A/N: It took me forever, but I finally finished the follow-up for With Love! ...I blame it on all those TV shows mom is getting me to watch, like Grimm. I had a change of Betas for once since Chibi's kind of grounded...so this time MAJOR thanks goes out to Glacies for looking over this and point out all the mindless mistakes I needed to correct! Hope you all enjoy the fic!

Disclaimer: I don't own Tegami Bachi; that belongs to Hiroyuki Asada. However, my OCs and ideas are mine, and I will break bones over theft of them. :)

Now, on with the fic!

Reverse Side: Thinking of You

"I'm so sorry, Sumomo." He whispered, and then the Gaichuu lunged. He felt the first feeler wrap around his arm with a slapping sound and began to pull those oh-so-important memories of her away from him. That was when he began to fight it, trying weakly to pull away. The spirit amber on his Shindanjuu had begun to glow with the force of those memories, then dimmed as they were ripped away, only to brighten again as he resolved to take those memories back even if it killed him. "No!" He shouted in protest. "Not those memories, not my memories of her!"

With his renewed resolve came his dingo's determination to help him. Oursa gave a fierce snarl as she shoved herself off the ground, letting out what sounded very much like a roar before slamming into the Gaichuu's many feelers with her claws flying to try and cut their heart-stealing connection to her master. She continued to let out snarls as she attacked the feelers as best she could, ignoring the feelers that wrapped around her as well and began to take her own memories away.

Boy cub… He froze a moment as the memories intermingled while the Gaichuu took them, sharing some between each other before the heartless armored bug could consume them. The memory of a distorted face looking down on him with hair the color of caramel and eyes the exact same golden shade of brown as honey filled his head for a brief moment. With a jolt, he realized it was him, as Oursa saw him. My cub… Another memory of him flashed by, he was curled up against her side, asleep. Must protect boy cub!There went yet another, this time of her fighting Gaichuu before.

"Promise me you'll be careful, Faus?"There went another one of his, one about her again.

"I'll try!" He shouted in response to the question in his memory that he would forget a half-second later, even as he pulled away and spotted the Gaichuu's exposed weak spot. Fueled by the memories as well as his determination not to lose them permanently and adrenaline, he swung his Shindanjuu around to the Gaichuu and pointed, the spirit amber lighting up in response. "Here goes nothing!" He shouted as the name of his Shindan escaped him, yet he still fired off the single shot that seemed to sense his need and went exactly where he needed it to, slamming into the armor's weak point. In an instant, the Gaichuu ceased to exist, sending the now empty armor crashing to the ground and the stolen pieces of the boy's heart flying back to him. Oursa fell heavily next to him and did not move or make a noise afterward, while he did much the same, unable to move or speak himself. He had nearly lost all of his heart, there wasn't really much left, but it was enough to keep both his body and identity alive.

"Oh, oh dang! Kam, hey, KAM! There's a Bee over here, he looks pretty bad—might not even be alive. There's Gaichuu armor everywhere, and I don't think his dingo is alive at all! Get over here!" Sometime afterward (because he wasn't sure just how much time had passed) he heard the feminine voice yell. Moments later, after the sounds of rock sliding and feet hitting the ground rather hard, he got that intense feeling someone was close by him, and not the obvious sense due to the voices talking, but the strange feeling someone was standing fairly close to him. He turned his head, opening his eyes as he did, attempting to find the person invading his space. At this point, the same voice piped up again, letting out a sharp curse before shouting "Hurry it up, Kam, he's alive!

"Shaddup, Kistoone! I'm coming as fast as I can, if he's alive, see just how alive he is!" A sharp, male voice responded from somewhere not too far off—not too far away to be able to miss the biting annoyance that made him cringe, that was for sure.

The woman's voice let out a soft laugh as she bent down, looking straight into his face, "He's just naturally crabby, no need to be afraid. I'm the one you'll be dealing with most anyway." She murmured as she did, giving him his first look at her. She was fairly pretty, with wild auburn hair that framed her face and hugged her jaw line, with vibrant light blue eyes set into almost bronze-colored skin. Around her neck seemed to be some kind of scarf or shirt collar made of fluffy fur that almost had the exact same color of the chippa flower fluff that floated in off Jose, the White Desert, on the occasional breeze during blooming season—it gave one the impression that her neck was surrounded by a freshly fallen patch of snow that starkly contrasted her bronze skin. "Still able to talk?" He struggled for a moment, focusing on the word and how to make his mouth move in such as way that that word would come out audible and understandable.

