It's the last thing I wanted to say.
Part Two: And I'll pray for you but I don't know why…
Kanda had been raised spoiled, Lavi found out. His mother must have been the one who taught him there was something unique to having two tails of one's sleek, long hair lying on the breastbone. It was the fashion of older Japanese women to wear it up, but she let it flow in watery waves all the way down to a small waist padded by an extravagant obi.
She looked like a goddess in a painting, gliding freely to mold the Earth at her fingertips. At his too-new Japanese her hand came up white in its rich sleeve of chrysanthemums, to give grace to her sniffing laughter. As for his father, he had the same flinty shortness in his speech as his son. His looks impacted Lavi less than the maddening detail of how he always wore his two heavy swords at his side, even at meal times.
They hadn't liked the dusty, off-color wanderer calling from their fancy gates. Kanda's mother had bowed in unenthused deference when she received him. He could see in her remarkably well-preserved eyes that she was already counting the pleasantries required to be rid of him in her head. She'd only narrowed her lips and nodded to a servant when he held out the letter for her. When the servant had read aloud her son's name, she had given a small cry and sank low over and over again in front of him in thanks.
Kanda's words were stiff and only about how he was honoring his parents from a distance and would not shame them. It moved the elderly couple to genteel euphoria, culminating in an extended invitation to stay. But once the favor was dealt, Lavi could tell that it was quickly regretted, no matter how many dinners' worth of describing Yuu's sword technique he had in him. The Kandas were not so happy to host a foreigner. Worse, a foreigner who would be foreign to a foreigner, with a slightly Asiatic warmth to his Western paleness. Mixed blood, they could sense, and that did not sit well with them. Normally he would have at least thought this over a little, but he owed the Kandas some gracious unthinking forgiveness. The letter was fake, after all.
"So, Lavi-san." Lavi had dropped from a prodigal-son-in-the-form-of-news-sama to a -san in a matter of hours. While that usually translated to improvement--more familiarity--he knew here the implication was different altogether. "Does my son speak often of finding a wife?" Kanda's mother was pale like moonlight and a good deal too beautiful for her age. She was also a master of demure tones and innocent inquiry, throwing confounding moving silk sheets over piercingly sharp thoughts. Lavi rather liked her.
"Yuu-san said that he could never marry without the express permission of his mother and father, who are the only ones wise enough to choose a proper bride. And besides, he would never consort with a Western woman." he answered, being good. He gave a winning smile, one of adulation for the man in question. He took a small sip of his sake as if in Yuu's honor.
Kanda's mother made an approving sound in her throat while his father nodded in noble satisfaction. But oh, they were just like Kanda. Sharpness was slipping from the corners of their eyes without them moving their heads. They were like the matched swords that Kanda used when he was at his most fearsome. Working in unison and from the same origin. Kanda was not a little boy any more. His parents were too smart to actually believe he was behaving like one. But he was telling his colleagues the right things. Giving the right impression about not being blatantly disgraceful in some distant land.
"Well, Lavi-san. My wife and I must retire for the night." Kanda's old, still muscle-taut and dangerous samurai of a father rose from the table, dipping his head. Lavi returned it. God, his neck was going to be sore by the time he got out of this country. "Feel free to roam the premises. We can not thank you enough for looking after our troublesome son all these years, and letting us know he is well."
"No trouble." Lavi protested jauntily, waving them off. He couldn't resist. "Yuu-chan mentioned he had a sister, though. Might I meet her?"
Lavi allowed them successive waves of consternation--at the inappropriateness of asking to meet with a woman of the house, of the embarrassingly childish nickname for their oldest son, and as it turned out to be the real issue, addressing the existence of their daughter at all.
Kanda's father was brief and unwelcoming. "We do not speak of our daughter." he said curtly. And like the split piece rushing to find its whole, Kanda's mother provided the recovery. "Yes, foreigner-san" she chided him, deviously kind like a kindergarten teacher with her naïve charges. "You may not know this, but in this country it is inappropriate to mention a girl that has already left the household. It is a great sorrow, but our daughter left our family shortly after our son departed for your army."
"Ah." Lavi simpered.
He spent the next week carefully looking over the complex--committing to memory its sliding light-as-air paper and wood doors, the artfully arranged rock garden, the meticulously cared-for family shrine. Then he charmed the address of Kanda's sister out of one of the servants and left.
---
Kanda and Lenalee were given a mission together. While Lenalee busied herself chasing a false lead across town, Kanda wasted no time lopping off the head of the statue with healing powers and confiscating its sparkling eyeball. He got the pedestrians at the scene to agree that it was a shame that those winged servants of Lucifer (which he had similarly decapitated) had destroyed such a miracle, and thank you for saving them all. Kanda wrapped up the day by spending the night in the red light district.
He sighed to himself, ill-tempered as his partner rubbed his perfumed hair on his stomach like an overconfident cat. He'd never resorted to using a place of business before. He found them unpleasant. Jewel-shaded men and women, languishing in the decorated doorframes, calling out sleepy-eyed to the shoppers sliding past, "Spend some time with us, handsome, pretty lady, blue-eyed stranger."
They sprinkled this sweetness on everyone. It didn't matter if it was a fresh-faced nervous teenager, a strutting middle-aged wealthy businessman with a bulge over his expensive belt, or a haughty old woman with her nose in the air like she was there to deliver a sermon instead of taking her pleasure. When they had caught sight of Kanda, their drowsing faces lit up briefly, like a herd of lazy cats in the dark seeing a rare canary walk into their nest. But they had oozed the same tepid honey, trilling "Come in, come in, angel."
That was why Kanda usually couldn't stand whores. People had spoon-fed him compliments all his life, ever since Japan--beautiful, heavenly, lovely oh so lovely. They had filled him with so much that he started spitting it all back out. It had been nothing but cheap gifts, meaningless clutter. He threw it away like garbage, it was so tacky and offensive.
But he remembered that when he was young--in a way that he was beginning to not be so young--he began noticing things. Sly things. The slightest flicker of a man's eyes and his condescending smile in a tea shop. A laughing remark from another boy in a shop about how he stared too hard at something he thought he couldn't have. It had perplexed him and thrown him into strange moments of irritation mixed with anticipation. He hadn't understood it for a time. But he had learned. No child stayed a child forever.
And it was in this way that Kanda learned that things could be said without being said, in gestures and hints. This was a secret art that the world ran itself around, unnoticing. It's practitioners were both smug and delicate. They spent time in both and had to be careful to hold them apart like they were keeping a paper separated from a flame. Kanda had no illusions that his looks made it easier for him to find others and for others to find him, so the natural frequency of when it happened had been enough. Unlike the blunt transactions between the kind of people in brothels, and their obvious noise, the there was skill and trickiness involved, including whether Kanda could escape the notice of his mission partner. It was easier for Kanda to live with this than be regular patron to these disgusting places.
