Following the conclusive thought, Lyric appeared to take notice of his unraveled focus. "You back?"

"What? Yeah?"

"Perfect."

She set about finishing bedtime preparations, though not before shooting him an expectant glare. "I'm still owed an explanation; get set for bed n' we'll go from there."

"There it is."

The busted Miscreant offered a nod, then walked around to the washroom's entrance. "Do you think you could...?" He tugged at his coat, earning a hearty eye-roll from the Seraph in question.

"Just crack the door and leave them there when you're through getting ready. I'll have it done and back by the time you're out."

"'Preciate it."

Albeit alarmed by her compliance, Kyoya lacked any desire to question it. Instead, he closed the washroom door behind him and getting to work. He caught himself taking care to toss his clothes as instructed.

Unfortunately, his fear of water made a great habit of rearing its head before any given adventure into the bath.

While initially bitter, the boy soon loosed an appreciative sigh its warmth. It ultimately allowed a much less tense journey into the depths, until he sat soundly with the water only reaching just above his stomach.

Thoughts of his earlier considerations plagued him. At least, with his vision blocked on account of a wet rag settled comfortably over his eyes, dismissing them came easily enough.

A baleful lump meandered about Kyoya's stomach as he processed the idea of relating his story to Lyric. To this day, it was something he'd never done, in earnest. Not for the likes of Guran, or even Reika.

The Seraph had some clue of Teleo's state, and even come into possession of an article requesting the boy's own death. While it remained clear enough that she'd act on no such threat, so little as the idea rattled him. Now, he'd have to come completely clean—and with Leyenda having revealed the true nature of his departure, there was no room for explaining it all away.

The troubled Miscreant sat alone with that thought. Contemplative preparation totally robbed him of the reality that he'd been soaking for well over an hour.

A gentle knock on the door nearly made him scream.

"…Blue? You alive?"

Kyoya breathed a sigh and sunk a bit deeper before responding.

"Y-yeah, all good... I'll be out in a sec."

"Gotcha. Your stuff's at the door."

He rose without much more thought. Just like Lyric said, his clothes laid neat in front of the entrance. However, after drying off and getting his pants back on, a crash from within the room shattered whatever tranquility had developed.

Kyoya burst through the door and stood shaking in its frame... but all that revealed itself to him was Lyric on the floor with Brynn.

It appeared that the girl had fallen from her bed. Not necessarily alarming, but in doing so, she'd scared the poor feline so much that it jumped and knocked something from their nightstand. The evidence showed itself as a cracked vase sitting on its side before them.

Though, it wasn't until then that the Seraph's gaze locked onto him, with intermittent disbelief jumbled amidst what was once an easygoing leer.

The Miscreant took an eternity to recognize that she was staring daggers at his chest. In suit, he looked down and recognized the exposure of his age-old scar.

A standstill overtook the room, leaving the pair to their own silent observations. Lyric continued to pry his soul apart, but she soon brought herself back to attention. "...What happened to you?"

Kyoya pulled the sleeveless shirt over his head, then sat back down at the foot of his cot. Her shift in demeanor indicated to him that she likely didn't do well with seeing injury. With her reaction Brynn's shoulder, there wasn't a guarantee she'd be any better with this.

However slightly that would prove to be, any amount of breathing room was something he'd conditioned himself to cherish.

"Surprise," breathed the Miscreant, who fell lightly onto his back with the statement. "Can't really skirt the lines, anymore."

Lyric huffed and jumped from her bed to his, landing with a bounce at his headboard.

"I'll pardon you for lying about it—that looks terrible… but don't think for a second I'll believe any garbage, this time."

The Seraph's eyes sheared guilty gashes into his conscience. He lay heavy with guilt: both for having lied to her, and for bringing her so much unnecessary concern.

While that in itself was taxing enough, he hadn't even started to relate his tale yet. Part of him wished he were cunning enough to lie again.

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She'd done more for him than he could ever have asked: it'd be cruel beyond his comprehension not to afford this Seraph the same courtesy.

Kyoya took a prolonged breath. He maintained himself enough to dredge up memories he'd paid great mind to sink deep beneath the tides of time. The boy had long trusted himself dearly to only tell his story to someone whose firmness he felt offered complete absolution. That said, in Lyric, there was no question.

"Like I said, I was out of Teleo," began a mournful Miscreant. His voice, for the first time in ages, saw difficulty in maintaining steadiness. "My sister, Sera, taught me how to fight when we were little, back when I still lived with my parents. When I turned twelve, she was already fifteen: the age Teleo's combat corps recognized as suitable for training on the battlefield."

Lyric's ever-attentive silence confounded him. However, he understood that she likely only meant it to be sure that he saw no interruption. "She left for a while, and I kept training, psyching myself up for the day she'd get back… but, we'd gotten word that something went wrong out on the front lines, and, well...—"

Tried as he did, the boy's thoughts couldn't quite form words, leaving a scrambled mess of stuttering to follow. His partner appeared to know well of what he was trying to say.

