He raised a dirt-smeared glove to the door, rapping on it with his knuckles. He anxiously bounced from foot to foot, looking down the hallway on either side. He ran one of his hands through his hair before realizing it was covered in dirt and rain, and he quickly removed his fingers before they could do anymore damage.

The door opened, stopped by a safety chain. One blue eye peered out rather blearily, and Lavi wondered briefly if he'd caught her in the middle of a nap. The one blue eye widened into a round orb before being turned into a half-circle of suspicion and derision, and the door slammed shut. Lavi stood there, dumbfounded, and he came to see that he'd never actually expected her to reject his company no matter how angry she was. Frustrated, tired, cold, lonely, and slightly panicky (given the fact he'd come close to losing his mind and he'd lost probably about four hours' worth of time), he shouted, "Oh, come on! I know you're angry, but can't you at least just let me come in, take off my shoes, give me a shower, and give back the damn books in your room? That's all I want! I haven't even said anything yet!" He stood there huffing angrily, staring at the white door with its shiny finish and small brass knocker. There was a vacillating silence, and then he heard the door creak open slightly. One eye peered out again, framed by dark hair.

And the door slammed again.

Lavi resisted the urge to smash his forehead into the door in frustration, and he was lucky he did because he could hear the sounds of the safety bolt being drawn back with a loud click. He stood there with his bag full of clothes held tightly to his chest like a small, lost kid. Esperanza stared at him as she opened the door, her eyes surveying him.

"You look like you've been through hell," she stated simply. She walked away from the open door, and Lavi took that as his invitation to come in. He stepped inside of her plush room with some trepidation, feeling like he was both unwelcome and tolerated at the same time. He took a deep breath as he set down his things.

"Go ahead, use the shower. Don't use up all the hot water - I don't want to freeze to death tonight," Esperanza said wearily in a gravel-toned voice. She sat down on the bed and, to his surprise, pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the dresser. She lit up, and the smell of tobacco permeated the air. Lavi wrinkled his nose at the acrid aroma.

"You smoke?" he asked, perplexed. Esperanza stared out the window, not looking at him. She looked as if someone had aged her by forty years.

"Old habits die hard." With that reply, she ignored him staunchly, and Lavi went to take his shower. He relished the hot water, but he didn't stay for long. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something horribly wrong about this set up. It wasn't that he felt unwelcome, at least not any more. No, he felt as if there was no atmosphere, like someone had sucked all the air out of the room. Esperanza's presence seemed so much more subdued now, not the raging storm she was in the Order halls. He felt as if there should be some sort of residue from that presence here, but all he could feel was spent fury and dissatisfaction, like burned sugar and hunger.

He walked out of the bathroom in his clean uniform, and she gave him a funny look, the only other expression he'd seen on her face all day.

"Amigo, you're dressed like you're going to war. It's nighttime. It would be dangerous to go back to the hotel," Esperanza stated hesitantly, as if she wasn't sure if she should be saying something so... concerned. Lavi shrugged.

"I wasn't planning on staying long. I mean, I was... uh, I knew you... probably didn't want to see me," Lavi said, scrambling for words. He was usually so good at putting together conversations on the fly, but he guessed that with this persona being so friendly he'd slowly lost his knack for predicting what people needed to hear and, more importantly, what they wanted to hear as well. His smooth tongue had gone out the door right behind his unbiased mindset. He took a deep breath as he sat down at the small writing desk, putting the books he'd wanted to take back into his bag. Esperanza watched, all the while puffing on a white stick of leaves and tar. The ashy end fell on the carpet, but she paid it no mind, and Lavi was starting to worry.

"Esperanza, what's gotten into you?" Lavi asked, frowning. He wasn't looking at her - he was staring into his bag. He knew it would make her more comfortable to speak if she didn't look him right in the eyes. He'd get a better version of the truth that way, but he'd never be sure if it was the truth without looking straight into her face. It was completely silent. Esperanza refused to answer.

