A/N: Meant to put this up yesterday but completely forgot! My head's been in the clouds. Anyway, this is all that's written so far; chapter three is underway.
Allen saves him. But he isn't Allen. Not quite. But not completely the Fourteenth either. Lavi is hardly alive, though, so who it is doesn't matter.
How long has it been? What has been done to him? Where is he, how long has he been here, has he been anywhere else? Everything is dark, and faded, and fading – is this a dark corner of his mind that he's escaped to, or is this the last dark bits of life he's been forced to? He hurts in a way that is so all-encompassing he is almost not aware of it at all.
When his head falls against someone's shoulder, and he's hoisted up from wherever he'd been, his body like some other entity completely because he hardly feels a part of it, he knows the other person is Allen. Familiarity is the sensation that lugs painstakingly through is brain, because his eye is not doing much for him.
They leave the Bookman. Lavi feels no regret.
Allen leaves him at the Order and says, before Lavi slips out of consciousness for the third? fourth? fifth? time on their journey, "I'm so sorry."
And Lavi hears an alarm start to sound, and thinks, in the cottony blackness of his brain, Well, at least it isn't hurting me.
His first days of wakefulness are hazy at best, but it's remarkable how little he hurts. He's drugged up and dozy and when the head nurse comes around he's distantly aware that he smiles at her a lot and she fusses over him as though he's an invalid. In his state, it doesn't quite cross his mind that he is.
A few days later he's off the heavy drugs, so he's achy and sore but too tired to be grumpy. He alternates between moping at the ceiling and being lulled back to sleep by it. He doesn't think too hard about the Bookman and what he thinks might have been betrayal but can't remember well enough to be sure – his fatigue makes it easy not to think too hard about anything, which he's glad for because not remembering is not something he knows how to cope with.
On day ten (when he was lucid enough, he'd asked the head nurse how many days he'd been out – six unconscious; he'd revived on the seventh; on the ninth he'd asked) he wakes up with an awful crick in his neck, and with Kanda in his line of sight, against the wall with his head bowed and arms crossed as though dozing.
"Yuu!" Lavi says, the exclamation much more croaked and breathless than he'd intended. It still shocks him how feeble his voice is, but Kanda's head jerks up all the same. Kanda looks at him for a long time, as though he's stalled and is incapable of starting up again. Lavi doesn't like the feeling of imminence in the air.
And then Kanda swoops over him, fingers digging into his shoulders, and says, "I'm sorry."
"Wha…what?" Lavi says, startled by the strength of Kanda's grip, disoriented by the strange hollowness to Kanda's voice.
"I'm sorry," Kanda says again. His hair has grown; his bangs no longer have any bluntness to them, instead look much softer. "When I returned I assumed you must be fine. No, it's because I didn't think of you that I later assumed you must be fine. I thought I was through with the Order; it was easiest that way."
Though he doesn't understand, it still hurts to hear he'd been forgotten and done with. Not a lot; he doesn't let it hurt a lot. He doesn't know what he's missed, and cannot draw judgements.
"When I found out," Kanda says, the skin between his brows pinched tight. His grip on Lavi's shoulders is painful. "When I found out, when I got the Beansprout to tell me, I begged him and the damn Fourteenth to bring me to you so I could get you out. It had been months and I didn't know."
"Don't worry, Yuu," Lavi says, trying for a smile. "Allen got me outta there; that's all that counts. I wasn't really in a state to be waitin' for ya most of the time, anyway. I won't hold it against ya."
Kanda holds his gaze for a long, long time. Searching for the anger he thinks he deserves, the disappointment. Lavi's not sure what he finds, but eventually Kanda lowers his head, overlong bangs hiding his eyes.
"I'm sorry."
It is unquestionably remorseful. Lavi tells himself, again, that he doesn't know what he's missed (and what in the world hasn't he missed, probably), and thus cannot draw judgements.
"Yuu…" He lifts a bony hand and places it on the crown of Kanda's head. "Don't be. I'm alive. And you are too. For all I knew, they could have been torturing all you guys as well."
Kanda is very still at that, and Lavi bites his lip. "Hey," he says, giving Kanda's head a little shake. "I know what you can do to make me forgive you. How about you bring me something to eat?"
Kanda brings so much food that Lavi's tempted to point out that he isn't Allen, but he knows – in little snatches of memory that he mostly associates with pain and darkness – that Allen is a sensitive topic. So he sips on some broth, several pillows propping him up enough that he doesn't dribble down himself, and Kanda pulls a chair up beside his bed and eats soba. The choking feeling to the air starts to recede as they reacquaint themselves with each other's silent company.
"Your arm," Kanda says, once Lavi's halfway done with his broth and is slowing down, and Lavi realizes things aren't peaceful after all, he just wants them to be. A glance at Kanda's bowl shows that he's just been stirring his noodles around.
Lavi sits up a bit straighter, and the blanket falls away from what's left of his right arm. It ends at his elbow.
