A/N: Hey! *bounce* With luck we'll be getting the chapter 224 update in a little less than a week, and someone's arranged a countdown this time around, so here we are! With the same nonsense title and half-meaningless summary. *grin*

Title: Crown of Thorns

Author: liketolaugh

Rating: T

Pairings: None

Genre: Angst

Warnings: Mild blood/gore

Summary: There are the days the exorcists feel like they've been lined up as humanity's martyrs, here to atone for the sins of the world. Other days, they forget it's not normal. On the worst days, it's both. Chapter 224 countdown.

Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man.


Day 1: The Voice of Darkness


If anyone had thought to ask Marie what his worst memory was, he wouldn't have been able to answer.

He could still remember a time when it would have been easy. The day his family was killed, the day his Innocence activated – the day he learned of a whole new side of the world, and the role he was expected to take in it. The day his innocence was stripped away and, for a while, he stopped playing music for fun.

Four years later, he lost his sight in an akuma attack and choked on the stench of his dying comrades, his ears ringing with their cut-off screams.

And then, less than a month later, he listened to a little boy cry as he hacked apart his only friend for over half an hour, and he listened to the wheezing cries of the damned child that died into moans and then to silence.

So no. Marie wasn't sure what his worst memory was anymore, and honestly, he preferred not to think about it.


It was silent now. Marie wove in and out of consciousness, a pounding headache overwhelming most of his higher thought processes and the assorted smells of death filling his nose. Distantly, he could make out the soft panting of the child who'd saved him, and the occasional gasping half-sobs.

He still didn't even know his name.

He wanted to move, to get up and get out of there, and take the child with him – but he couldn't seem to move, or even speak. His body, it seemed, had decided that it had had enough and failed him, just as it had weeks before.

Marie listened to the drip and ripple of water and blood, and then heard the boy sob, and then passed out again, wrung out and exhausted.

When he woke again, he was in a hospital bed, and he could hear voices. His headache had subsided, the pains of his body faded into a dull throb, but his heart was still thrumming as if he could still hear screams (and he thought that he could.)

"I'll do my best to get you transferred soon. I'm sure you want out of here as quickly as possible."

After a long moment, he identified the voice as Bak Chan, low and gentle, almost delicate. There was a tone of exhaustion, too, heavy and dragging.

"…You still want me to fight for you?"

Though he hadn't heard it much, Marie could still identify the boy's voice far more easily, to his own surprise – even as hoarse and toneless as it was. He could also just conceal a twitch of anger, which flickered down his spine and into his fingertips.

"I'm sorry," Bak Chan answered, sounding genuinely contrite and miserable. "We have no choice in the matter. We need you."

The boy was silent, and Marie continued to feign sleep, listening in. He wanted to know the boy's fate perhaps as much as the boy himself did.

Or maybe, at the moment, more.

"…I don't want to."

"I'm sorry," Bak Chan repeated, and Marie heard the rustle of clothing as he shifted uncomfortably. "We'll do our best to help you. The Order has many resources available to it that can-"

"I don't care. I don't want to be in the Order. I want to leave."

Bak Chan took a deep breath, and Marie braced himself as well. "That isn't an option, Yuu. You will be part of the Order… one way or another."

"…I know."

And it wasn't loud, it wasn't forceful, it wasn't even properly angry – Yuu was clearly too exhausted and shell-shocked for that. But there was a darkness in it, a brewing resentment and threat of chaos that made Marie think of-

Think of Tiedoll, actually, who was perhaps the only man he knew who might be able to calm that storm.

Marie levered himself up slowly, wincing at the oncoming rush of a renewed headache, and turned his head to Bak Chan and Yuu.

"I'll take him back with me," he offered quietly, noticing absently that his own voice was a little hoarse as well. "My master – General Tiedoll – he'll take care of him."

He waited for a few moments, and after an extended pause, it was Yuu who replied.

"Fine."

Though Marie didn't know it, it would be the last thing he heard the boy say for a good long while.


There we go! *smile* Now, I don't know what precisely the prompts are based on, but you can find the rest of the prompts over on dgraymanweek on Tumblr if you're interested. I don't adhere to my usual 1000 word minimum for prompt weeks anymore, but I do try to keep it over 500. *cough* Anyway, thanks for reading, and please review!