A/N: I forgot that the next chapter was too long so I'd had to break it up again. Anyway...after this one, one longer chapter and then a tiny epilogue. Hope the story is enjoyable.

Part 9

Spirit was simply standing there, a familiar, slight smile on his face as he regarded Stein. He was dressed not in his usual attire, but in one of his old plain teal t-shirts and a pair of gray sweatpants and sneakers. He had half of his hair pulled back in a low ponytail underneath the bandages that were around his head and on the side of his face, which Stein could see had recently been changed.

"Spirit...? What are you doing here?" Stein asked in disbelief. His own voice sounded foreign to him.

"Naigus said I could rest at home now, as long as I don't do anything to tear any of my stitches. I've been temporarily banned from Chupa Cabra's though, haha."

Stein blinked at him. He wanted to reach up to turn the screw in his head, but his hand suddenly felt as heavy as lead.

"Surprised you haven't been up there to make sure I'm following doctor's orders. Or swapping my kidneys," Spirit said.

He was still smiling and his tone was teasing. Stein didn't know what to make of this.

He did reach up then and turn the screw once, finding the lead had moved from his hand to his tongue. After days of self-recrimination and resolutions against anything that might distract him...all of the walls he had built up in his head crumbled like the desert sand. And he had no idea what to say.

"So...where have you been? It's been over a week," Spirit continued, his smile beginning to falter.

Stein's mind was slow to process the question. Spirit couldn't possibly mean why he hadn't been to see him...?

"I wasn't needed," he finally said uncertainly, his mouth dry.

Spirit's face continued to fall. "Oh."

'Why is he here? Why isn't he angry?'

Spirit regarded him another moment and his expression slowly became unreadable. His hand left the chair and he started to turn toward the door.

"I should have listened to you," Stein blurted out.

Spirit turned back and set both hands on the chair, leaning his weight slightly against it.

"Well. Took you almost twenty years to figure that out? Better late than never I guess."

He was back to smiling and joking, but Stein's head drooped in response. It hit too close, with the memories both old and new that had been assaulting his mind.

He twisted the screw once more and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. He needed some kind of anchor, but neither of the usual distractions was serving that purpose well.

"...Stein?"

He took a few more puffs on the cigarette than usual as he held the match to its end, his eyes still downcast.

"What's wrong with you?"

Stein took a long drag and then pinched the cigarette between his fingers as he looked up. His mind was both void and chaos all at once. The visions of his former partner wounded and dying in the sand were swirling before his eyes, attempting to cloud this more familiar image that seemed to be out of the past—of a time when Spirit would come to him offering friendship and precious diversion from the tendrils of madness that seemed to ceaselessly claw at him no matter what he did to stop them.

It couldn't possibly be that Spirit wasn't angry with him for the failure against Griffin? That he wasn't angry about the new violations against his body, even if they were life or death?

"Look, I..." Spirit said, his gaze falling as he leaned more heavily against the chair. "I just wanted to say—"

"I'm sorry," Stein interrupted, his mouth running ahead of his mind again.

And he was sorry. Sorry for the way the innocent patching up of battle-wounds had turned into occasional curiosities, and then into the illicit experiments that had ultimately ended their partnership. No claims of virtue could change what was, or what Spirit thought of what he had done.

He was sorry for the selfishness and jealousy that had in part prompted his self-mutilation, and for the way he had pretended that the best five years of his life had meant nothing to him. He was sorry he had let pride prevent him from doing what he knew was right or from even attempting to save the partnership that had in every way, saved him.

He was sorry he had spent nearly fifteen years hiding from the truth, and sorry that now when it had counted—when he had been called upon and trusted once more by the people that mattered most to him—that he had fallen right back into the weaknesses that had been the cause of his self-defeat in the past.

And he was sorry he had almost gotten his best friend killed.

Spirit had lifted his head when the words fell from Stein's lips, and as he studied him his eyes were slowly narrowing, processing every implication of the sentiment, just as Stein had meant it.

