The farther he walked, the more he realized how much he was a mere puppet. The walls shifted at the edges of his vision, and sometimes he could feel sand scratch his skin. His breathing was even, though inside he was panicking. The deeper he went underground, the more he realized that he was walking in another memory, and perhaps had been for several days. There was something about the feel of the walls at his fingertips, the way the ceiling dipped over his head, that felt surreal. These were merely the walls to his mental palace, the giant crystal corpse of his mind.

His memories were so realistic, he could no longer distinguish between recollection and true life.

"You finally figured it out, did you? I wondered how long it would take you," a small, boyish voice said to his left. Though he couldn't look at the voice, as his past self hadn't looked down once in his journey in this memory, he knew who it belonged to. He wished he could break free of the manifestation, if just to put his hands around that scrawny neck and wring the world out of his tiny body.

How to escape? He didn't know. There was no way to break free of the memory. He'd never fully understood how he managed to differentiate between dreamworld and reality.

"A pity, you being trapped here. I was so sure you had managed to get some control," the voice sighed with disappointment. Lavi continued walking down the path, his eye resolutely facing forward into the dark that loomed before his lantern. He could feel the hewn rock crunch beneath his boots, and he noticed that the ceiling was sloping down. He was headed down into the earth, and he wondered if he already knew what was at the end of this particular journey.

If he could just get a grip on this...

Finally, after what seemed like ages of walking, Lavi emerged into a rather large cavern. Despite himself, he gaped at the spectacle inside, breathless. It seemed his memories matched well with his own personal response, because he stepped backwards in confusion and awe. Before him, sloping inward, was a massive, inverted pyramid made of glass and etched with strange runes. An ethereal glow shown around the cavern as a little sunlight filtered through the water held within. His body walked around the pyramid, inspecting it closely. He touched it, its surface cold and wet with condensation. His lantern threw back the light off the glass, obscuring the contents of the inverted pyramid.

Breathing heavily, Lavi's head turned towards the lantern and back to the pyramid. He remembered this, yes. There was something in the pyramid, something important.

Plumb the depths of a lake of tears.

He raised his lantern to his face and blew out the light to better see the inside of the pyramid.

"You have that much ability, I see. Good..."

He ignored the voice, staring into the pyramid, walking closer and closer. The runes were in the Bookman's secret language, but Lavi couldn't read a single word. It was too archaic, older than even the oldest manuscripts Lavi had seen to date. Bookman might understand some of it, but he wasn't sure. It was far above his caliber, that much was true. He knelt on the ground and looked down into the tip of the pyramid, and to his amazement, he could see a plaque set into its tip, a single number inscribed deep into it.

He memorized the number, etching it into his mind so deep he could almost feel it with his hands by bringing it to mind. He could nearly smell the mustiness of this block of stone at the bottom of the lake, waiting to be discovered by a descendant of those who'd first put it down here.

And, in his concentration, he felt the world shift a bit. The whole illusion wavered like a building in an earthquake, silently shaken. Though his body stood still, within he almost gasped as a piece of the puzzle clicked. He had thought before that if he concentrated enough, he could push his memory forward, somehow bypassing all the tedium in between to get to a place he wanted to be. So, perhaps... if he thought hard enough, tried to remember...

It was like watching reel of cinema go by at double the speed. His body zipped around, and Lavi suddenly recounted a few things, pushing the memory even faster forward. He was the master of his own mind, and he would step out of this -

And, a stray memory was brought to mind as his hand brushed a smooth wall. He lost concentration, but the stray thought as he'd touched the wall brought him out of that memory and into another.

It was a familiar one, with Lavi touching a stone elephant in China. It was one he'd revisited several times before. With a mental frown, he shook that memory off-

Now, he found himself in a hallway. Oddly, he recognized it; it was cluttered with gifts and memories of gifts and dozens of odds and ends. He'd somehow backtracked his way into his mental palace, and he cursed vehemently, kicking the wall. He'd gotten so close to getting out of the first memory! If he'd just managed to maintain focus, he could've ran right through it and back to the present!

However, he now had control of his 'body', so to speak, and that was a plus. Being a puppet to his past self was tiring and frustrating.

"You managed to get out," a familiar voice said, and Lavi looked behind him. A younger version of himself stood amidst the debris of an old ship protruding from a wall. Lavi glowered at the apparition and said, "And what's it to you?"

