Ciklola - You only ship Yullen? ONLY? That's a strong word. In fact, I don't know how you've gotten this far in a LUCKY FIC only shipping YULLEN. Anyroad, I believe that everyone is allowed to have their own opinions and favorites, however, do not insult ME. If you think one of my pairings is gross, then tell me so and give me a reason why, but do not call me names or degrade me because of what I write; it is immature and impolite. Secondly, there will not be Yullen in this fic. AreKan? Maybe. Hell if I know. That, if you didn't get the point of my note in chapter 13, is not what this story is supposed to be about. If you are so offended by my choice of pairings then you do not have to read it. Take your OTP and your fangirlhood and your uke!Allen and go read Saya-sama. Lastly, but not least importantly, I must ask that the next time you wish to speak to me you log in to ff, as replying in author's notes can take up a lot of space and also be embarrassing for you. Thank you, Niamh

P.S. SisterWicked said to fuck your fandom with a porcupine. She doesn't like Yullen. Or you. Or your fail choice of insults. But it's okay – she doesn't like a lot of people anyway. You shouldn't feel special.

And now that that's over! I RETURN! I know, it's been a long time. And I know, I basically start every chapter like this, but HEY! I used to have an update schedule and I like to remind people that I no longer do. For those of you still waiting for TWS, I should be able to get it off of my laptop this week and send it to myself and then have it beta'd. Thanks for waiting. :D

This one is JUMPY again, but I expect the next chapter to be MAYBE 3-4 scenes altogether. Even though just as much stuff will be happening, some of it will be happening together, so don't expect the pace to fall at all, even if the scene cuts change. Or am I the only one who thinks scene cuts make stories feel faster?

As for this... I do not own D. Gray – Man. If I did, Lavi would be a stick figure with an eyepatch, Tyki would be a stick figure with a mole, and Kanda would be a stick figure with long girly hair. Allen... would be half of a stick figure.

WARNINGS: Sadism, men lovin each other, gore up the hizzy, and hints of romantic confusion.

--

This Twilight

The stupid golem took him a town over and into an alley, but didn't show him to Kanda. There was a lot of blood, a lot of blood, and all of it looked brown and old in the dawn light. The liquid was splattered grotesquely against the right brick wall so the pattern was almost completely discernible – one round body part or another had struck the wall at Allen's chest before it slipped down to his feet. There, against the crease between wall and pavement, the part had left the ground again, perhaps into the other wall.

"Goddamn it, Kanda..." Allen whispered under his breath. The British Exorcist was wrapped in his coat, frost pluming before his mouth in the completely winter-like summer air. It was edging toward fall, realistically, but Allen did not give the weather much thought beyond how cold it made his right hand when it wasn't crammed into the folds of his clothes. The morning light, which should have brought warmth to his shoulders, brought forth the shine of drying blood and the stench of iron and death; no heat filled the boy even as the light seeped into the alley. There were thick shadows everywhere, places where things might have fallen or hidden. None of them harbored more than slightly colder air and more mismatched splashes of gore, more darkness than even the sun could chase away.

Allen repeated to himself that Kanda was alright. The guy could live through practically anything with the powers that came from being—

There was a pattern that didn't fit with the others, and it stole away Allen's thoughts, turned them to something else. Finger marks, rapid and almost unrecognizable, marred the stones at the base of the wall on his left, the lines arranged in the forms of half-letters. Kanda wasn't smart enough to do something like that, was he? Allen didn't think so. Hadn't thought so. But those marks, when he focused on them, were defiantly words.

"'Mikk...Lavi...'" Allen squinted, trying to make out the rest. "'No...eries... heh." A humorless chuckle split the British boy's lips. The last few words were large and completely legible, as if a wave of strength had filled the swordsman while he wrote them. "'I cannot die.'"

Tyki and Lavi really were together, somehow, that was the information that Kanda had meant to convey. But what were eries? Aeries? A mountaintop bird's nest? Kanda wasn't that smart. Eris, the goddess of discord? Not that educated. And there was a long, squiggly line between that bunch of letters and the word before, as if there might have been isomething/i there.

Allen frowned. How many words were there than ended in eries?

If he had brought Link with him...

With a quiet self-reprimand to stop thinking backward and to start moving forward, Allen pushed himself from to his feet and began to, as difficult as it was for him, think. Kanda would never forgive him if Allen missed this just running on emotion and gut instinct. Hell, Kanda would kill him, assuming they both lived and Allen's first, illogical course of action lead to the swordsman's rescue. But thinking about that wasn't coming up with words was it? Nor was thinking about how he wasn't coming up with words.

iUseless. I can't even think when I want t—/i

"Shut up." He hardly whispered the phrase, but it was enough to bring a little laugh to the forefront of his mind. Allen felt his upper lip lift into a snarl. "I don't have time for you right now, so stop it. I need to find Kanda."

