This story is not intended to be a second season of Elfen Lied, or even a continuation of the main storyline. Rather, it's about change and growth, love and forgiveness, family and friends. At it's core, it's about Kouta and Lucy, and her struggle to have a normal life in a human society that is well-aware of the existence of Diclonii.

Before you start reading, be aware that this story contains a LOT of very, VERY graphic sex.

It might be offensive to some readers, but as this is a story about having a 'normal' life, and a couple in love having sex is a pretty normal occurrence, I believe it fits. I have tried to write it as PART of the story, and not the FOCUS of the story, but again, there's a ton of it, and most of it is EXTREMELY graphic.

That said, I hope you enjoy.

-Faith, Love, and Forgiveness - Chapter One: Reunion-

Kaeda House: Present day

Nana didn't know WHAT to think about the current situation.

Less than an hour ago, she had been sitting on the porch, sharing a big bowl of ice cream with Mayu. Wanta had started barking, but that was nothing new. There was once a time when any noise from that dog would result in Kouta racing to the front door, hoping he'd open it and see that Nyu had returned to them.

As you might have guessed, it never happened, and he slowly began to lose hope.

Six months ago, they had all been enjoying Somen noodles when, suddenly, Wanta started barking. As always, Kouta went to investigate the noise, but as he walked over to have a look, the old grandfather clock start chiming.

Instantly, he felt a surge of hope in his heart. That broken clock was Nyu's pet project, and now it was suddenly working again, it had to be a sign from God that she had returned to them.

Looking back at the entrance, he saw the silhouette of a girl standing on the other side. First the broken clock starts working, and now there's a girl with an identical body outline? This... this HAD to be her!

All the excitement and joy turned to soul-crushing disappointment the moment he opened the door.

"Hi! Have you seen a grey and white cat around here?"

"N-No... sorry."

After she left, Kouta didn't even return to finish eating, choosing to spend the rest of the day alone in his room.

Months passed, and Kouta paid less and less attention to the creature's sudden barks.

Now, Wanta's barking went completely ignored. The only reason Kouta even noticed it was because this time, the dog had broken loose and was pawing at the door. Finally, he walked out to have a look. Nana watched him go, then sighed sadly and turned back to Mayu.

It broke the Sipelit's heart to see how badly he wanted her to come back.

Then, Kouta started yelling for help. He had opened the door, but saw nothing except for the usual hustle and bustle of everyday like in Kamakura. Then, he noticed something pink out of the corner of his eye. It was Nyu alright, but she looked like she'd lost a fight with a tank.

Kouta yelled again, this time loud enough to get their attention. When they ran over, they were met with the sight of Kouta half carrying/half dragging an immediately recognizable girl towards the house.

"Nyu! Oh, I don't believe it!" Mayu exclaimed.

"She looks really bad! What in the world happened to her?" Yuka asked frantically, grabbing her feet to help Kouta carry her inside.

Nana raced to open the sliding door to Nyu's room. A few seconds later, she was sitting beside the older Diclonius, gently moving her blood-splattered hair out of her face. "Nyu! Can you hear us? Nyu!" Nana pleaded.

"Yes... I can hear you... now will you please stop yelling?"

Nana gasped in shock as the pink-haired girl opened her eyes slightly, focusing them on her.

"Lucy?!" Nana asked in shock. The older Diclonius passed out before she could say anything more.

Now, just over an hour later, Nana sat alone in the kitchen, trying to figure out what was happening. 'I can't sense her anymore. She was Lucy, but it's just like if she were Nyu...' the Sipelit pondered.

Yuka and Mayu, meanwhile, had been given the task of treating Lucy's injuries, and the situation didn't look good.

"Umm... maybe you should cut her clothes off before we do this." Mayu suggested, to which Yuka agreed.

Unsurprisingly, Kouta was promptly kicked out for that part.

Standing just outside Nyu's room, Kouta paced aimlessly around in the hallway as he waited for Yuka and Mayu to come out. She had a couple of cuts to her scalp when he last saw her, but now she looked like some kind of war had gone on and she'd been caught in the middle of it.

He was happy she had returned, yes... but was it because he wanted her around, or because this way, he could keep an eye on her?

'Would I still have asked her to stay if she had never mentioned remaking the world?' he had often wondered since he last saw her. He didn't tell her Kaeda House was her home like he did the first time she said she was leaving, and it was for this reason he wondered if maybe the only reason he had wanted her to stay was out of suspicion she'd go back to killing.

"Is Lucy going to be ok?" a voice asked behind him.

Turning around, he saw Nana coming up to him with a concerned, but guarded look on her blood-streaked face.

"Are you alright? You're bleeding." Kouta asked. Nodding her head yes, the Sipelit answered that the blood wasn't hers.

"Why do you call her ''Lucy''?" he asked in confusion.

"Why do YOU call her ''Nyu''?"

"Isn't it obvious? That's all she says... well, maybe not now, but when she first got here it was." he explained. Nana, in turn, told him she used the name 'Lucy' because that's what the Institute called her.

"Is Lucy her real, actual name, or did she have one before she came there?" he asked. Nana opened her mouth to reply, but stopped when Mayu and Yuka came out. Like Nana, they both had Lucy's blood on them.