"Yes…" The soft word flitted on butterfly wings between them, barely there, but still present. The young woman's eyes widened and she cursed again, but kept going.

"Got a name? Mine's Kistoone." Faintly, he thought her name was a bit odd, but so was she. He only had to look at her to know this woman was strange… And then back to focusing on getting out words again, thinking out every movement of his lips and forcing out sound.

"Faus." He muttered, practically spitting the word out, trying to make it sound more solid this time. Kistoone patted his arm gently in comfort, giving him an obviously fake smile.

"That's good, you haven't lost your heart yet, then." She told him. Once again, Faus the strange urge to laugh.

"Al…most…" Two-syllable words are much harder, he found, which practically promised that sentences were far beyond his reach. Kistoone frowned, but was prevented from saying anything more because the man had finally made it to them.

"He still alive?" The male voice asked: Faus watched Kistoone nod wordlessly.

"Barely, but he's giving me coherent answers. How about the dingo?" She asked, and Faus tried to focus, waiting on the answer and holding onto hope that somehow, maybe, just maybe…. No, he knew the answer already.

"Dead." He hadn't bothered to really entertain the thought she might be alive as a truth. She had had to fight to get up to save him, it was only the determination to save him that had kept her from falling to the strain of fighting and the Gaichuu taking her heart earlier. In spite the fact he was expecting it, that didn't ease the pain from the wave of sadness that crashed over him at the finality of the words. The bear had been the only remnant of his life back home, and even then…

"You okay?"

He blinked, eyes flickering to Kistoone.

"Mostly, Oursa…" He turned his head to the mass of thick brown fur not too far from him and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Kistoone still hovered over him, looking apologetic. There was nothing any of them could have done, he knew, but he couldn't really explain or try to tell her. He could barely get a few words out; a whole explanation as to why no one could have saved his dingo. "It's okay… Can you get…me to the next town?" He was almost delighted to find the though he was still weak, his speech was getting better, and it was getting easier to talk. Above him Kistoone's expression grew conflicted and she looked to the man with her. Faus didn't follow her gaze, but he did hear the man speak.

"I'm sorry, that just won't do. Kill him." The order was flat and emotionless; Faus shivered and Kistoone gaped.

"Kam!" She exploded "He just won back his life from a Gaichuu and his partner is dead—we can't just kill him!"

"He's barely alive and the loss'll burden him. It will be freeing him. Besides, he's a Bee, Kistoone! A slave to the government! Don't you remember what we've been through, what we've been taught?" The man had started shouting at her, but she refused to back down.

"He's made it this far, he won his life! The gods will look down on me if I kill him; he's a person, Kamui, a living, breathing, person! We would be no better than those who put us through our trials, we have morals, or at least you used to, and these go against them!" She challenged him with a bladeless attack, face twisted into a mask of anger and sadness that might have had confusion of pain mixed in.

"He's a person who has chosen corruption; it's against my moralsto let him live. Furthermore, I have no affiliation with your gods, Kistoone. If you have objections, then I'll do it." Kistoone was standing in a flash and Faus watched as she jumped over his body, her hand flying to a holster on her leg before shooting out of his vision.

"I have objections to his murder at out hands! Let's enlighten him—I'm sure Laurence wouldn't mind if we were able to convince him, and even if we couldn't, I'm sure we could. Of we could take him to the next town and leave him there, but whatever we do Kam, no killing. I don't want to see any more killing; that's not what we signed up for, it's not our job." She sounded almost hysterical, her voice trembling as the volume of her voice raised and lowered itself dramatically. It sounded as though Kistoone was on the verge of tears. "Please, Kam, please…"

There was a long silence before the man spoke. "Fine," he said coldly, "But this is all on you. He's yours to take care of, to enlighten, to get in trouble over when it inevitably happens. I have nothing to do with this or him."

"Thank you!" Kistoone let out an explosive sigh of relief and scrambled back to Faus, wearing a comforting smile.

"Don't you worry," She assured him softly while she tried to pick him up as gently as she could. "I'll make sure everything is alright." As she spoke, the energy it had taken Faus to deal with the whole situation up until now seemed to leave him in a rush and he slipped over the edge of consciousness and into soft, inviting blackness.