But then he had gotten into a bad habit when Lavi--the idiot--had walked into his world by accident in Spain. He and Lavi were often paired together for missions back when Lavi had been with the Order. It was because Lavi never seemed to be bothered by anything. Pity the more easily wounded hearts of Krory and Chaoji, or the blood pressure of Allen, or the excitably whiny or unctuous rookies, to be paired for a mission with Kanda. Komui was nice to his soldiers. He gave Kanda to Lavi to handle and spared the rest when he could. And he had been right to, because Lavi really hadn't cared. He had stared for a moment, then looked away. It had been characteristic of his roving interest as a Bookman.
For all the times after that he'd been with Kanda, Lavi had been far too permissible. Lavi would see it happening--Bookmen were too good at knowing when people had secrets--then he would deliberately wander away to do something else. Something relevant to him. To be able to not care about another person's presence, and so frequently, had given Kanda too many opportunities. He got too used to it. At first, he had resented Lavi's knowing. But Lavi's apathy never wavered. His knowing even made things easier on Kanda, and Kanda had to acknowledge the blessing of it. After Lavi's departure it became difficult to constrain himself to the far more conservative schedule he had used before.
Kanda was cross as he pushed his sweaty bangs out of his face as his companion for the night started licking at his free hand. He had picked this one because out of the lineup whispering excitedly, looking him over with mischievous anticipation while passing each other whispers behind hands, this one had eyes had swept over Kanda with more envy than silly awe.
But he'd turned out be tedious flatterer of Kanada's hair, skin, and sword. And he was a giggler to boot. Kanda bit back the wrong kind of groan when the other person clambered on top on top of him, still babbling breathlessly about how exotic he was instead of just shutting up and getting to work. Komui had insisted this would be a demanding job, so he had put ever-patient Lenalee on task with him. Kanda saw her in a more positive light than otherwise, despite her being the loving sort. Unfortunately, her sensitivity to people gave her sharp insight. Kanda hadn't even tried for a casual encounter approach with her around, and they were both due back at the Order tomorrow. God, he missed Lavi sometimes.
With his poor pick mewling at him, he got started.
---
Kanda's sister had breasts that smelled like orchids.
She didn't look like him, surprisingly, considering how lovely she was. She was a different type of beauty altogether, bound to the Earth, whereas Kanda seemed as if he could float to the clouds and judge the imperfect Earth at any moment he wished. Like his ethereally conniving mother.
Kanda's sister was more reminiscent of their father. Her handsome face distracted from a panther-ish way of moving. She had a self-possessed fluidity and was ready to slip across the space between you and her at any moment before you could say a word. Of course, Kanda's father had done no such thing because Lavi was not someone to cut down. Kanda's sister was more ambivalent about that.
She caught his cheek with the back of her hand, a single brushing stroke.
"So you've come to tell me about my big brother, eh?" she laughed softly at him. Her hair was much shorter than any high-born girl should dare. It was cut straight across the bottoms around her ears. Black and glossy, it was the only physical trait she seemed to share with her brother.
"If you want to hear about him." Lavi answered agreeably. They were crossing a small wooden bridge spanning one of those manmade ponds. It was thick with blooming water plants in femininely pale colors, fish with rare patterns nibbling at the roots.
She continued laughing, not like her mother screening the sound with her white robes, but uncovered hands clasping Lavi's.
"I don't. I think you want to hear about him. And I would rather hear about you." Lavi grinned at her. Who knew someone this smart could be a blood relative of Kanda's? She titled her pointed chin at him, kittenishly scheming. "Let me think." she requested mockingly. "You claim to be his friend, but do not bring him with you. You have no purposeful business here, but want to meet our parents. Now, what could you be to my brother, Lavi-san?"
"A victim?" Lavi suggested innocously, which made her chortle in an unrefined manner.
"Perhaps. Did he frighten you into being his lover? He must have conned you into coming here to get some subliminal form of approval from our parents in a twisted attempt to maintain his honor. That's just the kind of demented way Yuu-nii likes to think." She glittered at him through her teasing, already aware of his inclinations by the way he was admiring her cleavage amid the flashy red of her wisteria-printed kimono. So she added in false thoughtfulness, "I completely understand if you made an exception in your preferences for Yuu-nii. He made for quite the beautiful girl when he was a child. Is he your beautiful woman now? Or is he fighting what nature intended and making you his woman instead?"
Lavi gave her a lopsided smile at the absurdity. "No." He said simply to all of it. His fingers crept around the cloth she was lazily allowing to slip off her smooth shoulders, and he started to play with her white neck, tickling. She didn't squirm. "Did he tell you about himself before he left? I would have thought he was too young."
"Sisters are wiser than parents." she explained deftly with a shrug. This caused her sleeves to drop down further. "I could tell he was faye back when he had nothing in his head and hand except a sword. Not that I said anything."
"You didn't like Yuu very much, did you?" Lavi observed candidly. His younger sister shrugged again, releasing Lavi's hand to idly flick crimson maple leaves at the swimming koi below.
"I didn't miss him." she smiled. "None of us did, except those foolish enough to be in love with him. Yuu-nii was a bully."
"Hm." Lavi mused. Kanda's sister placidly continued, "When they came to take my brother away, he didn't fight, even though he had such a good life here. They told our father that Yuu would be someone who fought against evil itself, like one of the gods. So they wanted him to go. They said he could return when he won. And he listened, just like that. I always thought after all these years that his side must have lost, and that he committed seppuku."
"No, it's just taking a long time." Lavi reassured her. "So what happened with you and your parents?"
"They kicked me out because I wouldn't marry the man they chose for me. Maybe they would have done it anyways, but, you know…." she trailed off, crafting her next words carefully. "…I played a little joke on them before I left, that's all. They had it enshrined in room like it was the sacred mirror. Like it was supposed to be him sitting there. I'm surprised he didn't take it when he went, but they said he didn't need it. I thought they deserved it, parents who gave away one good son and then could think about anything else but using their daughter to get another one."
"…you decided you'd rather just know a good man."
Kanda's sister seemed perpetually amused with the world. Her tinkling laughter rang over the water.
"Oh, as many as possible." she returned, wrapping her half-bare arms around his neck. "Are you a good man, Lavi-san?"
"No, I'm a terrible one." he said truthfully, pressing his face into her sweet-smelling hair.