That was all it took for the moment. The laughter faded and a feeling of slightly uncomfortable uncertainty left in little more than the blink of an eye. Allen put a gloved hand to the brick wall beside him and leaned on it, leaned so he could feel the icy stone beneath his fingers, and he could smell the coppery scent of his comrade's blood. Life would be so much easier with Noah's powers and no memories. The lapses, the breaks in composure, the times that those memories broke out into Allen's thoughts – they were becoming more common. If there was some way to just forget them, for those irritating little electronic or chemical or magical bits of information to simply disappear—

Allen's eyes shocked open and he pushed himself back, turned to look down at the bloody message strewn at his feet. In the brightening light, the scrawl was no more or less clear than it had been only seconds ago, and yet it all made sense with that word.

"Lavi doesn't have any memories?"

– – –

Tyki had a twinging feeling that somewhere along the lines of the previous day, something very, very important had slipped his mind. It was not, however, in his nature to worry. Thus, whatever it was that he had not done or had not seen or had not killed would wait until it became more of an issue, and be dealt with at a time when the Noah was not wrapped naked around his young, softly breathing lover, a gob of red hair tucked beneath his chin.

Everything could wait. While he and Lavi were together, there could be no urgency.

It made him feel tame and mellow and a bit like he might now qualify as monogamous, regardless of how much he despised the idea. Well, despised the idea when it wasn't lying next to him, murmuring soft things about how the light needed to be put out because Goddamn it, no one got up until noon when they weren't on a mission. Only the light wasn't on. It was the sun peeking in the window.

Tyki shifted enough to let Lavi press into him and settle into a deeper, more relaxing sleep. Almost as soon as the boy was settled Tyki felt that he did not want to get up just yet, no matter the responsibilities of the day.

There was a prisoner to either feed or starve, depending upon many factors. There was a family to talk to and warn, if only in the broadest of terms. But in the meantime, there was a warm pair of arms around Tyki's middle and a loud snore coming from Lavi, and as much time in the world as he could ever want there to be.

Still, nature and tobacco inevitably called. With movements that made Lavi groan but did not threaten to wake him, Tyki extracted himself one limb at a time from the younger man, rolling gradually toward the edge of the bed. It was a bit like dancing, especially when the redhead made a soft negative and dragged him back to where he had been, arms like vices, fingers twisted in the bedsheets. It made Tyki chuckle ever so softly, a grin tugging up the edges of his lips.

"Lavi—"

"If I let you up you're coming back with breakfast. I refuse to skip two meals in a row outta laziness."

Tyki placed one hand in Lavi's hair and tilted the boy's head back enough to see that the apprentice Bookman's eyes were still mostly closed, slatted like half open blinds. "Forget it. You'll be asleep by the time I make anything worth eating."

"You can't make anything worth eating. Just throw something together."

"Hey..."

"I love you?" This time Lavi tilted his head out of Tyki's hand and turned so he was looking up with a half-sultry expression, the flesh of his shoulders exposed to the morning light. It was like he was daring the Noah to just go about his business and then come back again without an offering of food, that way they might be close again, naked and cool in the soft golden light. "'Sides, I'd be happy with pretty much anything that I don't have t'cook. Go, and bring me sustenance..."

Tyki shook his head. It shouldn't have amused him as much as it did that Lavi seemed prepared to nod off already. It shouldn't have filled his chest with warmth to watch that pair of perfectly green eyes slide shut. "I'll get you something, but you have to let me go." The Noah pulled at an arm that was still wrapped around his hips, a little fascinated by how Lavi could have such strength while nearly sleeping.

"Mmhmm. Right after I... hmm..."

The arm went limp.

Tyki removed himself from the bed with gentle movements, slipped his feet onto the floor. There air was a great deal cooler than he was used to – perhaps summer had simply transformed into winter while he had been curled next to Lavi's deliciously warm body – and the sensation of moving from one temperature to another made him all too aware of just how naked he really was at the moment.

With that thought in the forefront of his brain and his mind set on something warm to start the morning, Tyki dressed in casual clothing and made his way to the kitchen. Promptly, aware that he still had not come to a conclusion as to what to do with the swordsman in his basement and feeling rather less than inclined to worry about it, the Noah set about finding something with which to feed the redhead still curled so tenderly in his bed. Perhaps it was the smell of overcooked bread that brought the boy out into the kitchen in a sheet – Tyki didn't particularly care what it was. He only cared that Lavi's hair had dried in a very awkward shape after their late night bath and the color of the boy's cheeks seemed decidedly paler than usual.