Finally, she whispered, "I'm a murderer. I'm going to suffer for the rest of my life, and I have no room to be angry if someone decides that they wish they could torture me in a thousand ways. I think sometimes it would be better if I had died instead, back on the mountain. At least up there, there is no one to judge me." Of course, that wasn't entirely true - there would always be Lavi to judge her, always knowing what she did to him. He hadn't been Lavi then, though. He'd been somebody else, and that person's anger was separate from Lavi because he wasn't that person.

But what if he was? What if he still hung on to that anger? He knew that he'd felt flashes of it, but it only came that way, in flashes.

Lavi had no answers for her. Today had shaken her. He turned around, and he realized that he'd have to keep an eye on her. The stoic ranch hand he'd come to enjoy was beginning to stumble into a pit of her own making. He knew that, in spite of all his efforts, she could only save herself. He couldn't do it for her.

"I think... I think I'll stay a bit longer. It's raining, and the roads are going to get full soon. It's almost rush hour again, and there are some things I want to read. Besides, the books will start curling unless I proof them," Lavi said. They were all valid reasons to stay, but it was more than just that. He didn't want Esperanza doing anything stupid. "And stop smoking in here - an ember could set the entire place on fire." Esperanza looked at him with a sardonic look, and he thought he could see the shadow of a ghost of a smile. It was a start.

She tamped her ashes into the ash tray, and she threw the used cigarette out the window. The room still stank of nicotine and used smoke. Lavi looked back at her as she got up and walked to the bathroom, and he heard the sound of the hot water running. After a while it turned off, and he guessed that she was taking a long, nice soak. He sighed. This had been a long day.

He was poring over a rather promising looking piece of information when the door opened, and Esperanza trudged out. She threw herself on the bed with undue heavy force, and Lavi looked back with surprise. She lay face down on the bed, and he wondered for a minute if she meant to suffocate herself. Finally she turned on her side, staring at the wall, and he felt a sort of frustration rise within him. She was being... unreasonable. He knew that she suffered from a massive amount of guilt (a guilt he could understand, no less), but this was no way to deal with it.

"Esperanza... Esperanza, talk to me already," Lavi sighed, getting up and shutting his book. He dimmed his lamp slightly, deciding it wouldn't be worth it to waste the oil. They had electrical lights here, yes, but they'd turned them off for the time. He sat next to her on the bed, and Esperanza said, "I've been... dreaming about them." Lavi rubbed his face. This was exactly what he was getting at.

"The more you dwell on it, the worse it's going to get," he groaned. Esperanza suddenly sat up, and she asked piteously, "Then what would you have me do, Lavi? Forget everything? What good does it do for me to forget my mistakes for me to do them over again? Do you want me to do something with myself? There is nothing I can do! All I can do is sit here, read those dusty books, and go cross-eyed!" Lavi suddenly blinked. She was just as frustrated as he was with the situation. He should've known... Still, there had to be something they could do. She was useless to him this way, as sullen, depressed, and irritated as she was. She was acting like a petulant child, yet she admitted she'd done something wrong! It made no sense to him.

He glimpsed the fang of the panther she sported on her shoulder, her nightgown failing to completely cover the source of her shame. He wondered what it must be like, to have a constant reminder of one's biggest failures inscribed on skin so to see it every day. Actually, he did know that feeling... it was tamped down, but it was there. When she had killed actively, he'd stood by passively and watched people tear each other apart.

"I worry that I am still that monster. I have tried so hard to become... become someone else. To no longer be angry," Esperanza said, staring Lavi in the face. Her scarred visage would've been frightening in this dim lighting, if not for that fact Lavi knew her so well as to find the scars comforting rather than disconcerting. He sighed, and he said, "I would've never guessed when we were out on the desert. You felt more at home out there."

