Path Built On Graves: Chapter Four: Interrogations
AN: the real irony is how much I didn't like the Earl when I was younger, yet when I rediscovered DGM, he was like a family man that commits occasional murder and is more likable than the Order at the moment, which is basically what he is in this fic lmao
"It's up there?" Kanda's head was bent almost completely back, looking up the steep cliff to where the European Branch sat, high up and out of reach. Kanda just wondered if it was even worth it if he had to climb the whole fucking thing.
"Yeah, it's pretty high up." Maria squinted her eyes almost shut. It was nearly sundown and Kanda wanted nothing more than to collapse into a bed and sleep until he had to be dragged to sword training. "I once climbed all the way up because my master forgot to tell me that there was a way to get in underneath."
Kanda tried not to look too relieved because she was eying him in speculation, undoubtedly debating about making him do the same; that seemed right up her alley.
"If it was earlier, I'd make you climb," Maria admitted, proving him right, and he was suddenly thankful that one of their trains had been delayed an extra hour, "but I'm feeling nice…so we'll take the boats."
Kanda grunted and Maria almost laughed. "Come on, you whiny toad, it's not that far."
She made a small gesture with her hand for him to follow after, and Kanda did so, albeit at a slower, more cautious pace. Maria had gained a bit of a skip in her step the further away from Asia they had gotten, making Kanda wonder if her husband had been killed there, but he knew better than to ask.
However, when he sat down in the boat on the waterway, allowing Maria to steer them forward with an oar, he didn't think that it was much better than the train. At least the boat wasn't so jarring with its movements.
There were two finders standing on either side of the stairway that led upwards from the dock when they came in and one stepped forward, ready to help tie the boat off, but the second grabbed him and shook his head.
Maria knelt to tie the boat off, not bothering to offer Kanda a hand with getting out; she knew now that he preferred doing things on his own. Then she turned to arch an eyebrow towards the pair, leaving Kanda to wonder if finders usually guarded the door.
"Welcome back, General Walker," one said officially and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Thank you," she said simply, dropping a hand to Kanda's shoulder. "Come along, Yu, we'll see if someone in the science department is still awake and if there's a room for you."
Kanda wasn't about to argue with that, traipsing past the pair and climbing the stairs, looking around in wonder at the spiraling tower heading up and up and up, all the way to the top.
Maria yawned widely. "I'll show you around tomorrow when we aren't quite dead on our feet…take those stairs, there."
Kanda followed her directions to a door that was thrown wide open. There were so many smells that Kanda could've gone without for his entire life, but Maria didn't seem too phased.
"Yo…section leader…is that Maria Walker?"
"Gotta be dreaming, man, no way. Maria hasn't been back here in months."
Maria's lips twitched. "I'd love to say hello to everyone, but I'm rather dead on my feet and I'd like a spare room for my student."
Several heads snapped towards her amidst the chaos and she softened slightly at the greetings shouted at her.
"Hey, new guy! Help Maria's kid get a room!" was shouted to a thoroughly exhausted nineteen-year-old with spiky blonde hair.
"Who?" he asked tiredly, almost slurring in how nearly asleep he was, eyes flicking over to where Maria and Kanda were standing, surprise coloring his face.
"General Maria Walker," Maria said with her lips curving slightly, "my student is in need of a room."
"Hang on…Maria's actually teaching someone?"
"Didn't she say she'd never do that?"
"That's what I heard -hey Maria—!"
Maria cleared her throat loudly. "Another day, darlings, I'm rather tired."
Several good nights were shouted in her direction, much to her amusement and the young scientist loped in her direction, deep circles under his eyes. "All right, follow me…we've got a lot of open rooms—"
"Lots of failed experiments, I'm guessing." Her voice was carefully blank but the man still flinched, making Kanda curious. Non-expressions, he'd learned, were worse than Maria actually expressing anything she was feeling.
She noticed him looking and spared him a small smile.
