This takes place after the first season...maybe somewhere in the manga... After the end of the first season, I thought Kirihara and Hei really needed to have a conversation like this. Note: I haven't seen the second season yet, so hopefully I'm not butchering canon. Otherwise, I guess you could file this under AU.

"Li!" she tried to shout, winded from the chase he had given her.

He stopped momentarily, looking over his shoulder. "I told you before, the man named Li doesn't exist anymore." She expected him to continue in his escape, but she was taken aback when she saw him turn towards her, his mask close to shattering after his most recent self-imposed mission. She could see one of his tired, black eyes staring back at her with a smoldering coldness.

"L- Just wait," she huffed. "I am not...here to arrest you." There was something very funny to her about admitting this. She was in no position to put up a fight. She wasn't even on the BK-201 case anymore. She had just been off-duty, scanning the police radio for any mention of this man, as she occasionally did to break up the monotony of her time off. Some chatter caught her attention and she raced to the scene. Trusting her instincts, she hurried as fast as she could to the roof of the building.

And now here she was, completely out of breath after charging up eight flights of stairs, while he hadn't even seemed to break a sweat. "I just want to know one thing," she managed to get out.

The man said nothing, but waited. He seemed poised to take flight at any moment, so Kirihara knew she had to make the most of this.

"Why...why have you come back? Why are you here again? After so long?" she asked, hoping for something she couldn't quite define.

He stood silently again, playing his cards close to his vest. He seemed to contemplate whether or not she was really asking something else. Something in his eyes softened as he looked at her. "Like I said before, the city has grown on me."

Like he said before... So he did remember the night they spent together just hanging out. She had known the whole time who he was, but for some reason, she just couldn't help it. She had wanted to know the truth about him. She hadn't been a cop and he hadn't been a contractor. They were just two people spending some time together, two humans together in a world about to be rocked forever by change.

He turned to leave, but she couldn't let this chance slip by without asking. "Why did you save me? Save all of us?" she blurted out before he could leave.

He stopped in his tracks. She could see him taking a deep breath. "Kirihara," he said forcefully, "I am not a hero. I'm not even a good person. I killed for years...for money. Just because they were contractors doesn't make me any less of a murderer." He stopped and waited.

Misaki knew this, but there was still something about him that drew her towards him. "But, you still resist. You still try to fight the good fight. If you didn't...you wouldn't have bothered to try to save everyone." She sucked up her resolve. "I know the man named Li, the man you are, is not a lie!"

"Hei," he stated simply.

Kirihara looked confused. "Hey what?" she asked skeptically, surprised by the turn in conversation.

He sighed. "The name is Hei. That is who I am, who I have been for a long time." He turned to look at her once more and took off his chipped mask. She was astounded at what she saw: this man was not the man she had once known. He looked tired and even a little desperate.

"Hei," she tried out the name cautiously, "What...what are you fighting for now?" She was still searching, hoping that he would say the right words and release her from this anticipation that had built up inside her.

Hei laughed a dry laugh. "I could ask you the same." He looked away. "The disolution of Division 4, you're an inspector now. Tracking me isn't your job anymore." She was surprised he knew so much about her, and could have sworn that there was a tinge of nostalgia in his voice.

"I...I fight to protect the innocent! The victims who can't protect themselves!" she asserted.

Hei smiled sadly. "I know that's the truth." He waited a moment. They both knew there wasn't much time, but he felt he owed her this much of an explanation. "This world, this future...I chose it. It's my responsibility to...to...to take care of it."

"Take care of it?" Kirihara asked, confused. But it's not just your future. It's all of ours."

"I made the choice...for humans and contractors to coexist, and now I have to keep each side from hurting the other." His shoulders slumped as if under the weight of an unbearable task.

They both turned as they heard sirens approaching. Kirihara panicked. If they knew she was tracking BK-201 on her own time, she could face retribution later, either from her director or from the Syndicate. Before she could do anything, however, Hei grabbed her by the waist.

"Hold on," he said quietly without giving her a chance to properly do so. Hei threw a wire around the bottom of a water tower on the roof and used it to swing the both of them away from their present location. Before she knew it, she was flying from one roof to another. In a matter of seconds, they could no longer hear any sirens.

Hei obviously didn't want this conversation to end just yet, either. He released her almost immediately and moved out of arm's reach.

Out of breath and slightly disoriented by the sudden change of venues, Kirihara tried to make sense of what Hei had spoken. "But this...this future is all of ours! We all have a responsibility to make it right." She sighed. Finally, she asked the question she really wanted to know the answer to: "We're on the same side, right?"

Hei's expression was unreadable. He thought silently for a while. "You knew who I was, but you still treated me like a normal human being. I won't ever forget that."

After a moment, he turned to leave for good. As he snapped his wire around a metalic structure and zipped upwards toward another rooftop, Kirihara couldn't help herself. "You're not alone in this, Hei!" She didn't know if he heard her, though. He was so fast and blended into the darkness so perfectly that she almost instantly lost sight of him.

Kirihara sighed. Was this what she wanted? She felt a little better, but she wasn't entirely sure anything had been resolved. She felt better and worse: better because she had finally had an opportunity to talk to him, but worse because she knew Hei felt like he had to face this on his own.

After crinkling her eyebrows in deep thought for several moments, she finally looked around and realized she was on a strange roof in the middle of the city, far from where she stealthily parked her car.

"Oh great," she muttered, "how the hell am I going to get home from here?" She pulled out her cell phone and speed-dialed Saito...

A/N: For anyone following my other story TLSG, I will update soon. I just had to get this out.