"The city... holds me in. It reminds me of how angry I was. It catches me on fire the way a small match lights a dry stack of sticks," she said, her Spanish lilt rounding her words in odd ways that Lavi found both soothing and unnerving because at times he could hardly tell what she was saying. He needed her to keep talking, though. She was usually so quiet, at least nowadays. She was bottling all of this up.

"You think you'd feel better if you were somewhere out in the open? Or somewhere in the country?" Lavi asked. Esperanza shrugged.

"I do not think my anger will cool even out on my home plains in Patagonia. I remember too much, and it haunts me. Mis vaqueros taught me how to stay calm before all that... that mess," she said, throwing a careless hand out to gesture to the city. She bit her lip, a habit now whenever she was thinking hard or concentrating.

"Maybe if... if you apologize, you'll feel better?" Lavi said lamely, looking at her with a sheepish grimace. She gave him a sarcastic glance, and he knew that wasn't happening. They sat there, leaning against the headboard, and they wandered along different paths as they talked, straying from one topic to another. Eventually, Esperanza fell asleep, albeit an unsound sleep. Lavi could still hear her muttering things in her sleep, her face scrunching up and her voice becoming loud as she uttered something incomprehensible in Spanish.

It would take more than one night for her to find closure. Lavi just wished he'd caught this sooner. Perhaps he'd have been better able to help her.

He'd noticed things, the weeks leading up to his discovery of her affiliation in the War of the Wildcats. He had never capitalized on these, however, taking them for mere imaginings or random occurrences. He now saw they were all joined together - the sleep talking, the restless nights (at times, very seldom), the dour look on her face at all times, her constant and never ceasing stoicism, her nearly disproportionate ability to sacrifice herself despite her pride, and the anger she buried under layers of control. There were other things, too. She stayed far from children. She was curt when dealing with people. She never wore anything that revealed the tattoo on her shoulder. She so much preferred to be alone or with very little company, a female anomaly of sorts in a world where society was all a female had. He wondered why he didn't see it. Perhaps he hadn't wanted to. Maybe he thought that, for once, he'd found a woman who was just... different.

He got up and looked out at the world beyond. Looking back, he opened the drawer quietly and took the cigarettes. He'd tried one once, on Bookman's behest. The old man smoked a pipe now and again, but nothing more than that. He'd taken a draw, and he'd nearly made himself sick. He opened the window, and he deposited the cigarettes to the ground below. She would be angry with him, as cigarettes happened to be expensive, but it was a habit he found destructive. The lights of the city almost seemed to permeate the air, making it froth. He breathed in, almost expecting to absorb some of that light and hide it within himself, to use it to rekindle his lagging reserves of energy and vigor. He felt so held down, perhaps due in part to Esperanza's mood and the constant drizzle of Sao Paulo.

Perhaps tomorrow would look better. He looked back at the bed, where Esperanza lay sleeping. She was tossing over, making the bed look like a storm-tossed sea. Her mind was probably no better, but he'd never watched her sleep before. He sat down in the desk's chair near the foot of the bed.

He watched her move and mumble, yelping now and again as she curled up into a ball. Her constant motions were like the rocking of the sea to his mind as he found himself drifting to slumber.

The world seemed tilted off-kilter. It was as if everything were the wrong colors, or the lights here were too bright for inside, or the light was too dark outside the windows. Lavi found himself sitting in a courtroom at the defendant table, and he felt dread pool in the bottom of his stomach. He gripped the chair he was sitting in, looking around and passively inspecting the people around him.

There was a lawyer sitting next to him. He was faceless, without any features whatsoever, wearing a pinstripe suit with slicked hair and manicured hands that were resting on top of a briefcase made of some sort of skin that made Lavi's insides crawl. Ahead of him sat the judged, dressed with a mask and a robe as well as a white, powdered wig. The mask was a Venetian-made plaster glazed with a clear lacquer, and the design was one of words circling around the eyes and over the nose. It was a confusing mass that seemed to move.

