Remember how I said last chapter was short? Guess what?

OMFG, it's an epic. Only… not a poem.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the canon DGM characters.

Warnings: Blood/gore, shounen-ai, a random OC who won't be important unless you like the non-romantic plot, DIALOGUE HEAVY SECTIONS. Etc.

-- -- --

Part Twenty: Rejection and Affection

The snow stopped during their walk across the graveyard, which cast their destination in the harsh silver light of the moon, cutting it out of the shadows like a razor. The mausoleum had been built a very long time ago it seemed, longer than any of the three Exorcists could have possibly known at a glance. The walls were gray granite, the roof slate shingles, and the door imported mahogany of the highest quality, but the name plate next to the door had worn until it was unreadable. It was hard, however, for Lavi to take in those details, to focus on the duty that Kanda was so ready to perform, without thinking about what might happen. If they opened that door and went inside for Allen, there was no guarantee that they would all come out again alive.

He had always known that. And yet, as they mounted the steps, his Innocence clenched in his right hand, Kanda a step behind him, he felt that his fear ran deeper than it ever had before.

Because of that he kissed the samurai just outside of the door. Kanda glared at him – this wasn't the time or the place for such things – but Lavi only smiled back. Some things were more important to do at the wrong time than to never do at all.

Entering made the hinges shriek with rust, and the cold doorknob didn't turn back automatically when Lavi let it go. Not that it mattered. That meant they wouldn't be locked in, at least, which he found mildly reassuring. A flurry of anticipation filled his chest in a feeling that wasn't quite nervousness and wasn't quite excitement, and it went farther than he remembered, speeding his pulse in a way he wasn't entirely sure he was used to. It was real. Everything was real. The stone steps that lead down from their current position, the three tombs on either side of the lower room, the single sputtering sconce over his head – it all had a sort of rough texture that he didn't remember. The same sort of harsh truth that came with touches so intimate they left him feeling naked despite his clothes.

As his feet moved down the stairs, heavy on the old stones, grinding dirt, he focused on not thinking about Yuu. It was hard not to. So hard. More than anything he wanted the mission over and both of them rested so he could just touch the Japanese man naked again, it didn't even matter how or when or where – he just wanted to. Wanted to give that same kind of emotion that Kanda had given him and know exactly what was meant by it as soon as he could. It would be different, he knew, and he would feel shy, but that didn't matter. Not when he thought about how close they would be.

He shook his head. Trying not to think about it just made him think about it more, and he knew that his lover would kick his ass if he knew.

Obligation before gratification, and all.

The very back of the main room was cast in one large, deep shadow that, Lavi slowly realized, blocked a medium sized tunnel from sight. The structure wasn't quite circular, roughly hewn from the stone as if by someone using little more than a small hammer or a large rock, sharp at the edges. Two inches of water had gathered at the bottom of it, though where the liquid came from, Lavi could only guess without looking through the hole.

As he knelt to inspect further, Kanda took up a defensive stance behind him, hovering like a protective mother hen. There was a growl in the samurai's throat, low and foreboding that Lavi ignored for the moment, as he looked out into what seemed to be a large, natural cave, drenched in moonlight. That was wrong. A cave in a mausoleum lit by the moon was illogical. Lavi moved gradually forward, hunching through the passageway, and let his gaze rove over the entirety of the space, trying to decide if he was somehow imagining the things in front of him.

The place was roughly bowl-shaped, washed in black and white from the silver shining through the lack of a roof. It might have been a stone building once, a jail or the dungeon to some long destroyed estate, weathered with wind and rain and sun. What remained of the ceiling consisted mostly of long rotted wooden planks and teetering blocks of stone by the walls, ruined and waiting to fall. The walls were mud-smeared and uneven, water ran down the one to his left in a little natural groove, pooling in the middle of the floor without touching the slightly warped and upraised edges to his right. Lavi looked toward the far end of the slightly less that square room and there, just out of the light, was a large red button sitting in a puddle of blood.

"Shit!"

Kanda ducked into the passage behind Lavi at the word, and came through in time to watch the redhead splash through the puddle in the middle of the room and kneel halfway in the starlight, hammer returned to its holster. He opened his mouth to voice a warning and tasted blood on the air, thick and heavy and delicious, and rocked his back against the stone in an effort to ignore that feeling altogether. Mugen rattled in his hand until he forced his arm to stillness. Breathing wasn't good. He could smell and taste what was on the air when he took it in, so he stopped for the moment, eyes flicking through the shadows in the hope of finding something upon which to focus his mind besides that scent.

"Oh, fuck. Yuu!" Lavi sounded distinctly worried, with another, more dangerous emotion edging into his voice. "Can you give me a hand? I can't see color so I can't tell what's mud and what's blood and—"

"No," Kanda almost rasped the word, trying not to take in air to say it. "I can't even breathe in here… if I get closer, I'll…"

"Shit…"

"What is it?"

