White Demon, Red Scribe, Black Nightmare
A D Gray-Man and Assassin's Creed Revelations Crossover
"GET A PHYSICIAN!" Kanda bellowed when he kicked down the door on the den, "HURRY!" The men scurried away as he half-ran upstairs, Allen in his arms. He laid the white-haired man on the bed and undid his shirt, cursing loudly when he found his chest completely bruised.
"Fuck!" Bak said that his condition could get worse but not this soon and not so suddenly! What the hell was going on?!
"Kanda," Allen stirred awake, clawing at his chest.
"What the fuck happened?!" The swordsman demanded but Allen's only reply was a weak smile and a shake of his head.
"I'm alright."
Oh, he hated that sentence.
Having heard and spied Kanda returning carrying Allen and his words, the redhead was quick to appear as the doorway of the library as Kanda whisked by, single mossy eye watching the man take the stairs to the room he and Allen shared.
There as an admitted sinking feeling edging into his chest and he was brisk to follow, where Kanda laid Allen out on the bed. From Kanda's words and the sight, at least it wasn't something like wounds from an attack by Apollo or some other enemy, though that was a marginal comfort at best.
"The after-effects from the Apple again...?"
"They shouldn't be back this soon! He fucking said he has more time!" Kanda raged and it was visible that he was at the end of what to do.
"I'm fine, Kanda, stop worrying," Allen croaked with pained smile, struggling to sit up. "Honestly, it's fine. Doesn't even hurt like before," he said, deliberately ignoring the redhead.
"Calm down," Lavi told Kanda as he circled around the other side of the bed. "Getting worked up won't solve anything. Let me take a look."
As Lavi reached forward to check on Allen's wounds, the white haired man slapped his hand away as if it was burning and stared ahead with an empty expression. Kanda stilled, watching his partner with a slightly startled look.
"Lavi, please don't touch me, it makes me feel dirty," he said in a calm voice.
Kanda's eyes slowly moved to the redhead.
Lavi looked surprised for a moment though less so than Kanda and recovered from it more quickly, shaking his head seriously and having to put a lot of effort toward keeping his voice level.
"This isn't a time to start being stubborn. You're bleeding internally, which could be fatal if left alone. Do you understand that?"
"Why do you care?" Allen asked levelly with a faint smile. From the corner of his eye, he could see Kanda slowly reach for his sword. "Put that down," he pleaded, shaking his head, "and lead him out of here."
"The physician is here!" someone shouted form downstairs.
Lavi squared his jaw, looking for a moment like he wanted to argue, but he didn't. The announcement that a doctor was there gave him excuse enough not to and instead his simply shrugged coldly, turning away with a subtle huff.
"Fine, have it your way."
Even as he walked from the room briskly, he knew he had no one to blame but himself, not even his old mentor. He'd known the rules since he was a child, and he'd broken them. This was the result, and it was his own damn fault for not keeping a proper distance like he was supposed to from the start.
Kanda threw a last questioning look at Allen and ran after the redhead, grabbing his arm when they reached the stairs.
"What the fuck happened?" he growled and dropped his hand when he felt himself shake in anger. "What did you do to him?"
"I didn't do anything to him," Lavi stated, looking serious but otherwise guarded and cold, not trusting his tempestuous emotions to stay in check otherwise. "I didn't even put a finger on him, so you can stop bristling and baring your fangs at me."
Kanda stared at him for a while in surprise and then grinned. "Well, well. Someone put down his mask," he said maliciously, "but in any case, I hope to God you didn't put a finger on him because if I find out that reaction was evincible by something you did, I'm going to gut you like a pig." He heard his name called then and spun on his heel, marching back to his room.
Lavi only watched him leave, unconcerned.
`Someone put down his mask`? Ha! If only. It would be so much simpler then, if that had been all it was this whole time.
That made him pause for a moment in contemplation. How much of it had been just a mask? When he thought back on it, it was hard to say. Difficult to separate what had been sincerity and lie. Had he really gotten so comfortable with this persona that he'd lost track?
Was "Lavi" even the mask anymore, or was "Bookman" truly the falsity?
For some reason, that agitated him, and he finally moved to finish with his things and leave for his own place, less because he wasn't very welcomed and more because he had enough of the space and he needed his own.
The street still felt too crowded and stifling, the sun too hot on his back and salty breeze too frigid against exposed skin. He couldn't possibly reach his quarters fast enough, but he forced himself not to run or move with any notable swiftness, still feeling watched and judged and entirely uncertain if he was or he was simply being paranoid.
If he had been someone with less practice in appearing unaffected and keeping a firm grasp on his self-control, he might have fumbled with the key to get in, but was glad for managing to keep his hand steady long enough to slide the key in and unlock his door to slip inside.
The silence and total solitude of his room when the door shut was a far too welcomed comfort as he finally exhaled a shuddering breath, closing his eye wearily and his back against the door sliding downward toward the floor in defeat. His head still pulsed with the lingering effect of a hangover, but it was nothing but an annoying flick compared to the ache burning his chest like a hungry wildfire. The pressure of his knee where he rested his head helped somewhat, but not by much as he let tears finally flow unchecked.
