"I told her everything."

It was tomorrow now, and after school Lumaira had raced home to change and then get the bus to the hospital so he could visit Even. Naminé had already got up a little earlier, and was presumably at the hospital. Lumaira had pegged in his mind to fix that, too. She always tried too hard. She'd end up burning herself out if she didn't get enough sleep.

It took several minutes to convince the receptionist to let him through-

"I'm sorry, Even Carlisle is registered deceased on this database-"

"I'm telling you, he's upstairs! Ask Naminé Arkenstone!"

"And how do you know her?"

"She's my mum!"

"Ah. Okay. Well, off you go, then."

- then he practically scrambled up the stairs, found Even's room, and tiptoed in.

"Hey, Even?"

Even was alone in the smart, sterile room, seemingly engrossed in a thick book that had been laid out on his lap. He was wearing glasses again, Lumaira noticed, and vaguely the pink haired boy wondered where he'd got them from. But as soon as he spoke, Even hastily pulled them off, squinting again.

"Oh, it's you."

Lumaira tried to brush off Even's less-than-enthusiastic greeting, and came over to sit on the chair next to his bed anyway.

"Are you feeling any better?"

"A little," Even admitted, fingers trailing idly across the lines of his book. Lumaira nodded, satisfied.

"Good."

The two of them sat in silence for a while.

"They gave you glasses, did they?" Lumaira eventually piped up. Even nodded curtly and said nothing. It was only after five, maybe even ten minutes, that he spoke.

"You didn't have to come visit, you know."

Lumaira, who'd been inspecting the opposite wall, glanced over. Even's head was hanging, and he was fiddling a little with the corner of one white page.

"Of course I did," He promptly replied, and then in a daring gesture, added, "That's what friends are for, right?"

There was the briefest of hesitations and Even's head snapped up.

"But I'm not your friend."

Lumaira took the other boy's hand.

"But I'll be yours, if you like."

"But I'm awful," Even protested, but Lumaira didn't miss the weakness in his voice, or the hope. He supposed that in Even's situation, he'd be scared of laying his trust in somebody else's hands in case his supposedly horrible personality drove that person away. But Lumaira didn't believe that Even was as terrible as he made out. So he was rather blunt and tactless, but it was nothing compared to the two-faced slyness that a lot of Lumaira's friends seemed to possess.

"I bet you you're not," He replied, biting at his lip a little. "You're just not sociable, that doesn't make you a horrible person at all."

"But wouldn't you want to be with one of your other friends?" Even asked quietly. Well, maybe, but Lumaira would feel terribly guilty if he left Even alone to have fun with his friends. So he dutifully shook his head.

"I'd rather you be okay," He insisted. "You need me more than them."

Even took a deep, shaky breath, and nodded a little, glancing surreptitiously at Lumaira. Then he picked up his borrowed glasses and fumbled them onto his face, looking at Lumaira again.

"Oh." He said. Lumaira, who'd been picking words from the book on Even's lap - the ones that weren't so many syllables long he couldn't even read, at any rate - glanced up.

"Hm?"

"So that's what you look like."

Lumaira giggled a little despite himself, but quickly stopped when Even's face fell and his eyebrows crumpled with worry.

"Sorry," He said. "It was just... you sounded so surprised, like you'd been expecting something else."

Even huffed a little and looked distinctly offended, pulling the glasses off again.

"I just thought that you only looked like a girl because I couldn't see you very well. But you actually do."

Lumaira tried not to laugh and failed, spluttering into his hands.

"Oh, God," He managed to utter, finding himself unable to keep a straight face even for a second. Rennie told him that he was girly with startling frequency, of course, and he was used to it by now - because, at the end of the day, he was undeniably effeminate - but hearing it like that from the straight-faced Even was just short of hysterical.

The blonde boy was looking absolutely mortified and Lumaira quickly sobered up to console him.

