A/N: Agh, this one was difficult. It's all General Nyne's fault. Timothy was easy enough to age up, I can see where's he's probably going, but Nyne? She's just plain hard.

Thank you to Gemmery, Demi-Fae, Dragon Silhouette, minniearcangel, Cutiepie120048, RMXStudio, and karina001 for reviewing!

Title: Loose Ends

Author: liketolaugh

Rating: T

Pairings: Miranda/Marie

Genre: Tragedy

Warnings: Character death

Summary: After the end of the Holy War, CROW decides it no longer needs the exorcists. And CROW is nothing if not efficient. When a weapon is no longer needed - it gets put away.

Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man.

Klaud Nyne and Timothy Hearst lived in Poland. Timothy went to school every day, and Nyne worked as a teacher there, though for students younger than Timothy.

Right now, Nyne was watching from afar as Timothy ran about and played with some of his classmates - six children of ages ranging from six to twelve.

Nyne was wary, which was why she was currently keeping an eye on Timothy instead of letting him run wild. (He was, after all, fully capable of taking care of himself. Usually.) The reason for this was that Walker had not called once in the last month.

Now, she had never been particularly close to Walker. Timothy had been quite close to him, but still not as much as, say, Lee or the Bookman's apprentice. So it might not be that strange - except Walker was so very determined about his calls, and hadn't missed one in the fourteen months since the war ended. Plus, he'd seemed a little anxious toward the end, inquiring after their wellbeing with a strange edge to his voice.

So she was watching. Just in case.

Timothy was, at the moment, playing tag. With him were two twelve year olds, a ten year old, a seven year old, and a six year old.

Despite not quite being the oldest, Timothy was clearly (and understandably) the most mature out of all of them - but he'd hit that hotspot where he was mature enough that he oozed enough confidence to attract the attention of every other child his age, but not so much so that he could no longer relate to them.

He was leading the play, she noticed with a hint of pride. Keeping the other children from getting too rowdy, taking note whenever one of them was being left out, and even the two twelve year olds were listening to him.

He'd grown up over the last two years. And he'd been so immature to start with… She smiled.

As she watched, one of the twelve year olds accidentally got the seven year old a little too hard, and the little boy fell, face first, into a particularly deep drift of snow. Tears welled up in his eyes and he started showing those dreaded warning signs of crying (Nyne remembered them well from Timothy's early days, before he built up a tolerance for pain) and Timothy was there in a moment.

She smiled again and took a moment to look around, eyes flicking over the people within her range of sight, intent and cautious.

Out on the street, Timothy crouched beside seven-year-old Eddie. "That was a tumble," he remarked brightly, pretending he didn't notice the tears rolling down the sniffling boy's face. He plopped down beside him and ruffled his hair. "That was pretty mean of John, huh?"

Eddie sniffled and nodded, and Timothy helped him sit up. "Yeah, it was mean," he mumbled.

"Think we should get him back?" Timothy asked him, eyes lit with mischief. Eddie brightened slightly.

"But he's huge," he protested.

Timothy stifled a laugh - the twelve year old was a baby compared to an akuma - and replied, "Nah, I bet we could take him."

Eddie eyed him hesitantly, and then said, "Yeah!"

"Great!" Timothy grinned at him and they both stood up, and John started to back away warily.

This would have culminated in both Eddie and Timothy eventually charging the older boy, and Timothy ultimately cornering him so that Eddie could catch him, but Timothy was startled out of his focus by a call of his name.

"Timothy! Come here!"

Timothy jumped and looked over to Nyne, head tilted inquisitively. He almost winced; she looked serious - serious like he hadn't seen her since they'd come here. He turned and gave Eddie an apologetic look. "Sorry, Eddie, looks like you'll have to get John all on your own."

Eddie deflated. "Timothy!" he whined.

"You gotta go?" John asked wisely, heading over. Timothy nodded, and then jogged over to Nyne, who waited for him patiently.

"Master?" he asked, as soon as he was within range. "What is it?"

"Follow me, and be wary," she ordered him, deadly serious, and he grew solemn too, frowning slightly. Nyne spun around and started to walk, brisk but not urgent - or rather, desperately wanting not to appear urgent, he thought.

The farther they went, the more suspicious Timothy became. Nyne was acting almost like they were on a mission, watching everything and everyone, and, if he remembered Allen's quick talk correctly, she was behaving almost like she was trying to shake a tail.

So he started to turn wary, too. He looked over his shoulder and down the streets, and he turned his head sharply at loud noises, and he was tense and ready like a loaded spring.

He didn't ask what was going on, because Nyne probably wouldn't tell him until later. But he got that it was dangerous, and it was dangerous now.

Therefore, when three people sprang from an alley to surround them in an empty street, it wasn't much of a surprise that both exorcists reacted violently.

