-Faith, Love, and Forgiveness - Chapter Sixteen: Resolution-
Kamakura General Hospital - Four hours later
Kouta lay sleeping in his hospital bed, bruised and beaten, but in no actual danger. To his left sat Yuka, while Lucy sat to his right. On a small sofa, Mayu and Nana slept leaning against each other. The Sipelit had been given one of Mayu's outfits to wear, as police had seized her own clothes as evidence.
Mercifully, they had allowed her to go home for the night instead of hauling her down to the Station and interrogating her, but made it explicitly clear that they would be coming to Kaeda House the following night to conduct an interview with her, and that if she wasn't home, the Detectives assigned to the case would consider her a fugitive.
Lucy hadn't bothered changing out of her bloody clothing. Not long ago, she had passively sat naked from the waist up as a doctor loosely applied bandages to her left breast and side in an attempt to treat the injures inflicted by Kakuzawa kicking her.
"I'm afraid I can't do much for the broken rib. Just try to take it easy for a while, ok?" he had told her.
At first, he tried to get her into a private room to examine her, but, unwilling to leave Kouta's bedside, she simply removed her top and bra right where she was. Amused by her determination, he gave in and patched her up right there at his bedside.
Thankfully, she did agree to leave long enough to wash the blood off her face.
The doctors wanted to admit Kouta overnight, but the young man had declined. Finally, they compromised. Kouta would stay, but be discharged no later than 6 am. Neither girl was happy about it, but accepted that it was his choice, not theirs.
"This is all my fault..."
Yuka looked at her in bewilderment, "Nyu, what are you talking about?"
"I should have done more to force that helicopter down... I probably could have stopped it from taking off if I'd gotten to him faster..."
Yuka got to her feet and walked around the bed to the pink-haired girl's chair.
"Nyu, don't do this to yourself." she said, squatting down beside her. "None of this was in any way your fault."
"I wish I'd been more careful walking in. If I were, I could've stopped that human before he had time to jam that needle in my neck. It makes me so mad... I could have killed Kakuzawa and put an end to this so much sooner if I'd been paying attention." Lucy near-whispered to Yuka, "Maybe if I had, it would have spared Nana from having to take a life."
Yuka smiled and reached her hand out. Lucy took it almost without even realizing it, and the two girls held hands in silence.
"When are you going to stop blaming yourself?" the brunette asked gently. "You did all that you possibly could."
Lucy shook her head. "I don't deserve to be his girlfriend... he's already suffered so much because of me..."
"You mean, because of his family?"
Lucy froze. Until this moment, she had always thought the only ones who knew what REALLY happened to them were Kouta and herself.
"You know... don't you?"
Yuka just nodded her head, squeezing her hand gently as Lucy fought back tears.
"For how long...?"
Yuka looked down, trying to do the same thing. "Since the day after you left."
The Diclonius looked at her in stunned disbelief. "The whole time? You knew I..." she paused long enough to make sure Mayu and Nana were still asleep. "You knew I killed his father and sister this whole time, and you STILL took me back in? Why?"
By this time, both of them were fighting a losing battle against their emotions.
"Because... the way I see it, if Kouta can love and forgive you, then so can I."
Lucy had no words to express what she was feeling after hearing that. She was happy, yes... but in some ways, it made her feelings of regret and sorrow even worse.
"Nyu, there's something I need to come clean about..."
Lucy wiped her eyes dry, still holding onto Yuka's hand. "What is it?"
Both girls stopped talking when Kouta stirred, but resumed after it became obvious that he wasn't waking up.
"The truth is... I've always been jealous of you."
The Diclonius blinked in confusion. What could she possibly have to be jealous of?
"Why...?"
"Because you and Kouta have always seemed to "click" in ways I know I never will..." Yuka replied sadly.
"Yuka..."
She took a minute to gather her thoughts before continuing.
"From the very beginning, back when we only knew you as "Nyu", I could tell that there was something special between you and Kouta. I didn't know what it was, or where it came from, I just knew it was there. I used to get so mad when you two spent time together, or cuddled with each other... I even got jealous whenever he held your hand to help you across a busy intersection. I knew he was only doing it to keep you safe, but that didn't matter. All I cared about was the fact that he was holding your hand instead of mine..."
Yuka looked down as she silently started crying. "I've always been in love with Kouta, and to be honest, I probably always will be. Even when we were just kids, I always hoped to be with him romantically someday..."
