The cliffhanger returns!!

I lost some reviews in a comp crash. I'm sorry.

This is the shortest chapter in a while, so I'm totally adding more of an author's note to make it seem longer...

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of D. Gray – man. If I did, Lavi wouldn't have such a hard time of things.

Warnings: Bad action, blood, gore, an anticlimax, Kanda using words longer than thirteen letters long…

Enjoy!?

-- -- --

Part Nineteen: Confrontation and Sincerity

It all happened very slowly, even if it only took the whole of four seconds.

One moment, Lavi was jogging down the hillside, searching every nook and cranny of the place for anything out of the norm, anything moving, anything that qualified as a shadow amongst shadows. He sped up when he heard Kanda do the same, choosing to momentarily ignore the sound of his name on Allen's lips. And then he was falling. The ground rushed up at him fast and hard, a short granite gravestone did little more than push the air from his lungs before he hit the snowy mud beside it, sliding down the rough surface with his slightly skewed momentum. Coughing, he fought to push himself up, the burn in his lungs something that he needed to ignore for the sake of forward movement.

Something struck him hard in his ribs from the right, heavy, breathing, and grappling at his jacket with hands that whizzed over the material of his coat with wickedly curved claws, not sharp enough to cut the fabric. He made to retaliate, clenching his hammer in his right hand and shoving it into the creature even before he could see what it was doing.

"Hi ba—" The words fell short when the thing threw him ten feet to the ground and turned away, a great bright refraction of moonlight on white its only act of parting. For a moment Lavi blinked from where he had landed, watching what looked to be the largest snowy owl he had ever set eyes on dig its claws into the dirt and – to his horror – lift a severed human arm from the place he had been standing only moments before, missing three fingers and the connective ball joint at the shoulder.

He checked his fingers. "It's not mine…" He heard himself sigh in relief – and scream in utter, shock and terror.

Hooked in the top of his left boot where three, half rotted human digits, twitching closer to his skin.

It clicked a moment too late. Zombie. A zombie had reached up and grabbed him by the boot in an effort to knock him down or slow him – reached up from inside of the ground to do it. The graves had never been empty – only muddy from the corpses clawing themselves to the surface every night for months. They had never checked that little assumption, not after Kanda had stuck his hand and foot into one of them.

And the bird had tried to save him but now it was coming for him. Coming to rip him limb from limb the same as it had clipped the arm of the undead townsman. Lavi felt fear settle into the pit of his gut and hefted his Innocence, aware that there was no time to push himself to standing before it got to him and – most likely – tried to peck off his legs.

He swallowed.

A bang the likes of which Lavi had heard more times than he cared to count rang out over the graveyard, followed swiftly by four more, each one forcing his ears to flick back against his skull at the volume. The snowy owl – which had arms and talon like feet as well as a large black beak and huge white wings – faltered on its feet, a sick, ear splitting shriek bubbling from its throat before it toppled forward in a messy, bloody, white and red heap, the humanoid back a mush of seemingly black flesh and gore, oozing down its sides. Lavi remained immobile for a moment, entranced by the dark figure that, in a series of short, hurried steps, moved onto the struggling creatures back and proceeded to produce a silver gun from its right hand and aim it at the monster's head.

Lavi's lips parted in protest. That was a person, under all of those feathers wasn't it? Just like him? Just like Yuu? "Wait…" His voice cracked, hardly more than a whisper, and he heard the hammer cock as the weapon was leveled more surely. That was one of the children if he remembered right, Rachel? "W-wait…" His right hand was shaking on Oozuchi Koozuchi as the figure's head turned down, showering its shoulders in dreadlocks that reflected gold in the starlight. "Don't you… don't you… kn-know… you shouldn't… that's—wai—" The gunshot cut him off, and he turned his face away with an ill suppressed tremble.

It was a person… that had been a person and I could have—
Stop it. You can't think about this right now, it doesn't matter if you're a Bookman or not.
He shot a little girl. A little girl like Wendy…

"Hello, Katze," Mörder's voice was something he would never be able to make himself forget, not without remembering how Kanda had talked about him coming into the room. Now, when the man looked down at him with slightly purple-blue eyes and pointed the revolver at his face, Lavi wasn't sure if he understood entirely. "Come to collect the shadow have you?" The German man's expression was lost in the shadow of his hat, but Lavi could still make out his eyes, their blinking, their light, their emotion. Mörder was disgusted with him. This was the man who had helped to point them here wasn't it? A man who had fed Yuu during the worst of the change? Disgust didn't make any sense at all.

"What…" Lavi bent his right leg and was rewarded by a bullet narrowly missing the limb, buried in the ground by his knee. "Why are you killing them? They're people under that stuff! Don't you know that?!" It was the least of his problems and the most of his worries at the moment, though he couldn't understand why for the life in him.

