I'm not dead. And I'm sorry for not answering reviews, but life ate them. Really. My sis had her child, and between that and work and whatnot, it just wasn't possible. I'll try for this chapter, but no promises. ;.;

Um… ya'll don't want to hear about how crazy Niamh's life is, nor do you want to hear about how updates will be slow in the future, so I'll just keep that to myself. You guys can just encourage me. That way we all feel better about it. :3

Disclaimer: I do not own D. Gray-man. If I did… the whole story would be dirtier. And yes, that pun was intended.

WARNINGS: Emotional stuff, gore, etc. It's NHArawn, you know what to look out for. ;3

-- -- --

Chapter Twelve: Faith and Desire

The rain, the room, the play of Tyki's wet hair against the cushions – Lavi didn't know what he appreciated more. There were so many details that he hadn't known, so many colors and curves and soft, lovely things to see, he wasn't all too sure he would be able to sleep without finding something to focus on. But focus did not come easy. The curls in Tyki's dark hair, the light of the fire on the other side of the couch, the golden play of water drops on the blue fabric of their makeshift bed– he couldn't just see one of them. There were so many, many things. Lavi wanted to look at everything and nothing at once, if only he could remember how.

He could, however, focus on the fire. The flames licked at the fire grate, caressed the wood even as it destroyed it. It smelled warm, felt warm, and danced in shapes and designs that might have meant something to someone, if they only knew how to read it.

Lavi wasn't afraid of it. He felt that, at some point, he and fire had become intimate friends.

But he kind of liked to look at Tyki, too.

The Portuguese man had dragged him into the bathroom and then into the bathtub, distracting him from the shock of red hair and pair of green eyes in the mirror. Afterward, Lavi had found his face reflected in Tyki's eyes and that had been enough – his own face didn't have any meaning to him. Not any more than the off-white porcelain of the tub. But now, with his head pillowed on the older man's chest and the light of the fire warming them in ways he hadn't known existed, he had wonder what it meant to Tyki. What any of it meant to Tyki. What sex meant to Tyki. Because there was something dark in his chest, tight and warm and happy, and it frightened him more than sightless nightmares ever could.

It was a familiar feeling.

"Lavi," Tyki's hands were large and a sort of tan gray in the firelight, tender on his shoulders. "If you squeeze my shirt much harder, your hands will cramp."

Lavi glanced down at his hands to find them white-knuckled on the larger man's button-up, boney and shaking. He willed them to loosen, chuckling softly, and watched the muscles move and uncurl almost mechanically. They shook. He couldn't understand why. "Sorry, I was just… I don't know." Lavi shut his eyes and turned his face into the familiar scent of Tyki's chest, blocking out the fire and the light. It wasn't a memory – he wouldn't let it be a memory. "Are we going to stay on this couch and listen to the fire and the rain and not talk about Allen or Lenalee or anyone or anything for a little?"

The weight under him shifted in that way he was used to and he tilted his head back just enough to feel the brush of lips on his forehead. As good as seeing could be, feeling was better.

"We will have to get up to make dinner." Tyki mumbled, and his lips smiled on Lavi's skin. "Or lunch. Which meal was it I had you for?"

"Har har. So funny." Lavi opened his eyes enough to look up at the older man, and wound an arm around Tyki's waist, pulling himself closer. It was comforting to be that way, somehow, and he didn't have to look at the fire if he turned his right eye into Tyki's chest. "I guess that's okay, then. I like to be like this…" His voice lingered for a moment where he wanted to say something, but he didn't know what it was. They were close, but that wasn't the term. Touching. Warmth. Bright. None of them fit.

Tyki shifted again, this time forcing the apprentice Bookman to look up at him with a large, gentle palm on the side of his face. "You act as if there is something you mean to tell me, but you aren't yet able."

"I… feel…" Lavi knew. The emotions, the happiness and heat, the desire for more, the hope of tomorrow, the fear of losing the man beside him – he knew what it felt like. But there was something wrong with feeling it, wasn't there?

"Do you hurt?"

"Not physically." He had meant to say no.

