"Y-Yeah..." Eld looked away for a few moments, before deciding that he owed it to her to meet her gaze. He was glad she seemed to be able to remember things clearly now, but that did make certain things more difficult.

"You should know...at the end...he looked at ease." He didn't know whether she'd believe him or not, but he felt that she'd want to know...that she deserved to, really.

He remained silent for a minute to let that sink it before saying, "C'mon...we need to get to the clinic and get patched up." Akizetsumei needed it the most, but Eld was injured as well and bleeding, especially from the wound in his shoulder. As much as he didn't want to try and explain to his parents why he was beat up and clearly stabbed, he knew he needed to them treated before he lost too much blood to move them.

Though it was a sad thought, Akizetsumei nodded to Eld. She understood exactly what he meant, and took solace in that fact. To provide her brother that last right . . . it was the very reason she was here in Hillcrest. Dealing with her brother was supposed to be her job, not Eld's, and she hated to think of what she wound up putting him through.

Yet still, it was a moot point. Eld provoked him to this location; he was partly responsible for Oboreru, too-- and in the end, it was a combination of both their powers that put a stop to him.

"Go back there, with you . . ." Akizets thought.

Despite all the previous thoughts of regret, Akizets couldn't help but thinklong and hard about returning to Eld's village-- her mind swimming in such fantasies she had before Eld ran off to fight her brother for the last time. They were all such girlish thoughts and fantasies, dreams of spending time with this boy of her fancy, regardless of the fact that she was, in actuality, a good five years older than him. That just didn't really matter. She wasn't too mature herself, and, well, the truth about her age . . .

Akizetsumei's thoughts took a turn down a road she wished not to visit, but under the current circumstances, could not avoid. She loved to think that she could return to Hillcrest with him, maybe date him, move in, and spend the rest of her natural life by her side, but it just wasn't possible. She couldn't imagine herself returning to Hillcrest with Eldridge Tsukimono-- but that didn't mean she hadn't the want to.

"I wish . . ." Akizets trailed off as she leaned her head back again, gently setting the back of her skull against the tree once more.

Akizets shut her eyes and released a weak sigh. She could feel a slight numbness upon her right hand, and as much as she wanted to look at it, tap it, and try to make it feel again, she knew, deep down inside, how fruitless such an attempt would have been. Eld would see it clearly, how a slight haze attached itself to her fingers, a slow and steady outline of silver-gray that attached itself to the stark contours of her fingers, her palm, and the back of her hand-- slowly rising to the bottom of her wrist and casting a subtle haze-- an obscure sight to behold, and yet . . .

Eld would know exactly what that meant.

". . . I could."

"What do you...?" It took him a second to spot why she was talking that way, and when he did his eyes widened considerably. Her hand was fading--slowly, but it was the exact same effect he'd just seen with Oboreru.

"No!" he shouted, kneeling down next to her to grip her shoulder. "Hang in there! I can get you to a doctor in just a few minutes! Just a little longer...please..."

He hung his head...he knew it was useless, despite his pleading. He knew her wounds weren't fatal. If it was that cutting rain that caused this, he'd have been dead long before her, since he'd taken the bulk of the attack. She might not have tolerated pain very well, but her skin was no less thick than his was.

Regret-- it struck her like a brick wall, and it wasn't until Eld's reaction that she genuinely felt it, not for her own future, but for Eld's sadness. She didn't want him to be sad for anything, and she especially didn't want it to be because of her. Knowing that Eld's sadness would only last for so long should have been a solace for her, but in reality it wasn't. In reality, it was an inadvertent knife to her heart, one that was dug in enough to fill her with the urge to cry, something she wanted to avoid ever since she realized what was happening to her.

"I-- I'm sorry . . . I'm really sorry . . ." Akizets replied with a weak cry, one that made her wince and fall back into the tree again.

She stayed there, feeling the numbness running up her arm quicker than it had her fingers, hastened by movement and excess. She shut her eyes tightly, contained the urge to shout at fate for leading her to all this, and let out a small sigh.

