Five

Prior to a few months ago.

Kanda was born already in love. Which is sad if you look at the truth of it, because it's why he's been so hateful his entire life.

What about falling in love, then? Not waking up from non-existence to an obsession of unknown origin that wears the heart to shreds. A thing that happens by steps. Something that grows stronger through shared experience.

A bit of a clinical way to put it, but anyways. It's not like Kanda had ever thought about it happening to him. But other people, who have been watching him carefully since (his) day one, do. They've often wondered, "What if?"

"Oh my god, you're crazy!" Lavi screams.

He's scared out of his mind, but having the time of his life. Kanda has him in a death grip. The wind blasts Lavi's face full on, making him tear up even as he laughs in sheer terror. He tries to struggle his way free, but that's actually more dangerous. Kanda keeps a hold on him.

"What, don't you like this?" Kanda shouts over the air streaming almost painfully in their ears. It's cold, and no wonder, the scenery streaking past them is wintery woodlands. Snow snags their cheeks and snips little scratches into them.

"No, no, I'm not like you! I could die! Really!" Lavi twists in his arms, bowling over in giddy overstimulation.

"Liar." Kanda follows him down into the bend, holding them steady.

"Get us down, you psychotic asshole!"

Kanda complies, putting weight on Lavi's body to urge him to ignore survival instinct and step forward. Following his lead, Lavi jumps with him, giving an involuntary shriek as the slipstream slams into them. Then they're both stumbling onto the platform, and Kanda sleekly drops Lavi while keeping his own footing, like he knew he would.

"You've got a fucking deathwish!" he gasps as soon as he comes to a complete stop. He is in complete disarray, eyepatch crooked, hairband askew. But the way his hair has been swept behind clear away from his face gives him a clean look as he beams.

"You bring that out in me." Kanda retorts crisply.

"Now who's the liar?" Lavi hops up and dashes past him into the train compartment. "Gawd, I'm frozen!" he complains. Kanda follows him.

That night she doesn't go away.

Usually Kanda has to settle for lightning fast glimpses of her. Then she leaves no trace other than that same yearning that exhausts him with its permanence.

The floor of Kanda's room has become a dense mat of lotus flowers and their leaves. She is in their midst like always. Most of the time she's a hopeful revenant. Her faith in him is blinding. It's in her smile, in the hand she will patiently extend to him until the end of time. It leaves him aching to let her know that he's been waiting for her too and just as long. He wants to find her and end it for both of them.

But lately, like now, she lingers. He actually sees her hand drop and it's as bad as the times he sees her dying as she sleeps in the water. Sometimes he thinks in panic that this means she's died—and then he gets confused remembering that he slept in the water until he was born.

In these times, the feel of her slips from a pleasant fever dream into a haunting. It is, inexplicably, getting closer to what he feels about Alma. A yes, no, horrible mixed bag of things he doesn't understand and are beyond his control.

She shimmers at the foot of his bed, washed out in defeat. It's his fault. He's pushing her away. It's getting to be too much. But no, he hasn't. He can't. He doesn't want to.

Leave. No, stay with me forever. He wants to beg both of her simultaneously.

Lavi is sleeping in his own room somewhere in the castle. They'll see each other tomorrow. So that's what that's like. Expecting someone who will actually show up. Kanda grits his teeth, draws himself up in his bed, and it becomes that too. Waiting for the morning to come. Waiting for Lavi.

Lavi is not in bed. He's in Komui's office.

Recently some of those people who have been watching Kanda his whole life had sighed over steepled fingers,

"Couldn't he have done better than a Bookman?"

So Komui smoothes down the only wartime picture of Kanda by the corners. Little Kanda has shoulder-length black hair and looks more like a child-version of Lenalee than he does of himself. He and Alma stand the front, being the shortest and also the ones being shown off.

The whole thing is very formal. They wear the near-indestructible jackets and tights engineered for the nuclear free-for-all that was second exorcist training. All the adults are in their lab coats. No one smiles. It was probably intended as a promotional picture to circulate once they could declare the project a success. With the mess Kanda and Alma made of the North American facility, this is likely the last copy.

Kanda might wonder if there is a picture of him and the woman somewhere. The short answer is no, because cameras weren't invented yet. Komui hadn't even been alive then. But Kanda will continue to wonder, all the same.