The younger boy smiled, an unkind gesture, and stated, "There's hope for you yet."

Lavi stormed past the young boy, looking about the maze of hallways and their plethora of doors, all leading to different memories. He longed to figure a way out, but he didn't know how to get back to the memory he'd been trapped in, not without reentering it and finding himself back in the predicament he'd just escaped from. For all he knew, he'd been in this memory for years, and he was only just now aware he'd been trapped. Who knew what all he actually remembered?

"Where do you think you're going?" the young boy asked, panting as he tried to keep up with Lavi's long-legged stride.

"A way out," Lavi stated tersely.

"But you're headed down. You're going to your subconscious," his adversary huffed, hopping over a pile of old stuffed animals, all of them full of bulletholes. He picked the stuffing off his poncho, trying to match Lavi's speed.

"Maybe that's where I need to be. I don't remember enough, and if that's where all my unconscious thoughts are, that's where the memories I can't access must be," Lavi stated. "Why do you care anyhow?"

The redheaded boy frowned harshly and said, "If you can't get out, then neither can I."

Lavi smirked.

"Then that's all the more incentive to stay."

It took what seemed like hours to figure out how to wander down to his subconscious. After a while, he figured out he could conjure doors that would lead to massive rooms full of artifacts from other memories, taking shortcuts through whole periods of his life that way. Still, making his way into his subconscious wasn't easy. It took a lot of mental work to calm himself enough to reach the amorphous place at the bottom, or what he perceived as the bottom, of his mental space.

It was only after realizing the walls were slowly shifting and moving that he realized he'd finally made it to his subconscious. Now that he was here, he was unsure what to do. After all, there wasn't a whole lot he could do, other than walk around. Sometimes, random memories would play across the walls, but for the most part, there was just this general feeling of unease. Sometimes, he heard whispers, and other times he saw writings on the wall, etched into the black-and-silver marble or written in ink. Now and again, a message would be splashed across in blood, messages he could only bear to glance at.

tastes like chocolate

wish I could visit there again

killed her killed her killed her killed her

Of course there would be no memories down here. What was he thinking?

stupid you're so stupid

what were you thinking?

worthless liar murderer liar

"Come on, you're in here somewhere," he muttered to himself as he ignored the blood on the walls, the bloody shoeprints across the ground, and the messages scrawled in his handwriting. Sometimes, he caught glimpses of Esperanza, her hair matted and her eyes devoid of emotion, but he paid her no mind. There was no time to revisit that snarl. The last time he'd been stuck, he'd wandered down here. He remembered how he'd gotten out then, but would it work again?

This is just my imagination. This is all in my head. There is a whole world out there.

Last time, he'd reached this conclusion only after realizing that his friends, all apparitions of their worst selves, were not real. His mind had conjured them up, drew them from thin air, and put them all around him. No, he'd remembered who they really were, instead of the worries that had wandered into the arena of his unconscious mind. Yet, in his unconscious, he'd been able to feel the world around him, the real world. This was the place where his unconscious thoughts went, and part of that unconscious was also the real world outside. He had to have been processing all that info somewhere, and if he wasn't aware of it, it must be here, in this dark place.

He touched the nearest wall as the area began to lighten, looking up towards Esperanza. Just as the last time, she was wearing her home-made bombs and had human bone in her hair. Her eyes were dark and foreboding, knives at her side. She looked feral, wild, and almost savagely beautiful. She was colder this time around, refusing to look at him and sitting against a wall as she sharpened a knife. That was to be expected. His mental image of her had changed little, but it had changed.

Lavi looked into the dark marble under his hand, and he tried to reach for that unconscious part of him that must be drinking in the world outside...

"...waking up!" said a rough voice and there was the sound of footsteps, boots running across gravel. Memory transitioned to wakefulness, and Lavi finally understood what he was seeing. His eyes roamed the room he was in, surprised to find himself in a truck. He flexed his hands and tried to recall all that had happened, truly happened, and he was surprised by how much he remembered.