"I'm not laughing at you," He quickly explained. "I'm laughing at me. Because if I'm girly enough to look like a girl even when you put your glasses on..."

He soon realised that Even didn't understand, and shut up.

"Sorry. I just find everything funny."

Even turned away a little.

"Do you find me funny?"

"Not like that!" Lumaira quickly established. "I mean, I don't find you as a person funny at all. It's just some of the things you do and say."

"But that is me," Even protested. Lumaira sighed, rubbing his forehead. How could he explain to Even that being funny was a good thing?

"It's not like a horrible kind of funny. It's like... like me and Rennie. We tease each other all the time, but that's okay because we know we love each other really. It's sort of an affectionate kind of poking fun at each other. Like she always calls me a girl but that's okay, because, well, I practically am. And it's funny."

Even considered this.

"But doesn't it hurt when people laugh at you?"

"Not at all," Lumaira said, shrugging. "I like being able to make people laugh. It's like telling jokes."

"But I wasn't telling a joke. I was telling the truth."

"That's even funnier, then," Lumaira explained. "Because it's really silly and it's true so that's silly, too."

"But that's mean on you."

"I don't mind."

Even frowned and that, Lumaira realised, was where he didn't understand.

"I won't laugh," He promised. "If you say anything." How he was going to achieve this, he wasn't sure. He laughed at everything. But if it made Even feel a bit better, he was willing to try. Even, however, didn't seem content with this resolution.

"But then I'll think that you would have laughed at everything."

Lumaira looked at Even with sad eyes.

"Well, if I was going to, it's never a mean laugh. I wouldn't ever laugh to try to hurt you." Not any more.

And a few minutes later, the nurse came in, and it was time for Lumaira to go home, so he scoured the hospital in search of Naminé, found her in the end, and made very certain to tell her not to overwork herself, and caught the last bus home.

The next thing to do was call Rennie. She frequently bunked school to help her father out at the garage he owned - of course, the school knew but after so many years, they'd worked out the L'Erena was going to come into school when she felt like it whether they wanted or not, and there was little they could do about it. She got the work done. Lumaira sometimes wished he could join her but the truth was that he wasn't exactly the smartest of people and he couldn't afford to skip lessons. More to the point, his mother Naminé would be horrified when the letters would start coming home.

Today was one of those days when L'Erena wasn't at school - which was a mixed blessing. At least there was no way she'd have accidentally let slip to anybody at school if she'd not been there, but that also meant that Lumaira didn't know who she might have told of her own free will. So the first thing he did when he got home was pick up the phone.

"Rennie?"

"Hey, Lulu. 'Sup?"

Lumaira shuffled around his kitchen making supper as he talked. "Just checking you were okay, that's all."

"I'm fine."

"And, um, you haven't told anybody about Even, have you?"

From the other end of the crackling like, L'Erena laughed.

"Not a soul. Would I tell anyone? They'd never believe me."

"I guess so," Lumaira reluctantly agreed. Given Rennie's notorious status as a gossip, he wasn't sure - but she'd said so, so he had to trust her. That was what friends were for.

"So how is the old emotional train-wreck?"

"Don't be mean!" Lumaira instantly protested. "Mum and I took him to hospital last night, he was so ill. Mum managed to get a place in for him even though the hospital said he's dead... I don't know how she's going to explain it, though. I don't even know what she thinks. I visited him today, though. He looks better."

L'Erena didn't reply immediately.

"Okay," She eventually said. "Well, if you ever decide to remember who your real friends are, I'm right here."

Lumaira, who'd been carefully balancing a frying-pan-full of food on the way to his plate, dropped it suddenly.

"L'Erena!" He screamed, partly out of horror and mostly because the frying pan had fallen on his foot and it hurt like hell.

"What?"

"How can you be so heartless?"

He knelt down to pick eggs and bacon up off the floor as L'Erena sighed.

