It was a day after visiting Kanda, and Marie had taken it upon himself to practice moving through the building unaided. He had been fairly adept at it before the recent incident had knocked him back off his feet, and he felt well enough now to try it again-better than he should have, in fact. He had an inkling that Kanda's blood might have had something to do with it.
The medical staff wouldn't approve, but Marie wasn't as brazen as some of his Exorcist brothers and sisters who made their breaks out of the infirmary, and the nurses here weren't half as used to their patients making breaks in the first place. Marie had already spent enough time remembering his teammates on his strings-it was time he prepared to fight once again.
"Hey! Exorcist!"
Marie knew that voice, as well as he knew that it was useless to tell Bak there was no need to yell.
"Bak. Did you need something?"
The young scientist huffed to a stop, haste ceasing at once, and then thrust something into his hands in abrupt charity.
"Here," he said bluntly. "You've already got great ears, so the nutjobs down in tech development took apart some golems to put these things together. We think they'll make battle easier when you're back on the field, and you'll be able to contact Headquarters whenever, too."
Marie felt the things over in his hands, refraining from pointing out that Bak was one of those "nutjobs", too. "What are they?"
"Headphones. They'll help you hear better."
Marie looked down at them out of instinct, forgetting for a moment that doing so would not make the situation any clearer.
"You put them over your ears," Bak prompted.
"And putting things over my ears will help me hear better."
Bak snorted with the haughty impatience that Marie worried was going to get him hit one day. "Just put them on, Exorcist."
Marie put them on, to appease both Bak and his own curiosity.
"Do they work?" Bak asked excitedly.
Marie turned his head from side to side, trying on practiced impulse to pinpoint the locations of the sounds as if they were actually happening around him.
"Yes, loud and clear. It's amazing!"
In his mind's eye, he could see Bak breaking out into a grin of boyish glee at his amazement-the kind that could only come from a true love of one's calling.
"Isn't it?! I-"
There was a beeping in his ears and Marie quickly gestured for him to stem the inevitable outpour of information for the moment.
"I'm getting a message, I think."
His finger found the button on the side of the set and there was a brief cough of static before a voice broke through.
"Marie?"
"General!" Marie exclaimed in surprise. Bak inched in close to try and overhear.
"It's a relief to hear from you, my boy." Tiedoll sounded tearful, but then, he did most of the time. "It'll be even more of a relief to have you back on the team-you and the child, of course."
It took a moment for that to sink in.
"You mean you'll take Kanda?"
"Of course! It'll be like having a new brother for you, Noise."
Marie smiled widely in Bak's direction and pressed the earcup to the side of his head, like he could physically hold the wonderful news closer-they got to keep the kid. Kanda got to be released into a General's supervision, and at that the supervision of a General who, Marie would swear, would never relinquish any one of his apprentices into Central's clutches once he'd taken them into his care.
Marie felt lighter than he had for all the days he'd stayed at the Asia Branch-what he'd previously written off as a product of the oppressive recent solemnity darkening his spirits, like a cold, heavy coat he was fatigued to wear on his back, had all along been simply worry and dread. Dread of what might come to be in his future, and in Kanda's, of what it would mean to return to the battlefield without wanting to die.
He could tell this now, because at the General's words, the emotion that loosened the restraints of his nerves was unmistakably relief.
"Marie, listen." The General's voice drew him back to Earth. "You're going to have to bring him back to the Order yourself. I have business of my own to take care of, but I'll meet you there later. Will you be alright?"
Marie frowned in slight confusion. "Of course, General."
He knew better than to ask what the "other business" was, but he couldn't help his concern. It was just like the General to go off on his own, and to exclude his apprentices for their own safety, with no regard for his own.
"Are you sure you don't want me to meet up with you?"
"No, no, there's no need for you to worry," Tiedoll assured him benignly, like he was simply going into town on an errand. "It's best for you to stay with young Kanda-keep him safe until I get back. All I need to do is ask someone a few…important questions, and then I'll be right back."
"Important-?" Bak tried to butt in, but Tiedoll carried on blithely.
"Oh, and don't be alarmed if the Order doesn't seem to know where I am. I left rather unexpectedly, you understand."