"Good." she murmured approvingly. She took his hand started to lead him into the modest cottage she lived in.
"I'd be using you, you know." he warned her, just in case, although his hand was already on the knots securing her sash as they walked.
"That's fine. I could tell that you were the type right away. I'm using you too, friend of my brother and foreigner-sama." she pushed this thought away brightly. She slid easily out of her sandals and draped herself on his back as he sat on the stoop, unlacing his boots.
"Are you living like this to get back at your brother and your parents?" Lavi went on conversationally as he tugged the strings loose.
"Oh yes." she conceded instantly. "But I expect that you'll make it quite fun. I only regret getting you in trouble with Yuu-nii." He followed her into the dark unlit hall of her house. "He's a terrible hypocrite, you know. He'll say something about how you defiled his dear sister, even though I can tell you now that he never even pretended to notice me. He only said he had a sister, and didn't even mention my name, didn't he?"
"Something like that." Lavi admitted as they began to undress each other in her room. The futon was already neatly unfurled on the swept floor.
"Does it bother you that he won't be grateful?" she whispered to him as she laid back. "Nii-san never knew how to give thanks. Only how to hold a grudge."
"It doesn't matter." Lavi said, leaning into her mouth.
---
Lavi did write to them. He wrote and wrote and wrote about the things he'd seen. He cited specifically the things they would have liked best--for Krory, the technology expo Germany. For Chaoji, a master and crew just like Anita's. He enclosed little gifts the in the packets, like rare pressed flowers for Lenalee and lumps of local sweets for Allen. He was always on the move, doing "work" he said. But sometimes he'd give them a place to write to ahead of his itinerary, so they would be able to answer.
His first round, left in a tied bundle in in his abandoned room, had made them force Kanda to sit with them to compare notes for a day and cry. He'd read his, not completely unfeeling. They had spent a lot of time together. Lavi had known about him, and not judged him. Although admittedly, if he had, Kanda would have retaliated by letting his own sexual situation be known. Lavi had had something of a reputation among the Order, the kind that induced blushes and winks between the girl exorcists and laundry maids. He'd encouraged it, flirting shamelessly, so there must have been a reason.
He knew Lavi had been lying, of course. The line about monks had been incredibly lame. Lavi wasn't shy, and even if Kanda didn't already know that most people found Lavi funny and smart, he himself was living proof that a deficiency in charisma didn't stop you from finding someone to sleep with you. There was no reason for a reasonably attractive twenty-something man to be a virgin. And any time Lavi did something odd it could always be traced back to his shady other job. He was predictable under pressure. Maybe he didn't care. He was sometimes like that, uncaring that you caught him a lie because you knowing was that insignificant to the grand scheme of things. Kanda hadn't been enchanted with that part of him.
Kanda remembers that Lavi's last birthday before he had left had been with him, drinking himself into oblivion. He would have said no, but Lavi had looked him straight in the eye and growled in uncommon insistence "I let you be a bitch most times of the year, but today's my birthday and you owe me for a lot. Besides, I've got enough liquor to put down a horse, but it'll only make two grown men sick and stupid." Then Lavi had added, taking care not to sound too kind, "And anyways, your birthday passed while you were on a mission. I know you try to avoid Lenalee's cake and card ceremonies even when she has the chance to spring them on you, so give me some credit. You'd prefer drinking with a guy buddy, right?"
Point taken, so Kanda and Lavi had ended up on the roof taking turns with shots. Starting off, Lavi had fielded a one-sided conversation about the constellations and what the ancient Greeks could have predicted from them about this war. It whole thing had Kanda feeling faintly immature. It was a better activity for delinquent teens than adult men. But Lavi acted like a delinquent teen on his best days, so it hadn't been that awkward. A lot of lapses in talking had been filled easily enough by pouring another drink.
He had more than Kanda, who didn't hate gin, but preferred sake and vodka. Kanda had still been halfway lucid when Lavi hit his limit and threw up over the edge of the roof. Kanda had smirked at his red head bobbing over the side. Lavi had come up with tears in his eyes.
"Nnngghhh…Yuu, f-feel like shit…" he'd moaned. Holding his hair back with a hand, he'd stuck his head back over.
The man was one hell of a drunk. Effected himself, even Kanda had some degree of pity for the vomiting, crying mess. He'd crossed over, vision a little blurry, and sat next Lavi while he retched, crouching on his hands and knees over the protective edging.
"S-sorry." He'd said in between heaving breaths. "M'sorry, Yuu."
"For what?" Kanda asked, disoriented from drink. "Being sick? You had most of a bottle of straight gin."
"No…I…Ugh!" Another wave. Lavi had began to sob quietly with his forehead pressed to the tile. "I don't know…I'm just sorry. For…everything. I'm sorry, Yuu…so sorry…"
Kanda thought he'd been referring to last year in Spain. Lavi had told him afterwards about the gap in his sleep pattern, and the rooster, and the coffee. He'd only ignored him at the time. The alcohol and Lavi turning out to be a sad drunk made it all seem a lot funnier, so he'd laughed. And he had said:
"It's fine, Lavi."
Lavi had grunted faintly "S' not…" before passing out. Kanda had helped him get to bed, and the next morning at breakfast had seen him almost dipping his bangs into an oversized mug of coffee. Allen and Lenalee, for once not in one of their atmospherically dampening tiffs, were united in their bleak wordless masks of "What the fuck happened?" on the other side of the table. Kanda didn't volunteer any answers because he busy shoving past the breakfast line to get some coffee for his own hangover.
Maybe Lavi had been thinking about his decision already that day. Maybe he was sorry that he managed to stumble into the biggest secret of Kanda's life before he had run off. And maybe Lavi had made him feel strangely normal, the way he'd been sort-of talking about the way he was like it was just something to talk about--sitting around with another person, drinking himself witless, watching said person puke from it.
Still, Kanda sat stubbornly as far back as he could in his seat and let Lenalee have her few hours full of tears. Allen reviewed his old mopey clown faces with his arm around her, Chaoji hiccoughed with moist eyes and Krory thoughtfully watched the fire. He was due to marry the girl Lavi had found for him in a few months. They were all wounded and talkative and nit-picking at every generic word he'd left for them, sifting for clues to his state of mind--what prompted his decision, if it had been painful for him.
He didn't want people looking too closely at his. It was tactful, the way Lavi had left out the "love" part for his letter, and not too dumb because who in their right mind would use that word with him? But to Kanda's pride, it looked too obvious.