He could have blamed and cursed a lot of things for this; his old man, his clan's damn rules, the world at large, but all of them would've merely been scapegoats for choices he had made for himself. He wouldn't make excuses, either to himself or Allen. He had been responsible for how to conduct himself, and he'd chosen rather poorly.
The one person in the world he wanted to hurt the least, that he even had a sharpened desire to protect, and yet he had hurt him more than most anyone else ever could, not once, but twice over. He really was the lowest kind of person.
"What was that about?" Kanda asked suspiciously. "Did he do something to you?"
Allen laughed weakly as he waved at the leaving physician. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
Kanda took a steadying breath and closed the door. He contemplated about asking further, but he knew that he won't be getting any answers just yet. Nothing, his ass. They were best buddies just hours ago and now...?
"What did the doctor say?" he asked instead and sat on the edge of his bed.
"Nothing I didn't already know," Allen answered with an amused smile and tugged at Kanda's sleeve, urging him to lie down. "Everything is as it should be." He nestled his head on the swordsman's shoulder. Kanda held his breath, hoping to hear more. "Don't kill him, though." Well, never mind. Looks like the conversation was over.
Kanda squirmed into a better position and closed his eyes.
Even despite the fact that his deepest wishes were just granted and the annoying double-faced bookman was more-or-less gone, he still couldn't fall asleep.
Somehow, he felt like things were about to get much worse.
The morning after, though, Lavi was back again, same easygoing smile on his face and toting along breakfast composed once more of a number of herbs that he figured might help with Allen's condition.
It wasn't like Allen knew anything about said herbs to be suspicious about those anyway, and he didn't know the white-haired man to be one to turn down food unless there was a good reason to avoid it.
He sauntered up the steps towards Kanda's room and balanced the tray on one shoulder to knock, but hesitated before he could follow through, instead ending up standing just outside with a fist poised for several beats.
Would Allen even care to see him...? Likely not. He probably wouldn't want to either if he had been in the white-haired man's shoes, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to stand being looked at the same as the day before all over again. Allen might even still be pissed enough at him to refuse his food, which would be bad for his health considering that no one else seemed to have the foresight to make him anything specifically beneficial to treating his injuries outside of occasional doctor's visits.
He bit his lip in indecision and settled instead for leaving the tray just to the side of the door, mindful to stay quiet, before excusing himself back downstairs. They would have to come out eventually, anyway, and he didn't think both would miss sight of it.
"How is it even possible?!" echoed throughout the den when Kanda stormed in. "We have doubled the patrols and even the Byzantines are on our side and still nobody saw anything!" Kanda raged as he powerwalked into the main hall, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "What is he? A fucking magician?"
"Calm down, this won't solve anything," Allen pleaded tiredly, stepping aside from the door so that other assassins could come in.
They had a miserable morning. One of Kanda's men came to wake them up, bringing news about another murder, so they were out since before the dawn, hunting a shadow. Nobody saw anyone, nobody heard anything, they only found a body of the assassin that was guarding Faulklin's house. The boy himself was alright - they found him three blocks away hiding in a barrel - but nobody saw Apollo or anyone else.
"You are going upstairs right now," Kanda thrust out his finger towards the stairs for emphasis, "or else-"
"What?" Allen interrupted, his voice full of irritation. "Stop it! You don't control me! And raging won't help you do anything, so calm down already!"
"Don't tell me to calm down when my men are falling like flies!" Kanda roared angrily. The men around them awkwardly exchanged looks and tried to clear up the room before any of them could come to harm. Arguments between those two never ended well for anybody. "All this work we put into securing the city and each other is falling apart because of one fucking man! How the fuck do you think that makes me feel?"
"I know!" Allen screamed in return, stomping his foot. "-but screaming at everyone like a madman won't help us! How do you think that makes your men feel? Stop being a dick and calm down! Everyone is trying to help you! You can't hunt him alone! Putting your neck out for everyone else won't help us when you're gone!"
"I am the only one here who can hunt him on his own!"
"Shut up!" Allen yelled, grabbing the nearest thing - what turned out to be a hookah - and hauled him at the black-haired swordsman who dodged it without any problem.
"Go upstairs and rest!" Kanda growled menacingly, his hand twitching. He knew they couldn't get physical, not now when Allen's condition is so rapidly deteriorating.
"Don't tell me what to do!" the white-haired man screamed back already on his way to their room.
There was a collective sigh in the hall after Kanda collected the pieces of the hookah Allen tossed at him and plopped down on a pillow, trying to fix the thing.
It was all hard to miss for the redhead even from the other room of the library. Occupying himself with a book was quickly forgotten as screaming and glass shattering reached his ears and made him glance up, quietly slipping a book back onto its shelf before he sauntered to the doorway, stopping just before it to listen.
It was somewhat of a surprise to have Allen be the one to storm upstairs in a fit rather than Kanda for once, but he could have a temper that was truthfully worse on occasion when he did lose the patience to remain even forcibly polite.