The man cleared his throat. "I'm Reever Wenhamm, by the way…a lot of the guys in the department like you."
"They usually do," Maria chuckled. "I bring them coffee occasionally when they need it."
From the look on his face, Kanda gathered that that wasn't what he'd meant.
"Ah, General Maria Walker," came a silky voice behind them, "so lovely to see you again."
Kanda twisted in order to look behind his master. It was a man dressed smartly, not like the man that she'd spoken to on the train with that almost fond smile of hers, even after she'd said the man was an ally of the Earl, his brown hair slicked back and toothbrush mustache present on his lip. His uniform was unlike theirs and was a bold maroon with a crest at his throat and his breast.
Maria's face completely blanked of emotion, like moments before, but worse, like Kanda was looking at a carved statue; he didn't like it, she seemed almost…unnatural.
She knelt suddenly, disregarding the man completely. "Darling, why don't you go along with Mr. Wenhamm and get some sleep?" Kanda was so unnerved by her general demeanor that he didn't even try to shake her off when she brought a hand to his cheek. He held her eyes for the longest time and then he gave one single nod.
She watched them until they rounded a corner and then she straightened back up again, a calm mask smoothing across her face.
The only thing she was acutely aware of was Mun settled on her shoulder, teeth bared in an unfriendly and wrathful way.
She didn't notice the door that was cracked and the dark eyes that watched her curiously.
"Follow me, please."
Lenalee Lee didn't remember what her life had been like with her parents, when the akuma had attacked and rendered them to ash, but she did remember her brother, and she remembered the look on his face when they'd ripped her from him.
Accomodator of the Dark Boots, that was what they'd called her, and it had been months before she'd even heard her name again and even longer before she'd been treated anywhere close to human.
She shouldn't have even been awake, but she'd heard voices, the sound of Lvellie, the man of her nightmares, and a cold voice of a woman. She'd peeked out of the darkness, watching him walk past with a woman with a high ponytail and an exorcist uniform.
Intrigued, she couldn't help but sneak out of her room to follow after. Exorcists came and went, but she'd never seen a woman before.
"If you were more cooperative, this would go much quicker," came Lvellie's smooth voice.
"Am I supposed to feel a shred of mercy towards the man that killed my son?" the woman replied archly, grey eyes like ice. "I could drop a building on you and I wouldn't feel a thing…I would happily drop a building on you."
The members of CROW in their faceless uniforms shifted slightly.
"Are you threatening me, General Walker?"
General Walker bared her teeth and the strange golem at her side did the same, radiating pure contempt, if it was possible for it to do so. "You've got a brain, Inspector -I hope, though with that apathy, one has to wonder, but even jellyfish have their uses- I'm sure you can figure it out."
She stood, fury rolling off her entire being. "I will be perfectly clear. I have not had any contact with Allen D. Campbell, at all. Your men removed my son from me without even permitting me to hold him. His transfer from Central was guarded by your men and by your clergy. You lost him, so you don't get to blame me for your shortcomings, and believe me, there are many. I have not looked for my son, I don't know where he is and I very dearly hope that he is dead so that your depraved organization never gets its hands on him." And then she swept furiously out of the room, and Lenalee, knowing Lvellie would be following at any moment, raced quickly back to her own room.
Mana dropped a book with an echoing thud. "Uncle?" His eyes widened in surprise, eyes jumping from his twin to Maria, who he'd only just been made aware of months ago; Nea was good at covering his tracks, but Mana was smart and figuring out his brother was sneaking off to spend time with an exorcist had initially stopped his heart.
Then his eyes dropped to where Maria was cupping her stomach. "Oh," he said, followed by, "wait…you're with child?"
Maria was barely eighteen -as was Nea, himself- and was a slight woman that he had a hard time imagining with a rounded stomach, child growing within.
"He's taking this well," Maria remarked with amusement.
