Twelve Days
Kanda is coming back. Lavi is not. Kanda/Lavi
"In twelve days, I will forget…"
-Jackie, 12 days
One
?
Date unknown.
He's watched, oh so carefully, as his head tilts back. His mouth falls open into a gap and they lean in, as if birds could fly out.
He thinks several things at once. The first is a slow and sticky realization, a sugar spill enveloping his brain: "I can't. Not anymore."
Second, a memory. An impression. There's a clarity to the eyes, like a polish, when pain takes you so unexpectedly the body isn't even prepared for tears. There had been a deep and savage triumph in teaching Kanda a new kind of hate and hurt, when Kanda had been so arrogant about knowing them all already.
Then there's the last, that's the one that sticks. He thinks, stunned: "I've been written out." Out of Kanda's story, out of his own. Out of any story that counts. And that, that's just the best, it's a joke, it's what he asked for.
Out of the black yawn of his dropped jaw comes laughter. It's horrible. They wouldn't know, because horror is their bread and butter. They do stare, curious and slightly cross at him. But in any case, it's not what they are looking for. So they stick another finger in his heart and wriggle, to see what else they can jimmy out.
Two
A few months ago.
Lavi is alone in the field right before sunset. All around him are puddles that seeped out of the mud in weepy discs. The oranging sun tints them opaque and yellow like saucers full of fresh golden milk. Saffron, he thinks. Appropriate. But only to a point, since saffron is technically harvested from crocuses.
So maybe poppy milk instead. Swollen pods, slashed and dripping potent, creamy amber. For long, sweet dreams.
He crouches and slips his hands into one. There's a rush of baleful warmth, the soaking-in of the day. It feels like a human heat, comforting and septic. Breaking the puddle's surface turns it back into simple water, and the blood from his scratches eddies up in smoky red wisps.
Kanda would have said, stupid, why would you try to catch rocks with your hands? Lavi might have answered back irritably, because it's preferable to catching them with your face.
But Kanda might have driven off the stone-casters for him too, not even needing Mugen. He would have given them one look of incredulous contempt, and the villagers would have slunk off in shame. He would have washed Lavi's wounds and rested Lavi's head onto his shoulder, like teammates huddling close after the game has been lost.
Or he might have said, turn back.
Lavi wouldn't have, so Kanda might have tackled him wrestled and wrested until he had Lavi permanently entombed in the mud. Preserved in the pools of saffron milk or poppy juice or the just plain water that cleans before it drowns. After all, past experience dictates that it's easier to keep people in storage than to fight them.
Or love them.
Kanda is not here.
Lavi washes out the cuts on his palms and face.
Three
A year ago.
Kanda drifts through a maze of gold, magenta, cerulean, and corroded copper green. Hands run over the wares hanging on the stalls, sending bell-likes sounds rippling through the market. Open sacks of spices in rich mineral hues stew the air into a complex soup, made unappetizing by the underlying stink of animals in the street. Gold studs in noses, crimson dots on foreheads, loosely wound pink and turquoise saris. They flash by as shoppers step around him, arm in arm. Men crowd together in teashops to debate the sins of their statesmen.
In all this muted disorder, Kanda thinks only one thing.
He hates Lavi.
Lavi is tucking a flower into the tie of his hair. He says, "Hey look, they're selling lotuses, they're beautiful!…Yuu, what's wrong? I thought you liked lotuses, you have that one in your room!"
Kanda wants to punch Lavi in his stupid face.
Lavi is one of the few people who approaches Kanda outside of work. (Which is different from being noticed. Everyone notices Kanda, in the same way one would notice a crack in the ceiling that might one day give way to a collapsed roof and kill them all.) Approaches him with teasing, and unwanted affection, and thoughtless little gifts like the lotus in his hair.
It doesn't matter how much Kanda tries to discourage him with death threats and actual murder attempts. The dogged determination to be his friend feels familiar in a way that makes Kanda sick.
They've known each other for two years now. That's longer than he knew Alma.