"I had one fucked up dream after another last night." Lavi remarked, and seated himself at the momentarily clean table with a light shiver. The sheet wound a little more tightly around the boy's shoulders before he continued. "Mostly about Bookman." The way he said it, like there was no mystery to who the older man was, made the sentence disconcerting.

Tyki laid two pieces of over buttered and burnt toast in front of the redhead. "Should I pry, or do you not want to talk about it?"

"You don't have to pry. I was gonna ramble anyway." Lavi smiled then, that same, perfectly friendly smile, and Tyki felt a bit relieved at the sight of it. "I dreamed that I was really little, and I had to keep my right eye covered because it would make me less inclined to be neutral in my current recordings, but that it would be infinitely nice to have later. And when I woke up..." He picked up a piece of toast and bit into it before going on, "I realiz'd that m'right eye rea'y was special, I jus' needed t'be aware of it."

The Noah allowed himself to ease into the chair opposite Lavi's. There was something every serious in the apprentice Bookman's face, but the casualness of his actions made it less obvious how serious. Tyki simply waited. He waited for everything he had felt and said and learned in the last few months to come back as a lie.

"I can see evil with it in things, even when it's hidden. It's not like it's intentions or anything like that, it's just... I can see it. And I wanted to know..." Lavi turned his face away as if suddenly shy. "Would you mind if I tried it on you? We both know that you've done bad things, and it doesn't matter, I just want to know if I can see—"

Tyki laughed. He could not explain it at first, but the sound grew louder as he realized just what he found amusing in the situation. Lavi was ridiculous. What would it matter if the evil in him showed like it had in the past? Would it change anything? No. They were supposed to be beyond good and evil now, weren't they? So why would Lavi—

There had been too much blood and violence in the last few days, too much killing intent without enough killing. Angrily, the Noah leaned forward and slammed his hands on the tabletop effectively rattling Lavi's plate without dislodging the remaining slice of toast that occupied it. "You want to have a look at my dark little soul so you can understand what I've done and how little remorse I've felt over doing it?" The Noah laughed. "You don't need a special eye to see that, Lavi. I've told you everything that I've done, every sin I've committed knowingly. What more do you want me to confess?" He leaned closer, so that the boy was looking up at him with two perfectly round eyes. "Do you want me to tell you about the Exorcist that found you? Do you want to know what I did once you were gone?"

"No, I..." Lavi's voice quavered, and the protest went unfinished.

"Then why would you ask to see the marks on my soul unless you wanted to hurt us both?"

The redhead turned his eyes down, focusing on the toast that still lay on the plate in front of him. His eyes became decidedly distant, but when he spoke, it was in a whisper that fit only in the close space between the two of them. "I'm... afraid to look at myself." He lifted his left hand so that he could move it toward Tyki's right, but he did not quite touch the Portuguese man. "But you're right. I know what you've done and I shouldn't put you through that. I was stupid to suggest it."

Tyki did touch Lavi's hand, then, and moved forward just enough to feel that human, compassionate part of him want to be tender. "Then don't look at anyone." He breathed. "Can we not live as we have been, regardless of everything else?"

"But things are changing in my head, Tyki. The more I remember..."

Tyki shushed him. "The more stupid you become."

– – –

It was just after noon when Tyki went out, supposedly to hear the details on a rather dangerous plan of his leaders divining. The Earl, Tyki explained before leaving, was becoming restless. Things had not gone as planned for their last attempt at destroying their enemies, and now things had reached a peak for the First Disciple. He was angry and haunted. He might, given the chance, do something irrational.

Lavi was unsure if Tyki was the one who would keep the Earl in line, but it did not matter. It only mattered that the taste on his lips when the Noah left was sweet and filled with desire and endearment, laced with a twinge of pain and longing. It struck the apprentice Bookman as he watched the man leave that things were strained between them, difficult in a way that he could not understand very well at all, and heavy with emotions that made every part of him want nothing more than to curl up and hold on to the Noah, to pray that there was a way to keep going, forever. The feeling lasted long after Tyki disappeared into the shadow of a nearby building and did not come out of the other side, and festered in the redhead's chest the longer he remained in the doorway. There had to be something, some way, to fix what had become of their relationship. There had to be some terrifyingly simple tenderness that would bring back the feeling of belonging and joy that always filled him when they made love.