Tyki frowned at him. "Lavi…" The Portuguese man's lips pressed to the redhead's forehead once again, so pleasant and satisfying. "When I hold you like this… in the firelight, and kiss you and touch you… do you feel different than you used to?"

He wanted to nod. He truly tried. Instead, he closed his eyes and sucked in a hissing breath, a harsh tremble in his shoulders.

"I feel different." Tyki whispered, just as low and shaking as Lavi's voice would have been. "And feeling how I feel makes me wonder what will happen to us when all of your memories have returned. The people you knew… will you sacrifice them to be with me? Will you still forgive me for the hearts I have taken and the lives I have destroyed?" He chuckled half-heartedly, dry and cracking, with no mirth whatsoever in the sound. It sounded to Lavi like it hurt the older man, or like something was terribly wrong. "But when I'm with you like this, none of that matters."

Lavi wanted to nod again, but he couldn't. He focused on his mouth, on that emotion in his chest, on the fire and the memories. Allen and Lenalee and the boy named something like Yo – this was different than them. With them, he somehow hadn't really known.

"I think…" Lavi started, only to realize how bad it was to start that way and tapper off. It didn't matter. The words were already in the air, gathering dust. "I think I might feel… something like… love, Tyki." He wanted to babble, but he didn't allow himself.

"Love, Lavi?"

What emotion was in that voice? What expression was Tyki making? Lavi couldn't hear or see or tell. He had stopped observing. He had stopped breathing.

"Love," Tyki repeated. "Or something like it?"

Lavi felt himself shaking, but didn't know why he was. He felt nervous and tight lipped, breathless and cold. Yet his face was flushed, he could feel it.

The man that looked down at him, that smiled in a wan sort of way, that leaned down and pulled him into a hug, could not have been the man who had taken hearts and killed so many people. If he was, Lavi didn't care. "Thank you," Tyki whispered. "I cannot say that it is love, or that I feel love for you, but I am happy that we have something like that between us."

The redhead remained silent for a time, unsure how to respond. Something like love. Yes, they could have something like that, no matter who or what they were.

They fell into gentle silence again, filled by the sound of the rain and the crackling fire. Lavi didn't say anything else for a moment, instead turning his left eye to the familiar light of the flame while his right stayed buried against Tyki's chest, half-closed to the illumination that filtered to his pupil. He was comfortable and many things were familiar. The smell of flames and their movement most of all.

Gunfire.

It was right there, loud as it would have been in the same room, roaring and strong and carrying the scents of blood and ash, brimstone and gunpowder. Lavi didn't see where it came from or where it was going – the room remained exactly as it had been without the terrible sound of war filling it – but he felt and heard it as surely as he felt Tyki's arms around his shoulders. But there were no Akuma in sight. Tyki didn't seem to give a damn about the ruckus.

Akuma?

Round machines. Killing machines. Harbingers of war.

Demons.

They were different but they were the same. And they powered themselves with sorrow.

A blast so loud it made the back of his head vibrate echoed somewhere in the house. He tried at once to cling to Tyki and sit up to look, horrified what might be happening just outside, and needing to do something about it. Wanting to. He fisted his hands on Tyki's shirt, his eyes pulled away from the fire in an effort to locate the sound.

"Lavi?" At the whisper of his name the room grew suddenly still, silent but for the popping of the fire and his own rushed breathing. There was no gunfire, no war, no Akuma. It was just the two of them curled together in the light of the fire, and the sound of the rain pelting softly on the roof above them.

He blinked at the older man, perfectly aware that there was fear dancing in his green eyes. "They're awful," he whispered the words and clenched more tightly to Tyki's chest. "Those things… those… Akuma… they're terrible, aren't they?" Something small and insignificant – a tiny piece of his past – fell softly into place in his mind, something that nit the fire and the Akuma together so that he understood. Nyoibo. The name had come to him and he had remained indifferent to it. He had known that whatever Nyoibo was, it made him the opposite of Tyki; now, however, he knew why. "I used to burn them a lot when I heard them. And they would shoot at me. And you… you were on their side? Why?"

Tyki's soft brown eyes seemed to grow gold in the firelight, but he didn't answer. Instead, he reached out and took Lavi into his arms again, pulling him downward, pulling into the warm, scarred surface of his chest.

