Warnings: Um... angsty!Akimiya probably deserves a warning, heh. Thanks for everyone’s great support on this, and for some of the great ideas and suggestions I got! I couldn’t do it without you guys. ^_^

Part One

There’s a phrase, which I think is American in origin, given the pessimists that they are: “Another day, another sixty eight cents.” It always struck me as a pretty stupid phrase, since I don’t think there’s a single job in America where they only earn sixty eight cents a day. Someone, at some point, explained to me that it’s to convey the meaninglessness and monotony of life.

Great country, America.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here (there really was one, honestly) is that life (afterlife) can seem pretty monotonous a lot of the time. Especially when there are no jobs. I hate busy work. I really do. Of course, ‘may your life be interesting’ is a very potent curse. I think I’ll stick with boredom.

But damn! Akimiya moping? It just isn’t right! It’s seriously setting my world off kilter. It goes against all laws of God and man!

“Oi, kid, got a minute?” Watari calls, sticking his head into the small office I share with Akimiya. I sit around there a lot when there are no jobs to do, so I nearly spring out of my seat when Watari calls. Akimiya’s been wandering in and out all day, looking like the proverbial storm cloud with no silver lining.

I follow Watari back to his office, walk inside, and fall over.

Now, don’t laugh. There’s a very good reason for this.

I knew Watari had been working on something big and important; Tsuzuki kept dropping hints about it. That purple-eyed idiot seems to think that the only way he can get back at me for ‘having fun without him’, as he puts it, is to hint at what Watari’s doing. Actually, I’m quite grateful for this. It meant that when Watari got overly enthusiastic and put his newest version of his sex-changing potion in the office coffee, I knew better than to drink any of it.

The potion wasn’t a success, but on the whole, it was a very interesting day.

Anyway, as I was saying, Watari had been working on something big, and I knew it was something that involved me from what Tsuzuki had been saying. Still, this wasn’t what I had expected. Akimiya is standing inside when I get there, and he gives me his usual sunny smile. About then is when I fall over, because I can feel him.

“Did it work? Did it?” Watari asks anxiously.

“Not sure,” I say, accepting Tsuzuki’s hand up with a smile. “You’ll have to tell me what it was.”

“It’s supposed to reverse the dampening field effect,” Watari replies, giving me a you-already-knew-that look.

“Then it works,” I manage. I’m staring at Akimiya. I know I am. It’s just so utterly bizarre to actually be able to feel his presence for once. I had grown accustomed to the fact that I never would. I can still feel Tsuzuki and Watari, too, even though normally I wouldn’t be able to anymore.

“That’s great!” Watari cheers. “This’ll make it a lot easier for you to work together on missions!”

I look curiously at Akimiya. “And it’s okay with you?” I ask.

Akimiya shrugs. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

I’ve got to do something about this. He’s never had to worry about this in his life before, and he has absolutely no shields. His emotions are wearing away at mine with the force of a battering ram.

It’s strange to think that Akimiya hurts, just like the rest of us do.

“Come on, then,” I say, and motion for him to follow me. “I need to talk to you for a bit. Thanks, Watari. See you at lunch, Tsuzuki.”

They both wave. I take Akimiya outside, into one of the quieter areas. “Okay, Akimiya -- I’ve got to teach you how to shield before you drive me insane.”

Akimiya looks -- and feels -- rather uncertain. In fact, he feels a little panicked. “Do you mean to say that you can feel everything I’m feeling right now?”

“Not precisely,” I reply. “I’m blocking you out as best I can, but damn it’s hard. You’re projecting like . . . I don’t know what. I have no good empathy metaphors. Shielding is relatively easy, though.” Until someone tries to break down your shields. But he probably won’t need to know that.

“Okay,” Akimiya says, still looking uncertain. In fact, his uncertainty and fear are screaming at me, despite my best efforts to block them out.

“Picture a wall around you,” I instruct. “Something really solid like brick or stone. Make it very thick, and don’t give it any doors.”

I can tell he’s doing it, because the waves of emotion subside immediately.

“That’s good,” I encourage. “Now, believe that there’s no way that anything can get through it. Really believe that.”

And it stops, as suddenly as it had begun.

I practically wilt with relief. “That’s better,” I say.

He looks at me. “It worked?”

“Like a charm,” I reply. “You’ll still leak on occasion, and I can still read you if I want to, but nothing like all your inner thoughts screaming at me.”

“What’s it like?” he asks curiously. “Being an empath, around the unshielded.”

“It’s awful,” I say flatly. “It’s not as bad now, since I know how to shield myself. But when I was a kid . . . half the time I couldn’t tell what I was feeling and what other people were feeling. It’s why . . .” I hesitate for a moment, but I’ve always trusted Akimiya before, and this should be no exception. “It’s why I grew up hating myself so much. Everyone around me hated me . . . and it just seeped into me and became part of me.”