"General," Marie sighed with despair. Bak wisely inhaled the things he had wanted to ask, and the General's chuckle carried over his golem with a rushing of wind that swept away half the sound.
"I must be on my way," he apologized. "Make sure that both you and Kanda get safely to the Order."
"Yes, General," Marie said. He seriously absorbed the new charge-probably more seriously than he needed to, but he was determined to carry it out. "Please, make sure that you take care as well."
Marie didn't think it was because of the headphones that he could hear Tiedoll's smile.
"I will do my best," his General promised him. "And I'll look forward to seeing you at the Order."
The connection cut to silence, and Marie clicked himself out of the network. Bak was waiting for him to explain, he could tell, and practically bursting with questions.
He restrained himself. "Hey, Marie. I think you just lost your General."
"Oh, no. I should have expected this." Marie shook his head fondly. "Whenever the Vatican starts stepping on his toes, the General usually…goes for a bit of a walk. Normally he tells me, but he can't normally tell me why, in case the Order asks about him. You won't see him on any trains for a while, or anywhere affiliated with the Order."
Bak thought about that. "Should I just pretend I didn't hear anything?"
"I don't think it matters too much. My General can be as bad as Cross when it comes to not being found. Although if you don't have a good reason to spread the information around, I would prefer it if you did not."
"Sure, sure," Bak tutted. "I get it. I guess you're probably used to this sort of thing happening around the Order, aren't you?"
Marie just smiled. "Thank you," he said. "I think that you will make an exceptional Branch Head."
"Ha. Well, I'll try and make sure this place is still waiting for you, if you ever come back. Maybe we'll see you again someday-and maybe we'll even see Kanda again, too. Just…in better days." His voice went distant; his thoughts, to the dead.
"There will be better days," Marie could hear Tiedoll saying. "Have faith."
And Marie thought this might be the first time he believed. He reached a hand to Bak, and waited until he felt him awkwardly take it.
"Thank you," Marie told him again. "For everything you've done-for me and for Kanda both."
Bak quickly took his hand back, and cleared his throat. "Yes," he said, by the sound of it fiddling with his jacket lapels. "Yes. I'll take it that you'll be leaving soon-as soon as you can, if I know you at all."
Marie could do nothing but nod. Bak sighed.
"You might want to leave sooner rather than later, then. Otherwise, someone might start causing trouble about you taking Kanda. Not all of Central agrees that he should be released, you know, and if they find out he's not being transferred to a General, it's likely someone will use that as an excuse to start hemming you in with red tape. Right now is your chance-no one is filling in all the old jobs yet, so everything is completely backlogged-paperwork, communications. I'm going to start putting things in order as soon as possible, but…well, there are some other things I could do first."
Marie was solemn, but at peace. "You'll do well with this place," he said.
The two men shared a moment of understanding between them.
"We'll do better, from here on," Bak said, and it was the greatest affirmation Marie could have heard.
They left early, when the morning was damp and the sun was watery.
Marie imagined he felt Bak still watching them with the Guardian's eyes from somewhere in the mountains behind them. The waver and then halt in Kanda's footsteps said he might be thinking the same thing, checking back for a sign of him Marie knew he wouldn't find.
In a way, he was glad that they were parting the young Chan heir without a farewell-it helped Marie find some certainty in what he was doing, a conviction in his course that made him readier to face it. He was an Exorcist, after all-always had been. He had his mission, and Bak had his, and his work never ended but it still had to be done before he died.
He took a deep breath. The air was sweet and clear, and it would carry him home.
"Let's go, Kanda."
There was a barely audible sound that might have been agreement or might have been a pebble down the mountain, and they started into the bamboo fields.
The sun was starting to rise, and Marie found it wasn't so different without his sight-he could feel slats of coldness and warmth shifting over him as he walked, light and the bamboo leaves taking turns, and it wasn't as hard to navigate the tall stalks as he would have expected. All he had to do was imagine that it was music he was listening for, picking out the strains of individual instruments the way he had loved to do as a child. There was the rustling squabble of the wind and the leaves, the soft crunching and nervous, pattering heartbeat that was Kanda creeping through the forest, the whisper-drop of a feather from a perching bird.