With that thought in his head, barefoot, and coat-less, Lavi stepped out into the day and stood on the wooden porch. He closed the door behind him. He felt rather lazy and out of place in his simple white pants and a sporting a shirt of baggy green material, but he did not think it mattered that much if he stayed close to the house. It felt good to stand in the sunshine, and even better to close his eyes to the crisp, almost icy breeze that blew in from the north, bringing with it the kiss of the coming winter.

Lavi stretched. He felt restless, and his thoughts – Tyki, the past, the future, the growing unease in his chest – were not making it easier to relax at all. The air, which had been frigid in the morning hours, felt too cool to stand in with those burning thoughts filling up his mind.

With a light curse, the shirtless redhead skipped his way down the front steps. A walk would do him good. Just a short, barefoot walk around the house. Just a moment to clear his head.

The redhead had only gone down the steps when he felt that maybe the idea was foolhardy. He took a sharp left around the side of the house. He'd just walk the grounds. The chill air would wake him up and then he would go inside refreshed, and he would be able to sit down at the kitchen table and sift through every memory that had surfaced and every emotion he had come to feel, and he would be able to embrace Tyki the moment the Portuguese man came home.

His feet felt strange on the wet blades of the grass that made up the lawn, and the sunlight showed orange through the thin layer of Lavi's eyelids. The fresh air, felt soothing on his skin. It was cold. It would get colder. He couldn't imagine staying outside for more than a few minutes, even if he did not want to spend the day cooped up with his thoughts.

The smell of blood – not strong but still detectable – made Lavi slow to a snails pace, his thoughts on how cold it was and how refreshed he was momentarily forgotten. His green eyes scanned the area in front of him and then farther to his left, to the side of the house, and to the corner of the porch. There wasn't anything to see at first, but a few steps brought Lavi around to the side of the house, and showed him a splattering of dried blood across the grass in a line that lead to a bolted pair of hardwood doors. A cellar. He hadn't even thought that they had a cellar. The trail of gore would lead him directly through those doors, he realized, and into some dark secret that Tyki was keeping from him.

Curiosity, keen and horrible, made Lavi stop. Disgust, thick and painful, made him wind his arms around his chest and pull in a cold, razor sharp breath. He wanted to know what was in that cellar. He wanted to know whose blood it was, how it had gotten there, when it had happened. He wanted to, and yet he knew that it would ruin everything he and Tyki had worked for.

"Just ask him." Lavi told himself, and turned away from the doors and back toward the white porch he had come from. "Just ask him."

– – –

Time moved like water down a mostly clogged drain, slipping away faster than he could stop it and slower than he would have liked. The cold and the dark were not strangers to him, the pain in his arm and in his face were not the worst he had felt, but he would have killed to be somewhere else – anywhere else – to not have been so stupid. It was easier for the illusions to cling to him when he couldn't see anything out of one eye and it was so Goddamn dark the gardening tools looked like medical supplies and torture devices. It helped that he couldn't feel much but the hardness of the floor and the pain in his body – they kept him centered and helped him distinguish the difference between what was there and what wasn't.

It still surprised him when pain seared through his chest and left him gasping and choking – the doors hadn't opened and he had thought the dimly lit figure in front of him nothing but a shadowy illusion. The sensation that filled him was a bit like drowning, only he felt that he didn't have lungs to breathe with, that instead there was nothing but a fountain of blood running up the back of his throat. The world dimmed further toward blackness, but the sting of a blow against his face kept the room in partial focus for just an instant, just a heartbeat longer, and Kanda wrapped his mind around that fragment of awareness in the effort not to die – again. He couldn't die again. He couldn't let himself lose anymore time than he already had.

There were people and things counting on his survival.

"Tell me who it was." The voice was so vicious, so angry and close, that Kanda snapped his head back into sharp contact with the pipe beside his head. The icy shock of protest from his skull distracted him from the gasp – the life giving, stinging, burning gasp – that choked him and woke him at once. Had he died? He should have died. From the wet, slick sound of some part of him slapping against the floor, he should have died.

But he was still alive. Hardly. Alive enough to feel the fingers twisted in his hair and see the rage contorted face of shadows in front of him.

"Who was it?!" It was a demand that Kanda couldn't follow. It was a question he didn't have air to answer. "Tell me, Exorcist, who did Lavi spend his time with before he came to be with me? Who did he trust?" The Noah's voice was distinguishable now, if only because of the context. Still, what Tyki meant to ask was lost on the Japanese man. "Who did he love, Exorcist? Bookman or not, he must have shown signs."