"I've-- I've been holding on as long as I can, since then . . ."

Calm again, she felt the numbness slowing.

"I felt it--" she gulped hard "--as soon as you left, a-and I held on, b-because if you came back and I was gone . . . you would've hated me."

"That's not true. I...I don't think I could ever really hate you. The person...I really wouldn't be able to forgive...is me..." She's suspected, hadn't she? That giving him her powers would do this to her, and yet she'd done it anyway. Because he wasn't strong enough to save them, she had to give him her powers, and the result was...

He raised his head, looking at her with watery eyes. "It isn't fair! You haven't done anything wrong...you've only tried to help others, to set things right. You...deserve better than this. You deserve to be with your family, to find someone who give his entire heart to you, to...to..."

"You deserve to live, dammit!" Why did the world have to be like this? He hated it, hated it and all the people who made it that way, himself included. Because he wasn't strong enough and because the bad people were...

Akizets frowned sadly. "No . . . Eld . . ."

What was she to say? That she wished she could live with him and talk about all the what ifs, the could bes, and the should bes? She might have wanted to, and maybe she'd get the chance sometime--but right now, with Eld staring at her with watery eyes, she wanted to tell him the truth, first and foremost-- the absolute truth for the better understanding of her feelings, if only for him to know why she did it, even if she knew deep down in her heart that it'd be the end of her. Akizets could have given into her own final wants, but she thought of Eld first and foremost-- Eld and the human race he belonged to.

She acted on better judgment, and though movement made the numbness grow quicker, she raised her functional hand up to grip Eld's shirt loosely, to pull herself forward and let herself be closer to him-- closer like she wanted to be, but also closer to better insist her understanding of the situation:

"You're the one that deserves to live. You and everyone else like you. You . . . you're all experiencing your chance at life," she said with a weak sternness, yet filled with the passion of a true philanthrope; she lifted her partially translucent hand to set upon the center of her chest, to motion to herself, "Something . . . something we already had. Something we lost-- a- a thousand times over!"

Akizets felt herself on the verge of crying, now--something she so desperately wanted not to do; over and over, she'd told herself that she wouldn't but now she had tears in her eyes.

"You and . . . all of them, all of you-- people that are real," Akizets reasoned breathlessly-- passionately, "You don't need us like we need you."

"I...I don't understand." There it was again, this talk about being real or not; why did she say that? Did it have something to do with why they wanted Kageko? He didn't get any of it, and now that someone may have been willing to explain it...

"I mean, I know that there's something different about your family; that you aren't normal..." They had powers he didn't understand, even having used them for a brief time, and when they die they didn't leave behind spirits. Clearly they weren't quite the same as him or anyone he knew.

"...but even so, you're here with me," he said, clasping her hand in both of his. "You're real to me, no matter how I look at you." He put all his feeling into those words, as though if he could convince her of the value of her own existence, she'd somehow continue to exist.

Eld took her hand, clasped it in his, and Akizetsumei smiled at him. "You're sweet . . ."

It was just another reason she could fall in love with him. Of course, he brought her just a little cheer, and it was nice to think about. For her to acknowledge her own existence, however, would do little to assist her in continuing to exist-- and she didn't want to lie to herself, anyways.

If only he were right.

There was no sense in Eld lying to himself, too. Even if he'd forget it all in time, he might as well know now while she was still a semi-real part of his life.

"But we're just . . . we're just remnants, Eld. Nothing more, nothing less," Akizets explained to the best of her ability, "We never really had the right to exist, but . . . i-it's the only thing we ever want, since the day when learned what it's like to be real. But . . . we're not. We're just fake memories. In a couple days, you . . . won't even know I ever existed. B-because . . ."

She leaned back at last, against the tree with her head leaned back and eyes open. She still wanted to see, even if it meant she might have to eventually come to terms with the fact that the numbness in her shoulder was attacking the side of her ribcage with rapid succession.

". . . I was never really there."