"She's got... I'm not really sure what they are. They look like mostly healed gunshots."

"How many?" Nana asked, to which Mayu said "Umm... eleven or twelve I think."

"There's a pretty big scrape on her right side, kinda like she'd been dragged by someone or something. Her horns are both broken, too." Yuka continued.

"What the hell could have possibly happened to her?" Kouta wondered aloud. Mayu looked nervously at her new 'parents' and voiced the question Kouta knew was coming: "Should we take her to the hospital?"

The answer had predictably been no, and even though Mayu disagreed, she trusted that if both Kouta AND Yuka opposed the idea, there must have been a good reason for it. In a way, it was kind of a relief. Mayu was well aware that both of them cared deeply for Nyu, and if both of them didn't want to go to the hospital, it strongly implied Nyu's injuries weren't life-threatening (or at the very least, they THOUGHT they weren't.)

"Should we wake her up?" Mayu asked. Kouta shook his head no, opting to just let her sleep until she wakes up on her own.

"I think someone should sit with her until she does." Nana offered

"Good idea, but isn't that a little much for one person?" Yuka asked. After thinking about it for a few seconds, Nana suggested the four of them all take turns watching over her, which everyone else agreed to.

"Since it was your idea, do you want to go first?" Kouta asked. The young Sipelet nodded, and shortly after, Nana found herself sitting on the floor at Lucy's side. Yuka and Mayu had done the best they could, but dear God the older Diclonius looked awful!

"Lucy, where did you go? What did you get into that caused all these injuries?" she asked out loud.

At first, Nana occupied herself by reading some of the children's books Yuka had bought her to help her learn to read. Soon, she became less interested in reading and more interested in looking at the sleeping Diclonius she was sitting beside. Out of curiosity, she lifted the sheet Mayu had covered her with and gasped at what she saw.

Mayu was certainly not kidding about Lucy's injuries. They definitely LOOKED like gunshots, but Nana decided to gently prod the sleeping girl with her vectors, just to be sure. To her relief, there were no bullets or fragments inside the wounds.

A faint "Uggghh..." got the Sipelits attention and she leaned her head in closer. "Lucy, are you awake?" she asked.

After a few seconds, a single tear leaked from her eyes, and the sleeping girl moaned what sounded to Nana like a garbled apology.

"She must be having a nightmare..." Nana said quietly.

Mass murderer or not, she had witnessed Lucy have enough remorseful breakdowns in the short time she lived at Kaeda House to know the girl wasn't just some heartless killer without conscience or soul, and she couldn't help but shed a few tears of her own while she watched Lucy's sleep become more and more distressed.

Tap...tap...tap

Nana looked up as the door slid open to see Kouta motioning for her to walk out into the hallway with him.

"Anything yet?" he asked after she stepped out. "I think she's having a really bad nightmare. She started crying and apologizing in her sleep" she answered sadly.

'Wonder why that could be...' Kouta thought bitterly. He loved the girl called both Lucy and Nyu, but that didn't heal the deep wounds caused by her murdering his family. Not for the first time, Kouta had to wonder if, deep down, he loved Nyu and the young Lucy, but hated her adult counterpart.

"Thank you, Nana. Please let me know if she wakes up." he requested before going back down the hallway. Nana took up her post again, watching helplessly as the pink-haired Diclonius tossed and turned in her sleep. Suddenly, Nana was hit by a flash of inspiration, thought she didn't know where exactly it came from.

There WAS something she could do, but if Lucy ever found out about it, she'd probably kill her.

"I don't want to do this, but we have to know what happened to you. Please, forgive me."

Sitting so close to the girl who so brutally dismembered her still scared her, and what she was about to do could get her killed in more ways than one, but she had already committed to the decision and wasn't backing out now.

Releasing one of her vectors, Nana very carefully phased it through Lucy's skull until it made contact with her brain's Hippocampus region. The moment they touched, a huge avalanche of Lucy's memories flooded through her receptors.

As she was trying to focus, she began to feel severely light headed, then her vision started to blur, and Nana became faintly aware her nose was beginning to bleed.

Attempting "Receptor-Assisted Recall" (which is a fancy way of saying "Stick your vectors in someone's brain and see their memories") can kill the host if whoever's doing the sticking is clumsy or careless.

Even if they're not, they themselves could suffer lethal brain damage if the process takes too long.

Whether out of compassion or out of good old-fashioned stubbornness, the Sipelit pushed forward, closing her eyes and concentrating until she finally found what she was looking for. Seconds later, she gasped in shock and removed her vector. Staring wide-eyed at the older girl, her nosebleed and impaired vision stopped, but the grief and heartache started.

'So THAT'S what happened...' she thought as she watched the older Diclonius sleep. After a few seconds, the shock of what she seen wore off and Nana burst into tears.

"Lucy, that was so brave... I've been so wrong about you all this time..." Nana whispered.

Holding her hand in the hopes it would bring at least some measure of comfort during her nightmares, the young Sipelit resolved then and there to forgive Lucy for all the suffering she had been forced to endure.

After Yuka arrived to take her place, Nana returned to her room, disrobed, and crawled in bed.

Now that she knew the truth, she just needed to figure out what to do with it.