Lavi let himself fall. "Why would you follow a God that wants to create things like that?"

The Portuguese man's hands were very large and gentle on his back, moving in slow lines. When he spoke, it was in a small, cracked whisper. "It isn't my place to ask that question." Tyki's hands stopped. "I didn't choose anymore than you did."

There were still things he didn't know. Fate hadn't played into his thoughts.

"Tyki…" Lavi looked up at the gray-olive man beneath him and furrowed his eyebrows. There was something wonderful about the older man in the firelight, and something terrible. Lavi did not want it to be familiar. "I'm sorry. I just… I don't want to remember anymore." It was painfully true. Painful because he didn't know what he was giving up, but he didn't specifically care at the moment either, because Tyki couldn't be – regardless of the people killed, of the things done – evil.

When the Noah spoke, it was with a decidedly gentle tone. "If I knew how to reject them from your brain and you wanted me to, I would."

Lavi closed his eyes and pressed himself still closer to the older man, trembling half in fear, half in something completely without name. He wasn't frightened of Tyki. He was horrified he might remember something that would change how he felt for the man beneath him.

"I won't leave you." Tyki's voice was a sure and steady as the beat of his heart against Lavi's cheek. "Not even if you hate me."

"Good."

-- -- --

Link barely woke long enough to see that Allen was in the room with him and then he was out again, only to wake again a few hours later. He didn't seem too aware of himself – or overly concerned with Allen's slightly inconsistent presence at his side – but he did meet eyes with the younger boy just long enough to look thankful. Some things, it seemed, couldn't be bashed out of Link's head, for some reason.

Still, when the assistant inspector woke for the third time around evening, he looked gaunt and weak and uncomfortable. Despite that, however, he turned to the boy in the chair beside him and opened his mouth to speak.

"A few days." Allen answered before he could ask. "And I was with Kanda when I wasn't here. Your skull is fractured. Don't try anything stupid." Which sounded ironic even to the British Exorcist's ears. Still, it needed to be said, if only as a principle.

Link gave him one of those weak, rare smiles and opened his palm in Allen's direction against the white sheets in a motion that could have meant a thousand things. This time, Allen knew, it was an offer of thanks. He hadn't run away, he hadn't been killed, he hadn't done something irrefutably wrong, he hadn't contacted the Noah – he'd been a good little Exorcist, just like they wanted. Somehow, the gratitude for his actions seemed less demeaning from Link than it did from Leverrier.

"Yeah, I know." Allen waved him off, though a smug grin attempted to pull at his lips. "You should thank Kanda more than me – he noticed you were missing."

The assistant inspector didn't nod, but his eyes agreed. With slow, tired movements of his eyes and deep, hard breaths, he spoke. "F-furniture?" It was soft and laughable, given how often that statement had come back to haunt Allen in the past few months. Just the word alone brought an unsteady smile to the assistant inspector's lips. Pale and thin as they were, the expression mirrored itself on Allen's face – it was humorous in an odd sort of way, and honest in another.

Allen let his eyes wander away from the man in front of him and instead focus on the untouched plate of lunch resting gently on the beside stand.

"Furniture doesn't need food, does it?"

-- -- --

Tyki was only a bit surprised when Lavi volunteered to go alone to procure the things necessary for dinner the following evening, and was a good deal more surprised by the boy's insistence once he had showed his disapproval. There were dangerous things outside – Noah, Akuma, murderers, cut purses, Bernadette – and Tyki found himself worried about what might befall the helpless Exorcist out of his presence. And yet, despite that, it offered him a golden opportunity that he did not wish to ignore. There were plans he had laid – he had the Akuma for it at the moment and nothing bad ever came of allowing them to kill humans – that he did not want to see come to fruition in front of his lover.

Lover. The word just suddenly meant Lavi, somehow. It had more to do with the feeling of the younger man's chest and the fit of his arms and the depth of his kisses than it did with the emotions – which remained somewhat undefined – between them. There was meaning and purpose and something dark, warmth and pain and fear also. It was all knotted with awkwardness that reminded Tyki of something sacred and important, new and exciting. The word, though he could say it in his mind, never made it to his lips in conversation.