But Lavi never did play games with him. No little presents in his letters. Lavi would always be agreeably concise, as if he could predict what would happen if he got too sentimental (I.e. borderline affectionate). Not only would Kanda not write back, his standing policy, but he would start burning them as they arrived. Lenalee made disproving faces at him whenever she had a pen and a paper in her own hand, but Kanda let her and Allen and the rest give Lavi short updates of "Kanda's healthy, Kanda's wounded, Kanda's recovered, he's grumpy, he was amazing on that last mission." None of it was was inaccurate, anyways.
"Dear Yuu," Lavi would say without expectation of a response.
"I hope you're being nice to the newer exorcists."
"Don't be so hard on Allen. Everyone says he's catching up to you."
"I went to that town again; you know, the one for our fourth or fifth mission. The girls there are still just as pretty."
"Do your best to win this war for me." He wrote once.
---
One of the things Lavi quickly found out was that Tyki Mikk didn't know how to keep his hands to himself.
"I told you not to do that." he told off the Noah mildly. Tyki would have been delighted if he became passionately upset over something like two male hands on his waist. The first time it had happened Lavi had cursed him out. This turned out to be the trigger for a game of Tyki's that consisted of feeling up your organs until you screamed. Lavi had not taken to it well.
Lavi wasn't as skittish about that anymore, though. All the Noah had strange, fetishistic ways of entertaining themselves. It was symptomatic of the immortals. It had gotten to the point that discouraging them felt like spraying water at cats to stop them from clawing the furniture. They only did it out of sheer boredom.
"Why?" Tyki asked coquettishly, not letting go.
"Tyki, I don't like you."
"I like you." He countered. Lavi rolled his eyes. Centuries too long in semi-human form and the Noah seemed to regress further and further into childlike behavior. Rhode was the poster child.
"I'm working." He tried another angle. This usually was enough to fend the dusty-skinned pack off, if he was stubborn enough of it. He leaned back over the desk, determinedly writing another two lines. Tyki ignored this first attempt and pressed into his back, resting his chin on Lavi's shoulder and talking into his ear.
"Why don't you like me, Lavi?"
"You tried to kill me. You tried to kill Allen." Lavi filled in automatically. His handwriting was getting sloppy, he noticed. He'd have to check that.
"Only once! And that was a long time ago." Tyki playfully blew on his neck, enticing. "I promise not to do it again." he whispered.
Lavi grabbed onto his hand and with a tricky, well-practiced sleight of foot, looped him and got out of his hold. "Not gonna work. You already promised." he reminded Tyki, whose abyss-eyes were taking him in with undeterred amusement.
"But you've yet to make it worth my while. You're such a tease, Bookman."
Lavi wearily turned away this accusation with a shake of his head. "Tyki, that's just not true and you know it. I'm doing what I'm supposed to. You've seen me."
Tyki laughed, reaching out and flicking overgrown bangs out of Lavi's reproachful eyes.
"And what exactly are you supposed to be doing? Strange women all over the world?"
Lavi shrugged. "It's not like I'm not allowed to anymore. You never said I couldn't do things the way I wanted, as long as it got done."
"So quick to throw away your purity and principles." Tyki chided him suggestively. He put an uninvited hand on Lavi's hip.
"Just took up a different set, that's all." Lavi told him calmly, not taking his eyes off Tyki's smirking face. "And it's not like you didn't already know this, since you've obviously been tracking my sex life, but I told you I wasn't interested in men."
"Yet." Tyki added onto his sentence for him. "Give it a few decades. Women alone get boring."
Lavi picked up the hand on him like it was a dead frog, dropping it as quickly as possible. It was slow work, understanding the Noah. For most of them, the way they spoke was a nebulous blend of jester's riddles, sage's advice, and philosopher's revelations. All of it was delivered in spouts of hyper riots or liquid-heavy ennui. Or, in Tyki's case, seductive coaxing, winning you over into absorbing his words like cult propaganda. As Lavi watched, Tyki took his hand back, amused, as if he'd just withdrawn an adult pleasure from a child; Lavi was revolted now but would beg for it later once he grew up.
Lavi reflected how incredibly difficult it was to get out of his too-human impression that all Noah were ill-spent wisdom.
"You should sleep with me in the future. You would learn a lot." Tyki commented casually in a way that a normal man would use when inviting a friend out for drinks.
Lavi swore in one of his fifteen languages. Not in shock, but exasperation.
"I was one of 'those' in one of my past lives, you know. One of those people Bookmen were allowed to consort with. I was born noble. The more eccentric nobles have always liked pursuing those kinds of things." Tyki grinned impishly at him, borrowing a mask from his little-girl-older-sister. "It would make you a better Bookman. You do go on about that."
"I'm sure." Lavi snapped, finally riled, and a little upset with this information. In what way? If anyone would be uncritical about living Biblical anomalies insinuating their way into mortal, carnal fold, it would be the Bookmen. "But I still wouldn't sleep with you."
"No?" Tyki asked, unconcerned. "It seems I caught you at a bad time, setting up house. Not in the mood. I understand."
"I don't find you attractive." Lavi insisted. Monster, he thought halfheartedly, because it would be counterproductive--and wrong--to say it out loud. It was already wrong to think it. It was hard getting used to the new way of things, but he had to. He was already on his way, and it wasn't that bad. No turning back now.
"Give it a few decades." Tyki said again, laughing, grooming his black silk locks with perfect fingers.
Pleasure really was one of the more aggravating components of Noah's psyche.
---
Lavi faithfully continued to send letters to them and they faithfully continued to pounce upon them and tear them apart. Little changed about them. They followed the same format of "I was just here, I just saw this. How are you all?" They had more interesting news to send back, most of the time. Or, at least, they tried too. It was if they didn't want to disappoint him by being stagnant. Or maybe they were trying to bribe him home with all the excitement that had sprung up immediately following his departure. Lenalee in particular always slipped in a gentle rebuke for missing all the fun in her postscript. Lavi never gave her any more hope than a "that's too bad" each time.
They were preparing themselves for the biggest guilt trip yet with the wedding.
"I thought we had a no marriage, no family rule." Kanda grumbled as he got ready. He had been enlisted to be part of the wedding party. Komui had threatened to suspend him for two months if he acted up.
"That was easier when we were all kids or came married." Allen said matter-of-factly. All of them were in the men's dressing room--him, Allen, and Chaoji. "That old rule was just to stop people from calling back their loved ones when no one was watching. If either spouse croaks, the surviving spouse agrees to have the body cremated immediately and to be monitored during the grieving period to prevent contact with the Earl. Komui worked it out with the Vatican." And then, catching sight of Kanda's prayer beads, Allen scolded him for mismatching the rest of the party. Kanda scowled, but left his bracelet on the table.