Lucy squeezed her hand gently as she too succumbed to silent tears.
"When you returned to Kaeda House as Lucy, it was so... painful... to see you two together. I had always thought the feelings you had for Kouta were Nyu's feelings, not Lucy's... but then I realized that whatever was so special between Nyu and Kouta was still there between Lucy and Kouta... and... that's when I knew for sure that I had lost..."
Choking back her sobs, Lucy left her chair and knelt down beside Yuka.
Without a word, the two girls embraced and held each other until they'd regained most of their composure.
Yuka smiled sadly, her eyes getting teary again mere seconds later. "As much as I want to be with him, I know how deeply you love him, and I know he feels the same way about you. It hurts to say this, but if I can't have him, at least he ended up with you instead of somebody else... but you better make DAMN SURE you treat him right."
Lucy nodded, her voice nearly breaking from emotion as she swore that she would.
"There's something I want to do... just this once. So, please try to be understanding..."
Lucy looked at her, puzzled yet curious.
Yuka got to her feet, taking a moment to help the pink-haired girl up. After a few moments of hesitation, Yuka leaned down to kiss the still-sleeping Kouta, but stopped and turned to look back at Lucy. At first, she thought it was absolutely absurd for Yuka to ask for her permission to kiss HER boyfriend, but she could see the almost pleading look in the other girl's eyes.
So, at last, the Diclonius nodded her head. Yuka closed her eyes and lightly kissed him on the lips for what she knew would probably be the last time. When she finally pulled away, Lucy could see Yuka's tears had fallen on Kouta's face.
"Please... don't ever tell him I did that."
Lucy wanted to be angry, but she knew this wasn't Yuka trying to move in on her boyfriend, this was Yuka saying goodbye... not in a literal sense, but an emotional one. It was painfully obvious that her and Kouta were deeply in love, and she had finally come to fully accept it.
"I won't..." the Diclonius promised.
"You should get some sleep... you've had a hard day." Yuka said.
"I'd love to, but there's no way I could fall asleep in one of these chairs."
Yuka pondered this for a few seconds. "Just crawl in bed with Kouta. It's big enough for more than one person."
"What about you?" Lucy asked. Yuka replied by telling her she'd just sleep in a chair, or on the floor if that wasn't working out.
"Just sleep up here with me."
The brunette looked at the Diclonius like she had just suggested they go get jobs at a strip joint.
"Nyu, the beds big, but not THAT big... I doubt we'd both fit."
At the pink-haired girl's request, Yuka agreed to try it anyway. Unbelievably, it turned out the bed was indeed large enough to comfortably accommodate Kouta, Yuka, AND Lucy.
"This is SO going to be awkward when that nurse comes in..."
Lucy giggled quietly, amazed that the two of them were able to get in bed without waking up Kouta. Reaching up, Lucy pulled the cord on the wall-mounted 'night-light' and settled down.
"Nyu, are you sure you're ok with me sleeping here?" Yuka asked quietly.
"I'm sure."
Yuka nodded in reply, unable to fully suppress a smile as she cuddled up against her sleeping cousin.
"That nurse is going to think Kouta's some kind of pimp or something..." Lucy quietly joked. Yuka giggled softly, watching as the Diclonius yawned and closed her eyes before doing the same thing herself.
Sleep came quickly for both girls, but for one of them, it didn't last long. Not even an hour later, Lucy was awake again, driven from Slumberland by nightmares of the ones she'd murdered for literally no other reason than revenge against Kurama for a betrayal she'd now learned never even happened.
She fell asleep again quickly, but once again, she didn't stay asleep long. Soon, she was awakened again, this time gasping for breath and shaking with anxiety and fear.
"Are you ok, Lucy?"
Looking over, she saw Nana looking at her in obvious concern. She shook her head no, got out of bed, and entered the bathroom. When she didn't lock the door, Nana mistook this as Lucy's way of saying "Come in here and we'll talk about it."
She was very mistaken, but surprisingly, Lucy wasn't angry about having her privacy invaded.
Together, the Diclonii sat on the floor, whispering back and forth about the nightmares she'd had.
"That girl... I don't even remember her name, but she was standing in front of me holding her severed head. She... or rather her head... she started asking me why I killed her. She said... "I did nothing to you... you killed me because you saw Chief Kurama cared for me!"... and she's right... I did. She wasn't even a secretary, she was just some coffee girl... but he seemed like he cared for her, and that was enough for me..."