"I'll be fine, Tyki," Lavi said to him at the door, swimming in a coat and shirt and pair of pants that had never belonged to him. His right boot fit snuggly over what remained of his makeshift cast and held his ankle in place, which in turn made the black length of the cane in his hand look like something decorative rather than the crutch it functioned as. "It's just a few eggs and some bread, nothing worth stealing, you know?"

The Noah wasn't altogether sure how to express the fact that that wasn't his number one worry.

So he kissed the boy firmly on the mouth and let him wander off into the day with the most detailed set of directions known to man floating around in his head.

And then Tyki went to work himself.

It was true that his favorite third level Akuma had been destroyed by Allen Walker, but that didn't diminish his resources too terribly. There was a second level with a good amount of cunning and small amount of understanding left at his disposal, and a quick thought was enough to receive all of the information it had gathered.

Bernadette was indeed a madam of some renown it seemed, and her underlings ranged from talented older women to blushing young boys, all of which were cared for and fed and clothed. A do-gooder in a dark and sinful world – with beautiful auburn hair and eyes the color of polished amber. She had made something of a name for herself and the cleanliness of her practices to the point that not even the law bothered with her much anymore.

Tyki, however, was not the law.

Grabbing his long coat and a hat that might obscure his features from a distance, Tyki left the little house on brisk feet, knowing exactly where he was headed. He would watch, that was all. He would watch the whorehouse burn and kill that awful woman with his own hands.

It wasn't raining, but the air was heavy as if it might, cool and soft against his face and hands. He hadn't brought his gloves, having no use for them, and the slight change was enough to send a thrill of anticipation dancing up his spine. It was true that his actions might bring about the wrath of one Exorcist or another, but he doubted it – for all they knew he had completed his mission and moved on in a direction that they might follow – and he would not allow himself to assume otherwise. If he came by one in the street and he found himself ignored, there was no reason to change that, not without direct orders from above.

He wasn't hunting them after all. He had a new, more interesting query in mind.

From the far side of the street, just beneath the shadow of a halted carriage, Tyki observed the large, wooden building that marked his destination with eyes that lingered on the angles of the windows and the lay of the roof. It was a sturdy building, and eye catching, decorated with paint that had been mixed with broken glass so that it seemed to shine silver in the spring light. Silver and red – deep crimson, gentle gold. It would have been beautiful if not for what it was.

Tyki closed his eyes and ordered the Akuma already in position to begin.

-- -- --

The explosions rocked the entire street enough to send Lavi fumbling for the nearest lamppost, eggs and bread clutched to his chest in fear. The sound brought to mind a thousand memories that he could not hold on to, and a thousand and one curses he couldn't name the languages of. His knuckles whitened the harder he gripped the black metal of his street lamp, and still there was another explosion in the distance, loud and filled with screams of terror.

Lavi sank against the cobblestone walk way, still holding on with one hand, and tried to peer into the street around him, tried to hear what might be going on. The sound of bullets leaving barrels and the screams of the people they struck, splintering wood and shattering brick, the crash of roofing tiles and the smell of freshly cut wood – he observed it all in the course of a single second. He heard names and saw faces, memorized them, traced the skyline and discerned the origin of the gathering smoke and dust. In the course of just a few heartbeats he felt himself embody the internal calm that he had lacked while hearing the phantom Akuma in the living room, and strength he had not imagined himself feeling. He didn't have to hold on to the lamppost. He could go and record what was happening.

Record?

He pushed the thought out of his mind and heaved himself onto his good leg, teetering on the shuddering street. It didn't matter. He just needed to see what was happening and be sure that it wasn't as near to the house as he thought.

-- -- --

She truly had beautiful hair. It was the exact same shade as Lavi's, only longer and thinner, wavy and soft to the touch. Her eyes, however, were not that piercing emerald that Tyki had come to enjoy so much – they were pretty amber, shot through with gold that flickered the more she feared him. And she did fear him. Bernadette feared him almost enough to weep at his feet if he told her to.

Almost.