Not like he can summon much of a memory of Alma's friendship anymore. The jokes, the mornings in the incubation room, the sleepy-sweet times of waking up from nightmares and limbs dropping off together… Those few months, they boil away into the blackened tar of the last few moments.
But scratch Alma. Alma had tried to kill him. And fair enough, because Kanda had tried to kill him right back. So they're even. That's all done with now.
Lavi is smiling bemusedly at the petals, torn up and strewn around his feet.
Kanda knows Lavi well enough by now that the know-it-all, expert on war and conditions for stalemates, would look him straight in the eye and say no, you aren't. Because you came out ahead, didn't you?
Which is why Kanda deliberately loses Lavi the next time a swell of people divides them. As he goes about the city by himself through the morning, there are icons and statues and actual lotuses everywhere. He hates India.
That flower that Lavi put in my hair, he thinks. That was fresh. They must grow nearby.
She appears in his sightline, as clear as if she were real, flying past in a billow of skirts that he could count the number of flounces on. She stops short, hair and dress falling into place as she stands in a hollow of lotus flowers. Her smile radiant, her hand extends towards him, the expectancy in it more loving than a kiss.
Because, as she says, "Forever…"
And then she is gone again. Kanda is alone in a buzzing crowd.
He thinks, I killed Alma. I killed Alma for you because you said you're waiting for me. And I'm no closer to you now than the day he died.
Lavi is sulking in the reception area when Kanda walks in. He looks up from where he's sprawled out on the couch.
"Thanks for ditching me. I thought you were a professional. Are we going to go looking for this thing or what?"
"I got it already."
"What?"
"I got it. The innocence. The mission's done, I already called Komui. I just bought our tickets for the first train tomorrow."
Lavi spasms a bit and starts to say something, but Kanda cuts him off
"I couldn't get seats in the same car. Too short notice. I don't think I'm going to be tired tonight, so I'm going to stay downstairs and write up the report. Lucky you, you'll have the room to yourself. I guess I'll see you tomorrow when we leave." Kanda lies, smooth as ice.
Something crosses Lavi's face, but it's there and gone. Right away he is beaming, only glad that the mission is a success.
"Great! That saves me a lot of time and work. Thanks Yuu, I guess that frees me up to explore. This is a great city, just think about what's out there! "
Kanda is no longer listening, but Lavi continues to babble: "Yeah so… I'm just going to nip upstairs and give Bookman and the others a call, you never know what information he'd want about a place given the opportunity. And hey, time for souvenir shopping!"
Lavi nimbly hops off the chair and bounds up the stairs.
"Thank again, Yuu!" He calls over his shoulder.
Kanda watches him go, idly vicious in his satisfaction in having handled him. Lavi is much smarter than Alma ever was. Alma had believed, against all evidence, that Kanda was a good person. He thought Kanda cared about the people around him, and would sacrifice for them. He was wrong, and that's why he's dead.
Meanwhile, Lavi (mostly correctly) assumes that Kanda is ruthlessly self-interested, and there's a story behind how he got that way. Usually true, but Kanda at least notices other people when they start to become a problem for him. He knows there's a reason why Lavi asked to go on this mission with him, and it has something to do with that dark side of Lavi that no one seems to like. It's been snooping around the lotus, and the second exorcist program, and though he doesn't know it, Alma and that person.
The bags were sent ahead from the station and Lavi's already checked himself in, but Kanda has to get his own key from the man behind the counter. When he goes upstairs to deposit the innocence, the door is ajar and he can hear Lavi on his golem.
"It's not working. I can't do it anymore right now, not with him. It's too hard. He's wearing me out."
There's a silence of a reply, and in a low voice, Lavi agrees,
"No. I don't have much time left."
When Lavi sees Kanda, Kanda expects him to jump to his feet. Instead he keeps his back flush to the bed, but lifts his chin up a little to meet Kanda's gaze. The turned up angle of his nose makes him look a little haughty. There is something setting in his face like a mold, languid and unpleasant.
Kanda stares. He wants nothing to do with this scene. He has to say something to excuse himself from it, but what?
