The footsteps approaching Marie's room skipped and hurried, just outside the informal infirmary room he'd been set up in, and Marie listened to their soles to know who he would be receiving. They were smart shoes, gentlemen's shoes, not the softer slippers that sometimes meant a medical attendant was coming to check on him, and Marie knew who it would be-Bak Chan had always tended towards his father in regard of dress.

The door hardly had time to open before the Chan heir had barged in-he was the sort of person who barged places, in a harried but purposeful sort of way.

"It's me," he said shortly, and then he had hardly paused to let Marie digest it before he was moving on to get out what he wanted him to know. "You can see him."

Marie sat up straight in his chair, strings dissolving back into Noel Organon's inactive form around his fingers-he had once again been limited to doing little more than idly plucking away at his Innocence.

"You mean Kanda?"

Bak made a sharp noise of confirmation. "That's right. He'll be accompanying you back to European Headquarters soon."

Marie smiled, deeply and genuinely. "That's good."

There was shuffling as Bak came further into the room and dropped a folder bursting with paper forms onto the table next to him. It made a tired sort of thud.

"Someone is going to escort him up to meet you-Zhu, hopefully. He doesn't trust many of us. You, maybe. Zhu. No one else."

Bak gave a sigh of haggard melancholy. Marie wondered how many calls by golem he'd had to make today, and how many questions his people had been asking that he couldn't answer.

"We can't definitively say what Central has planned for the Second, but I've sent in my argument towards keeping him on your team." Bak ducked his head. "For all my word is worth."

Frank and stout-that was what Marie was learning to like about Bak, but more than that he was learning that he was kind, the sort that couldn't be tempered into soft words but that was no less pure.

"Thank you," Marie told him sincerely. "And I don't mean just for him. For me, too."

He went back in his mind through the sound and clamor that had almost been the end of his life, and focused on the voice of the child who had brought him back.

"I want to keep him with me."

Bak nodded, and he couldn't be sure but he thought he might have returned his smile, albeit thinly.

"I'm glad that at least something good came from my parents' work," he said, and Marie didn't need exceptional hearing to pick up on the fragile, youthful despondency of a son questioning his mother and father.

Marie thought that Bak himself might be one of the best things the Chans could have produced, but he didn't tell him so-he'd probably had enough by now of sympathy and hopeful praise to his reputation. The moment passed on its own, and then Marie heard him rock back on his heels, drawing his head back into his neck and shrinking into his shoulders like a turtle into its shell, obviously mulling something over.

"Zhu says it's fate that Yuu saved you. He says it's your destiny," he said in time. "That you're…bound to him."

Marie nodded slowly. "I am."

"And that you'll follow him."

"I will."

Back crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, and finally held them uncomfortably at his sides instead.

"I," he said, with something hard in his voice, "don't believe in fate. Do you understand?"

Bak was a blunt man, but a good one, and that very same bluntness of his found its counter in his own natural awkwardness, which made his intentions easier to read. It was because of this that Marie smiled and waited, perceiving that the small man would have more to say when he was done putting his thoughts in order. Eventually, Bak shifted again, like a bird ruffling its feathers, and he knew he was ready.

"I don't believe in fate at all," he continued out of nowhere. "But I do believe in unavoidable coincidence. And I believe that it was unavoidable coincidence that you encountered Yuu when you did."

"Hmm." Marie considered that. "Unavoidable or not, for now, I'll fight for him. He's why I'm alive."

"He is," Bak agreed, and then fell quiet, and Marie suspected he was dwelling on all the other people who weren't alive.

A golem that Bak must have brought with him suddenly gave a loud sputter, and they both jumped.

"Someone's going to retrieve the Second Exorcist. Fou is going to keep an eye on them, just in case." The message died out with another sputter and the golem flapped its way onto Bak's shoulder.

"I should go," he muttered. "Before he gets here. If you need anything-"

"You won't see him?" Marie interrupted, already half-expecting the answer.

Bak shook his head as though it hung heavy on his neck. "No," he said. "I'm not sure either of us are ready to look each other in the eye."

He gathered up his files into his folder and then moved quietly to the door, but he hesitated when his hand was on the door handle.

"I'm glad he saved you," Bak said. "And I'm glad you brought him out of there."

And he was gone before Marie had the chance to say that he was, too.

Marie found his way carefully from the chair to the bed while he waited for Kanda, and settled himself into what he hoped was a non-threatening posture. Bak had said that Kanda didn't trust freely, and Marie didn't blame him. He himself had moments where rage turned his black world red, thinking how he had almost become one of the corpse-vessels of a Second Exorcist, and it was hard not to silently question what the Order said it was doing to help him.