He stood in the midst of the rubble that had become of the whorehouse, holding the little redheaded woman by the hair on the nape of her neck, unsatisfied with her, displeased with her. The sunlight was fading a bit toward twilight, casting the ruins in shades of red and orange, but he didn't have eyes for it. He only looked down at the little madam and smiled at her angled, pale features and watched her reel back in an attempt to free herself.

"I told that whore of yours that your death would be worse than his. I promised you'd suffer worse than he had to." Tyki explained, and grinned at the silent way the woman tried to fish-mouth words to stop him. She wasn't like the boy. The boy had been brave even if he hadn't been good. She tried to be good without being brave at all. "He told me that you won't pleasure a man with your mouth, Bernadette. He offered to. And then I tore out his stomach and his lungs and he died. He died choking on his own blood." He jerked her head up, the better to expose the line of her throat, and almost laughed when she tried to claw at him, when her hands sank through him as if through air. Only a thought and her fingers would sever themselves, but that would be cruel.

Tyki didn't want to be cruel. Tyki wanted to be pleased.

"Perhaps I'll take the things you have no use for. Wouldn't it be better if you didn't have what you don't use?"

Her eyes, perfectly round with fright, didn't convey the same incompetence as her gasping, horrified mouth. She couldn't even scream.

"Your tongue might be an interesting place to—"

He was interrupted by an explosion and a very familiar scream of fear from the far side of the street. Akuma were already on the move to intercept the trespasser, assuming the man had lived through the initial attack against him. Tyki didn't want that to happen. He turned, a silent command in his mind, and watched the dust settle from the gun shots, most of it brick and mortar and other such things that wouldn't be healthy to inhale. Indeed, it was only a matter of moments before a coughing, sputtering redhead lurched into view, tear-stained cheeks streaked with dirt and dust.

Tyki felt his blood go suddenly cold.

He did not want Lavi to see him as he was. He did not want the apprentice Bookman to remember.

He broke his promise.

Bernadette's head simply separated from her shoulders as he willed it, quick and sudden, in the course of only an instant. The blood that followed, the burble of the air, everything – Tyki rejected it all. He cast out orders to his Akuma as an afterthought, hurried and direct. Flee. Hide. Leave the boy alone. Blend in. Run. He did the same himself, sinking into the earth. Tyki did not want Lavi to see him like that, like this. He felt… unhappy with himself. With the situation. He didn't want to be anywhere near what had happened when Lavi saw it.

But what would Lavi do? What would the redhead think when he opened his eyes and came to the rubble, when he found that woman, headless, her body bleeding in the dirt? Would he remember? Would he know at once who had killed her?

It was too dark under the city to think of these things, and he couldn't stay in limbo forever. So Tyki moved himself up again, up and west, his thoughts growing darker as he went. He needed, even if it was a lie, to find Lavi and soothe him. He needed, even if it was a lie, to be sure that the boy didn't see that woman's corpse and think of the war they both had a part in.

He broke the surface some two blocks from where he had disappeared beneath the street, half in the wall of a dubious looking store. With one long look at the fading sunlight, he decided that it was a good enough place to start.

-- -- --

The blood was almost maroon in the dirt, almost ruby in the woman's hair. Her eyes were soulless, lightless dark amber, open and emotionless. Her skin was the color of bleached parchment, semi-transparent, thin and blue from lack of life. Dead. The woman was dead. There was no hope to fix how she had died, even if the cut through her neck was so straight there was no chance in Hell a blade had done it.

There so much blood.

Lavi felt disgust well up inside of him looking at her, and smeared her blood on his mouth in an effort to keep himself from gagging. The plan backfired and he emptied his stomach into the rubble and shook, his mind reached for some reason, some memory that might explain what he had stumbled upon. He couldn't find anything. He didn't know of anything or anyone that could behead a person like that, and he didn't want to learn. He didn't want to record. He didn't want to be curious about what the woman had done or who she had been, where the other people who lived in her house had gone and why that house was now lying in a pile under his feet. The redhead was sick and covered in grime only half of which he could guess the contents of, that was enough to make him want to stop thinking altogether.