"Oh, yeah," he says. "Darn."
Kanda is stiff in his seat, eyes on his bowl.
"Look at the bright side, Yuu. At least they didn't do good on their promise to give me a second eyepatch to match my first."
If anything, Kanda goes stiffer. Lavi wants to sigh.
The fragments he remembers of his captivity have the quality of nightmares, confused and mostly nonsensical but enough to make his heart seize. There had been Sheril and pain and wanting his heart to give out. During some other span of time Lavi had woken up sometimes covered in dried blood that wasn't his own and somebody sing-songing in his head. One little Finder, two little Finder, he caught once, and he'd snarled and screamed in his bindings before feeling himself forced out of his own head once more.
There had been the time he'd woken up with Sheril's frown right in his face. Refused to kill her, hm? Sheril's finger jabbing into his temple, his head falling to the side. No no, that makes you useless, not a good idea, Junior Bookman.
He doesn't tell Kanda that when Sheril took the bottom half of his arm – in one fell slice, wholly unexpected and uncharacteristically crude a show for a Noah who can work pain from the inside out – his Innocence forced him conscious long enough to witness it lashing out at the few Noah gathered (Sheril, a glimpse of Tyki, someone hanging back in the shadows, and where was the Bookman?). It was no longer a hammer, but a force of energy strong enough to force even the Noah to retreat before it condensed around the end of his arm and burned so badly he passed out again.
The next time he awoke, Sheril threatened him with blindness, and also with the slow dismantling of the right side of his body – Wouldn't that be fun, hm? We've already had a good start.
Why hadn't they just destroyed his Innocence? What else happened to fill the gaping chasm in Lavi's mind? It yawns at him, this nothingness, like it's trying to swallow him whole. He feels himself become untethered, his mind begins to fog, it feels like he's being taken over once more but he knows this is just him doing it to himself.
He grips his mug as though he wants to crush it. He is here; a whole part of his consciousness has been stolen but he is here, safe and real and himself. He stares at a crease in the blanket, his eye learning every shadow, every fold, locking on to this piece of reality. He feels sick, but his head begins to clear.
"Your Innocence?" Kanda finally says, voice filtering through the rushing in Lavi's ears.
Lavi swallows down his nausea. "Komui has it. Apparently it's been falling apart since I got back."
"I'm sorry," Kanda says, so quietly that Lavi almost misses it.
Lavi shakes his head. "Please stop."
Day eleven is better because Lenalee comes in and is so determinedly positive – so happy to see him, to hold his hand, to feed him – that Lavi can somewhat ignore the gloom emanating from the seat behind her.
"Lenalee, maybe you can take the head nurse's position, she's not nearly as nice when she's feedin' me," Lavi says, which isn't true because he has too much pride to ask the head nurse for help, so when he gets to the meat and vegetables at the bottom of his soup he just stabs at them with his fork and hopes the bowl stays steady in his lap.
"Hmm?" Lenalee says, amused. "I'm not sure I'd like to deal with the sponge baths, though." She holds up a spoon, hand beneath it to catch and drips, and Lavi flashes her a grin before chomping down.
"Aw, c'mon," he says through a full mouth. "I might be a bit bony and banged up, but I've still got a pretty hot body."
She gives him the most halfhearted smack in the head, hardly more than a tap. "I'd rather not have to help you use the bathroom, either."
"No better way of bonding!" Lavi jokes, and Lenalee can't help laughing.
On day twelve Lenalee snaps at Kanda, and Lavi wants to hug her because he hasn't had the heart to do so himself.
"If Lavi can be tough about this, then you hell as better should be too," she says, fists clenched and back ramrod straight, and Kanda looks up at her in surprise.
Lenalee's voice rises and shrills; it's a good thing Lavi is the only patient in this room, and that the nurses leave when he has company.
"He lost an arm, okay. He's skinny and tired, okay. His Innocence is broken, okay! But he's here like the rest of us –" her voice breaks and Lavi knows exactly why, but she plows on "– so you can stop acting like the world is over because it's clearly not because we have him! If you're just going to sit there and mope, there's no reason for you to be here at all!"
And then, since Lavi's bowl is empty, she storms out of the hospital room.
"Hell as better should be," Lavi repeats under his breath, with a bit of a laugh. "She's still not very good at stringing angry words together, is she?" He reaches toward Kanda, but falls a bit short. "Yuu, tip your head this way a bit."
Kanda does, and Lavi gives Kanda's head a gentle shake, messing up his hair. "Yuu, Yuu, Yuu."
Kanda peers at him, so uncertain, that Lavi has to smile.
"Turn that frown upside down, Yuu. Like Lenalee said, the world ain't over yet."
On day fourteen he says, "So, what did I miss, Yuu? Anything big happen in your life?" because he's ready to know now. All he's gotten from Lenalee is that Kanda was home free for three months, but came back and re-awakened his Innocence and bound himself to the Order all over again. It simultaneously sounds like the most un-Kanda thing ever, and the kind of stupid honorable thing Kanda does all the time.