The sound of heavier footsteps-Crow footsteps, Marie imagined-alerted him to new company in the hall, and he listened until he detected a much lighter pattern underneath them.

"Here we are," someone said from outside, and then there was the familiar opening of the door, a pause as it was presumably held open, and then a long, soundless stretch in which Marie felt a pair of eyes on him. Kanda must have entered the room after a while, because there came the same noises again-hinges, latch, and handle-and he was alone with the boy.

Marie waited to speak until the heavy Crow cloak had swished out of earshot. Zhu must have been busy-there was no way a Crow would have been anyone's first choice to escort Kanda, of all people.

"Do I call you Kanda?" he asked, and there was a quiet, wordless affirmative.

"It's good to see you," Marie tried to add, but now there was only a slight falter in Kanda's breathing that might have been a halted word. It was apparent that Kanda was locked up tight inside himself.

Considering it was the first time Marie had seen Kanda since the incident, there wasn't much other than that he could think of to say-the boy moved around the room a little bit, keeping quiet and close to the walls, slinking by them the way an injured animal might when it didn't want anyone to know it was injured. It was obvious to Marie that Kanda wouldn't reply unless prompted, so he made sure to stick to questions-simple ones, mainly about the Asia Branch and Zhu, but mostly Marie did it so that he could concentrate on his voice and his presence, and try to memorize both. If he was going to have the boy traveling with him, he wanted to be able to pick him out from everything else purely by sound.

Marie hadn't adjusted yet to communicating without visual input, so he spoke in what he thought was Kanda's general direction-he was hard to hear, even for a man with such acute hearing that he had used to be able to hear a song from five streets down, next to a busy marketplace, and then recreate it on his strings for his teammates. Marie knew there was no real point in looking at someone like he was trying to…well, look at them, but it was a habit he didn't think he would be able to break for a long time, and he did it even when it was someone else speaking to him. He also had the tendency to lean towards the voice, which he was trying to make himself stop-Kanda, jumpy as a cat and twice as likely to scratch, didn't like it at all.

Finally, he succeeded in drawing him into conversation-or perhaps, drawing the conversation out of him.

"Do you have your Innocence yet?"

There was a pause which he imagined was Kanda either nodding or shaking his head.

"No," he said. He sounded cautious about it, like he didn't quite trust his own voice. "Zhu still has it. They told me he's making it into a real sword."

"Oh, I'd been wondering what form it would take for you," Marie said with a bit of a smile. "I think it fits you well."

"It's a chokutō," Kanda murmured back, either repressed or recalcitrant. "It's harder to kill with than a katana, but Zhu said that was what he wanted me to have."

Marie got the feeling that Kanda wasn't looking at him. He recrossed his legs on his seat and tried to keep his stance as relaxed as he could.

"Whether or not you feel it yet, eventually you'll start to be uncomfortable when you don't have your Innocence. You'll get used to having it with you."

Marie held up his hand and splayed his fingers so Kanda could see the thick iron bands that adorned each one.

"I know they call Exorcists the people made to wield Innocence, but Innocence is part of the Exorcist. Each one is unique in how it reacts to its Accommodator, but I've always believed that synchronization isn't just an Exorcist understanding Innocence better. I think it's the Innocence starting to understand its Exorcist better, too."

Kanda winced to himself, closing any form of expression inwards and unreadable. His hand clenched, tendon after tendon, and Marie understood, even if he couldn't say for sure whether the boy was already that much an Exorcist, at least, to know Innocence as his will and body and hated how he was inescapably faced with his own accountability, or if he still rejected its intimacy to him and resented what he might view as a circumstantial attachment. Most Exorcists found themselves on both sides of that coin at least once in their lives, and it was up to them to decide in the end what was true, so Marie said nothing more about it.

Learning Innocence was something that took a lifetime-and most Exorcists didn't have long ones. Marie could only hope for Kanda that he had a General who would make sure it wasn't too short.

Among the Black Order, it was said to be an honor to be called before the Grand Generals.

They only presented themselves directly to Exorcists the first time they synchronized with their Innocence, and then only saw them again on the off-chance they lived long enough or were dedicated enough to break the critical one hundred rate, at which point their full synchronization would be observed a second time. The vast majority of non-Exorcist staff never saw them at all, and the only other occasion for them to show their presence was for the revelation of a prophecy from the Cube, as of recently-but even then, only the Exorcist Generals had met personally with the Grand Generals.

So one might understand why General Froi Tiedoll felt he'd seen them a little too often.

