The truck was suddenly thrown, and Lavi had very little time to realize what was going on. He crashed into the ground, face-first, as the truck skidded on its side and crashed into the trees. Dazed, he was aware that his face hurt a lot and he was lying with his back against a tree and his legs in the air. He groaned and tried to get back on his feet, managing to bruise his ribs on a buttress root. He spat out the first curse words that would come to mind, no matter the language, as he crawled on his hands and knees and looked around.

It took him another moment to realize he couldn't hear a thing. He was deaf as a post. His vision was frantic, searching the forest. He could see the hay truck and all their belongings. Bookman and Allen were nowhere to be found, but he could see that there was a massive amount of hay piled up where it had fallen out of the truck. A sudden, horrid thought crossed his mind of Bookman trapped underneath the bales when the truck had flipped, and he scrambled toward the hay pile as fast as his limbs would let him.

It was only the afterthought that something had caused this sudden turn of events which made him stop in his tracks for a moment and think. He reached for his hammer, breathing deeply. His breath roared in his ears like an inner ocean, and sound slowly came back to him. He could hear the shouts of frightened and confused men, the cackle of something in the trees, more explosions. He swallowed, focusing. This was no time to run into battle without a plan.

First, find Bookman and Allen. Strength in numbers.

If he could, deal with the Akuma that had somehow flipped the truck without him noticing. More than likely, it had used a bomb.

Which he could very easily step on...

Lavi looked down at the leaf litter that was almost ankle deep. He pressed his lips together, looked at the sky (or what was visible through the canopy), and attempted not to shout obscenities. He couldn't catch a break.

Carefully, he tiptoed his way through the encroaching jungle, and he dug through the hay pile.

"Bookman? Hey, Jiji, if you're in there, you need to say something!" Lavi joked weakly as he tossed entire bales to the side, searching for his mentor.

"Idiot apprentice, if I were an assassin, I would have killed you," Bookman weakly groaned behind Lavi. The redhead turned to his voice and found him underneath a suitcase, his head bleeding profusely and his kohl smudged from landing on the ground. Lavi quickly lifted the heavy valise off the old man and helped him sit up.

"Pressure bomb?" Bookman asked as Lavi brushed the dead leaves and detritus off of him.

"Yeah, looks like," Lavi muttered. "It's like Florence all over again, huh?"

"I hated those things," Bookman agreed, shakily getting to his feet. "Did you see where Allen went?"

There was another large BOOM, and the two instinctively dropped to the ground and put their hands over their heads. They had been through this kind of thing before. Honestly, Lavi was glad for the familiarity. A lot of the time, the Akuma came up with new deadly devices, and Lavi's massive knowledge of war weapons was useless at that point.

"No, I didn't see Allen. Must've been thrown. Did you see any bandits?" Lavi asked. His mind immediately turned to the goat that had been stuck in the brush. Someone had wanted them to stop here. It was entirely possible this was a human endeavor.

"No. I didn't see anything," Bookman grumbled belligerently, obviously miffed that he'd missed the signs of ambush. Both Lavi and Bookman felt chagrined for their immediate ineptitude. For two people so familiar with war, they should've noticed beforehand that something was about to happen. Lavi wondered how many had been killed, but he squashed the thought. He'd long before discovered it was no good to feel guilt over the dead. It wouldn't help them and only add to the psychological burden Bookmen carry.

This was why you didn't get too attached.

"Grab the gun. Go look for Allen," Bookman ordered as he removed his Innocence from the inside lining of his coat.

Lavi gave the old man an incredulous, and perhaps fearful, look. He balled up his fists, and Bookman gave him a look that brooked no argument.

"These may not be Akuma. To kill with Innocence would be... unwise," Bookman stated.

Lavi deliberated momentarily. How long had it been since he'd had to shoot a gun? And if he was forced to, would he even be able to hit his mark? Deciding better safe than sorry, he left.