It was a terrifyingly depressing thought for her. No one wanted to be forgotten, not even someone who hadn't an existence to be remembered. The thought made her tremble, it made her want to cry even more--and then, she forced her mind to wander, attach itself to a different subject, but it was related, and thinking back, she remembered just who it was she was starting to sound like.

Akizets broke into a slight giggle-- a sad laugh as a tear finally touched upon her cheek and ran down to the point of her chin.

"Hah . . . here I am, trying to talk just like him! It's a famous monologue, you know? F-famous, for us. I-I tried to memorize it. I-imagine that-- me, trying to memorize a monologue," Akizets exclaimed in mellow retrospect, "I-- I couldn't even get past the second line!"

Which brought her to a different train of thought, one she willingly jumped to--one she was able to willingly jump to. She could have gone back, even to and from, the previous line of philosophical and inward thinking. It was an amazing feeling. So long she'd spent in a state of losing the last ten words of every line of thinking, sometimes even so extreme as four. She couldn't remember a thing. All she had were feelings, none of which she could ever accurately describe, for lack of memory of what they were. She needed reminders constantly, from other people and other things--she had to depend on the existence of others just to think straight. Now, she didn't. Now, she could think clearly, freely.

"But now . . . now I can remember all sorts of stuff!" the retrospective sadness passed in lieu of a peaceful enthusiasm, "I just wish I could share it all with you."

Again, what she was saying went over his head; he didn't know anything about fake memories and the like, and her quick mentions of that stuff wasn't something he was piecing together. But forgetting about her...would that really happen? The idea that he could ever forget her was painful.

But in spite of himself, he couldn't help but smile weakly at her admission of her bad memory. Now she could remember clearly...he wondered if there was some connection to Oboreru feeling at peace.

"I...I'd like to think I'll never forget you, but I...I know that I don't really understand what you are. But...even if, for some reason, I forget you here," he said, lifting her hand and touching it to his forehead, "I'll never forget you here." He finished by placing her hand back over his chest, where she'd be able to feel his hear beating. Despite seeming somewhat calm now, it was pulsing wildly, betraying how he really felt.

"You'd . . . make me real . . ." Akizets trailed off, ". . . in your heart?"

It was almost as if the idea was confounding to her. She felt no hope for reality, for the same existence that Eldridge Tsukimono and so many like him held dear. She had no hope for nothing, nothing more than the future of this man she, personally, held dear.

But now, she was left to think of a new what if. If something of her existed still in the heart of another . . . then did she truly exist? The wind would forget her, the earth, the water, and the sky--they would forget her in every way, but would Eld? Would there still be something left of her. Akizets smiled at the thought. As little more than a fading memory, it was a grand hope to have.

"I knew there was a reason I saved you," she remarked with a coy smile--though, he eyes displayed a very different feeling, not pride or anything of the sort, but a genuine fondness. There was a very good reason that she saved Eld:

Because of he was the kind of man whose heart she could value that much--enough to genuinely believe that even if she were gone from his mind, that there would be feelings left somewhere inside of him. The sharing of their feelings and souls before Eld departed to take care of Oboreru once and for all . . . maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe, even after she was gone, he'd carry a little piece of her around--one little remnant of a memory, even if it were the smallest thing like a smile crossing his lips whenever the wind brushed against him.

Again, Eld found himself smiling slightly despite himself. She was amazingly upbeat about it all; he wondered if, facing the end of his own existence, he'd be so amiable. Wait, I did, he recalled. And I wasn't. His memory of that encounter was fuzzy, but he did know for certain that he was far from happy.

He looked her over fondly, but found himself flinching away when it he laid eyes on the parts of her that were fading. To look at that, and know what it meant made something in him want to tear out of his chest in grief.

"H-Hey, how about you share some of those memories with me?" he asked. He wanted to stay with her until the end, but if that was all he focused on he was afraid some part of him would break.

