"My father grew up as a low-class worker boy," Levi started, his eyes trained onto his pale, clamped hands resting tensely in his lap.  "He was raised in the suburbs of Trost, and my grandparents never gave him anything but the food on their table and the roof over his head.  For everything else, my father had to work his ass off, including his own survival.

        "My father was a high school drop out, and he struggled to learn everything he could on the streets and at work, having his days filled with the long hours of his five part-time jobs.  He literally worked from dawn to midnight, only to come home for really a three hour nap until he had to wake back up again to go back to work.  My grandparents never helped him; they couldn't help him, because by the time he was sixteen, they were both in their sixties and couldn't do a single thing except sit on the couch and wait for their next doctor's check-up, paid with the money my father worked so hard to earn.

        "And by the time he was eighteen, both of my grandparents had died.  They left him alone in this world, but they didn't leave him abandoned.  My father was free from the responsibility of taking care of two hopeless elderly people, and he could finally go out and pursue the thing he wanted to do most:  manage his own business."  Levi sighed, his eyelids drooping as he went on.

"So he started a small flower shop in the middle of town, just to get started.  He always had a weird sort of fascination with nature, so a flower shop seemed to suit him just fine, I guess.  He ran the business well, and he became successful enough in a few years to upgrade his shop.  He slowly began to earn more income, and along with his fortune came Olivia Lynn, a striking young woman five years younger than himself, but a beauty nonetheless.  Her long raven hair and glittering cerulean eyes were enough to charm him, and my father initiated his plans.  He made friends with her over a course of a year, finally presenting her a bouquet of fresh lilies from his shop and asking her out on a date.

        "My mother was the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and her father was already everything my father wanted to be.  He looked down upon his daughter dating such a low-class man, but my mother, full of spirit and freewill, denied her father's opinion and went off with him anyways.  After several months of affectionate words and long romantic nature walks, my father had asked permission to marry her.

        "They were married two years later, under a massive oak tree in the middle of the meadows outside of Trost; it was their usual date spot, considering my father wasn't that classy of a man to bring her to fancy dinners and expensive shopping sprees.  However, my mother loved nature as much as my father did, and they ended up getting along fairly well.  And a year after their marriage, they became pregnant with their first child."

There was a pause, a long silence that swallowed up the entire vehicle; and if it weren't for the consistent pounding of the rain outside, the vacuum would have surely deafened them both.  Aria sat there, waiting for the next part of the tale, patiently sitting on her side of the car, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

"My elder sister ended up being a miscarriage," Levi sighed again, taking a breath in, refusing to even glance at Aria, who listened intently.  "The umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, strangling her to death during the thirty-sixth week of pregnancy.  Penelope was her name, after my mother, whose middle name was Penelope; Penelope Olivia "Lyv" Lynn-Ackerman.  It was a long-ass name, but my parents loved her dearly, even though she never really arrived in this world alive."

Levi paused to collect himself, hearing the tapping of the rain upon the roof of his car, the warmth inside the vehicle making him shiver and shudder with distaste.

"It was another year after the miscarriage when my mother was pregnant with me," the man continued grimly, "and to their relief, I was born into this world healthy.  They raised me in a house in the countryside, where my father would go into town every single day to manage his flower shop, and where my mother would stay back and home-school me, teaching me everything there was about life, love, and happiness.

        "I was quite happy back then," Levi grunted.  "Our little family was knitted close and we never really grew apart, even after I moved out for college.  I studied at TPrep, obviously, since it offers the best education in law and crime in the entire country.  It was also close to home, which I really liked.

        "I moved out into my own apartment because I wanted to experience the world for myself.  This cruel world, which I had to learn the hard way, rewarded me with the hardships of living solo.  The debts climbed up and all of my time was devoted to studying and working various part-time jobs.  My parents offered to help, they insisted on helping, but with my stubborn attitude, I declined the frequent pleas and toughed it out myself; alone.

        "I managed to survive the storm," Levi went on.  "I finished college in the top twenty, and my debts ended up being paid off by my parents anyways.  I continued to live in that apartment I had rented, and I refurnished it so it would fit my tastes better.  I got a job at the Survey Detective Agency, and Erwin was kind enough to give me my first few cases that would set me off into the career I've dreamed of since my freshman year of high school."