With a start, he realized they had solved almost all the riddles on Darrin's canister. The number at the bottom of the lake had provided one answer. They'd found the place where sun and moon kissed at the Temple of the Sun on La Isla del Sol based on an observatory there, which filtered both moonlight and sunlight onto a dial. Viracocha's face was some kind of rock formation just above the lake, and there they viewed a constellation in the shape of another number. Along with the riddle of the amphithere, that was four riddles solved.

Of course, this left them with one more to tease apart.

He sat up with a groan, putting a hand to his chest. His sternum still hurt like the dickens, but that was to be expected, given the state of his heart and the brutality with which he had abused his body these past few weeks. The truck began to lurch to a stop, and he looked up eagerly. While he'd been in his trance, they'd laid him down and kept him warm, and he remembered every moment now - and he was glad to have been mostly 'out of it', given how boring that experience seemed to have been. Likewise, he didn't know where they were or what else they'd accomplished since he'd entered his old memories.

"Apprentice."

The sound of an old man's voice quickly distracted the young man from his transfixed ogling. The little historian had climbed into the back of the truck, which had ground to a halt.

"Hi, Gramps," Lavi breathed.

"Are you alright?" Bookman asked, right to the point of it.

"Yeah... I think I'm fine. Just... I, uh, I'm still out of it," Lavi said quietly. He felt oddly claustrophobic, suddenly aware of eyes locked on to him.

He swallowed, his eye flickering between the old man and the growing crowd behind the truck. He could see Allen's white hair peek over the short, sturdy men who'd come along on the trip with them. Link trailed behind, his gaze neutral but inquisitive. And Esperanza...

Well, if he hadn't known better, he'd have said she was fighting her way through as best as she could.

"You did not take that medication, did you?" Bookman asked irately.

Lavi's gaze bounced back and forth. Esperanza was staring at him with narrowed blue eyes, while Allen and Link were peering over the heads of others. Darrin had also managed to get in on this congregation, shouting curses as he weaseled his way up towards him. More and more, Lavi felt his space being constricted, and he gently inched his way towards the back of the truck.

"I... I was scared to take it. I stopped taking it... two weeks ago. It made me feel..." Lavi felt put on the spot, what with the people gathered around behind Bookman. Lavi had figured his awakening would be a spectacle, but he felt like a bug under a microscope. This would be easier, if they weren't all breathing his air. He just wanted a little space. He felt jittery and not all there, perhaps an effect of coming back to the "real world" - if indeed, this was the real world. How was he to tell?

No, no, he couldn't go on worrying about it like that. If he did, he'd never trust a single thing he touched or saw or felt. It would be a fate worse than death, terrified of living for the fact that it could merely be a dream.

"I knew it," Bookman spit, and Lavi once more redirected his attention to the old man. He was rubbing his eyes with exhaustion, and finally Lavi noticed the bags under his eyes, the parchment-like folds of his skin, the gray in his hair and the stoop in his shoulders. Bookman had always been vivacious, though not emotional or overly sentimental. Now, he looked like he had not slept in days. "Why can you not just do what I tell you? Why must you make this more difficult? Apprentice, you cannot go on like this."

"Oi, he awake?!" Darrin shouted as he finally got up to the truck. Lavi grimaced at the loudness of his friend's voice, and he felt vertigo as the truck shook with Darrin's sudden added weight.

"Yeah, I'm awake," Lavi answered wearily, though he put on a smile. Darrin slapped a thigh happily and pointed at him while looking out to the crowd.

"He's awake!" This proclamation was met with lukewarm cheers.

Bookman slapped his forehead while Lavi laughed, glad that despite his condition he could still enjoy a bit of humor.

"Shoot, boy, we're gonna fix you right up with a glass a' scotch, 'n then we'll break out them goats fer dinner, cuz you're all back with us, ain't ya, and..."

Lavi sat with his back to the side of the truck, enjoying the American man's ramblings about the subsequent celebration he had planned, but the dark look Bookman gave him did not escape his notice. Still, he could bask in the moment. If this was a memory, at the least it wasn't a bad one.

"...and a dancing senorita!"

"Darrin, we can't afford that!"

"We'll dress Ricardo up as a girl! Same thing!"

"So tell me again where we are and what we're doing?" Lavi sighed as he drew in the dirt with a stick.