And then, there's Lavi. Yet another one of his problem cases. Komui feels like he has a million of them. And there's what feels like a million pictures of Lavi. They're candid shots in the worst way. He jumps uninvited into the scenes of other people. Finders, exorcists, and scientists are all wide eyed and spooked to have Lavi clumsily land in the middle of their meals, card games, training sessions, experiments. Lavi always flashes a cheeky grin at the viewer while everyone else ogles him in alarm.

Most people are a little camera-shy. Not Lavi. Komui is a little surprised at this. Photography is a somewhat new and definitely very Western notion. Lavi has encountered enough cultures to appreciate how many of them still fear the camera stealing their souls. And yet there are a thousand versions of his face on Komui's desk, sassing him. Brave boy. But maybe he just thinks you shouldn't fear losing something you don't have.

War pictures. Because they're part of a history people know is important to record even as it unfolds. Because you don't know how much time is left. Because you don't want to be forgotten.

Lavi sits before him, silent and uncooperative.

It's a new age, Komui thinks blandly at him. Bookmen won't be the masters of recordkeeping for much longer. Look at what we've managed without you so much as noticing. A venerated hundreds-year old tradition of keeping secrets, down the drain.

It's nobody's fault. Progress never is.

The newest pictures on his desk are the absolute latest in surveillance product. Though taken in wartime, they are not war pictures. They document nothing and the whole point of them is to show things that would be better off not remembered. He is ashamed of them, but as the Vatican pointed out, spying on their soldiers is nothing new. Might as well use the newest technology to do it right, if it's got to be done anyways.

It's not that obvious. In the pictures, Kanda and Lavi tussle clumsily, elbows hitting noses. In some, they're just talking, but in others (more of them), they're arguing. Whatever they're up to, it doesn't look easy. But in a few, they're blended into one uncomplicated shape in one of the more secluded archways of the Order.

"What exactly are you accusing me of?" Lavi asks coldly in a preemptive strike.

Komui sighs.

"Lavi, I'm going to pay you the compliment of being direct. I may be following the Vatican's orders on this, but it's what I think too. It's a very, very bad idea for you two to get any closer. You and Kanda both have very complicated pasts. You both have very uncertain futures."

"You say that like it isn't true of all of us." Lavi laughs lightly. The look he gives Komui is far too calm. He's used to subjects of hard and heavy consequence, like wars and needing to handle their possible key figures (e.g. Kanda) with a delicate hand. He thinks he can still spin this right if he's careful.

Komui almost smiles in desperation because Lavi is such an idiot savant he can't even recognize simple relationship advice when he hears it. He's practically forcing Komui's hand.

This comes in a manila folder so thickly stamped with "CONFIDENTIAL" that the cover might as well be red. Lavi eyes it with misgiving.

"What's this?"

"It goes without saying that we are sharing this with you in the strictest confidence. We have faith in your ability to keep secrets…even from Bookman. But beyond that, I think you'll be discreet for Kanda's sake. And for everyone else in the Order, whatever that's worth."

It takes a while even with Lavi's speed-reading, but Komui waits in respectful silence. He watches Lavi's face, and at the right time he wearily rises to go around the desk to lay a hand on his shoulder.

When Lavi hits the pictures (Kanda and Alma trying to synchronize with their innocence, Kanda after his fight with Alma, Alma now), he retches. Komui gives him his wastebacket and tries not to attach any special meaning to it. Everyone does the same thing, after all.

But he can't help flinching at Lavi's expression when he resurfaces, running the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes are bright with the refusal to cry, but what's left is uncomfortably close to hatred.

Lavi thinks there's no way around his limited time in their lives slipping away like the sands of an hourglass. That's his business. And Lavi doesn't know it, but Komui's is to keep this secret for him. He does it so the Vatican doesn't hurt him like it hurt Lenalee. He'd do it for any of his exorcists.

But just as well as Komui knows this, he knows that Kanda is already an old minefield littered with live charges. He's beyond hope. Lavi wandering into him, not knowing what's buried in his past, is like to blow him and the rest of them up. And that's something none of them need, especially with the thirds program up and running.

There's no helping this. There's no way for this to turn out right.

So he just keeps his hand on Lavi's shoulder.

Several hours later, Bookman rudely jolts out of a sound sleep to his apprentice prodding him insistently. The boy is the color of cream and there are strange, tiny cuts on his face. He has a book in his hands.

"What is it? Why are you waking me at this hour?"

"I need to leave tonight. I'm going to this village." Lavi hurriedly flips through the pages to the right place and points. Squinting, Bookman's eyes follow Lavi's finger to where it rests on the page.

