Title: The Tower
Fandom: D.Gray-man
Author: su-dama/tempusfugit3
Pairing: Lenalee, Kanda
Rating: PG for slight language
Words: 2,250
Disclaimer: DGM belongs to Hoshino Katsura et al.
A/N: For those needing the touch of someone's hand.
-The Tower-
They are discussing the State of the Church, and Lenalee calls it a church, this one building they enter, because it's bigger than a chapel or temple or sanctuary of various kinds. She's never particularly liked churches, chapels, temples, or sanctuaries; she's loved them because of what they represent. It's not the stained glass or otherworldly arches, not the specks in the sunrays through this stained glass and otherworldly arches. She's just fond of the way she can walk in, any hour on the clock, and find herself quieted.
Peace from her early days when there were gags.
This peace is reaching out within her to Kanda's wings, his arms around their wet cloaks. He lays them gently on a pew. He stands there and gazes at the crucifixion on the large wall space in front of them; it's not that large, nor are they larger than life. The rain had driven them in. They have only the altar and themselves.
"It's pouring hard," she says. "Kanda, did you hear the thunder?"
He turns to her; his face is damp, fringe sticking to his forehead.
"You should dry off. If you catch cold, I'd feel guilty."
"You always feel guilty," he says.
"I have a right to. You're my friend." She moves quickly to be upright beside him. She genuflects and he shakes his head. It makes her heart hammer, thrumming the droplets from the tips of her hair. She hugs herself because this church today is empty, empty and old and used. There are no sunrays due to the storm, thus no possible warmth for peace. She looks around for a fireplace.
Lenalee can remember the last time she was alone with Kanda: he was having his tea, and she had joined him. She seems to always be joining him; but when she was little, he'd join her, and he would bring her candies-with-affection Jerry had made for her. Kanda never ate these candies. He would pat her shoulder and she would suck on a cherry-flavored lollipop, smacking her lips at the stickiness, and he'd pat her some more. It was as if she deserved him. He sometimes murmured things for her ears alone, that everything was not as bad as she believed them to be; that she should start breathing instead of holding her breath for the end of days.
It had worked, and he made her breathe easy. And there was a time he placed a single petal on her pillow in the infirmary, and he had nodded, and said it was her in such a small form, and he'd give her a whole flower once she got better. Then he was swatted out by the nurse.
Presently, she runs her fingers along the tapestry at the segment of the wall on her right. It is taller than the both of them.
Kanda used to start things and end things quickly, like she deserved him but he didn't deserve her. He would bring her those candies and little gifts and make very small gestures that anybody else would have missed in plain sight. She had begun to look forward to how his patting her shoulder made her drowsy, kind of like how Komui made her giggle-cry whenever he played with her hair and said she was just like Mother, with all that hair.
Now her hair is short. She tucks it behind her ear and leaves the tapestry.
Kanda. He was. He was a boy who held her hand, begrudgingly; who let go of it, begrudgingly. There were many times he actually held on a second longer. There was always that languid moment in which she'd feel like she wasn't losing her head. With him.
"Someone came in and blasphemed," he says, humor somewhat in his tone.
She turns and frowns. "What does it say?"
"It's just a crude drawing."
Lenalee rushes to his side again, dropping her jaw at the crudeness. "Goodness that's disgu—" She gives an angelic face with her mistake. "That's interesting, I mean."
"You don't have to worry. I'm not offended. You're a girl," he says plainly.
"Kanda, I think I know what that is, and that's a, hum," she declares, losing her voice.
"It's written in blood."
"Oh that's right, that's what that is."
He eyes her (that disconcerting expression that makes her laugh) and there is a slight blush barely detectable around his nose and ears. He motions for her to step away from the penis graffiti on the altar.
"Who do you suppose did that?"
"Maybe Lavi," he says. She can sense his lips curving.
"Kanda!"
He raises his brow at her, the water drying in trails down his cheekbones, where there is dirt from earlier.
"Kanda, we all know Lavi would not draw that. He would draw breasts," she adds, laughter keeping at the base of her throat. She can see how he closes his eyes briefly to hold in his own amusement. She jumps off the steps of the altar and waits for him. Her heels of Innocence strike the boards; she could put holes through them because of the power it gives her to think about it. She suddenly feels deserted and hugs herself again. "Do you feel that?"
"Yes," he says, looking around them, up toward the ceiling. There is an entrance to somewhere on their left. "Look." She looks. "Lenalee, stay here."
"No, I'm coming with."
"No, stay."
"Kanda? What is it?"
Lenalee thinks she knows where that deserted feeling is coming from, but she doesn't think it's coming from where he thinks it is: the tower to their left, the staircase leading to the bell. She credits the building itself. They are both missing something.
They are in a city with a church on the west end with a tower and a bell in that tower. She had only glimpsed it outside. (West is like the end of days.)
The storm is getting noisier and dramatic; thunder shocks her voice so she has to look behind her at the empty pews, paranoid, mid-sentence. She is not scared. Thunder does not scare her; people do, people who leave her.
"Hey, Kanda, wait for me."