"Look, Lulu, it's not like that. Just... listen to me, okay. Even committed suicide for a reason. It was because he was lonely and miserable. And hey, I know that's not nice for anybody but sometimes that's just the way it happens. I know you're just trying to help but there's probably nothing that you can do. You're just going to end up hurting yourself." She paused momentarily as though to reach for some invisible object or sip from an illusionary glass. "I know what you're like. You're just like your mother. You try to help everybody else so much, you forget about yourself. Even... there's no hope for Even any more. I know that it hurts you for anything like this to happen, but you have to move on. If you keep clinging to him, it'll just get worse. For both of you."

Lumaira, halfway through scraping the worst of a smashed and ruined egg yolk back into the pan with a fork, sat down hopelessly on the floor and looked at his destroyed supper. How could he possibly piece this back together into something edible? And how could he possibly fix Even, poor, lost Even with no friends and no family and hardly even a life?

"I have to try," He quietly insisted. "I can't just abandon him now."

"I'm not telling you to abandon him. Just let him go."

"It's the same thing!"

L'Erena sighed again, this time more audibly.

"I'm coming over. I need to talk to you properly."

The phone line went as dead as Lumaira felt. Suddenly in the cold silence, food lost halfway to his plate, he felt scared. Nothing left to do, the truth was sinking in again. Even had come back from the dead.

Even had been dead. And now he was alive. It broke every fundamental rule of, well, everything, and in the empty night nothing else seemed impossible. Zombies. If there was Even there could be zombies. Lumaira tried not to think about all those films - oh, he'd laughed at them then, curled up on the sofa with Rennie - but he couldn't help it. The undead, crawling from graves to limp down roads, forming hoards and killing all who stood in their way...

Lumaira let out a little whimper of a scream. Suddenly, he felt terrified. This wasn't even a nightmare; this was reality. All he'd been doing was trying to hide from it. What if Even himself was one, mindless and-?

No. He had a heartbeat. He clearly thought for himself. And he showed no signs of wanting to eat Lumaira's brains. Yet.

No! Not yet! Not ever! It wasn't going to happen! It couldn't happen!

When something knocked on the door, Lumaira nearly shrieked before he realised that it was just L'Erena. Calming himself, he rushed to the door and opened it to find-

"Boo!"

"Argh!"

"Oh, God, Lulu, you really are pathetic."

"You'd be on edge too if you'd-!" Lumaira began, but then he decided better of admitting that he'd actually thought that L'Erena was a zombie. "Look, just. Come in before the cold gets in."

"Or the living dead."

"Don't say that! I'm scared!"

L'Erena laughed, pushing through to the kitchen.

"Ew. What happened here?"

"I dropped the frying pan," Lumaira truthfully told her. "When you told me that I ought to leave Even to die."

Rennie sighed, dutifully grabbing a towel and mopping up the slowly solidifying egg yolk.

"Honestly."

Lumaira sank down to the floor as L'Erena dumped the last of the kitchen towels in the bin.

"Rennie?"

"Uh-huh?"

"D'you- do you think that zombies exist?"

L'Erena laughed a little comfortingly, sitting down next to Lumaira.

"Not a chance."

"It's just that I was thinking about Even, and well, if he came back from the dead, then why not other people, and then I was just, uh, wondering. Yeah." Lumaira burbled, feeling a little useless.

"Don't be a scaredy-cat. There's no way they exist."

Lumaira considered this and hoped like hell that Rennie was right. Cowering by the worktop in the kitchen, he felt like he needed a cleaver in his hand, just in case. So he quickly decided to change the subject; however he was less than tactless in his approach.

"So how do you think Even came back?"

L'Erena shrugged.

"Dunno."

"But you must have wondered."

L'Erena gave Lumaira a steady look.

"Personally," She said, "I think that this whole thing is a hoax and Even never really died. It's the only conclusion I can come to. But obviously you disagree-"

"I know he was dead," Lumaira vehemently insisted.