Despite the agony in his body and the dwindling confusion in his mind, Kanda burbled out a sickly chuckle, thin from his lack of breath. How was he supposed to answer when all he could do was wheeze? But whatever. It didn't matter. Lavi hadn't loved anyone – couldn't have loved anyone. He had cared, Kanda knew that, but love was one emotion that when it wasn't learned as a child, it didn't suddenly compute as an adult.

If a childhood was forgotten, however...

"Y'think a Bookman can love somebody?" Kanda seeped the words through lips that felt sticky and numb. "He n'ver felt anything. Not even when it looked like it. He didn't love anybody." Somehow, there was anger in his voice and Kanda could hear it – but there was nothing to be angry over. The past was over and done with now, and losing handfuls of his flesh meant getting away to change that wasn't a likely outcome. The anger turned into a roaring fire of rage. "He might not even really love you anymore, when he remembers." He would have gone on. There were so many slurs and insults he could have thrown and so many things he could have said, but he suddenly couldn't articulate anything but a horrible, throat abusing scream. The sound died a moment later, cut off with his flow of air.

'Did you not want me to do that?'
'Che. You just surprised me.'

The conversation flashed through his mind as fast as a bolt of lightning and then it was gone again, replaced by a snarl that he could only half hear.

"I'll make him love me!" Tyki yelled at him, and what must have been the Noah's hand sliced through Kanda's abdomen in a motion that left the swordsman shaking. Blood loss was not a problem easily fixed, even through magic. "And kill whoever came first!"

Kanda would have tried once more to explain that that simply was not possible, but reality was swiftly slipping away from him, moving like sand through his fingers. There was nothing to grasp and nothing to anchor to – not even pain could keep the moment tangible anymore. And what was one more death, really? What was one more fraction of his life for peace? What did it matter if he didn't wake up and Lavi lived the rest of his life feeling for someone else?

– – –

He lost himself in what he was doing.

That wasn't something out of the ordinary for Tyki, as he often lost himself in things he found pleasant, or simply wandered off in thought while he enjoyed some simple physical activity. And the more often that it happened, the more human he felt most of the time – when he came back to himself he was renewed and refreshed.

This time, he was breathless and empty.

Blood, some of it fresh, some of it dry, soaked his clothes and splattered the floor in dark circles and lines, and marred the pale, expressionless face in front of him. There was far too much of it. No human had ever had that much blood as far as Tyki knew, and yet it had all come from the boy crumpled against the wall. The Exorcist had not moved for what now seemed like a long time, nor had he made a sound. Currently, Tyki noted, he held the boy's heart in his right hand and what might have been the broken remains of a lung in his left, both of them still warm. Perhaps that was enough, finally. Maybe, with more blood and gore strewn about the cellar than any person had the right to lose, the Japanese Exorcist would finally die an inglorious death, and Tyki would be left with one less worry.

The thought was the only thing that made Tyki feel human at the moment. He felt tired and languid, and, to his slight surprise, lustful underneath it all.

Very lustful. Thirsty for the touch of skin against his and the feel of hair tangled in his hands, hungry for the panting, pleading press of lips to his. When the violence was gone, there was only burning desire and cold indifference, and the realization that this time his feelings were not specific to Lavi made Tyki more uncomfortable with their arrangement than he had felt in weeks.

Disgust, too, threatened to take root for a moment. Was that all it took? A bleeding lump of flesh and a pretty face? Tyki snarled at the Exorcist's corpse in front of him. He was still angry, though the reaction was hard to explain exactly. The day had been terrible simply because of Lavi's suggestion in the morning – his dream, his cool demeanor – and it had set the tone for the meal Tyki had shared with his family. Things had not gone well. And Sheryl had mocked him for it. And now, knowing that there was nothing to undo how Lavi had felt in the past and feeling that the whole endeavor had been doomed from the start, Tyki did not know what to do exactly.

Eaze and the others were friends of his human half and Tyki wished to protect them. Why could things not be so easy with Lavi?

To make matters worse, the more Tyki thought of losing the redhead, the less he wanted it to come to that. The more he thought of hurting the apprentice Bookman, the less he felt that it was an option. The more he looked at the beaten, lifeless face of the Japanese Exorcist, the less mortal he felt.

With a slow, deep breath, Tyki closed his eyes and allowed his hands to relax. The sound of flesh hitting the dirt floor was not alien to him – he did not even question the wet squelch of it under his feet as he turned toward the stairs. The mess he left, the boy that had finally died, the blood, everything, could be dealt with in the morning without risking too much rot or stench. And at the moment, regardless of everything else, Tyki needed to find the object of his mental frustrations and perhaps take out his physical ones. Assuming his foul mood didn't make that impossible for both of them.