The bride was voluminous and blushing in her many layers of lace. Her hometown was one of those quaint countryside hamlets, the kind that made the pale groom look as if he were a spook descending upon the simple folk. But his soon-to-be-wife didn't seem to mind. Her voice was light and teasing as she excitedly clutched her bridesmaid's hands in anticipation. Lenalee had worn her hair loose for the occasion to match everyone else. Throughout the ceremony her straight dark hair stood out starkly from the cream-colored materials of the dresses and the pale curly heads of the other women.
Later that night at the rented out inn, well bedecked with congratulatory banners and flowers and feast foods, Kanda found her on a balcony overlooking the central courtyard. Below, the wedding dances were in full swing. The candles and torches cast a rosy glow even on Krory's bloodless cheeks as he and his wife stepped merrily across the floor, hands twined. Other dancing couples opened up to a circle around them so they could clap and cheer for them to the traditional wedding song. Lenalee shone soft eyes on them.
"Lenalee, Walker's looking for you." Kanda told her shortly, expecting to snap her out of her dreamy reverie. Women. So sentimental.
Lenalee turned to him and he saw that her eyes were a little glassy.
"He is, is he?" She sounded strange. Kanda noticed redness across the bridge of her nose.
"Lenalee, are you drunk?"
"Oh." Lenalee shifted, and in the dim light Kanda could make out her squinting at her hand. She was grasping the thin stem of a half-full glass that he hadn't seen before. "I don't know, actually. Maybe I am. I don't usually drink."
"Well, Allen's looking for you." Kanda repeated, figuring Lenalee's man could scoop her up and move her into their room if she wasn't feeling well enough to see the festivities through. She was one of the important guests, but Krory and his wife seemed perfectly happy to pay attention only to each other.
"I'm getting married, Kanda." Lenalee answered. She extended her hand out over the railing, over the lit heads of the wedding revelers below. Kanda could see the jewel winking weakly in the darkness.
"Congratulations." he said without hesitation. "Why isn't he with you, then?"
"Oh, you know. It's their night. Didn't want to steal the spotlight…"
"Hm." Kanda affirmed. Then, quietly and without malice, "Why did you say yes?"
Lenalee stared at him blankly. "What was I supposed to say? I love him." she replied.
Allen retrieved her a few minutes later because someone at the buffet table had seen her admiring the scene from up above. They all went back to the main party and after it ended a few hours later, they retired to their rooms. The bride's background demanded that the weddings be a rich affair, and Krory was still officially a Count with a fortune piled up in gold coins somewhere in his home country. He used it to lavish a two-day stay upon his friends and his wife's relatives, with activities like hunts and drives.
Kanda avoided most of it by doing solitary training in the woodlands. That was where he was when the inn was razed to the ground by the flock of akuma that breezed in. Some hysterically excited younger exorcists even later reported sightings of a long-haired beautiful woman in a suit, her exposed hands and face as gray as stone.
Allen and Krory took it upon themselves to dig guests out from the rubble before the inn was reduced completely to cinders. Kanda wanted to get to work exterminating the problem, but Lenalee recruited him to accompany her to town to lift collapsed building rubble off the trapped townspeople she'd spotted by circling the air. It was, as she snapped out with vicious anger when he had balked, because she wasn't strong enough to do it herself. Chaoji had run off to search for Komui.
Krory's weeping wife was gingerly packed into one of the emergency coaches sent by the Order to get everyone out. She had a bad burn stretching from her ankle to her knee. Krory held her hand up until the last few moments when they separated, her screaming his name and clawing. He had to stay to help purge the area of akuma. Allen had turned sad eyes on her blistered skin and muttered that it was a shame that Miranda wasn't there. At the bride's stricken expression, Lenalee had punched him in the arm. Really punched him, so that even when they all started home after a long, exhausting two nights of fires and fights, covered in ashes and dust, Allen still bore a sickly purple bruise.
It wasn't until they were climbing into the carriages that Kanda remembered the prayer bracelet he had let behind. It was defunct as a religious object, he'd stopped praying or calling himself Buddhist a few years after he left Japan. But his mother had slid it onto his wrist the day he left. He'd started to push his way back out, but this was met with a large wave of protest from his tired comrades. They wanted to go home, Krory needed to see his wife as soon as possible, the inn was burned to nothing and the beads had been made out of wood. Kanda had given in, but not before delivering a cutting comment about going into a firestorm for a lost hairclip. Lenalee punched him too.
So when they wrote to Lavi, they had little to make him envy what he had missed. Each reported one item of tragedy. Krory's wife would have a permanent scar. The status of one of the youngest exorcists, and his innocence, was unknown; he had been reported by his team to have been last seen running after Lulubell, with his golem going offline shortly after. The town had been completely destroyed and the Vatican had issued a strict ban on large Order gatherings. It was too much of a temptation for the other side. This was not appreciated by Allen, who started grousing about a large wedding even though Lenalee's irritated sighs became more and more pronounced beside him. Even Kanda appeared to have suffered, Allen noted sarcastically in his version of events. Nothing more unfortunate happened than him losing his bracelet. This was certainly evidenced by Kanda's bad mood over it--a most rare state for him.
A series of letters from Lavi arrived after, awash in sympathy and angry exclamation for all the damage inflicted. He sent some special poultices that would help with the burn, he said, and some luxuriantly rich jewelry and cigars for the new couple. He was sorry that the circumstances couldn't be happier for such a wonderful occasion.
A packet came for Kanda, which opened up the exactly right bracelet from the right temple, a string of alternating black and white wood prayer beads so new they reflected light.
"Thank you." his return note had said awkwardly.
---
Lavi thought about the last time he had seen Bookman. He had went to meet him shortly after Bookman turned in his needles, hobbling out of the Order with cantankerous excuses about how his bad back and worn knees and useless eyes meant he couldn't fight anyways. This was true, so they let him go and less than a day later his innocence had already been reduced to elementary form and tucked into Heveleska to await a fresher accommodator.
It had been a bit easier on Lavi, who simply dumped off his hammer on the scientists with a request for repairs before dashing to freedom. Lenalee, who had better access to the inner workings of the Order than the rest as part administrator herself, had confided in a letter that it still hadn't been taken apart. They were getting plenty of new recruits with the other spare innocence, and Lavi was young and strong enough to keep a weapon aside for him in case he returned. It sat on a lab table, unbothered.
