The Crystal Ship, a d.gray-man fanfic

AN: Woot, a surprise fic! I know I haven't announced I was gonna end anything soon...but here you go. 4 hours or so. Yay inspiration.

Happy 9-9-9 date, if your day was not filled with awesome magic, maybe at least this will help. : D

Summary/About: Another small drabble...this time with parallels to Snow White. XD Mild LaviKanda / KandaLavi. (P.S. I don't think 'Snow White' as such existed in the 19th century...but it's 'fictional', so if Dragonball did, then screw it. I'll let myself make this a nice, peachy plothole.) Rated T for implied gayness, though I'd put K on it if I had a say.

Disclaimer: -Man and characters belong to Katsura Hoshino. Songtitle and four lines of lyrics belong to The Doors (it's an AWESOME song. Listen to it while you read, I tell you!).

THE CRYSTAL SHIP

"...And the princess had skin white as the innocent snow, and hair black as the raven's wing. But an evil sorceress was jealous of her beauty and decided the princess has had too much happiness. So the sorceress made a poisonous potion and dipped the most pretty apple she could find in it. The princess saw no evil in people, she took the poison apple that an old woman had offered her and tasted it, and the very same moment she took a bite, she fell to the floor.

The princess was locked inside a crystal coffin in the forest's sanctuary, because she was so beautiful even in death that everyone wanted to see her. One day, a prince was travelling by; he had heard rumours about an amazingly beautiful girl sleeping eternally, and he saw her, and fell in love. As he leaned down to kiss the princess, her head turned a bit and the poisonous bite of the apple fell out of her mouth, and she awakened..."

Lavi had no idea why he was reading that child's tale. It used to be his favourite, not that he ever believed in tales - being the Bookman's apprentice, he knew better than that. He believed only in facts. But he still enjoyed reading tales, imagining things that could never be, thinking what would happen if the world was a bit better... maybe dreaming was what was turning him more and more human. And in that exact tale, there was something drawing him to it, even though he couldn't tell what it was. Maybe...

Maybe it was Yu. Lavi's grumpy best friend, who had locked himself into a glass prison of solitude, who had flawless pale skin and raven-black hair, who was slowly being killed by poison of a lotus spell which's emblem was embedded on his chest.

Whenever he was talking with Yu, Lavi would almost see himself banging on the cold crystal walls, pleading to be let in, refusing to just watch Kanda wither, unable to reach him from behind the glass. And the samurai would continue shutting him out anyway - or maybe he couldn't do anything about it. Maybe...maybe he needed to be saved from the poison apple, too.

"Say Yu, do you like fairy-tales?" Lavi's grin is just as annoying as ever, and his single visible eye glitters mischievously. Kanda snorts scornfully and doesn't plan to answer, but Lavi follows him down the hallway as if pulled by an invisible string, grinning at his face all the time.

"They're for kids," Kanda finally grunts and speeds up. But the redhead doesn't fall behind.

"Oh come on, Yu, that depends on who's reading it," he says. Without getting an answer, he continues, "You know, fairy tales often hide morals, wisdom or truths that are actually important to a reader of any age, and you can recognize many things you could find around you and learn from it, and some of them help you imagine something you wish you could do but you can't.."

Kanda listens to the, in his opinion, mindless blabber and almost, almost wants to hit Lavi. But he doesn't. Instead he wonders if he'd like to read a tale about a samurai beating up a fool at the moment, however decides that he would not.

Fairy-tales are for kids.

Though sometimes, sometimes he feels like a really big kid.

Lavi thinks.

He's the Bookman's successor, and yet he cares about people; he cares about Kanda too. He knows more about Kanda than most people because of his work, even though those files don't seem like just ink and paper to him. Kanda knows that he knows, and so they have some kind of mutual understanding - and yet the samurai seems to be afraid of it, he tries not to get close to anyone, he's scared of the changing world around him as if he was a kid and tries to lock himself within, hiding from it. Sometimes Lavi feels like this too, and he doesn't want to rethink all the things that made them friends in the first place. But he also notices another similarity between them.