The golem they'd been sent along with fluttered noisily ahead of them for Marie to follow, which was strange because he'd always thought the golems were fairly hard to hear before. The headphones really were working-he could hear the difference.
After a short time it became apparent that nature was the only thing he could hear, though-Kanda didn't have anything to say. He didn't ask any questions, or try to start up a conversation, and Marie didn't push him.
But it was hard to know what the boy was thinking. He'd shown no sign of trying to talk, but no sign of splitting from Marie, either-no sign of running. For some reason, Kanda seemed to think he needed this, what the Order could bring him-that or maybe he just saw no point in being anywhere else.
Marie really wasn't sure what he would do if Kanda did try to run. Let him go? Follow him? Convince him to stay?
For now, he would leave that to Kanda-it wasn't necessary that Marie understood his logic. He didn't want to teach Kanda that being in his presence meant being cornered with words or being put on the defensive-Kanda shouldn't have to think of Marie as someone who tried to pull him outside of what he was comfortable with, and Marie wanted to keep the tentative trust he had.
It was a right that most Exorcists afforded each other, after all, when it came to their backgrounds-the right to say nothing at all. Innocence didn't care if its Accommodators came from rust or riches, and it was hardly possible to find one who hadn't had the course of their life somehow twisted by the war even before they were explicitly involved in it. Some left behind a past full of shadows, and others came from a life of memories too fond to recall without the Order's reality harshening a raw heart.
Very few became agents of the Vatican without looking to start over. In Marie's opinion, sometimes the only way to survive the war to fight it as someone else.
He wondered who Kanda would be.
For his part, Kanda kept staring around the bamboo fields-he couldn't decide if he liked all the green surrounding him or not. It was hugely different from the gray, man-made environment he was used to, but at the same time, the monotony of it-one stalk after another stalk after another three hundred-lent it a feeling of cyclicality, like maybe he really wasn't going anywhere at all.
He did like the way they appeared to reach towards the sun above, though-it reminded him of something, maybe something someone had said, something that wouldn't quite form into a whole memory. Something about the lotuses.
It itched at the back of his mind as he walked, but not quite in a bad way-it reminded Kanda of sensation returning to a body part that had been idle too long. He took in a slow breath, pulling air in and pressing the surreal out, so that it was easier to think in the present, and of where he was going.
The Order.
Of course, the Order was all he knew-but this would be his first time in it as a cog rather than a captive. How much different would things be, in Europe, and as an Exorcist? Kanda wondered these things in the bracing manner of one who did not truly want to know the answers, and tried not to feel too much like he was about to walk into a living cage. If he had to be in a cage, better one that would at least move with him-better anything that might give him even a chance of chasing the woman, and that…significance she carried with her, as though there was more meaning to the woman than just a woman.
It was a painful significance. But it was a pain that filled.
Kanda had learned by now that emptiness was an emotion. He had also learned that nothingness was worse than pain.
He shook the thoughts into the back of his head like he always did and squinted in front of him-it always got harder to see Marie when he thought like that. He concentrated until the lotuses cleared away a bit and blurred back into comfortable semi-reality, letting Marie's tall silhouette sharpen into clarity again.
There was the vaguest tilt of the head from the man as if in answer, and a brief warmth over the visible edge of his face which said that, consciously or not, he sensed Kanda's attention. Kanda looked away-he did not know fully what to make of Marie yet, other than that he wanted to follow him.
It was not that Kanda had no questions, it was that there were so many things which he did not understand that he couldn't even begin figuring out how he might be able to-there was nothing for him to ask, and nothing he wanted to say, anyway.
He found himself scrutinizing Marie's back from behind again-even breaths, casual efficiency, his balance held at his center. He wondered if he could ever be that calm, if the storm could ever be that quiet. His life thus far had been monotony interrupted by violent chaos, but no upheaval seemed to breach Marie's level existence. Even in his stride, there was a confidence like still, deep water as he moved through the dense field-one that Kanda couldn't hope to match despite Marie, as he had told him, not being able to see anything at all.