"Allen." The redhead responded simply, and his shoulders moved back and then forward as he leaned down, doing something Kanda found himself unwilling to focus on with his hands. Lavi made a soft, catlike purr in the back of his throat and his ears went down before his hands, glistening red with blood, lifted to the light. "I… want to… it's Allen's blood… I should… take care of Allen. Yuu… I think I might be going crazy." He looked back at the samurai without rising and moved his left hand closer to his face. "I want to eat—"

"L-Lavi?"

"Oh my God, Allen!" The utterance of the redhead's name, so very softly that Kanda almost didn't hear it, broke whatever spell had settled over Lavi and made him turn back, concern the only emotion in his voice. Kanda let himself shift more steadily against the wall and forced his eyes to wander, to study the room, to hunt from something that wasn't Allen or Lavi or human. He was only vaguely aware of a conversation going on between the apprentice Bookman and the white haired Exorcist, which consisted mostly of promises of safety and little questions about where they were and what had happened. The kid was tough, Kanda would give him that. Allen could hardly form sentences with any volume and yet he wanted to know how the mission was progressing.

And then something caught his eye.

On Lavi's blind side, tucked into the farthest corner, was a shadow that, he thought, had no logical purpose in being there.

"Baka Koneko, blind side, corner!" Mugen, which had always been at the ready, jerked in his hands as he brought it before him, keeping his eyes exactly on that shadow. It had gotten away before, it was true, but not this time, not when he knew how it moved and what it could do. He took a step forward and Lavi stood, hammer in hand in a fraction of a second, but he didn't move away from Allen. That was fine with Kanda. Let the redhead stay out of harms way for the moment, if the shadow tried to kill somebody, his odds of recovery were much lower than Kanda's.

The shadow did not react to being discovered. Kanda moved forward at a deliberate pace, sword in front of him, eyes locked on that dark black spot pooled low in the corner. His feet swished through the water in the middle of the room and he realized that he'd have to be next to Allen – bloody Allen – in order to get there. He gritted his teeth and moved forward, icy water soaking into his boots, glaring at that place as strongly as he dared.

He tried not to breathe.

"Yuu, maybe you should say something before it thinks we're here to kill it." Lavi warned from his left, shifting his weight back and forth. The samurai didn't look at him.

"Che. It already knows that. It got Allen 'Naïve and Self-Sacrificing' Walker for fuck's sake. It knows we're here to find out if it's an accommodator."

"Accommodator?" The word came from somewhere in the room, but the voice that said it was not Allen's or Lavi's, though it shared a similar accent to the British boy's. Kanda did not take his eyes off of the shadow in the corner but he stopped walking, waiting to see what would happen to it now that it had spoken. "What exactly is that?"

Lavi steadied his feet and lowered his hammer, a bit more willing to show understanding and vulnerability to a stranger than Kanda was. The thump of his Innocence next to his feet almost made Kanda turn to see. Almost made the samurai yell at him for dropping his guard. "The three of us are accommodators. It means that we can use these weapons – which have Innocence in 'em – to destroy Akuma." He clarified as best as he could off of the top of his head, though he figured the explanation sounded just as crackpot and stupid as it would have been to say 'We're Gods disciples and you might be too!' like a general might have. He rattled on as quickly as he could, hoping the shadow would listen. "Akuma kill people. It's a lot more complicated than I can really explain without takin' about an hour to do it, and I'd like to know that you aren't gonna try and kills us, if that's at all possible."

Something brushed through the side of Lavi's hair and he stiffened, feeling a hand close around his own, thin and small and pale. It turned him around to face the entrance, and he was met with a person the likes of which he might have seen a thousand times since coming to the town. Dark, curling hair, deep dark eyes, skin as milky white as Allen's, a smooth, sloping and feminine jaw, generous lips – a woman that only came to the middle of his chest. He couldn't move away from her, not for the life in him.

"Tell me about Akuma."

Lavi's response was incredulous, his eye shocked wide with surprise. "You're the shadow?"

"No, I'm the Queen of England. Yes, I'm the bloody shadow, nitwit!"

Kanda turned at the voice and immediately regretted it, the sight of Allen – broken and bleeding through the bandages on his throat and chest – sent him staggering away in an effort not to move forward and bite. Mugen clattered in his hand when his back hit the rock wall behind him, which was not far enough to remove him from the sight and smell before him, sticking in his mouth and nostrils. The blade flailed sideways and caught the moonlight, which reflected back at the shadow that shouldn't have been there to reveal a dark pile of cloth – a distraction. He cursed and forced his eyes to Lavi and, he was startled to discover, the tired looking woman standing in front of him.