Memories . . . how strange they were to recall. Akizets smiled slightly. She wanted so badly to share all her memories with Eld, now that she had them to remember--and yet, she hadn't the time to tell each individual one. It was kind of sad, but . . . but maybe she could talk about as many as she had the time for. Maybe--yes, yes, she'd do just that. Akizets began with the very first thing that came to mind.

"Y-you know-- you know, I used to have a sister? She was great. She was my best friend in the world . . . Lyna, we all liked to call her. It was impossible to remember her full name, you know? Even for everyone else!"

She was silent for a second, forced to think back about this one. A non-Cizokian would be troubled to remember Akizetsumei's name, but this one was probably troubling even for people of . . . where that language came from! (Though, it was odd for Akizets to have a Cizokian name. She wasn't actually Cizokian; there were racial similarities, but the differences were too great. She was of some Oriental descent, but not Cizok's)

"Lynavleder, that was it," Akizets recalled.

Just thinking of her name opened a well of memories. Akizets shut her eyes and smiled. Beyond her parents, she was most fond of her sister.

"She was great. She really was. We were always together. She had this really snarky personality and . . ." It was odd. As Akizets recalled these memories aloud, she felt the pain less and less--she felt calm. She stopped stumbling over her own words. ". . . well, it was almost like she could come up with a sarcastic way to say anything! Like-- like-- biting stuff, and she could get kind of scary if you really made her mad. But with me, she was always calm. We stayed in the same place together and always talked . . . about anything, really. I couldn't remember what we were talking about half the time and changed topics so much, and she just rolled with it like it was natural to her! She was older than me. Older than my brothers, too. She was kind of, um, eccentric? That's the word, right? She was always a mess but she didn't care. She made a mess of things a lot of the time, but she didn't really care. Actually, you know, we both did. We played a lot of pranks together."

"I remember her . . . she was tall and super skinny, and had this wild red hair and these red markings under her eyes. It was always hard to see her face though--I mean, her hair was everywhere. It was short but . . . just uncontrollable. I swear, if you looked right at her, you'd think she'd come out of a loony bin! She had real peaceful eyes, though. These sort of . . . I don't know. I've never seen a green like them before--like they were always glowing. A lot of people said that she looked crazy all the time, but I think she was beautiful."

Akizets remembered her like it was yesterday, making this one of the first times she could ever claim such a thing. But, unfortunately, it wasn't a story that ended on a happy note. She wished it did, but she couldn't change the past, no matter how much she might want to.

"She passed away a couple months ago, though . . . um . . ."

There was a long, sobering pause.

"Y-you know . . . the thing, that thing my brother and I did?" Akizets asked rhetorically, "We learned that from . . . her."

"All four of us were together. Toushikyo, Oboreru, myself . . . and her. A-and-- we were approached by this guy, this guy-- Vince? He introduced himself as Vince. He had a bunch of other guys with him, and they brought all these . . . shadowy things with them. They were gonna eat us! Can you imagine that? We fought, but there were too many of them . . . they overran us, cornered us in this valley. Some were just as fast as me! My sister, Lyna-- she takes in this deep breath and tells us to run. I asked . . . why? Why wasn't she coming with us? And she got teary eyed and screamed at us-- th-that if we didn't run, we'd all die."

Akizets frowned somewhat.

"So my brothers and I ran away."

There was a long pause in the midst of her recounting. Akizets stared up to the sky, thinking back on it-- the clouds, the rain . . . it never rained where she came from. Clouds were all just a menial thing; they all sat down upon the earth no matter what. You never saw them rise to the sky, but that day, she saw a cloudy sky.

"My father told us that the lightning storm shook your world from ours."

"I'm sorry..." It was difficult to imagine what it was like, Akizetsumei together with all her siblings. He only saw them from one angle, as their hated enemy--it was difficult to imagine that they might be different, that they might actually get along when it was just them. It did not make living with what he had to do any easier.