They sat outside of a grass hut somewhere in continental Asia. Lavi came out with a cup of butter tea for his mentor, who was hunched on the bench, rheumy eyes shut as if he were tired. He took the drink from Lavi with liver-spotted hands so winkled that tucks of skin bunched up on the bones of his fingers. Lavi threw a spare blanket over him because it was cold at this altitude.
"Tell me again why we do this. Tell me about who writes history." Bookman intoned at him as soon as Lavi sat down.
Lavi groaned. " Gramps, this is so juvenile…" But when Bookman persisted with his heavy silence, Lavi gave in and started his recitation. "We record the truth. In the wars, the winning side tells the story, and destroys the stories of the conquered. But we see all, and we hide nothing. We maintain neutrality and alone guard the world's truth."
"…Wrong. Or, not completely correct."
Lavi wordlessly let the steam of his own cup unfurl in wispy shapes into his face. They took on picture-forms, so clear that he could have divined the future from them.
"We are not just the writers of truth--we are its custodians." Bookman continued. "We may say we are neutral, but in what way? The history we have been tracking since it's beginning is the history of man-- wars between men. We look like men, Lavi. We hide. We hide everything in our appearance as men. The reason why we can do this is because men had dominion on this earth and we could run anywhere to protect our secrets after we had stolen them from whatever war."
Lavi silently beheld the warm-colored liquid in his hands. Bookman was straining beyond his damaged eyes to give him a sharp look.
"Lavi, I'm not trying to show you mercy by saying this. I'm not offering you the choice. We both already know what a Bookman must choose. But you will have to purge the imprint of an era thousands of years old. You must track the new history.'"
"I know." he said. "I understand, and I will." He had no doubts. It was Bookman who had doubts, heartbroken thoughts that he was free to have now that he was finally old enough to die. His last act of duty was to retire from the Order so that it would have no collateral on Lavi when he became free-range himself. Bookman could toss off the shroud of Bookmanhood. The new Bookman was next to him, taking small sips out of the nourishing broth he had prepared for them both. In the house were the remnants of the wife and child Bookman had left behind long before Lavi was even born.
"Why did you do it, Lavi?" Bookman asked, almost mournful, even though Lavi knew it was to his great satisfaction that Lavi himself was indifferent, smiling faintly at the grass-and-rocks landscape. "Why did you join the Bookmen?"
"I thought we're not supposed to question it. We're supposed to become it…that's what you said." Lavi attempted to inject some wry humor into the conversation. A cold wind tousled the fringe on their wraps and the last spider web scrap of hair on Bookman's skull.
"Yes. That's our official creed. But no other Bookman has watched over a mind like yours, and now I think there should be one."
"Well, gramps?" Lavi laughed. "What is it? And what's the answer you came up with?"
"It would be beyond human arrogance to be able to rationally answer the question whether one can really turn his back on three millenia of mankind." Bookman finally smiled the slightly, his crumpled mouth twitching. Lavi got up to fetch another blanket from the house; the chill was really biting and Bookman seemed unwilling to move.
"So, Lavi. Can you?"
---
Kanda, Lenalee, and Allen were patrolling close to the home base, close enough to walk back in under two hours. With that much muscle, it sounded serious, but it wasn't. They were only doing a patrol, busy work. In the past half year or so the aggression from the other side had hit a true lull. It had gotten to the point that the hot-blooded younger exorcists had somehow found time to explode the Order into a hotbed of passionate crushes and pseudo courtships of excursions into town while still in uniform.
Lenalee laughed at them and Allen encouraged them with playfully bad advice but Kanda was far less delighted. For one thing, some of the bolder, stupider ones dared to turn sheep's eyes on the senior exorcists. Lenalee had assured him that it was harmless, like students having infatuations on teachers in school. It must have touched her that the hormone-sodden bunch of them could srill have such sweet past times in a military organization. But Kanda could see it flattering both her and Allen's vanity when the teenagers would sidle up to them with shining eyes and breathless admissions of admiration--for their work as exorcists, of course.
Kanda had tried to put a damper on their indulgent attitudes by asking whether they should really be allowing underage flirtations with their spouses. But Lenalee and Allen had only looked at each and burst out laughing as if he were joking. Then they had stifled their giggles to give a loyal light kiss to each other, souring Kanda's face and warding him off.
Ever since she actually married Allen, Lenalee had been in much better mood.
"Kanda, Kanda, take a break." she beckoned to him. And to Allen, snooping about on a ledge above their heads, she yelled "Allen! It's time for lunch!"
Allen hopped and slid down in a miniature avalanche of gravel. Kanda scowled as the small stones sprayed against the side of jacket with a patter. Lenalee found a grassy area and produced a blanket out of her backpack, airing it out before spreading out stacks of boxes on top of it. Kanda silently began to help her unlid them. They revealed a multitude of delicious dishes of all nationalities--simple rice balls in their seaweed wrappers, festively bright Chinese dishes with an assortment of fragrant ingredients, headily scented Indian foods smelling strongly of heat, hearty European recipes of pasta and roasts.
"So?" The gluttonous gleam in Allen's eye that Kanda had seen too often came again. "What did Jerry make for us?"
"Oh." Lenalee coughed modestly into her hand. "I cooked this time."
Allen rounded on her in surprise. "What? Really? Thanks honey! You're an incredible cook." he childishly threw an arm around her and gave her a sound kiss on the cheek. Then he began to heap large portions of everything onto one of the empty plates, eating noisily.
"No problem." Lenalee murmured, watching him and smiling. Noticing that Kanda wasn't eating, she started to fuss with piling a plate high, scanning the food here and there and picking up a few pieces from scattered boxes. "I know you don't things seasoned too strongly Kanda, let me find the milder ones…"
They had just finished and were packing up the sauce-stained mess when a explosion like a bomb made them all whip the heads in the direction of headquarters.
"Oh no." Lenalee said when they saw the smoke.
In less than two hours they were engaging the enemy on the tallest spires of the city.("High ground, high ground! We can't meet them in street!" Allen had ordered.) They were too thick for them to reach the base. Allen wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, Clown Crown gripped in his hot hand. His wedding band glistened on his knuckle. He and Kanda stood on the roof of one the many churches while Lenalee reluctantly passed back and forth in the space between them and the swarm of high-level akuma creeping up on them.
"Lenalee, you can fly--go ahead to headquarters. Me and Kanda will fight our way through. They're just trying to delay us here. We'll meet you there. Go." Allen told her. She opened her mouth, but a leering akuma lobbed a missile over her head and it struck the platform underneath Allen and Kanda. As Kanda felt himself falling backwards as the floor beneath him crumbled, he saw Lenalee freeze in midair, dark eyes wide.
