"Hey… Hey! What's going on down there? Answer me!"

I bit my lip as I reached up, ignoring the agony, and tugged the rope. Kanda seemed to take a year and a day to haul me back up. When I didn't crawl over the ledge, he grabbed the back of my belt and pack, and he hauled me over, both of us landing in the snow. I shivered, not even willing to move. My breathing was wet, and every single breath was absolute torture. I couldn't think through the pain, so I didn't even notice Kanda carrying me up the slope. All I could do was cling and try to breathe, no matter how bad it hurt.

"What did you do?" he seethed, and I answered haltingly, "Did... did some... thing... stu...pid..."

He limped to a cave-like shelter, and he set me down. Immediately, he lit the lantern, and I felt him undo my jacket. The wound was revealed to open air, and I openly sobbed in pain as he peeled my shirt off of it.

"You've sliced open your entire side... how did you do that?" Kanda muttered.

I thought he sounded awed and disgusted, but that could've just been me. I grabbed his hand suddenly as a spike of pain shot through me, and I realized abruptly that I was bleeding out so much that I was going to die. This wasn't the funny sort of way to die, either. Death was looming over me, waves of black overtaking my vision. It took all my will just to breath. My vision was beginning to fade in and out, and I realized that I was very, very scared.

"You must've pierced through your stomach and cut up your liver. It looks like you've just about disemboweled yourself. A samurai would've been proud," Kanda muttered to himself as he busied himself with opening a bottle of water from his pack.

He poured it over, and I vaguely realized I was screaming. The pain took over all thought. I knew nothing but the massive spike in my side. Kanda looked grim, and suddenly the pain started to dull. I knew better than to think that was some sort of medical magic - adrenaline was a pain reliever. At one point in time, I'd worked as a hospice nurse, and I'd watched enough people die there to know how it worked. They always said they felt better right before the end.

As I lay there the realization that I was going to die hit me full force. I'd never see my family again. I'd never see my pets. All my friends, my colleagues, would disappear from me. There were so many things I'd wanted to actually do, and some of them were kind of stupid. I wanted to know what it was like to eat waffles with chocolate. I wanted to know what it was like to swim in a river without fear. Most of all, I wanted to know what it was like to finally live normally, in an actual house without worrying about rent, about where I'd go next, about where my family was at all times, about what we'd eat or wear, or about who was lurking around the next corner. The fact that I was going to miss so much sent me shivering, and the fear of the massive void waiting beyond whatever point death was bringing me to slammed my mind to a halt.

"Kanda?"

"Hm."

His face swam in my vision as he inspected the wound, and I waved a hand at him, finally settling on his shoulder.

"...I'm scared."

My voice sounded pitifully tiny. I refused to close my eyes on the off-chance I couldn't open them again. I could hear the rush of my heartbeat in my ears, going far too fast. I'd already lost quite a bit of blood. There wasn't much left in me. I started to think about Violet, about how she'd witnessed one of our first pets, Snatches, die. He was a cat who'd been run over, and he laid there in her arms for nearly two hours before gasping his last. Violet tried to tell me that he was asleep, and I had to explain that he was dead. Violet was so stupidly, tragically optimistic.

I wondered if she would do the same with me. Try to say that I was only sleeping.

Suddenly, I was hoisted into his lap, and he was taking off a glove with his teeth while he cradled me with his other arm. I hissed in pain, and Kanda grabbed his sword with his free hand.

"Don't be scared. You're not going to die," Kanda muttered against my head as he put his sword in his other hand. I clung to his jacket, desperate to hold on to something. I didn't care that I was bleeding all over him.

He grabbed my hand, and he muttered, "You're freezing."

"We're on an ice-caked mountain and I've lost about five gallons of blood. Thank you, Captain Obvious," I stuttered, trying to keep some semblance of dignity despite gushing tears and snot. I buried my face into his jacket, shivering. It was incredibly cold. I didn't remember being this cold in my life. It felt like I was frozen solid. Everything was spinning.

"Stop wasting your breath," Kanda said, slicing open his free hand with the blade of his sword.