"We now indict the defendant on charges of identity theft and fraud, stealing the lives of the present victims in attendance, of which there are forty-eight," the judge stated in a rather sonorous, female voice that sounded oddly familiar. The judge cocked her head to the side, the wig sliding and slipping over her shoulders like snakes as her head continued to lean at an almost unnatural angle. Lavi feels sick as she gives the indictment, and the lawyer says in, yet another half-familiar voice, "Objection. That would be forty-nine counts, not forty-eight."

"No, it is forty-eight. He is who he is now."

"Your Honor, it is forty-nine. You forgot the other him," the lawyer said, and Lavi frowned.

"Aren't you supposed to be helping me?" Lavi asked, rather peeved, and the lawyer looked at Lavi with his non-eyes while shrugging deferentially.

"Anywho, onward. How do you plead?" The judge straightened her head again, but it started to lean towards the other side, again at a near unnatural angle. Lavi could feel bile rise in his throat as he watched her. He swallowed, feeling his palms sweat. Behind him, he could feel many presences, but he couldn't tell what they were, nor could he somehow turn to look behind him, for whatever reason.

"The defendant pleads 'not guilty'." There was an immediate response.

Behind Lavi, there was a massive uproar of voices, all of them the same yet varying in intensity, shouting profane things. Lavi winced and ducked as the sound hit him like a wave made of metal. He was rocked forwards and slammed into the table, as if a thousand hands were pushing him down.

"SILENCE."The judge's command was immediately met with an absolute absence of noise, as if someone had taken the needle off the gramophone with nary a scratch. There was only the breathing of many individuals behind Lavi, and he once again fought to see what was behind him. It was to no avail.

"Not guilty, you say? Interesting. I should have the defendant speak for himself, if you don't mind," the judge said, and Lavi nearly pinpointed the voice. Lavi turned his head to the side, catching sight of the grieved party's table.

And yet, there was no one seated there. In fact, there was no table. Lavi felt his breath catch in his chest, and his stomach roiled as nausea swamped him. He swallowed again, harder this time, and he felt his hands shake.

"WELL? WHAT IS YOUR VERDICT, LAVI?" Lavi was jarred out of his reverie, and he looked back at the judge, and he scrambled for an answer to give her.

"I-I'm not guilty, your honor. I've never stolen anyone's identity."

Another uproar sounded, voices throwing punches at Lavi, and he ducked again, cringing. There was something about those voices that grated against him, making him feel like curling into a ball and disappearing, something... something utterly sinister about them, malicious, intent on his death.

"Verdict, your honor?" the lawyer asked, and Lavi wondered how long he'd been sitting there under the table. They'd gone through the entire process, and he hadn't known it...? He felt his heart slam into his rib cage as she suddenly stated, "Guilty. Bailiff, you know the punishment. Be kind enough to mete it out, would you?" The judge suddenly removed her mask, and Lavi's eyes widened as he stared into the decaying face of his mother.

"God does not appreciate lies and thieves," she stated, and Lavi was suddenly grasped from behind, pulled to the front of the court room near the judge as Lavi tried his best not to throw up. He shook and shivered as his mother stared down at him with accusation, and Lavi struggled against the bailiff, an invisible force he couldn't see. He was turned around to face the audience who had vehemently stripped him bare with verbal knives and slaughtering insults.

He suddenly knew why the voices had unsettled him. The voices... they were all his. All those voices were his.

In front of him sat an entire audience of copies of himself, but they were all different in some way that he couldn't put a finger on. A chord went through him as they all stared at him with blank, green glass eyes. He realized he was alone, even among these people who were himself. He shivered as he wondered what the punishment was.