Mörder laughed hollowly. "It should be obvious by now, shouldn't it?" He half breathed, and held his left hand out in a sweeping motion, encompassing the whole of the graveyard. The ground, every burial mound and dirt patch that Lavi could see, was writhing with rotting human bodies, grappling at whatever they could find to wrench them from their prisons. Swallowing, Lavi looked from the motion to the man in front of him and then, in utter fright, to the body of the creature that had tried to save him.

A pile of ash.

"What do you have to say for yourself, Katze? Now that you've seen my power?" The Akuma dressed in Mörder's skin questioned, pressing the barrel of his weapon to the apprentice Bookman's forehead. "Meow, perhaps?"

"You were in the inn… Allen would have known…"

"The little cursed one? He never looked at me, Katze, not even once. That brat trusts his eye too much." Mörder growled, then cocked the gun again, one soft yellow eyebrow lifted over the other, lips lifted in a too-wide smile. "Too late to argue now, isn't it Exorcist?" The word was a curse on his lips, thick with anger and something else, something twisted. It was all Lavi could do to open his mouth and curl his fingers more tightly on his weapon's handle.

"MOVE!" Lavi stiffened at the yell, too close to his back, and flinched at the sound of gunfire, expecting the world to narrow into darkness, expecting the projectile to hit him squarely between the eyes, to end it once and for all. But there was no pain and no sudden blackness, no flash of light. There was just the sound of grating metal and the smell of burning gun powder.

Blood.

And there, standing slightly hunched, the middle of his chest seeping dark liquid in a grazing line across his jacket, was Kanda, Mugen held like a sideways shield before him. "What the fuck are you doing, idiot! Napping?! Move!" The samurai growled without looking, leaning his weight into the Akuma until his arms trembled. "I don't care what kind of emotional issues you're dealing with, get your useless ass up and kill something!"

"Oh…" Lavi closed his hand on his Innocence, a small smile coming over his face. Maybe then, if he was right, this was regret? "Right!"

-- -- --

Allen had turned in a rush, pulling his Innocence around him in an effort to create the strongest possible defense against whatever it was breathing across the back of his skull. There was no time for an offensive strike, no time to do anything but cocoon himself in Innocence and pray he pulled his hood up in time – and then his eye whirred to life, distracting him for just the faction of a second more than would have been good. His left shoulder took the brunt of the attack, but that wasn't the end of it, a secondary strike caught him in his right calf, stilling his turn before it could even half complete itself with momentum.

He fumbled for a moment before taking the only course of action he could think of – he threw the Innocence outward and made to push whatever was attacking him as far away as physically possible.

It worked for the most part, but that he landed in an awkward heap three feet from where he had been standing, disoriented, left eye focused halfway across the graveyard, right searching the darkness in front of him. The sound of gunfire wasn't something he could pay attention to at the moment, not when his eyes finally settled on the things that, he realized, had bit him. And there were two of them.

The first was green-black and serpentine, upright despite the fact that it lacked proper legs, the humanoid face split by a too-wide snake mouth. The eyes, however, were perfectly normal, and ringed in dull black scales, as if that part of this person – this human – had yet to fall victim of the power that plagued it. He watched it open its mouth, the slits of its nostrils flared, and the glimmer of yellowish fangs made him swallow thickly. Poison? He couldn't tell. It was too dark for him to see anything and his leg hurt too badly for him to pay attention to anything but standing up – he could hardly feel his foot at all.

He told himself that that was one of the reasons why it was so hard for him to tell what, exactly, the second of his attackers was. A rat, perhaps, with large round ears and long white whiskers, and a face that was too narrow and too long for its neck – the thought of it made Allen shiver.

"Oh, Pierrot…" The voice was just beside his right ear, so close and yet he couldn't feel breath with it. He turned his gaze that way, and felt his heart clench in his chest when nothing was there. "As fun as they are to look at, you really should pay more attention to yourself…"

Allen glanced to the right to see something pull taught around his wrist and yank him that way, lifting him from the ground before, to his surprise, changing his trajectory and lobbing him into the two creatures that had attacked him. He expected them to charge, to bite and scratch at him, for the snake to strike at a weak point and recoil to do it again. He did not expect a serpentine tail to strike him across the side his head and send him slamming into the nearest tombstone with a crack that he didn't feel the repercussions of, too numbed by adrenaline and fear. After a short delay, pain shot from the base of his neck to the bone above his right eye and everything tilted sickly around itself, blurry, shifting. There was blood in his mouth that made him cough, spreading warm and sticky on his lips.

He tried to push himself up, but something smashed hard against his chest, three times, each one driving the air from his lungs. It didn't matter if he had Crown Clown – he couldn't breathe when the pounding was finished. He felt as if his ribcage was suddenly too small for the billows of his lungs.

There was movement that he couldn't follow, and kind, laughing dark eyes looking down at him, then pain cutting onto the sides of his throat. He couldn't breathe and he didn't know where his arms were, couldn't see out of his right eye, he couldn't scream. His lungs burned with effort. He felt sick, like the blackness that had already consumed most of his vision would be a pleasant reprieve from this horrible nightmare, so he didn't think much about how he could focus on those eyes, glimmering with moonlight, still laughing at him. They were just eyes, tender eyes, watching him fall asleep.