Dreams. Neither of them has any.

He doesn't have a dream, he has a duty, a purpose - just how the old man keeps reminding him. Funny thing is, despite of being quite different, Kanda is the same. Almost as if the war is the reason he exists in the first place. Almost as if no one - including himself - matters at all.

Being at war from the very beginning, they both seem to have stuck in a strange mix of childishness and maturity, and Lavi sometimes wonder if either of them can dream at all. He's pretty certain he could but he thinks it's a waste of time; Kanda doesn't have that kind of restrictions yet it doesn't seem he has any ambitions for himself - everything is for the war. The war was taking him away, or maybe that was the doing of the very same glass and poison that surrounded his life?..

Kanda hates.

He's an Exorcist, and that's all he has the intention to ever be. He doesn't remember if he ever questioned it - he probably had, but it doesn't matter now, because everything is settled. For that very reason, he doesn't want anyone close to him. He hates without choosing whom to hate, and when he doesn't find it in him to hate, he at least tries to. He wants to hate Tiedoll's fatherly love for him, Lavi's faked enjoyment of life, Lenalee's luck of having a brother, Walker's naivety and belief in his dreams. He's not jealous, he just sees it all as from behind a glass, in a world that he can't get into no matter how hard he tries, and maybe that's what he's angry at.

And he hates the Order, because it has to be the Order that put him in this position in the first place.

He doesn't want anyone else in that prison of his own making, because that's how things are supposed to be. He's supposed to be a tool in the war against the Earl, nothing more and nothing less, and when someone manages to make him feel human again, all that he normally holds self-evident and true are threatening to crumble. It's not supposed to. And that's why he also wants to hate Lavi, because he's always around and trying to snake his way into the samurai's heart, and his attempts threaten to shatter the glass between him and the world more than anything else does.

At moments like those, he wonders if the person he's looking for even exists, because he doesn't remember how he got that purpose to his head. Maybe the ones that wanted him to fight came up with it at the same time as with everything else, and gave that fatal wish to him just to keep him going like a war machine without ever doubting anything? No, such thoughts were thwarting his loyalty. He didn't want freedom in exchange to the feeling of usefulness. He'd rather stay in illusion, fight his war and die honourably than shatter it and find himself with no other purpose than to die eventually without gaining anything in return.

Lavi persists.

He feels that Kanda actually wants to open up even if he doesn't realize it yet, and that he needs it. So he tries again and again, not minding the small injuries that he gets from time to time, and he silently smiles to himself, genuinely, when he feels it's finally taking effect, though he can't say why exactly he does it. It's something he isn't supposed to feel. He wants to save Kanda.

Kanda denies.

Every time Lavi gets too close or too familiar, he draws his sword almost mechanically, because that's also how it's supposed to be. He doesn't want to trust anyone. He fights alone, like a wolf, and he doesn't want care nor pity, nor anyone thinking they can 'save' him, especially not crazy redheads who fake everything. He wasn't supposed to feel anything, anything at all; and yet there was this, a person shaking his small world to the deeply hidden core and waking the heartbeat in it.

"Yuuu, have you read 'Snow White'?" Lavi interrupts the peace and quiet of the meditation room, and Kanda wonders if it was a mistake to come here.

He keeps silent, but the redhead plops down next to him and starts obnoxiously poking his side, while Mugen is out of his reach. "No," he finally states gruffly without opening his eyes, hoping that his posture gives out the 'leave me alone' message clear enough.

"Well, you should. It's about this really pretty girl who tastes a curse falls into a deathly sleep in a crystal coffin. Then-"

"So what? Now shut up, I'm trying to meditate here."

"It reminds me of you," Lavi exclaims loudly, however the stupid smile he has across his face sort of ruins the image. He beams and the next moment his face painfully plants into the floor, Kanda's fist having collided with the Bookman Junior's head. He rubs it and looks up, and sees Kanda still twitching.