"Yeah. I know. But I don't know how to explain how Even came back if he did. So what am I supposed to so? Suddenly believe in magic? Convert to Christianity?"

Lumaira miserably leaned against L'Erena's shoulder.

"I don't know what to think any more."

Tomorrow came and with it, more school and more lessons and more life like it always had been. Lumaira kept finding himself twisting in his seat to stare at Even's empty chair at the back of the class, around which everyone giggled and joked just the same. It was like Even had never even existed. Everyone was just carrying on with their lives, no idea that the boy was actually alive, slowly recovering in hospital.

Lumaira was more than a little out of it all day. Nightmares that had forgotten him when he was six were returning, concentration ruined by all the thoughts of Even, here there and everywhere.

He walked to the bus stop with Rennie after school, and was about to say goodbye when-

"I'm coming with you."

Unsure as to whether this was a good thing or not - but insanely hopeful - Lumaira nodded a little as the two of them boarded the bus.

"Okay. Just be nice, won't you? And don't laugh at his glasses. He's got glasses now."

"Sure, yeah, whatever."

They reached the hospital in good time where there was yet more confusion over Even's state of life -

"I'm sorry, Even Carlisle is registered-"

"Deceased on this database, yes, I know, but he's upstairs. I promise you."

- and then a short trip to Even's ward. Dancing around nurses, Lumaira carefully slipped in with L'Erena behind.

"Hey, Even."

They were trying to make him eat, which he didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about. Lumaira was quick to shuffle over and take his hand.

"Come on, you need to eat."

"I'm not hungry," Even insisted, conviction more than a little lacking. Lumaira steadily met his eyes, which was quite an achievement because Even hardly looked at anybody. It was always the floor, or his own bony hands.

"You need to eat."

Even shuffled uncomfortably, looking away.

"I know," He whispered, loud enough only for Lumaira to hear. "It's just... it always reminds me of... you know... everything does."

Lumaira gently eased himself past an irritable-looking nurse to sit beside Even, softly brushing his thumb against the back of the older boy's hand the way his mother used to do when he was too upset even for a cuddle.

"I know it's hard," He promised, "But you have to keep trying."

Even looked down at the tray of food on his lap, then over at L'Erena, lingering in the doorway. She shrugged a little to him, as though to tell him that whether he liked it or not, Lumaira was right. So he sighed a little, and unsteadily reached out to take his knife and fork. Lumaira was quick to locate the temporary glasses and push them onto Even's face.

"You need those."

Even opened his mouth, presumably to reply, and then decided better of it and began to eat again. A few minutes later, the nurses left him to his own devices. L'Erena said she was going to go and find Naminé - although how true that was, Lumaira didn't know - and left, leaving him alone with Even.

"So how are you feeling?"

Even had finished most of the meal by the time he pushed the tray away, and Lumaira supposed that would be enough as he carefully carried it to the side.

"Better."

"Good. I've been worried about you."

"Don't worry about me," Even huffed weakly. Lumaira smiled apologetically.

"I can't help it.""Can't you just forget about me?" Even asked with the kind of tone that tagged a silent everybody else has to the end of his question.

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," Lumaira promised earnestly. Even stared for a few moments, still a little boggle-eyed, then gave up and returned his focus to his hands.

"I wish," He whispered after a few minutes of awkward silence, "I wish I'd met you before... before, you know."

"Yeah," Lumaira said, reaching over to take Even's hand again. "Yeah, me too." And feeling the need for further explanation, he added: "You have no idea how bad I feel for not saying anything. We knew how miserable you were. Anybody could have said something. I guess I'm just lucky that you came back."

Hesitantly, Even did something that Lumaira hadn't been expecting: he tentatively leaned against the healthier boy, his comparatively tiny body weight leaving almost no force against Marluxia.

"D-do you really think that?"

Lumaira pulled him into a loose hug.

"Of course."