"Try not to die, little Pierrot," The shadow spoke to him as that gaze came closer, dancing with delight. "Not before I know what you might become."

-- -- --

Running down the hill, for some reason, had made his chest ache, but it wasn't from exertion – a distance that short wouldn't have worn him out even if he had needed to breathe – but rather more like a bruise, throbbing with every step. Kanda shrugged it off as his imagination when the pain did not worsen and hurried on, scanning the dark graveyard with eyes that saw it as well as he would in broad daylight.

It was that sight that had helped him save Lavi.

The idiot had just been sitting there, looking up at what was obviously their prey, waiting for death. The samurai saw more things wrong with that than he cared to name. What did it matter if the thing the Akuma killed was a human – Kanda had done the same before – that wasn't the problem. The problem was dying, according to Kanda.

The gun Mörder held against Mugen's edge refused to slice into pieces like the Japanese man had hoped it might, but then again he hadn't hit it at the preferred angle to begin with. The horizontal stinging, bleeding gash across mid-chest was proof of that.

The Akuma in question shifted, changing its weight until it was held by its back foot, which allowed Kanda to rock back and lurch forward again, bringing his sword down across the barrel of the gun with more force than before; a short shower of sparks sprinkled toward his feet, bright to his night-adjusted eyes. He didn't particularly care. He didn't need to be able to see to grit his teeth and push forward, angling his blade for Mörder's wrist with his next strike. The Akuma was grinning at him when it shoved back, left shoulder shifted low. Its countenance, once ruggedly handsome, had stretched into something like a rubber travesty of a mask, the line of his scar peeling away from the metal off his face.

A second shower of sparks made Kanda wince, as his blade was deflected and blocked again, locking them once more with the barrel of Mörder's gun across Mugen's blade.

"Yuu-chan!" His name – if that qualified as his name – didn't distract him from what he was aiming to do, but the press of something to his stomach did. The gun he held Mugen against was supported by but one hand, the other, to his slight shock, was pressed to his gut, fingers wrapped around the butt of a second weapon.

Kanda had seen that when the Akuma had come to kill Lavi the first time, the second silver pistol. The flash of sparks had blinded him while it was drawn.

There was only time enough to move a half step to the left before the gun fired.

It hit him slightly above his hip bone, toward the middle of his stomach, first with pressure rather than pain like any bullet of that caliber would have. Ignoring the burn of the virus in his flesh, Kanda lurched awkwardly forward and slashed down at the Akuma's right shoulder, burying his katana with enough force to push the machine away, both of them staggering. Blood sprayed out from the wound and the Akuma pushed it self away, growling at the pain in its shoulder.

The ground beneath them began to glow softly red.

The samurai recognized the symbol at once and retreated slightly, three steps before the pain got the better of him and he let his left hand cup the wound on his stomach, the better to hinder blood loss. Mörder didn't seem to notice the fire symbol smoldering beneath his feet, and pointed both of his weapons at Kanda, a strange look on his face. The Akuma didn't understand why it was that the Exorcist didn't crumble. The wave of fire that swept upward was enough to bring a startled cry of agony from the creature's lips, a sound that was neither human nor machine, but rather a twisted combination of both. Kanda saw a chance and took it. Hurriedly he dashed behind one of the taller headstones, just out of sight – the best place he could see to take a short sojourn and find out just how badly he was wounded.

Within moments, as the smoke and flame dissipated across the sky, there was a warm hand pressed to his shoulder, a hand that he knew had blood in it, which smelled like Lavi. He cast his eyes to it and followed the length of the redhead's arm first to his shoulder and then to his face, noting a short gash on his left cheek, a growing bruise on his chin, as well as a less bloody blot where the gauze was missing from the apprentice Bookman's temple. His eye was wide and focused, not fogged with emotion like it had been.

"You ok?" The question caught Kanda a little off guard, especially how very quiet it was. There were fingers on the back of his hand, pressed to the place he had been shot.

Wordlessly the samurai nodded. "Don't be stupid, something like this won't kill me." As if to negate the words he winced, hissing from behind his teeth. Unpleasant fire spread up his chest and down his right leg, it would be difficult to move before his body recovered from the virus seeping through his system and he cursed it, lifting his hand to examine it. There was more blood than he was comfortable looking at – it disgusted him slightly that looking at it made him want to lick his fingers – and the telltale points of pentagrams on what skin he could see, burning black against his pallid flesh. That hurt, no matter how he didn't want to admit it.

"Um… Yuu-chan… didn't that bullet have—"

"Shut up."

"But the owl-bird-girl-thing turned to ash and I don't want you to die without—"

"Shut. Up." Kanda growled at Lavi, narrowing his eyes at the redhead. He didn't need to be found like this, no matter what the idiot wanted to talk to him about, and it wasn't like he was dying anyway, not yet. There was a glint of pain in the other Exorcist's face so he did the only thing he could think to: he took the apprentice Bookman by his high collar and kissed him, which was the best apology he could manage at the moment.