"I'm kind of enjoying it," Nea leaned down to press a kiss to her shoulder through the material of her uniform.
The irony hit Mana more than anything else. His brother's skin was the Noah gray, a ringlet of stigmata around his brow, umber eyes impossibly soft as he looked on Maria, and her smile was much the same.
Mana couldn't believe that they'd been sneaking around the Black Order and the Earl for two years, really, he should've been surprised that Maria hadn't ended up pregnant sooner.
"We're going to get married before Allen comes," Maria added, her smile bright and Mana could see why Nea loved her so much.
"Allen?" Mana's mouth formed the name carefully.
"If it's a boy, we're naming him Allen," Nea said, completely shamelessly and so utterly in love.
"And if it's a girl?"
Maria's lips twisted. "We're still working out some names." She waved a hand. "That's not important. We're going to get married, and it would mean a lot to us if you would come."
Mana had known it would end badly as soon as he'd found out about their relationship, but the "Of course," couldn't be silenced; Nea was his brother and he loved him dearly, and wherever he went, Mana would follow.
Follow until he fractured.
Mana opened his eyes to the dark and cold inside of his tent with the circus, trying not to think of the small boy the ringmaster had bought from a freakshow, with his arm wrinkled, red, and imbedded with a cross, hanging useless at his side, skin the color of Nea's and eyes and hair just like Maria.
Mana wouldn't get attached to this 'Red', he would find Nea again and everything would be fine and perfect and wonderful again.
(High above him sat a figure on a rooftop, a cigarette between his lips and long red hair tied back, his only company an over-large golden golem at his side.
"Mana Walker?" Cross Marian asked the golem. "Guess he really got fucked up after what happened to Nea."
The golem twitched in worry.
"But you're sure about the kid?" he asked it as though he was speaking with a man, not a sentient golem crafted by a Noah.
Timcanpy nodded.
"Allen D. Campbell…hm." Cross grinned around his cigarette. "Well, this is going to be interesting.")
Maria blinked at the heaping portions that had been set out before she'd even ordered breakfast. "Jeryy, how'd you know?"
The chef reached through the opening to grasp her hands, his eyes as hidden behind those sunglasses that he didn't need as the first day they'd met. "Oh, honey," he said, "I know you…and I made some special cake for you!"
Maria looked at it and had to stifle her amusement. "Eat shit, Lvellie," she read out, warmth rising in her chest. "Thanks, Jeryy…I really appreciate it."
"That is one evil man, honey," Jeryy told her seriously, "don't stay here any longer than you have to, all right?"
He leaned forward further to hug her tightly, but his words settled ice into her heart. "Jeryy…are they- are they…" Her throat closed, remembering the notes in the file on the Second Exorcist Project. "Are they doing something…?"
Jeryy's face softened and Maria tried not to break. She'd already been fractured into so many pieces because of the Order and its actions perverted in the name of the God they loved so much. Maria had never been religious, but joining the Order had made her a straight up atheist, and she so loved to bring up that fact in front of any clergy that found themselves in her presence. They didn't much like it, but, then again, Maria hadn't liked being restrained for months during her pregnancy and forced to give up her child.
("Are you still using that excuse?" a priest had asked her, disgust curling across his face. She presumed that was from the assumption that she hadn't been married in a Christian fashion and that her child was born out of wedlock. Allen might not've been conceived after their wedding, but he had had no shortage of love from his parents, that, at least, Maria knew.
"Are you still being depraved human beings experimenting on children in the name of your God?" she replied with ice that burned.)
"That's a lot of food."
Maria pulled back from Jeryy with a blink, looking down on Kanda. "I'm surprised you found your way in here, darling. Didn't get lost?"
"I'm not you," Kanda rolled his eyes.
Maria's eyebrow twitched. Damn brat.
"And who's this cute little sweetie?" Jeryy practically zeroed in on Kanda in a way that made him physically step back.