Blood spilled out of the wound as he cut it twice in an 'X'. I stared in fascination, and he told me, "You tell anyone I did this, and I'm going to tell them you were delirious."

He suddenly stuck his entire hand into the gash. I bucked and screamed, him holding me as tight as he could to keep me from flailing. After a few moments, he removed his hand from the wound, and I felt a peculiar itching sensation in my side. Soon the pain began to disappear, and I lay there against him, utterly exhausted.

"Next time you decide to do something nice, don't," he grumbled as he started to bind his hand up with a spare kerchief, still holding me.

I took several deep breaths, realizing that my side felt as if someone were stitching it up.

I tried to look, but he ordered, "Just lay there and wait. Don't move - I don't want you accidentally tearing something. It's still doing its work."

I just lay there, waiting as the agony slowly dissipated. I vaguely wondered if he'd only alleviated the pain with some magic voodoo thing, but then I realized that I was actually beginning to feel better. I blinked, frowning as I noticed that I was breathing easier.

"Here, stand up," Kanda said, hauling me up. Curiously, I stood on my feet with hardly a twinge, and I examined the tear in my shirt. There was no wound. There was just clear, new skin stretched over it, good as new. I looked up at him, incredulous and light headed, and I demanded with a cracking voice, "What did you just do to me?" That wasn't normal. In fact, that was the farthest thing from normal I could think of. His blood had healing properties?

"Tch. Obviously, you're perfectly fine. You're already asking stupid questions," Kanda grumbled. He started to leave, and I quickly moved to button my shirt and coat, my face hot in the wicked wind.

"You could do that before? How the heck... Why did you... KANDA!"


We hiked in silence to the check point Lavi had designated. We hadn't bothered to ask how many were with him. We'd kind of guessed that it was just him, himself, and... well, him. Lavi may be the friendliest of us, but that didn't mean he played well with others. It didn't take long for us to find him, seeing as we tripped over him.

"Holy - what is wrong with you!" I screeched at Lavi.

Kanda and I had gone one after the other over Lavi. I was pretty irate at this point, what with Kanda declining to tell me he was some sort of walking magic medic as well as the vast list of other things that currently displeased me. Landing face down in the snow on Mount Qogori was not what I'd call my lifelong dream.

Lavi stirred from the snow, having obviously somehow managed to fall asleep. The storm was clearing up now, and the sky was visible.

Lavi's hair stood out a mile against the landscape, and he blearily asked, "Say wha...? Oh! You guys are here!"

He brushed himself off and smiled that goofy grin as he trotted over to us. Kanda and I brushed ourselves off as he came over, and I wondered for a minute if Lavi was a narcoleptic. That was the only explanation for why he'd be napping underneath half a foot of snowfall.

"The light is up there, another thousand meters," Lavi stated, pointing to the very top. I groaned. At this rate, we'd probably make it by nightfall, and I didn't fancy going up at night.

"Where's Bookman?" Kanda asked, and Lavi pointed farther down the mountain with one gloved hand.

"He's waiting at the six thousand meter marker. We had some difficulties, especially with his breathing. He's decided to wait down there with the other guides, seeing as they're getting altitude sickness, too," Lavi said, and I noted that he looked a little sickly himself.

Something wasn't quite right about how he was talking either. His words were a little slurred.

Kanda must have noticed as well, because he said, "How fast did you go up? We stayed at seventy-five hundred meters for nearly seven days."

Lavi thought back, rubbing his good eye, and he stated, "Uh, went up about two thousand meters a day. There were a few problems, though, and I had to backtrack when I lost the trail I was using."

"Lavi, are you feeling okay?" I asked, coughing as I said so.

The mountain air was chilling me to the bone, and my previous brush with death had not helped with that situation. I knew that I'd start freaking out once we finally stopped for the night, but for now I was holding together pretty well for someone who'd just given Death a firm handshake. Lavi nodded, and he frowned.

"Why do you ask?"