Allen turned the spit over the fire, exposing a portion of goat leg to the flames. The warmth suffused Lavi's cold skin pleasantly, and it was all he could do not to sit directly in the center of the stones ringing the fire. The smells were heavenly, but the synesthesia from such heady fumes almost made him throw up. The aroma of cooking flesh paired heavily with the memories of bombs and screaming and panic, but Lavi bravely sat before the food and willed his stomach to want.

"We're headed towards Mexico. From what Bookman could make out from your notes, he found that you had found a local Aztec legend about the hummingbird god - some fellow by the name of, ah...Hooah... Hyui..."

"Huitzlipochtli."

"Um, yes, him. May we call him Mr. H?"

Lavi chuckled at Allen's polite deferral. While Allen was sharp, he had no tongue for complicated names like the ones used in Northern Mexico for their gods. Granted, most people in general found something like Tezcatlipoca or Tenochtitlan a mouthful.

"Yeah, otherwise we'll spend half the night trying to say his name," Lavi muttered as he stared into the fire. Around him, he could hear the chatter of men in Spanish, their work mostly done. They were much closer to Aztec country now, which was slowly turning to desert. Lavi was amazed at how fast they had traveled, but part of that was Allen's Ark abilities - he'd been to a city in southern Mexico before, cutting their trip in half. At the moment, the brush and scrub was low to the ground, with the occasional grove of tall, sprawling trees. It was honestly quite pretty, if he did say so himself. There was an air of quietude here, one that Lavi had not felt in a while. The Akuma had left them mostly alone. For now, they were safe in this desolate land. The Akuma liked to stick closer to urban centers where prey was bountiful, though that did not mean an intrepid Akuma would not hunt in the sparsely populated, yet very vulnerable, rural lands.

"Well, we're headed towards an old temple of Mr. H's. Rumor has it that there is a large bowl at the top into which the hearts of men are placed after he cuts them out," Allen said slowly, his expression largely chagrined. He sighed.

"These gods never seem to be very nice," Allen stated as he turned the spit again, and a bit of goat leg crackled happily. For all its juicy goodness, Lavi's stomach roiled at the smell of cooking flesh, trying his best not to get tangled in a memory of walking about on battlefields set afire. He put his chin in his hands as he stared into the flames, imagining almost that he could see little figures of people within their dance.

"They rarely are. The ones that are nice tend to lose followers to the gods who aren't quite as benevolent. And even the benevolent ones find a few less-than-merciful among their flock of farm animals," Lavi muttered as he leaned back, the fire popping with the drip of fat. His immediate thought was Kanda, and that lightened his mood. As far as farm animals went, Kanda was an -

"So this basin is the one the old man thinks is in the riddle. Makes sense. Huitzlipochtli was depicted as a hummingbird several times," Lavi considered, cutting off his prior thought as he picked apart Bookman's assumption a little more. "Hummingbirds were thought to be the souls of dead warriors, and he was the granddaddy of all hummingbirds."

Allen gave him a funny look, finally taking down the goat leg off its spit. He offered some to Lavi, but the redhead waved it away with a green expression.

"More for me then... Why a hummingbird? They're so beautiful. I wouldn't have drawn the comparison quite so quickly," Allen said before devouring his leg of goat. If Lavi hadn't already been put off by the smell, Allen's table manners would have done his appetite in. The boy was an animal in a gentleman's suit the minute he sat at the dinner table.

"Have you seen hummingbirds fighting over a flower? They're vicious. I've had those stupid things dive-bomb me more than once. For something so small, they're awfully annoying," Lavi grumbled, kicking a stone as he thought about it. Those pesky overgrown flies had more than once almost buried themselves in his hair in their attempt to drive him away from a large hibiscus they were snacking on. He was tempted to tell Allen that was how he got his eye-patch, but he decided against it for purposes of secrecy and weight.

He looked past the massacre that was Allen's dinner, and he locked eyes with a certain blue-eyed Exorcist. She stared at him with an unreadable look, and he quickly averted his gaze. He knew that eventually he would have to speak with her. There were questions on her face, and more besides. The tension between them had only grown, and this would not help matters in the least. He wasn't sure if he was ready to accept her back into the fold just yet.