It was not until Tyki was on the stairs that he remembered that the doors were locked from the outside. With a shake of his head and movement of his bloody right hand through his sticky hair, Tyki willed himself through the wood and into the cool evening air, and didn't find it refreshing at all.

– – –

The town was full of rumors and stories and sightings, but none of them made any sense at all. The biggest lead that Allen found was a woman who claimed that strange, terrifying things were afoot – a madam had been beheaded, a girl with a sword had perhaps robbed or killed a townsman, and the locally loved politician had stopped coming to market to pick up his groceries. There had been explosions that had remained unexplained only three months ago, and people were starting to act in curious, quiet ways.

By nightfall, the British Exorcist thought he might have known what house it was that Lavi – and Tyki Mikk – were staying in, but he did not want to risk barging into an innocent's home on only rumors. He would watch when morning came, and act if he saw either of them. Kanda's trail – he was too good at maintaining a low profile for his own good – quickly ran cold, which bothered Allen immensely. There was nothing to be done for it, however, so the white haired teen decided that it would be best to simply wait for the time being. Wait for something to come up.

Allen hated waiting.

He did not try to call headquarters and explain what had happened, nor did he try to contact Link and inform him of the situation. Instead, Allen found himself a quiet inn not too far from the little white house in question and set himself up with a room for the night, a room which had only a single bed and a window that looked out toward the dawn. The décor lacked thought, but did not distract him from the purpose of the room itself – the bed was covered in soft beige while the windows sported something more like russet orange – and he found himself calmed by the unpredictability of it. His own room at the Order had once been filled with all manner of strange things like chains and crosses and jars of scientific goop, but the colors had always been rather bland. Though never as bland as Kanda's.

More often than Allen liked, his thoughts went back and lingered on the long haired swordsman, and turned swiftly to things that simply were not proper to think about in such a serious situation. It wasn't as if Allen was infatuated with the older man, nor was he enamored, he simply wanted the Japanese Exorcist in a way that completely defied their current and past relationship. They were comrades. They wouldn't have even spoken to each other if not for the war. They rubbed each other the wrong way, even if they had far more in-common than either of them liked to admit. But it was that wrongness, the friction, the static, the fire that rose in Allen's veins when Kanda told him he was a naïve liar and a shoddy excuse for a martyr, that made the attraction so strong. Because in many ways, Kanda was right and Allen knew it. And there was simply nothing that Allen could do to change that.

'Che. Why are you smiling?'
'You woke up, Kanda.'
'Idiot.'

The conversation had been fleeting, but Allen had learned something very important out of it. Kanda did not smile for others.

Selfish, but right.

With a sigh that did nothing to ease the tension in his body, Allen lay flat on his back on the single bed, looking up at the dark rafters. For the longest time, Lenalee had been the most adorable, loveable thing in his life (most likely still was if he didn't count Tim – who was damn loveable sometimes), but now Allen had to wonder if cute and affectionate were even what he wanted. Kanda could match wits with him sometimes. And when they couldn't argue, there was physical exertion to drive out the awkwardness and burn away the rage.

It was too bad that Kanda was damn good at hand-to-hand combat. Allen would have loved to pin him down by all of that luscious hair and...

His thoughts were in the wrong place again. All of that blood in the alley way was supposed to make him worry.

Allen threw an arm over his face to block out what little light there was in the room. "Why did I let him go alone?"

– – –

Lavi fell asleep leaning on the kitchen table, arms folded under his head, a worried expression on his features. There were papers strewn about the tabletop in what might have been organized chaos – divided by language and perhaps contents, all of them in the redhead's hand. The way the boy held to one of them even in his sleep made Tyki think that perhaps they were important, and maybe it would be best not to clean up the mess until Lavi woke.

So the Noah surreptitiously tiptoed his way into the bathroom and drew up a bath, knowing it would be better to face his young lover when he wasn't bloody to the point of gruesomeness. Almost as soon as he had stripped off his ruined clothing and sank below the surface of the steaming, soothing water, he heard the crinkle of paper and the shift of feet on the floor. But Lavi did not interrupt him right away. Tyki submerged his hair and watched the water around him turn first pink and then almost burnt orange, swirling with darker tendrils of older blood, then reached for something with which to cleanse his tangled tresses. When he was finished, the Portuguese man scrubbed at his skin until he was satisfied and, without delay, pulled the plug on the tub.

The last of the water formed a small, clockwise spinning whirlpool before the door opened without the courtesy of a knock. Tyki wrapped a towel around his waist before he glanced up at the apprentice Bookman, schooling his face into a mask of innocent curiosity.