Lavi's noticed that there is something very different about this Kanda, and that is the base truthfulness in his expressions. There is less pretense, as though it's become easier for him to show what he feels. And now, he is contemplative.
"I found that person."
That Person, Lavi's mind supplies. He smiles.
"At last, huh? That's great. Um…was it a good thing?"
It's almost unsettling, how intently Kanda holds eye contact. Lavi's not sure he realizes he's doing it himself. Finally, Kanda says, "It ended…right."
"Good," Lavi says. And then, not quite certain if he's trying for teasing or not, he says, "Hey, then it makes sense you couldn't come rescue me. You were doing something more important."
He surprises himself with the fact that he feels not a trace of spite, not even any jealousy. He understands, even though he doesn't know what happened, that Kanda did something more important than anything he's done for the Order in those months they were apart. That Person is Kanda's purpose, his everything. Lavi's learned as much.
Kanda looks like Lavi's said something distasteful. He looks not angry, but maybe disappointed. Maybe regretful. Like he wishes Lavi had said something else.
"Yuu…when you say you were ready to be done with the Order…I mean, why'd you come back?
And now Kanda lets out a loud, frustrated breath, and crosses his arms in the huffy way Lavi remembers well. "I owe the damn Beansprout."
To think, Lavi muses, that without Allen, we may never have seen each other again. He cannot begrudge anyone for this. As soldiers in a war there are things that rank above personal affections.
It still hurts, but just a little bit, because he doesn't let it hurt a lot. He cannot say, after all, that he thought about Kanda during those months he recalls little of.
"Also you're a General," Lavi points out a little later. "That's new."
"Whatever," Kanda says, with a twitchy shrug. "It's just to appease Central. It's a worthless title."
And then Lavi asks why he's around, since it really doesn't make sense for General Kanda to be at Headquarters every single day.
Kanda tells him it's because it's what Allen said to do, and by now they know that they can trust Allen just a tad bit farther than they can throw him, which is more than they can trust most people. 'They' being those of them who trusted Allen before they ever saw the signs of the Fourteenth coming to light. Komui is in hot water with Central for freezing missions but Akuma activity has dropped as well, which has given Central just enough reason to wait a bit longer as opposed to sending their few Exorcists out for potential slaughter.
("That's what they'll tell us," Kanda says, sneering. "Who the hell knows what they're using this time to get up to. Shit, they're probably still trying to kill him and don't want us in the way.")
"So what, is Komui at odds with Central?" Lavi asks, pushing himself up to sit against the headboard.
Kanda makes a psh sound. "Hardly." And then, under his breath: "Not like he can afford to be."
What Lavi thinks is if the Earl really could have up and destroyed the Order one hundred years ago, there isn't much they can do other than hope Allen Destroyer of Time keeps his word and gives them whatever small chance of winning he thinks he can procure. Hacking up a few extra Akuma isn't going to do their side much good.
"If he doesn't turn into a psychopath and just start hugging the Earl again," Kanda mutters darkly when Lavi tells him this. His foot taps impatiently against the hospital tiles.
"Split personality or not, he's kinda all we got."
Kanda glares at him.
"Yeah, yeah, we got you too, Yuu. You're real strong and capable. But do you have the freaky half-trust of a handful of Noah? Honestly," – and Lavi says this quietly – "I think the best way to get to the Earl is to get those closest to him to do it. The Fourteenth is the closest…but then Road and Tyki have a creepy thing for Allen, too. It's something. It's more power than any of us have, than all of us combined."
"How do you know that?" Kanda says quickly. "About the Fourteenth and the Earl."
"Oh. Um… I don't know." He truly doesn't, though he has no doubt where he picked it up – even on the brink of death, a Bookman snatches at tendrils of history whenever he can, on the off chance that survival will allow him to record it further.
Kanda tsks. "He was hardly ever Allen when I was tracking him around. After the Fourteenth awoke, which is my damn fault in the first place, any last vestiges of the Beansprout got dimmer and dimmer. I've seen it with my own eyes. He's hardly less Noah than the rest of them."
"Well, something got through to him, or else I wouldn't be here."
Kanda looks away at this, because he can't argue against it. "I don't like waiting. It feels useless, like a fucking waste of time."
"Did he say how long we'd have to wait?"
"He said 'Trust me, Kanda. You'll only be in my way for this. I'll be counting on you later' and I said 'You better not fucking make me regret doing something as moronic as trusting you'."
Lavi smiles and takes Kanda's hand. "I'm glad you two became friends."
"Tch."
"Nice stigmata," Lavi says, looking at the cross on Kanda's arm. "How holy."
Kanda says nothing, but doesn't pull his hand away.
And somehow, so simply, as though no time has passed, they pick right back up, he and Kanda and the relationship they'd fumbled into all those months ago.
