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January 28th.

One year to the day since Kira's defeat. Though of course, in Teru's personal timeline it had happened only a couple of months ago, when he'd briefly been popcorn. So surely, he told himself, this day shouldn't matter so much. He'd already been through it all too many times.

Still. This was a bad day. To make things worse, Yukimura was still trapped in the apparently-impervious-to-escape-attempts Hat Shore, and... well, there was one other person who'd offered to be there if he needed to talk, but he didn't know how he felt about seeing her, today.

At least he wasn't drinking in the popcorn room this year. He was in the Great Hall, with coffee, watching one of the TVs, Masuyo resting on his lap.

Teru had been putting off seeing Yukimura again. Until he was more - stable, that was what he told himself, but there came a point when that was just an excuse.

So he'd sent an owl, inviting Yukimura over, and now he was waiting for him to arrive, preparing the tea that had been his Christmas present.

It was the first thing Teru had done in - too long. Months. He'd told himself that nothing was wrong, that in a school full of demonic psychopaths it was only sensible to keep to himself. But that wasn't why he isolated himself, and he knew it.

Humans shouldn't know the day they'll die. He'd let himself despair over it, let himself stagnate, become one of the very things he'd wanted to see the world cleansed of. And there was only one thing to do.

So, he went to the popcorn room, dressed in the clothes he'd worn the day he arrived, Masuyo in his arms. He set her down on the floor, gently, stroking behind her ears. She mewed up at him, worried.

"It's all right," he murmured. "I won't be gone long. And if I'm not back soon the elves will take you to A or Yukimura and give them the letter I wrote, and they'll take good care of you, a-and I'll always -"

Pop.

Five minutes later, by Hogwarts' standards, Teru reappeared, lying in a pool of butter, his suit now replaced by a grey prison uniform. For a few moments he lay motionless, as Masuyo watched anxiously from under a popcorn case - then sat up abruptly, gasping for air.

Memories flooded back into him. This was - he'd been here so long, years, seen it all before it happened and forgotten, had to live it and forget again...

...but it was over now, he told himself, clutching at butter-drenched hair. All over. Near couldn't have him any more.

January 28th, 2010. The day Kira fell.

Teru had told himself, over the past month, that the date didn't matter. He'd had time to come to terms with what had happened, or from his perspective would happen. He'd accepted it. He wasn't in mourning for the new world any longer.

Still, now that the day had come, he ended up sitting in the popcorn room, gazing at that one name - Light Yagami, Slytherin. He'd brought a candle, but it was just resting in his hands, not lit. Yagami didn't deserve it. Did he?

[[ooc: post is closed for now, unless you really want to talk to him while he's brooding. He'll be more ...interesting... after Wednesday's had a word with him, though. And it's open, to people who want to be - drunkenly rambled at and offered celery. This is probably the only time you will ever see him get trashed, yes.]]