Nana nodded and reached out to hold Lucy's hand. After a couple of silent minutes, she asked the Sipelit she thought she should do.
"It's too late to apologize or offer forgiveness... isn't it?"
"Not at all..." Nana smiled. "Papa might be gone, but I still hear him sometimes... If I can still talk to him, I'm sure you can, too."
Instead of telling the younger Diclonius it was more likely she was developing Schizophrenia than talking to Kurama's spirit, she just nodded and squeezed her hand.
"Thank you, Nana."
"You're so welcome, Lucy." she smiled as her and her "older sister" quietly sat there holding hands on the bathroom floor.
"Nana?"
"Yes, Lucy?"
"Will you please get the hell out now so I can pee?"
Four hours later
By 5:30 am, all five residents of Kaeda House were awake and waiting for the doctor to come discharge Kouta.
All of them except Lucy. When the nurses entered the room to wake Kouta, she used the distraction to quietly slip out of the room. She had somewhere she needed to go before going home, and this was her best chance to go without attracting attention.
"Excuse me, Miss, but you're not supposed to be wandering the halls."
Lucy mentally kicked herself for forgetting about the hospital posting Security outside of Kouta's room. They weren't there to actually guard anyone inside the room, they were there to keep an eye on the two Diclonii in case they harmed any of the humans. They knew Nana was being investigated for a possible murder, and though she herself wasn't actually under any suspicion of anything, they figured it was best to keep an eye on her anyway.
"I'm... I'm just going out for a cigarette, I'll be right back." Lucy lied. The guard didn't look that convinced, but pointed her to the hospital's designated smoking area. As soon as she walked outside, Lucy hopped the fence and disappeared.
Back in Kouta's room, the doctor was signing Kouta's discharge papers when Yuka suddenly realized they were short one person.
"Where did Nyu go?"
She was there when they all woke up, but a quick check of the bathroom revealed she was indeed gone.
When they asked the guard, he simply replied that she'd gone outside to smoke. Everyone at Kaeda House knew the pink-haired girl utterly detested smoking, and a quick check of the designated area confirmed she wasn't there. As Security started to panic, so did her family.
Then, Nana had an epiphany.
"Actually, I think I know where she went..."
Ryukon Cemetery - Fifty minutes later
By the time Lucy made it to her destination, the sun was rising over the horizon. As much as she wanted to just say "Fuck this!" and leave, she knew she had to do this if she ever wanted to finally put her past behind her. Still wearing the same blood-splattered, knee-length skirt and top she wore the day before, the Diclonius experienced numerous emotions along the way. Anger, foremost, but there was no shortage of remorse and sympathy either.
She stared at the rusty old gate, half-toppled fence, and clusters of weeds. Nana had said the place was in bad shape, but this was just pathetic.
Walking through the run-down cemetery, she found the graves of the Kurama family way back in a far corner. Walking over to them, she stood motionless for several minutes, trying to think of what to say now that she was actually here.
Watching from a distance, the other residents of Kaeda House looked on as Lucy stood lost in thought. They wanted to go over to her, but this idea was vetoed by Nana, who insisted they stay put instead of intruding.
The previous nights final encounter with Director Kakuzawa had provided the answers to questions she didn't even realize needed to be asked. Kurama had told her his wife and daughter died, but it was Kakuzawa that told her what actually happened to them. She knew the Institute wanted Nana dead after she herself had coldly mangled the innocent Sipelit's body, but she never knew Kurama defied his orders and saved Nana's life at extreme risk to his own.
The biggest shocker of all was finding out that on the night she surrendered to the Institute in exchange for Aiko being given medical care, Kurama had indeed upheld his end of their deal. It had always been her belief that he had lied his ass off, talked her into giving herself up, and then deliberately let the young girl die as soon as she was taken into custody. In reality, Kurama got her to the hospital in time, but complications from surgery ultimately took her life... not him.
The realization that she had murdered several innocent people in a fit of rage over a betrayal that never actually happened had wrecked havoc on the pink-haired girl's conscience.
Finally finding the right words, Lucy took a deep breath to steady her nerves.
"I carried a lot of hate for you. It was all I thought about the whole time I was locked away in that hell-hole you call an Institute. You took away my freedom... my "home"... my only friend... my..." she tried to say before breaking down.