Lavi scrabbled to the truck and peered inside the cab. The two men inside were still alive somehow, dazed but aware. Lavi asked them if they were okay, and one answered that his leg was broken. The other complained of a headache, probably because he'd smashed his forehead into the steering wheel. Both were wearing seat belts, which had more than likely saved both their lives.

Lavi reached inside, grabbed the rifle off the rack, and headed out, ignoring the protests of the men inside the car. He stood up on the cab and looked around, noting the craters in the road. There was still no definitive evidence of Akuma, besides the cackling Lavi had heard earlier. His heart continued to thump in his chest, sometimes lurching as it missed a beat.

"Allen? Allen!" Lavi called, jumping off the cab to the ground.

"I'm... I'm over here!" Allen shouted from deeper in the forest, and Lavi fought his way through the brush, hair standing on end. He could still hear men running pellmell through the jungle, but he ignored them, his focus on Allen's voice.

"Keep talking! I'm coming to find you!"

"I'm actually in a tree. Look up!" Allen commanded, and Lavi searched the shallow treeline underneath the canopy. Allen was, indeed, stuck in the air, pinwheeling his legs in a vain effort to get free.

"How did you get up there?" Lavi asked breathlessly, wrestling with the vines and shrubs. He readjusted his headband, almost smacking himself in the face with his rifle.

"I jumped at the last second. Master's split-second training sessions finally came in handy," Allen quipped darkly, shifting in the branches of a small, wide-branching tree.

Lavi began to climb, his eyes scanning the undergrowth for intruders. Spanish shouting echoed in his ears, immediately translated.

"A demon, some kind of creature!"

"But I saw other men! Where's Pedro? He was in the last truck!"

"Quiet, they'll hear you!"

Lavi swallowed as he realized he was about twenty feet off the ground, but Allen didn't seem so perturbed. While Lavi had never had a fear of heights, he recognized that a drop could put him in cardiac arrest or kill him outright. He looked ahead at Allen instead.

The kid didn't look worse for wear. In fact, he'd got the better end of the deal. His face was scratched in places, but he didn't have the road rash Lavi suffered. His clothes were clean, besides the leaves in his hair and shirt, and he was more or less calm. Allen wasn't one to panic, and for that Lavi was thankful. As much as he loved Komui, the man had a penchant for overreaction, and he still remembered the donkey kick to the face he'd received after trying to rescue the man, who had somehow gotten stuck in the rafters trying to fix something in the Science Department.

"Do you wanna climb down, or do you think you can make the jump?" Lavi asked, now directly behind the boy.

"I can jump, if you'll unhook me. I think a branch is stuck in my suspenders," Allen suggested, tugging at the aforementioned piece of apparel. Lavi helped Allen sit up on a branch and unclip the offending article of clothing, and the white-haired Exorcist smiled gratefully.

"My thanks," Allen said politely.

"De nada," Lavi wearily answered.

Allen jumped down from the tree, and he rolled back on to his feet-

A blur tackled the boy, and Lavi activated Tenshui.

The Akuma was not burly. It was a thin mass of bristling wires, a white mask on its face. It cackled, the scream of metal on metal. Lavi scrabbled to get out of the tree as Allen knocked the creature off him. It rebounded off a tree and scrabbled down, hissing under the mask. Lavi's hammer suddenly crashed into the side of it, and it screeched as it was pinned. It spit and clawed like a cat underneath the hammer, and it took a lot of his strength to hold the thing in place.

"Allen, any time would be good, you know," Lavi suggested through gritted teeth.

Movement edged at the corner of his eye, and the distraction almost cost him his hold. Allen blocked another demon, this one much bigger and made of what looked like vines. Lavi wouldn't have been able to tell it apart from the surrounding forest, if it weren't for the fact Allen was impaling it with his long, sharp fingers.

"I'm a bit busy at the moment!" Allen answered, slightly peeved.

