Title: Le Carnival Negre
Fandom: D. Gray-Man
Summary: No one ever said parenting was easy. That's why Cross didn't bother trying. (Yes, another to add to the woefully small collection of "Cross's torturous past with Allen" fics...)
Rating: M
Genres: Horror, Supernatural, Suspense *(AC when concerning speculation around Allen's past as needed, though I will do my best to keep it in line as the manga updates.)
Pairings: Cross x Maria, Maria x ?
Spoilers: Manga Ch. 180+
Characters: Cross, Allen, Noah
Warnings: +Release date is sporadic, but I do plan on finishing it.
+If I'm doing my job right, it's really graphic: this a challenge fic to best Dance of Shadows' imagery/descriptive fervor, but on the darker side. (Yes, be afraid that I said that.)
+ Also, I'm trying to make it period-realistic.
+Merry Christmas...Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. ...Ha ha.
D. Gray-Man:
Black Carnival [Le Carnival Negre]
Introduction: Home Sweet Home
The thing about children, Cross considered into the night, was that he never knew wether to consider them little gremlins that somehow turned into humans somewhere along the line—much like an akuma, now that he thought about it—or mini humans, that over an excruciating, absolutely impractical period of time, became brain-addled, fucked-up adults.
If Cross Marian believed the former, it would be easier on the Earth, because then he could treat them like his pet golem and continue on. No, unfortunately, he knew exactly what they were: just tiny humans. And he had promised: every human on this planet was just a tool to him, until he could rid the Earth of akuma.
—Steaming, melting, blood-dripping akuma, curled around a tiny body of some poor grieving soul in the forsaken graveyard—
He had never wanted children, he thought as he took a drag on his cigarette in the frigid January night, staring at the deep shadows painted against the walls.
—Infants, a bullet of Innocence ripping through them; intestines spilled from a gash in its side—
And now he had one.
Fucking Mana's.
Cross sighed, and let the glowing stick blow away in the city's midnight breeze. He stood up, and dusted off his pants.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this, you know."
The flickering lamps that greeted him were exactly as he'd left them: spreading a warm, hopeless glow from the far corner of the room. The dusty boards creaked under his broad black shoes, a familiar noise by now with the absence of the buckles on his regular clothing.
He passed by the bed on the right and tossed his Order coat flat on it; with a sigh, he pulled the chair next to the couch out and took his place upon it. His normal white shirts were put away for the task at hand, so all he wore was a charcoal grey sweater and nightpants; the silence of them was odd, and the arrangement felt quite foreign: another mark that would not let him forget the fact of the unsettling and irreversible turn his life had just taken.
That turn which currently lay on the sofa below him, unconscious.
The boy with the head of soft-brown hair was passed out, feet toward the door. He was small enough that he was nearly lose-able in the thrice-folded sheet covering him; his feet didn't get close to the far arm of the furniture. And in the depression between his pale chin and emaciated shoulder lie Timcampy, Cross's—for lack of a better word—companion machine.
A triumph of machinery and magic, "he" was designed for self-preservation and "intelligence," and ended up with many quirks as a result of the learning programs. Cross was continually tinkering with them, but usually let the quirks be, for not knowing what could come was much more entertaining than seeing the program function exactly as planned. For some reason, he had grown to the size of that American thing known as a "basketball", which was as large as a medium-sized watermelon (though Tim was a lot squishier than either, thankfully). All these things, however, made it all the more ridiculous-looking that the golden ball with four stubby limbs and two equally stubby horns had dug itself a nest next to the boy's head, which it was in fact larger than.
Cross guessed it had something to do with heat. It was dreadfully cold in these north-country winters.
There was also the possibility that it was some residual memory of Before.
Cross had never liked the feelings he got when That Man was involved. At the time, the youth—as it was more appropriate to call him—had creeped him out, which was not something easily done. Cross had liked his ideas, his ability, and his promise, but the simple fact was that humanity in the 14th had been a time bomb, just like the essence of Noah was for the other of the Clan. And it was a sick, sick kind of humanity that had inhabited that body.
Every time he thought about it, he had a sense, a feeling, of impending doom. . . . A looming darkness, as it were. And he was pretty sure it was himself it was talking about (he could at least hope it wasn't for the bigger picture itself). From the moment he had come into a contract with the 14th, he Knew, absolutely knew, he was screwed. Some sort of sense that came from the kid's power—maybe it was divining "the future" somehow, like he'd seen many times in India, or maybe it was just something from Cross connecting with channels of spirit magic so often. But either way, there was no denying that everyone in the Black Order got into weird shit, and slowly started to notice . . . Things, quite different from before they'd been inducted into the spiritual freakshow.