Kouta wanted so badly to go over and comfort her, but knew that doing so would be a horrible decision. Lucy already had problems with trusting people, and if she thought they were spying on her, it would only make it harder for her to open up to them (or rather, open up to anybody except Kouta).
Sitting down on the ground, Lucy started quietly crying as she thought back to everything that had been done to her in the years spent as a guinea pig for their experiments. Part of her just wanted to say screw her promise, and go back to her original plan of killing off humanity.
After all, wasn't that what she had been born for in the first place?
"No..." she whispered out loud. Wiping her eyes, she repeated the word again, this time a little bit louder.
"I won't let myself get dragged back down into hate and resentment. What happened to me is never going to stop hurting, but I..." she broke off as she was overwhelmed by tears again.
Looking at each other, Kouta and Yuka were at a loss as to what the pink-haired Diclonius was doing. It was an open secret she hated the holy shit out of Kurama, so why was she crying on his grave?
"Nana, what's going on?" Mayu asked quietly.
"I don't know for sure, but... I think we're about to see another miracle."
Lucy sobbed gently, feeling a thousand different emotions at once. "I can't truly be happy with Kouta and the others if I cling to hate and resentment. If I don't let it go, eventually it's going to destroy me."
She slowly got to her feet, still crying, but trying to calm down enough to speak.
"You and I both hated each other, but... life is too beautiful for hate. Your... "daughter" Nana taught me that..."
Lucy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was now or never.
"I'm so sorry for the people I hurt just to punish you, and... I-I forgive you... for everything I went through at the Institute, and for Aiko. "
Just like Kouta, the moment she said it, she knew she had made the right decision.
"Lucy..." Nana whispered, watching the older Diclonius silently for a few seconds before she broke down and started crying herself. To Nana, this was the greatest thing she had ever seen Lucy do, and her heart swelled with pride and admiration for her.
As Mayu and Yuka comforted her, Kouta smiled at his girlfriend, discreetly wiping away a tear of his own. After everything she had gone through, the Diclonius Queen had finally forgiven what could be considered her most hated enemy.
The peace she felt afterwards defied description, and made her wonder if Kouta had felt the same way when he forgave HER.
Motioning for the others to follow him, Kouta walked towards the cemetery. Everyone else hesitated at first, not sure how well the older girl was going to take the intrusion into what was clearly an emotional moment.
Coming up behind her, he gently wrapped his arms around her and hugged her from behind. Though startled, she knew instantly who was touching her.
"Kouta!" she said before turning around to face him.
"Why did you take off like that? I was worried sick about you." he asked.
Lucy choked back a sob, looking down at the grass. "I'm sorry, I just... there was something I needed to do, and it couldn't wait."
"Letting go of old grudges?"
Lucy gave him a look of surprise. "How did you...?"
Pointing over to where the others were waiting. "After everything Kakuzawa told you, Nana figured you'd come here. I'm sorry, we weren't trying to eavesdrop or anything."
"Smart girl..." Lucy complemented.
"Do you want us to go home and give you some privacy?" Kouta asked.
"No..." Lucy answered. "I've said all I needed to, let's just go home together."
Kouta smiled at her with a brightness she'd never seen before. "I am so incredibly proud of you, I want you to know that. I know this must have been hard..."
"Like it was for you?" she asked quietly.
Not sure how to answer that, Kouta took a second before nodding his head. "Yeah... I'm not going to lie to you, it WAS hard to forgive... but like Nana said, all refusing to forgive you was doing was hurting both of us. If you know someone is sorry for something they've done, you should forgive them, and let it go."
Lucy smiled as another tear fell from her eyes. "I guess that girl really is smarter than I gave her credit for." Hearing this, Mayu playfully nudged a blushing Nana in the side.
"I'm curious though... when I forgave you, I knew you were sorry about killing my family. You forgave Kurama even though he never apologized for anything that happened to you or that girl Aiko. I mean, it's possible he might have refused to ever forgive you, right?"
Lucy nodded her head, "I guess you could say that, yeah..."
Already knowing the answer, but wanting to hear it himself, Kouta asked the question that at this point was pretty much the elephant in the run-down cemetery.
"Why? Why would you forgive him if he never would have forgiven you?"
Lucy closed her eyes, trying to find the right words to answer him. When she opened them, he could clearly see more tears in her beautiful red eyes.