"But why? What is this village? Why does it matter?"

"I think…" He says cautiously, willing himself to be good enough. Better than Bookman, in convincing people that he is someone else—"I think it has something to do with the third exorcists. And Kanda's lotus."

Non-Roman letters interweave with lotuses blooming across a page. Like an after- thought, the etching of a village nestles between the stalks.

"They grew lotuses there forty years ago. They don't grow them any more."

Understanding dawns upon Bookman and he quietly allows himself to be proud. Proud and exasperated. Kanda's case has been always exceedingly difficult to crack. Up until know, all they've gotten to is that there is a figure in his past that seems to be at the root of everything.

So this is what Lavi's supposedly secret comings and goings with the cursed Japanese exorcist will come to. Bookman is under no illusions, Lavi is skirting dangerously close to the edge—this might very well damage his apprentice in a way that will take an annoyingly long time to fix after they leave this place. But he's not so arrogant to discount information just because it comes at a personal price.

So he says simply, "Good. Good work. This might be a major breakthrough. You've managed to get somewhere with the boy after all, I see."

"No." he says quickly. Bookman gives him a look.

"No, this is something I figured out on my own." He lies.

And Bookman lets him.

By the time the birds are stirring to announce a faint lightening of the sky, Lavi is almost out the door. It's been a while since he's played the nomad, in the style of a large pack on his back. But there's such bulk that he doesn't see who grabs him from behind, and the shock nearly kills him.

"Lavi? Where are you going?"

Whirling around nearly unbalances him. There's Kanda, in a not-quite-rare state of undress. He always seems to be running around half-naked or half-dressed only in bandages. For someone who hates uninvited attention, he sure is a provocateur.

But it looks like he leapt out of bed, and his incredibly coincidental timing throws Lavi off.

"Yuu…Kanda. What are you doing up?"

Lavi still vacillates between the two options when they're alone together. And Kanda still hasn't decided which one he should use.

"Couldn't sleep." His gaze is sharp as it drifts towards Lavi's bag. He hasn't even attempted sleep, to Lavi's misfortune. If he were a little more muddled, Lavi might have been able to slip away with an excuse. The awkward, fumbling words he hasn't quite planned, to do with the girl, and how he vaguely sought Lavi to wash out her aftertaste, and how despite that he would sooner die than tell Lavi about her, fade away.

Lavi's not going on a mission. They generally observe office hours around here, unless it's a dire emergency. Too bad for him, it looks like a spot of Lavi's crisis has cropped up just as he was having a moment of his own.

"I just…have to go for a while. Not sure when I'll be coming back, but, you know. I'll see you when I do." Lavi says, which tells him about as much as nothing. The energy between them is incredibly uncomfortable. Kanda looks at him as if he sprouted two heads. Less than 24 hours ago, Lavi would have never gone away on a trip of indefinite length without at least making some clumsy attempt to say goodbye. Kanda's not sure Lavi from 24 hours ago would have agreed to go at all, if it has to do with what he thinks he does.

So, cautiously, he ventures, "Is it for Bookman?"

Lavi gives him a big soppy smile. It's common fodder for him, but only around everyone else. Ever since they came back from India he doesn't do it with Kanda. It was nice.

"I know you're not going to believe this, but I never do anything for anyone else—it's for me."

"But you hate it. You said so."

"So I did. Well, I can't take back what's past. So?"

"So, don't go." Kanda answers, too bewildered to be angry like he should be. The whole thing is surreal. He feels like he's in a fugue state. Maybe he is. In this very grounding moment of Lavi about to escape in the wilds without explanation, it's like the past few hours didn't even happen. No Lavi excitedly clutching his arms as they teetered together through a snowstorm on the top of a train. No the girl gracing his bedroom like an addiction he can't kick, Nothing. Things aren't connecting. Lavi is just matter-of-factly going into a vanishing act.

Somewhat unconsciously, he reaches over to put his hand on Lavi's arm. Maybe just to put things on pause, keep him from running out too quick. Lavi does something he never has before, and violently jerks away.

It makes things worse. The tension is even weirder as Kanda valiantly bulldozes through the scene to its end.

"Why do you go if you hate it?"

"Oh, stop it." Lavi mocks him lightly. "If I do, I do, and if I go, I go. Why are you doing this, anyways?"

"…Do you really want me to say it?"

"No. Because you don't." Lavi says immediately and indifferently.

