( Though the terminal point of the self is what rakes his heart across the coals, Robin's brief remark about the inevitability of end, as if it were an easy fact, as if it were a given - puts him a little more at ease.

As beautiful as it is to hear someone argue with conviction that he can overturn his fate, and that things can change - he's afraid of hope. Everything he'd ever done with hope had hurt the people he loved - his parents; the orphans; Yuu...

He just wanted things to end. He wishes he had died, before Krul had turned him. He wishes he had died when his mother threw him from the car. And he wishes he had died when he sacrificed himself for Yuu. It's all this postponing that makes him feel dread - all these connections and obligations that make him fear an end that's he's long since been owed. )

... I don't.

( He says, eventually. )

I know... it's already started. I don't feel much about a lot of things anymore. And... I have asked. Did ask a vampire, how long it took him. But... he couldn't remember. The years blurred together.

( So it does haunt him. Not knowing when. Knowing every day he's probably a little less like himself, but not knowing how, not realizing the things he's lost. )

... But if it takes longer than for us to handle things here... then that would be the best for everyone, probably. If I'm returned back where I came from, after all this, while I'm still partly myself... that would be all right by me.