Kanda was not sure he understood fully what it meant to be blind, but it unnerved him deep down, deep to his heart, to imagine what the world would be like if all of it was dark and he couldn't see the lotuses at all-because of course they would still be there, rustling just against his ear or folding under his foot. Perhaps he would even find them brushing over his skin when he got into bed-perhaps they would grow over him and suffocate him while he slept.
Sometimes, Kanda wondered if they breathed.
A part of him-a large part of him-wanted to make Marie tell him what the world was like when the lotuses weren't there, but he remembered what Zhu had said about not telling anyone else and he didn't. Also, said a voice that was very quiet but also very hard to ignore, he didn't want to hear that the lotuses weren't real. Even hearing Zhu say it had made him self-conscious, because how could Kanda be a part of this world when he couldn't see it the way everyone else did?
The lotuses and the lady and sometimes the other things that whispered, he thought, would always be just beyond either reality or fiction, something he didn't quite have a name for yet. They couldn't be all in his head-the lady had to come from somewhere, right? From that other life that was his.
It had all seemed so clear at the Asia Branch. Out here, surrounded by all these strange things and getting further away from the familiar, it seemed that she got farther away, too-though at times, like now, when his thoughts became too deep, he would see a ruffled hem disappear behind a bamboo patch, or the sun would flash softly off of fair hair in the corner of his eye. He could…see her, almost. He was so aware of her it hurt to describe it, especially because somehow that made her feel so much farther away.
How big was this world, he wondered? And how far away from him could she be in it?
Kanda felt something like a shudder flash through him, and felt that he had found another thing which he knew out of nowhere. Whatever was beyond the green could simply swallow him with its…bigness, and it would be very difficult to be found. The lady had to be very lost, wherever she was.
Kanda had to duck suddenly under a low-hanging bamboo leaf, and blew it indignantly away as he lost two paces to Marie. For now, his world was close and near, and full of the bitter, damp smells of leaves in the morning. His journey was just beginning, and he had time to reach the end.
He decided he liked the green after all.
As the day stretched on warmer and brighter, Marie found himself settling more and more into the familiar rhythm of travel. He hesitated less in his direction, and he had been able to pick up their pace a little. By the time the sun was starting to feel hot on his skin, Marie felt confident that they had come far enough and made good enough time to stop for a while.
Bak, along with his overly enthusiastic assistant Wong and a few other unseen scientists and researchers, had packed them both food and blankets to be rolled out, probably more than they would need before they were back in civilization. Marie found a sheltered spot to stop, assuming Kanda would follow (he hadn't said one word for the entire day), and unslung his pack from over his shoulder to sit down and rifle through the contents.
He found simple foods, lasting foods, packed for the trip, most of which Marie could identify by touch and smell but some which he could not. Kanda came inching quietly into the space with him, and accepted what he was handed-Marie trusted Bak, and Kanda trusted Marie, at least for the moment.
They were dry foods, unfortunately, for the sake of not spoiling, and so both mostly tasteless and prone to sticking in the throat. It was tempting to use their water supply to swallow them down, which Marie knew would be foolish to waste-he had no doubt that the golem would lead them to their destination, but Marie still wasn't sure how many days it would take them to reach it, and more importantly, if they would encounter more clean resources along the way.
Kanda, from the awkward, muffled crinkling of him adjusting and readjusting his fingers, was spending some time turning his own portion over and over in his hands, not seeming at all familiar with the foods or how to eat them, which Marie found slightly strange. Out of the two of them, Kanda should be the one who was more at home-he'd been raised in the Asia Branch his whole life, though that life was admittedly much shorter than Marie's had been so far.
"What's this?" He eventually asked, with audible suspicion.
"It's…" Marie wasn't sure how to answer that. He couldn't see what he had, after all, and he believed Kanda understood that already. Did he mean something else? "It's safe food. From Bak," he finally settled on.
There was a very serious pause, which Marie filled in automatically as a slow nod.
"Not pills," he muttered, and then, "Or mayonnaise." Marie had no idea how to interpret that, but for Kanda, at least, everything seemed to have been clarified. There was quiet munching and nothing else-all must have been well, he supposed.