~Three Years Later~

They had been agents of the Reverse. Faus always remembered the initial shock and revulsion he'd displayed when Kistoone told him, but he had had no choice and they seemed nice enough. (Well, Kistoone, anyway. Kamui tended to act as though he didn't exist.) They'd even buried Oursa. It was Reverse or death, and he actually had a possibility of escaping the Reverse…or so he had thought when he first agreed to join. Kistoone had been right—Laurence was incredibly persuasive, but he didn't have to be with people like Zeal running around. He had taken up the hate for the twisted Amberground government, however he did not agree with their ideas on how to go about taking it down and the Bees down with it. He had made friends among the Reverse; they were a ragtag little group of messengers and "missionaries" that Kistoone and Kamui seemed to head, however they were fairly interesting.

Even though he was a member of the Reverse, there was one thing related to the government that he couldn't give up—her. She had become a Bee like she promised him she would, but without him. He did not directly approach her, but that didn't stop him from looking from afar. She had had a grave marker made for him and placed it halfway between Central Yuusari and their hometown, he visited it as often as he could and had seen her visiting it from the top of the hill not too far away.

That was the hill he sat on now, watching her and some blonde boy at the marker. "What is it you're so interested in about that marker? You've been here every morning we stay in a town located anywhere close by, Kistoone says you try to go every day, but wouldn't say why." Faus turned his head to see sepia eyes looking at him intently. He had peaked Noir's curiosity? That was new. He chuckled and looked back out to the pair at the marker before gesturing to it.

"She couldn't. Mom doesn't even really know. No one gets it, but they've never bothered to ask why. That marker out there? It's mine." He turned back to the young man he had known three years previous as Gauche Suede, just as those sepia eyes so focused on his face widened in slight surprise. He smiled and nodded, not seeming to care. "Those memories you no longer have, I bet one of them included visiting there at least once. Never saw Gauche there, but I doubt Su-chan bought all those flowers that first week. We were okay with each other; he was working for his sister and I was there for my family. We were both hard to catch, but hey, what can you do? It seems to be what, ah, killed us both." He said good-naturedly, and in response, Noir tilted his head. "What?"

"You don't talk about Gauche in relation to me like Laurence did." It was deadpanned, a simple pointing out of fact. Faus nodded again, as though his companion had made an interesting point.

"You aren't him, well, not in a personality sense. Your facial expressions are different; your demeanor is totally different than his was. The face and body you wear is Gauche, but your mind is entirely Noir. Your heart is entirely Noir. That's why I don't act like you're one and the same; I knew it from the first time we met, after that first discussion." Noir looked almost thoughtful at that before pointing back to the marker.

"Okay, so the marker is yours, but who are they?" Faus looked to the girl and boy in Letter Bee uniforms with their dingos and smiled again.

"The girl is Sumomo, the squirrel on her shoulder is Aki. She was my best friend when we were little, that's why she's a Bee now. She wanted to keep us together, didn't want to lose her best friend and I didn't want to lose her either—too bad we lost each other anyway… I don't know the boy, probably one of her friends from work." Noir looked like he was thinking again when he looked back to Faus.

"Does it make you sad that you can no longer see her like you used to? Do you miss the things you lost in joining the Reverse?" Faus shifted and looked to the girl again, then back to the Albisian beside him. The smile was more wistful now than warm and happy as he looked back to Noir.

"Of course I miss being able to see her every day, being able to let her hug me and see that huge smile that she smiled just for me… I think about her all the time." Faus shook his head slowly. "I miss almost everything I lost in joining the Reverse. It probably tore my mother to pieces, I had friends in Central, I'm still not sure if she let herself cry—she was always so cheerful when I knew her…" He sighed, letting his words trail off.

"I guess I'm lucky, then, that I don't remember." Noir looked almost sad as he looked to the pair in the distance.

"I'm not so sure. Were they to come rescue us, you wouldn't remember all those so happy to see Gauche, all those people happy to see you. Gauche or not, you have a sister and friends who would be devastated you didn't remember them, didn't think of them while you were gone." He thought a moment before speaking again. "In a way, that would be worse, I think." Noir shifted uncomfortably.

"They won't come to rescue us." It was firm, scolding, he still looked to the pair at the grave marker and watched as the girl appeared to pick up something.

"We could get lucky, why not have hope?" Noir snorted, shaking his head as he almost swore Faus' response reminded him of somebody he once knew.

