Title: the way home
Disclaimer: I don't own DGM.
Pairing: None.
Summary: Reasons why they keep fighting, why they keep calling the Order "home".
AN: Thanks for reading, hope you'll enjoy it.
In the deep, cold wastes of northern Iceland, Allen waits in a leaking hut and huddles closer to the makeshift fire. At the side, the Finders toss and turn and pull their blankets closer around themselves.
The silence is heavy here at the end of the world; no one walks past the dirt road outside, not even a beggar. The fog is thick and grey and otherworldly, and it brings with it a bitter cold that tramples the soul into the icy dust.
He cannot allow himself to fall asleep. No one knows when the Akuma might appear, gunmetal grey bodies shifting out of the heavy darkness, guns out and bullets at the ready. And so he has to remain alert, because the Finders need their sleep.
This mission will be over soon, Allen thinks, warming his fingers. They feel like icicles and he wonders how long he can go without sleep.
He can't wait to return to the Headquarters. The old building rises unbidden in his mind's eye; there are tall turrets that thrust themselves into the forlorn sky, old spires and gothic eaves housing bats and pigeons and even the odd squirrel which creep about at the darkest hours.
Allen thinks of the bustling headquarters. When he gets back, there are plenty of things he wants to do: spar with Kanda, talk to Lavi amid the dusty shelves in the underground library, deliver piping hot coffee with Lenalee, banter with Reever and Johnny, try new dishes created by Jerry, walk in the tranquil gardens when the sun is barely ghosting the horizon, teach Krory to play cards, help Miranda – and then he thinks of the things he will have to do –
hide from new trouble-making Komurins, pay Cross's bills, being unable to save more Akuma while he waits for his next mission within the Order's grounds –
and yet he is glad to have a home to return to.
:::
Lenalee turns and waves to the toddler who peeks out from behind her mother's voluminous grey skirt.
"Thank you, exorcist," the village chief says, pressing Lenalee's hands.
"It was nothing," Lenalee says, beaming.
She boards the waiting train and follows the Finder to their carriage. It will be a long ride back through the moors, through yawning caves and under staid tunnels, and the hours will stretch on through the night like an endless kaleidoscope of horrors.
Lenalee wraps a thick scarf around herself; the Finder has already shut her eyes, exhausted from days of keeping watch. Her colleagues have already moved on to their next assignment, and it is she who gets a brief respite from the war; it is she who gets to return carrying a report to the Order, their home.
Home, Lenalee thinks, and leans her head against the window as she waits for the train to start moving. A solitary gas lamp burns outside along the shadowy, silent platform, a twinkle in the darkness and a glittering source of comfort for all who must travel in the darkest hours of the day.
Lenalee feels comforted by the lamp, for the nightmares come thick these days.
But she is going home.
Home, where her brother waits, drinking endless cups of coffee and reading reports through the night; home, where her friends are, waiting for their next mission. Home, where her heart is, where the darkness is stayed, where unpleasant dreams lose their malignance in the cadence of life and love.
She is going home.
When the train stops, she will take the underground ferry through the deep caves, across the jewel-like water, and step across the tiny dock into her brother's warm embrace, her brother who left his peaceful life in their homeland to accompany her, who left the land and life and woman he loved to be by her side.
Then she will look up at Komui, at Reever and Johnny and others standing behind him, and say I'm home, Brother.
And they will all rejoice in that infinite, miraculous moment.
:::
Kanda points at the rose emblem on his chest as he glares at the portly train attendant.
Perhaps the attendant recognises the emblem – or perhaps he is merely frightened of the sharp sword in Kanda's hands – for he hastily undoes the lock and ushers Kanda into the reserved cabin and leaves almost immediately.
Kanda sits and looks out at the moss-covered bricks of the station. There are dreary-faced people gathered along the platform, hands bundled under their woollen jackets. The wind blows cold here, here in the north of Scotland where the faeries sometimes still dance on moonlit nights.
Kanda hates Scotland. It's cold and he doesn't understand the language which flows like silk.
He also hates England, the land he is about to return to. London is grey and cold; it is also bloated with misery, poverty and smoke, and the living drop like flies every day at every street corner. There is no shortage of new bodies for the Earl to pick and choose from.
Kanda despises the Order. He thinks about leaving – he could leave and no one would know, he could leave Mugen behind, escape into the villages and the woods and eke out an existence somewhere, he could kill himself with a stab to the abdomen, he could hide in a rural village away from the bustle of the city.
But he doesn't.
Instead, he turns off the cabin lamp. In the shrouded darkness he can almost see the diaphanous silhouette of a slim, gentle woman; she reaches behind for his hands. She waits at the door, hands outstretched and never turning back. Kanda can only see the nape of her neck and the elegant bun of dark hair.
He reaches out too – but it is too late; she vanishes as the village bells ring in the midnight hour. His hand passes through nothing but the cool air, touches nothing but the door handle, strangely warm.
The dream dispersed, Kanda tucks his ticket away and waits for the train to start. He will not forsake the Order. He will fight –and fight – and fight, as he must, until he can see her again, as he surely will.
:::
Lavi leans across the parapet of a bridge and rests his chin on his hand. The dark red bricks are stained a sooty grey. His scarf flutters around his neck. The wind is strong tonight, here where the blood-red, sharp-edged scythe trembles on its edge.
"Something wrong?" Bookman says, very nearly a ghoul in the tumbling fog.
The human guillotine is about to bite.
"Everything's wrong," Lavi says.
The air smells wrong too, here where the grinning necromancer directs his servant to unsheathe the sword of death.
A trumpet blows somewhere below. They peer through the fog. There are soldiers below, standing in neat columns, with shiny boots and hardy helmets. The trumpet sounds again, and the men start marching on towards the kiss of death and the un-peaceful rest of the living dead.
"Are you frightened?" Bookman asks as the contingent, brave and loud in its size, marches through the unnatural fog.
"No," Lavi says. But his heart goes thumpthump like a frantic drum, and despair ices his veins.
"We can leave the Order," Bookman says.
"No, Grandpa," Lavi says. "How can we leave?"
"We'll have to leave anyhow, if your Innocence evolves," Bookman says.
Lavi nods in a non-committal manner. The last of the soldiers march out of sight, swallowed up by the dank night and the stretching fog, and Lavi sighs.
The Order is teetering, and Lavi knows he cannot leave yet, not now, not soon, not when the world is about to be extinguished. He thinks of his comrades – his friends – and all they have been through, and he prays under the burning sickle moon that salvation will come.
Until then, they will all keep fighting – together (the code of the Bookmen be damned).