"Did you have another assignment?" Lavi's voice was tired and quiet, brittle like he did not want to break the silence and would let his words crack instead. He blinked very slowly and wrinkled his nose for a moment. "It smells like soap and death in here..." That, however, was a distant observation, strangled by threads of memory.

Tyki made his way across the cold tile floor to the redhead, noting that even now, even with so much behind his eyes, Lavi did not even flinch at their nearness. And the thoughtful frown to the boy's lips did not change either. "Not exactly." Tyki replied honestly. "An old one came back to haunt me. And might again, given some time."

"What's in the cellar?"

Tyki blinked. He lost his mask of warmth and understanding and curiosity, felt it dashed away by the ice water of Lavi's words. If the boy had looked then lying would be impossible. If the boy hadn't looked then lying was the only option. And if Lavi remembered who the swordsman was and how the Japanese man simply refused to die... "We have a cellar?"

"Don't fucking pretend you don't know what I'm talking about!" Pain and betrayal could not hide behind the boy's anger. "I saw the blood on the door! What's in there?"

"Nothing! Nothing you want to hear about, Lavi."

"This isn't going to work if you're not honest, that's the point. Tyki..."

The Noah wished that that was true. He wished that the redhead would understand. But that wasn't the case. And exposing Lavi to the swordsman again would likely result in memories that Tyki could not afford to allow to surface. Not if he wanted to avoid unpleasantness. "Nothing is in the cellar. I used it before you came here and not once since. Can you not trust me when I tell you that?"

"No." Lavi whispered, and his knuckles visibly whitened when he clasped his hands. "Yes. I don't know. Just... I'm going on a walk. I need to clear my head. I keep thinking about things and people and the blood and Bernadette, and everyone I knew, Tyki. And as much as I love you, as good as this is, I need to settle. I need to think. Because I don't want this to just... end when I realize everything I had." A mirthless little smile crawled across his lips, self-deprecating and honest. "I'm not Job, I don't think. If I had friends before, I can't just replace them. If I had a lover before, I can't just forget them. You understand?" Somewhere he had gone from angry over a secret to fragile and lost, lonely and in need of warmth. Lavi, no matter what he remembered at the moment, still believed that he felt love for the man in front of him, it was obvious by the light in his expression.

Gently, Tyki reached out with a damp hand and cupped the side of the younger man's face. It felt smooth and warm against his skin, delicate, but only because of how human the Exorcist really was. "Do what you have to." Tyki heard himself say. "Just come back to me at the end, alright?"

The redhead nodded before he leaned up to kiss Tyki, tender and sweet, the way things had been, the way things were supposed to be. "I promise."

– – –

Reality did not slam into him like it sometimes did when he rose from the dead, nor did it ease into his bones and rouse him like a lover, tender and quiet. Instead, it burned through him like a poison, moved his thick, toxin swamped blood through his veins and forced him to choke out what had come to rest in his lungs. He felt stiff and cold, feverish from wounds that had only just healed enough to support life again. And something else. Kanda had only experienced what it was to go septic once, but he remembered it as clearly as he did first unsheathing Mugen – one did not forget the black fire of infection or the heavy, weak sensation of a double edged heartbeat. And now, pressed against a cold metal pipe with no water or food or warmth to speak of, the swordsman had to wonder if his body would be the end of itself after all.

There seemed to be the dimmest shaft of light falling over the floor, but Kanda did not pay it too much attention. He focused on trying to breathe out the congealed mess that clogged most of his airway, and tried to individually move his fingers and toes, even the ones he could not feel.

A tenor mumble filled his ears before a hand – not his own – touched his lips and tilted water between them. Sweet, clean water. It didn't matter who was offering it, nor did it matter that Kanda had half a mind to bite those fingers. The liquid was just enough to wet his lips and tongue, to moisten his throat, and then there was nothing left but a hand pressed to his lips.

"Some nothing." The mumble was still too quite to identify, just loud enough to make Kanda try to bring the shadow moving in front of him into focus. He couldn't, because his eyes weren't yet functioning, but the attempt brought a second handful of water to his lips and he drained it, breathless when it was gone. The press of something cold and hard to his fingers alerted the swordsman that the fabric that had once held him to the pipe next to his face was gone – his arms were useless at his sides, the right splinted with part of a shovel handle. Or maybe it was a rake. It didn't matter. The bones had been broken again, it seemed or simply had not healed as much as they should have.