On day fifteen, he's sick of being stuck in bed, so Kanda procures him a crutch instead of telling him it's best he doesn't push himself.
("Oh, who'd you get this from?" Lavi asks. Kanda shrugs. "Went through some hospital rooms.")
Kanda helps him get to the edge of the bed, his right foot hovering off the floor – though it's almost healed by now, he's supposed to give it a few more days. How he hurt it is another question entirely.
"My right side's pretty fucked up, ain't it," he says musingly, when Kanda positions the crutch at his left.
Kanda grunts.
Instead of taking hold of the crutch, Lavi says, "Hey Yuu, bend over for a second." He reaches as though he's going to grab Kanda's arm to help himself up, but instead he takes Kanda's head and brings it down and kisses him.
Making out with Kanda is as nice as it's always been, nicer still when Kanda slips his thumb beneath the strap of Lavi's eyepatch, making him shiver. Nicer still when Kanda answers Lavi's teasing of "I've still got my kissing, huh?" with an exhale of "Stupid rabbit."
Lavi is losing the last thread of reason as to why this is not something he should allow himself. Even if Kanda might have been capable of setting this neatly aside, he is responding now, and Lavi holds fast to the moment because it is happening while what-ifs are not.
(Has he not suffered enough, to do something for himself? Screw being a Bookman. Screw that he might be the Bookman. Maybe he can be selfish also.)
And then, a bit later, a crutch on one side and his half-arm slung over Kanda's shoulder on the other, Lavi says, "Full steam ahead, to the cafeteria!" and they hobble their way down to eat.
He regrets it a little bit because the trip exhausts him completely, but Kanda grudgingly (and very attentively) helps him eat, and then piggy-backs him back to his hospital room afterwards.
On day sixteen, Komui comes in with Lenalee and Kanda on his heels and the satchel that holds the fragments of Lavi's hammer in his hand. He says, "Well, looks like our only hope is that it'll let you drink it."
"Come again," Lavi says, as the satchel lands in his lap. He pushes himself into a sitting position, blinking away the sleep their hurried footsteps just tore him from.
"There's nothing we can do without it crumbling more," Komui says. He swivels a chair to face Lavi and sits down. "You said that it protected you when you were with the Noah. I think it's gone beyond the realm of a normal equipment type."
Lavi rubs the heels of his hand against his eye. "You're sayin' I'm a Crystal type?" He can't help it – he yawns.
"If you try to activate it, we'll know," Lenalee says, coming up beside her brother. She looks worried, even apologetic. Kanda supplies why.
"She's going to ask if you really want to give up any freedom you'll have once you've healed in favor of re-binding yourself to the Order and the war, etcetera," he says blandly. Though the way he narrows his eyes implies he takes the question just as seriously as she does.
Lavi looks at the small lump in the satchel. He loosens the knot, and then dumps the sorry chunk of his hammer onto his lap. A bit of the head is all that's left, and it crumbles before his eye, looking like it's given up on itself, and on him.
Does he want to find out if he can still awaken it? Wars are so pitiful, the act of fighting them pitiful, the causes of them pitiful. The results most pitiful of all. But he cannot truthfully say that he is detached from this war; he cannot actually observe it with the egoism of an objective bystander looking in, like some sort of God. Even God has chosen a side in this war, and made people into weapons.
He puts his hand over his hammer.
He doesn't get any farther than "Ozuchi Kozuchi" before the remaining pieces dissolve into dust, swirl up into the air, and reform as a pitch-black cube hovering a few inches in front of his nose. "Oh shit," he says, turning his hand over. The crystalline Innocence settles into his palm and liquefies. "Double shit."
"Lavi…" Lenalee says quietly.
Lavi's heart races with an exhilaration he hasn't felt in ages. He grins at her. "Gramps would'a hated this," he says. And then he drinks it.
His right arm is on fire from the inside, just as it had been when his Innocence had converged on the wound before. The others hover nervously at his bedside as he tears off the bandages, his teeth gritted, one long, pained sound grinding its way out of his throat.
The stigmata sears itself over his bicep, and then directly on the other side of his arm as well, just above where his elbow had been. Blood flows from the wounds and converges over the end of his arm. There is a flash of green light, a pleasant warmth, and he's left with something of a cap on his stump, an inky green substance that looks metallic but that he knows – a little queasily – is his blood.
"Aw man," he jokes, sweating and a little light-headed, "I was hopin' it'd regrow my arm."
"Activate it," Kanda says. His voice is low but firm, and he stares at Lavi's arm intensely.
"Ya know, I'm still in a hospital bed," Lavi says, but he wipes away the sweat and finds the familiar connection, and says, "Activate."
The seal on his arm glows, and green light shoots out of it, darkening and condensing. Before it can solidify all the way, something much smaller separates and falls onto Lavi's lap. And then he has a right forearm again, a green so deep it's almost black, melding seamlessly with his actual flesh.