The girl appears in his mind's eye this time, about a thousand times more beautiful than Lavi in an objective way. She is golden, and white light, and at least straightforward. She's waiting for him. That's it. She's been with him as long as he's been alive, and Lavi is what? Kind of the creepy kid he didn't meet too long ago, to be honest. And he had to learn to like him, against his better judgment.

Ugh, not Alma again.

So Lavi may have a point. But then again, there he is with the tiny red nicks from the ice in the storm on his cheeks. Kanda's has already healed over.

"Maybe I do," Kanda says anyways. Just for the sake of argument.

Lavi once told him that Bookman gave him the nickname "heartless" because for all the wars and their atrocities he's witnessed, he's always blamed rather than pitied people for their suffering. Prodigious for a Bookman. A little odd for one of Lavi's age. He's come to hate it. But Kanda never really saw it before now, with Lavi laughing away.

"Well, don't then," he says, turning his back on Kanda and sweeping himself off to the great unknown.

Kanda is stunned.

Six

Sometime around the present.

When Alma resurrects, he's ugly. Not surprising, considering that he's technically a dismembered cadaver held together by stitches and a toxic infusion of the Earl's egg nonsense. It's not unlike taking in the horror of Frankenstein's monster when it animates, and everyone gapes aghast.

But with simple will, Alma scours this all off like a layer of rust. He walks forward clean and shining, hard-edged. He even has sharps coming off of him, like a devil's tail. Somewhere in the background, Allen Walker does his stupid-wahing wahing routine. Kanda ignores him as usual, and Alma has eyes only for Kanda.

Alma could probably take on any form he likes, but he wants to look like the boy Kanda killed. He goes right up to Kanda, slightly on tip-toe like he used to. He smiles. Cheerful, sunny Alma. He was always smiling, when they were little. The dementia in it is new, though.

Less than an hour later Allen Walker is once again the selfless hero that everyone who matters can't help but owe. He got Kanda in end. Alma is like a child again, crying out in frustration. Once again, how very little life has given him. But even as Alma's fingers dissolve into sand, they grasp at what he does have.

Kanda.

Kanda gathers him up in his arms, precious cargo of his best friend and his true love's soul and everything that has truly mattered to him. The bundle is alarmingly light, but it helps, not being weighed down, when Kanda throws himself through the portal to Mater Allen opened for him.

Somewhere else in the world, Lavi is being bound by the Noah. But Kanda won't know that for a while.

Lavi had predicted that Kanda would never amount to much because of his fixation on Alma and his ghostly woman lover. And he was right, because right now, Lavi is completely gone from Kanda's thoughts. As part of the Order, Lavi goes in the discard pile. All he can see is Alma and the girl curled up inside him like a butterfly drying out and dying in its chrysalis. He doesn't return for a very long time.

Seven

A little later

One day he has Allen restrained until the gray recedes. When it is only a little flush on the tip of his nose, Allen suddenly says from within the ropes, "What will you do now, Kanda?"

"What?"

The Beansprout squirms. In the corner, Johnny Gill snores because there's nothing he could have done if the fourteenth woke up anyways.

"I mean…whatever happens to me, it's going to be over one day. This business with the fourteenth. Then what will you do?"

Kanda frowns. "What are you talking about, idiot? There's a holy war going with the akuma and the Earl, do you think we're going to sign a paper and it'll be 'okay, I won't kill your guys anymore!'"

"But you don't care about the Order. You're a General, but that's only because you want to help me. I fought so hard for your freedom, Kanda. What are you going to do with it with the part you still have?"

Mourn forever, Kanda thinks. The memories come in jogs and stutters. Little Alma reciting from his book, dancing around the edges of the pools so his feet won't fall asleep from the cold hard stone. Grown-up Alma in the grotesque, so powerful and resentful, and then eroded and dying again in his arms. That beautiful woman he loved, promising she would wait, a thousand times.

And she did wait. But all she did was take Alma away with her into a field of fully open lotuses.

Then there's the fastest flicker, the image of Lavi on one of his better days. The best day. Red hair, limned in light, laughing.

He has no idea where Lavi is. Gone, which is all Lavi probably wants him to know about it.

But that's gone in a flash and he answers Allen,

"Why are you always so hung up on these things? Don't you have bigger problems to worry about than these little kid questions?

Allen grins and his skin is back to normal with a little rosiness in his cheeks. He's always happy when he's successfully fought off the change again. Kanda still has to keep him bound for a while longer. The fourteenth can be very tricky. But Allen can talk.