Stop it, you don't need blood. You aren't that hungry. You just drank—

"They're machines," Lavi was explaining to her, hammer shrinking to a nonthreatening size in his right hand. She watched it from the corner of her gaze, almost curious. "Made out of metal and fueled with souls. We fought one out in the graveyard, you must have saw…"

"The blond man who shot me?" She tilted her head to the side and the curls of her bangs fell over her left eye, blocking it from sight. Genuine wonder filled her expression but Kanda could no longer watch the exchange, not without thinking about Allen's blood smearing Lavi's hands. He closed his eyes and left the redhead to it, devoting his mind to focusing on something – anything – besides what he wanted at the moment. Mugen's tip found the stone floor and he leaned on it, listening to their conversation without breath.

"He shot you?! Don't tell me you are an accommodator and a parasitic-type on top of that."

"Do explain before I decide that I don't want to wait anymore and just kill you."

The redhead rambled, going about the explanation in a roundabout sort of way that would, Kanda decided, give the woman what she wanted in the end. It was enough. The Japanese man let himself sink against the wall silently, holding his sword in a two handed sort of block until the end lowered itself once more, almost as if his arm couldn't hold it anymore. The connection of the edge on stone was nearly soundless, but Lavi's left ears twitched in that direction anyway.

"…so the only way that I know of to survive an Akuma's bullets -- that I know of -- is to have Innocence inside of you, somewhere. Is there a chance that—" Lavi stopped when he heard the slight clatter of Mugen against stone and turned to look in Kanda's direction. The smaller man had his head tilted back on the wall behind him, one hand on his abdomen, the other curled loosely on his katana's hilt. The redhead felt his face drain of color and rocked on his feet, then glanced down at the woman he was trying to explain everything to. He didn't have time for her. "Gimme a sec."

Her eyes followed his gaze to the Japanese man and she frowned, an expression that made her small, square face seem somewhat rounded from his angle. She released him. "So assuming that I do have this Innocence on me," she shrugged as Lavi went slogging across the puddle in the middle of the room toward the samurai, "Is that the reason whoever I kiss turns into a creature from someone's nightmares? Well, except for you two. Who are you, I might ask?"

Before Lavi could answer, Kanda lifted Mugen and pointed it at him, blood red eyes cracked at him blearily. "Stay back or I'll drink you dry." The Japanese man warned, sword bobbing dangerously in his hands. The apprentice Bookman ignored him.

"I'm Lavi and this is… Yuu. The little one is Allen." He said it without looking at the brunette, his eyes only for the dark haired man he knelt in front of. Delicately, he pushed the katana away by the flat of the blade and leaned forward, watching as Kanda tried to retreat into the wall away from him. "We're Exorcists, like I said. It would make sense that, if what you do has anything to do with Innocence, it can't effect us like it does other people because we're already synched with our own weapons." Lavi took the Japanese man by the back of his neck and yanked him forward, and sighed at the little sound Kanda made, the hands that fisted on his jacket. It was just blood. The apprentice Bookman didn't need that much of it.

"I'm Ursa Weaver," the woman responded, and took a small step toward him. "What are… you doing?"

"Yuu needs blood or he'll go crazy, I can see it on his face. C'mon, bite me."

Kanda's hand let go of Mugen and he grabbed the redhead, but did not bite into his throat. Instead he simply held firm, looking at the side of his lover's face with glassy eyes.

I shouldn't. I shouldn't. I might—

"Yuu-chan! Bite me, damn it! I'll knock you out if you try to kill me." That got the apprentice Bookman a little gasp that resulted in Kanda's mouth closing at once on his throat. The woman – who he kind of figured should know what she had turned the samurai into – let out a little gasp of surprise at it and stepped back when the Japanese man's eyes met hers, burning crimson. "Good… that's it Yuu-chan, you just drink, it'll be fine…" Lavi reached up and stroked the back of his lover's hair only to find himself unceremoniously hefted by the front of his coat and turned into the wall, his back pressed against the stone, Kanda leaning into his neck and chest. A little sound of surprise escaped the redhead, but little else. He didn't care what angle was needed, he was still willing.

Ursa looked down at him with an expression that was quite sure, her delicate, feminine hands fluttered from inside of the long dark cloak she wore, exposing the pale column of her neck to the moonlight. At the base of her throat, where a necklace might have hung, was a large green-black gem, embedded in her skin. Lavi almost said something, but Kanda moaned softly, as if in protest, and it forced him to pause long enough for the woman to find her voice and speak.

"I… suppose it's a vampire because I kissed it, right?"