Lavi's hammer slipped, and the creature tried to run into the trees. A series of needles impaled it against the massive tree's trunk, and Bookman hopped down from a smaller tree. Lavi turned his attention to the living amalgam of vines, and he crushed what he thought were its legs. It dragged thorns over Allen's legs, but his cowl blocked them from doing true damage. The two Bookmen jumped over the lashing vines from the creature, and after several more minutes of battle, it lay on the ground, beaten.

"Are there any more?" Lavi panted.

"Not that I could see. However, there are bandits as well. They pick up whatever's left over from the Akuma attacks. Easy pickings," Bookman said. "I suggest you be careful."

"When are we not?" Lavi joked, smiling, and Bookman rolled his eyes. He decided to take that glibness as a sign of the redhead's humor returning.

"I will see if there are more survivors," Bookman said, disappearing into the underbrush with a quick hop.

Lavi and Allen surveyed their kills respectively, wiping the sweat off their brows. They had not been easy opponents, but the fight had been quick. Three against two was a little unfair, but one of them had a dud heart and the other was an incredibly old man, so it all evened out. Lavi kicked the corpse of one of the Akuma half-heartedly before collapsing into a sitting position.

"You okay?" Allen asked.

The redhead nodded, waving a hand at Allen.

"It's nothing. Gotta get my wind back," Lavi assured as he finally stood back up, replacing his hammer to its rightful spot. He picked up the gun, which he'd dropped from his scrabble down the tree, and put it in a soldier-carry, leaning against his shoulder barrel facing up.

"We should be heading back," Lavi suggested. His face was beginning to sting from the dirt rubbed into the scrapes, and he really needed a drink of water. His sketch and pens were no doubt lost to the wilderness, but at least they had their belongings more or less in the same place. It definitely beat having to fish clothes out of a river or something. He'd never forget the look on Kanda's face when their luggage disappeared down that ravine...

Allen nodded, taking the lead. Lavi followed behind, tramping through the undergrowth. He could swear he spent more of his time trying to fight the plant life than the actual demons. Lavi suddenly snagged his pants on a thorny branch, and he beat at it with the butt of his gun in the hopes that maybe he could break it off rather than deal with it.

"Allen, hey! Hold up, I'm stuck!" Lavi shouted into the dark, and the white-haired boy patiently stood, no more than a few meters away from the road.

It was only a flash, the gleam of something in the distance, that tipped Lavi off as he looked at Allen. He abruptly took aim with the gun, nestling it into his shoulder as easily as embracing a friend, and leaned forward. His good eye looked down the sight for mere moments, enough to discern his target. Allen looked behind him in confusion just in time to see what he was aiming at.

Lavi breathed out slowly, mechanically, and took his time squeezing the trigger. A deafening sound cracked the air, and Lavi's ear rang like a gong. The bandit's mouth formed a surprised 'O' as his shirt blossomed black. The rifle in the bandit's hand seemed to fall slowly as the bandit put shaking hands to his chest and fell sideways against a tree. Allen ran to the downed man as Lavi lowered the gun and yanked his pants off the thorny vine.

He couldn't have been older than Allen. Lavi could see that from where he stood. The younger Exorcist's eyes were incredulous, almost unseeing, as the bandit before him abruptly coughed his last, blood misting Allen's face. The hands gripping Allen's forearms relaxed, and Allen swallowed hard, staring into the dead boy's face. Allen looked up at Lavi with a lost look.

"I surprised him," Lavi said quietly, motioning to the fallen gun. "He was going to shoot you."

Allen looked back at the dead boy. His eyes were still open.

"You killed him," Allen said slowly.

And Lavi knew, in that instance, it had dawned on Allen that Lavi had probably killed quite a few people. And he wouldn't be wrong.

So he didn't say a word.

"We've got to go back to the others. They're going to wonder where we are."

Lavi grabbed a canteen and shoved three pills in his mouth. Hopefully, the slew of medicine, and maybe a few of Bookman's sleeping pills, would help ease him out of the day. As much as he hated being in that numb fog, the medicine did help to an extent. At least, he didn't worry too much. And right now, he could do without worrying.

