Okay, so I found the fic that I wrote this as a sequel to: http: .?thread= 812755#t812755 (remove the spaces). It's Light/L, so enjoy, you yaoi craving fangirls.

But as it turns out...this fic is a fanfic of a fanfic D: which I did not know. I have NEVER read "True Elisions" by Ezran, though I do very much want to now. However, just in case, I'll just say this- this fiction was written with only the above fanfiction in mind. Bits and pieces of the original "True Elisions" will probably make its way into my writing, but this story is my own. This universe is my own. Sorry if anyone is confused. God knows I am.

ANYWAYS. Please enjoy :) Next chapter will be the final one, and considerably shorter.

-Hana

In Mu, there was no sun to brighten day, nor was there a moon to illuminate night. The sky never changed- it was constantly a dim, murky grey, endlessly spanning towards a horizon that did not even exist. There was no life, no vibrant color to speckle the landscape. There was nothing but the eternal feeling of absence, the gnawing pain of knowing that something that once belonged was gone. Time had no place here, not even Death itself. The only thing that resided consistently was the neverending loop of loneliness.

All dead...all dust and gone.

So it only made sense that, to Misa, her journey with "B" had taken weeks in hours...in days of months...or perhaps just a moment. But her chest had begun to bleed heavily just several steps into their search, making her collapse onto the dusty ground, her body convulsing violently as she coughed up mouthfuls of blood.

"B" had only stood by and waited, watching with unseeing eyes. The tattered blindfold, stained with streaks of red, seemed more haunting than when she had initially met him...the thought that he was blindly watching her through the yellowed cloth seemed extremely disturbing. But then, he crouched down near her, not necessarily staring at her, but merely facing her direction. He scooted to where she was grasping at the ground, still gagging and bleeding and dying.

"Are you finished?" he asked blandly.

She struggled to cease her convulsions, facing him with the darkest look she could muster. Her limbs refused to stop their trembling as she staggered to her knees. "I...am fine..." she choked out before burying her face into the floor as she felt another round of bile rise up in her throat. A pool of red was beginning to surround her... the hole in her chest was becoming larger and bloodier.

Suddenly, a pair of thin arms hoisted her shaking body onto a slender, hunched back. Misa blinked in shock as she realized that "B" was practically giving her a piggyback ride. The blood that had soaked her own black corset was already leaving its maroon imprint onto his white shirt.

Hesitantly, she let herself relax in his grasp. "...Thank you" she murmured.

"This isn't a kindness," he said stoically. "This is part of the deal."

"...What?"

"You can't walk without a heart," the black-haired man said matter-of-factly. "I don't know how you managed before you found me. I'll be your legs-"

"-And I'll be your eyes," Misa finished. "All right."

There was a sense of relief that washed over her as she realized that she didn't need to walk by herself anymore. So great was this feeling, she failed to realize that the hole in her chest was becoming slightly smaller.

~0~0~0~

"Don't bother."

Misa visibly twitched, her fingers just barely grazing the tempting apple that hung from the withering branches of a large, peeling tree. The bright red skin called out to her hungry stomach like a siren to a ship's crew. They had been traveling for a long time now, and the only "food" the two had encountered had been that of a dying, grotesque creature that lied on the side of a forgotten road. Misa had insisted on not eating it. B had only laughed. But now, the lone apple floating so sweetly on the branch of a dead tree beckoned Misa, tempted her to take a bite out of its tender body. Only B's bored tone blaring below her had snapped her out of its trance.

She had sniffed, shifting her body in his grasp as she reached for the apple once more. "Why not?" she whined. Pain was beginning to gnaw at her insides as her stomach let out a loud growl.

"It's not real." he stated in that monotonous voice. "It's an illusion."

"How did you even know I was reaching for an apple?" she snapped in frustration.

"You're predictable." he said plainly. "And I suppose it would not be accurate to say that I am 'blind'."