"Holy shit," Lavi says. He flexes his right hand, then holds it in front of his face. He can see the creases of his palm, the finer lines scattering over the entire underside of his hand, even his finger prints. And yet…
"I can't feel it. It feels like nothing is there. But…I can sense it?" He touches his cheek with it, and though he feels his hand on his face (cool, unyielding), he doesn't feel any of the warmth from his face travel into his hand, just a faint impression of his jaw, his cheekbone, and the resiliency of flesh over the top.
He picks up the hammer in his left hand, and it extends the moment he thinks the request. It's nearly weightless itself, but so familiar – feels so friendly in his hold – that he feels a wave of nostalgia. And yet there is a voice at the back of his mind saying, Damn you, Innocence, for fooling me into loving you when I know of the suffering you wreak.
"Well," he says, looking at the others, "looks like I'm part of the Stigmata Squad."
Komui beams at him. Lenalee and Kanda look stunned.
"I wonder if this thing stays when I de-activate?" he muses, looking at the end of his new arm.
The answer is no, it doesn't stay. The hammer does, shrinking back to its portable size, but the end of his arm loses form in another glow of green, leaving just the seal and the stigmata behind.
"Hey," he says to Kanda once Lenalee and Komui have left. "I'm like Allen in reverse."
Kanda doesn't crack a smile. He's taken over Komui's seat, elbows on his knees and chin on his joint fists.
"Hey, Yuu," Lavi says. "Promise me something." He waits until Kanda looks at him to continue. "Promise me, if you ever face off against Sheril, you'll be careful. He's crazy – they're all crazy – but he's the worst. I don't think he was ever hinged right, as a human."
Kanda gives a sharp puff of laughter through his nose. "There is no 'worst' among them. They're all the same."
"Yuu," Lavi says, because what Kanda said is true, but still, still.
"What do you want me to do, then, if I face him? Not power through to land my blows? Be wise about my fighting strategy?"
Lavi remembers, and he sees the amusement in Kanda's eyes as well. He starts to grin.
"Yeah, something like that."
And then Kanda reaches toward the right side of Lavi's face, but never makes contact. Lavi turns his head to see what Kanda's doing, and finds that Kanda has pinched some of his hair between his fingers.
Head still partially turned, Lavi says, "Um, Yuu?"
Kanda lets go of Lavi's hair, touches a thumb to Lavi's lips. He looks like he's deep in contemplation, like he's trying to work out what strategy to use here and now.
Please, Lavi thinks, lips parting, give me a sign that I'm not the only one that still wants this to happen.
"Yuu," he says, and it works, because Kanda kisses him. Slow, careful, and Lavi's head hits the pillows. He pulls Kanda down with him, missing what it felt like to be able to wrap both arms around Kanda's neck but doing well enough with one. He feels Kanda's knee dip the mattress, feels the closeness, feels his heart opening up and demanding more of this, greedily.
When the click-clack of the head nurse's shoes can be heard in the hallway, Kanda draws back. "Hurry and get stronger," he says, face inches from Lavi's, and then he's gone.
Lavi eats, and once he has the energy, he trains. He gets stronger. He adapts to having one arm; it's not that big of a deal. He's managed fine without depth perception, after all.
The calm is eerie, and everyone feels the tendrils of dread coiling through them, but there truly seems to be nothing they can do but train, and wonder, and wait as well.
Krory takes to hovering around him like a worried hen, coddling him as much as possible. It makes Lavi's throat prickle dangerously, because the closest he's had to a parent is Bookman leading him around the world and letting him pull on his ponytail and teaching him how to fight and observe. He wonders if having parents feels as safe as having Krory. And when he thinks this he's hit with swoops of laughter, because Krory being 'safe' is definitely a questionable way to put it.
Miranda is as self-consciously kind as always, though he'll catch her, every now and then, giving him very nervous looks. He constantly wonders who he refused to kill. A large part of him doesn't want to know.
And then there are Akuma to fight again and strange happenings to investigate, Innocence to collect here and there – though what's the point when the end is so near? Like there's time to find new Accommodators and train them up well enough. Lavi's been back a month and a half when he's put back in action. The scientists and the Finders all say things like It's amazing how quickly you Innocence users are able to recover but he just thinks, Finally, that took too long.
His control over the elements is stronger, easier. He can almost feel them at his fingertips, like they're a part of himself rather than something he summons into being through his hammer. He is closer to his Innocence than Bookman wanted. He is in control, lets the link run through him, no longer resisting and no longer falling into recklessness because of his resistance. He doesn't run the risk of toppling buildings and crumbling city blocks to the ground anymore.
The catch is that he is more paranoid of people than ever before. He hates crowds, hates noise, hates it when there's too much movement or too much to look at. He grits his teeth and makes it through each time, but then afterwards sometimes he'll shut himself up in his room and feel shaky and weak for an hour or more, and the best he can do for it is lie down and breathe.