Kanda and I looked at each other, and for a moment I was surprised at how well we'd managed to gauge each other's reactions. Of all the people I expected to have mental synergy with, it hadn't been him. Yet, I could definitely tell that I had in mind the same thing he did—Lavi taking the mountain at two thousand meters a day was not healthy in the least.

"We'll spend the night down here. My sleeping bag's mostly dry by now, so you can have yours back," Kanda stated, aiming the last bit to me.

Lavi raised his eyebrows at us, smiling mischievously, and I glared. The wind whipped my hair around, and I jabbed a finger.

"No funny business. If you say anything, we'll pull out the elephant poop incident," I warned, and Lavi put up his hands in an innocent gesture.

Kanda drove the point home with a swift point of his sword, not even bothering to say anything. We were both irate, and we were both taking it out on him, but man if it didn't feel good. We set up camp, but I found out my tent had a massive hole in it from Kanda's sword shearing straight through my side and into my backpack. It was a wonder that the contents hadn't just spilled out. My tight packing had kept the sword from damaging anything else, and for that I was thankful.

It was still bizarre to think that the blood on the slices in the tent was mine, though.

"Alright, who do I sleep with now?" I asked, throwing my hands in the air.

This getting very old, very fast. I just wanted to sleep in my own tent! Was that too much to ask for? I was tempted to sleep in the ruined one regardless of the hole. Sure, I'd freeze to death, but I'd get to keep some of my dignity!

Lavi poked his head out of his brightly colored tent to tell me, "You can sleep in mine! In fact, we can share a sleeping bag if you want! I make for a great heater!"

I chucked a snow ball at his head, but he ducked before it could make impact. The little tosser was fast.

"Funny, har dee har har," I grumbled.

It would take me quite a while to fix my tent, but I would manage. There was no way I was going to spend another day in someone else's living space.

The rest of the day was spent plotting our ascent to the top of the mountain. The plan was fairly simple. We'd take it at about a couple hundred feet every hour to try an ease us into that dangerous level. The air here was exceptionally thin, and breathing was subsequently getting more and more difficult. Lavi had said that if we tried to go up too fast, we'd develop pulmonary edema. In much simpler words, we'd choke to death on our own fluids. That didn't sound like the most dignified way to die. Lavi himself said that we should probably stay at our current location for another few days, more for him than anything else. Both Kanda and I agreed on that, perhaps the only thing we'd both agreed on this entire trip.

Night fell swiftly, and I tried to keep my thoughts from wandering back to my close call. Nevertheless, I remembered the fear all too well, and I was suddenly paralyzed. What would have happened if I'd been with anyone else besides Kanda? In that moment, I would have died and gone on to the next big thing. I believed in Heaven, but I also believed that it was a good thing to have a healthy dose of fear for whatever lay in wait behind the veil. I shivered, holding myself as I buried my face into the fur of my sleeping bag. I'd patched up my tent with a bit of ingenuity involving some sutures and a bit of clear nail varnish which had no business being in my bag, and now I felt exceedingly lonely. It was especially cold in my sleeping bag by myself. I'd grown accustomed to Kanda's odd, unnatural warmth, and now it felt oddly cool.

There was a rapping sound on the door of my tent, and I sat up. For a moment, I thought there was a Yeti outside my door from the looming shadow, but after a moment's inspection I realized it was a human figure. I sighed to myself as I unhooked the flap of my tent, and Lavi poked his head inside, hood and all.

"Can I come in? I'm getting buried out here," Lavi asked.

His teeth were chattering so hard I thought he'd need to go down the mountain to see a dentist about the worn off nubs. I gestured for him to come in, ignoring my very vocal stomach and instant paranoia. Lavi sat down, sprinkling a metric ton of snow everywhere, and I made a face as he sprayed me with it while trying to get it off of him.

He smiled and said, "Sorry. I didn't mean to get all your stuff wet."

I sighed in a long-suffering manner, and I closed up my tent as fast as I could before the snow could pile up on the inside.

"What did you want to talk about?" I asked, knowing he was curious about something.

He was always curious about something. He liked to shove his nose where it didn't belong. One day, that nose was going to get chopped off for it, too, and more than likely, Mugen would be doing the chopping.

