AN: Apologies for this long note and having not updated in eons. In short, I'm not pleased with (the writing *coughs* of) this story and didn't really want to finish it – I also wanted to work on some personal novels (not to mention I kind of lost track of (completely forgot) the plot too). But I realized it was sort of crappy to never finish it. So for anyone who is still reading this, thanks! I have a few more chapters written, which will be posted shortly. Apologies for grammar mistakes as I have no beta. Also, wash your hands and/or stay home, peeps.

Thirty-Four

The woman, Yooa, shot up with such speed, the various trinkets on her desk rattled. A picture, a pen, a wooden block calendar shaped like a dog. She darted out of the room like a banshee, the guards hot on her tail.

"Interesting," Kuroro said

Kurapika sighed. "Unhelpful is the word I was thinking of."

Kuroro stood up and walked out, intent on wrangling some other information out of her. They made it as far as the hallway before a rush of lab coats brushed past them, panic written across their faces. The air smelled faintly of smoke and something else.

Kuroro grabbed one, lone runner by the arm. The lab coat pulled back, surprise coloring her dark face. "Let go of me!"

"What's going on?" Kuroro asked, keeping his grip tight.

The lab coat frowned. "Something started a fire down here; we've got to leave. Now."

"Where do you keep the memory serum?" he asked.

The lab coat jerked away, surprisingly hard. Perhaps reading his mind, Kurapika held up his dowsing chain. "Where's the memory drug?" the blonde asked.

"Not here," The lab coat said, her lips pressing together into a thin line. "Let go of me."

Kurapika sighed. "Where is your boss's drug?"

She opened her mouth, then shut it, likely weighing the pros and cons of keeping her job. But the air was thickening with that chemical smell and a gray mist was fogging his vision, we don't have much time…

"This isn't the true lab, but I don't know where the real one is," she replied, scowling. "That's all I can tell you. The drug's probably there."

The chain didn't budge, she's not lying, so Kuroro let her go and she scampered away.

"She was telling the truth," Kurapika said, though he looked wholly suspect of that fact.

"Seems like it," Kuroro said, watching the last few lab coats skitter past them. His

dark eyes swept down the white hallway slowly filling with a mist of smoke. "If I came here, it was to steal that. But it wasn't actually here, so I went somewhere else. Still, I can't imagine how I'd be so careless as to accidently take it, but…" He was rambling, talking out loud to himself. But it was the one thing that didn't make sense to him above everything else: that someone he'd accidentally forgotten his own memories by being too careless.

Kurapika nodded. "But what?"

"But it would depend on how potent it is," Kuroro said. "If all I needed was to inhale some fumes and my memory would be gone…no, I still can't imagine that. I would've done my research before attempting to steal it and accounted for that before trying to take it."

Kurapika snorted, though the corners of his lips were pulling down into a grimace.

"We should look around," Kuroro said. Something sterile permeated the air as they went down the hallway, what is this place? Though as they ducked into a lab, one thing became very clear: the drug isn't here. If it were, Yooa wouldn't have abandoned the lab so quickly.

"So do you recall anything walking these halls?" Kurapika asked. "Because I really don't want to die today."

"I suppose dying tomorrow would be alright?" The quip came out by accident. And the blonde looked so nonplussed as he stared up at him, Kuroro nearly apologized. While he did possess a sense of humor unrelated to his memory loss, it was reserved for those he wasn't mortal enemies with.

"Uh…" Kurapika's brows came together. "I'd rather not die at all. Particularly of smoke inhalation."

Kuroro frowned as they rounded a corridor, going deeper into the lab. They were moving farther from the source of the smoke, is the fire merely a coincidence or some sort of sign? Past experience said it was meant for them, but it seems too contrived. And I have been here before… The fire alarm, the smell in the air. It was like the perfume, not in scent but in the feeling it gave him; he was on the brink of recalling something vital to his identity.

"Why did we come here again?" he asked.

The blonde pulled the collar of his shirt over his mouth, somewhat muffling his next words. "I don't know," Kurapika replied, his obscured scowl reaching his eyes. "Like most things, we came here on a vague chance it might lead to these chains breaking."

Kuroro gave him a look, but Kurapika did have a point. Most of their good fortune in returning his memories had been the result of just that. Luck.

"Can we continue this conversation above ground?" Kurapika said.

"Sure." Kuroro wrapped an arm around the blonde's shoulders, an oddly intimate and wholly unnecessary gesture though he only realized the latter once they were on the streets of Yorkshin again and the blonde was shirking away from him. There was a good bit of tension simmering between them. And Kuroro half wished his memories had waited to reappear until the chains had actually fallen of.

"So where do you think the serum is?" Kurapika asked. "Any idea at all? Anything ring a bell down there?"

"Do you remember the first riddle that got us stuck together."

A thoughtful expression crossed the blonde's face. "Sort of. What goes up but never comes down."

He nodded. "I think I know what the answer is...and I think I know where the lab is, or at least was. But let's walk. I need to think."

Yorkshin hadn't changed much. The streets were near spotless, not a speck of litter anywhere. Men and women dressed to the nines were ambling down the street, going to or coming from work presumably. There was even rain on the horizon, reminding him of his previous encounter with Kurapika and his friends. Why am I thinking about that now? Or is it that I don't have anything else to think about? It was part of his past, a past he was trying to recall so that he could get on with life the way he wanted to. And the pieces were all there, but somehow the picture wasn't clear. That serum wasn't obtained here, but somewhere else. Now, he wondered if the lab had been in Jasper's strange house, but now that he's dead it's likely been moved. Or at least the product has been.

But when he glanced down to share his admittedly incoherent thoughts with the blonde, Kurapika's face was steadily growing red. It struck him again, the same feeling he'd felt in Meteor City, how uneasy he made Kurapika and how intensely the blonde was trying to hide that fact. Though, is it that I do make him uncomfortable or that I don't?

"Do you think the lab is under the warehouse you woke up in?" Kurapika asked, his gaze locked in a staring match with the ground.

"What makes you think that?"

"The warehouse is one of the only things you remembered when we…first met," he replied. "All of this started with me crossing paths with you, seemingly by chance. For some reason, I help you. And then we run across the riddler, who chains us together until your memory is restored, which it has been, but we're still not apart. So what if that was some kind of riddle too?"

"A riddle?" He quirked an eyebrow.

"Restore can mean to return something to it's former or original place. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that the warehouse is where you woke up when you lost your memories."

Although he wasn't sure why, somehow it came as a surprise Kurapika figured all that on his own. This is the chain-user, after all.

"Anyway, should go back to the warehouse," he said, finally lifting his eyes to meet his gaze. "Because that was a riddle too."