Lavi smiled crookedly when he pushed away just as suddenly as he had been pulled down, head cocked to the side. "Then you'll be ok?"

"Che." Kanda craned his neck against the stone at his back in an effort to see what the Akuma formerly known as Mörder was doing, but couldn't lift himself far enough without putting strain on his stomach. With a huff he settled back down again, resisting the urge to rush the healing process more than it already was. "Where's Moyashi?"

"I lost sight of him about thirty seconds ago, still on the hill, fighting two things like us. He crashed into something and then I had to focus on the fire seal." Lavi glanced over the top of their rather pathetic cover, gripping his hammer to his chest. "The zombies look like they're leaving… though… a lot of them are in pieces... Jesus…" He trailed off, and turned his eye in a sweep across the churchyard. "I don't think we have to worry as long as those townspeople-turned-monsters attack the zombies for us." Lavi looked down at Kanda again, frowning, and laid his hand once more on top of the older man's, cold, sticky blood oozing through his fingers. "Really, you'll be ok, right? You can get up if I make you mad enough?"

Kanda ignored the question and narrowed his eyes at the younger man. "Where's the Akuma?"

"Systematically searching graves, moving in the wrong direction."

"Good." With a groan, Kanda pushed himself to sitting, though much of his weight still rested on the stone behind him. It was cooler than he was, which reassured him to some degree. Pulling both his own and Lavi's hand from his stomach, he saw that though the virus had begun to fade – and with it the pain it caused in that area – the wound itself was still exactly as it had been, bleeding freely, the blood that had congealed coming up with his fingers. A bandage would have been nice – not that they had any. They had snuck out without a Finder to carry them. "Kuso…" He muttered, and put his hand down again, squelching against his jacket.

Lavi lowered himself enough to hook an arm under the samurai's shoulders and pull him farther upward, relinquishing his hold on Kanda's hand for the sake of holding his Innocence. "If I get us up, can you run?"

"Che." Kanda responded with a slight bend to his knees, enough to show that he was prepared to try. "If you'd wait two minutes I could push myself up, asshole."

Lavi smirked down at the Japanese man before pausing, left eyebrow cocked high above the right in something of a one-eyed wink, almost flirty. "C'mon, will two minutes really make that much of a difference for you? In that two minutes he might realize that we both hid this way and not over there. I say we make for the hill, dash our way up to Al—"

A loud, shrieking scream pulled the redhead's ears down and he turned, Kanda matching the movement. They both caught sight of a person the likes of which they had never seen – green and scaled and footless, though obviously standing – holding in its right hand the limp, bloody body of Allen Walker, his eyes open but unfocused, Innocence no longer active. Lavi tensed at it, anger burning in his gut, but remained where he was, fingers squeezing more tightly on Kanda's coat. The snake-creature held the boy out by the back of his jacket but Allen remained impassive, and the red shine of blood down his chest showed where the gore came from, as well as the rapid, forced rise and fall of his ribcage.

"If you want him," The voice didn't sound at all like it came from the snake-person, but rather somewhere else on the hill, slightly more toward Allen. "Come and get him!" The creature holding Allen's coat flopped him over a shoulder and started off down the hill toward the place that had initially filled Lavi with the urge to kill something – moving at a pace that seemed rather ridiculous for a serpent to move at. The redhead watched, aware that Kanda was watching with him.

"I'll finish Mörder, you follow Allen?" The apprentice Bookman asked, looking down at the recovering samurai. The wound was still bleeding, though not as badly as it had been before.

"Che. If that thing could take Moyashi, both of us will have to fight it. You might be borderline useless but that's a least something." Kanda took a handful of Lavi's coat in his left hand, smearing his blood on it – the smell made his heart pound – while he renewed his grip on his katana in his right hand, stabbing the blade into the dirt. "Kill the Akuma, get the Innocence, then Moyashi. What is he level two?"

"No idea, he's still wearing rugged-German-gunslinger skin."

Kanda grumbled. If Allen had gone down the hill and Lavi had stayed like suggested, Mörder would have been dead on sight. Not that it mattered now. Shaking the snow from his wet bangs, the Japanese man nodded and Lavi lifted, working him up onto wobbly, uncertain feet. It usually didn't take this long for such a wound to become little more than an annoyance but the samurai didn't let that bother him at the moment, not with more important things in mind. "I'll get its attention, you fry it, understand?"

Lavi nodded and relinquished his hold on his lover's back so he could stand alone, leaning on the pommel of his sword. "If you think that's best, ok. Let's make this fast, the more blood you lose, the redder your eyes get, and I don't think I want to see you full of bloodlust on a battlefield, ya know?"

"I'll be fine." Kanda insisted, an echo of what he had said when he had first started to change the way he had. His sword made a wet sound of suction as he pulled it from the ground, the black blade shimmering to life as he turned and ran his fingers down the length of it. He met Lavi's gaze with his eyes narrowed, not quite glaring. "Shinanaide." He almost commanded, and his left hand smeared his own blood on the curve of Lavi's hip. The confused expression the apprentice Bookman gave him almost made him smile, "It means don't die."