Timothy took them in over the course of a moment, which was still longer than it took Nyne. A moment after she had attacked one of the men (with black hair and green eyes), he sprang at another, a man with blond hair and brown eyes, and screamed, "DADDY!"

Never say that Timothy was not good at improvising, and he'd found myriad ways to create an opening if there wasn't an obvious one.

Sure enough, the man looked shocked and alarmed, and he slammed his head into the man's, slipped in, and caught his body as it fell to the ground.

While Nyne grappled with the man she'd attacked, the other moved in to wrestle with him, and for the first time, Timothy noticed who they were. His eyes, or the man's eyes, went wide and startled and scared.

"You're CROW?" he asked in a very small voice that wasn't his. The man looked somewhat alarmed, but he didn't falter once, because he was, after all, a professional. "What are you doing? What did we do?"

The man took a deep breath, and replied, mechanical and a little strained, "Timothy Hearst. Combat exorcist, two years of experience, 72% synchro. High risk."

It sounded almost like he was reminding himself, but Timothy wasn't paying attention to that just now. Those words - most specifically, the last two - were enough of an explanation, and he gritted his teeth, trying not to cry for the first time in years. "You're… you're killing us?" He pushed back in a body that had a lot less strength than he was used to, but still enough to make the man strain. "Why?"

Allen hadn't called in a while, he realized belatedly.

The CROW didn't seem to have an answer; he threw Timothy aside instead, slamming him into the ground, and Timothy rolled away and sprang up before he could be hit with a spell strip or worse.

Timothy's body was limp on the ground, and with both him and Nyne tied up he prayed they'd ignore it. And that it wouldn't freeze to death.

Lau Jimin had died in the last fight of the war, but its Innocence was still active, somewhere, and Nyne had kept the experience and enhancements of an exorcist, but that was all - there was no Lau Jimin to help this time.

They fought together, hard and fierce, sometimes back-to-back and sometimes not. Timothy was shaking and tearing up, trying his very best not to lose focus and cry, but it was hard. He'd just wanted out. He'd just wanted to make more friends.

He took it back, if it meant he could've kept the friends he'd had already.

The man in front of him, with black hair and brown eyes, was visibly faltering even as Timothy attacked him, over and over, harsh and desperate. But the four of them remained at a stalemate up until Nyne lost track of her location, dodged without looking, and a Flame Wing settled on Timothy's body. And then it burst.

Timothy screamed; his vision whited out and he couldn't hear or feel anything but how much it hurt. Unseen by him, Nyne whirled around, horrified, and the brown-eyed took a step back, face shutting down a moment after shock flitted across it. The man's breath visibly stuttered. No one noticed but the green-eyed CROW.

"Timothy!" Nyne called out before she could stop herself, reaching out for just a moment before she snatched it back, and fury settled over her features.

After a few moments, the possessed man's body collapsed as Timothy lost his hold on his Innocence, and a few moments after, Timothy was dead, still burning on the ground.

Nyne let out a growl, low and animal like Lau Jimin, and sprang with no weapon save her flying fists. But while the black-haired brown-eyed man was hanging back a little, looking reluctant, the other two went after her with new energy after their success.

She fought back long and hard, burning for revenge for her downed pupil, who she'd thought could grow up and have a life someday, and for all the others who couldn't do the same because of them, because of these CROW.

Finally, though, the green-eyed man got a solid hold of one of her arms and would not let go, no matter how much she struggled. He gave the brown-eyed man a look, and reluctantly, he grabbed Nyne's other.

The blond had apparently recovered, and he marched up to her and gave her a long look.

"Klaud Nyne," he said finally, rough a little rough and breathing a little heavy. He was wincing, and it satisfied her only a little that he was clearly in some serious pain. "Combat general, twenty-one years of experience, 139% synchro. High risk."

She glared at him viciously and thought of all the things she'd like to do to a man like him, but instead she said, "Burn in Hell."

He didn't react, not even a little, and a moment later, she shut her eyes and held back a scream as his switchblade was buried in her throat. She arched slightly and a hoarse cry escaped as the knife was twisted, and the men watched as she dropped to the ground and bled into the snow, gasping for breath, wincing and trying not to make any noise.

"I can't do this anymore," the black-haired brown-eyed man said suddenly.

The green-eyed CROW glared at him. "Then you'll join David and Samson."

The man stared at Nyne, dying on the ground, and then looked at Timothy's still-burning body with bare ground all around him, and swallowed. "Gladly," he whispered. "And may I be punished for my crimes, for I have sinned."

"You have now."

I feel a little bad about that... but it's definitely not the worst. Still. Timothy barely made it to eleven. *sigh* Well, thanks for reading, and please review! Next chapter's the conclusion.

Edited 9/26/16 for detail and mood.