Prompted by her, however, he felt the urge to share a memory of his own. "I...never had any siblings. I'm an only child. However...there's a man who was like an older brother to me. I'm good friends with his sisters, and ever since we were children he'd watch over us. Of the four of us--me, his sisters, and one other--I was the only guy, so Remmy would occasionally take it upon himself to try and teach me how to be a man. I always used to dread those times; the way I was, it seemed like I'd never be a real man." He chuckled slightly; funny that those were now some of his most treasured memories of him.

"But...a few months ago, bandits took over our village. Remmy organized the villagers to fight back, and I fought with them. At the time I got frustrated with him, because he wouldn't teach me how to fight...but...I realize now that he taught something much more important: why to fight."

"Eventually, we drove them off, but after the final battle as they were retreating, their leader took a potshot at me with his gun--he would have got me right in the back of the head, but Remmy moved me and took the bullet instead...and later he died from it."

For several moments Eld remained silent, long enough that Akizetsumei might think the story was over, but he continued. "You...can remember everything now, right? Then...you probably know that I'm a Reaper." Her brothers and father did, so it was a reasonable assumption. "It was actually the night he died that I became one...he was the first spirit I saw, the first one I passed on. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. But...he was the one who taught me that a man has to do what's necessary to protect the people he cares about, and as long as he was wayward spirit he was a danger to himself and to the entire village."

There were some similarities to what Akizetsumei had to do; while he didn't have to actually fight Remmy (which was fortunate, because it was not a fight he would have won, he was certain), he still had to accept the responsibility of removing him from this life...and whether by violently or not, gone was gone.

"So I guess I know what it's like..." Whether he was referring to that or simply to losing an older sibling was left up to her.

"We're so . . . similar . . ."

The thought was immediate. She rued Eld's story perhaps just as much as he did hers; he had all her sympathy, truly. They likewise knew the pains of losing family and putting family down for theirs and everyone else's good. Akizets, weeks ago, defeated her own brother. He'd lost it for the final time and nearly killed innocent people. She tried to put him down, but there was little she could do; she had to strike at his heart. Oboreru was in pain, and in agony, he lashed out. He couldn't bare the burden of his own existence any longer.

Akizetsumei struck him in the heart, but somehow, a shell remained--a shell slowly emptying itself of genuine feelings, slowly becoming little more than a violent husk.

So similar . . .

"Memory and Reaper . . . who would've thought?" Akizets smiled sadly at the prospect--a lost potential.

A lost prospect of love or, perhaps if nothing more, friendship. They'd known each other for such a scant amount of time; anyone else might look upon them and declare them mutual acquaintances. It was that thought which struck Akizetsumei rather suddenly. She couldn't see herself as Eld's real friend, as she could not acknowledge herself as real--and perhaps she was right. What friendship could remain when she'd just be forgotten so quickly? It wasn't Eld's fault, though. She couldn't blame him.

She could barely blame him for anything.

"Do you think . . ." Akizets trailed off as she watched the coming of night; under a fresh veil of stars, she could see the glimmers of light lifting from her form--she could feel weightlessness in its approach, and the serene numbness and tranquility that assaulted her senses . . . and yet, there was only one thing she could think of--one fragmented question on her mind:

Do you think if . . . if I were real," she locked scarlet eyes with Eld's own; the well of tears was threatening to burst. "We would've been friends?"

A Memory and a Reaper...Eld finally managed to pick up that it was what they were called, which explained some of the more confusing dialogue he'd been part of recently. But not nearly all of it.

"Stop saying that!" he snapped. He wasn't truly angry, but...sad, depressed, a little hurt...a mix of many things. "Memory, or whatever...it doesn't matter. You are real. These feelings are proof...you're no less real than I am, and we are friends." They might not have known each other for very long, but that didn't change anything; he cared for her, and even if things would never have worked between them, he knew at the very least they'd be friends.

"You have as much a right to live as anyone..." In the end, it hadn't been any easier to kill Gestahl or Oboreru; they still weighed on his conscience as heavily as any other that fell to him. And it was no easier to accept her fate than it was to accept the death of anyone else he'd lost...