Allen had secluded himself, more or less, and Lavi knew he needed time to sort out his thoughts. There was nothing like watching a person die in front of you. Allen had experienced something like it, watching a soul disintegrate into nothing. Lenalee had recounted the event after she'd been well enough to talk while they were in Germany. He'd never heard so much hurt in her voice before, besides perhaps when she relived the days when she was strapped to a bed in the Order, forbidden to see the light of day.

And again, he wondered why, of all the people in the world, God had called children to fight his war. A small, still voice knew the answer.

He does not call the equipped, but he does equip the called.

Allen was practically deaf from hearing the call so much. The boy should be canonized as a saint, if it weren't for the fact they were in a secret war. He practiced love for thine enemy like no one else Lavi had known. Saving the Akuma... what some would call a fool's errand, yet it had allow Allen to fight and still keep his soul.

Lavi wondered about the state of his own.

"You doin' alright, pardner?"

Lavi looked up from the fire he'd been intently staring into. Darrin stood at his shoulder, cylinder strapped to his back as per usual. The man was holding a whiskey bottle (nothing new there) but had yet to gain the red-rimmed eyes of the drunken. The apprentice smiled at him sheepishly.

"Just... hoping I didn't scare Allen too bad," he admitted, looking over his shoulder at the white-haired boy who was splitting firewood. Was it just him, or did he swing a little bit harder than necessary...?

"Heard you killed a boy," Darrin grumbled, sitting down next to the younger man.

Lavi was silent, fiddling with his pill vial, watching the little dots inside roll back and forth.

"He was going to kill Allen. His rifle was aimed at his back," Lavi said flatly.

He'd gotten on the wrong side of more than one person, not just Allen. Bookman complained that Lavi had interfered. Lavi'd remarked back that they had already interfered when they battled the Akuma with Allen to begin with. Bookman had had nothing to say about that. He merely told Lavi to remember they were spectators in this war, and he'd stomped off on his little legs to tend to the wounded. Oh, the irony.

Darrin took a swig from his whiskey bottle, and he offered it to Lavi. The young man looked at Darrin's chapped lips and crooked, slightly yellowed teeth, as well as the neck of the bottle, and he kindly declined.

"Did the right thing, boy," Darrin assured. "Allen'll understand, at some point. Can't be mad forever. Ye saved his life. Either way, y'had good 'ntentions."

"What was that about the road to hell?" Lavi drawled. "Paved with good intentions?"

Darrin spat.

"Y'ain't on any road to hell, boy. It's when you lose the heart 'n soul, you got trouble," Darrin muttered sagely. "Ain't nothin' wrong with defending yerself and friends."

"Perhaps in your American West that's how it works. In Europe, we call it murder."

Suddenly, there was a commotion on the edge of camp. It was a slow progression, not an immediate reaction to a problem, but Lavi could sense it in the puzzled looks of some of their guides. They'd had to stop for the night on the road, and they'd be at their destination by tomorrow night. However, their mission was to investigate an amphithere that may or may not exist.

"Este aguandando aqui junto a mi! No se donde esta. Uno momento, fue aqui, y un momento proximo, no fue!"

Ricardo, the scientist sent on the mission, was calming the man down who'd been out gathering wood from the surrounding jungle.

"What's going on?" Allen asked from behind Lavi, and the redhead turned around. The boy had a worried look on his face, staring at the man who seemed to be slowly getting into hysterics as others tried to explain that they hadn't seen Pedro either.

Man, Pedro was having a bad day. He hadn't been seriously hurt in the bomb blast, but he'd had to have a three inch piece of wood removed from his right buttock. That would ruin anybody's day.

"Apparently, one of the guys, Pedro, was out with Federico and kinda just vanished," Lavi explained, scratching his head.

"I don't blame 'im for bein' jumpy. Not after t'day," Darrin agreed, taking another swig and putting his feet up on a stone.