Suddenly, forty-eight bodies moved in a procession towards the Bookman Junior, their blank eyes suddenly coming a-fire with a fury that Lavi could almost feel wafting over him. He scrabbled against the tile floor, trying to move away from the advancing body of Bookman Apprentices. They grabbed hold of his arms and legs, taking him from the bailiff, and Lavi struggled against their hold. Their hands were cold and clammy, reminiscent of a corpse that had been decaying in the water for weeks. They felt bloated and dead, even though their appearance was healthy. Lavi felt revulsed as they strove to hold him still, and he looked up into the face of one of the personas, one he instinctively knew was Manuel. His face was calm, to the point of resembling an automaton. He lifted one clinical hand as Lavi continued to move, and a persona grabbed his head to hold it still.

"We hereby-"

"GET OFF OF ME!"

"-revoke all-"

"LET GO! I'M INNOCENT! I DIDN'T-"

"-privileges and rights-"

"I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING TO YOU!"

"-by removing-"

Lavi shouted over the persona, struggling harder as the doppelganger lifted up a needle - it was an acupuncture needle that looked oddly similar to the ones that Bookman happened to use, and Lavi felt the pit of his stomach drop to the point of no return. What were they doing with that -? The hand suddenly began to edge towards his face, moving the needle slowly (yet fast, oh so quickly). He finally located the spot he wanted, the area right over his victim's covered eye. A clammy hand held open the eye by pulling the skin around the patch, and Lavi struggled harder, realizing what he might be planning. The persona lifted Tensui, the Innocence that Lavi considered friend but now happened to be his enemy, and aimed it over the needle.

He was going to plunge it straight into his eye. He was going to put that needle through his eye straight into his brain -

Lavi let out the loudest scream he could muster as he watched the hammer begin its downward descent. He finally shut his eyes, struggling and struggling and struggling...

"Amigo!"

He continued to thrash.

"Amigo!"

He could feel himself finally making headway, his hands and feet coming loose from the bonds that restrained -

"LAVI, WAKE UP!"

Lavi finally stopped moving, recognizing the voice. It was still dark, and his eye took a long while to adjust to the darkness. After a few more minutes of labored and panicked breathing, Lavi made out the outline of Esperanza's form sitting on top of him, her head hung low between her shoulders as she held down both of his wrists. Lavi tried to remember what had happened, and a flush of hot and cold rolled through him. He finally whispered, "Esperanza, I'm awake. You can let me go now." His voice shook. He couldn't disguise how much the dream had bothered him.

He'd only seen a lobotomy once. It'd been the most gruesome thing he'd seen happen so calmly. The technique was a secret fact - it was not yet ready to be unleashed on the world, but Bookman said that nevertheless they needed to see one in order to record it accurately. He'd watched with sick fascination, even then. He'd been fourteen years old, and even the thick exterior shell he'd created for himself had not blocked out the feeling of pity and sympathy for the patient who'd had an ice pick driven straight through his eye sockets. The patient, afterwards, had been little more than a sack of meat, completely devoid of personality. It was a just a lethargic insane patient that looked like he'd gotten worse rather than better. Lavi couldn't help but notice what those personae had wanted...

"Lavi, are you all right?" Esperanza asked quietly, her own voice shaking, though more due to strain than actual fear or emotion. Her arms quivered as she tried to hold herself upright in her awkward angle over the Bookman Junior, and Lavi carefully extricated himself from the Argentine. He sat with his head between his knees, squeezing his good eye shut as he thought about the dream. It had felt so real... Everything, it'd felt absolutely real...

"I had a nightmare. Th-that's all," Lavi stumbled. Even in the dark, Esperanza radiated concern - and curiosity. Again, Lavi noted just how good a Bookman she would've made. She was a little bit too forwards about her curiosity, though, but that could be -

Lavi stopped that train of thought. As much as he wanted, he couldn't put that sort of structured life on Esperanza. She was a free spirit; being trapped by Bookman law and emotion (or lack thereof) would kill her. He suddenly smelled something, and he wrinkled his nose. He suddenly realized that, in his fear, he'd actually soiled himself. His face grew hot as he got up quickly, stumbling in the dark, and said, "Uh, excuse me." He knew that she knew, but never the less he tried to keep up the charade that he was going to the bathroom to relieve himself, not to change.