"From what you said I'd think so but… why're you goin' around kissin' people anyway?" Lavi questioned, stroking the length of Kanda's hair ever so slowly. The samurai didn't seem to notice. Ursa did. "Come to think of it, where's your army of animal people? You turned them, right? So—"

Ursa nodded, but didn't give any sort of direction as to where he might find them. "They're waiting for my orders. I can't control what they turn into or who I do it to, but they do as I say once it's happened." As she watched, tired brown eyes thoughtful, Kanda slid a hand up under Lavi's shirt and pulled his head away, panting heavily now that he had gasped just once. Lavi smiled at her. "It's a bit of a story, if you want to know why I started, and I don't think this… Allen boy will stay conscious through the telling. If you can pry the bloodsucker off of your neck long enough to—"

"Make her drop the invocation." It was the clearest thing that the samurai had said since the ordeal had began, and it made him shake to say it. His hand on Lavi's chest curled slightly, nails on skin. "She's… not synched enough… the – Innocence is not… reacting—" He fell silent, curling in on himself, and Lavi pulled the Japanese man's face up closer to his own, placing his hands on the sides of his face.

"What Yuu? What's the Innocence not doing?"

"It should happen to her. What's happening to us should happen to her." Kanda tried to clarify, tried to make himself understood, and yet Lavi continued to look at him like he was completely insane, bleeding from his throat. The samurai knew then what he needed to do – and what he wanted to do. He wanted to gorge himself, to drink until there was nothing left, but he needed to avoid doing that at all costs, so he would do exactly as Lavi had said – with or without the Bookman's help.

Lavi made to reply, but Kanda's face stopped him. The fingernails on his chest bit into his skin and the Japanese man made a low, guttural sound before rocking back on his feet as if in preparation to strike. "Yuu-chan, if you come at me…"

"Knock me out now."

"Yuu-chan, I'm warning you…"

"Don't fucking warn me and just do it already."

Ursa took a step forward even as Lavi raised his right hand.

"If I do this wrong you're going to stop feeling your face, feel dizzy, maybe vomit—"

"Rabi—" There was so much pleading in Kanda's voice, so much fear, that Lavi shut his eye and let his right hand do what he had never seen, only read about. With two fingers he hit the mental nerve on the inside of Kanda's jaw, and prayed that it was a good idea. To his slight surprise the samurai took the blow loosely, without tightening his face or neck at all, and immediately slumped into him, no longer breathing. The redhead opened his eyes and looked down at his lover, at the face pressed against his chest, and then up at the woman who had watched the ordeal, her chocolate eyes as wide and confused as those of a child.

"He'll be ok. He's just sleeping." Lavi tried to reassure her, and forced himself to smile.

Ursa wavered on her feet for a moment, seeming to think about what she had just seen. "Oh?"

"Yeah. While he's out of it, you wanna tell me how this whole thing started?"

"I came here after my would-be mother in law died." She said quietly, "Michael and I came to get the necklace from his mother's grave that she had promised him. But… when we had the groundskeeper bring us to the grave that was hers, the top was muddy. But we dug it up anyway." Her hands fluttered about her collar for a moment before she went on. "Her corpse was missing, but her clothes were there and…" Her fingers went to the gem under her cloak and moved aside the fabric so he could see where it rested, below the hollow of her throat and yet well above her breasts. He didn't even think about those breasts. "This. When Michael picked it up… the whole world feel apart.

"There were corpses crawling from the ground and this… flaxen haired man, who turned into something like a knight from medieval books when we started to run. And we ran. The groundskeeper was caught by the corpses. I led Michael here in the hope that we could barricade ourselves in and wait those… creatures out…" Lavi watched as Ursa began to lose herself in the memory, eyes blinking as if to avoid tears. "We found this room and came back here to hide. We thought we were going to die. He held the necklace between us and… we kissed each other. I wished with all of my heart that we had someway to fight those creatures…

"And then he changed." She said, turning her face to the rocky and dusty ground beneath her feet. "He turned into a beast with fangs and claws and he tore through so many of them, growling like the dog he resembled. Somehow we made it out alive, but the knight couldn't find us." She paused, swallowing hard. "It was just the two of us for a while. But there were too many dead, so I turned as many as I could every night. But many fell. Like the groundskeeper. I thought I was saving them. Taking away their wills, yes, but what else was I to do?" Her head shook as if to dismiss the question unanswered. "It seemed to be working until…

"I can tell the rest later. If you are who you say you are then… what now?" Her eyes, still very tired, only now emotional as well, looked up and studied the unconscious way that Lavi held Kanda against him, with gentleness and care. She smiled softly. "I'm sorry, I thought your girlfriend was a man. I hope you're not insulted."

"Yuu-chan you mean?" Lavi blinked, incredulous, before a deep blush spread across his features. "Y-Yuu-chan is a man…"

Ursa looked almost ashamedly away. "Then forget I called him your Nancy."

