It took Sanidine six hours of digging through the Negaverse's records before he started finding things that were interesting. The easy things to find were the basics—youma live in the Rift, youma come in all shapes and sizes, feral, humanoid, Greater, don't eat too many starseeds—things that meant nothing and didn't help him at all.

But then he started finding things about Personal youma. Youma that had bonded with a Negaverse agent. That shared a link with them, that swore their loyalty.

His eyes burned so badly by the time he read the article on the computers that he wound up reading the same line four times before it actually started to click.

He hadn't exactly declared Evan as his personal youma, but he couldn’t imagine that he was anything but. They'd had a bond before he'd been youmafied, and Evan followed him around like a lost little puppy. He came when Sanidine called. He did whatever Sanidine wanted.

Maybe Sanidine was grasping at straws, but that had to count for something, right?

—And it was only important when he'd read that the loss of a personal youma was devastating. Not just the guilt and grief he'd felt, but it was physical. It hurt.

All of Sanidine's suffering had been emotional, and self inflicted as he berated and blamed himself.

Some of the text was sketchy, like whoever had transcribed this information onto the computer didn't have a very good grasp of the English language or they'd been too distracted to do their job properly. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek, tapping his pen on the desktop, annoyed, and reread the paragraph again.

He reached the same conclusion: either Evan had not bonded with him, or Evan had not been permanently dusted.

Except, he had no ******** idea how something was permanently dusted, and what that meant for Evan if he was temporarily dusted.

Annoyed, Sanidine tried to summon the youma; he'd just had a very strong refresher course on how to summon youma, and there were instructions here for summoning a personal youma, but no matter how hard Sanidine strained, nothing happened.

No Evan. No youma at all. Just a headache.

He groaned—but not all was lost. He had a good start.

It meant there was information on youma here that he hadn't seen yet. It meant that someone might have already researched this.

It meant that Evan was still out there, and that maybe he could find him.

But his research had only just begun; Sanidine stretched and had to shake his head to get back into the groove of focusing on this project.

Further research yielded very limited answers. He couldn’t find much information on the differences between permanently and temporarily destroying a youma. He couldn't find out what happened to youma when they died permanently, or if there was any restoring them, or how to tell if you'd bonded with a youma.

It was three hours after his first finding that he started reading about the Rift.

The Rift, where youma lived. Where they went to recover.

Sanidine had never been to the Rift, but he was out of his seat before he'd even finished reading. He didn't bother closing out of his open computer, or picking up his stuff; he slipped through the door as quickly as he could while trying not to look suspicious and made his way to the Hall of Shadows.

He'd seen the Hall of Shadows once, during his very brief tour of the Dark Kingdom, when he'd first been brought down here. He had told himself he'd never travel down that hall; there was no reason to. Not with those jacked up eyes and hands and monsters pressing at what seemed to be such a thin wall. Not when you were inviting yourself into their layer, just asking for them to tear you apart.

Some people might have liked youma, but he didn't.

There was only one he cared about, and he must have cared a damn fine bit to go into the Rift to find him.

He stalked through the Hall of Shadows with wide, deliberate steps, and every now and then, when he thought no one was looking, he jogged a few steps.

Ultimately, he didn't know what to expect on the other side; the Hall of Shadows was harrowing, so he expected only the worst from the Rift. He passed through the great doors—and froze.

There, in plain sight, staring up at him with wide eyes and ears folded low was the only youma he could recognize on sight.

Not that Evan stayed in his line of sight for very long; the moment the youma laid eyes on him, he charged at Sanidine, tackling him to the ground. Evan was nuzzling into his chest, making the strange, aquatic chirps that Sanidine would have given a kidney to understand. He didn't know what Evan was saying, but he wrapped his arm around him anyway, drawing him close. Crystals and rock dug into his back, and he could feel the eyes of half a dozen youma at least, just watching, but it didn't matter.

Evan clung to the front of his uniform like a lifeline; he looked exhausted, and worried—strange, for a creature covered in fur with inhuman eyes—but relieved. He was battered, still, and Sanidine would have guessed scrawnier than before, but it was probably just a trick of his mind. Evan had a glow about him, here, that he didn't have up in Destiny City.

But he couldn't focus on much of anything except wrapping his arms around Evan, making sure he was there—alive, and real, and staying with him.

None of this made much sense at all; he'd spent so long betwixt hope and denial that finding Evan here felt surreal. It felt wrong and it felt right, and he couldn't trust that this wasn't a dream until Evan pressed against him so hard that a crystal at Sanidine's back jabbed him, hard.

It was better than a pinch.

Sanidine was awake, and Evan was alive. A youma, still, but alive, and clinging to him and wailing like he'd been every bit as traumatized as Sanidine had been.

Sanidine didn't know how long they laid there; he had not concept of time these days, anyway. He just knew that Evan clung to him, chirped and whined at him, and buried his face against his uniform. He didn't know if youma could cry, but Evan trembled against him, occasionally making sharp, gasping noises between streams of chirps.

Evan had every right to hate him. To attack him. To blame him for all of this.

In typical fashion, Evan just forgave him.