"I'll leave you alone, then." He says finally, and turns to go.
"It's nothing, you know." Lavi calls as he's one foot out the door.
"Okay."
"There's nothing going on."
"I believe you. I'm going."
"No you don't," Lavi says dismissively, making Kanda glance back despite himself.
"You know what your problem is? You think there's nothing worse than someone finding out that thing you're so desperate to hide. There is. It's no one ever finding out. "
Lavi sits up, stretching. There's something hostile in it.
"But you know what, Yuu…today I'm going to do something a little bad and have some fun," He announces with a wink.
"What, are you going whoring?" Kanda asks reluctantly, somewhat accusingly.
Lavi clasps his hands over his heart, falling back into the bed in mock surprise. "Yuu! That language! Who even knew you had it in you!" He bounces playfully but his tone is remarkably cold.
"No. I'm going to spend the day with you."
Kanda doesn't even like to think it because it's so absurd…but the first time ever, he's a little afraid of Lavi.
They end up the Ganges with a flock of glittering, happy children at play. Kanda would have stayed on shore, but Lavi can be surprisingly strong and dragged him in by the wrist. Once in the water, Kanda shoved Lavi hard in the back, but he only came up sputtering and laughing, immediately splashing some pretty, squealing girls close to their age nearby.
Kanda watches sourly as some little girls and boys fearlessly run up to Lavi, grab his hands and show him how stomp at the water like there's something to kill in it. Kanda starts to make his way to dry land, but a big boy thinks he's part of the game and runs right into him, knocking him over.
The water quickly closes over his face and it becomes dark. Kanda is livid as he feels a foot tromping on his shoulder. The child is already past, his departing heel sluicing against Kanda's waterlogged ear.
He lashes out, but finds no purchase. Tendrils of his hair float into his eyes and he angrily turns his head to get clear of them.
And there she is. Her dress is spread out around her like the folds of an inky jellyfish. Her arms are limp. She's falling backward with her back arched, a stream of bubbles escaping from her mouth. Drowning-
His hand reaches out for her and slashes right through her body—
-Then Lavi is hoisting him to his feet. Kanda coughs and spits up water like an idiot.
"Yuu, I thought you could swim" Lavi scolds him. Then he shakes his head, confused. "Wait, the water's not even deep. Just stand up next time."
He sloshes back to where the children are calling him.
"That was fun!" Lavi announces as they drip in the streets. The sun is in its zenith and burns to the skin, but unlike the locals in their breathable cottons and linens, Kanda and Lavi are dressed in heavy synthetic blends developed by the Order's R&D. Kanda chafes, itches, and steams from the humidity of his own body. He wants to crack Lavi one more than ever. The only thing stopping him is that this country is literally made of people and he doesn't know if he can get a clear shot. Even now they're surrounded by city denizens, as slow and dense as a flock as sheep now that the day is winding down.
All he can do is seethe and storm forward as furiously as he can in the tidal wave of people in his path, and refuse to answer Lavi.
"This is what life is made of, don't yah think Yuu? Forget battles n' heartbreak, these are the things we shouldn't forget."
What was wrong with Lavi? The things you can't forget are bad things. The people you can't save. The people you doom.
"We always seem to be running from one apocalyptic disaster to the next, but I've always wished for more times like this. Soldiers at the cantina trading stories and shots, their sweethearts coming to see em' off with a dance and a kiss. Picking up some of the local color, playing games with the local kids. Y' know? Always…"
Always…
Lavi's tone has gone strange and although it was what Kanda was striving for, there is more distance between them than he would have expected. Kanda turns around, just so he can snap at Lavi to stop acting so weird.
Lavi is standing stock still in the street, dripping as if he just emerged from a pool or got drenched in the blood of a hundred traitors. His expression is hollow like a reaper's and hopeful like loved one's. This comes together badly for Kanda. Something twists hard inside him and leaves him cold.
"What do you think, Yuu? When this war is over, will you remember your friends?"