There were dark pentagrams burned into the ground. He felt that those came from Akuma. He felt that he wouldn't find a single body in the mess around him. He also felt that he was still ready to dry heave at any moment, which he did as soon as he thought about it.

The tears, however, weren't something he felt. They simply started and refused to stop, racking his frame, making it hard to see. He didn't know the woman, so why was he crying? He didn't know. He only tried to scramble for his cane – he'd dropped it and the eggs and the bread at some point – and find a way to stand, but he couldn't. In his moment of horror and curiosity, he had trapped himself next to this dead woman on a pile of ruins with no way to get away but to crawl.

Lavi floundered, fingers trailing over the path he had struggled across just minutes before, and jerked his right back when he found the sharp side of a piece of glass. He hadn't seen it from the blurring of his vision, and now he couldn't see if he was bleeding or if he had the woman's blood on that hand, too.

In the back of his mind, something reminded him of something else.

And he remembered having blood on his hands, someone else's blood. Someone who had trusted him to watch their back. He had a face in his mind, an angled face framed in soft looking dark hair, smooth skin he could remember against his. There had been rushed breath against his face. It wasn't much blood, just enough to cover his fingers, and yet he felt painfully apologetic about it, and frightened, and terrified that he had done something irreversibly wrong. But that hadn't been the case. That blood hadn't been like this.

Then there had been something meaningful.

"Stop it, brain, I don't care about that," Lavi mumbled, closing his eyes and pulling his hands to his chest. "I'm happy. This was an accident. I just need to stand up and walk away before anyone gets here. I just need to go home and tell Tyki what his family members look like." He poked at his left leg with his shaking, wounded right hand, and frowned at it, at the dirt that now covered the borrowed surface of his pant leg. "There's nothing wrong with you so hold all of my weight, damn it. On three?"

"Lavi!"

The apprentice Bookman jerked his face in the direction of his name, recognizing that warm, honey and burgundy voice even raised in a yell. Tyki was standing just at the corner of some building that looked as if it might have been blasted by mistake – the outer wall was scorched to the point that the paint was unrecognizable – his expression serious and somewhat frightened, eyelashes weighed down with dust from the air around him. He seemed so concerned, so human, that the thought of Akuma left Lavi's mind in an instant, and he reached out for the older man in an attempt to draw him closer.

The Noah started for him, moving at a brisk, if careful walk over the debris. His concern only seemed to grow when Lavi didn't push himself up, his plan to talk his left leg into lifting him abandoned.

The redhead only hoped that neither Tyki nor Akuma had anything to do with the mess he had walked into.

-- -- --

Allen was more than surprised when Kanda called him just after sunset, and perhaps a little frightened that something had gone wrong on the mission or that the swordsman had found heart enough to miss him. As he lifted the receiver to her ear and greeted the Japanese man in a soft, worried voice, he cast his eyes from the telephone to inside Link's room, to be sure that he wouldn't disturb the sleeping assistant inspector. If Kanda was calling out of loneliness the last thing Allen wanted was to whoop in unfettered glee and make Link die of trauma.

Well, maybe not the last thing.

"You said you would call me everyday, Brat, and you haven't at all today." Kanda's voice crackled over the phone line, strained and tired as if he had spent the day on the road, heavy as if their time apart hadn't been too splendid on his mental health. Allen twisted his fingers in the black phone chord and thus dragged Tim closer to him, causing the golden golem to flutter in distress. He smiled at Tim in apology and released the chord. "You didn't, I don't know, jump off a building or something equally stupid?"

Allen frowned. "No. Link woke up. I was keeping him company."

"Che. Spare me the details."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing that isn't true."

"Kanda, if you're implying that Link and I are something more than Inspector and Inspect-ee—"

"I said I don't want details."

Allen felt his eyes narrow and so turned them away from Tim. Kanda was irritating, to say the least. And if either of them was gay, Kanda had the girly hair and the soft features and the figure for it – not that the British Exorcist was looking. Much. "Look, is there a reason you called? Or are you so stupid mine is the only number you know?"

"Bean—"

"It's Allen. And I don't want to hear about how lonely you are. Please."