With a little chuckle Lavi shifted until he could lean Kanda against the wall, brushing his fingers through the side of the samurai's dangling hair. With a little reluctant sigh he pushed himself into a crouch and then, with a little mischievous grin, leaned down to brush his lips on the Japanese man's. Ursa, still looking away, did not notice. "Well, as nice as it to talk about how pretty Yuu is, I'm gonna have to ask you to try and deactivate your Innocence if you can, being I'm pretty damn sure that's what you've got on your chest." He said, reaching for his own. "See the glowing green stuff? That means active. Yours does it too."

"How exactly does one deactivate this… divine crystal, exactly?" Ursa's tone was distinctly incredulous, and her eyebrows arched over her dark eyes as if she didn't specifically trust him to tell her.

"Allen would be better at explaining it to you; he's parasitic like I think you are…" Lavi complained, but held out his weapon as an example all the same. "It's… the Innocence tells my arm what to do, then my arm tells my brain, then my brain tells my Innocence. It works the same way backward. Have your brain tell your nerves to tell your Innocence that you don't need to defend this town anymore." He said, and holstered his hammer in a hurried sweep, smiling at her disbelieving look. "It helps a lot if you believe it."

With a frown, Ursa reached up and touched the stone with her fingertips. Her eyes remained focused on Lavi, however, as she spoke to him. "Because you haven't changed like the others, I'll trust you." She smiled a little crookedly, "Though I'm curious why your friend has a harder time of things than you do. Any idea why that might be?" She questioned, furrowing her eyebrows.

"Vampires are a lot closer to humans than house cats are," Lavi said after a short moment of thought. "The other vampire I know is pretty normal." He grinned at his own horrible reference to Crowley, but didn't laugh at his own joke, knowing she wouldn't get it, before taking a step back to give her space. She nodded at him, as if it to cue him that she was prepared to trust him regardless of his ridiculousness and stupidity – mainly because of how he treated his companions, he didn't know.

"It's alright," Ursa whispered to herself, as if speaking to a very small child. "We don't have to fight anymore." Nothing happened. Ursa stood with her left hand on her chest, right hanging at her side, eyes closed, and a snowflake fluttered through the roof to settle in Lavi's hair. It was the first of many. He reached up and brushed it away indifferently, but it was not until his hand came to his side again that the change occurred to him. There had been nothing to catch his fingers on, no fur or cat ears, just his own, mud and blood caked hair, unruly and tangled on top of his head. Startled, the redhead patted the sides of his head and found – to his relief – his own ears back where they were supposed to be, the loops of his earrings dangling next to his skin.

Behind him, Kanda made a sound like a groan and then – to Lavi's horror – a noise the apprentice Bookman had become familiar with. He retched sickly, loudly enough for Lavi to turn to him and move through the suddenly dark room, stumbling over rocks hidden in the water shadows around them.

Kanda felt very cold. It was the one thought that made sense to him, how cold he was, as well as how warm the liquid was that filled his mouth. He knew what it was by the taste of it – salty and metallic – and he knew what had happened by how suddenly deaf and blind he felt, hunched against a wall, puking blood. At least it wasn't his blood, he knew. It was Lavi's blood, and maybe pork blood from earlier, but it still looked fucking awful coming out of his mouth. Like he was dying or something. It didn't feel much better either, to have it leaking out his nose and choking him, getting in the way of lungs that weren't used to taking in air. The Japanese man couldn't think very well with that happening.

He could, however, make out the touch of a warm hand on his back much like before, and the sound of his name on a pair of worried lips.

Kanda let the redhead hold him. He was freezing, and sick, and dizzy, and tired, and the very last thing he wanted was to be alone on top of all of those – not right now with his own body rebelling against him. When his stomach stopped convulsing enough to allow him to breathe, he turned back and looked up at Lavi, who grimaced at the sight of his face. Kanda knew his mouth and lower jaw were covered in blood, his lips also, and felt by the trembling in his jaw that he was indeed lacking in heat the way he felt. The redhead touched the side of his face, and Lavi's fingers were fire on his skin.

"Take Moyashi," Kanda heard himself say. "I'll be fine."

The redhead's smile seemed too slow, for some strange reason. "He rubbin' off on you too, Yuu-chan?"

He made to reply but he was throwing up again, dry heaving, and he felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his skull at any moment, his face was going to fall off. He realized that he could hardly feel his limbs at all at some point, but things had become foggy, distant, strange. Before it happened he knew what was coming. Knew there was no way to stop it. So he turned his body toward Lavi and reached for him, though why he wanted to he could only guess.

The samurai's fingers brushed the edge of Lavi's coat before he fell.