"I won't. I promise." Lavi chimed, and seemed to think for a moment about kissing the samurai in front of him until the thought better of it, amusement flashing behind his eye. He didn't speak a farewell, or wave a hand, he just turned away, dashing from shadow to shadow, hammer held tightly in both of his hands, larger than even a moment before.

Kanda gave the graveyard a long, glaring sweep of his eyes, and felt his lips turn down when he caught sight of the machine in question. The thing was still human looking, unhurt, and still searching in the wrong direction. If the Japanese man had been of sounder physical ability at the moment, he would have charged the bleeding akuma – instead he lifted his sword with both hands, sighting down the length of it, aiming for Mörder's back. Kanda wasn't usually one to attack from afar – it took more concentration to guide Hell's Insects than he was willing to subtract from his swordsmanship – but now was the time to make an exception, being running didn't seem like that splendid of an idea. He spoke the words under his breath, hardly more than a whisper, and slashed downward, that same warm, buzzing, power zinging across his chest with the motion.

It wasn't silent, but Kanda ignored what he was hearing for the sake of willing his five projectiles at Mörder's back. They would have gone after his target on their own to some extent, but there was always the chance that a sudden, fast moving zombie or a well aimed bullet would distract them from what he intended – that couldn't happen now. As Mörder, his face scrunched and his metallic teeth showing from behind what remained of his lips, turned and opened fire, the ground beneath his feet began to glow softly red again, and then white on top of that, the light catching in his suddenly black eyes.

Kanda felt a bullet graze his right arm but held it firm, focused on willing two insects to either side of the machine and one above, the better to keep the Akuma from noticing the building power beneath his feet.

His ribs still hurt for some reason, as did his stomach, but there was no time for that, no time to think about the pain in his arm. He focused his Innocence, his mind, on what needed to be done. Mörder was charging him but that didn't matter either – nothing mattered but the goal.

The Akuma made a loud laughing sound, hysterical, as his feet pumped against the muddy ground, snow plastering to his hair and hat. He lifted his left gun in front of him and took aim, words that Kanda could hardly distinguish falling from his lips as he moved. "And to think I let you live that day, Exorcist! That I helped you! At least you lead me to it! Right to what I wanted!" Three insects fell – the last two didn't have much of a chance but it didn't matter, the sky suddenly cracked open like a great gray and black eggshell, rent with a bolt of lightening from above and a swirl of flame from below, loud and bright and roaring. The combination of elements caught the gunman's right foot as soon as it was formed, but the Akuma did not cry out at it – he leaned heavily on his remaining limb and took aim once more.

Kanda let the illusion fade. It was pointless. The three gunshots that sounded in front of him – those he needed to pay attention to.

Lavi, standing behind Mörder's current position, having flanked him, raised his hammer in the air and commanded it larger, all the while his left eye guided a path for the serpent of flame and lightening he had made. Moments like this, when he compared the raw forces of nature that he summoned and the creatures of the underworld that Mugen produced, he had to wonder if Yuu had the higher synch rate or not. It was a stupid question, really, and he knew it. No matter how big and violent his own attacks were, the second illusion annihilated anything Lavi could produce without unlocking his own abilities. That, however, was a thought for later contemplation – now was the time for action. For that reason he brought the giant hammer forward, catching the tunnel of cracking thunder and searing flame on the weapon's head and slamming it into where he hoped Mörder would be standing. His whole shoulder protested – the lightness of the weapon did not change the fact that he had just smashed it full force into the ground – and he realized he had unleashed a guttural battle cry, though what purpose it served he couldn't imagine. As the sound faded from his lips he blasted the earth a final time, gritting his teeth to the feeling of so much power being used at once.

There was a shriek and a sound like a groan, a loud bang and the softer thump of something lighter than the hammer striking the ground. As the power faded from his Innocence a thunderclap made the entire graveyard shudder for an instant, the dying flames sizzled against the snow and died away, leaving a low layer of badly scented steam in their wake, like ozone and metal and grass. Lavi allowed his weapon to shrink enough to be leaned on, panting heavily, feeling every bruise and cut on his body with a freshness that made him grimace. The snow was growing thicker, but the flakes that had landed on his heated skin had melted into a dangerous layer of water on his flesh, already freezing in the winter wind.

Still, he took the time to scan the snow in front of him, searching the white and red-brown ground for footprints or marks of escape, bullet marks or pentacles. He saw nothing but the seven meter wide circle he had charred into the ground and in front of it, another of equal proportions, a searing mound of akuma parts lumped in the middle of it. Mörder's hat had smoldered with the rest of him.

With a loud inward breath and a cough, Lavi started forward, picking his way quietly and quickly around the rubble, aware that any grave might mark the resting place of a once-living corpse, still glancing forward every so often. He didn't want to trip on a body. A rather odd looking lump in the snow caught his eye ahead and he snuck toward it, moving hurriedly, until the scent of blood filled his nostrils – fresh blood.