Better to just stay out of his way for the moment, especially for him.
Sauntering into the main room, he gave a low whistle as he saw what Allen had thrown as Kanda tried to fix it.
"You know its probably better to just toss that. Messing with broken glass will just end up with cut fingers and little to show for it," he warned, plopping down on an opposite end of the table casually, propping his chin on one hand, before jumping straight back to business. "Apollo struck again?"
"Shut up," Kanda growled, his hands visibly shaking with rage. "Just shut up. Be silent." He flexed his hands into fists and threw the poor hookah to the side, sighing. He looked tired and stressed and there were darks circles under his eyes. He squeezed the bridge of the nose and dragged the hand down his face. "Yeah, he did," he answered but it was evident that it was not the only thing that was bothering him.
Lavi merely hummed, obeying the command to stay silent for only a short while as he watched Kanda from the corner of his eye. It wasn't hard to figure out what was bothering him besides just the loose, difficult-to-find murderer.
"You're also worried about Allen's condition?" he stated more than asked.
Kanda gave him a meaningful frown and slumped in his seat.
"I'm so tired," he whispered but it might as well have been Lavi's imagination. "Anyway, he still won't tell me what you did, and for some reason, I find it more disturbing than ever." He stared into the bookman's single emerald eye. "I hope it has nothing to do with his rapidly deteriorating health."
"I told you, I didn't do anything," Lavi hummed, eye flicking away elsewhere and casting a smile that didn't reach all the way. "He just found out 'friendly' doesn't equal 'friends' when it comes to Bookmen, that's all. To put it in your words, he can be quite naïve sometimes."
Kanda mutely shook his head, just looking more tired than before.
"Great fucking job, idiot. This will totally help us now." He stood up and walked away, not able to bear to be in the redhead's vicinity anymore. First time in his life, he really didn't know what to do with the situation.
"Hey, I'm not the one who decided to eavesdrop where he shouldn't of been," Lavi tossed.
If Kanda's words hadn't managed to add an extra thorn to the guilt he already felt, his own words certainly did, but what else was he supposed to do? He was a Bookman before he was anything else. As far as the Clan and his mentor would be concerned, he was already treading over very thin ice just by being here.
After a moment, he added before Kanda could disappear entirely, "I might know something that'd help his condition, that you could do."
Kanda paused just as his foot touched the first step. He looked over his shoulder, tilting his head. "Are you trying to save him now? Or redeem yourself?"
"Neither," Lavi shrugged and sat back, and really it was only a half-lie. "But even a Bookman has to earn their keep somehow, assuming we expect our presences to be welcomed, or at the very least tolerated, so we can do our jobs, and information is a Bookman's most valuable currency. What you do with that information, that's your business, not mine." He paused and hummed a moment. "Although now come to think of it, there is something you could do for me, as a trade of sorts. You're fully free to refuse, of course."
Kanda stared at him for a long while before his head did some involuntarily half jerk - as if he has been pricked by a needle. "If that is really how you feel, then your services are not needed here. You'd do more harm than good."
"Well from my vantage, it appears you and your guys need a lot more help than your pride is willing to admit," Lavi hummed.
Kanda turned around to go, but stopped himself again, only slightly turning his head this time. "Can you even bare to look at yourself in the mirror?"
The redhead blinked at Kanda's question. Was that supposed to be a sincere question, or was he merely trying to gauge a reaction? He only offered up a grin, not one to let such insults towards his character affect him, especially not when his profession entailed witnessing just how ugly humans could be towards each other, one gruesome event after another.
"Of course! Who wouldn't want to glimpse this handsome mug o' mine?" He kidded. Sobering somewhat, he continued, in a voice low enough that Kanda would hear but it wouldn't carry much further. "Next time you brew a tea, try using Yarrow and Perennial Foxglove in the brew. It won't cure him, but it should help, especially with the internal bleeding."
And with how upset Allen was with him, he didn't foresee the white-haired man accepting the tea he'd been making anymore. In this way, he could still see to it that Allen was being taken care of, and he didn't think Kanda would ignore the advice when it had to do with his lover's failing health.
Kanda huffed and climbed the stairs, not looking back. He couldn't help himself but to shout back at the redhead to clean up his mess - and by mess he meant the food he brought to Allen, who still outwardly refused to acknowledge the redhead's existence - but Kanda knew he was only trying to cope with whatever happened on his own. Knowing the beansprout, he definitely didn't stop caring - which made things worse for him.
He just couldn't let go, no matter how hard he tried to contradict himself with his actions.
Kanda took the advice and brewed the herbs the bookman told him to, but only because he hoped it would really help the sprout's health.
Allen though, stubbornly kept on insisting nothing was wrong and that he didn't hurt, but Kanda knew better. Even if it was only because of how he's seen the man stumble from time to time when he walked.
He still didn't know what to do and he hated it. He loathed himself for it. Just as he loathed the fact that Apollo kept happily strolling through the city, murdering his men as if they were just infants.