The silence after he'd spoken seemed interminable, and Stein lifted the cigarette to take another drag only to find he'd crushed it in his fingers. He pulled out another as he reached yet again to turn the screw in his head, the white-hot pain barely a distraction as he waited for Spirit's response.

As he lit the second cigarette he remembered he'd interrupted his former partner and wondered suddenly...what had he been about to say?

Those words were apparently lost as Spirit looked down again with a grimace.

"I trusted you."

No turning of the screw could cause a pain worse than what the sound of betrayal in his former friend's voice sent to his soul.

"Trust is an easy way to get hurt," Stein said almost automatically. And the instant regret he felt upon saying the words was only heightened when Spirit's eyes snapped up to his, beginning to fill with fury as his lips curled back in a disgusted snarl. Stein felt that his heart would leap out of his chest without any surgical aid for the gripping pain he suddenly felt.

'Why am I so determined to ruin my life?'

"But...you don't need to hear that twice."

Stein realized he was holding his breath and let the smoke out of his lungs with a slight cough. Spirit's fingers were clenching the back of the chair. He looked down again and scoffed heavily before he seemed to decide something and looked up with a resigned sigh.

"I was pretty fuzzy at the end there. We got him, right? I didn't just dream that?"

Stein's brow furrowed lightly as he drew some quick conclusions.

"You haven't made your report to Lord Death?"

"No. I came here first."

Stein reached for the screw again as his mind began swirling with too many confusing implications. Implications that meant nothing now in the face of the terrible words he'd just spoken to his former friend, he supposed.

"Would you stop that? It's creepy," Spirit said, cringing at Stein's hand on the screw.

"Griffin is dead," Stein said, taking a long draw from the cigarette. And truly, the man he had known in school had been dead for a long time. The Invisible Man they had fought was a mere echo, just like his voice and vain promises over the Forsaken Plains.

How unfortunate that his claims about Stein's desires weren't.

"He was wrong about you."

Stein let his hand fall and refocused on Spirit, noting how the chair shifted slightly along the floor under his weight.

"Sit down," Stein said, suddenly aware of how much the mere act of standing let alone walking to his lab all the way from Death City must have physically taxed the injured weapon. He probably had several popped stitches from the effort too.

To his surprise, Spirit accepted the invitation even before he walked over to turn the chair around toward him. That told Stein everything he needed to know about the man's physical condition, and he hesitated as he considered how to put forth the likely urgent need that his stitches be examined. But to suggest that would most certainly be unwelcome, and so he was faced with the problem of once again doing something to violate Spirit's trust, or else find some way to convince him that he needed medical attention.

"Why did you come here?" Stein ground out instead, his ire growing at the situation. If Spirit had stayed in the hospital bed where he belonged, he would be just fine.

"Because...you weren't there."

Stein had knelt next to the chair where Spirit was now leaned back, apparently done attempting to be strong for the conversation. He was again faced with a roiling confusion in his head. Spirit hadn't seemed upset until he had reminded him of the past and tried to put him off—an unfortunate old habit he desperately needed to shake. But did it mean that...Spirit had wanted to see him? Maybe to chew him out. He remembered he had interrupted whatever it was Spirit had been going to say.

"I don't think you're going home tonight," Stein said grimly. He was sure the scythe's response would be one of protest, or to somehow gather the strength to get up and get out. But instead Spirit only sank further into the chair, closing his eyes as he sucked in air, apparently releasing a tension he'd been holding.

"I actually don't remember much about the fight," Spirit said, wincing as he gave a slight shake of his head. Stein considered to that point the obvious signs of concussion when he'd done the surgery. "But I do remember he was goading you on, trying to get you to switch sides. He said your life was waste."

Stein's face fell. Images of the fight instantly played before his eyes, and the maelstrom of his thoughts swirled down to what was important, and what he needed to remember.

It was his fault that Spirit was injured... Nothing else mattered. Nothing at all.