He's afraid that even though he's gotten stronger again, he's also gotten weaker.
Sometimes he doesn't deactivate until well after they've left the fray of their most recent battle, even though he knows his right arm attracts looks. It may have saved some people but it's also the reason others died – the villagers can usually tell that his arm is part of the same deal as whatever brought those monsters to their town in the first place.
And then sometimes someone will look at his arm and see something that is not wrong or fearsome or cursed. Sometimes people will thank him, sometimes people will smile, will even ask to shake his right hand. As though they see in it something that is innocent.
In Spain, after he and Krory retrieve the Innocence that had been setting the forest ablaze every night and renewing it every morning, a little girl who is possibly the inn-keeper's daughter says when they check in for the night, "Your arm's so pretty," and for some reason Lavi feels like breaking down.
He keeps it stopped up, just curls up in bed and listens to Krory begin to snore, and hopes that it will be a night he gets to sleep as well.
His new room at Headquarters is beside Lenalee's.
"Her face is bloated because she cries," Kanda tells him after she leaves them in the cafeteria one day, having wolfed down a meal before being dispatched on her latest mission – Poland, something about a well with water that's been poisoning the crops and the animals but not the people.
Lavi already knows this. The walls are thin and he hears her at night. The first few times he did nothing, but now when he hears her he goes next door and knocks, and is ushered inside. It's the least he can do: hold her and give her someone to hold onto. She's watched her family grow and shrink repeatedly for so long; Lavi hopes holding on to someone can give her some sense of solace. Maybe if she holds on tight enough, she can tell herself that he won't leave too. He's still not sure about it himself.
She hates all the crying she does, though. "I'm sorry I can't pull myself together," she says to him once she's back from Poland, and in the ruddy light her eyes are puffy and her hair is tangled and sticks to her tear tracks.
Lavi just hugs her again, at a loss for how else he can help. "There's nothing wrong with crying," he says into her hair, working very hard to keep his voice steady. It tears at him to see her so sad. "It's amazing that your heart is still so big."
In return, she comes to him when he wakes, screaming, from a nightmare. And when he doesn't wake screaming but because he'd been holding his breath, he tiptoes to her door, clammy with sweat and sometimes still shaking from the force of the gasps he'd stifled. It only takes one knock, and she answers. He doesn't go to Kanda because he doesn't want to torture him with anything more.
And with Lenalee it's easier to just talk about nothing, or daydreams disguised as nothing, whittling the night away with the kinds of conversations that flow when the brain is most tired. Sometimes she's on a mission so he faces the night alone, but when she's home he goes over without a second thought.
"If you could take everyone and bring us all on vacation," Lavi says tonight, sitting on the floor with his head leaning back against the mattress, "where would you bring us?"
Lenalee makes a humming noise beside him. She's wrapped up in blankets, and the lamp beside her bed glows dully. "Somewhere really warm," she says, and then she laughs. "Like the sun."
"The sun? That's the shittiest vacation I've ever heard of." Lavi laughs too though, and then it's the both of them laughing under their breath so as not to wake the hallway.
"I'd like a vacation," Lenalee says, smiling wistfully. "A permanent one. And the Akuma can take one too. They can go back to Hell or wherever they came from, and their souls can come with us, and the Noah can just disappear, and me and you and my brother and everyone else could just go on vacation forever."
"That's…very dark and very light at the same time."
Lenalee's still smiling, but it fades slowly away as she stares across the room. "Kanda wants to go."
Lavi looks away from her, tries to keep his tone light. His heart feels heavy, though. "He shoulda thought of that before he became a General. Now Central's got him doing important Generaly things, so sucks for him."
The light flickers, and Lavi waits for it to die, but it catches itself and shines on with tired determination.
Lenalee says, "I don't think he wants to go on vacation alone, though. I think he'd get lonely."
Klaud Nine, Krory, and Marie take down Lulu Bell, and then Marie spends a week in the infirmary and Krory a week and a half.
General Sokaro kills Chaoij. The report, relayed by Komui when Lavi, Lenalee, and Tiedoll return from a failed retrieval mission in Switzerland, is that he'd gone haywire and attacked his unit, as though something had infected his brain. It was kill him or risk letting him Fall.
So then Chaoji really turned on them, or Sokaro would have Fallen as well. How could he have taken such a risk, though, and how did his Innocence determine that his actions weren't an act of betrayal, cutting down another Innocence-bearer like that? It's frightening, how sentient their weapons are. Though really it's the other way around: they are the weapons and their Innocence keep them in check.
The war has never been a simple matter of good versus evil, not when their side is teeming with the corruption of Central, not when Allen is simultaneously a Noah. But the question of what it is a matter of still hangs in the air.
