What We Can Do
Fandom: D. Gray-man
Characters: Edgard Chan Martin, Twi Chan, Kanda Yuu, Alma Karma
Warning: Major Character Death
The Second Exorcist Program was going well.
For now, they had only one apostle. His name was Alma, and he had been awake for a few months already. Almost a year.
Edgar watched in silence as Alma talked softly to the sleeping children. Subjects, he corrected himself. Subjects who weren't even alive yet.
"Hey, are you awake?"
Alma's unusually loud question startled him, and he focused again on the small exorcist. He was intently looking in one of the pools. He recognized that one — Alma was always more enthusiastic when he was talking to him. It was Yuu, after all.
"Make a sign if you're awake!"
It was understandable, tough. Still, Yuu never answered. What were the chances of having two subjects at once anyway? Basically inexistent.
"That's great!"
What?
Alma started to say something Edgar didn't have time to process. The sleeping subjects never answered and yet…and yet there was a small hand coming out of the pool, pointing at the babbling Alma.
"Me? Oh, that's awkward. Well, hum… My name is Alma. Happy birthday, Yuu!"
He grabbed Yuu's hand, and pulled him out of the pool. Edgar was still staring. Yuu was awake. Alma had been talking to him; maybe it was what woke him up? It shouldn't surprise him that much, all things considered. It had always been the two of them. Where one went, the other followed.
"We have a second one!" he finally exclaimed, turning to his assistant. "Tell the Branch Head! And get some medicine too!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Professor Edgar!" Alma yelled. "He is soaked, give him you're coat!"
"In a second!"
He took his scientist coat off and put it on Yuu's shoulders, before helping him stand and taking him to the infirmary.
Two apostles at the same time. It was a better than everything they ever had.
It didn't stop him from feeling guilty when he saw Alma's worried eyes follow Yuu as they walked out of the cold chamber. They should have been at peace.
He had a bad feeling about this.
Edgar thought it was strange, how Yuu couldn't stand Alma.
Two exorcists as a couple had always been rare. Yuu and Alma had always been one of the few that lasted — the stress of the war either pushed people together or tore them apart.
He had hoped their good relationship would carry over to the new Yuu and Alma, but he had been wrong. He didn't even know why he hoped…maybe because he remembered how the previous Yuu and Alma were? They had started out as exorcists in the Asian Branch, years ago, when he was only a teenage scientist entering a war he couldn't fight in.
Edgar had been happy to call them his friends. They had been there when he married Twi, andwhen his son was born, but had died a few weeks before Bak's tenth birthday.
Maybe the two of them finding each other again would have made him feel better about this whole thing.
"Are Yuu and Alma fighting again?" Twi asked, walking in the infirmary and considering the damage with a raised eyebrow.
Edgar smiled, rubbing the back of his head. He avoided touching the bandage around his skull, by fear of angering the nurse.
"Did you get in this state by trying to separate them again?"
"I'm not the only one!" he protested, waving an arm in the other victims' direction.
She just shook her head in dismay.
He looked away as blood splattered on the ground and Yuu fell, failing, once again, to synchronize with his Innocence.
"The test isn't over," professor Sarinz said in the speaker. "Do it again."
"What? He can't—"
"During the last ninety years, all our tests have failed. Today, if we get positive results, the project will start and we will finally have hope."
"Alma's heart stopped beating," Twi announced, interrupting their conversation. "Four hundred and eighty seconds before regeneration."
He was right, Edgar told himself. It didn't matter, because if they managed to synchronize, they could end the war. That was they were working for. That was what Yuu and Alma had been fighting for before their death.
He couldn't feel guilty about it. They just wanted to win. They were doing the right thing.
Weren't they?
"Fucking Innocence", he heard Yuu mutter.
Fucking Innocence indeed.
It was early in the morning when he saw Yuu and Alma sneak out of their room. He was happy to know that Yuu now appreciated his fellow apostle. He smiled to himself. Yuu was definitely getting used to his life in the lab, and Edgar could only hoped he could succeed in synchronizing.
He didn't want another subject — no, not subject, child — to die because of them.
"Edgar?"
He turned around to see Twi approaching. She didn't have her usual files and clipboard, it was still too early, but had a cup of coffee in each hand. He grinned at her, and she smiled back, handing him one of the cups.
"Thanks Twi."
"So," she said, taking a sip of her own cup. "Why are you standing alone in the middle of the corridor at 4.30 in the morning?"
"I was watching the kids," he explained, and it felt weird because the last time he had "watched the kid", Bak had been fourteen and not allowed to go wandering alone in the labs. That boy gotlost way too easily. "Fô told me Alma dragged Yuu into his morning ritual. It looks like they'refriends now."
"It's nice to know."
She was starring at the empty room with a pensive frown.
"Things are going to be fine," Edgar said. "If anyone can do this…"
"…it's Yuu and Alma?"
"You're reading my mind, it's amazing!"
She elbowed him in the ribs, and he almost spilled his coffee.
"But more seriously," he continued after regaining his balance. "I'm worried…"
"…about Marie?"
"You're really good at this, you know?"
"Edgar."
"Sorry," he said, not thinking a word of his apology. It must have been noticeable because Twi
sent him a deadpan look, and he smiled sheepishly.
"About that," she said. "He's leaving for a new mission at noon."
His eyes widened in alarm. Marie was blind and still recovering; they couldn't send him…
"He isn't going alone, it's not too far away from here, and it should be an easy one. No Innocence, just destroying Akumas. Reports say they're only level 1 or 2."
"Did you tell Bak? He must have asked."
"Of course not. I didn't want him to worry. He really likes Marie."