A look of shock took over the blonde's face before she slumped over against his frail frame. "That doesn't make any sense." She stared at the fruit that continued to beckon her, tempt her. "How can you be blind...and see?" Sweat was dripping down her skin, the ongoing starvation driving her insane. "I..." A drive of desperation suddenly racked the girl's body, and frantically, madly, she grasped the apple with delirious possessiveness. And then...her eyes widened in disgusted terror.

The vibrant, crisp red of the fruit began to melt away in her hands, disintegrating into thousands of little fire ants, crawling onto her arms with frightening pace. "Ha..." A sound tried to escape her throat but faltered as she began to breathe heavily and pant and whimper in horror. Dozens of thousands of little mouths began to nip, dig into her flesh, biting and tearing away to the bone.

"Ge..."

More blood was spilling...the little red insects were becoming indistinguishable against the dark fluid they were now swimming in.

"GET THEM OFF!" she shrieked, thrashing and tossing about, clawing into B's shoulders as she waved her hands around urgently. He was losing her balance, she knew, but all common sense had left her mind as she cried and screamed and begged to some unknown god to make it stop.

"Stop it!" the man below her hissed as she dug her dirty fingers into his skin, sobbing loudly against his ears. She began to shake him violently, heeding some mad notion in her mind that he could make it better...all she needed to do was rely.

Ants were beginning to swarm onto his pale body, and he could sense the same pang of agony that was already consuming Misa. He stumbled onto his knees, shaking and writhing in pain, digging his hands into the dirt beneath him. Suddenly, a pair of trembling, bitten hands grabbed at his tattered shirt, tearing it off him before swatting away the remaining insects. He allowed himself a soft sigh of relief, noting that the bites on his skin were not deep at all, and that they would heal over eventually.

He turned over to face his companion, listening for the soft breaths that were escaping her mouth at a rapid pace. He touched her arm.

"...Did they leave you?" he asked.

"...Yes." Misa managed to breathe out. Her body was covered with sores...but she was grateful, and somewhat shocked. Those bugs...those disgusting, horrendous, terrifying ants...they were gone. And it was all very strange. They had refused to leave her when she tried rubbing them away from her own body, they had continued to savagely bite and mark her when she tried picking them off herself...but as soon as she had desperately shooed them away from "B", they disappeared. Why, she couldn't comprehend.

And as she savored the tremendous relief, she found that she didn't care either.

All was silent for a while, as the two struggled to retain their breath and gather their wits. Misa remained on her back, staring aimlessly at the sky. B was sitting in a strange crisscross, resting his head on his elbows. He was staring at something, or nothing. Misa couldn't tell, and in many ways, she really didn't want to know.

His voice broke the barrier of quietness that had enveloped them, his voice bland, but barely concealing a strange mix of relief and anger in his tone. "I told you not to touch it," he continued, his fingers beginning to pick at the wilting crabgrass that surrounded them. "I told you not to touch it." Misa felt her face blanch as she witnessed him violently yank out a handful of grass and throw it at the wind. "You could have become one of them." His voice was still so quiet, barely a murmur, but his limbs were shaking so heavily Misa wondered if there was a silent wind rattling his bones.

A lone apple rolled across the dusty grounds, withered, rotten, and aged. The blonde inwardly flinched as the grayish tip barely grazed her leg while it slowed to a halt. She felt herself grow cold at the idea of experiencing that again...but there was a certain impulse that hit her, even as her inner workings screamed for her to stop, that prompted her to grab the apple and plop it onto "B"'s palm. She watched as his back grew stiff, and slowly relaxed into a curious stance. He delicately picked the fruit up by its stem, similar to how Ryuzaki used to hold things...but strangely, and somehow welcomely different. He pressed the skin against his lips, letting his tongue out to give out a quick lick before taking small bite.

Nothing. No flesh eating insects, no horror, no pain.

Just the sounds of teeth biting into fruit, just the sensation of temporarily being whole.

In Hell, devils laugh at my sorrow, yet weep at my jeers.