And honestly, at the contract time, he had laughed; that boy had laughed, disappeared into the shadows, and Cross had run into the ground to prevent the fruition of that sense of imminent death.
And then, one day, it was suddenly gone . . . probably because everyone involved but himself was dead.
Today, however, it returned.
The Noah were all bipolar; it was simply given. A God-sent power with a human host had no choice but to be so imperfect. And now, this child was doing it to him: The flares of memories, foresight, and instinctual fear that rose in him whenever he thought of the 14th were instantly abated, chased away like faerie demons by light, whenever he looked upon this child.
So then it was true, that there really had been a seed planted, waiting all this time.
Cross took the chair and brought it closer. It was rough under his worn hands, and he could feel the splinters against his skin. It could use a good sanding, not that he ever would.
"Well, Tim, 's he still alive?"
Timcampy opened his mouth and clicked his sharp, pointed teeth in greeting, his wings ruffling. Cross gave him a rub between the wings briefly, and then moved his hands over the boy's head.
Even with the lamp next to his cheek, the light was dim. Cross hunched over closer and slowly, peeled off the bandage running the entire left side of the kid's face.
Underneath, it was still swollen, but at least the sections turned to meat on his nose, chin, and cheek were drying out. Gently, he prodded at the thick scabs on the cheek, careful not to break the seal. Some puss oozed out of the bottom half, yellow and liquid, but his nose and forehead had finally dried out.
Easily, Cross picked up Tim in one hand and held him toward the wound. "Clean."
On command, Timcampy's tongue lapped up the remaining fluids in a few quick, dry strokes. He was still licking the air happily when his master pulled him away.
Cross watched him jiggling happily for a second, and then shook his head. He replaced Tim to his previous resting spot, and then pulled one wing across the boy's forehead so that it held his bangs out of the way.
Bending close, Cross pulled at the skin around the star cut into the boy's forehead. It was still red and angry, but symmetrical: made with detailed precision with a dull blade.
"Damn, Mana. . . ."
What it would be like, being held down while a thing like that gouged out each of the five gashes into your forehead? A black backdrop, cold, with shining metal against it; tied and strangled, pinned down while things cut you up, and there was no help coming, and you had no idea what was going on. . . .
Cross shivered and rearranged himself over the body. The feeling still itched at his back, but the deep wound on the kid's lower face easily focused his attention.
While the star looked clean-er and quickly-healing, the other wounds certainly did not. The horizontal gouge under the boy's eyelid was curved and not as deep, which was lucky, since that area was a bitch to heal. Still, it would be purple for two months at the least, and it would be impossible to keep him from prodding at it.
As it was now—less than a week since the event—the whole lower eyelid had puffed to the size of a golfball and was black and blue. It held more bruising than the others as well: it definitely looked like the result of a blunt object that raked across the face. There were several smaller lateral wounds and bruises nearby, accounting for how the vertical groove looked like it turned a 90-degree corner. It would either be from impacting something that was on the ground, like a rock or stick, or from one of the coils newborn akuma could form.
Gingerly, Cross took a metal tool from the crate next to him and pulled the cut on the lower eyelid apart until it resisted. The delicate cells were still oozing, but slightly more of the cut had crusted together since yesterday, and it had finally changed from blue to bright red inside, which was a god-damned relief.
Cross pressed more of the terrorized skin around the gash together until he was satisfied with the amount of crap that had run out of it and onto a cloth. The fibers didn't immediately burn through, so the akuma poison should have been gone. Though . . . damn, if it didn't start healing faster, he was going to have to learn better stitching. . . . On other people.
Cross grumbled and went for another instrument, this time scraping out chunks of dirt or yellow puss that had appeared since the last time.
He certainly didn't like doing this, but it was better than having do deal with putrefying flesh later. On your face.
"Here, Tim. Bring the light."
As he swiveled on the chair to face the kid's feet, to the soft beat of wings Timcampy hefted the heavy thing to Cross's other side. When he laid it just below the boy's thin collarbone, he curled upon its top, savoring the radiating heat.
"Thanks," the man gruffed out, absentmindedly patting him while he changed tools. It was time to inspect the third part of the boy's wound, the part that trailed down the cheek. It appared to be made from an incredibly jagged series of cuts, or the akuma's forearm pushing down on the flesh to keep him still while he thrashed. The teardrop chunk at the end of the slash—otherwise shallower there—was a lovely parting gift that probably came from the point of the blade getting stuck in the groove.
A going-away present, how nice.
As Cross inspected the wound, some of his hair fell over his shoulder, painting the side of his arm red in the light.
"I always loved the color of your hair.
"It goes so well against mine, see?
"I wonder what the color of our children's hair would be. . . ."
Cross suddenly found his hand had stopped moving, and Timcampy's fluffy tail nub knocking into it, like the arm of an annoyed clock.