"Who decided on this mission?"
"Central. They say Marie is healthy enough to go back to the field. I made sure he got a simple one."
"I'm still not reassured, but thank you."
"We have to take care of the few exorcists we still have. It's only right, with every thing they are doing for us."
He nodded, and their eyes focused on the empty room again.
"Twi?"
"Yes?"
"Are we doing the right thing? The whole Second Exorcist Program…all those children who died in the past ninety years…"
She bit her lips, refusing to look at him. As the Branch Head, Twi couldn't doubt what they were doing — she was the one pushing all of them forward.
"No, I don't think it's right," she finally answered. "But does it really matter?"
He looked at her in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
"All I know is that we're not exorcists. We can't use Innocence. If we could, we would be out there with the exorcists. We can't be on the battlefield, but we still have a perfectly fine weapon. We can still fight."
"I'm not sure I follow you there."
"We have our brains, and it's our responsibility to use them to ensure our victory. Humankind depends on us as much as it depends on exorcists. I don't particularly like it, but until there's a change in how the higher ups handle this, right or wrong doesn't matter."
"I see," Edgar said. "I still feel like we're going to pay for it."
"We probably will," she agreed. "In the meantime, we do what we can."
With the boy's results, they didn't expect things to go awry.
So, of course they did.
How could they not notice Yuu's strange behaviour? The hallucinations? He should have suspected, especially after their conversation about a month earlier. Yuu had suddenly jumped and turned around, asking if someone was there. Edgar had thought he had only heard Alma, but what if it had been something else?
"There's nothing we can do," Twi explained. "We made it this far, and yet…"
'What did Yuu see, exactly?" Sarinz asked, looking grim.
"An unknown woman in an unknown location," Edgar answered. "That's all…for now, at least."
"Just like the other ones," Sarinz muttered, before continuing out loud. "It's only a matter of time before he loses his mind."
Silence settled between them as they waited for his final decision.
"We need to stop all experimentation of the subject "Yuu". We are going to freeze him, we have no other choice."
"I'll make the report to Central. Even if I doubt it would interest them."
"I know it's supposed to make us win the war,'" Twi sighed. "But how many more children are we going to sacrifice?"
As she voiced this question, she caught Edgar's eyes, their earlier conversation coming back into both of their minds.
It wasn't a question of right or wrong, he told himself again. Now if only he could convince himself.
Suddenly the boys' friendship wasn't so great anymore, because Alma had listened to their conversation and tried to escape with Yuu, which made half the Branch go into panic. The Crows had caught Alma almost immediately, but Yuu had fallen into the underground river.
He had been found with Bak and Marie.
Thankfully, Yuu and Marie hadn't recognized each other's. If Yuu had been able to identify Marie as the boy he had trained years ago, things could have gone downhill extremely fast.
To avoid any risk of them being in contact again, they had to send Marie on his mission earlier than intended. It concerned Edgar a bit; he wasn't sure sending Marie was a good idea. While he was physically healthy, Edgar wasn't so sure about the young man's mental state.
The preparation to put Yuu to sleep took a day, at most. That kind of things was Twi's area of expertise, so Edgar wasn't part of whatever they were doing.
Still, it was a relief. With Yuu frozen, it would be the end of it, and they would avoid a Branch wide disaster.
"Chief? A phone call for you."
He grabbed the phone with a sigh and put it on his ear. The past two days had been tiring, and he hoped it wasn't another bad news.
"Assistant Chief Martin on the phone."
"We need you to prepare your men," a man said, and Edgar recognized one of the Crows' voice.
"We have a new subject for the Second Exorcist Project."
Damn it, not again.
"I'm not sure it is a good idea right now," he tried. "We're having trouble with—"
"Mister Leverrier's orders."
He definitely wasn't rested enough to deal with Leverrier.
"Who is it?" he ended up asking.
"Exorcist Noise Marie. The new subject will arrive in about thirty minutes."
He closed his eyes in grief. He should've pushed more against the higher up's decision to send him; Marie didn't have any will to live after what happened to his comrades. For God's sake, the last thing he had seen was his teammates' death. He should've talked more about it to Twi.
He didn't know what to answer, and was saved from doing so by his golem catching his attention.
"Right," he just said before hanging up.
"Edgar," Twi's voice called him through the golem. "Are you there?"
"Of course."
"Alma has disappeared, he might be planning to stop us from freezing Yuu. Can you find him?"
"I'm on it."
He quickly relayed the Crow's order to his second and let him deal with Central. He would rather look for Alma, and besides he didn't want to face his wife's wrath if he didn't.
He needed to find Alma and keep him away from Yuu while they made sure he would never wake up again. The idea made him strangely sad.
He liked those children, independently of who they used to be. This Yuu and Alma weren't exactly the Yuu and Alma from before. Everything his friends had been, everything they had loved had been ripped away from them, and they would probably never know. Despite what they had done to the boys, Edgar had still grown to love them.
He found Alma above the lab, where they conducted the synchronization test. Just like Twi had suspected, he wanted to save Yuu. He wanted to synchronize with the Innocence with no supervision.
He was going to find out their secret — the disgusting secret behind the Innocence they were trying to interact with. He needed to get to him before it was too late, to talk to him, calm him down when he inevitably figured it out. He would need to explain to him, just like Twi did for him. She had been right. They were doing their best to win the war, at the expense of the exorcists, and until someone you came in and changed the Order's ways, that would be their way of fighting.
He would like to see that change happen, one day.
He stepped into the lab, and he knew he wouldn't.
Thank you for reading! (Reviews are always welcome)
Sorry for any mistakes, English isn't my first language.