Maria laughed, dropping a hand to his head in a way that had him smacking it off. "This is my student, Kanda. This is Jeryy, he's the head chef of the European Branch."
Jeryy saluted.
"Whip him up something, will you?" Maria asked Jeryy before considering Kanda thoughtfully, "…hm, maybe something Japanese?"
"Right-o!"
And with that said, Maria wheeled her massive cart of food over to a table and began to chow down.
The whispers followed her no matter where went and Maria had never cared for them very much, but it was worse in the European Branch than it was in the Asian Branch. It hadn't been like that before, but the Inspector's people made it worse.
If Kanda noticed her white knuckles when he sat down opposite her, he didn't comment on it, which Maria appreciated.
She'd barely slept last night, dreaming about babies with malformed right arms drowning in pools of their own blood.
Her stomach roiled again at the thought.
The Order was toxic and she hated it so much. She couldn't hate Bak, though, or Marie, or Klaud, or Froi, or…or…
Maria sighed tiredly into her soup and Muncanpy kept his tail wrapped around her wrist while he chowed down on a sandwich.
"Ready to learn how to properly use a sword, kid?" she asked instead.
"I can use a sword," Kanda grumbled under his breath.
"Anyone can use a sword as long as they know which end to stab people with," Maria snorted. "You are going to learn how to properly use one, there's a difference."
Kanda didn't agree with her.
Tyki was still out of sorts after meeting that woman, Colette. There was something about her…something unnerving and something painfully familiar, like looking in the mirror or looking at Sheril, but he couldn't figure out what it was.
It was important, he was sure of it, a flash of resemblance to something he remembered seeing as a child…poking his head into places he shouldn't have been.
He remembered the anger on his father's face, more viscerally than anything else.
Colette had been a curious one, with a weariness and a sadness that seemed to cling to her, clear in every movement she made. She'd only seemed to come alive a bit when that boy had called out to her.
"Master?"
That single word had lightened her somber aura enough that at was noticeable and Tyki's eyes had followed her back to the boy in the Order uniform -a child not even Road's age when she looked her usual (though it was possibly close to the appearance she wore when with his brother and sister-in-law), and that was the part that hit him the most, that the Order was using literal children in this war- and he had to wonder how young she'd been when she'd started to wear such a look.
Tyki sighed. He'd have time to deal with the enigma that was Colette at a later date.
Lenalee watched them from behind a pillar, interest piqued. General Walker was a relentless teacher, she'd learned while watching the spar. It was a miracle that her student hadn't collapsed yet.
The boy, Kanda, he looked completely exhausted, drenched in sweat and covered in bruises, holding onto a training sword, but his master hadn't even broken a sweat. Her brown hair had been pulled up into a bun at the top of her head and she was wearing a training uniform to match her student's. There were slight scars on her arms where she'd been cut before, years old, but Lenalee couldn't help but think there were ones on her chest that were worse.
"You're doing very well," General Walker said, her training sword held in front of herself, one hand held behind her back.
"Shut up," Kanda growled, making her smile.
"Could be better," she added, just to goad him, and he lurched forward. She sidestepped, using her foot to trip him so he crashed into the ground.
And then he was pulling himself up and attacking again. He'd improved slightly since they'd started, just after breakfast and it was almost lunch now. Lenalee knew they were going to come to drag her away soon but she couldn't help but wish for a master like General Walker, someone who was tough and unafraid to speak what she thought, who smiled and said 'darling' with so much warmth even if her student disregarded it mostly.
"Again!"
Kanda struck and his master blocked with ease.
"Again!"
Lenalee heard the sound of footsteps and a spike of terror overtook her at the thought of Lvellie, so she took off, heading for the cafeteria, hoping to hide out there before the men from Central found her again.
She didn't notice the oversized golem sitting on the sidelines, turning almost completely to watch her as she left, before returning its attention to the sparring match before it.
"So, what's the deal with that general and Central?"