"It doesn't matter if he would have forgiven me or not. I can't make him do the right thing, but I can do it myself, and..." she looked down, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "And be content with knowing I'd done all I could." she told him.
In that moment, he knew she had finally learned what it meant to truly forgive others. It wasn't about whether you got anything out of it, it was about what THEY got out of it.
Unexpectedly, Kouta wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the lips right there in front of everyone. Lucy, still crying, put her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
At first, Yuka looked away. Despite her giving the couple her blessing, it hurt to see Kouta so in love with someone other than her. Painful as it may be, it was abundantly clear to her that trying to get in their way would only make them resent her, possibly for the rest of her life.
Not having Kouta as a romantic partner was far better than not even having him in her life AT ALL.
"Will you two knock it off already? You can make out when we get home."
One simple kiss hardly qualifies as making out, but nonetheless, the couple walked over to where the others were waiting. Unexpectedly, Yuka came up and hugged the Diclonius, who this time hugged her back without hesitation.
"Nyu, do me a favor and don't do this again. You really scared the hell out of us."
She nodded her head. "I'm sorry... I just..."
Yuka shook her head. "It's alright. You don't to apologize or explain, we're just glad you're safe."
For a long moment, the two girls just stood there hugging, then they were joined by Nana, Mayu, and finally Kouta.
"Come on..." he told them, "Let's go home."
Kaeda House - Late that night
"Nana, I don't want you to freak out, but the police are here and they said you have to come down and talk to them." Yuka told her. They had come while the young girl was in the bath, so she was told to finish quickly, get dressed, and come down.
She returned downstairs, clearly concerned for the Sipelit who now might be in serious legal trouble. Nana, shaking from fear, did as Yuka said.
As she walked into the dining room, Kouta, Yuka, and Mayu were waiting for her at the table along with two detectives and a tall woman with long, dark gray hair, a black business-type suit, dark purple eyeshadow, and red lipstick.
The detectives introduced her as Yae Moriyama from the Prosecutor's Office. Over near the door stood two uniformed police officers who nodded politely at her.
Lucy was also present, but standing off to the side. She couldn't help but notice that the two uniformed officers kept glancing at her like they were worried she might start attacking them if they didn't keep an eye on her.
"Miss Nana, right? Please, have a seat. We know it's late, so we'll be as brief as possible."
Nana sat down, visibly nervous, but the presence of her family helped calm her anxiety a bit.
"For the record, you are a "Diclonius", correct?"
Nana nodded.
One of the detectives looked over at Lucy. "So are you, right?"
"Right."
As soon as she confirmed that, Kouta noticed the two officers were subtly trying to back away from her.
"Well, as I'm sure you guessed by now, we're here because we need to speak with you about what happened last night at the Diclonius Research Institute. We understand that you were a test subject there at one time, right?" one of the detectives asked.
"Y-Yes..." she replied nervously.
At their request, she told them in great detail everything that had happened that day. When she finished, the detectives asked her one single question:
"So, you admit to killing Director Kakuzawa?"
Trying her best not to cry, she timidly nodded her head.
"She didn't have a choice! He was going to kill Kouta!" Yuka interrupted.
"We know." the first detective said, and the entire atmosphere changed instantly.
"You... you do? How?" Nana asked.
"Surveillance footage was recovered from the Institute. In addition, that scientist Arakawa left a written confession in her hotel room." the second detective said. "We can't disclose what was in it just yet, but it answered a lot of questions for us."
"So, what happens to Nana?" Kouta asked.
The detectives looked over at the prosecutor. "Well, ma'am? Are you charging her?"
After thinking it over, she shook her head. "No. She killed Director Kakuzawa to save this young man's life. I'm ruling it a justifiable homicide."
"What about her?" one of them asked, referring to Lucy.
"Hold on a minute, why are asking about her?" Kouta interrupted.
"When we recovered the surveillance footage, it wasn't just from the Director's office, it was from the facility as a whole. When we reviewed it, this young lady was seen inflicting severe injuries on Institute personnel. Broken bones, concussions, skull fractures, broken ribs... you name it, she did it."
"My boyfriend was forcibly abducted by the Institute. I only did what was necessary to save him, but if it bothers you, next time I'll just kill them all. Would that be more to your liking?"
"Well, no... but..."
"No." the woman cut in. "I won't be filing charges on her either. If Mr. Shintaro wants to know why, you can tell him I've concluded both Diclonii were acting to save human lives. If he doesn't like it, then that's just tough shit."
