"Hey," Kanda said softly.
There was no reply.
"Last night, somebody broke into Hevlaska's flat and set fire to it."
He paused, listening to the machines. "She's okay, she just got knocked around a little bit. She's got alarms and shit, so they got her out, but the place is a mess. From the sounds of it, somebody tried robbing her and it got out of hand. They questioned all of us. Finished with me at three this morning."
Kanda closed his eyes, wondering how it had gone for some of the others. He had committed no crimes, but that wasn't true of everyone. "I don't know what to think," he said. "The old bat had stuff worth stealing, yeah, but the Order's been in an uproar since Cross came back. Maybe it was one of us, I don't know. It could be Lavi. He's not going to survive Paris, and he's not going to go quietly. Stupid fuck's in love with Lenalee. Even Komui's acting weird, and Rouvellier has started knocking people around. One person anyway, that bean sprout. Could be him. Nobody knows shit about him. Hell, it could even be Cross."
Kanda opened his eyes and turned to his left, gazing at the sleeping figure beside him. At some point during the day, the nurses had rolled him to his side to help prevent bedsores, although Kanda knew they were inevitable. The human body wasn't designed to be prone for this long.
Even though they had presented the coma to him as the best possible hope for the body to heal, it had its dangers if it went on too long, and this coma had. There was muscle atrophy; the figure beside Kanda was much thinner than he was, and had not grown as tall as it should have. There was also no way to know how much damage had been done to the brain. They did scans, but there was only so much they could learn from them. They needed responsiveness, not much, even a little would do, but there wasn't any, not anymore. Movement had gone from minimal to random to none. What remained was the rise and fall of the chest as a machine filled the damaged lungs with air.
At first all Kanda had cared about was that his friend was alive. Where there was life, there was hope. That's what they told him, but after a while, he began to doubt. The doctors had to amputate one foot just above the ankle, where the heated shackle had burned through the tendons and into the bone, and most of the boy's back was covered in scar tissue, a problem compounded by the inevitable bedsores. If he woke, he would need skin grafts. There had also been repeated respiratory infections in lungs damaged by heat and smoke, including a few cases of pneumonia.
Kanda felt especially guilty about that. He had not thought to check to make sure his friend had been able to keep his face covered on his own. He'd been too concerned with himself.
It was one thing to say, as Father Tiedoll did, that there was only so much a frightened child could consider, but the situation had required better of Kanda than that. He hadn't had the luxury of being a frightened child, and someone else had paid the price.
At the moment, he was too exhausted to think about it too much. They'd questioned him until 3:00 am and he hadn't gotten into bed until 4:00, and of course years of habit got him up at 6:00. He'd tried to nap, but found the result unsatisfying. Fire was an uneasy subject for him, creeping into his dreams even when he didn't have an immediate reminder of it. When he did, the nightmares were ten times worse.
"Hey, I know we should study, but do you mind if I just crash here for a while? I didn't get any sleep last night."
He waited, as if for a reply.
"Thanks." Then he leaned the recliner all the way back and closed his eyes, drifting off to the sounds of mechanically sustained life.