"Wait... do you think... the amphithere snatched him?" Allen asked nervously, suddenly looking around him into the surrounding forest. It was just before dusk, the sun giving a dusty glow to the surrounding land. Lavi couldn't help but notice the hair on his arms raise. Those shadows were awfully long, and there was so much foliage...

"Uh... maybe Pedro just went to the bathroom and didn't tell Federico," Lavi suggested, but even he didn't believe that.

"Lavi, come here," Bookman called from the edge of the forest, and Lavi's stomach dropped to his ankles. What now?

He awkwardly looked at Allen, and the kid shrugged, gesturing to Bookman. Lavi got up with a creak and began ambling over. He winced as his leg cramped, a side effect of the medication. At least it was working now.

"Comin' Gramps!"

Lavi couldn't help but feel like eyes were on him. Darn it, Allen! The kid was supposed to be the optimistic one, not making him feel like he had to watch his back!

Bookman was kneeling somewhere in the undergrowth, and Lavi almost tripped over him. Allen bumped into Lavi's back, and he almost jumped out of his skin.

"HOLY - God, Allen, put a bell on or something! You just about made me crap my pants..."

"Oh! Sorry, I hadn't meant to frighten you."

"Both of you, quiet," Bookman snapped. He motioned for both Exorcists to lean down to his level, which they did. The old man's finger traced a deep rut in the ground, covered slightly be ferns. It was hidden just well enough that a casual passerby wouldn't notice, but of course Bookman was never just a casual passerby. Lavi himself had to hand it to the old man for keeping his eyes so sharp, and he wondered how he managed to keep his eyesight in check, what with their reading by lamplight and all.

Maybe he ate a lot of carrots.

It was quiet for a few minutes, the boys staring at the rut.

"Uh... why are we looking at a ditch?" Lavi asked, pursing his lips and playfully shaking his pill vial. "Are you going to be the one on meds next? Cuz this looks like a ditch to me."

"Shut up, idiot apprentice. I did not train you so you could make glaringly obvious mistakes. Look closer."

Lavi nearly laid on the ground, Allen right behind him, staring at the depression in the ground. The two boys looked at each other, and simultaneously stated, "It's... a ditch."

Bookman slapped his face, rubbing his eyes. The two boys looked at each other, and Allen shrugged. Lavi shook his head and twirled his finger by his ear, and Allen tried hard not to laugh. It wouldn't do to have both of them slapped by an irate old man.

"What about the grooves in the ditch?" Bookman drawled.

By this point, Lavi was almost shoving his eye into the mud, trying to discern what it was that Bookman was trying to teach him. He felt muted frustration, and he knew he was overcompensating for his lack of feeling by being exaggeratedly hard to deal with. However, Lavi suddenly realized what Bookman was talking about. He backpedaled away from the ditch, putting his back against a tree with a horrified look.

The ditch... was at least a foot and a half wide...

"Lavi? What is it?" Allen asked, eying the track.

"He finally gets it, that's the matter," Bookman grumbled.

"Good Lord that thing is big," Lavi moaned, covering his face. No no no, he didn't want to think about giant snakes. He didn't like snakes particularly, but a giant snake? He knew he'd have to finally confront it some time, but this was too soon!

"The grain of the track is very small, almost scale like. You can see from the very small striations," Bookman said. He pointed again to the edges of the tracks. "It also left small, iridescent filaments behind, perhaps from its scales or feathers."

Lavi groaned and leaned his head back against the tree, pouting. Chances were, he'd have to talk to it, too. And he wasn't good at speaking snake particularly either! He had brushed up on some of his Nahuatl and Mayan, but who knew what kind of language a giant feather-snake spoke...

"We must find it and begin negotiations. They enjoy keeping their prey for a few days, riddling them with enigmas. They feed off confusion," Bookman ordered, standing up.

"Then, can we do it tomorrow?" Lavi pleaded, peeking through his fingers.