"For you, you might consider it lucky. I don't remember anything, why would I consider it lucky?" He snapped back in rarely-shown agitation.

"Because people loved Gauche and whether or not you remember it, you are Gauche. Whether or not you remember in time, that's still the body you wear. They loved Gauche, they could learn to love you. Heck—you could learn to care for them as well." Neither looked at each other, but watched as the girl stood, shaking her head. She jammed something into her pocket and began to walk quickly away.

"What was that about?" He asked, tearing his sepia gaze from the girl in the Letter Bee uniform and the boy with his dog following at a distance as they walked away to a wistful-looking Faus.

"I left her a letter today, just this once." He said, and with that, he stood and walked away. Noir didn't wait very long before he followed after him.

The next day, Noir found Faus on that same hilltop looking down at a piece of paper. "What is that?" The young man asked, causing the other to jump.

"She wrote back. Not sure why, but she wrote back." He held out the letter (though whether it could be called a letter or not was questionable, it was only a few lines) to Noir. Almost reverently, Noir took the letter—he had never received a letter before, yes, he'd taken them from others, but never received one himself. The fact that Faus was letting him read one addressed to him was slightly amazing. Looking at it, Noir wasn't sure exactly what he was expecting to see, but the words written on the paper definitely weren't it.

"Faus,

Maybe one day, we'll make amends

For all the letters written that we'll never send.

I miss you."

He stared at the words written on the paper in neat, elegant handwriting and got the impression that this girl had managed to pour all of her heart out into those three lines. The impression left him feeling oddly sad, wistful even, wishing that maybe he could remember those who missed him as much as this girl missed Faus. Maybe, he thought, maybe one day you'll be able to tell each other what those letters contained… Just like maybe I will be able to remember one day, too… He handed the letter back to Faus.

"Maybe one day we'll get lucky and they'll come rescue us. Then you can share those letters and I can see those who miss Gauche as that girl misses you." Faus took the letter back with a shake of his head.

"That was just an example yesterday." Faus said bitterly. "They aren't coming to rescue us—it's been three years for me, two for you, Noir. They think we're dead. If we do meet them again, it'll be as enemies—we'll have to strike them down or be struck down ourselves, no matter how much we wish for a different outcome." Faus stares with cold eyes into the sepia ones that now look hurt, upset, undeniably let down.

"But you—" Noir started, but he was cut off.

"Faaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuus! Hey, Faus!" Both heads turned to look for the voice's owner, but they already knew who it was without having to look—Des was the only one who would call him like that. It only took them a moment to locate him as Des wasn't exactly an inconspicuous individual; there he was, running up the hill with his stranded starlight hair flying behind him and Roda at his side.

"Noir!" Roda shouted, and Faus couldn't hold back a tiny smile. She still followed him around without fail, be it out of forgotten habit or simply because of her namesake—it was nice to see that one of them got to keep their dingo, he thought. He still missed Oursa, still felt the pain of his dingo's absence though Kistoone was all too happy to go along with him on trips for the Reverse when they didn't all go together. "I told you." Roda's sharp retort to some remark Des must have made to her earlier brought Faus back to the present. He watched as Des held up his hands in a gesture of joking defense.

"I didn't say you were wrong, Roda. I just said I didn't know and wasn't sure you wanted to waste time looking here if I was already going." Roda sniffed at him and moved to stand by Noir.

"You doubted me." She threw over her shoulder contemptuously. Des sighed and looked to Faus and rolled his eyes over Roda's lack of manners; where Noir was concerned, she could be unrelentingly obnoxious, they simply accepted that as a fact of life that couldn't be fixed.

"Mom wants to see you. Not sure what for, but she wants to see you." Mom was the name they commonly used when they referred to Kistoone, who treated all the members of their ragtag little group, with the exception of Kamui, like they were her children in spite the fact that she was twenty-one. Faus shrugged and looked back to Noir and Roda, Roda seemed to be inspecting her companion for sign of any injury or change since he'd managed to sneak away from her to go after Faus.

"You two coming back with us?" Noir looked up from Roda, and for a moment, Faus would have sworn the expression he wore was purely Gauche. It was a look of questioning unaltered by the usual bitterness-hardened features that so often defined him as Noir rather than Gauche, a look almost seeming to ask if it was really okay to come with them. Faus held back a chuckle and nodded, gesturing for them to follow. The group proceeded down the hillside and back to the camp with soft discussion flitting among them. Among the topics were the weather, dinner, where to next, and so on until the day faded into normalcy.