The detectives looked at each other and shrugged. "That works for us."
As they stood up to go, the Prosecutor asked Nana a strange question.
"I've never seen a Diclonius in person before. Is it true that they have horns on their head?"
When Nana said yes, she asked if she'd mind removing her hairbow for a moment. The lady's request surprised her, but she complied and exposed her horns.
And then, the Prosecutor did something so unexpected, it shocked even Lucy.
"Oh my God, that is so CUTE! They really DO look like cat ears! Can I touch them?"
'...What the hell is wrong with that woman?' Lucy wondered.
Nana, blushing in embarrassment, consented and endured almost five minutes of having her horns examined like they were the Holy Grail. To top it off, the woman took a selfie with her before leaving.
To nobody's surprised, Nana got teased by her family for a long time over it, but she didn't mind. She knew with absolute and complete certainty she was loved and wanted by them, and if they made fun of her, she never took it as anything but what it was: lighthearted and playful teasing from one family member to another.
That night, all five of them slept peacefully. Kakuzawa was dead, Nana was cleared of any wrongdoing, Lucy had forgiven her most hated enemy, and Yuka had finally accepted that Kouta and Nyu weren't having a fling that would blow over in a year or two. They were very likely on the road to getting married some day.
Despite this, Yuka was genuinely happy for them. Kouta might be a jerk sometimes, but he still deserved to be happy. If marrying Nyu would make him happier than marrying her, she was ok with it, or at least she WILL be ok with it... eventually.
As Kouta and Lucy got in bed that night, he asked her if she thought Nana was going to be ok after what happened, and was surprised when she replied with, "I hope not".
"Nyu, don't you think that's a little harsh?"
"That's the point, Kouta. If she were fine with it, she might grow comfortable with killing like I..." she said before stopping herself.
"...Like you are?"
"Like I WAS..." she corrected.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that." he apologized.
Lucy just sighed and cuddled against him. "It's alright..."
Holding her tightly against him, he rubbed her back gently over the white cami she used as her usual sleepwear. She smiled, doing the same thing to him as they held each other.
"When I finish college, will you marry me?"
Lucy stopped dead in her tracks, looking at him in disbelief. "W-What did you just say?"
"When I finish college, will you marry me?" he repeated, a little slower.
"Do... Do you really mean it?" she asked hopefully.
"I still got almost three years left, is that going to be ok?"
Lucy smiled happily at him. "I don't care if it's three years or thirty years. All that matters is I get to marry the man I love."
"I'm sorry about this, but can we hold off on telling anyone?"
Lucy nodded, but asked him why. "Well, it's basically because I... God, this is embarrassing..."
"It's ok. You can tell me."
"I want to keep it between you and me because I don't have an engagement ring yet. It'd look pretty bad to say you're engaged, but not have a ring to show for it."
"Kouta, I don't care if we don't have a ring."
"I do."
Lucy sighed, but relented. "Alright, we'll wait... Just do me a favor, and don't spend a lot of money on it."
"No promises." he teased. Lucy smiled and closed her eyes, holding on to him tightly. After a few moments, she softly whispered, partially to herself , "This IS real... right? Y-You actually want me to marry you? Like, a real, ''husband and wife'' marriage?"
Trying not to laugh, he asked her what other kind of marriage was there.
"The kind where I wake up and realize it was just a dream..."
Opening his eyes, the couple looked at each other.
'God, she looks so... vulnerable.' he thought to himself. "Have you had dreams like that?"
Lucy nodded, so Kouta held her slender body against his and rubbed the side of her head soothingly.
"It's not a dream, Nyu. This is real life, and I'm really asking you to marry me... legally."
His leaned in and gently kissed her forehead as she started to cry, holding her as tightly as he could without hurting her. "So... will you?"
It always broke his heart to hear or see her cry, and this time was no exception.
"Y-Yes..." she sobbed gently.
He smiled, whispering "Thank you", and comforting her as she cried. Not for the first time, he had to wonder how the hell a girl as emotional as her managed to brutally murder hundreds of people. It simply did not make any sense whatsoever.
Before he knew it, she cried herself to sleep. Smiling at her, he closed his eyes and yawned. He wasn't completely sure how they were going to deal with the red tape involved, but as he fell asleep, he had no way of knowing that, before long, this problem would be solved for them in a way none of them saw coming.