Emi gazed around as the pre-dawn darkness pressed upon her eyes. The sound of snoring was rhythmic and constant, but Emi was sure her cry would've woken someone. It seemed she was wrong. She stood, grabbed her thing and carefully picked her way across the floor of the apartment.

'I won't be played,' Emi thought harshly, 'I'm the Hero, I can't allow myself to get distracted. I must maintain my vigil, or else the Devil will rise again.'

She paused by the door, slipping on her shoes before she opened the door slowly and silently, sliding through the gap and closing it behind her. She had her purse, she had her clothes, she would leave for her place and she would never visit the Devil's Castle again, her dream making her eyes mysteriously watery as she began to walk quickly away from the apartment. She got to the stairs and almost screamed, seeing a figure about knee height sitting upon the steps. Emi gasped and fell backward, grasping the rail for support. Upon the steps, looking rather concerned for Emi, was Maou.

"Hey, Emi," he said tiredly, "you're awake, huh?"

"Satan."

Emi's eyes were wide and she looked like she might hit him. Maou, however looked even more concerned. He turned on the steps to get a better look at Emi. She was pale, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. She wore her pajamas, and had slipped on her shoes without any socks, meaning she was leaving in a rush.

"Satan," Maou asked, "what's with that?"

"That's what you are," Emi said defensively, "the Devil, Satan Jacob, Ruler of Demons and Slaughterer of Innocents."

"Emi," Maou said sharply, cutting her off, "what's happened? What's going on? You seem upset and you look petrified to see me. Are you sick? Or is it your… you know…"

Emi was taken aback. For a moment, she thought Maou was talking about her feminine functions, but then he finished his sentence in an undertone.

"…your emotions? Are they getting bad again?"

Emi looked at Maou, who genuinely looked concerned for her wellbeing, but then her vision flashed and he had red eyes, horns goat legs and bloody teeth. She saw a field of corpses and she felt hopelessness surge through her.

"They are none of your business," Emi said, brushing away tears angrily and trying to sidle past Maou without touching him.

"Emi," Maou said, "be careful, this railing is-"

Crack!

The section of railing Emi was leaning against to circumvent Maou broke and Emi felt time slow as she teetered over the edge. Without the time to even shout, Emi tumbled over the edge, the ground closing fast. Then she felt her arm stiffen and strain. She looked up and saw Maou, holding Emi's hand as she hung off of the stairs.

"-weak," Maou finished through gritted teeth, pulling Emi back up and onto the stairs. They were narrow though, so Emi lay across Maou's lap, breathing rather heavily and shaking from the adrenaline. There was a moment of silence and stillness, then Emi stood and clenched a fist, striking Maou hard across the face.

"AH! Emi, what the fuck!?"

"That's what you get," Emi said through gritted teeth, tears still spilling from her eyes. No matter how much she looked at Maou, the same visions appeared in her head, showing him standing over a city of bodies, evil and demonic.

"For what," Maou said, grabbing her shoulders and pushing Emi up against the apartments of the Villa Rosa complex.

"For… for…."

Emi broke. As Sadoa Maou pinned her against the wall of the building, demanding an explanation for Emi's attack, she broke down, allowing the visions of her dreams to finally leak from her tear ducts. Emi rarely dreamed, she considered it a gift, as she rarely had nightmares, but at the cost of no dreams of flight and love and whimsical fantasies. So when she did have a nightmare, it shocked her. And when she had one that pulled at her heartstrings and made her suffer horrible fates, she was severely traumatized.

Maou released Emi and she slid down the wall, sitting down hard upon the steps leading to the upstairs apartments. She curled up, putting her head upon her knees and she cried, feeling her emotions well up inside her. The Hero's sadness and paranoia leaked from her like a broken hose, and Maou did all he could to help. He sat down next to her as she cried, and slowly but surely wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She didn't resist, enthralled as she was by her terrifying visions. Maou soon had two arms around her, holding her close to him, and as Emi cried, Maou activated his power. He did not seek to steal more power from the Hero, he just wanted to help, and so he thought the spell, over and over in his mind and Emi's emotions were sucked into Maou, turning into power.