Or at least, all was well until several hours later after they had resumed the road, at which point Marie was unexpectedly faced with his first real moment of adult terror as Kanda, out of nowhere, began retching violently into the undergrowth, yanking him out of deep, meditative thought and directly into images of a future where something was seriously wrong and Marie lost the kid before he even got him to Tiedoll.
There was then urgent questioning, some rather unhappy answers, and a forcedly calm call by golem back to the Asia Branch which assured him that this was temporary and not life-threatening, causing Kanda to pipe up indignantly to remind him that he'd said he was fine in the first place. Marie ignored him in favor of listening to a scientist who apparently knew about these things explaining to him that while Kanda was biologically like any other human in that he could live off the same food they did, after subsisting off of vitamin pellets and pills for so long the switch to "normal" meals was probably taking its toll on his body.
This was not overly difficult for Marie to wrap his head around, but trying to convince Kanda after this incident that the solution to his discomfort was to put himself through more of the same was a task in itself. Once the golem was disconnected, it returned to being their navigator, and Marie eventually relented with trying to convince Kanda, when his responses went from terse to sullen again.
As time went uneventfully on, Marie felt the sun's heat moving and waning overhead as the afternoon passed on into evening, and he tried to tune his ears to the winds and the vague, omnipresent static-noise of the world as he off-handedly speculated on how close they would be able to get to the trains before he would hear them.
He wasn't accustomed enough to this part of China to have a guess on exactly when that might be, having never been to the Asian Headquarters before he'd been relocated there for medical attention, but he could weakly estimate that they would need to camp at least a few nights along the way before they reached the train-conveniently located in the nearest city to this branch of the Order. Trains were still a novelty in China, outside of the major cities, and Marie doubted it was a coincidence that they all seemed to connect to the Order eventually-the Order always had the best technology, and every now and again it allowed the right people to "discover" something which would further their own cause.
Marie recognized his own bias tainting the observation, and made himself quash down the bitterness-the Order was insidious, but he was a part of it. He stopped where he was and breathed out through his nose, while Kanda's footsteps faltered out of their pattern with his and found their stop a moment behind him. Marie listened, and thought hard about the life attached to them.
He slung down his pack again and imagined slinging off his thoughts with it. "Kanda, let's rest here for the night," he decided.
The boy was strong-stronger than a normal boy his age, certainly-but he wasn't used to hard travel the way Marie was. He didn't protest when Marie began to feel and sort out the bedding material stored away, partially warm from his body heat, and he came close to receive what was his before retreating out of reach again like he thought he was in danger of being grabbed.
Marie settled himself in-it was occasionally an inconvenience to cover his whole body in blankets made for the type of man who did not have to stoop through doorways to avoid hitting his head.
"I'll wake you when it's time for us to go."
Still no complaints. Kanda did nothing but blink at him for a second or two (possibly not even that), and then curled wordlessly into his blankets, leaves and loose earth shuffling as he turned to face away from Marie into the spindly forest.
Marie focused on the silence for only a few moments before he turned his head back up to the sky he knew was above him, and with the feel of cool darkness on his face, thought about what he'd learned and what he was unlearning, after so many years of being an Exorcist. Those heavy thoughts carried him to heavy dreams, in a slow slumber, but even drifting on the verge of falling into it, he was somehow resignedly aware-Kanda did not sleep at all.
Tomorrow would be long-and no less because Marie didn't know what it would bring.
Welcome back to I Think the Author Got Lost: The Novel.
The first bit of this was actually the stuff I couldn't fit into the last chapter, and in the process of merging that with enough content to make its own chapter, I wound up with run-off from this chapter which will be in the next chapter. Sorry, gang, looks like we're going to have to put off meeting Lenalee for one more, though I already have her written all pretty.
Anyway. Sorry for the wait, thanks so much for the support, and I hope that I do the characters justice. I know not a lot happens in this chapter, but hey, that's what the next chapter is for. Finders, Akuma, and creepy kids to be expected (with much less of a wait than for this one, it's less of a mess).
My God I love D. Gray-Man.
Cheers!
