A/N: What's the best way to avoid answering Chemistry questions? Edit and post a new chapter of a story. Huzzah.

Ivy wove to and fro across the tombstone, forming a strong framework over the crumbling rock. Underneath the vines, the stone was almost falling apart. Not because it was old, the gravedigger was sure, because it had only been set up seventy or so years ago, only a breath ago compared to the antique stones littered across the cemetery's western side. Maybe the land was wet underneath, he thought, rocking back on his heels to brush his hands against the dry, almost sandy dirt at his feet. Maybe not.

Maybe it was cursed, he wondered, but then he shook his head, banishing such odd thoughts from his mind. Maybe the grave was angry with him, or furious with the way he was wasting his life – which would be odd – then again, everything seemed to be about him these days –

Good lord, he was intent on self pity today. Shaking his head again, and hitting himself lightly, he tried to focus through the fuzziness in his vision. His body was starting to give out, he knew, but he was intent on at least cleaning up this grave before he headed back to his shack, centred in the middle of the cemetery.

With a delicate hand he slowly snipped the larger leaves away - too nervous to remove the vines of ivy entirely in case the entire stone fell apart and he had to go into town and get a new one - and brushed them back so that faint carvings were revealed. Oh, and the last flower had died. Tucking the limp rose into one of the pockets of his thick coat, he made a mental note to order one in with the next batch of groceries.

His hand itched and he moved to scratch it before remembering that it was not the left one, not the real one. It was a deep itch, in the hand he didn't have anymore. Chrono sat back and sighed. The sky was cloudy, almost black. It would rain soon. He'd better finish up and head home.

Look at yourself, Chrono. You're cleaning graves. Life's left you behind. What would she think? What would either of them think? What would anyone think?

You can keep their memory safe in other ways, better ways, but instead you're cleaning graves and after you've finished you're going to go and shiver in a wooden shack while you get soaked. You know it's not home. You can't go back home, and it's because you-

Chrono slapped himself across the face. That wasn't the sort of person he was. It wasn't him. They had taught him better than that. He didn't care what he did, and he wouldn't let himself angst over it. He just lived. That was his job. To keep on living. She was depending on him. They both were depending on him.

He didn't want to think about it, but when he did, he would start listing in his head everyone who depended on him.

She was depending on him. So was she. And Remington, and that man – the old man from the church, the one who had trusted him – what was his name again? And Sister Kate, and little – well, old - Azmaria, and even Joshua, who had been working so hard to make up for what he had done, and some of what Chrono himself had done – maybe all of which he was to blame for - and so many people, all through the years, and he could go back further and further, and all the people who he had lived past just would not stop passing before his mind's eye –

He dug the heel of his hand into his eye and tried to stop his memory running away from him. Florette, Fiole – he focused on living faces– she's still around. Though I never really knew her at all, but she seemed to be nice, well, not to us, but Satella loved her in the past and Sheda seems to now and Satella, don't forget she's alive, Satella got to live without everyone else, Satella managed to avoid them as well as I did, though that was unintentional and I don't think she's happy about that, and from the older, older days, there is still Sheda, because there's no way Sheda would let herself go and die, she was always so cheerful, held us together before she came along...

Chrono could not get away from the past, and sometimes he had to acknowledge that that was because he didn't want to. There was only one way he could pay his debts, he knew, and that was by not forgetting them.

There was still only one way he could allow himself to live like this, or he would have given up even putting in the slightest effort into doing anything but moping around the house. And that was imagining them.

In his mind they were friends, and they understood each other and him. They were walking over to him now, Rosette talking ridiculously loudly while Mary smiled gently and nodded. They had seen him now, and they came over and helped him to stand up on his shaking legs. Rosette was admonishing him for getting caught in the rain while Magdalene just smiled and shook her head. They tried to start a conversation with him, but Chrono would only smile and nod as they walked back to the shack.

He would hide himself in a world of his memories, ignore the real world and imagine the two people most important to him conversing with him as if they had forgiven him for everything he had done, but he would not talk to them. He never talked to these figures from his imagination no matter how many times they cajoled him. He would imagine he was with friends, but he would not talk, not ever.

If Rosette and Magdalene could see him now, they wouldn't be happy. But if they saw him talking to himself and pretending he was talking to fake images of them, they would be...

But he needed them. Imagining Rosette and Magdalene held him together. He didn't think that he could continue without at least phantom companions, and there was no way he could ever turn up on the front door of Florette's and Sheda's house – if he managed to find out where they were living this time – and say "Hello. I'm still alive. I'm wasting my life. How are you?" and he couldn't meet Satella again. He thought Satella might have an inkling of the idea that he was still alive – on her first visit to Rosette's grave she had seen his flowers. But to meet Satella, and see the accusations in her eyes...Chrono had always been afraid of accusations, of someday someone turning up and saying "Your name is Chrono and you have killed so many people who trusted you, and I know exactly what it is that you have done."

He could not accept anything he had done in his past, or at least, very little, not to the point of accepting it and forgiving himself. He accused himself of things all the time. But if anyone else had accused Chrono of what he had done, if anyone had known and blamed him for it, he would have run and run and run, trying to escape the lingering shadow of himself.

He had reached the shack now, and Rosette and Magdalene smiled at him before they turned, arm in arm, and evaporated. The shack was small and leaking, and rather than stay inside and watch his few possessions slowly wash away in the heavy rain, he sat outside, leaning against a tree, and slept, ignoring the aches in his old joints.