Dinner continued with little fanfare. Darrin, Allen, and Ricardo were once again playing cards to while away the time while Bookman sat by himself in his tent, poring over books and manuscripts and codeces in an effort to gain more information about the beast they were battling. As Lavi sat away from the card-playing trio, he stared at the canister on Darrin's back, and he felt a strange sort of dread, seeing four of the five riddles answered. He knew that the completion of the canister would mark the beginning of the end of this journey, and he wondered how he had come to be so attached to this group of people, out here in the South American hinterland.

It glimmered in the fire light as Darrin clapped with glee, having bested even Allen at a hand of poker. The white, bone dials seemed like the tombstone teeth of an eerie grin, and Lavi found he could not stare at it for much longer. He hugged his arms and walked away. As he departed from the merriment, Allen looked over his shoulder at his friend walking into the dark, and he frowned. He stood from his chair halfway, but he was surprised to find a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back into it.

"I'll talk to him," Darrin said, laying down his cards. Ricardo and Allen looked at each other, and some sort of silent agreement was made. Darrin walked off into the gloom and away from his winning hand. As chance would have it, Link walked by, and seeing the empty seat, he gestured to it. Allen and Ricardo motioned for him to take it, and he sat primly. Even in the sweltering lower Mexican climate, the man was still wearing a suit and had somehow managed to make his hair presentable. He picked up the cards, stared at them for a moment, and merely said, "Ah. He cheated."

"I knew it!"

"That explains it. Mi Dios..."

"A penny fer yer thoughts?"

Lavi looked down from his perch on top of a truck's cab, and he smiled thinly at the little old man below. It was hard to believe he'd met him hardly six months ago and had thought him no more than an American drunkard. The man had proved himself tough and resourceful, and though his habits were disgusting, his kind heart more than made up for it. Lavi felt a slight stab of guilt thinking of how he had lied to the man about Esperanza; the old man still hadn't spoken more than a few words to the woman, a fact that had, at first, given Lavi a small measure of satisfaction. Now, he wondered if Esperanza had truly been sincere in her excuses, and he had burned, not only his bridges with her, but Darrin's as well.

He'd have to tell him the truth. Had he not yet learned that lies led to lies, and heartbreak to heartbreak?

"I don't know. My thoughts are pretty valuable. You might need more than a penny," Lavi teased, but he slid to the side to allow the man a place to sit. Darrin clambered aboard with several grunts, but he managed to sit atop of the truck cab. Moonlight painted the landscape a harsh white and blue, turning trees into ink blots and grass into seas of waving cerulean. The two sat together in silence, looking over the landscape.

Darrin itched at his seemingly permanent stubble, and Lavi did his best to quell his irritation at the noise. Darrin sniffed and finally said, "Y' alright? You been out of it fer a few days."

Lavi looked down at his hands, which lay folded in his laps. He furrowed his brow and tried to think of words he could possibly use to conjure the mess of feelings tangled within.

"I'm not supposed to like you. Any of you."

Lavi was surprised that Darrin did not lean away in disbelief or astonishment. No, the old Westerner sat as still as a stone before nodding his head.

"Yeah, I know."

The teenager rubbed his face with both hands, rubbing his eyes and forehead as he took a deep breath.

"We're almost done with this trip, and that means leaving all of you. I've made... made a lot of friends on this trip. You and Ricardo, mostly, and even some of the other guys who drive the trucks. Poor Pedro's been through the wringer," Lavi said with a sardonic smile. Pedro, the unlucky man who'd been kidnapped by the amphithere some time back, had encountered even more misfortune since then. He'd somehow had his foot run over by one of the tricks, and he sat on a cactus after tripping over a suitcase. Lavi got to know more about the man than he'd have liked after spending three hours helping Bookman pick spines out of his backside. The man now walked like his own shadow would eat him.

"And what's the matter with that? All journeys gotta end, pard'ner," Darrin said sagely.

"Yeah, I know that."

"But it's more'n that. You got more on yer mind. It's laden heavier'n a pack mule."

Lavi looked to the sky, searching the stars for answers.

"I don't want to miss any of you. I'm not supposed to miss any of you. Missing you is..." Lavi searched for a word, found his vocabulary lacking, and gave up. "...is weakness."

It was silent for a while longer, but this silence was no longer the companion-ate quiet of two people enjoying the night air. This was the pregnant stillness of a storm waiting to break.