That evening, Kanda sat outside the sick room, struggling to keep pressure on the worst wound. His many other injuries attacked his ability to do this simple act. He was one in a piles of people waiting for treatment, quiet in a sea of whimpering cries pitched for attention. Beside him, two youngling exorcists moaned from broken limbs and bad cuts, which gave him more stomach pain than the pulpy bruise on his abdomen.
Lenelee was walking down the hall. When Kanda saw her coming, he gritted his teeth. He latched his fingers into the lightly textured wall to pull himself up into a difficult half-standing position.
"Lenalee! What the fuck is wrong with you? Allen's innocence extends! He could have grabbed a ledge by himself! Why didn't you--"
Lenalee's thin arm in its black leatherette sleeve swept him aside without her glancing at him. The round baby faces of the of their junior comrades stared openly up at Kanda leaning his weight heavily into the wall, panting. He glared after his comrade's small jacketed back as she sauntered off.
"You…bitch!" Kanda growled over the brisk clicking of her departing heels. He slid an inch down the wall. His arm was pinned by his upper body, so the broken shards of his shoulder needled their way out of his flesh, poking out wetly from his already mangled skin.
If Lenalee heard him yelling from halfway down the hall, she ignored it.
---
Lavi heard the skipping clack of Rhode's penny loafers on the flagstones before he saw her. Even then she was only a flurry of ever-moving skirts and lace somewhere around his waist. The girl part of her finally reached out and tugged at his hand with all ten of her soft child's fingers.
"Hey, hey, Lavi." she cajoled. He looked down to see the pink ribbon stripe looped around her head and a gesture towards a stall. "That. Buy me that."
"Rhode, you've said three times already!" he scolded her. His bag was already stuffed with trinkets she had wheedled out of him. She shot him a look that was half reproach and half begging.
This Rhode was different that the one he had met in Edo. She had the same shape as the cool-headed diminutive torturess that tore Lavi's sanity into pieces in the fake tower. But she was a different edition. She was charming.
Rhode now had the rosy flesh and blue eyes that any Victorian doll would envy. The frilled uniform with the bell sleeves and dark pleated skirt were several discarded human identities gone. They couldn't keep her in the same grade school forever, they explained. Rhode didn't age. So she was currently enrolled in one that dressed the girls in a plaid jumper and dark stockings.
Strangely enough, she liked Lavi. And Lavi liked her back. This was a serious bone of sulky contention for Tyki Mikk, when Tyki wasn't trying to fondle him.
"Hypo-crite, hypo-crite!" she had chanted when Lavi blanched the first time he had saw her again. "You can't say you don't like me because I tried to hurt you and your friends. I only did it because you hurt my Tyki, and I was angry. Didn't you attack Tyki as soon as you saw him in Edo because you thought he killed Allen? Hypo-crite!" And on with the singsongs until he started welcoming them, her with her little bird-voice.
She started tagging along with him on these trips--not that he really encouraged her, but if school was out, and she got the doorway open before any of the other Noah could stop her, and he was in town with a bazaar area like this one where it always more fun to have someone walking with you to admire the wares…
"Please!" she implored, stretching her hand towards some glittery thing on the counter that was too high for her.
"I'm here for work." he reminded her. Rhode protested-- "I'm here for work too!"-- but he took her hand and forcefully lead her away from the merchant, whose thick mustache twitched at the darling sight of them. He must have looked like an older brother--wait. Lavi sighed. How old was Rhode's physical form? Ten? He was now old enough to be her proxy father. One that had started young, but still.
"Lavi-bunny?" Rhode chirped at him as they navigated the crowds hand in hand. "Why're you sad?"
"I'm not sad, baby." he reassured her. "Just thinking is all." He paused. "What did you mean by you're working too?"
She giggled in delight, eyes sliding past him. Then she went into a free-spinning dance that spread her skirt out into a color-hatched circle. "Lookit!" she shouted excitedly. "Blackbirdies flown free from the pie!"
"What?"
"Lavi?"
Lavi turned around.
Kanda knew he looked just the same. Sleek dark hair with cut bangs framing his face, a stark black uniform silhouetting him against the colorful shoppers. And Mugen. But Lavi, he looked different. He looked like he had lost weight and rest, cheekbones higher in his thinner face. His hair had grown long enough for him to pin it to the back of his head in a loose rose-colored lariat. He was surprised to see Lavi, the way he was and here. But Rhode was in plain sight too, the first dusting of ash spreading across her cheeks.
Kanda saw Lavi make a wild snatch for her even before he could draw his sword.
"Rhode!" Lavi cried, but she merely laughed and doused her human beauty. It was like the sun had suddenly eclipsed in a column just wide enough to encircle her body. Her skin flushed with corpse-grey deathliness, and her nails blackened as if she had struck all her fingertips against stone and they clotted blood under the nail. Her gem-like irises collapsed into awning holes.
"The birdies fly in and eat bunny pie!" she sang, whipping up a doorway with a fluttering wave of her hands. Kanda started, throwing himself forward to cut her down before she could step through--she must have been the one to summon all those akuma to town. All those…Lavi was frozen, the stupid noncombatant, arms wrapped around his books as if those would shield him. He was staring at Kanda and Rhode was languidly slipping into another dimension, grinning widely at the line of expressionless, identical long-coated gunmen lining up behind Lavi with their muskets pointed at him…
When they fired the shot in unison, Lavi could feel Kanda throwing him down--
And Kanda, suddenly seeing snatches of the past as the pain struck all through his upper body--
--one of his nameless one-night stands on his knees, throwing his arms around his waist and begging him not to go--
--Komui in his office of command, reigning over his paper strewn desk like a corporate monarch, briefing him before this mission with a pen caught in his fraught fingers: "Strict orders, Kanda…only engage akuma. No matter what you see. ONLY confirmed akuma!…What else would be there? Don't ask questions, soldier…Dismissed…."--
--Lenalee, two weeks shy of her first anniversary, screaming so loud that everyone in the Great Hall could hear her…"I don't want a baby, Allen Walker!"…Allen shouting back at her, furious…--
--Dragging his bitter eleven-year-old sister back through the rice paddies after she'd run off with a village boy…."I hate you nii-san!"… she was sobbing relentlessly…."I hate you, I--"
--His mother in her glistening white kimono, proud father over her shoulder, expression set…her slim fingers sliding a string of black and white beads onto his wrist and an almost angry coolness in her black eyes…--
--Lavi shouting for him that first summer day that he fell into a fountain shattered to pieces, collecting rock and water beads in spatters and shards on his pants and shoulders--
And Lavi, pulling him closer, the white front of his shirt was crimson, a smear of the color on his face distorting the shape of his close-lipped frown under green eyes freed from an eye patch. "Yuu!" he called…"Yuu…!"