Unconsciously, he puts more space between him and Lavi, and then just goes, leaving Lavi behind for a second time. He can feel Lavi's eyes boring into his back, green and disappointed. Then the crowd engulfs them in separate bubbles of human bodies and the feeling fades.
The next time Kanda sees Lavi it is almost dark. Lavi sitting on the railing of the balcony connected to their room. There's a long, skinny pipe in his hand in the shape of a flute, or a giant's fingerbone.
"What the hell are you doing? What is that?" Kanda tries to grab the pipe, but Lavi easily ducks out of his reach and darts into the room.
"If you don't know what it is, why are you trying to stop me?"
The words "Is it dangerous?" build up pressure on Kanda's tongue. The pointlessness of asking makes him bite them down. Whether it's dangerous or not, Lavi obviously doesn't care. And it's none of his business what Lavi does.
Lavi throws his head back, exposing the long line of his throat, and blows out straight at the ceiling. The vapor comes out in a rapid stream, like an erupting volcano. A surprisingly pleasant floral note suffuses through the room.
"Ahhhh…God, I've been needing this."
"Are you crazy?"
"Nope, just stressed as fuck. I don't know how you stand being so tightly wound all the time, don't you ever get tired of it?
Kanda doesn't want to get deeper into this, but he wavers and asks, "Are you going to get sick, or…"
Lavi holds out the pipe sideways, the faint blue lines in his bare wrist showing. His eyebrow is raised. Kanda stares at it in consternation. Lavi starts to laugh at him, realizing that Kanda doesn't know how. Kanda can feel himself flushing. He's about to knock the pipe out Lavi's hands, who cares if it breaks—
"Here."
Lavi comes around and hooks Kanda so nonchalantly that he doesn't even have the instinct to resist.
When Lavi turns his head to the side and brings the pipe to his lips, Kanda sees his chest seize from the draught. When Lavi faces Kanda again, his mouth is tight as a seal. The pinch makes him squint, cheeks scrunching up to his short brown lashes. He leans in, tilting slightly to avoid bumping noses.
Kanda opens his mouth, and a stream of smoke with the tangy-sweet scent of rose petals passes between them.
Kanda hadn't even felt Lavi's hand had on his shoulder, bracing him, but now he sees Lavi drawing it back. Lavi puts the pipe down on the table, a dull thump of ceramic on wood. Kanda exhales, turning Lavi into a bloom of fog. By the time it clears, Lavi has tipped himself over contentedly into one of the unmade beds, tangling with the bedding. Lying back, he heaves a sigh.
Kanda sits down next to him, cracking his neck awkwardly. He waits, but he doesn't feel anything. Meanwhile, Lavi's pupil has become a pinpoint of black floating in color. The iris is like a chunk of raw innocence, green and luminous. Lavi smiles.
"Don't tell anyone about today, OK?" he says into the unlit room. Everything is slowly turning indigo from the deepening dusk outside the window.
Kanda glances over at him. Lavi is completely relaxed, loose red hair messily framing his face on the pillow. "Why?" he asks neutrally.
"Just don't." Lavi answers simply, seriously. Which explains nothing, but Kanda understands.
Lavi is afraid of something. It's getting harder for him to hide it, and he doesn't want to face it. He trusts Kanda to not make him, because Kanda is the exact same way.
It's not a trade—Lavi will go back to prying about Kanda's past and his powers soon, and it will be excruciating. Despite the injustice, he knows Kanda will spare him the same. It's not because Kanda doesn't care about other people's problems, or isn't curious, which is what anyone else would assume about him.
Why?
Because it hurts Kanda thinks, looking at him.
Lavi believes that this will make a difference. He believes in Kanda's empathy.
Without thinking about it, Kanda leans down.
Four
The day after a year ago.
Kanda had somewhat expected for Lavi to have a narcotics-induced lie-in, but he is up with Kanda at 6 am and angry. He whirlwinds around the room, throwing things together for their departure even though their train doesn't leave until 10.
"Lavi, yesterday, you—"
"Yesterday, I was on drugs! Are you out of your mind?!" He flounders, visibly tripping himself up. He blushes red and turns jerkily back to his open suitcase. His voice is strained as he tries to close the matter quickly.
