Kiss the Flag
A D. Gray-Man Fanfiction
By Exploding Your Universe
In need of a Beta
-
Komui stared sadly at the black gravestone that was draped with a dampening white flag. The white cloth itself was printed with the rose cross. The rose cross, a symbol of the Pope and his Church, did not fit with the occupant six feet under who had no belief. A blanket, instead, should have lain on top for as much as Lavi liked to sleep. The Supervisor was almost certain that Lavi would have agreed with him. Rain hammered steadily not only on the grave marker, but on the Chinese's back as well.
The Bookman had requested that Lavi not be cremated in the Order since an Exorcist was not his first job. After much arguing, the Grand Generals had reluctantly allowed it under a condition that it was not a Bookman's Junior that they were burying, giving Lavi's grave the credentials and attire of a normal deceased Exorcist. Bookman said nothing more but had disappeared from the Black Order, recording with Innocence. He lettered Komui ever so often, even if not much was explained in them.
Rain continued to fall, but Komui paid no heed. His hair was drenched along with his clothes and water dripped from his nose and glasses. He'd been there when it started and some time before that, guilt etching noticeably with the sadness on his features after every five minutes. The Supervisor had sent Lavi on what should have been a simple Innocence retrieval mission, but no one could have predicted the Noah of Wisdom to be at the location.
Komui was briefly thankful that Black Order members were usually cremated, otherwise he'd be by someone's headstone all day feeling responsible.
A ting, no more than a short pealing sound, came quite suddenly and the Chinese man looked for the sound. When it came again, he found the source at the foot of the grave marker, half-buried in the muddy ground but twinkling slightly in the dreary light. Another rain drop struck it and it rang softly. Crouching, he outstretched his hand and unearthed hoop earrings he immediately recognized as Lavi's. His first thought ran to Bookman; that the old historian would leave something at his dead apprentice's grave but it didn't seem likely.
Then Komui remembered every detail of the redhead when he was placed in the coffin. The earrings Lavi were wearing were purple studs, ones that couldn't have been his considering how much the young man had liked hoops.
"I'd appreciate if you left them be, Supervisor," a solemn voice said behind him, and Komui promptly fell on the wet ground. Quickly he turned to Tyki Mikk, fear replacing all other emotion. But instead of killing him, Tyki – dressed in formal wear – was glancing between Komui's face and the earrings in his hand. "Please," he said while Komui was still in shock. Slowly, the older man set the hoops back on the ground in front of Lavi's name and stood.
Tyki ignored him after the earrings had been returned, but Komui couldn't stop staring at the genuine look of loss in the Noah's eyes. Surely he couldn't be sad that an Exorcist was gone…? Then there was the fact that this location was only known to Order members, no more than six miles off from Headquarters. How did Tyki know that the redhead was buried here?
After a few minutes, golden eyes looked at him from the side and Tyki spoke again. "Why do you think I'm here, Supervisor? That expression tells me that you don't think my actions are honest." Komui snapped his jaws together with a clacking sound and looked away.
"Maybe they're not," the older man admitted, "but he was an Exorcist and a Book—"
"You're wrong."
Komui blinked, confused. "He was too. He had Innocence and he was the Bookman's Junior." But Tyki shook his head, a small sad smile lifting his lips when he looked back to the deceased's name. When he stepped closer to the headstone, feet squishing in the mud, he crouched low and put a clothed hand on it. Komui saw that his glove was already soaked through.
His hand brushed across the dates. Lavi had been twenty-five. "He might have been an Exorcist," Tyki said softly, "but he had stopped being a Bookman for six years. Becoming an Exorcist was his downfall because you can't fight along someone and not feel the same pain they do. Bookman dropped him when he realized that Lavi was attached to more than his friends at the Order." The Supervisor jerked with recognition that what the Noah was saying meant that Bookman had lied to the Great Generals, given that the entire Black Order hadn't even known that Bookman let go of his apprentice. Why would Bookman fight for a normal grave for someone that wasn't his student?
The Chinese man asked his first nagging question. "What are you doing here? Lavi couldn't have meant anything to a Noah." He immediately knew he overstepped boundaries when the Pleasure disappeared in a blink of an eye with only the top hat remaining. Then there was an aching, sharp pang in his chest. The hand around his heart tightened warningly, and Komui gasped in pain, eyes clenching while sweat dampened his brow.
"Please, Supervisor," Tyki said from behind him. "Do not test me here. Not when I can number the exact time on how long he's lain there. Do you wish to know?"
"…s-six months, twenty-three days, and nine hours." Komui felt Tyki's hand twitch as if the answer surprised him, but he was the Supervisor of the Black Order and he swore to himself to take the burden of everyone sacrificed, Lavi included. Wetting his lips, he said, "I…apologize. It just seemed unlikely to me for a Noah to visit the grave of an Exorcist." The rain was beginning to ease to a light drizzle.
The Pleasure's hand also eased from the Supervisor's chest. "I can understand," Tyki reasoned and walked around the older man to the gravestone, touching the arched top again. Komui inhaled deeply.
Komui leveled the younger man with a wary stare. "How did you know that this was where he was, let alone going to be buried?" At his question, Tyki looked over his shoulder and Komui stiffened in shock. His eyes… Tyki's eyes…were sunken with sorrow. Komui shifted his gaze downcast.
"Because I requested that he be buried here to Bookman," he heard Tyki say. His voice was filling with emotion. "It was the only thing he would do for me, and I am very grateful to him and to your Order for allowing it."
"But it was under pretense that he was still Bookman's Junior when he was buried," Komui admitted. "If we had known that Bookman stopped his apprenticeship it wouldn't have been even a consideration. In fact, it would be my job to inform the Order of what happened." He looked back up at the Noah, another question nagging.
"If I may, what was your relationship with Lavi? This still seems too surreal." And right when he finished his sentence, it suddenly struck him.
"…that Lavi was attached to more than his friends…."
Tyki only looked back at him with a guarded expression, but Komui looked away again, to Lavi's tombstone and the sopping wet flag that lay on it like a second skin. He stepped forward and gripped a corner of the Order burial cloth and dragged it off the black stone because it didn't seem right to have it on there anymore. A corpse didn't have Innocence, so right now the person buried wasn't an Exorcist. Just a normal young man that had died for a stupid reason at the age of twenty-five, he didn't belong to the Black Order. And not to the Bookman's lineage, either, not for six years.
In fact, the only one with any real reason to stand at Lavi's grave was Tyki Mikk.
Before the flag was removed completely, a gloved hand reached for the other end. Komui faced the younger man and watched him bring the white cloth to his lips and kiss it.
"Thank you, Supervisor. He did speak well of you."
Time later, Komui never brought the lie to attention nor did he ever write to Bookman for what he'd done. And while his little sister and a couple of older Exorcists and Finders that knew Lavi still went to the grave every now and then, Komui stayed away from it in fear of being caught by the Noah. Or worse: catching the Noah himself standing before Lavi's name.