As he put on his second pair of pants, the mud and rain spattered pair, he realized the enormity of his dream. Just as he thought about it, all the sensations flooded back to him, as if they were real experiences. He knew that he could back all of that sensory information. The clammy hands were from nearly being grabbed by a floating dead body. The lobotomy was an obvious one. The needle, he'd seen hundreds of times from Jiji's set. Being held down... that was another memory he'd rather not recount, but even as he fought to not think about it, it came again.

He was left in a cold sweat after the memory had dissipated, and he found himself curled up on the bathroom floor, his head covered by his hands. It was still dark, and he could see nothing. He hadn't bothered with the light. The door opened, and Lavi cringed before realizing it was Esperanza. He felt hands run through his hair and a soothing voice saying things in Spanish, things he didn't understand.

"Come on, amigo. Let's go to bed. Take of those pants. I'll lend you a better pair." Lavi obeyed listlessly, feeling drained completely. He actually liked the empty feeling, though. It meant that there was nothing left in him to feel. There would be no fear, no hope, no sadness. Esperanza's hands guided his as he undid the pants he'd just put on, leaving them on the floor. She fetched him another pair, one made out of cotton cloth with a drawstring around the waist, and she helped him put them on. She began to lead him over to the bed, and he suddenly felt a burst of old, chivalrous male pride.

"Es-"

"You are sleeping on the bed." That Hispanic command left no room for argument. He was going to sleep on the bed, whether he liked it or not. He acquiesced just as he noticed that the sky was beginning to lighten from its dark black to a dewy gray blue, the color of early morning. Esperanza began to walk towards the desk and chair, and Lavi noticed that they were both flipped over. One of them even had a loose leg, and Lavi wondered if he'd done that. He idly watched her from the bed as she rearranged the furniture he must've displaced. A thrown sofa here... a scattering of pages and books... a broken curtain rod... a cracked window, even...

Esperanza was about to make herself at home on the small, tiny sofa (that Lavi had absolutely refused to sleep on the minute he'd come into the hotel room), and Lavi felt panic, the same panic that had hit him in the mountains. However, this time, he made sure to tamp it down to something bearable. However, as the dark began to close in, right on the cusp of sleep, the panic hit him full force.

"Esperanza?" Lavi whispered hoarsely, suddenly feeling like a small child. He hadn't had a nightmare since he was seven.

"Yes, amigo?" Esperanza answered, her voice sleepy.

"Could you, uh... could you pull the couch over here?" he asked, wide awake now. He sat up in bed, pulling his knees to his chest again. He rested his chin on his knees. Despite his feeling of terror, he managed to make a pouty face at Esperanza as she looked at him over the high back of the couch with a sardonic look. She sighed, and instead of pulling the entire couch next to the bed, she walked over in her pajamas. He was slightly shocked as she pulled back the covers and began to climb into the queen-sized bed she usually had to herself.

"You don't have to-"

"You try anything, and your balls are mine." Lavi resisted the urge to cross his legs and scooch away. She meant every word she said. The look on her face said it all.

"Okay," he practically squeaked, laying down. They were back to back, and Lavi felt the panic begin to dissipate, knowing there was someone else near him. The apparitions had felt so real, and they'd become a real fear, but with another person nearby the fear was toned down to a mere thrum of unease. He didn't feel like all forty-nine of them would jump him in the middle of the night. It was a childish solution, but it was a solution that seemed to work. Lavi kept that as a note to himself.

He was just beginning to drift off to sleep when Esperanza asked hesitantly, "What did... did you dream about?" He could hear the nervousness in her voice.

"I'm not telling unless you start telling," Lavi muttered, and he heard Esperanza laugh. He lightly smiled, his eyes shut. She shifted, and she said, "All right. If you tell, I tell." It was quiet, a tense silence that was heavy with expectation.