“That’s awful,” Akimiya says. His voice is soft.

“Well, it wasn’t a picnic,” I say dryly. “But it’s over now. Don’t know why I brought it up.”

“Because I asked,” Akimiya said with a shrug. “Oh, hey -- Watari said he thought we had another assignment coming up. We should probably go check.”

I nod. For once I’m almost eager for an assignment. I nearly freaked out when I first had to work with Akimiya, without my empathy. It’ll be nice to be able to use it again.

~~~~

“I feel like an idiot.” My words fall softly into the near silence of the room. And I do feel like an idiot. I’ve been feeling like one all day, and I’d prefer to get it out of my system, now, before I leave. The night before a mission is always a little tense between Tsuzuki and I, and I think it always will be, no matter how much time passes.

“Why?” Tsuzuki asks.

“Because of Akimiya.” I’m damn near talking right into Tsuzuki’s shirt, lying on the couch with my face resting against his chest. It’s one of my favorite cuddle positions. Despite what some people may think of me, I’m very big on cuddling. After sixteen years of being almost totally deprived of any affectionate touch whatsoever, it’s nicer than words can say to just spend time wrapped in someone’s arms. I know Tsuzuki likes it too; when we do this, his contentment seeps through him and into me.

There are few things nicer than being totally content, and knowing the person you’re with is also totally content.

Tsuzuki’s arms tighten around me slightly in a reassuring gesture, then loosen again. “What about him?”

“He’s just . . . he hurts as much as any of us. And I never realized it. Never even thought about it.” I shake my head slightly. “I don’t know why it never occurred to me. He’s a Shinigami. We all have our reasons for doing this. I knew his reason for doing it, but I never thought it bothered him this much.”

Tsuzuki shifts a little. “He’s so cheerful all the time . . .” he agrees.

“But so were you, and I knew from the moment I met you that there was more to that than met the eye,” I reply.

“You had your empathy for me,” he reminds me.

“Yeah, and that’s part of what bothers me,” I say with a shrug. “I depend on it too much to read people, to understand them. I shouldn’t have to. But I never . . . I never learned anything like reading facial expressions or body language, because I never needed to until now.”

Tsuzuki sighs softly. “Well, you have your empathy back now.”

“I know,” I say. “But it’s still bothering me. And . . . I wish there was something I could do to help him. This isn’t going to go away, or stop hurting. Time will make it hurt less, but . . .”

Tsuzuki nods and murmurs agreement. He knows, better than I do myself, what I’m talking about. I can’t even imagine what all those years must have been like for him, hating himself, doing a job he hated, with no one to comfort him. Sometimes -- a lot of the time -- I’m surprised he lasted long enough for me to meet him. I know he’s getting better now, I can feel it from him. But all those years spent in self-loathing won’t be reversed easily.

That’s what worries me about Akimiya. He won’t get better easily, but I don’t know how to help him. And . . . he’s just so damned sensible and good-hearted . . . I can’t stand the idea that he could become me or Tsuzuki. He deserves better than that.

“What do you think I should do?” I finally ask. “He’s not going to let it go. Just from what I could sense in those few minutes . . . he’s damn near obsessed. His need to be with her . . . it’s tearing him apart, from the inside out.”

Tsuzuki shakes his head a little, running his fingers through my hair. “I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s anything you can do.”

“There’s something else,” I say slowly. “And this may be nothing, but . . . when he found out that the potion had worked, and he had no shields . . . he practically panicked when he found out that I could feel everything he was feeling.”

Tsuzuki’s hands pause in their reassuring carress. “You think he’s hiding something?”

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “I mean, he could have just been worried that I’d notice how depressed he is and get on his ass about it . . . but it seems like it’s more than that.”

“So ask him about it,” Tsuzuki suggests. “You two will be off on your own for a few days at least.”

“I will,” I say. “But I think I’d better let it wait until after the mission is over. I don’t want him any more distracted than he already is for that. I just hope he doesn’t get angry with me for meddling.”

Tsuzuki laughs a little. “He hardly can. He’d be the biggest hypocrite on earth after what he did to the two of us.” His voice softens a little. “Not that I’m complaining . . .”

“Me neither.” I smile into his shirt and attempt to nestle closer, though I think in order to do so, I might have to climb into his clothes. “Ne,” I say, stifling a huge yawn, “we should probably get to bed, since I have to leave early tomorrow.”

“Mm,” Tsuzuki agrees, looking for all the world like he’s going to fall asleep right where we’re lying. As much as I’m comfy like this, I think I’d wake up with a horrid crick in my neck if I actually slept here. So I prod him into standing position and up to the bedroom we share. I moved in shortly after the whole mess with Muraki and the dreams; it seemed silly to own two apartments when we never spent the nights apart anymore.

I can still remember when we couldn’t sleep in the same bed for fear of the nightmares we both had. For the first few weeks we lived together, it happened pretty regularly that I would get sucked into his nightmares, or worse -- he got sucked into mine. I can keep my head in a crisis pretty well, but Tsuzuki’s hopeless at it -- we were both hysterical for a while after that little mess.

However, I helped him strengthen his empathic shields some, and we both got some much needed and much appreciated lessons on dream control from Akimiya. We can’t do it to the extent that he can, of course, being a yumemi, but he was able to teach us how to recognize when we were dreaming and wake ourselves up. That may be the biggest favor anyone’s done for me in years.

Once he taught us, we both agreed that we could feel it now; dreams are so different from life that it’s hard to believe I ever got stuck with them in the first place. I remember almost all my dreams now, and usually let them run their course, unless they turn bad. Tsuzuki, I think, may always wake himself up.

We curl up together under the blankets. “You be careful tomorrow, okay?” Tsuzuki asks sleepily.

“I will be,” I promise, closing my eyes. Now that I have someone to come home to, I always am.