"Yuu!" The samurai was more or less sitting on his feet, snow in his hair and down both of his arms, not melting as fast as it landed, piling up on his eyelashes. The redhead forgot about the zombies and the dead akuma, let Allen slip out of his mind for a moment, and came to a skidding, knee bashing halt in front of the Japanese man, left hand reaching for his face. The pair of eyes that opened to him was a color between black and red, leaning more toward the latter, focused on his face. Relief rushed through his chest as he touched his lover's face, leaning toward him. Kanda leaned back at the same pace until Lavi found himself looking down at the dark haired man, looking at his tired, hungry features, water dripping from the tips of his ears and his nose. "You ok?" He whispered, and the air that escaped his mouth billowed in a white fog between them. Kanda's left hand, caked in dried blood, but otherwise steady, felt like ice on the side of Lavi's face.

"Losing blood makes me tired."

"Then we should get this over with so you can sleep."

"Do you think…" Kanda paused, pulling the redhead a little closer. Lavi knew what he wanted but waited for it, waited for the press of lips at the juncture of his throat. "I could take a little?"

The apprentice Bookman nodded and tried to ignore the cold nose pressed to his skin. "You've lost a lot, so yeah. How's the wound? Ow. Be nice, I'm not a steak." He realized after a moment that the Japanese man had sunk his teeth into an old wound, most likely to avoid littering his neck with bite marks, but it made it hurt a bit more – the skin was already bruised and sensitive. Kanda however, was very gentle, allowing the blood to flow naturally rather than sucking it out. Lavi made a mental note to thank him.

Instead he let his left hand, nearly numb with cold, wander down the samurai's chest until he found the wound that, to his surprise, still oozed slowly, darkly colored blood, soaking a good portion of Kanda's coat. Lavi had to wonder just how much the Japanese man could lose before he stopped thinking and just drank for survival – but shook the thought from his mind. He wasn't going to lose that much blood from a gunshot, not if he hadn't already.

Steadily, Lavi undid the buttons of his jacket so he could get to the shirt underneath and, with a grimace, tear what had to be strongest fabric Komui had ever made into comfortable clothes into an uneven, clumsy looking strip. Kanda ignored him as Lavi captured the older man's left hand and reached into his jacket sleeve, then pinched the top of his button down shirt, just bellow the seam, and gave a tug that disconnected it from the torso of the garment in a single pull. Kanda made a little curious sound but Lavi didn't answer, too intent on taking the destroyed garment and fashioning it into something like a bandage. He couldn't watch while he worked, not with Kanda drinking, but he managed without too much trouble to undo the buttons of his lover's jacket and place the waded shirtsleeve in the correct place. For a time he only held it, waiting for Kanda to pull away.

As he withdrew, Lavi secured the mass of cloth with the waist of his shirt – which left his own belly button exposed for the moment. Kanda winced when the makeshift dressing was knotted into place, but didn't complain, and instead laid his head back in the snow, looking up at the redhead. "Ready?" Kanda questioned, and the apprentice Bookman shivered, suffering from mild blood loss and cold.

"Just one thing," Lavi said quietly, and leaned down to kiss the samurai firmly on the lips, fearlessly, almost desperately. It wasn't a long kiss, but the heat it caused stilled his shivering momentarily and lifted the right side of Kanda's mouth in a slightly amused expression, which made the kiss slightly more awkward than it could have been. Pulling away, Lavi returned the expression, the snowy front of his hair falling over his eye patch in a red-crystal and white-powder wave. For a moment he seemed very boyish, almost triumphant, and Kanda had to wonder if the apprentice Bookman had sorted through his feelings and found that love was what he felt even if he didn't understand it, though he doubted he would hear the words even if the younger man knew. "Let's go save Allen-chan."

-- -- --

Everything was liquid oozing around itself, tangled and dark, and very, very cold. Allen could hardly breathe the air was so chilled in his lungs, cutting him open like shards of glass, stinging, numbing the fingers of his right hand. With a groan he swallowed – his mouth tasted salty and coppery – before rolling his head to the side in an effort to see through the twisted world his left eye was showing him, black and white and far away feeling, not even the barest evidence of an akuma soul in sight. Everything hurt and span – and bringing the fingers of his right hand to his unseeing eye made him retch with pain, blurring what little he could make out with his left. His chest convulsed and he grew still again. Broken ribs, concussion, and only God knew what else – he couldn't move to check. The rushed quality to his breath warned him that there had to be more.

"Don't try to move, you'll hurt yourself." The voice was familiar but he couldn't place where, like something he had heard in a very distant dream. Something laid itself across his face, blocking his eyesight, and something else pressed to his throat – that reeked of alcohol and burned like fire, but worse. He winced at it, but found his voice unable to protest for any number of reasons. "Without that cape of silver, you're just a boy with an ugly left hand and a scar, aren't you? But the uniforms… are you the next thing up from that hunter with the bloody painful bullets? Fucking pointless if you are. I haven't slept well in two months from this thing, I doubt I'll die either." There were hands on the British boy's chest, pushing back his jacket, and a low, deep whistled sounded over his face.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were buggered. Don't think I'll get a word out of you with a crushed sternum and two cracked clavicles – at least not without drugs or whiskey. What do you say you give gabbing a shot, hm?" The voice came very close to his ear, speaking very clearly, though he couldn't remember where he had heard it. "What are you, boy? A twelve year old assassin?"