Kanda made a strange harrumphing sound, like he was somehow annoyed and amused at the same time, and cleared his throat. "Look, I've made it to the town where the kid was found with his organs lying outside of him and it seems there's something going on. Just this afternoon a whorehouse was destroyed by what sound like Akuma – the madam was found headless, but her head wasn't cut off." The swordsman paused, as if he were thinking of words, before he went on in a softer tone. "It was like her head and her body had simply fallen away from each other."

The white haired boy looked at Tim watched the golem come to rest on the top of the wall mounted telephone, wings tucked in close. They both knew what that could mean and neither of them wanted it to be true. "Tyki Mikk?"

"A man in his middle twenties and a younger man with red hair were seen leaving the area just moments before anyone could see what had happened. The redhead… had an eye-patch."

"Kanda?" Allen didn't like how the other man's voice was growing tight.

"Don't use that tone, Bean Sprout, and no, stay there."

"But if it's Lavi—"

"Why the fuck would he be with Tyki Mikk?" The swordsman stole the words from the back of Allen's mind, if not out of his mouth. "I don't know. It's too soon to come to any conclusions." There was a sigh then, and Allen came to the conclusion that Kanda was shifting uncomfortably on his feet, remembering what had happened the last time he had crossed path with the Noah in question. Maybe he was leaning on something and glaring at the nearest person he could see. Or at a wall, he liked to do that too.

Allen, somehow, didn't like the thought of the swordsman lingering on that thought. "I take it you want me to sit here with Link while you parade around like an arse and get yourself killed then?" That wasn't the best way to get Kanda's mind off of it, but the British Exorcist hoped it might work. "For all we know it's the Noah of Lust trying to lure us into a trap or something."

"But if it isn't…"

"It makes more sense that way, doesn't it?"

Kanda fell into thoughtful silence for a moment before sighing over the line. "I'm going to look at the ruins tomorrow, see if I can point myself in the right direction. Stay put."

"Kanda."

"What?"

The British boy shut his eyes and tried to not sound the least bit condescending. "If you find Tyki Mikk, don't fight him. There's always a chance that you'll lose again, and he might actually kill you this time. Just… I don't care if I have to leave Link here against orders, my situation can't get much worse and you—"

"Che. It can." Kanda growled softly. His voice had an odd edge to it. "They let you out of the Goddamn grounds don't they?" He made a strange sound like a laugh. "There's very little the Church isn't willing to do in the name of God."

Allen bit his lower lip. They didn't talk about the things that the Church would do usually, nor did they talk about the way that Kanda knew. He didn't particularly want to know everything that Kanda knew, not after what he had already learned, but he was willing to test were bad ended and worse began. There were things worth worse. Kanda, Lavi, Lenalee – they were worth anything, Allen knew. He couldn't care what would happen to him. "It doesn't matter. Don't be stupid."

Kanda sighed at him.

"Please, Kanda?"

The swordsman grumbled something that wasn't understandable.

"Do not make me work my earring into the line so I can call Lenalee to make you promise."

"Fine! Damn it! I won't try anything. Just… don't call Lenalee."

Allen smiled. "And if I don't call you, you call me. You aren't allowed to disappear, understand?"

"You're like my fucking mother or something." Kanda growled, and made that sound like he was shifting on his feet again. It made Allen want to tell him to sit down. "Now go play nurse to your chaperon, Bean Sprout. I have things to do before I sleep."

The British Exorcist would have asked if Kanda even had a mother, but he was too frightened the answer would be in the negative, and so let the comment go unremarked. Instead, oddly, he found himself smiling. He hadn't really, truly smiled at Kanda, he didn't think, since the last he had thought the swordsman dead. Or maybe it was the time before last. It had been a long time. "Try not to think of me while you do them."

"Huh?"

Allen waited.

"Che."

"Goodnight, Kanda."

"Whatever, Bean Brat."

-- -- --

"I'm sorry about the eggs." Lavi shivered against the pillow that he and Tyki had come to share, right hand extended for the second bandage of the evening. He had cut himself in a crooked, jagged line that bisected his life line twice and marred his palm with a mark that wasn't likely to scar despite its seeming deepness. It still stung, but Lavi tried not to think about it. In fact, he tried not to think about a lot of things.