Levi pressed his lips into a thin line, a bead of sweat forming upon his brow and threatening to drip down into his lap, his face tilted down so that his jet-black hair shaded his glinting steel-blue eyes.

"Then came the Skull Ripper Case."

Aria just sat in her seat and listened, her face flipped over from her usual peppiness to the current serious state she was in.  With her hands in her lap and her eyes trained onto the devastated man before her, the intern leaned in eagerly, ready to comfort the man that would surely snap.

"I was zealous, and I briskly picked up the case," Levi murmured.  "It was the biggest case I've ever been assigned back then; and that's saying something, since I had solved about six cases in the past two years; all taking three months or under.  I read the descriptions of the case from police observations, and I was so excited about working on the case.

        "However, after a week and a half of following the previous trail of murders the Skull Ripper had left behind, it became more and more evident to who the killer was; it was about the fourth murder from the Skull Ripper when all of the evidence was tied together and pointed towards one man; the one man that raised me and loved me dearly as his own beloved son.

        "I refused to believe that he did it.  I refused to follow the evidence, which was hard and cold in not just tangibility, but also in spirit.  The evidence, as inanimate objects, didn't care about what I thought or what I did; they just sat there on the white linen cloth as the forensic scientists analyzed them, giving me solid, chilly results that still yet pointed to that single man."

Levi sat there, his hands trembling in his lap as he took a shaky breath.

"One thing led after another, and I tried to hold down on the arrest for as long as I could; but when a neighbor called the police about terrible muffled screams coming from the house beside them, the police went their way to the area with me in the car right behind them.  When they arrived at the house..."

The man's dark eyes glanced over quickly at Aria, who still sat patiently next to him, her glittering dark amber eyes dull and bleak, omniscient about what came next.  

Levi sighed.  "My father was leaning over a girl with a bloody scalpel in his hand, a massive gash ripping down from her left temple to the tip of her chin.  He had this sort of surprised look on his face, as though he didn't know what he was doing; the expertise of the cutting of the skin though said otherwise.

        "So, the police arrested him and the S.W.A.T team arrived, escorting my father to the prison where he would be held for the next few months, awaiting trail against all of the families who supposedly lost their loved ones under his hands.  He was found guilty of first degree murder, accountable for a string of a total of seven killings.  Ruled insane and irrational, my father was excused from the death sentence; instead, he was sent to prison for life...without the possibility of parole.

        "I never thought in my entire life that my father would be accused of such a thing," Levi whispered, choking on his own breath.  "Murdering seven people?  Mutilating their bodies until they were unrecognizable?  I just don't see him doing that; he was a lover of nature and the most caring husband and father.  I just don't see him running a slow knife through someone's skin while they're still alive and...breathing..."

Levi sat there, shivering from the warmth that seeped into his bones.  His muscles, moving so fluidly now that the heat had thawed them, usually frozen and unbelievably stiff.  He muttered under his breath, the air that exhaled from his lungs fogging the glass in front of him as he stared out into the pavement, drenched in the sky's solemn tears.

"This warmth..." he mused glumly, barely audible as strained his neck, letting out a low, choked sound.

"The...warmth?" Aria asked, puzzled by the random statement.

"It disgusts me," Levi hissed, cursing as he stared down at his palms, which grew pink from the heat that resonated throughout the chilly vehicle.

Aria blinked a few times, clearly confused.

"You don't like heat?" she breathed.  "But...doesn't it amaze you, though?  How such a delicate thing such as temperature can mean life or death to you?"

"No," Levi answered bluntly, his scowl deepening as he scoffed, spitting like some irritated panther.  "It reminds me of the happy times.  I hate it."

"But...isn't that good?" Aria inquired.

"No," the man snarled again.  "The warmth reminds me of the times...when my parents would take me to the oak tree that they had spent so much time under; where my mother would pack a picnic of sandwiches and potato salad or some shit like that, and where my father would bring a soccer ball or a frisbee to play with." The memories seemed to envelop him in some solemn casing, his scowling features relaxing down to a rather sorrowful face.  "And when I was about five, we would sit on the blanket my mother would set down so we could rest on it, blowing bubbles into the warm summer air as the sun smiled down upon us with its blessed rays...