Allen opened his mouth, which still tasted of blood, and prayed that this person was the one they were looking for, because otherwise he was very, very dead. His breath came out in an agonizing line, pushed through his teeth, words forming only on his lips, pain searing in his lungs with every alcohol scented breath. "I'm an… Ex-exor…cist…" He whispered, hearing his breath catch in his throat. "W-we want…t-to… 'elp you." Finishing brought a finger to his lips, stopping him from going on anymore than he already had.

"An Exorcist, huh?" The voice chuckled. "I don't need an exorcism, boy. I've already embraced my demons."

-- -- --

"Yuu?"

"What?"

"You're kinda… sagging."

"Sagging?"

"Drooping."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" The samurai and the apprentice Bookman had wandered more or less silently from one end of the now empty graveyard to the other, tripping over immobile zombie corpses, Kanda stumbling more often than he was comfortable with. He half understood what it was that Lavi meant as soon as he asked – his shoulders were slightly hunched, mostly in the effort to press on the wound on his torso, which still hurt, even if it wasn't pouring blood down his jacket anymore. The sleeve against his skin was soaked. It was rare for Kanda to bleed so much – even when it hadn't been that long since his last injury – and it made him wonder why exactly that was.

There were still quite a few petals left, he knew. Enough to last hundreds of gunshot wounds like this one.

And yet the ribs he had broken days ago were hurting more with every step and the pain in his stomach was not declining. Something was wrong.

Lavi's right hand touched him lightly on the shoulder, and it felt very large and heavy against his frame. He was tired. "You look like it hurts to walk, Yuu-chan." The redhead clarified, a serious frown on his face. "In fact, you're walking like your ribs are bothering you… you gonna be ok? And be honest, I don't want any of this 'fine' crap you keep pulling." His voice, though low, carried with it the warning that no matter what or who they were going to save, if Kanda answered with that same, idiotic claim again, they would be stopping to have an inspection of his health. The Japanese man drew in an unneeded breath and sighed, letting his obvious exasperation show.

"I must have hurt them and didn't notice. I'll live."

"You're pretty light. I can carry you."

"Che." Kanda narrowed his eyes at the idiot beside him. "And defend yourself how, exactly?"

"Well, you'd have… wait… that's your protest? Shouldn't you say something about how you don't want to be weak in front of me?"

The samurai didn't look away, nor did his expression change. He simply brushed Lavi's hand from his shoulder as he spoke. "Your safety takes priority over my weakness," Kanda said flatly, then turned his face back to the churchyard as if he had caught something interesting out of the corner of his eye – at the base of the cliff, tucked away under the shadows. He lifted Mugen, still active in his right hand, and pointed at a mausoleum that had been half carved out of the cliff side and half built of large, gray stone that seemed to be what made up most of the surrounding rock. "That smells like blood." He observed plainly, and vaguely saw Lavi nod from beside him.

"How we gonna do this? Go in with guns blazing and demand our Moyashi-chan back, beat the thing into submission, and then tell it our intentions?" Lavi inquired, and lifted his abandoned hand to scratch at the space between his ears.

"Yeah, because that will work so well. After we're both dead, you can come back and explain things to the asshole that killed us and take it back to the Order. Do you even have a brain, or do you just pretend most of the time?"

"What do you mean most of the time?"

"I mean shut up before you hurt yourself, baka." It had been a very long time since they had argued like this, and Kanda had to wonder if the flirtatious smile on Lavi's lips meant that this wasn't arguing at all. He didn't mind if it wasn't.

"You know, baka and Lavi have the same number of syllables." The redhead pointed out with a pout.

"I wonder if Bookman realized and named you that on purpose to make them interchangeable."

"I named me, thanks. And they aren't interchangeable, but Lavi is just as much work as baka, so say Lavi."

"Shut up, we're nearly in earshot."

"Oh, c'mon Yuu-chan…"

"Che. Yuu-chan is harder to say than Kanda, so why don't you use Kanda instead?"

"Because I love you," Lavi said offhandedly, voice perfectly steady, eye focused on the terrain ahead. He took three more steps before he slowed and eventually stopped, his face drained of color, gaze no longer seeing. He quickly, with his heart thumping in his chest, reviewed the conversation in his mind three times over, listening to the last thing he had said and searching it for sincerity, for lies, for any hint of something besides truth – and then he looked up at Kanda, blinking. The samurai looked exactly the same as he had a moment ago, worn out, but a crooked little grin creased his lips, allowing a single vampire fang to gleam in the moon's light. Lavi wavered. He opened his mouth and slowly took in a breath before sighing and starting anew, heart slamming like a hammer on an anvil against his ribcage. "Ne, Yuu… did I just say… that I… I mean… did I…"

Kanda's broken smile never faltered. "Che."