B silently stared at the half-eaten apple, handling it lightly. "...Interesting." he said, with an odd sort of fascination, as if he had just conducted an experiment. "Very interesting." He grabbed Misa's wrist, ignoring her flinching as he pushed the bitten fruit into her hands.

"Eat." he said simply.

She gave an almost overenthusiastic nod, giving the apple a large bite, relishing in the dry, grainy, yet fulfilling bits of food. For the first time in a long while, she smiled. And, if for but a moment, she could have sworn to have felt a heart beat boldly inside her chest.

~0~0~0~

Time had no place in Mu, but sometimes Misa felt as if this was all she had ever known- walking through murky swamps, trudging through sandy deserts, traveling under an eternal darkness with no one but a strange man who served as her legs. Her other life seemed so distant, so far away from the blackness that surrounded her constantly. It seemed so...surreal. As if it had all been just a blurry dream from long ago. It didn't fit.

Pages of my story flutter around me, but I do not remember writing a word.

But...it wasn't horrible. At least, not in her mind. "B" was odd, no doubt- he was always so callous and lethargic, perhaps even borderline misanthropic. But he provided her company in a friendless world, and always seemed to know what was going on, blind or not. "To be blind is to see", he had once told her. It had been so long ago, but it still made her head hurt trying to wrap around the idea behind the message.

.o..o..

"Are you really blind?"

B stopped in the middle of his tracks, bringing a finger to his mouth inquisitively. "If you are inquiring if I cannot see that which is around me, then yes. I am very much blind."

Misa scrunched her nose in thought. "Then...how are you not blind?"

B remained silent for a small amount of time, his bare feet scuffling through mud and water. Dark, decaying trees loomed over the two like steep statues, watching through cracked, frozen eyes. The path was black and neverending, it seemed; yet they walked on.

"I can see the truth." he finally spoke. It was so straightforward and honest, almost as if he had revealed a secret that had lurked in the deepest, darkest corners of his heart. The female bit her lip as she tried to decipher the meaning behind his words. "What truth?" she asked again.

"Numbers no longer have importance," he murmured, almost more to himself than to her. "Just chains. Chains and the name."

A part of her wanted to press him further, to see if he truly did have the Eyes, but a larger portion decided against it. So she turned her thoughts towards Light.

Light had her heart. Light owned her heart. She still relied on him, in some ways- he was the first thing she saw in the morning, and his memory was the only thing that existed at night. And her insides still fluttered when she thought of how he saved her, and how he took vengeance for her. But then, her chest would bleed, and she would collapse in a bloody heap. B would never outright help her...just watch. Wait. Pick her up when her convulsions finished. Walk on like nothing happened.

Memories of Light provided comfort. But they destroyed her, tore her up to bits in the process.

She could see that truth clearly. Perhaps she deserved a blindfold, too.

.o..o..

She buried her face in B's ragged black hair, an inexplicable wave of exhaustion hitting her hard. Memories of her past life began to flicker across her eyes like an old film. Her first day of school, her first ballet lesson, going to the park with her mommy and daddy, singing in a talent contest, entering highschool, painting her nails with her sister...walking back home from school and witnessing her family being brutally slaughtered, watching a murderer go free, entering a blur, worshipping Kira...finding Light.

It was a sick sort of comfort, like a devil singing a soft lullaby in her ears. It was all so blatantly a lie...but she chose to shove all inhibitions down the drain to bask in the make-believe. At least in dreams, you can escape nightmares.

So it puzzled her still that she was becoming so attached to her substitute "heart"; each hour that passed, each moment, they walked in silence, with him quietly carrying her, and her prodding him to where he had to go. Where were they going exactly? What were they looking for? A heart? Eyes? Misa wasn't sure, but some unknown force drove them both towards something.

And through it all, she found herself giving him bits and pieces of food that she savaged, washing him down with what ever little water she had, and being happy. And, as whatever warped time went on...he reciprocated the favor. All in the name of "the deal", but still. There was a sort of subtle joy that she felt writhe within her as their travels grew longer and more weary; their time together seemed slightly...nice.