"That's the part of me that's still 'Allen'."

He's quiet for a moment, and then pipes up again

"Do you miss him?" he asks quietly.

Kanda glances at him. Doesn't Allen deserve it?

"Of course I do."

Allen nods. He adds too casually, "I miss everyone at the Order. But, Lenalee was the one I saw last, and the one who went after me…I think about her the most."

Kanda look away at the catch in Allen's voice because that's what he'd want himself. But Allen shows no embarrassment. He keeps his head down as if he could drift off to sleep in his chair now that his struggle is over for the night and he can end it on a better note: the one of good memories.

"She's waiting for me. I know everybody is, but especially her. I feel bad, making her wait. But it makes me feel better, knowing she is. Isn't that crazy?"

Wordlessly, Kanda crosses the room and puts his hand on top of Allen's bowed head, ruffling his hair.

"Someone waiting for you when you don't know if you'll ever be able to go back to them… Is it easier when no one's waiting for you? Kanda, you tell me…"

"Go to sleep, stupid Beansprout…"

He sits up with him until Allen can sleep.

When Kanda finally returns to base, he's greeted by something of a riddle. He's stopped three times. Once by a man who gives him two things, once by girl who takes one away, and once by a man who gives him one thing and takes another.

To start with, Komui doesn't summon him to his office because it's Kanda that has the high ground now. It's only common decency that they show him some humility for their crimes against him. No one else will, so Komui does. So when Kanda is let in through their very officious front gate with all the fortifications to keep akuma and Noah and fallen exorcists out, Komui is standing in the doorway alone. He bows deeply.

His newest General looks to the side, displeased with the ceremony even though he feels it owed. Komui draws a picture out of his labcoat.

Kanda takes it and his heart clenches a little. It's the one of him, Alma, and the second exorcist research team. He remembers this picture. It technically wasn't that long ago, and it had been like a brochure for his and Alma's existence. The researchers had waved it all over the place.

He'd used to think of it as bland and pointless, like those class photographs with rows of students and their teacher to the side. The kind where everyone is expressionless, and no one thinks is interesting except for those with the dull business of being related to those pictured. But for the first time, he recognizes that Edgar and Twi Chan have a certain look about them. They are once subtly tired, happy, and anxious even in their neutral default. They have the look of parents.

Meanwhile, Alma's face is blank because they were told not to smile. At the time he was probably feeling a little empty. That was when Kanda was still constantly trying to murder him because he found that a better prospect than being his friend. But Kanda doesn't feel like this is a sad thing any more. That face will fill with a love that had 30 years to grow before Alma was even born. There may have been 10 complicated years following that, but the having the one day—the last day—was worth it.

It's stupid, but since he's let Allen get away with it of all people, he doesn't give Komui any trouble about seeing him with the start of tears.

This whole time Komui's hand has been resting heavily on top his other pocket. He jimmies his leg in unease, hesitating. It seems like Kanda can't take his eyes off the first picture, so maybe it's enough. Maybe he doesn't need the other one.

But this isn't just for Kanda. So Komui slowly pulls it out and hands it over.

Kanda can't think of what it might be, so his face contorts in slight annoyance over being interrupted from taking in Alma. But if the first picture made his heart clench, the second stops it entirely. His head snaps up sharply from shock, but Komui's snaps down just as sharply in another bow of deep, deep regret. Komui can't even face him.

Kanda has his arm draped along the backrest of the plush red velvet seat. Mugen is propped up in his other arm, his hand idle on the blade in its sheath to casually hold it up. His head lists to the side with his eyes closed, but he isn't sleeping; he's just bored.

Lavi is in front of Kanda's arm resting on the seat, sitting pulled up the edge of the bench. Lavi's bored too. He has a book open and the fist he has pressed up to his cheek says that he desperately wants to be taken out of what he's doing. That was right before Kanda took him onto the roof of the train.

Kanda's never seen a picture of the two of them before. And he catches what Lavi missed in Komui's office. Even though they're not doing anything- they're not facing each other, they're not talking, they're not even touching—the two people in this photograph are together.

Kanda holds this picture in his hand, over the one of him and Alma as children. Lavi. He lowers his eyes. He can't smile or cry to this one. He doesn't know what to say.