        "The summers were the times where my family would truly bond.  The meadow where the oak tree stands is a prime example, because our times there together would never get old.  The bubbles, the picnics, the relaxing in the tall grass as the sun rose higher and higher into the sky...yeah.  Those were the times.  The times where warmth ruled over the earth and where the sunshine stilled reigned with its bright beams and tickling light.  I can still feel the sun tingling my skin as I stood under it's face, only to be picked up by my father and placed right upon his shoulders...

        "He ran around the meadow with me on top of him, my arms extended out to my sides as I flew through the sky as an airplane, touching the clouds and grazing the heavens with my fingertips.  I can still see my mother, sitting to the side with her face stretched out into a beautiful smile, her pale skin tinted with a rosy blush as the warm breeze brought happiness to our eyes.

        "My mother...I could see why my father had wanted her so much.  She was divine angel, fallen from the heavens but had somehow managed to create her own haven here on this earth.  Her raven hair, plaited into a single braid that was brought over her shoulder, waved in the wind as it rolled through the hills in the distance, her sky-blue eyes glittering as she gazed upon me with that motherly affection, and her laugh sounded like distant chimes every time she set off with the sight of me pretending to be a pirate with a stick as a sword, a cowboy with my father as my steed, or Sherlock Holmes, crouching over a weed with the frisbee in my hand, pretending like it was some kind of magnifying glass.  She was beautiful, the saint of my existence and the goddess that ensured me my life and my safety."

A smear of a smile happened to make an appearance on his hardened face, which had softened into a rather pleasant-looking demeanor.  But after a split second of thinking once more, the man's features returned to their normal stoic manner.

"But now she's dead," he growled, clenching his jaws tightly together as he fought the tears that lodged themselves inside his throat in a single massive, painful lump.  "She's dead, and her body is rotting under the oak tree we had spent so many good summers under.  She fell victim to some fucking unknown illness, and she was bedridden from the time I was assigned the Skull Ripper Case.  She died six months after my father had been sentenced to life in prison, heartbroken and crying in her last moments on this earth. She thought of him on her death bed, and when she spoke her last words to me, she asked me why I had agreed to catch him in the first place."

Levi clutched his face with his clenched hand, sobbing into his palm as the tears rolled down his face is massive drops.

"I couldn't even answer her own damn question!" he cried, screeching into the icy air that surrounded the vehicle outside.  "She died never having her last question answered, god fucking dammit!!  Why couldn't I answer her, just that one last time before she departed from this shitty world?  What kind of son am I?  Unable to even answer one simple fucking question!  Fuck!!"

He wept into his palm still, his shoulders wrecked with sobs as he buried his face into his hand.  His teeth were clenched tightly, so much that if he had bitten down any more they would have shattered.  His lips curled back, forced down into a fierce frown as the tears tumbled down his flustered face.

Aria, seeing a window of transition, reached over and placed a gentle hand on Levi's, which gripped a handful of his black slacks upon his thigh.  The sudden touch startled the man, making him jump and face the girl with a look of hate, mixed with the tiniest hint of a childish helplessness.  She gazed at him with a certain degree of carefulness, her face stern and firm.

"People...are capable of doing things that may seem impossible," she said hesitantly, flickering her shimmering eyes away from him, only to set them back onto his steel-blue gaze.  "In every one of us, there is a monster that resides in our hearts; our souls are all dark and bleak in some way, and this sadistic beast sulks in those shadows until it sees the time of opportunity to strike.  It eats away our minds and it rots away our rationality, but in the end, we will be who we always will be:  ourselves."

Levi blinked and flickered his line of sight up to her, his brows knitting in a sort of hope, now hinting some minuscule amount of determination.

"My grandmother is currently suffering from schizophrenia," the girl murmured somberly.  "I visit her frequently in the nursing home she lives in now.  My grandfather had died a few years ago from natural causes, leaving her alone in that place, waiting for the next time she will see me.  She's all I have left now, and her mind is deteriorating from the terrible illness...

        "And every time I come by to visit her, she asks me the same question, over and over and over again:

        "'Aria dear, why didn't you do anything more to give your parents justice?'"

She stayed silent for a while, trying her hardest but failing miserably to stop the violent quivering of her lip.  She took a shaky breath and sank her gaze downward, her grip on his hand slackening as her eyes grew bleary.

"I know how you feel, Levi," Aria whispered, her voice choked.  "I know exactly how you feel."