"I'm so sorry, Blue… If it's that tough, you don't have to—"

Kyoya shook his head and let the indecision go with it, bringing himself back to composure.

"…We all took it pretty hard." He offered a light breath to keep from staying silent too long, allowing less room to stop. "At least, the whole 'front line' story was what we were told. As it would happen, the person Leyenda kept going on about—that 'Ruler of Teleo'—he was our mentor; Archduke Aronne Oberon... and the one who I thought did it."

Yet another breath preluded his continuation. "A year or so after that, Demons started ripping holes into the city; I'd never even seen one before, let alone fought, so of course I ran, but..."

The memory of his brush with death at Oberon's hands never failed to wrap its cold, spindly digits about his conscience. No amount of comfort nor warmth ever seemed to relieve the frigid grip that constricted the boy's neck ever since his fateful encounter. It left naught but an emblematic sorrow in a fearsome clash against his blazing pride. "Oberon chased me down. He cornered me on top of the Duke Bastion, and kept going on about how—"

A stricken Miscreant loathed reminiscing of that day, but in the Seraph's company, anguish was afforded no place. "...how Takera, The Mother, told him it was my fault. That I was conspiring with the Denizen."

Lyric blinked at him.

"T-Takera spoke to him? And she told him that?" stammered the Seraph. Whether it was shock or disbelief, something in her eyes ripped into his soul. "There's no way she—" The girl stopped herself. "And I never—"

Her train of thought had hit a clear hitch in the rails. Before Lyric went on, she crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "I really, really don't want to start wondering why the All-Mother would lie..."

Kyoya's heart hung in his throat while she thought on. "...But, I know for a damn fact you're being real, here. If you'd ever been involved with any kind of grody shit like that, I'd have picked up on it as soon as we met."

"For real?" tailed the Miscreant. "I know your intuition is crazy, but I wasn't expecting you to believe it without—"

"The Hope doesn't just give me gnarly intuition, Blue; I can't read minds, but I can read people. You're coming up clean."

That last admission came with a tinge of uncertainty—not that she wasn't sure of herself, but rather at the implication of her claim. "I think I'm more prepared to assume that Oberon was just off his rocker. There's... an awful lot to consider if her lying to a world leader is what's happening."

They exchanged an anxious look, but both of them managed to shrug it off. "So, for now, let's err on the more reasonable explanation."

Kyoya nodded his agreement. With that past them, his recount continued.

"Right... I got beat—bad. The whole time, he kept offering help, if I could just tell him why I would ever make a deal with the Devil; of course I had no clue what he meant, so I denied all of it. It wasn't till after that fight that he told me about Sera, and I think I'd lost it, at that point. When he tried to hold me up by the neck, I, uh..."

He paused, having recognized far too casual of an approach to such a topic. "…well, I bit into his hand—through gauntlet, and all. That's how this thing happened."

Kyoya pulled at the corner of his mouth and brandished his 'fang.' A gleam in Lyric's eyes suggested either acute interest, or the onset of tears—one of which he preferred rather largely over the other.

"I guess that makes up for such a huge bounty," murmured the girl.

"I'd have done that and a lot more, if he hadn't already beaten me to a pulp," Kyoya agreed. "I'd used what was left of my Burst in that move. After that, while we thrashed back n' forth, he ended up throwing me off the roof—"

A gasp from his partner forced his tale to a halt. She gathered her wit back quickly enough.

"I-… Don't worry about me—y'know, by now."

The Miscreant found no bother in her concern. In fact, he found it reassuring, knowing that she drew sympathy from hearing of his strife—even if that in itself left a painfully selfish sting.

"I must've blacked out when I hit the ground, 'cause I woke up in a bunch of fallen wood. If not for that, and for being fireproof, I doubt there'd be any of 'ol Blue left."

Lyric's silence remained. "Past that, I just had to make it outta there. I crashed at the Monadt Highlands homestead for a while… then, I left when I felt like it was time—and I guess that was yesterday."

He'd finally lifted the burden of secrecy from his chest.

Kyoya's next breath brought a lulling ease with it. He wasn't quite sure whether was from finally coming clean, or Lyric having been the one he'd told.

"No joke, huh…" The Seraph shifted around behind him, situating herself so that she sat looking over him while he laid flat on his back. "Yeah," the girl began, "...I can't say I don't believe you."

"I don't expect you to feel any kind of way about it. That's just how I came around, plain and simple."

"The 'kind of way' I feel isn't tied to you expecting it."

Lyric rested her cheek on her right hand, using the other to take hold of his hair's azure spike and offer a generous tug. "Don't flatter yourself… Miscreant."