"I dreamed... I dreamed that I was being tried in court. And my lawyer didn't have a face," Lavi said. Esperanza whispered under her breath, " Porque todos son el mismo." Lavi chuckled, turning slightly to look at her. She turned as well, a mischievous glance in her eye. Lavi rolled his eye, and he flopped back down into his original position.

"Anyways, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted -"

She scoffed.

"-my lawyer didn't have a face and the judge... was, uh, my mother. She said that I was guilty of identity fraud and theft. And then I had forty-nine different copies hold me down and try to give me a lobotomy." He rubbed the eye under his patch, wincing as he thought about it. Even with Esperanza right behind him, he could still feel the fear that had rippled through him in massive waves. Esperanza was quiet before asking sheepishly, "Amigo, what... what is a lobotomy?"

"They stick a needle into your brain through your eye."

"Ah... That sounds frightening."

"It looks frightening." Lavi shivered, and Esperanza turned over. She put a hand on his shoulder, her thumb rubbing concentric circles on his back. He bit his lip as he squeezed his eyes shut but realized that was a horrible idea when the image of a needle approaching his other eye came to mind with horrible clarity.

"Your turn," he finally said. Esperanza was silent, the same tense silence stalling the air.

"There were dead children, everywhere there were dead children. They were asking me where their parents were. I couldn't tell them, so I tried to bury them instead. They kept crawling back out, and they followed me where ever I went," Esperanza whispered in Spanish. Her voice was choked, and Lavi turned around. They stared at each other for a while... and then, both simultaneously turned over.

They were afraid of what they would do if they had stayed staring at each other that way.

"Esperanza?"

"Si, amigo?"

"I don't think I'm going to be leaving any time soon," he murmured, hugging himself. He could feel her radiating body heat, and it was a comforting warmth to know that someone else was near. He thought back to Dia de la Tequila, and he felt guilty. That had been the day his descent had really started in earnest. It had also been the day he'd decided for himself who he'd wanted to be when he'd rejected his Bookman self and his plea to turn back before he killed them both. If not for his Bookman self, he nearly had killed them both, and he wondered just how valid his other self's point might be.

"I won't be letting you leave, either. You're in no fit shape, not as you are." Lavi felt a brief rush of relief. Despite the fact he'd made some acquaintances in his hotel, he still felt horribly alone. They were friends made from firefights and blood and tears and shame. There was a bond there that was not easily severed. However, Lavi was scared to acknowledge it for fear that he'd have to cut the bond himself, striking deep and hard in order to release them both from each other.

"Esperanza?" Lavi said, turning over slightly. His words were thrown over his shoulder.

"Si, amigo?"

"Thanks. For, uh... for everything," Lavi put out awkwardly, and he felt the bed shift again as Esperanza sat up. He could feel her eyes boring into his shoulder as she stared.

"No hay de que, amigo. No es una problema."

A/N: Another rather sporadic chapter to this convoluted fic of psychologically messed up goodness. Don't we just love this sort of stuff? Well, anyways, it's time to reveal our reviewers, subscribers, and the like!

On Team Review, we have three people: janrockiss, with her usual, lovable review, St. Iggy the Pyro, another lovable reviewer who managed to put up quite a bit of input from an iPod no less, and Chocoglazed123. As to the very latter, I don't mean to snark, but those little character tags do have a purpose. Not all stories are OC-centric. Just a note.

As for Subscribers and Favoriteers, I have absolutely nada on the newbie list. Ah, well. Better luck next chapter, right?

As for discussion questions, I have quite a few. How many of you think that Esperanza and Lavi are a confirmed couple? How many of you guys think they're not a couple at all? How many of you would like that idea? How many of you would loathe it? What do you think the symbolism in Lavi's dream means? Will allowing Esperanza and Lavi stay together create more tension or make things more relaxed? Are there any parts that you thought were funny or humorous? Do you think that Esperanza deserves the flack she receives?

Anyhow, that's all I've got for the time being. I should be back very soon with another installment.

God bless, and happy reading!