"When this journey ends, I have to let go of all of you. And when the time comes, I... I have to let you die, when your journeys end. I've broken so many rules already. I saved Allen's life, something I would never have done two years ago, and now I, I, I have blood on my hands for it. I wasn't supposed to interfere, but I did. Sometimes, it scares me how much you all change me. I'd risk my life for any of you, and that's wrong. It's breaking up my head, trying to keep it all bottled up. I was lost for days in a dreamworld because of all of you, but I wonder if that's because of me or because of what you've all done to me. I wonder if this was preordained or..."

Lavi took a deep breath before starting in again. Darrin nodded and waited for him to continue.

"When I... I lost it, back at the tavern, when I went missing... I saw lots and lots of versions of me, all from different parts of my life, and they said that I had to give them back my heart, that if I didn't give it up, Bookman was going to die. And I tried to tear my own heart out of my chest to pay them. Sometimes, I still look over my shoulder and wonder if they're there, waiting for me to pay up, or if they're waiting to tell me that I have to give something else to make up for all the damage I've done already. I'm not supposed to like you. I'm not even supposed to really know you. All of you are just ink on paper. When you die, I write down your name, and when you fight, I write what you do, but I'm not supposed to become a part of the war."

It all tumbled out, everything he'd been holding in for the past month or so. He told Darrin almost everything, about how frustrated he felt with himself, about how badly he wanted to stay in this world where friends mattered and he mattered, about how he was scared of losing his mind. He talked about the people he'd killed, the people he'd watched get killed, and the people who killed others and themselves. He'd seen suicides, murder, terrible things no one should ever have to watch, and he'd survived it by not caring. And now that he did...

"I don't know. Now, it keeps me up at night. I don't sleep well anymore. All I think about is the suffering and the hurt, and sometimes I wonder if the love I get is worth that kind of horror," Lavi said, surprised to find he was hoarse. The moon had traveled so far along in the sky that the truck now cast a long shadow. The campfires had all gone out, burned to a low ember. "And I... don't know if I can let go even if I wanted to. She let go of me, and look what that did."

He chuckled darkly, nodding back towards the camp and putting a hand to his mangled heart. He didn't know if he had it in him to forgive anymore. And honestly, now that he had a taste of his own medicine, he didn't know if he could do that to someone else. Darrin put a hand on his arm, and Lavi patted it with his own. It felt good to have someone sit beside him and listen. While Bookman did his best, Lavi knew he would never have suffered through the tirade Lavi had put before Darrin. The old man would have told him the bottled clan answers he always did: "You must distance yourself. Act like a Bookman. This is your inheritance."

A weight felt lifted from his shoulders, getting it all off his chest.

"Pard'ner... I dunno if I ken help you-"

"You've already helped."

Darrin looked up, and Lavi smiled at the old guide. The geezer's mouth split into a smile, revealing the numbs of his remaining teeth. He nodded along and said, "Well... I reckon this is something between yer Paw and you. Ain't nothin' worse than spendin' yer life doin' something ye cain't stand, and that ain't a life I coulda led. But... that's yer choice. 'N I think Allen 'n Ricardo 'n Pedro 'n them, they all gonna understand that, you know? They know what yer job is, 'n a man's duty to family and work is important. I worry 'bout yer noggin, yeah, but yer soul... you kin tame the mind, but the soul ain't easy to fix once it's broken up. A man's got life long as he fights, but once he's outta fight..."

He readjusted his hat on his head and looked at Lavi with seriousness. The moonlight dug grooves into his face, and he said with gravitas, "Don't you let go a' that fight, boy. Long as you got fight, you get through anythin', even if'n it all goes down in a flamin' ball o' fire. Y' can say t' God that you tried."

With that, he looked back out over the darkening land, and he pulled out his hip flask, drinking deep.

"Thanks. I'll take it to heart," Lavi said quietly. Suddenly, he was reminded of an earlier thought, and he hung his head.

"Actually... I have something to tell you... Remember all those things I told you Esperanza said about you...?"

and the blood flowed free from the boy's mouth like the flood of a thousand wars but he was swimming past it, he didn't have to drink it in, he could stomach all the pain, the bones and hair and flesh swimming in it with him, but the smell of gunsmoke was so strong, and there were mortars crashing around him, but there was the house to his right. He just had to get out of all this blood, make it home, make it to Bookman because he'd know what to do, and maybe, just maybe, maybe he wouldn't have to pay with his heart

He woke with a start, though he didn't immediately sit up. To his left, Bookman slept comfortably in his cot. It was so early in the morning that light had only just begun to filter through the canvas of their tent. Everything was a soft blue, the pastel of early morning, and the young man got up. He put on his pants and shoes, quickly put on his signature headband, and shoved a shirt over his head. His dream stuck to his mind's eye like so much sleep, but with time, he was forgetting it.