He was scratching at his leg through his dusty trousers while he waited for the elevator to descend, dislodging flecks of dried paint from his gold-trimmed General's coat. Grains of his drawing charcoal blackened the creases of his fingers, and callouses formed rough and white like calc on his hands. He resembled the local baker more than the eldest acting General of the Black order, but resemblances meant very little when one could shape reality itself in his hands. His father had been a traveler and a romantic, his mother an Athenian beauty he'd met trekking through Greece. Tiedoll had gotten his propensity for wind-chasing from him, while his mother's curls translated on him into a coarse frazzle.

He was not a man made for war, but sometimes the most unsuited of tools could do the most unlikely of jobs, if one had the ingenuity. And Tiedoll had not only survived this job (which not many did), but succeeded into Generaldom.

From faintly below in the Order's belly, Hevlaska's ghostly light illuminated the lines of his face, cast in crags by the surrounding darkness and grimmer than most ever saw-though one might not be sure it wasn't just a trick of the light.

The elevator drifted to a smooth mechanical stop in empty air, and there was a series bright flashes as a row of bulbs and lenses came to life at once, their beams directing upwards like spotlights onto five of the Order's most enigmatic and influential figures-the Grand Generals. Tiedoll remained impassive except to squint in the harsh, white-washing shine as the hooded men bore down on him from their imperious seats, their faces as ever unseen. Their reserve was tangible and almost sterile, untouched by any humanity at all.

But today, Tiedoll was not willing to see their dispassion as otherworldliness, or a necessary detachment from a world they weren't truly a part of, or as a holy elevation from the trifles of plain living. Today was the day they had told him about the Second Exorcist.

They hadn't showed him logs or files-they'd all been destroyed or locked away so deep that no one would ever find them again. A single Crow had come to inform him (how the men moved from place to place, and who directed them, was a source of mystery to Tiedoll), recounting in lines it sounded like he'd memorized what the research entailed and what that research had ultimately resulted in. It had taken less than a minute-the man hadn't even removed his hood-and then he'd stepped aside and indicated for him to proceed to the deep chambers where the Grand Generals waited. Tiedoll had spent the whole ride down using the black canvas of the walls to color in the details he was savvy enough to know the Crow hadn't said, and the picture he'd painted in his head was grisly and still too wet to touch, like fresh blood spilled.

"General Froi Tiedoll. You've been told of the tragedy of the Asia Branch."

No mention of error on the Vatican, or of how they had nearly condemned Noise Marie from his team when the man was still alive. Tiedoll gave a mirthless smile.

"I have been informed of the project, yes."

"Good."

They didn't thank him for his time; he was expected to be grateful of being allowed into their presence. There would be no formalities, either-the Grand Generals wouldn't have called for him unless there was something they wanted.

"You have expressed past desires to take on the younger Exorcists as your apprentices."

"That is true." Tiedoll adjusted his ragged traveling cloak around his neck. "If this is about the Second Exorcist, then I am assuming the child needs somewhere to go?"

"He is not a child."

They did not like being anticipated. Tiedoll's smile hardened a degree as they went on.

"He is fully capable of being as dangerous as Alma Karma. He needs an Exorcist of greater power to keep him in check. In this case, a General would be best."

Another one of the men picked up from the last, as if rehearsed or cued.

"Of course, any General would be equipped to adequately subdue the Second if he were to get out of control. However, there has been some question about whether or not you have the moral equipment to do so."

Subdue. Of course.

"Of course I have no objections to the charge," Tiedoll said, delicately avoiding their attempt to corner him, "and in fact, I'm honored that it was me you chose."

There was a murmur among the robed figures, as soft and sibilant as bat wings, that Tiedoll couldn't decipher. The Grand Generals were an eerie collective mind, but not an unintelligent one. They surely detected the question hidden in his statement-why me?

"You may be wondering why you were selected for this," one of them said down to him, and Tiedoll internally sighed. It was impossible to tell which of them had said it, since they all even sounded alike to the other, but it hardly mattered when they were all insistent that everything be their idea.

"So I was." He didn't bother hiding the dryness of his tone.

"Winters Socorro already has Kazana Reed and Chakar Rabon in his discipleship, both junior Exorcists, and Marian Cross won't be filling the position for obvious reasons."

There was another sort of unified grumble-sometimes, Tiedoll thought that Marian's best quality might be his ability to irritate the Vatican.

"In any case, since your team has been eliminated, and Noise Marie has already had contact with the Second Exorcist, you should have the most success to take him as an apprentice."