She drifted away from her daydreams as she felt him stop by a large stone. Her eyes gazed upwards- she could have sworn that the tip of the rock just barely scraped the sky. B motioned for her to climb off, and she did so, sliding off his back onto the muddy ground below. They were in some swamp-like area, their clothes dirty and sticky with murky liquid that Misa did not dare try to identify. Her hands wandered towards her chest, tracing the old, yet fresh wound that still gaped wide open, exposed for the world to see. She shuddered, quickly moving her fingers away from her torso before turning to face the dark haired man. He was leaning against the cracked surface of the stone, hands fiddling around with an old piece of cloth that they had picked up from one of the abandoned colonies.

"...Why don't we ever travel with the others?" she asked tentatively, playing with her hair absentmindedly. "You said yourself, we're safer when we're in a group."

His hands didn't hesitate for a moment. "Because they are looking for something they will never find." he said simply.

"Their soulmate?" Misa guessed.

"Yes."

She scooted closer to where he was, looking at him with quizzical eyes. "What makes you think they won't ever find each other?" she asked quietly.

A small, stale smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "Because they are idiots. They can't see it."

A puzzled look came over the girl's face, her brow furrowed in deep thought. "I...don't understand..." she muttered. There was something he was going to say, something he was going to reveal, that she knew was going to be important...but she didn't want to hear it. She wanted to run away. She didn't want to see anything.

You spend your whole life searching and missing something that was never gone.

Silently, she forced herself to sit still. "What..." -she choked a bit, clearing her throat before continuing- "What can't they see? What can't these people see?"

A hoarse chuckle escaped his throat, bitter and strangely entertained. "It's almost sad. They wander around in those large groups of theirs, searching for two or three eternities for a loved one, anyone from their past lives that they believe can save them." He paused, his voice drifting away from the initial amusement towards a more sobering tone. "And sometimes...sometimes their right. A spouse, a child, maybe even a parent and child. But many times...they crawl away and rot like animals. Still looking, but never finding."

Misa crawled closer to him. "But what can't they see?" she pressed again, this time a bit more desperately.

His face turned towards hers, a sick, sad smile plastered on his face. "The person they spend their lives looking for...is almost always right beside them."

The air became still. The silence thudded in her ears, color drained away from her face, her eyes widened in fear, and shock, and disgust, and...joy. "R...right...beside them?" she repeated, almost shyly.

"Ye..." B's back stiffened, his shoulders becoming tense with realization. "No. No."

It all became a blur, and suddenly, Misa's head hit the ground with so much force she didn't have time to think. He was above her, his hands clenched around her throat deliriously, squeezing with such power he wondered how he hadn't snapped her slender neck.

Her lungs were burning with need, her mouth gasping for any air, any air, and she thrashed and kicked and pounded against his chest fiercely, but hopelessly. Her eyes were full of horror and hate and...betrayal. He continued, huffing with animalistic grunts as he hoovered above her menacingly.

"There is no one." he spat, and shook her body violently. "I deserve no one."

Dark liquid began to drip all over her face; dazedly, she realized that his eyes were bleeding. No...not bleeding.

Crying.

His grasp around her throat loosened, and a long breath of air finally rushed through her lungs. She struggled to sit up coughing mercilessly before facing her attacker. Her mind boggled with wonder at the sheer 180 that his emotions experienced. No longer was he fearsome and terrifying...now, as he cried shamelessly to the ground, clutching his knees against his chest, it was actually... pitiful.

Rationally, she should have ran away, she should have started her own search for Light, without the psycho. But in Mu, rationality wasn't always rational, and her emotions always ruled her anyways. So she knelt down beside him and brought him into a desperate, protective embrace. She felt him stiffen underneath her, and for a moment, she feared that he would attack again. Instead, he relaxed, tentatively resting his head against her shoulder.

Misa wasn't sure what exactly happened, or why he had reacted so violently, but for a moment, she didn't care. They stayed like that, with her finally falling asleep with him in her arms.

The end was nearing. The story needed to begin.