"Whatever. Just don't tell anyone, ok?" he says, echoing himself from yesterday. He hears it, gets frustrated, knows that it makes it seem that he was more lucid than he is willing to admit. "Just don't tell anyone!" he repeats nevertheless, growly and wild.
"Lavi, what you said before, about remembering friends—"
"Lay off! You know what, you're off the hook, we're not friends, so it's moot. Just leave it alone."
"You were talking about you, weren't you? You were asking if I'd remember you."
Lavi hands go still inside the contents of his suitcase. All of him does. Kanda waits, watching him put it all together. Maybe Lavi would have asked it of Allen, or Lenalee, or anyone else who happened to be with him, but Kanda is the one who was there.
"I won't call you Yuu anymore."
Of all things to say, that is not something Kanda expected. He's at a loss, and Lavi seem to draw strength from how he doesn't have a reaction ready.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Lavi questions him sharply, on the offensive. "I already decided a long time ago that there's a reason why you don't like being called that. You have things that you don't want to come out, same as me. Fine, I'll respect that. How about you return the favor?"
Alma's tinny voice reads from the book the scientists gave him about making friends. Making a friend from the only available one in the candidate pool.
"If that person treats you badly, do not hold it against him. You do not know what his struggle is. Be kind to him. Help him through his dark times without any hope of thanks. This is the rarest, most precious friendship of all".
Alma's face comes up from the pages and that funny scar across the bridge crinkles his eyes more than his grin, making him look doubly pleased. Yuu had found the words stupid even while having to grudgingly give Alma credit for being right. Kanda isn't sure he wants to offer, but because Alma was so very dorky and proud for winning over Yuu before he went dark, he commits halfway anyways.
"Lavi…you need help, don't you?"
Lavi tilts his head at him appraisingly.
"What Kanda, you need another ghost to chase?" he says cryptically and cruelly.
The image of Alma sweetly lecturing Yuu about friendship quickly burns away into Alma weeping because he has a reaper's cradle instead of an arm. Edgar bleeding out at the point paints him a different color from head to toe.
Then there's the girl in a field of flowers who is always reaching out for him, in his dreams and waking life. Whoever she is, he knows she's waiting for him. She's been waiting for a long time. And she's just as far away as the day he split Alma in two.
Kanda thinks about the tattoo on his chest, Allen Walker's mutant eye and arm, and Lenalee Lee's shattered legs that only got clumsily glued back together by her innocence. Lavi stands before him with normal limbs and solid footing in the real world, not even disfigured like the rest of them. Forget the eye, Kanda can tell he's faking.
Kanda has never seen a plainer person. What does Lavi know about being a ghost?
"Stop being so melodramatic. You're not a ghost. You're a human. A human with small, sad problems. You could fix them if you bothered to try."
Lavi breaks his nose.
Kanda staggers back with his vision spotty and blood dripping from his hand. It'll heal in a heartbeat but it hurts like a bitch. As if this gesture needed any more clarification, Lavi shakes out his fist to cool down the knuckles, and says
"Go fuck yourself."
Kanda ignores this and barrels into him, knocking him onto the bed. People think Kanda is thin and sprightly, that there must be magic involved in turning him into an ogre when Mugen gets into his hand. He's not and there isn't. He deftly deflects Lavi's blows and uses brute force to seize him in a submission hold. Instead of securing Lavi's arms, he grabs his head and holds it firmly face down. It's like throwing a blanket over a bird. When there is nothing you can see to fight, you go still in the dark.
Lavi thrashes and screams incoherently into his chest, but this doesn't bother Kanda in the least. Kanda waits until he has quieted.
When he has, except for his heavy breathing, Kanda says, "Shut up Lavi. You're going to be fine."
What ensues is a manic tangle of limbs and hair and argument, a minute intermission to clean up the blood, and more argument. They miss the train and don't call. Komui worries himself half to death.
Author's notes:
It's going to be a four-part series.
I don't know what Lavi is smoking. Something made up and harmless, this is fiction.