Lenalee and Komui are fighting for each other, and the extended family they've built up around them, for the goal of providing a world worth living in for those they want to protect. Kanda fought for his own freedom, and now? For his own guilt, for turning Allen into the Fourteenth? There is bound to be more (like Lenalee and Lavi and, yes, Komui, and the idiot Finders, for a Beansprout he might believe is still there).
And Allen…Allen fought (fights?) for humans and Akuma alike. For souls, for peace, for everyone.
It's all for people. Everyone fights for people. Even Chaoji, probably, but just that and the Innocence on his arms were not enough to keep him in God's favor.
And Lavi? Yes, there are people he fights for, but he wonders to what extent. How much will he allow his Innocence to make him do, or prevent him from doing? And does he really have a choice, now that he's sold himself to it a second time?
Things are less convenient without Allen's Ark, or at least without new entrances popping up for them. After a mission in Bulgaria with Kanda, their Finder must arrange their return to Headquarters, which means there is time to be sucked into the festivities the townspeople throw.
At the pub where Lavi and Kanda are corralled to eat, a drinking song breaks out at the largest table that spans the entire center of the dining room. Merriment is all around, despite the corner of town that burned to the ground. Men sing from deep in their lungs, noses pink, tankards sloshing. Women hike up their long skirts and dance between tables.
At first Lavi thinks it foolish, that they celebrate when many of their own have died, but then he looks at it differently. They are celebrating because they are alive and still have a home. They still have a town, and themselves. Their joy is pure; they celebrate their own continued existence.
They hail Lavi as some kind of hero for calling up the rain that doused the flames. On the street, a little old nun had bustled up and blessed his arm – darkly ironic, but he'd been touched all the same. Here in the pub, they are treated to a free meal, and accommodations have been arranged at the inn next door, also free of charge. Women who are not dancing, and some who are, glance at him not-so-secretively, enamored and intrigued. Everyone is grateful. The bar master keeps bringing more plates of food to their table, until it is too risky to pick up a glass to have a drink.
It all leaves Lavi sweating, nerves taut, too much in his ears. He finds relief in the sullen expression on Kanda's face. They are at a small table crowded into a corner, because Kanda had refused to be seated amongst anyone in the throes of festivity.
"Too much for ya, Yuu?" Lavi reaches a leg out beneath the table, hooks the toe of his boot around the ankle of Kanda's. It helps ground him.
"This is the most obnoxious thing I've ever witnessed."
"Jealous I stole the show?"
"Che."
Lavi laughs, pulls Kanda's foot toward him. "Should we leave?"
He thinks it's probably quite rude, getting up and sidling their way out, and wonders if anyone can see the crackling energy between them, his fingers bumping into Kanda's wrist under the pretense of not letting the crowd separate them.
In their room at the inn, Kanda kisses him against the door without preamble. Lavi finally deactivates his Innocence, wraps his arm around Kanda, and kisses back. He can still hear the sounds of celebration, faintly, through the closed window, but this is much more enjoyable.
And then Kanda pushes closer, thigh between Lavi's legs, and Lavi grins.
"Wanna have sex, Yuu? Though we should probably clean off first."
They smell of smoke, and Lavi can feel grit all over his skin, dried into the sweat and the bruises. Kanda hasn't done anything beyond kissing him since he's recovered – whether it's because Kanda's been worried he's too fragile or because of his arm he isn't sure, but it's probably some of both.
But now Kanda's fingers open his jacket and steal beneath his shirt as though they'd simply been awaiting the invitation.
"We don't have what we need," Kanda says, mouth moving down Lavi's neck, palms a searing heat on Lavi's stomach.
"Yeah," Lavi says, head tipping back, voice losing solidity. "Bummer."
Later, he lays flat on the mattress, hair creating a water stain on the pillow while Kanda presses kisses slowly down his front. He holds on to Kanda's shoulder, fingers tightening every time Kanda's lips touch his skin. Kanda's wet hair is tied into a very tangled knot on top of his head, and it's one of the hottest things Lavi's ever seen.
"Hey Yuu," he says, eye on the ceiling. "Ya still want me even though I don't have enough arms?"
Kanda kisses right above his navel; Lavi's hips rock languidly.
"I don't give a fuck how many arms you have. You could have three and you'd still be you."
"Well, I dunno if that'd be me. If you ever see a me with three arms, don't get too close."
And then he can't see the ceiling with its old wooden beams and cobwebs, because Kanda's face blocks the way. A frown, and eyes that want him very much.
"Are you an idiot?"
Lavi gives a nervous, intoxicated laugh. "Maybe."
Kanda's hand goes between his legs, and Lavi sighs.
Later still, it's Kanda's voice that wakes him. "Lavi. Lavi."
Lavi comes to covered in sweat, Kanda's hand on his shoulder. It's sometime in the middle of the night.
"Shit, sorry," Lavi manages, and then he's breathing fast, curling up on himself. His dream disappears in a blur to the back of his mind – eyeballs, knives, fingers playing with his intestines, his hammer crumbling, the beginning of a Fall.