~~~~

If there’s one thing I really dislike about being a Shinigami (other than risking my immortal life all the time) it’s the research. It really would be far too easy to just put us on Chijou with explicit instructions. No, we have to figure everything out ourselves, like it’s all one big mystery put there for our annoyance.

Still, Akimiya is a very logical man and I’ve gotten quite a bit of practice, so we make a lot of progress on the first day alone. We decide to call it quits early and get dinner. Hopping back and forth from Chijou is tiring, though you’d never know by the way Tsuzuki takes lunch breaks, so most of the time we just stay here for the night.

Akimiya looks very tired, so we opt to just stay in the hotel rather than go out again. Maybe I should bring it up now; I know from experience that people are more likely to talk if they’re tired.

“Akimiya?” I’m feeling very hesitant. I remind myself firmly that he really can’t get mad at me for trying to help, though I know damn well that’s a lie.

He turns to me with his usual sunny smile, but it looks forced. Am I overreacting? A brief empathic check reveals that I’m not. He’s still miserable, damn him.

“Hai?” he asks.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course I am,” Akimiya says, with that ‘I’m-always-fine’ look of his. It’s so odd . . . before I could use my empathy near him, I always just assumed that he was fine when he gave me that look. Now I know better. God, I feel stupid.

“You don’t seem it,” I say, and I know I sound even more uncertain. Some self-confidence would be really nice right about now. They should market that and sell it in capsule form.

Akimiya blinks at me. “Are my shields not working?” he asks, again sounding a little bit panicked.

“No, that’s not it,” I say patiently. “You just seemed really upset earlier, and . . . I’m worried about you.”

He looks away. “It isn’t anything you can fix, so I wouldn’t suggest you waste your time on it.”

Okay. This is worse than I thought. Akimiya is not allowed to blow me off like that.

“You know what, Akimiya? You sound like me.”

Akimiya gives me a blank look. “What?”

“When I was angsting over Tsuzuki. Didn’t I tell you at least once that you couldn’t fix it and you should stop wasting your time?”

He shrugs. “I don’t remember. Probably.”

“And what did you tell me?” I ask. When Akimiya doesn’t reply, I plow bravely onward. “You told me that even if the problems couldn’t be fixed, talking about them might help.” I’m actually not sure that Akimiya ever said any such thing, but it sounds like something he might have said, and in any case, it might get him to talk to me.

“I don’t think I ever said that,” Akimiya replies absently.

That’s it. I give up on being diplomatic. “God damn it, Akimiya, just talk to me.”

Akimiya’s lips twitch in a thin, but genuine, smile. “I miss her,” he finally says.

Well, thank you for that stunning revelation. God. No wonder he was always so irritated with me, if I sounded like this. I’m amazed he put up with me as well as he did. “Tell me about her,” I request, settling on one of the beds in the room.

Akimiya sighs, rubbing his thin hands over his face. “She was kind,” he finally said. “That’s what I loved the most about her. And she was creative and funy . . . she could sing like an angel. She was thinking about going professional. I was behind her one hundred percent, even though her parents wanted her to do something more . . . academic, I guess. We met in a choir we were both in . . .”

His voice trails off. I’m rather stuck on this last part. “You can sing?”

He gives me an embarrassed look. “Aa . . . I was nowhere near as good as she was, though . . .”

“Well, come on, let me hear it!”

“No!” He looks even more embarrassed. It’s kind of funny. At least the agony isn’t rolling off him in waves any more.

“I’ll pester you later,” I say with a smile. “So when did you fall in love?”

“Well, after admiring her for a few months, I finally got the courage to ask her over for tea,” he says, blushing slightly. “We had so much in common . . . I asked her to marry me about a year later.” His voice falters. “I loved her very much.”

“I know,” I say quietly.