Komui doesn't either. He never voices a spoken apology. Kanda tucks the photos into his jacket, and leaves him in the hall with his head still bowed

He gets a turn when he opens the door to Lavi's room and finds Lenalee on her knees crying over his things. She holds her face in her hands, poised over some of his clothes, a notebook, and pens arranged like a shrine on the floor. At the sound of her arrival she drops her hands quickly and presses wet handprints into his scarf. Pens clatter to the side.

"Oh, hello!" she says, mutually surprised. "I'm sorry."

The last time he caught a woman off guard with her tears was when Allen forced everyone to behold Alma's agonized soul. His reaction is fairly similar. His brain supplies the instant sage opinion that he can't handle this either. His feet backpedal immediately.

"Oh no, no, I'm sorry, don't go!" she protests earnestly. She jumps up, "I'm sorry— " (why does she keep apologizing?) "—I wanted to be sad tonight, for Lavi. You were his friend too. Is that why you came?"

He looks at her and doesn't mean to let her go unanswered, but her lower lip trembles and she catches herself with the murmur,

"Oh, I didn't mean to say 'were'"

She rights herself, and her posture is straight, tall, and proud. She's been a weepy mess on and off ever since he met her, but she's always been able to do that too. Switch back to being a fighter, a strong one, at the drop of a hat. She clasps her hands and bows her head, like he brother. It looks more like a comrade keeping vigil at the funeral pyre than a young girl moping.

"I wish I had done better with him. You know, in the past. That's all. That's what I think about, sometimes."

Kanda is quiet for a moment, and without overanalyzing what he owes Allen or whatever he thinks about Lavi, he interjects,

"How about Allen? Do you think about him?"

Lenalee swivels about and faces him, deeply aggrieved.

"Of course I do. And I thought about you, too! While you were all away, I thought, I could have done better with all of them."

She throws her hands up in exasperation, at herself and the three young men who bedevil her so.

"First Lavi and Bookmen were taken by the Noah. Then you disappeared with Alma. Then Allen ran away on his own. So I worked backwards. When Allen hugged me but wouldn't stay, I wanted to sink into the Earth and disappear forever. But he made me promise to understand that he's OK and still fighting on his own. I…I had to, so it brought me back. Then I was sad about you, but I knew you were free, one way or another. I was just sorry about not seeing your pain earlier. But, Lavi…" and she can't go on.

"What about him?" Kanda prompts her.

Her ever-evolving hairstyle is a shower of mismatched bunches as she shakes her head in despair. "Oh Kanda, you should know even better than I do, because you've been doing this even longer than I have, haven't you? You and Allen had unconfirmed status. There's hope in that. But it's different for someone in enemy hands."

She bites her lip and glances away again. She can't face him either.

"If you catch yourself waiting too long for someone, he's probably not coming back."

He watches the proud soldier go away again and the worst in her reassert itself. Her back slackens and fingertips going up to her eyes again.

It's out of character for her to do this to him. But maybe she's entitled to some payback, after all they've put her through these past few months. That's fair.

He goes back at nightfall to ensure that Lenalee's cleared out. He expects nothing but the dismal little sorrow's nest she built of his things on the floor. It's there, blue and lumpish in the dark. But so is Bookman.

The little old man has a little wear and tear around the edges, like binding of a slightly used book. Kanda is not the shouting type but Bookman holds up a hand to silence him anyways. To everyone else, he's not here.

And so it comes out that Bookman is the hateful old bag of dust Kanda always thought he was. Kanda could be more sympathetic because he certainly knows what it's like to have everything good in him scraped away until only the monstrous dredge is left. But he's not. Kanda has never liked him, and in that time when he and Lavi had been on interesting terms, he'd had no qualms with wanting the decrepit man dead and out of the way.

Bookman treasures stacks of tedious papers with no readership more than someone who has literally given him his life.

And this wouldn't bother Kanda in principle, except that he never forgives those who take from him. If Bookman had been better at his job he would have realized it.

But maybe Bookman still has a scrap of humanity that seeks a sliver of redemption. Kanda won't give it to him, but it's the only thing that likely saves him from an impromptu execution atop his old apprentice's left-behind belongings.

He takes something out of his bag and turns it over to Kanda. Unsurprisingly, since it's Bookman, it's a book. No, more of a sheaf. A stack of papers dimpled from the pressure of handwritten words.

On his way out, he finally concedes to his attachment, or at least his guilt about the boy. Because before he can leave, he has to know. He asks Kanda,

"You'll go to him, won't you?"

Author's notes:

Tired…Thoughts all over the place…