"Well, I talked with Kanda, and he told me about your little, uh, mishap. I just wanted to make sure you were okay," Lavi stated.

I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously. What did he mean by 'make sure I was okay'? Was that some sort of excuse or something? I crossed my arms and gave him a sharp look.

He threw up his hands, and he sighed, "I don't have an ulterior motive. I know what it's like to almost die. It's not exactly a fun mental walk in the park."

Shifting on my sleeping bag, I bit my lip and considered his offer. I still had my doubts.

"What do you really want? Do you have a hole in your tent too?" I asked bluntly.

Lavi looked sheepish, grimacing with a shrug.

"Uh, actually, two of the poles broke, and now I'm sleeping inside of a flat sack instead of a tent," he admitted.

Ah, there was the problem. I knew it wasn't just to check up on me. My gut was never wrong.

"I knew it was more than just sentiment," I muttered wearily.

Lavi suddenly looked vaguely concerned, and he leaned forwards, asking, "Look, I'm serious, though. Are you really okay? Coming that close to death is a scary thing. Especially after being treated by a guy like Kanda. I love him and all, but he has all the therapeutic ability of a heart attack."

I snickered. I had to agree with that. Kanda was not exactly counselor material.

I took a deep breath, and I answered, "I'm... shaken. It kind of hit home that I, uh... I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of and that I have a lot of things I'm not done with yet, either."

Lavi put his chin on his knee, and he asked, "Like what?"

I looked down at my hands, thinking about it.

"I still have five kids to raise," I mumbled, looking up. "I... can't die yet, not to leave them. Lily is nowhere near ready to take care of them all, not mentally and emotionally. She's just not..."

I suddenly noticed that Lavi was staring at me rather intently, and I blinked.

"What?"

He straightened up, and he shrugged.

I motioned for him to go on, and he hesitantly said, "You think a lot about your family."

I rolled my eyes. Why was it that everyone around here seemed to find it some sort of miracle that I hadn't abandoned or neglected the five balls of energy that were my flesh and blood?

"No, you don't say?" I stated sarcastically, and Lavi laughed.

He lay back against his pack, and he crossed his arms behind his head.

"Honestly, though, you... you and your family fascinate me. I've never had a family, so I don't understand how you keep together so well. I've seen so many of them torn apart over the littlest of things," Lavi stated, looking at the ceiling of my two-person tent, and I drew my knees to my chest, looking away.

Families weren't perfect. A lot of them were dysfunctional. Mine, despite the stability we seemed to have, was still incredibly off-balance, and it was only Lily's calming and vague influence that kept us from truly falling apart and ripping each other to pieces.

Unfortunately, Lily's influence didn't always extend to everyone.

The both of us talked for a good portion of the night, and I felt myself slowly relax. Finally, Lavi asked, "Eh, Mag...do you mind if I sleep in your tent?"

I blinked in surprise.

"Uh... why?" I asked, suddenly skeptical.

Lavi didn't look like his usual, lecherous self, though.

He seemed almost pensive as he stated, "I think… I think I may be getting sick up here. Kanda might be right - I've been hiking too far up too fast. I know you're used to taking care of people..."

He could say that again. I was everybody's mother. I could hear a kid cough through three doors, a hallway, and several walls. I had super hearing where sniffles were concerned.

"Alright, I think I can handle watching over you. Was there anything in particular you wanted me to watch for?" I asked, scootching to the very end of my tent, the farthest I could get from him. Even though I'd gotten used to sleeping next to houseguests, I wasn't ready to get that cozy with someone of the male persuasion again.

"Um, like, if I stop breathing? I'd like to know when my lungs quit," Lavi stated simply, and I smiled at his deadpan response.

That wouldn't be a problem. I was going to be up for a while.


A/N: I've decided that every fifth chapter or so I'm going to put discussion and recognition on each, seeing as I'm a lazy bum (and not as many people read this story, so it seems a bit pointless to put it on each one). However, I do very much enjoy reviews and subscriptions! Please, please, please, review, subscribe, and favorite.

God bless, and happy reading!