-- -- --

Lenalee had brought in coffee despite the hour, worried. Bridget had thanked her, said something about how she needn't serve the lowly science department members if she didn't want to, and then gone back to work. The Chinese girl had once again explained that she still enjoyed the pastime and then headed off to see her brother, silently hoping that he would be alone and have a word.

She paused outside of the door to listen, standing on the side of the door that the hinges were on, just in case Leverrier came out in a lethal rage again. The bastard – and she could stand to think of him of such despite her usual niceness – had a habit of saying horrible things to her when that happened, which had been almost constantly since Allen's sudden disappearance. Of course the British boy had called in, as had the others, and Komui hadn't pressed the issue of leaving without his escort over the phone, but that did not quell the inquisitor's ire. Instead it burned darker and hotter, and he lashed out in ways that only made the people around him dislike him more. At the rate his popularity was falling, it would take a miracle to stop his assassination within a year.

Even the greatest Crow assassin, which Leverrier was not, could not ingest cyanide.

The thought gave her courage.

"—Walker isn't the only problem here, Supervisor. The other two aided him in his escape."

"If that's the case, Inspector, I'm afraid you'll have to try every person who has taken their phone calls since departure and the crew who served them breakfast before leaving as well as the group who saw them off for aiding him. None of that sounds like escaping either."

"He left without permission."

"He had permission to leave on that day. I told him nothing about the means by which he had to do it."

"You're telling me that Allen Walker is smart enough to find a loophole that pathetic, find a train, and take it just to spite me?!"

"Not everything is about you, Inspector. I believe he did it because he feels as if he is being stalked by your assistant."

There was a short sound like awkward laughter and the light ruffling of papers. Lenalee did love it when her brother could keep his head in a dire situation. "The perhaps he would enjoy confinement better."

"Confining him is not an option, you know that. Losing an Exorcist or locking one up – let alone three – would put us at a deficit that will lose this war. Even if you see them as lambs for you to sacrifice, you know that you cannot waste them foolishly."

He was toeing the line, nearly being insubordinate. There were two ways this could go, Lenalee knew. There would either be yelling and Komui would have to apologize, or Leverrier would see and understand, and have to think. She waited. Her brother's talents at manipulation were growing more adept by the day – he knew now that there was no way to avoid thing but to try and bend Leverrier's desires to his own.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence.

"Then how do you suggest we discipline him, Supervisor?"

A chair creaked. Her brother had relaxed into his chair. A small victory. "If there's anything Allen Walker loves, it's food, and a variety of kinds of it. Give him plain rice, plain meat, and steamed broccoli for two weeks and he'll never want to sneak away again. A diet like that shouldn't make him too unhealthy, either." He paused, and Lenalee imagined that he had turned his attention to his quill, the way he would when Reever wanted something and he just wasn't in the mood to be nice about giving it, no matter what it was. "The other two most likely just trusted his word about the train and assumed he had permission. I doubt it was anything malicious." There was another break, and she heard someone slurp – Komui – and then a soft contented sigh. That was fake. His coffee had long since grown cold.

"We shall have to see."

The phone rang. Leverrier excused himself. Lenalee slid into the far corner of the hall when he opened the door and started down it in the opposite direction, completely missing her. She slipped inside soundlessly, moving on her slippers with delicate steps that not even Komui noticed until the door was shut behind her. He looked up from his stack of papers, lifted the phone, and smiled at her.

"Hello!" The word was half meant for her and she smiled right back. She would have hugged him for his earlier display if not for that. She took the coffee cup he was using and put it on her tray, the replaced it with the warm bunny-print one she had brought with her. He took it in his hands almost at once. "Lavi?"

Lenalee paused.

"Hey, Komui. Just callin' to tell you that we found the Innocence. And the akuma. But we might take a while to get back." Lavi's voice was tired sounding in Komui's ear and the Chinese man glanced at the clock on the wall – just after eleven – and frowned. It seemed very late to be calling in when they could just call on their way back in the morning.

"How are things then?"

"Well…Yuu-chan's throwing up all of the blood in his stomach, and he was shot, looks like hypothermia, too. I just feel really slow, now that the cat-parts are gone…"

"Would you like me to seek approval for use of the Ark?"

"No." Lavi responded as Lenalee stiffened in front of him. She didn't much like using Allen to use the Ark. "Allen's got a crushed chest bone and two broken clavicles. He wouldn't be able to sit up to play."

"You're not wounded that badly?"

The apprentice Bookman chuckled. "Well, besides being tired and half-deaf and worried sick… no, I'm fine. Just bumps and scratches. Though, I think Bookman is gonna want my head when I get back… never mind. Everything ok there?" The question seemed offhanded, as if he didn't really care how Komui answered as long as it distracted him. It was a part of the Supervisor's job that he rarely got to fill anymore.