"First off, I'm not a girl," he hisses, Mugen having magically appeared at his hand by now, and Lavi barely dodges a slash. The next moment they're already running down the hallways. Kanda's chasing after him, looking truly infuriated. "Secondly, don't give me such sentimental crap!"

"But Yu," Lavi grins over his shoulder, running as fast as he can, "I have to, after all you're my best friend and.. I love Yu!" Even if said as a joke, he genuinely means it at the moment and it scares him, and he thinks he heard skidding behind him that should mean his beloved is going for the kill - even if he never seriously hurt him, ever, whatever reason there might be.

He expects to be cut to smithereens after this. Surprisingly, when he glances back for a second time, Kanda is gone.

Kanda suspected it would be best if he just kept away from Lavi, yet he also found himself liking the latter's company. Feeling human was strange, but it wasn't something he honestly loathed, and little by little he started wishing he could break the invisible walls around him. But how could he? It was his fate. And fate was something that has been decided eons ago, and nothing could change it unless the gods wished so. Sure, Buddha was a cool guy who didn't enjoy torturing people like some gods do, but that didn't change the fact: fate was inevitable and unchangeable.

That night, he had a very strange dream.

Everything around him seemed to be made from ice, sparkling magnificently in the rare rays of sunlight that would break through the thick layer of clouds. It was like he had entered a crystal kingdom, the one he always suspected existed but never witnessed this vividly, even in a dream. Somewhere far away, behind the icy ocean he was staring at from the snow-covered dunes, there was another world, a world in colour and warmth, the one he was forbidden to enter. The silence was almost tearing his ears, only a light tingling could be heard from time to time, it had to be the huge glass canes rubbing against each other even though there was no wind.

And then he saw a sail in the distance, a ship that was just as white and partly transparent as the rest of his world, beautiful carvings all around it reflecting the stingy light. The sail was hanging perfectly loose, however the ship kept floating, almost as if it was sliding over the air inches above the water, almost in a ghostly manner. Kanda wanted to say something but no sound came from his mouth. What a dreary landscape it was; beautiful, fragile, pure, and yet bitter, estranged and distant.

The ship's almost there and now he can see what's on the deck. And he spots a patch of red, and in moments, Lavi lands swiftly on his feet next to him, the ship having stopped and its one huge, crystalline wall just inches from them. Kanda glares at him, not realizing why is the stupid rabbit still colourful while the rest of the world is not. What's so special about him anyway? He looks down, shock probably clear in his eyes as the land under Lavi's feet seem to come alive and the glassy snow is changed by a patch of emerald green grass. He looks up again, this time without anger, just with surprise, and Lavi smiles at him and reaches out to him, and suddenly he feels alive, and the colours seem to come back to him, and he hears his voice saying "What the hell is this?" as the redhead's hand rests on the samurai's shoulder after touching his cheek.

What sort of a mockery is this? How can he, who sees rules and regulations, and freaking norms, above everything, can have this sort of a delirious dream with another man? What happened to the glass of his world, who dared to shatter it? But he can't stop it without waking up, and he sees himself holding hands with the red-haired menace, walking along the shore, and everything comes alive under their feet, and fantastic flowers bloom in the matter of moments wherever they go.

When Kanda woke up, he realized he couldn't pretend he never had the dream. Angrily, he turned on his other side, and glared at the wall for the rest of the night.

Maybe it was true, maybe both of them did share a special bond. Lavi knew it and regretted before accepting. Kanda didn't know, and was scared upon learning. And yet the outcome was going to be the same. The unknown lines of fate, carved into the crystal walls from the beginning of time, that said they would meet - and they have met -, they would bond - and they did -, and they would save each other. Was the rest of the story encrypted as well? Who knows. But the truth is there.

Lavi is scared.