"Maou," Emi said, her voice muffled through her arms and her knees.

"Yeah, Emi," Maou asked gently.

"I'm sorry I hit you, I had a nightmare and I just…"

Her sobbing renewed, and Maou thought her heard a noise behind him, but when he spun around, no one was there. He resumed holding Emi, draining her sadness, her fear and her paranoia, all of which were crippling and gut wrenching from Maou's viewpoint. Even so, when he tried to look into Emi's feelings, he found a bundled heap of neurological wiring, lying discarded in her brain.

"Emi," Maou said, giving her a little shake.

"Hmm?"

"What's wrong? I can sense there's something really wrong, but I don't know what. Your emotions are… well, it's like they've been mixed into one big tank of angst and it's begun draining out of you… like you yourself can't even identify them anymore. What's going on?"

Emi thought about her nightmare. She thought about loving someone for years and one day learning it was just a great big scheme to lure her into a trap. An entire lifetime of love and happiness, wasted….

"I just… I have a lot on my mind."

"Well," Maou said, "that's why I threw the party. I figure we're all so busy with our own stuff right now, we needed a break, a little time to relax, you know? Listen, I won't pretend to know what you're going through, I mean, you punched me in the face a second ago, but if I had to guess, your nightmare was terrible."

No response met Maou, so he cleared his throat and continued.

"Well, I think you were on your way out, and in a hurry too. I don't know why, and if you wanna leave, I won't stop you… but Emi, if you were to stay, even if it was just for a couple hours and you left when the sun actually came up, that'd be awesome."

"You want me to stay," Emi asked, lifting her head from her knees and looking at Maou.

"Yeah. Like I said, I wanna spend time with everyone before the work week starts back up and we all have our own stuff and we can't really see each other. And I know Urushihara is a pain and I know that everyone fights a lot and that we can be pretty annoying and stupid, but it's begun to feel like-"

Maou cut off suddenly, turning away to hide his crimson cheeks.

"Feel like what," Emi said, wiping away a remaining tear and sniffling.

"Well, it's sort of begun to feel like a family," Maou said, not looking at Emi. Suddenly he stood and turned to go back inside.

"If you want to stay, come back in and get some sleep… or wait out here, either way, it'd mean a lot if you decided to stay the rest of the night. Maybe tomorrow we can all go do something together. If you want to leave, you can go, there's no one to trip over now."

Maou turned and walked back into his apartment, leaving Emi outside to think. She knew that the others would question her absence in the morning, and Maou knew that if he didn't want to get punched again, he would cover it up. No, the decision was hers to make. Should she leave, or should she stay?

'Well,' Maou's voice echoed in her head, 'it's sort of begun to feel like a family… It'd mean a lot if you decided to stay…even if it was just for a couple of hours…'

Emi felt her navel fill with butterflies as she thought about Maou. No, he'd never do something like in her nightmare; Emi would kill him if he tried. And Suzuno would help her do it, plain and simple. Emi wasn't sure why, but the little girl that was Suzuno Kamazuki never really seemed like a killer to Emi, still she had no doubt in her mind that Suzuno could hide a body better than anyone else she knew.

'That idiot,' Emi thought, 'I wonder why he was out here….'

And Emi was left to wonder why Maou, the Devil with no conscience, was outside, alone, at night, sitting upon the front steps and not nestled in his covers, sleeping soundly. Perhaps there was more to the Demon King than Emi had originally assumed. But then, what could keep a Devil awake at night? Emi had come out here to leave, and in an instant, a chance encounter with Maou, he had suddenly made her want to stay. His words, asking her to stay, echoed in Emi's head, over and over.

'Does that sound like a diabolical schemer's voice,' asked Emi's conscience, 'or does that sound more like someone who enjoys your company and wants to see more of you?'