"Lenalee just brought me the most delicious coffee, mmhmm, smells divine," Komui watched his sister smile and listened to Lavi laugh softly at once, both of them less than awake. He didn't mind that. They still smiled and laughed and the expressions were real, so it couldn't have been all bad. "I'm curious though, how is it that Kanda-kun has become hypothermic? And Allen… how did that happen to him and not to anyone else?"

Lavi made a little sound and said something away from the receiver before he sighed. "The vampire thing. Because Yuu stopped breathing – because he didn't need to – his temperature went down. He still had a heartbeat, but that didn't make him much warmer. When the Innocence stopped affecting him, he was so cold that… it happened." He stopped to say something else away from the phone before he went on. "Allen got pummeled by a snaky person and Ursa which is… a really long story. He's awake. I'm gonna go see him." Lavi made a sound then like a yawn, and Lenalee crinkled her brow at her brother, wondering perhaps how it was that things had unraveled on the mission. Komui decided that this was not the moment to sate her curiosity.

"If anything changes, call back as soon as possible. I can send a Finder to bring the Innocence back if—"

"It's ok." Lavi interrupted softly. "Besides, it's Ursa's. She's an accommodator."

-- -- --

To his slight surprise he didn't feel as bad as he had before, not in the least, thought he felt numb over more than half of his body, like someone had just cut away the skin and replaced it with someone else's. The thought was disconcerting. He slowly, fearing the harshness of the lights, dragged his left eye open in time to see a hand coming for his face, that wasn't Lavi's or Kanda's. It touched his forehead, the thumb running across his scar very slowly.

When there hadn't been a scar, Mana had put him to sleep that way.

"…accommodator." Allen hardly heard the word it was so distant, but he did pick it out despite the beeping and whirring by his head.

A woman wearing a worn looking dress and a blanket over her shoulders leaned down at him, smiling. He didn't understand. Lavi was supposed to be here, and it wasn't as if Lavi had turned into a woman. Her hair was back in a messy bun, though it didn't look bad on her, just a bit strange. "How are you feeling?" Her voice was too soft to try and recognize. A townsperson, maybe, or someone he had asked questions on the street and then never talked to again until now. Whatever the case, he made himself smile at her while he fought with the gauze over his right eye and, inevitably, lost.

"Numb," Allen whispered, and he watched a little smile lift her lips. "But warm. And…" Lavi came in the door to his right and he couldn't see him, but he heard a little clearing of the older boy's throat, so he still knew. His head didn't much like rolling across his pillow away from the woman, but he still managed, wincing and pinching his eyebrows together in discomfort. The redhead smiled at him, which wrinkled the little bandage under Lavi's left eye and pulled his head up to expose the large circle of gauze around his throat, the left side of which had started to bleed through.

Lavi looked tired. "Hey 'Sprout, how ya feeling?"

"Sleepy," he got out the last word he had wanted to say but hadn't managed. "What… happened with the shadow? I passed out after Kanda threatened you. And…" he looked first at Lavi's head and frowned, and then turned his eyes around the room. The room wasn't private, but instead much like the infirmary at the old Order, with six beds to each wall, and supplies at each end. Like all hospitals he could remember, the majority of the room was white. White walls and ceiling, tiles just a shade closer to pink, lights that put everything in stark, uncomfortable contrast. There were yellow curtains, all drawn back, that circled the beds, a means to divide them from each other if the need arouse. His eyes came back to Lavi's face. "There's something wrong."

"Really?" The apprentice Bookman's eyebrows lifted as if in curiosity. His right hand, sporting a bandage around the wrist and missing its fingerless glove, reached up and ran through his hair. His jacket was gone, replaced by a loose fitting gray shirt that didn't weigh on the few superficial wounds he had received in comparison to the others. His pants where Order issue, as were his socks, but his boots had been replaced with flat white slippers that covered his toes. "I wonder what that could be."

"The cat ears are gone…" Allen frowned a little, almost pouting, and reached out with his right hand as if cheated. He looked rather pathetic with his swollen face, wounds, and a pout. The white haired teen could have been some poor lost child wanting to pet a stray dog. "It's too bad, really. I'd have liked to pet you more." Allen mumbled, and his hand fell limp next to the bed, hanging loosely. "Kanda kind of monopolized you," he observed with a snicker.

Lavi reached out and took the boy's hand in his, then knelt enough to place the hand on top of his head. "You can still pet me, see? Prr…"

"Now it's perverted."

"Only if you're dirty minded!"

"Which you are."