Tiedoll refused to show the pain at the reminder of the team he'd lost-each of their deaths was a barb, and new enough that stirring their memories only pierced him harder. Instead, he focused on the implications of their answer. It appeared they expected the Second to be unmanageable-or at least extremely volatile. There was no other reason for them to refuse putting him with Socorro when they obviously favored a more hardened choice-they thought that if they did, Socorro would kill him quickly.

"I see. I am to take it that Noise Marie will be returning to my team, then?"

"Correct. Unforeseen circumstances have allowed him to return to duty. Both Noise Marie and the Second will join you-at present, they are both still posted in China."

Tiedoll raised a bushy eyebrow at the "unforeseen circumstances", but didn't bring it up. "Good. Then I expect they will be sent word they are to become a part of my team."

The Grand Generals all nodded together. "Correct."

"I look forward to taking on a new apprentice." He clapped his hands together. "I shall take my leave immediately."

"May God be with you."

The elevator hummed and then started into ascent, the echoes of their words rising with him. He didn't know what he could do for the Second Exorcist, nor did he know anything about him other than that he possessed natural abilities which far outstripped a regular Exorcist and that he could heal from supposedly any wound-well, that and one more thing.

In his pocket was a picture, a photograph he'd been handed with the absurdly sparse briefing folder while he spoke with the Crow-he didn't think he had noticed that Tiedoll had kept it. It was a sad picture to him, with all the smiling people who probably stayed up for sleepless hours of the night debating the moral worth of the things they did in God's name, and with the two children standing at their front in strange clothing and fading but fresh scars faintly visible on them.

He had asked which one was the survivor, and the Crow had pointed to the boy with the long, dark hair threatening to obscure his face and the sullen, tired look. What Tiedoll found himself captured by was something about his eyes-something about them that reminded him of the elevator trip down to the Generals, and how it felt to be moving down through darkness with no way to see where he'd come from or how far through the emptiness he would have to reach before he found the wall.

And that told him more than anything the Crow could have said.

One might think from the way he acted that Tiedoll was not angered by many things. They would be wrong-many things disturbed his temper, but only very few of those things ever disturbed the surface of his tranquil façade. This one was coming close.

Tiedoll was, above all, an artist. It was his specialty to make something from nothing-and so it would be with the Second Exorcist. But first, Tiedoll would need his tools-tools that the Order couldn't provide.

He emerged out of the elevator chamber and back out of the labs, to where the vast, cathedral-like windows of the Order cast caustic sunlight into the building, and he felt better for it. It would storm again on the island soon, he was sure, but he wouldn't be around to see it.

Tiedoll put a hand into his pocket with the photograph and hummed a song to himself that he had heard on a French streetcorner once-a pleasant ditty that gave away no nerve. After all, what had he to be nervous about? He had suggested to the Grand Generals that he would be traveling to China to meet his new apprentice, and he was departing the Order to do so. No one would stop him.

In truth, though, Tiedoll had never said any such thing, and that knowledge was what gave his little melody its extra beat. Tiedoll had certainly told the Generals that he would be taking leave from London, and certainly he'd said that he wished to discover more about the Second Exorcist, but he had at no point in their interrogation of him declared outright that he would actually be going to Asia to collect him. In fact, once he had gotten far enough away from the Order-too far to stop, but not too far for a message not to be intercepted-he would send word ahead to Marie to bring young Kanda over to the Order himself. His General would be away on business.

Tiedoll walked humming and unaccosted right out of the Order, and then he walked right off the boat from the island, and not a man stopped him. It was, he thought privately, very foolish to assume-and even more so to expect someone you had misled to not return the favor. But who knew? Perhaps he would to go Asia, if that was where Marian Cross could be found.

For, just as it was foolish to trust someone by virtue of wearing your colors, it was foolish just the same to assume that someone unfound was unfindable by another man.

Tiedoll boarded the train from England with vengefully high spirits. Here was the perfect opportunity to get lost in transit.

Best to leave Marie a message.

Welcome back to The Vatican is the True Final Boss: The Novel.
This chapter was originally longer-about twice this size, in fact-but it seemed like too much when I laid it all out, so more Kanda and Marie next chapter. Too short? Too long? *shrugs* I'm not really sure. If there's something you guys want, tell me.
Speaking of you guys, thanks a bunch to the people who expressed interest in seeing where this thing goes-I've got a lot planned, and feedback is what gives me the energy to tackle the organization hell that is unrelated scenes. (And yes, since you asked, there will be Daisya, though I have him planned for a bit later on.)
Cheers to everyone who read, reviewed, or is reading, and enjoy the story!