Reever wasn't really expecting an answer, but the Section Leader looked up in surprise. "Ah, I forgot, you're new, you haven't heard the story about Maria Walker."
That sounded a bit ominous, if Reever was being perfectly honest. "Is this a story I'm going to get in trouble with for hearing?"
"Nah," the Section Leader waved him off, "most people know it, and Maria prefers not to have to tell it over and over again. She says it's like reliving her trauma."
That sounded worse.
"You probably noticed that Maria has a wedding band."
Reever nodded.
"Well, Maria was on an extended assignment several years back and got married while she was away from the Order. She got married, with child, and widowed all within the span of a month when she was eighteen."
Reever's eyes widened in surprise. That sounded awful.
"She actually got pregnant before she got married," Section Leader shrugged his shoulders, "the church doesn't like her too much for that, and they don't really recognize the marriage because she wouldn't tell them her husband's name…they locked her up and experimented with shoving Innocence into her unborn child."
Reever's mouth dropped open at that, his heart dropping into his stomach. "They did what?"
"Yeah, pretty terrible, right? They wouldn't even let her hold her kid after he was born, just shipped him off and then lost him in an akuma attack, no surprise she's so bitter about it."
Losing a husband and then a son…Reever couldn't imagine it. He almost asked how she could bear working for the organization that had cost her so much but he had to stop himself when he realized that she didn't really have a choice. She was an exorcist -a powerful one, too, if she was a general at her age- and the Order always had a shortage of exorcists.
What a terrible situation.
Reever was still thinking about it later when he heard a "Quit squirming."
"You're pulling too hard!"
"Don't be such a weakling, Yu."
He looked over to the training area to see Maria sitting on the edge with Kanda standing in front of her, scowling as she combed his hair back, a faint smile on her lips.
"How tight you want this, darling?" she asked, smoothing her fingers through, separating his forelocks so that they hung free, framing the sides of his face.
"Tight enough," Kanda complained and her fingers took a ribbon, winding it around the tail that she'd formed, looping it several times before tying it off.
"All right, does that work?"
He reached to feel, giving an experimental tug just to be sure, before nodding approvingly, making his master laugh in a way that actually reached her eyes.
She'd seemed solemn -and angry when Lvellie had shown up- the previous night and Reever had no doubt that the story about her was true…but in a moment like that, she did seem almost like a mom to her bad-tempered student.
He wondered if it hurt her not to know her own son's fate.
Tyki hummed softly to himself as he entered the church, looking around with disinterest. Luckily for him, there didn't seem to be any foot traffic that day. That was good. It was easier to kill and interrogate a priest when there was no one around.
His back was to Tyki as he stepped silently forward, fiddling with the bible on the pedestal before checking the candles some churchgoers had lighted before leaving.
"Excuse me," Tyki said smoothly, "but you wouldn't happen to be Father Clark Ogden?"
The man turned around in surprise, probably not expecting someone to approach in such silence, nor being so well-dressed that he didn't quite fit into the crowd around the church.
"Yes, can I help you, young man?"
Tyki took off his top hat and delighted in how the color leeched from the Father's skin at how Tyki's own turned ashen and grey, the stigmata appearing across his brow.
"Hello." Tyki bared his teeth in a terrifying grin that was almost sharp. "Six years ago you married a Nea Campbell and a Maria Walker…I'd like to know about them." He moved fast and the Father didn't stand a chance before there was a hand sunk through his chest, wrapping around his heart, squeezing slightly to let him know where exactly he stood.
"You're going to tell me everything about them," Tyki continued with that same terrifying smile. "That is…if you don't want to die."
They were empty words, of course, the Father was going to die regardless, but humans had a tendency to do what you wanted when given the proper incentive.
So, Father Clark Ogden opened his mouth and told Tyki everything.
AN: As always: PLEASE REVIEW!
There's some interesting stuff coming up with certain characters' families ;)
