"What if it was all a lie?"
"Most things are," Lavi said, crooked eyes looking at the spaces around her, her general shape but not her, "Could you maybe specify?"
Lenalee licked her lips, perhaps only to stall for another moment, another second to struggle with the unnamed fear that had curled its roots between her ribs. "No," she said at last, "No, I don't know. I can't really say."
She reached up and pushed the hair behind her ears, again and again, catching him every time.
(Once, he had tried to write it, tried to find the exact terminology, the exact word for every bone in her wrist, the precise capture of grace, and failed so completely, he had burned the paper, as he had all the others, as he always did, forever hiding the evidence.)
"What's the lie?" he pressed her, dread making him say it.
You're the liar, she ought to say. You're the lie.
Lenalee touched her hair again, playing with the blunted strands, uneasy and unsure and faintly aware that she had staggered into something hollow, and now collapsing.
"God," she posed, then retreated, "No, not God. The mission. The Noah claim to be His disciples just as we do."
"The Noah command an army of demons," Lavi countered with a shaky laugh, "Hardly the holiest of clans."
"But still," she said, "Still. Doesn't it feel like...like there's something we aren't meant to know about?"
So many things, Lavi thought, but did not say. Saying it would mean death.
"It's probably just petty, internal politics," he shrugged, and touched her shoulder. It was supposed to be a friendly, comforting gesture. Appropriate for the briefest of windows. He mentally began to count down from three.
She turned abruptly and pressed herself against him, hands balled against her breast, pressing into his chest, pressing the air from his lungs. He declined to breath.
"You can't tell me?" she whispered.
Slowly, he touched the back of her head, fingers spread so the little one pushed into the nape of her neck.
"I do try," he said, and tried to keep steady, "I do want to tell you."
"It's alright."
"No, it's not."
"It's alright," she said again, and her arms unfolded, and wrapped around him, pulling him down so his face rested against her neck, ear to her pulse, and again he breathed.