He caught the offending tuft between his fingers, but his eyes wandered.
"I never did want children, but. . . ." He turned to the boy. "I would have had the foresight to tell them not to turn me into a fucking akuma!"
He slammed his hand down on the crate and ran his hands through his hair. "Dammit, Mana! Did you really, really lose it that much? Did you seriously live in so much a dreamworld that you never bothered to tell him about akuma, and yet—!"—he swooped down over the kid's injured eye—"when you're brought back from the great Beyond, you do this to him! Jesus."
Cross grunted and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He readjusted his glasses and turned the massacred eye toward him.
"What did you do here, Mana; what did you do? Just what were you planning. . . ."
It was incredible, really. Perhaps because of who he was, he seemed to have been able to resist the Earl some. A strange sort of time-buying—"So long as I'm doing something which will kill you eventually, I can do whatever and give you as much time as possible." The Earl every-so-often even demanded his victims be killed slowly and as gruesomely as possible. Still, how often did akuma carve stars not people's heads? Either he was really mad about being an akuma (not inconceivable), or . . .
He pulled back both halves of the swollen, slit eyelid, and pulled the light over to the rolled-up, discolored organ.
It was whole.
"Just what were you thinking, Mana? What is this?" he pushed the lid back as far as it could go in its current sate, which was admittedly little. He considered what pulling on the eye itself would do, but decided against it. There was no telling what damage it would cause, to him or the boy.
Not only should the kid be blind in that eye, he shouldn't even have it. By rights, he should have lost it. And yet, here it was. Whole. Cross didn't have the heart to screw with it, not until he woke up, anyway. This was an experiment he wanted to control. He had to wonder at the iris's milky shade of grey in the mean time, though.
"Such pretty eyes. . . ."
Cross shook his head and sat back, surveying the scene before him. He'd really done all the work on the eye that he was willing to for now. The kid, when he got around to it, could tell him how it was. And if he happened to be possessed, well, then he could take the Innocence and practice some long-forgotten magic.
He motioned the golem to a new spot and finely placed the rest of his picks and scrapers on the plate to his side. Without a word, he reached out and pulled the kid's red hand up.
Just as he started in on reexamining the severity of the rippling of the skin, a tug came on the heavy limb. In the makeshift bed, the kid moaned; after a bit, his head turned.
Cross waited to see if they would quiet, but the motions grew. He returned the hand to its place and reached for his pile of needles.
"Can't have you waking up just yet, now can we?" he asked into the night, drawing clear liquid up into the glass tube. Several small bottles littered the floor next to one of the legs of the sofa, just out of sight.
Cross squinted at the amount in the tube, and then nicked the bubbles to the top.
"Judging by the amount that put me out that one time. . . . This shouldn't kill you?" he said with a little too much mirth. After pushing the air out, he reached for the groaning kid's right arm. Several small, discolored circles already smattered his elbow; Cross had often wondered if he should make a pattern out of them.
". . . Mana?" came a tiny voice.
"Sorry kid."
Cross Marian was by no means ever trained as a doctor, but he did find there to be a certain art to injecting things into people. The skin lifted satisfyingly as he withdrew the metal tip and set it aside.
"Mana's not coming back, ever again."
The twitching limbs quickly went slack, and Cross wondered what sort of rush, if any, it had caused in his dreams.
"What did you dream about, Cross?" she asked as her soft, nude arms spread across his equally bare chest. Together, they radiated heat.
He pulled her closer against him and placed deep, loving kisses around her jaw, down her neck, and further on. . . .
"Only you."
He picked up the boy's left wrist and placed two together fingers just above the green cross growing out of the back of the hand. He had never seen anyone born with Innocence, and certainly wasn't about to let the opportunity get away.
". . . But, it would have been a lot better for you if you had let him kill you."
He bent over the boy again, and on into the night he worked.
Talk Time: It's a new story from me! Actually started it last year (some of you out there will understand this turnaround time, sigh). . . . But, jeez. This is my first attempt at the straight "Horror" genre, and I think it's turning out okay. Its format started out as each chapter is an inclusive shot around a moral, which I've admired in other persons' fics. I am trying my best. :) This first chapter started out as "What Cross would have had to do to deal with Allen's injuries, specifically his eye." So, we'll see where it goes from here! (Edit: Fic is mostly plotted out. Yay explosions.)
...Hah.
Anyway, please enjoy this and give me any tips you may have, and by all means please let me know when there was a part that particularly touched, scared, or fascinated you, (confused you,) or anything else you find noteworthy. I really love it when you readers point out "Oh and I really loved that part! Squee!" Granted, Allen's not going to be doing much squeeing in this fic, but that doesn't mean you aren't allowed. Let me know what you think. Thanks!
~Gani