Lavi's already pale face became even paler, his eye rounded and his lips turned down in protest. It didn't matter what he said now – the words were out in the air, and now in his mind, wearing that little shred of separation that still hardly remained. "That kinda just fell out…" The redhead whispered, "I… can I sorta… unsay it and keep it for later? When I'm not—"

"No." Kanda said at once, cutting him off with a glare. "You love me, the end. You don't get a redo."

"But… Kand—"

"Don't you ever call me Kanda!" The words were dangerously loud, but the Japanese Exorcist didn't seem to care as he stomped back to the apprentice Bookman and took him by the collar of his jacket, yanking him forward with a scowl pulling down at his lips. The redhead touched Kanda's shoulders in an attempt to keep a bit of his own weight on his feet but failed no small amount when his heels lifted and he stepped into the older man, tripped a bit by his boot. The moment he made to protest there were lips on his own, hard enough that he could feel the press of teeth behind them, and a hand in his hair, stopping his retreat, not that he would have wanted to. The caress was nearly desperate, the tongue against his own worked no longer to dominate but rather to mingle, and his own hands drifted slowly, shakily around his lover's back.

Honesty, trust, desire, passion – it all made sense then. All because of the little thing called love.

Parting didn't make his arms let go, nor did it assuage the sudden reality of the moment – he kept the smaller man against him and closed his eye, shaking slightly, and thought about the older man's request. There were too many emotions in the moment for him to focus on repressing any one of them, so Lavi didn't. He simply held on.

Mostly he was happy, he decided. Happy and loved.

Kanda's voice was much softer against the side of his face, his embrace looser. "I told you that you were stupid."

Lavi heard himself chuckle and sniffed, but he couldn't remember crying, couldn't remember starting to. It didn't matter – he was happy that he was. "Why didn't you tell me…Yuu-chan? If you knew, why didn't you say anything?" To his surprise the samurai didn't answer at once and simply stood there, searching for words. But Lavi could wait. It didn't matter if the Japanese man needed to explain that to him in a few years because he didn't know how to word it, he could wait.

"I wanted you to figure it out." Kanda said quietly, and he leaned a bit more surely, letting Lavi support him. The apprentice Bookman held him, and even smiled a little at the display. "And I didn't know how to say it. Telling you that you love me… explaining to you that the reason you care—I can't do it. There aren't words to convince someone of something like that, so I decided to just wait for you to figure it out, even if I hate waiting. When we… made… love that night… what you said…" The samurai paused and his Adam's apple bobbed against Lavi's shoulder as if it was a battle to swallow. "I'd have waited forever after I heard that."

"Yuu…"

"Shit."

Lavi's right hand cupped the back of the Japanese man's head and pulled him closer, nuzzling into the side of his neck with a motion that was half-catlike and half-needy, a low moan in the back of his throat. "I love you," he repeated against Kanda's skin, as if trying out the words. "I love you. Yuu… fuck, no wonder you can get up in the morning!" He almost laughed but stopped halfway, feeling the samurai melt against him like the snow between their chests, slowly, until it seemed Lavi wouldn't be able to pull himself away without taking a part of his lover with him. "When we get back – God, I want to… but we shouldn't be doing this here… Allen is—"

"Another minute won't kill him," Kanda growled, though it was obvious he wasn't as sure in that statement as he would have liked to have been. "He is not allowed to interrupt this. I refuse."

"Tim is behind you."

"Maybe I'm an exhibitionist."

"You almost had an anxiety attack when I was talking even a little dirty in the alley, you are not an exhibitionist."

"Che."

Lavi pulled away enough to find himself lightly kissed, just a brush of lips against his, hardly of note, but still something between them. He smiled at it. Now, for some reason, he didn't mind the warmth of emotion that welled in his chest at the touch. He relished it. The little dance of heat in his chest bone, the too wide smile that threatened to split his face – it was all purposeful and good. "Let's get this done with, ok?" He suggested, and held very, very still when Kanda leaned slightly upward and pressed their foreheads together in an echo of what had happened two nights before, sticking his bangs to his face. Lavi closed his eye to it and sighed, aware that the action spread heated air across the bridge of Kanda's nose before he kissed the icy end of it, very softly. The same, imperfect grin took the older man's lips.

"Yeah…" Kanda mumbled up at him. "Let's."

-- -- --

This ended on a slightly different note than intended – Lavi wasn't supposed to figure things out this chapter – but I still like it. It was more Lavi than what I had planned in the future. It still works out, it'll end how I want it to, but this part is different.

You can partly blame Dark-chan, if you feel like you must blame someone. I asked her if it was ok and if I should go for it regardless of my plans and she said, "YUS!" with a big hearty face. So it's not my fault. 8D

Thanks for reading and reviewing! TFL is over half done, you will see it soon, I promise…ish…