She can hear him sighing to himself as he enters the staircase, bleak and gray, like a castle's. Their voices bounce. Thunder bounces with their voices. And there is lightning that catcalls out to them from the passageway, slivers of electric light illuminating the insides of her eyes. The sound could be exaggerated by the bell. She feels strangely deserted.
"Kanda, something's up there," she whispers.
"Right."
He carries himself like a ghost up the stairs, Mugen unsheathed and poised low, pointed toward the tower, shining in the bleakness of the occasion.
She thinks of something scary but pretends to be okay. The rain had gotten into her eyes, lashes webbed together, so that she sees and views things in contradiction, that she's not paranoid because she sees and views all sorts of things. Now you see it, now you don't.
Because he climbs, she follows. Lenalee follows like air on the balls of her shoes and is careful to keep the rings around her ankles from clicking together, though now she remembers, damn, damn, she hasn't Invocated yet. She had done so earlier on their mission, but that had been hours ago and they had been caught in the rain.
The noises are different the higher they go, step by—she is anxious, he is predatory—step. Lenalee, his consort with heels of wind, may Kanda ride on it. He motions for her to stay near the wall if she is so adamant about coming with. She pokes his back for him to stop being so asshole-ish. They continue on.
She hopes they are just being paranoid and that they'll return to the drawing downstairs and Lenalee will laugh, oh, it's funny after all, it's just a penis (she'd only seen her brother's penis in the bath when they still bathed together, and the memories are vague).
Though the drawing is in poisoned blood.
And that's not funny.
Kanda scares her with a shiver he cannot contain, especially with how he lowers his sword further to the floor, then toward his belt.
"It's already happened," he says, emotionless.
For a moment she is about to, adamantly, force his sword back up toward the tower. They are more than halfway, almost there, almost. Then she understands. "No."
"Yes. It smells like death." He stares forward, starting forward again.
She grabs his arm. "Careful."
He shushes her by putting his hand up, and she sees that he's been biting his nails. She had stopped biting her nails, and he'd begun. She wants to swat at his hand to relieve the shield of silence. Lenalee knows this is stupid, but she is suddenly angry at his ridiculous need to shield and shelter and shove her out of the way. He is her brother all over again, though this is worse; for Kanda is a longtime friend who had given her candy and patted her shoulder without the family ties to obligate him to such chores. She is suddenly astonishingly angry.
"Lenalee, don't—!"
"It's already happened, hasn't it?" she spits out. "Why . . .?" But it's impossible to question him. She heads up the stairs faster than he can pronounce her first name. Two steps at a time; her legs have healed and made her beautiful once again. Her anger flares and dies down into a ball that pops and disappoints. Bobbing ablaze. She is running, she is running into a door and the door is opening and—
"Oh God." She pushes off from the opened door and walks to the pile of dust that's being lifted and dancing by the storm. The part of the wall is missing, a chunk out of it, wood and stone crumbling, metallic structures, bits flying up into her face: the ashes, the ashes here below her feet. Her heart doesn't have a chance to drop before Kanda is at her and saying things at her; he is saying only one thing at her, but it is still At Her.
"You don't want me to fucking protect you. Fine, all right."
She's been here before. They've been here.
Lenalee finally removes the point of her shoe from the pile. Her legs are dusted by the stuff. The wind is moving around them, the storm is above, and so is the bell of copper, darkness inside of it, pure black candy, liquorish. It scares her so much she makes a sound that shouldn't be coming from her.
"It's not the vandal," she is saying to him, calmly.
He picks up the clothing remains scattered across the floor. Kanda is being respectful and placing the clothing upon the pile, black and white like his nature. He is silent and also careful, like she warned him to be—protective anyway. She forgets to be angry. She thinks it's the priest's ashes. Somebody of this church. Somebody.
The thunder and lightning.
"The Akuma must've, they must have come here, when we were over there, and," she questions herself, "I wonder if we missed it by a few minutes or if this just happened and we were in the church at the same time?" She nods to herself, neither scared nor angry. She finds her own hand wiping the dust away from her shins, slowly. Nor is she feeling completely.
Kanda has put Mugen to his belt, stepping over toward her with boots now clunking down, faster than she is slow. He is breathing, he is her friend and he is breathing in her own unfeeling.
She scowls as he scowls; he nods his head once. "All right?"
"Of course."
He stands near her and his hand is going to her shoulder. She is good in her patience however hard it is to let him touch her shoulder just to pat it. He hadn't in so long, she was beginning to forget what it feels like to be comforted this way, from him. He's supposed to be tenderless. She's supposed to be strong now.
"Kanda. We have to tell the authorities."
He pats her firmly there, fingertips like steps through her jacket.
The wind is ringing the bell. It is not moving, despite the sounds around them.
She thinks they'll be crushed by the bell if the supporting arch fails. It's about to. It could fall and they'd die, too. The other walls could collapse on them. The wind and rain could push them over. Or they could die the same way the priest did, whoever, if Kanda's power ran out and if Lenalee lost her will to live. They are such parasites, both in ways they do not talk about. But.
Kanda's hand is brushing down her arm and grabbing for her hand, meshing inside her fist. Warmth, send it in. His hand is slightly wet and dusty, though a grip of steady-pace-yourself warmth. He squeezes and says by the squeeze, Breathe, before the lightning may strike us down.