The grumble in front of him had something to do with a fever and Tyki Mikk's misuse of words, but it ended like a question somehow. A whisper, but still a question. Repeated softly. Maybe the voice wanted him to respond even if he couldn't make out what was being said exactly.

Not a voice, a person. Kanda knew that much. But who could possibly have found him in a Noah's cellar when his golem had disappeared some time ago?

"...button's say Yuu Kanda, but that's kinda awkward isn't it? I mean, doesn't it get confusing?"

What the fuck was this idiot rambling on about? And why were his hands pulling open Kanda's coat?

"…I guess everyone just calls you by your last name, huh? Be easier that way. Good thing Tyki told me my name was on my buttons when I got here – never woulda thought to look otherwise."

Lavi.

The thought struck him like a physical blow, and sent a bolt of awareness and life jolting through his whole frame. It didn't speed the healing process at all – it would take hours for him to be anywhere close to mobile, and days before the wounds were nothing but memories – but it gave him a reason to force his one working eye to focus and a point at which to aim his senses. Almost at once his half-unfeeling fingers found a fringe of fabric, like the hem of a shirt, and then the curve of a stomach, both of them connected to something larger. Green. And above that, if he followed the shape with his eyes, he could make out a mop of unruly red and white-gold, almost shapeless in the dim light.

"Hey, don't try anything funny. I don't remember and you're about a half inch from dead – I'm only doing this because—"

Kanda's attempt at saying the redhead's name resulted in something like a hissed, formless whisper.

"Tyki lied and I just... I can't walk away again. Leaving that alleyway, when he'd... I just can't do that again."

"Lavi." This time, Kanda managed to get air behind it. The result was a short pause in the redhead's mostly one-sided conversation. "Shut up."

"Yeah, you sound just like him, Kanda."

The swordsman blinked repeatedly at the name. Lavi did not call him Kanda. Would not. Not for money or food or hookers. But the tone was still correct, down to the teasing little lift and the smile that didn't always reach the other boy's eyes, it was still Lavi under it all, even if he did not remember who Kanda was. The thought was painful – or maybe it was just irritating – but it wasn't the end of what had been. Especially if the Japanese man could get out of the cellar alive...

With all of his will, Kanda ignored the fact that getting out of the cellar, feverish or not, wounded or not, would likely have no impact at all on his future. Without Mugen—

"So now..." Lavi interrupted his train of thought. "I was thinking that you should tell me everything you know about me so I can send you on your way. Or maybe move you to an inn. Just... get you out of here." The redhead leaned closer, close enough that Kanda could make out his facial features better, and see the confusion dancing behind his eyes. "Because I'm not leaving over this. I love him too much to let one lie make everything we've promised moot. And you're tough enough to break out, right?"

"Che. You love him?"

"What's so surprising about that?"

Kanda ignored the pain in his chest and the vertigo that threatened to spill the contents of his stomach across the floor when he moved. He simply threw himself forward, smashed his palms on the redhead's shoulders and used his momentum to carry them both down against the dirt floor, ineffectually pinning the apprentice Bookman. Lavi did not fight him, though Kanda could not imagine why not. With the redhead beneath him, his fingers itched to wrap around the idiot's throat and strangle some sense into him, but the swordsman did not follow the temptation. Instead, he narrowed his eyes into the best glare he could manage at the moment, and clamped his knees tight on Lavi's hips, holding him in place.

"You can't love anyone, Bookman. It's not allowed, remember?" Kanda whispered in a harsh, panting breath.

Lavi didn't struggle, but a hand came up to touch the billowing side of Kanda's ribcage. Maybe it was a feeble attempt to soothe a sick man, or maybe he was looking for a broken rib to punch. "I don't know what you're talking about, Kanda."

"Why are you calling me that?!" His snarl had more bitterness in it than it did anger, and he tightened his hands on Lavi's shoulders, bruising flesh that he couldn't see, but wanted to feel. Yet the hand on his chest remained perfectly gentle, tenderly stroking across fractured bones and bruised tissues with care and curiosity. "You don't call me Kanda. You call me Yuu. Or Yuu-chan. Or whatever fucked up pun you can make out of it. Even when I threaten you, it's still Yuu, Yuu, Yuu and nothing else!"

The fingers tracing across Kanda's side came to a sudden, shaking halt. "...Yuu?"

– – –

Yeah. It ends there. Please forgive me for the suddenness. Thanks for reading, and thanks to Bookkbaby for reading it over for me. :D I'll see you all next chapter, which I hope to have out sooner than I did this one.

Also... the ridiculous plot movement... yeah, I hope you like it. This story is going really fast, but I still don't know how much it has left in chapters.

Thanks for readings and reviewing!