He doesn't know whether it was a dream or not, but he had witnessed Kanda die once, and he doesn't want to see that ever again. He figures the hourglass in Kanda's room is also a kind of a symbol to the latter's prison, but by now he's sure he can break it if he keeps being determined. He wants to do it before it's too late, he doesn't want to stand and watch Kanda fade out behind the thick crystal wall that lets no feelings pass through. He realizes he shouldn't be feeling this, but he eventually accepts it. Just for Yu.

Kanda is indifferent.

If his destiny is to die, then be it. If the rabbit wants to interfere with it before that, then be it. If he's breaking Christian norms of feelings, then be it. He just doesn't care anymore, and he has to admit he wants to see the colors of the world, even if it won't last long. Or maybe...maybe something can be done about it too. Maybe not everything around him is an illusion. Maybe Lavi isn't.

"What do you dream about, Yu?" Lavi asks silently. He's sitting on Kanda's bed - and Kanda doesn't know why on Earth he hadn't thrown him out yet, but for some reason he feels like he wouldn't really care if the redhead entered his room in the future. Maybe something's changing within them.

"None of your business," he grumbles and looks away, the crystallic landscape present in his mind.

Lavi smiles a little. "I dreamed I saved a princess from the glass and poison by a kiss," he states boastfully and waits to be killed.

However death doesn't come. "Idiot," Kanda snorts, apparently pretending he doesn't get the parallel which he already knows. "You'd just get poisoned yourself. Even your dreams have no logic."

Lavi's smile widens, and it looks genuine. "Maybe what's poison for one is a blessing for two," he suggests carefully.

Silence engulfs them for a while, until there's a quiet breath that sounds almost like "Maybe.", and then the sound dies out as two pairs of lips swiftly meet, gently, seeming almost scared, yet reassuring and true. At first it seems like the kiss lasts just a brief moment, but in a second it's restored and grows more firm.

It feels like the walls are finally shattered, and Kanda feels sounds and colours surround him more real than before, the layer of glass between him and it all seemingly finally gone, and he tastes Lavi's lips without caring if anyone would find this wrong or unfitting, because he's risking his fucking life for the Order and so here he can do whatever he damn wants, he deserves it and more. Lavi suddenly feels at ease, as if a huge rock was lifted off his chest, and he believes everything is going to be alright now for Yu, and hopefully he'll find a way to save him from fading away too, now that he can reach him. He finds it a bit surprising and yet really exciting that Kanda's lips feel this soft, unlike his hands that are rough from constant sword practice. He lets himself be drawn into the vortex of feelings, because supposed to happen or not, this is the right thing to do, and the one written in the book of fate.

After the kiss ends, they pull apart only a little and look at each other for a bit, both a bit embarrassed and contented about finding this new kind of feelings, and everything suddenly seem so much lighter, even Kanda's room, and they both are happy to find that in fact they are needed no matter how they are or what they do, they are needed by each other and it's such a great feeling that neither of them speak for a while, just looking at each other, Lavi clearly happy, and Kanda's expression a lot more softer than his usual frown. It seems like they could just sit there close to each other forever.

Lavi's the first one to break the silence. "Welcome back to the world, princess," he says and grins stupidly, his seriousness suddenly blown away.

Kanda hits him on the head.

"Idiot," he grunts and kisses him again, aggressively, and Lavi doesn't resist.

When they break apart out of air and lean against the wall, sitting in each other's embrace, the dark room seems to lighten and warm up a bit, and the last shatters of walls of loneliness melt way completely, leaving no prisons nor restraints on their souls, and the moment could last forever for all they care. Even if the magic work of the kiss is already complete and their worlds are free and whole again, they don't want to stop yet and share another one..

Lone snowflakes are still falling behind the window, but the coldness is gone.

Before you slip into unconsciousness

I'd like to have another kiss

Another flashing chance at bliss

Another kiss, another kiss

THE END

Hope you like, I think I was high while writing this. 8D