Emi shook her head, the Devil didn't care! But even as she thought about it, she knew he did, otherwise he'd have let her fall. Maybe he was true to his word, and he actually wanted to have a future with her…

'That sounded way different than I thought it would,' Emi thought to herself cradling her head in her hands. Still, it left the question, what should she do?

Emi waited for the sense of panic and paranoia that usually overwhelmed her when it came time to make a decision, but none came. In fact, her sadness, it seemed had been removed altogether. She thought about her dream and the fears that drove to her spawn those terrible visions, but they too had been purged. In fact, the only thing Emi could remember clearly from her dream was a vision of her, Maou, and a little girl with silver and purple hair between them, a happy family.

Emi came back from within the deepest recesses of her mind to find she had a smile upon her face. It left as quickly as it came, pushed out by Emi's frown. With a sigh, she realized she had Maou to thank for the lack of negative emotion she felt. Still, she was unsure about that, as he'd taken them without her consent.

'Even if he had offered, I probably would've told him to shove it,' Emi thought, 'he probably just figured it would help me feel better.'

'Or maybe,' said a snooty little voice in the back of her head, 'he actually cares for you and he could sense that you needed the help. Maybe you should stay, even if it's just to thank him for what he did.'

Emi knew the voice well, as it was her logic and reasoning speaking. With another sigh, she stood up, wavered with one foot over the step down before she pivoted and quietly walked back up the stairs, onto the porch, and back into the apartment. Maou was awake, looking at the ceiling with his arms behind his head. Emi kicked off her shoes, crept back over to the sleeping back next to Maou's and laid down.

"Thank you," Maou said in a barely comprehensible whisper.

Emi said nothing, laying back down and trying her best to fall asleep. Her final thought was the fact that Maou had been awake while she was asleep, and that he could've killed her right then and there if he were evil… but he didn't. It wasn't the most pleasant of thought, but it was strong, practical and it made Emi feel a little more secure. With a sigh she fell back asleep and had no dreams, resting long and lazily as the sun rose in the sky.

"Emi," said a voice, "Emi, wake up."

It was a familiar voice, one that Emi associated with strange feelings that made her gut flitter and made her brow furrow. She opened her eyes, and found herself in a most compromising position. She was cuddled up against Maou, holding onto a fistful of his loose pajama shirt, one of her legs thrown over one of his own. She sleepily looked up to see Maou trying to wake her up.

"Emi," Maou said quietly, "get off me, before Urushihara wakes up!"

And in that moment, she realized that she had broken free of her sleeping bag during the night and sidled up to a sleeping Maou, who was now looking rather uncomfortable, like a child who feared being caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Emi's eyes grew wide and she slowly let go of Maou, rolled over and curled into a ball, tucking her knees into her chest and covering herself with a blanket. The shock of such an act faded quickly though, and soon Emi had fallen back asleep. Maou himself quickly stood after being untangles from Emi and in a rather static state of disbelief, he went about cleaning up the apartment, as Ashiya was till snoozing away soundly. Maou's face still hurt from being punched a few hours ago, but he had used his magic to heal it as best he could, so now he wouldn't have any noticeable marks.

And even after he had scoured the apartment, washed and dressed himself he was still rather in awe of his awakening. He could still remember it. He'd woken up to a comfortable warmth about him, with a dead leg and an arm across his chest. He had looked down and there, looking like she was in perfect serenity, was the red haired Hero of Ente Isla. He remembered the look on her face as she slept, the way she had been slightly drooling upon him side. As Maou cracked eggs to make breakfast, he thought of how she had looked when she'd woken up. Her look of sleepy confusion, the way the sun beams shot through her hair, making it look as if it were on fire, and the way her sleepy green eyes opened wide when she finally realized how they had been cuddling in their sleep.

Another chapter? Sorcery! Deceit! Nope, it's real, 100 percent fanfiction. Fresh out of the oven and ready to be devoured for your guilty pleasure. Or mine, still not sure who I write this stuff for. Angsty chapter here, lots of emotions and stuff like that. I just have all of these feelings! Anywho, I hope you like it. Read on, Devils.