Kistoone had wanted to take a trip to the next town to buy more supplies and he'd allowed himself to be dragged along without complaint. He passed familiar houses, streets Sumomo had played in when they were young, faces he had grown up seeing; passed them all quietly with the hood of his cloak pulled securely over his face. All the while he was still listening to the young woman's innocent chatter as she sorted through supplies and tugged him around like her own personal shopping cart and ignoring the stares she attracted. The cold never seemed to bother her, so she ran around wearing what she pleased—often a brown, leather-like skirt slit up both sides that Kamui forced her to wear a pair of shorts under along with bandages wrapped around her feet like shoes, as well as at random-seeming points along her arms and torso. Covering a good portion of the torso bandages was a semi-hardened leather top that she had dyed blue herself and collared with a massive amount of fur that resembled a ton of chippa flower fluff all collected and somehow strung together into one huge, fluffy mass. He wore a simple black, hooded cloak that covered his face and plain, dark clothes. Unlike her, he didn't speak, and just barely made any kind of noise, as though he was trying to blend into the background and fade away.

This was in part due to the fact he had spotted a girl with long hair the color of caramel and warm brown eyes walking around the market—his sister, Ava. He'd notice her anywhere. A young boy of three or so clung to her hand and babbled on incomprehensibly as Ava towed him behind her through the market. Kistoone either didn't notice the resemblance, or she simply didn't care as she struck up a friendly conversation with the girl over a bin of freshly grown apples, however Faus could only focus on the child, who had that noticeable light brown hair that was the exact color of caramel and eyes that leaned more towards a golden brown than anything else—so similar in color to his eyes it was slightly disturbing. However, the final nail in the coffin was when the child burst out with a sharp cry of "Faus!" before erupting into giggles and reverting back to his senseless babble. Faus stiffened, suddenly frozen in place while Kistoone tensed before Ava's eyes flashed with pain and she patted the boy's hand.

"I'm sorry if he startled you, Felix likes to be loud from time to time… Particularly our late elder brother's name…he looks so much like him that most of what he's heard from his birth is 'He looks so much like Faus…' It's kind of his favorite word." She looked back up to them and Faus could see she was on the verge of tears even after three years of his absence. He wanted to hug her then, wanted to cast away his cloak and hug the both of them and yell 'I'm not dead, I'm not gone! I'm alive and right here and I'm never going to leave you again!' and then do exactly as he said he would—but he couldn't. He was supposed to be dead and there was no way he could leave the Reverse, even if he wanted to.

When they left shortly afterwards, Faus told Kistoone to never bring him back. He couldn't take seeing his family like that again.

Night found him hidden away in his room for most of its duration, emerging at some point with a folded square of paper in his hand. Kistoone and Kamui must have retreated to their rooms and gone to bed, as Noir with Roda curled against his side, asleep, and Des were the only three who sat around the fireplace, which held a slowly dying fire. Without a word to anyone, Faus marched up to the fireplace and tossed the paper into the flames. Noir almost stood, then seemed to remember Roda was asleep against him and stopped himself. "Faus, what are you doing?" He asked, sounding almost worried.

"Giving myself another thing to make amends for." The cryptic reply would have made no sense had he not shown Noir Sumomo's response that morning. He stared on as the fire claimed the paper; it was a response to her letter—a response he would never let her see.

She didn't need the grief and he didn't want her to get hurt in the process of looking for him if she decided the letters were really from him. He did, however, need the sense of closure.

Des shot Noir a curious look around Faus' body, eerily lit by the firelight, but Noir said nothing. Faus closed his eyes as the paper turned to ash, picturing the words he had written there and was now permanently erasing.

Su-chan,

No matter where I go, or what I do,

Just know that somewhere,

Out there,

I'll always be thinking of you.

-Maybe one day, but not anytime soon.

-I miss you too.

-So much.

With that, he turned around and walked away. Maybe, one day… he thought before shaking his head. No, what a joke. No one would come to rescue him or Noir. After all, who would rescue dead men?

A/N: And that's a wrap for now! Hopefully everyone liked it, and if you did, I really enjoy hearing comments/feedback, etc. I have a lot of these to stop and type up, so hopefully I'll have another update ready soon.