That woman's head, the body, the clean way the two had been separated, the fresh blood, the glass, the expression on her pale features—

Lavi didn't want Tyki to have anything to do with it. And he didn't want to image the Others – the woman who turned to dust, the crew that bid him adieu, the man who took a bullet for him in the snow – and remember their names or their faces. The past was the past, wasn't it? And he had been on the wrong side of the war, hadn't he? And Tyki wouldn't do something like that – couldn't. Not with the hands that he touched Lavi with, not with the fingers that he covered wounds and traced scars with.

"I'm just glad that you're alright, Lavi." Tyki whispered to him, not looking up from the gauze he had placed on Lavi's palm. The room was lit by both the lamp by the door and the candle atop the bookshelf by the bed, which cast Tyki in shades of gold that made his hair look just a shade off from black, his eyes nearly the same shade as the flame. There was no evil in him, no malice, no anger. And the angle at which he was sitting, kneeling on the floor while Lavi had the bed and pillow to himself, made that even more obvious.

Lavi reached out and tangled his left hand in the other man's hair. The colors changed, but the texture was exactly as he remembered it, exactly as it had been while he had been blind, soft and curling around his fingers. Gently, ignoring Tyki's momentary unwillingness to follow the pull of his hand, Lavi guided the older man into a kiss that felt exactly as it had when he had woke in the morning. Nothing had changed. If Tyki had killed that woman, if Akuma left stars in their wake, it didn't matter. It didn't change anything.

Because if he didn't believe that, he didn't know what he would believe. He didn't know what he would do. It would hurt too much to lose Tyki, too.

Too?

With slow, tender movements, Lavi pulled back enough to lay his forehead on Tyki's, close enough to feel his breath, too close to look him in the eyes. The hands that were still tugging at the bandage on Lavi's palm fell away only to return to the fabric of his borrowed white shirt and twist the hem.

The redhead took a steadying breath before he spoke. "Please, tell me that I'm wrong." He held on more tightly to Tyki's hair at the slightest hit of movement. "Tell me you didn't have anything to do with what happened today."

There was something in the way Tyki breathed, in the way his hands slid up to cup the sides of Lavi's face, that made his whisper that much heavier. "Do you want me to lie?"

Lavi wanted to shake his head. "Yes."

The Noah made a soft negative sound while his fingers moved into Lavi's hairline, gentle, slow, warm. They were so many things those fingers could be, but murderous wasn't one of them. "I don't want to lie to you. I never want to lie to you again."

"Please."

There had been so much blood, surely if Tyki had done something, there would have been some on his hands?

"I'm sorry."

The apprentice Bookman did not open his eyes while he wept. "I don't want to lose you. I don't want to be wrong about you. About Road and her big brown eyes and her sharp nose, about Shirley and his horse-face, about Lulubell and her hips – even the Earl. I don't want him to be anything but this adorable, lazy looking nobleman, not even when I see him for the first time." He sniffled loudly and cursed the fact that he couldn't control his tears. "I want you to be good. But how can that… how can murder be good?"

Tyki kissed him softly on the lips, shallowly. It would have been perfect. "I'm sorry."

"You're evil, aren't you? You're all evil."

The hands in his hair didn't even flinch.

"Me and Allen and the others… we were good, weren't we?"

The forehead against his remained just as solid as it had been, just as close.

"Tell me I'm wrong."

"Lavi…" The Noah's breath was warm and soft against the boy's lips, the color of his voice a soft silver. They needed to be closer. "None of it is as easy as that. Not even good and evil."

"But I'm wrong?"

"No." Tyki said at length. "We are."

-- -- --

Thoughts? If it felt at all like it lacked description, I'm sorry, it happens when I'm tired sometimes. I'll make it up to you next time. And… just a warning – there are two VERY DIFFERENT WAYS this story can go. I'd like some OPINIONS on that.

AND! I should also mention that if I don't know where it's going by the time it gets there, it won't go ANYWHERE. So volunteers to tell me which idea sounds better are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for more UPDATES.

Thank you for reading and reviewing!