Kanda pulls him up and over, so that Lavi's face is against his neck and their legs interlace. "It's okay," he says into the top of Lavi's head, running fingers through Lavi's hair, damp on his nape but not from the shower anymore. "Lavi, it's okay, breathe."
Slowly, slowly, hand clenched into Kanda's shirt, Lavi slows his breaths. His clothing clings to him, feels cold; his forehead is slick against Kanda's skin. He feels disgusting, feels like he's making Kanda disgusting, but Kanda doesn't let go and doesn't remove his lips from the crown of Lavi's head. And after a little more time Lavi doesn't care about the sweat and the uncomfortable hot-cold.
"Sorry, Yuu," he says, exhaustion hitting him hard and fast.
"For what?" Kanda says. His fingers still move through Lavi's hair, and Lavi is too tired and too heavy to answer.
Kanda, Lavi, and Lenalee become something of a fixed team on missions. Lavi doesn't quite realize what this means, though, until he barges into Kanda's room one afternoon looking for a book he's sure he left there, only to be frozen in the doorway by twin glares. Kanda and Lenalee sit side by side on the floor.
"Excuse you," Kanda says slowly. "We were meditating."
Lenalee's glare is already gone, but she lets out a huffy breath. "I was feeling so peaceful."
They are due to be dispatched tomorrow morning, right after Sokaro's team is due to return. Headquarters has a system now of always having one team around, just in case another invasion happens.
"Well, isn't this cozy?" Lavi says, leaning against the door frame.
"You should meditate with us, Lavi," Lenalee says, back to her usual chipper self.
Kanda tsks.
"I think it'd be a great team-building exercise," Lenalee says, frowning at him.
"We're already a good team. We don't have to build anything."
"Aw, Yuu, you don't want me around?"
Kanda looks stubbornly to the side, and Lavi chuckles.
"That's fine, I'm too fidgety for mediation anyway. Ah, but there's my book!" Lavi stomps, purposely loud and obnoxious, over to the table, and then stomps just as obnoxiously back to the door. Kanda smacks him in the leg as he passes.
Later, at lunch, when it's just him and Lenalee at the table, Lenalee puts her hand on his and says, "Are you in love, Lavi?" Her smile is sweet, just a hint of teasing, and very knowing. Very happy for him, too, which means she's already decided on her answer.
The question still hits Lavi in waves. In love. In love. Really, truthfully, he already knew, but he'd never thought the actual words.
How ironic, a Bookman in love.
And then, when she's gone and he's finishing off his lunch, he thinks to himself that yes, he's in love with Kanda, but he's also in love with having a family, and a home, and a reason for the heart in his chest.
"Do you wear emotions like you wear clothes?" Kanda asks him that night, under Lavi's covers, a hand on Lavi's waist. The moonlight slices like moonlight always slices, a harsh, jagged way across his face – his mouth, a cheekbone, part of an eye in the light.
"What, fight in them and get them all sweaty and bloody and then chuck them in the laundry? How poetic," Lavi jokes, but it's halfhearted. Kanda's fingers tighten against his skin, belying his frustration for just a second.
"Are you…this…Lavi," Kanda finishes, a little pleadingly, and Lavi has to smile because words will never be Kanda's friend.
"Is this honest, you mean. Am I being honest with you."
"Yes."
"I am being honest with you."
Kanda ducks his head a little, and it brings all of his face into the slant of light. His eyes are lowered, flitting side to side; he's thinking. His hair is loose around his shoulders, over his back, down his chest. Lavi wants to feel it more, wants to tuck it behind Kanda's ears and watch the way this will make Kanda's cheeks darken.
Kanda picks his words with difficulty, but his eyes are back on Lavi, and they demand the truth. "Then, when Lavi is done, when you move on to the next one, will this –" he tightens his fingers again "– will this still be?"
"Yuu. Am I being Lavi right now?"
"No," Kanda says without hesitation. "And yes. Your speech changes and your personality changes, but…it's still you."
Lavi smiles, comforted and reassured. Lavi has been the realest, the most human, and maybe that's because Lavi is human, and as such is part of his humanity. He thinks Kanda has answered something else for him, also – there will probably not be a next one, no number fifty.
"Answer the question," Kanda says, and Lavi blinks open his eye. He'd snuggled into the pillow, satisfied with himself, and had forgotten that he'd countered Kanda's question with one of his own.
He tugs on a bit of Kanda's hair, and gets an impatient frown in return. He wants to trace Kanda's lips with his fingers, then his cheekbones, then the whole of his face. Kanda really is gorgeous, and there's something struggling to be just as beautiful inside of him. A heart that is larger and softer than he'll ever let most people know.
"Well, it takes two to answer a question like that, but on my end, yes."
Kanda flops down, ankles butting with Lavi's, hand going to Lavi's hip. He tucks Lavi's head beneath his chin and says, "Good."