"Lavi!" Allen complained. "There is a man out there who's been captured by some... dragon or other! You don't abandon teammates!"

"But it's almost dark and I don't want to be eaten alive!"

"Tonight. Before any more unlucky men disappear," Bookman muttered. "They don't eat people, but they certainly like to play with their heads a bit. Sometimes they're missing a few cards out of the deck when you find them again."

Lavi waded through the undergrowth. His eye scanned his surroundings, ears attuned to the slightest swish swish of foliage. Allen was only a few feet behind him, swinging another lantern. The rainforest cacophony had not died down in the night. Animals scurried and hissed and croaked, birds cawed, and mosquitoes buzzed around their heads. He was drenched in sweat by now, the stifling day's heat trapped by the trees. Heavy breathing issued around him.

What was worse, his paranoia had spiked. Every shadow made him jump. Every vaguely humanoid shape, be it tree or trunk or stone, sent jitters up his spine. He imagined enemies behind every limb, every bush. After today's debacle, seeing that boy dying, knowing there were bandits in the trees, all movement felt as if he were being preyed on, stalked. Sometimes he thought he'd see a pair of blue, accusing eyes, sometimes a single green eye in the dark, other times remembering other trips and smelling memories of tramping through the forest, weapons at the ready, following a pack of sweaty men out to face down creatures that would make people shiver to think about...

God punishes thieves and liars.

But he has something special for murderers...

Sickness spread in his stomach as he thought of the boy, blood misting out of his mouth as he painfully rasped a last breath. He couldn't shake the vision from his head, causing a flurry of other

blond and pale with an axe, her face getting larger, and he's terrified because he accidentally walked into the house off the warzone, hadn't realized there was someone in it and he drew the pistol, the one he'd been given, had secretly hoped he might get to use, if just once and she flew, pale, on top of him as a deafening sound swelled around them both and now there was blood everywhere and lord, he was just ten and he'd seen so many die but not like this, the gurgling and the twitching, and she smelled like rose petals and iron and there was a baby crying somewhere in there

visions

a boy no more than eight carrying a rifle single file with the others half his age and he hopes he doesn't get caught because he's not supposed to be out here, because he's just curious, that was all, curious as to the marching and the noises of boys and the raucous shouting of kids playing ball but the boy is coming towards him and he has to put a hand on that stupid rifle again, keep cover, rule number one was to never break cover

of people he

bright blue eyes piercing his heart over and over, hammer coming round again to kill, always to kill, because that's all he could do was watch as others are killed and he himself kills, kill others for others, watch others kill for others, this round of suffering as they fight, eye for eye and tooth for tooth, Doug's eye for these soulless glass replicas, yet there was no way to fight heart for heart, because he wanted to know where he could fight to get his heart back, where he could dig it back up out of someone's dead hand as he smashed a hammer into the demon over and over that wore his friend's face

"Lavi?"

He was pulled out of his reverie by Allen's questioning voice, and he looked back. And he could see in Allen's eyes that the boy was frightened.

"You said you were sorry about something," Allen stated, holding up the lantern.

Lavi looked down at his trembling hands, and he realized he didn't feel anything. Or rather, the feelings were gray, like paint that had lost its vibrancy. They were quieter, tamer, yet small. It made him feel sick, and it made him feel numb, but the feelings didn't go away. The guilt still stuck to his insides, sometimes making it hard to breathe. Now the guilt was condensed, smaller, like a black hole sucking things into it. Easier to manage, but with a price.

"Allen... about today..." Lavi started, unsure where to go with his statement.

How do you apologize about murder?

"I understand."

Lavi looked up in surprise, not realizing he had been staring at the ground. He blinked rapidly, trying to untangle the strange, pale mess of his feelings. Part of him didn't believe Allen, the paranoid part that whispered like insects running inside his brain.