And now the moment of truth: he took up the bottle of pills from the nightstand and stared at it with equal parts loathing and hope. Finally, he spilled one out on his hand and swallowed it dry, wincing at the bitter taste. Carefully quiet, he left the tent to see how morning fared. No one was awake, not even Link, who was typically baking something by now. It seemed everyone was taking a break before the great push into the forests towards Huitzlipochtli's temple. From what Lavi remembered, it was not far, but its isolation made up for its distance in terms of difficulty. It would be difficult to find, as it was more than just old - it was dilapidated and surrounded by what little forest was in this portion of Mexico.

Lavi walked towards the nearest ring of coals and began to light the fire, but he found the matches were wet with dew. He cursed vehemently and threw them down on a log.

"Querias tu ayudarmete?" a voice said from behind him, and he spun around. Esperanza stood in the early morning fog like an apparition, face stoic but holding a hint of sadness and perhaps apprehension. Lavi stood quietly there with a wet match in hand, and finally he held it out in front of him for her to take. She plucked it from his fingers and knelt next to the fire, throwing the unlit match into the pile of dead embers. From a pouch, she drew out flint and a knife, and Lavi watched from his seat on a log as she struck them together.

"Porqué estás despierto tan temprano?" he asked.

"No puedo dormir," she admitted with a shrug as she finally managed to light a small pile of kindling she'd gathered together in the middle of the pit on top of the old embers. She began to blow on the small, burgeoning flame, and Lavi bent down to help. Together, the two revived the dead fire between them until it was a small, but warm, blaze, and when it was obvious it wouldn't go out, they sat together and stared at it awhile.

"I couldn't sleep either," Lavi admitted, leaning his head towards her as he spoke. He tapped a stick against his leg as if impatient for something to happen, and had he looked up, he would have seen the merest ghost of a smile on Esperanza's face.

"We were always light sleepers," she stated nonchalantly.

The fire continued to crackle before them, and neither moved. The morning stillness enveloped them with an almost motherly touch, and finally, Lavi broke the silence.

"Ranza, I don't know if I'm ready to forgive you yet," he admitted.

Esperanza remained quiet, but he saw a slight droop in her shoulders. She licked her lips pensively and rubbed her arms as they sat before the fire. He put his hands together and looked at the ground, his feet tapping an uneven rhythm as he tried to decide what his next words would be. For so long he'd been bitter about her rejection. Something about it had struck him like a thorn in the bottom of his foot. That she was here, suddenly ready to restart this broken friendship - if he could even call it that - seemed like a slap on the face.

Yet, he knew he was angry. And he knew the look he'd seen on her face when he'd first woken up in the truck after his time in a trance. That was not something she could have hidden. She had been worried about him, and he couldn't pretend that he hadn't noticed.

"I understand this," Esperanza said quietly. She looked at him with steely blue eyes, unreadable. He stared back.

"I'm glad that you do," Lavi said, leaning back to sit up straight. He winced as he popped his back, shifting side to side. The silence stretched on, quiet as morning fog.

"But... could you... forgive? In the future?" Esperanza asked tentatively.

Lavi chewed it over, unwilling to look at her. He searched within, wondering how he felt about all of this. She'd be one more knife to slice his heart open if he was wrong. Yet, she'd slice him even if he was right. Yet, he did know one thing - the months he'd spent with her had been wonderful, with all their peaks and valleys. There had been something there, and her presence here validated that fact. The trust was broken, but he found that he was perhaps willing to rebuild it.

"I think for you I could make an exception."

A/N:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for waiting so long! I won't bore you with all the details of my life - I'm just glad that this came out of my head and finally got put into the story! Many thanks to those who are enjoying this and still reading it, and I hope that this chapter was worth the wait. The story is humming along fine, and maybe, just maybe, it'll reach its end here soon.

Anyways, God bless you all and have a beautiful day!