Ursa let out a nearly silent laugh, high and strange, before she covered her mouth with her hands. "I could always kiss you again, Lavi." She offered, which – to her slight surprise – got her a loud grunt from the bed to Allen's left, the occupant of which the British boy had somehow failed to see in his cursory sweep of the room. Instead of asking, however, he remained distracted by what Ursa had said.

"Again?"

Lavi turned his attention away from Allen and Ursa, aware that she was about to proclaim herself the shadow and once again have someone question her certainty. Instead he pushed himself up and moved around the bed to the one next to Allen's, pushing back the curtain enough to let him see Kanda there, laid out against the crisp bedding, eyes shut. The samurai was pale still, though now it was due to a lack of nutrition rather than being mostly dead, and it showed in the lines of his face. His eyes were still too deep in his skull, his cheek bones too hollow, but the purplish quality to his lips was fading fast. The wound on his side had caused quite a bit of blood loss, but the Japanese man still had the strength to open his dark blue eyes and look up at the redhead, lids at half mast.

"Good morning, Cupcake."

"Che." Kanda looked down at his left arm, at the needle sticking into his skin that fed him fluids, and frowned. "Some morning." A pause. "Fucker."

Without word the apprentice Bookman lowered himself to the floor next to the bed, leaning on the mattress, looking up at the samurai. His fingers shook a little as he reached up and touched Kanda's right hand, a little brush of contact that made the Japanese man look at him, blinking. Lavi pretended not to notice. He touched the samurai's fingers very gently, following the lines and bumps of his calluses, until Kanda grabbed his hand and held it firm, though much more loosely than Lavi might have imagined.

"Yuu-chan…" Lavi started, and he could not take his eyes from Kanda's fingers. Not for the life in him. They were still very cold in his hand, even if they were better off than they had been. He didn't need to speak for a moment, so instead he leaned his head on the mattress and pressed Kanda's hand under his chin, cool fingers against his throat. He wanted to say that he was worried. That he had been worried and still was. He wanted to know, more than anything, that Kanda was fine, would be fine, and that there was nothing to concern himself over, and that they could go home and just do nothing for two weeks, pretending that their leave would last forever. But he couldn't have it. Even if he opened his mouth and made those things known, he couldn't have them. Words were useless, even if he had known what to say.

Kanda pulled his hand away and rolled on to his left side, exposing the swath of his back that wasn't covered by the hospital gown he was wearing. Lavi wanted at once to push himself up on the mattress and kiss it, but he shook his head the way he would have if the urge had been feline. Instead he spread his arms out across the mattress and gently touched that strip of flesh with his fingers, tickling along his lover's spine.

Silence settled between them.

A long moment slipped by, and the Bookman-in-training found himself tuning out what Allen was saying, though he should have recorded it, his face pressed to the soft, plush surface of the mattress. His hands grew still. The bed, even if the Japanese man hadn't been there very long, smelled like Kanda. Lavi closed his eyes at it, and sighed from the bottom of his chest.

"Che. Baka Usagi."

"Ngh?"

Kanda's voice was very quiet, almost indistinguishable, but Lavi lifted his head a bit to hear it better. "Are you going to just sit there or get in?" The samurai growled, and the low, straight line of his ponytail slid down his pillow, snaking against his back. In a rush the redhead stood and, grinning and twitching his eyebrows at Allen and Ursa without a care as to what they thought, closed the curtain around Kanda's bed, watching the little loops of metal at the top catch when he changed angles. When it was just the two of them, incased in soft yellow light from all sides, Lavi slipped off the shoes he had been given and floundered his way onto the bed, taking up his place behind the Japanese man without even pausing. Kanda shifted back into him, regardless of the blanket between them.

Lavi buried his face in the samurai's throat, breathing him in, and hooked his arm around his lover's chest.

"Watch the bullet hole."

"I will, I will," Lavi whispered, putting the hand he had looped around the samurai's chest a little higher. He didn't care where he had to touch, or that there were two people sitting not six feet behind him, or that a nurse might come in and see. It was only him and Kanda, pressed together, and a little pile of something he had never known between the two of them. Kanda relaxed and, in a few moments, his breathing came in slow, sleepy waves. Peaceful. He rocked back a bit more and Lavi let him, then lifted his knees until they fit more evenly, his mouth pressed to the soft, lively skin between his lover's neck and shoulder. The Japanese man's mouth opened and he could feel it, feel the little change in his breathing before Kanda spoke.

"Don't call me, Cupcake, either. Ever. I'll kill you."

Lavi's mouth smiled against Kanda's skin, wide enough that he could only kiss the samurai to avoid discovery. "Alright, Yuu."

-- -- --

You like? Different than planned… but… plans are meant to be ignored, right?

Not too fast? I promise that little things will be explained in chapters to come. Kanda's mark problem, Allen's eye – you shall hear things. :3

Reviews are still loved!