---
Lavi was crying.
It had no meaning. There was no sadness in his face, no anger. He sat across from Kanda, hands folded, unresponsive to the tears running down unmoving features. A plant dripping dew.
Lavi was singing.
Sometimes underneath his breath, sometimes soaring strong and brave. Short, happy lullabies, not always in words Kanda understood.
Stop it, it made him uncomfortable, Kanda wanted to say. Lavi didn't cry. Lavi didn't sing. He didn't do much of anything, he was just…Lavi. A face that disappeared years ago. But Kanda's throat was constricted by a vice he couldn't touch. His fingers were detached and he couldn't rip off the clamp choking him into silence.
"And then the boy falls asleep, the flame inside the breathing ashes, one, two…" Lavi's lips formed around the melody.
Kanda watched the words fall out as Lavi looked into his face. Again Kanda could not move for any reason. Lavi reached towards him, smoothing out the searing pain that ate into every second. It cut deeply into him in a ceaseless flood. He could connect it to nothing; he only felt it, swollen and whole. Phantom pain.
Lavi was adrift somewhere in this miasma, walking back and forth and back to him, always. His hands, busy. Rearranging, pressing. Fighting off the agony.
Kanda opened his eyes to Lavi's sitting in a chair with his back to him, voice softening and dying:
"No matter how many millions of years, return the prayers to the earth…"
"What is that song?" Kanda asked once. How, he didn't know, because formless shapes were still clogging his mouth.
Lavi had answered, without looking back:
"A hope that no one would want."
---
Kanda woke up to a plain white ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye there was a snow flurry haze through the glass panes of a window, dappling the dim light that came in. There were foot steps beats in the morning, rubber into wood. One by one, dreamily faint.
"What the fuck!" Kanda protested, the broken croak that came out catching him by surprise. A raw blistering feeling stabbed into his upper body and he choked on his own cries of pain.
The beats became a running rhythm, louder with each one. A billowing wind buoyed the snowfall outside, rippling the paisley light in the room like water. Different kinds of almost-white. Kanda's hands pulling free of their soft, thin constraints and blurring into stripes of bandages and sickly-pale skin before his unclear vision. Sheets. Bleached sheets. Porcelain washbasin and a washcloth hanging halfway out.
Brown. Dirty. Edges to lighter impurity. The pad of a palm to a hand. It covered his mouth. It was trying to muffle his screams.
"Yuu…Yuu, stop."
An ivory off-white. Kanda's overgrown nails, clenching into his skin, trying to pull him off. The bottled up noise. The pain. He wanted to open his mouth and let them drain out.
"Yuu, I'm going to give you some drugs. Calm down so you can take them."
Fingers pried in, propping his mouth upon by pushing the two sets of teeth apart. Two hard pellets tumbled down past his tongue . They were worked down by a hand rubbing the muscles of his throat, guiding the swallow.
Some time later, Kanda slid back into focus. Lavi was yanking at gauze on his chest, trying to pull it loose. Whatever dried layer between his skin and the bandage had glued them together. There was mottled pile of them already sitting to the side.
"Welcome back, Yuu." he said as he worked on the wounds. "I was hoping you wouldn't be in much pain after the fever broke. You never complained much before when you got hurt."
The sides of Kanda's felt stiff. Like they were a few layers too thick, and that interfered with moving his head on the pillow.
"Does your face hurt? I thought I got all those bullet fragments… Hold on, I'll check again in a minute…"
Frag--? Kanda tried to touch his jaw, feel for the leftover shrapnel stuck in him. His elbows wouldn't cooperate and bring his hands to his face. Akuma bullets dissolved into the pentacle virus. They didn't leave fragments.
Lavi saw him squirming and said: "I know you thought I'd die if you didn't take the shot, because you're immune to the akuma virus… but if it's human bullets, you're almost as likely to die as I am. Your regenerative spell works best on other magic."
Kanda glanced at the window and the snowstorm serenely blew on, swirling in the four squares. It said that there had been weeks worth of this; wearing nothing but bandages, incoherence and Lavi. Lavi. Lavi, the fugitive, no longer run away, but immobile while was Kanda was immobile, watching over Kanda's should-be corpse plodding its unnatural way back to life. Why…hadn't the Order come looking for Kanda, and then tried to convince Lavi, a capable fighter, to stay…? Lavi had…somehow fought off the akuma that had been aiming for him--a harmless ex-exorcist, without even an innocence?--while unarmed, and…where was Mugen? What about human bullets? Humans didn't work for the Noah. Rhode had-- nothing made sense.
Sensing his consternation, Lavi smiled, wan and patient like a parent at the bedside of a frightened sick child. Kanda wanted to hit him, because it was not like that. He was lucid and angry…lucidly angry…but trapped in this slowly rebuilding wreck of a body. And every fiber of his intuition told him that it was somehow Lavi's fault. Not accidental. Something deliberate, made of secrets gone horribly wrong.
"It's alright, Yuu. Don't worry, nothing's wrong." Lavi promised him. Kanda's insides tightened, repelled by Lavi's peacefulness. It inspired a desperate need to get away. And Kanda couldn't. "This was supposed to happen. You made it happen a lot faster, but it's okay. It's better this way." Lavi comforted him, smoothing a fresh cloth onto him with spread fingers. Kanda twisted his head on his pillow, infuriated at Lavi's ambiguity. It sent spears of hot pain down his back, but he didn't stop. Lavi had to grasp him by the shoulders and hold him still.
"You don't understand." Lavi told him strangely. His kindness was unsettling. His gaze was absent and calm, focused not on Kanda but on the shifting world outside. A grey-scale kaleidoscope display lit his face. Kanda watched the pieces of change as the snow continued to fall. "You don't have to see any of it this way."
"See what?" Kanda finally managed to get out. It came out thick and feeling wrong. He felt tied down.
"The fall of man." Lavi replied.
He finished redressing Kanda's wounds, tucked him back him, and walked out.
Author's Note:
I think that's a good place to end it for now… I'm sorry, you're probably all as confused as ever, and thinking "…Are they ever going to fall in love?" Next chapter answers all, in a coherent manner!(ish…) and "Yes, yes they most assuredly will." The story lies in how, I guess.
…Can't think of anything else to say…mostly I'm getting a lot of "What's?" and "That's sad…" in terms of feedback. And to this I say: "I know…sorry." This story between them just kind of happened in my head and it's like I'm just writing it down. I hope it comes out OK in the end. They're going to be happy. You'll see.