He doesn't mean it he doesn't mean it he doesn't mean it he doesn't know he doesn't mean it he couldn't know he doesn't understand why would he forgive you he's just placating you

"Allen - "

The white-haired boy raised a hand, shutting his eyes. His mouth was set in a hard line. The moon, or what was visible of it, highlighted the scar on his face. He took a deep breath, composing himself, and Lavi anxiously waited.

"You did it for my benefit... You did it to save my life. And I am grateful. While I'm not happy about how it turned out, I can't deny you did it in my best interest," Allen announced in a precise voice.

Lavi winced at the tinge of anger in Allen's voice towards the... outcome. It was clear in Allen's posture that the death of the boy had rattled him and made him furious and conflicted. After all, Allen was used to fighting demons, and he knew said demons would receive a welcome in Heaven. He had no idea what was the outcome of the poor boy who'd been in largely the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. Allen easily empathized with the dead kid, and that made it even harder to reconcile that Lavi was not only willing to kill, but had killed someone whom Allen could've easily replaced in a different life.

Yet Allen was choosing reconciliation.

He doesn't mean it he can't mean it humans don't mean the things they say they lie they lie they lie

Allen's voice was soft as he opened his eyes.

"I also know that this is probably harder for you. You're an observer. You're not supposed to... interfere."

Blonde, pale

dark skinned and big eyes, surprised

smell of oily blood, the picture of a white ribbon

He rubbed his eyes, aware that he should feel... emotional. He should feel grateful. Allen didn't hate him. Allen might still be friends with him, someone who didn't deserve friends. But he felt like his heart had gone stale, gray and cold and crumbling all of a sudden. The feeling would come and go, but it was here now, so present and dry. He licked his lips, thirsty.

He grabbed his canteen and gulped some water, unaware of Allen's expectant face. He fiddled with the canteen, and a noise caught his attention in the wilderness.

And then, he turned around and kept walking. Allen stood there, stunned, having expected... a different reaction. Or any reaction at all.

Yet, Lavi kept tramping forwards through the brush as if nothing had happened, lantern swinging as he searched the undergrowth. Allen frowned, and he followed behind.

"Lavi!"

"Mhm?"

"How...many?"

Lavi stopped dead in his tracks, the smell of salty iron not far from him. A deadened heart stuttered a beat, sending ripples of guilt through him as he thought about it. They had all been in self-defense. He had only been trying to save himself. That's what he'd always told himself at night, when the little voice came back and asked him why, why, why.

But was it worth it?

"Seventeen," he admitted over his shoulder, the words like bitter gall leaving his mouth. He had counted them as ink on paper, nothing more than swipes of the pen as he cleaned his mind of the issues, tried to forget the stains their blood had left on his patchwork heart, sanitized every memory until it was crystalline and pure as a gem. And now...

Now they were lives, seventeen too many, who were in the wrong place with the wrong people at the wrong time.

Allen's hand descended on his shoulder, and Lavi stared at the ground with a blank stare, regretting not being able to regret, with irony. He realized how far his mood had plummeted, and he looked at Allen with a pained, yet frank, plea.

"We've got a snake to find, don't we?" Lavi asked with a bit of a smile, and Allen smiled. He nodded, and the two continued into the forest with their eyes glued on the trees that seemed to buck and sway to the rhythm of rainforest music, unaware that what they sought was only a few steps behind and had always been.

A/N: Back again, everyone! I'm hoping everyone had a wonderful Easter filled with candy, baskets, and the love of Christ (though I understand not everyone will believe in the last item, I wish for it anyways). I decided to clean up this chapter and put it out, seeing as it's now a month gone by and it's time to add another piece to the tapestry.

Thanks, India, for reviewing! And any input is welcome, even something little like 'This made my day'. I'm glad you were so happy to see it picked up again!

And a big welcome for my new subscriber, OmGiStHaTaDuMpLiNg! I love the name - honestly, anything food related pulls on my heartstrings. So it's nice to see something that has to do with food.

Well, until next chapter! Happy reading, God bless you, and tell somebody you appreciate their company!