“I . . . I knew that Saiki was jealous, but I had no idea he would ever . . .” His voice breaks again. He’s started to tremble. I don’t know what to do, so I walk over and sit beside him, pulling him into a hug, holding him the way Tsuzuki holds me when I’m upset. “H-He had been friends with Rika-chan since childhood, and adored her, and I knew he didn’t like me because she favored me . . . though he had known her so much longer. No one realized . . . how bad his jealousy had gotten . . .”

Empathy increases with touch. His pain is leaking through his skin and becoming my own. I can feel his hatred and his misery and --

oh God --

“He didn’t -- ”

Akimiya nods slightly. “After he . . . he and I . . . after I was . . . out of the way . . . he went to her. Tried to force himself onto her. That was how they knew . . . when they found me . . .”

He’s shaking so much that I can barely hold onto him, but maybe that’s because I’m shaking too.

“Her sister . . . found them . . . before he’d gotten a chance to . . . do very much, I think . . .” Akimiya murmurs. “I’m not quite clear on exactly what happened; it wasn’t as if I could ask. But she managed to scare him away, and they found him that night . . .”

God, how long has he been holding all this inside him?

“You should’ve told one of us,” I say, trying not to sound reproving, but comforting. I have to reinforce my shields before I’m able to speak at all.

“Didn’t want to,” Akimiya says softly. His eyes are red from holding back his tears. “I was weak . . . I couldn’t protect her . . .”

I want to know how he was killed, but I don’t dare ask; so I lower my shields a fraction and all the images come flooding in anyway. My eyes snap open again.

“You weren’t weak!” I have to pause to regain my breath. “Akimiya, that wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have stopped him.” Guns are rather tricky things to avoid. It’s why I always carry one.

“Should have realized what he was going to do,” Akimiya says faintly. There’s a slight pause, then he blurts out, “I lied, Hisoka. They didn’t put him in jail. He killed himself that night.”

I can only stare.

“He shot himself. With the same gun he used on me. Left a note saying how sorry he was about everything. And ever since then Rika-chan has just been up in her room, not eating, mourning . . . he was such a good friend to her . . . and she lost the both of us in one night.”

He draws in a shaky breath.

“And yet . . . even so . . . I can’t stop hating him . . .”

He’s such a good liar. All these months, hiding all this, making off-handed comments about not really knowing his murderer’s motivation. But to know this . . .

“You’ve been watching her.”

He nods, tears streaming down his cheeks now. “I watch her whenever I can. I can’t stop. I tried but I can’t. I watch her dreams. I know it’s wrong to use my powers like that, but I couldn’t stop. She’s in so much pain, and I can’t help. Hisoka, I just want to help her.”

I hug him tightly. “It’s not . . . wrong to do that, but you’re only hurting yourself more. Akimiya, you have to let go.”

“I can’t. I’ve tried and I can’t.”

There isn’t much I can say to that, but there is one thing that may help. “When my parents first locked me in the cellar, I didn’t see them for almost two weeks,” I say quietly. “And when they finally came back down, do you know what the first thing I did was?”

He looks at my blankly for a second, then shakes his head.

“I tried to use my powers on them,” I say. “I’m not as good at projecting as I am at receiving, but I can do it. I tried to force them to love me.”

He stares at me.

“It was wrong of me to use my empathy like that. I know that now.”

“What did they . . .?” Akimiya’s voice trails off, as if he’s afraid to know the answer.

“They beat me and left me and didn’t come back for another month,” I reply.

“. . . oh,” he finally says.

“So by trying to help myself, I only made things worse,” I say, hoping my moral comes through in this charming little fairy tale of my life.

“You don’t understand, I can’t stop,” Akimiya says desperately. “Even when I don’t try, I’m drawn into her dreams anyway. I’m too powerful and we were too close. And once I’m there, I just . . . can’t make myself leave.”

I pause at this. I’m not sure what to say to that; I don’t know if there’s any way that we can stop this. I know for a fact that misery and loneliness is like a beacon to anyone with even a tiny amount of empathy, and Dreamgazing can be similar in some instances. He’s drawn to her dreams because she was so close to him, and because she is so miserable. Perhaps if we could help her . . . but given what she’s been through, I’m not sure that’s possible.

“Akimiya, holding this all inside you is not good,” I say firmly.

“Thanks for the news flash,” Akimiya says wearily. He’s still drooping in my arms, his head now resting on my shoulder.

“Look, we’ll find some way to help, all right?” I ask. “Even if we can’t fix it . . . we’ll find a way to make it hurt less.”

“Emotional morphine,” Akimiya mutters into my shoulder.

I can’t help but laugh at that. “Look, get some rest. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

He nods and stands up, going into the bathroom to change his clothes. He comes out and burrows under the blankets wordlessly. I shut out the light to let him sleep, but don’t go to bed for a long time.