So I moved over last weekend, and worked the entire time on top of it. As a result, my unplugged computer lost so many reviews, it isn't even funny. I apologize. I have been really, really bad about reviews recently, but they really are a wonderful encouragement. Even if I haven't responded, every one makes me smile and think and understand what you, the reader, might get from my work. I promise to be more careful. I also promise to write replies and porn regardless of the fact that I'm sharing a room with a boy now.

On a different note, this chapter continues the fast pace set by recent chapters. I don't know why, but this story doesn't want to have anything useless in it. At all...

Disclaimer: I do not own DGM. If I did... Kanda would never have Vegeta hair and deus ex machina would not be the solution to the Alma situation. Thank you.

WARNINGS: The Pairings of Decisiveness. Angst. Yaoi. Some blood. Lenalee.

Nineteen: Without the Mask

The sunlight splashed cool and white across the frosty ground, catching in the snowy branches and casting grayish shadows across the brown, glittering grass. The weather had gone from rain to a light spread of snowflakes in little more than two days, but the change had seemed gradual enough, giving them a chance to find thicker garments within their suitcases each morning. The quiet that filled the air was almost deafening. The lack of movement, the complete stillness, made the whitewashed world seem absolutely at peace. The silvery light made the icy ground shimmer as if sprinkled with finely crushed diamonds, glimmered off the frozen branches like it would have off thin planes of glass. The world was white and clear crystal, solid and motionless.

Harsh breathing broke the quiet. Red marred the perfect snow. Plumes of fog whipped away in strips in the otherwise invisible wind. The sound of metal sinking through dirt was the only preamble to a thud that was neither soft nor quiet – though there was not even a groan to accompany it.

With his right cheek pressed to the cold ground, Allen blinked blearily at the nearest tree, tried to pull the knot on the side of it into focus. From that strange angle, looking at it with his left eye and only part of his right, the knot looked almost like the gnarled face of an old man, winking at him, hawk nosed, teeth clenched as if to hold a pipe. The image swirled for a moment before he lost it completely and forced his eyes closed, then opened them once more. It was just a knot on a tree, nothing else, but he could still make out the face. The warmth that spread across his abdomen and up his chest, however, was as real as the crushed snow catching in his eyelashes, as real as the large, wet flakes that had started to fall from the sky above him.

It didn't hurt right now. It had, when the forth level Akuma had grown a bladed arm and caught him in the lower chest with it. It had hurt a lot. Now, the snow felt like a soft white mattress, cool and pleasant against his skin.

He felt heavy. He felt fatigued. It reminded him of China, his heart losing strength in his chest. But then, he had not felt quite so much like he wanted to sleep before he recovered.

The crunch of a foot in the snow made him curious, but not curious enough to lift his head. He looked from the old man in the tree to the darkly colored leg that had just come into view, and tried to place the shiny shoe toe, but failed after just a moment. The knee was unfamiliar, too. Maybe he hadn't seen this leg from this angle. Maybe he couldn't recognize it from the spidery shadows thrown down around them.

Maybe he was hallucinating. Yes, that seemed the most-likely, he decided. Because when a second foot came down next to the first, the stranger simply stood there as if confused what he had stumbled upon. It was pretty obvious to Allen. If one came upon a bleeding person, one was supposed to offer help. It was the only logical thing to do.

The thought was the last logical thing to happen to him for a very long time.

Lavi and Lenalee found thieves and a wet, cold wind when they arrived, neither of which stopped them from finding the comfort of their inn in a matter of minutes. There, they spent the night avoiding the subject of Lavi's love-life and instead focused on the dangers at hand. The town attracted the bloodthirsty and the violent, took them in, kept them, and spat them out twice as bad as they had been, with nicer clothes and a desire for crimes that were less easy to follow. The Finders that had gone in, however few, either did not return, or came out cut-purses and gamblers, a change none of them were willing to explain for even the largest of rewards.

The thought that it might be Innocence stemmed from that unwillingness. Any Finder fallen into the arts of a back-alley opium runner had to be influenced by more than a local network of crime lords and monetary gain.

Lavi realized it was all hogwash by the third day. There wasn't a single Akuma in these parts, not the faintest glimmer of Innocence, and too many men had offered Lavi a job in exchange for Lenalee for there to be more here. It annoyed him. If Yuu had come, they might have spent a week upturning the rocks of the city and chancing out the serpents that pulled the strings. But now, with Lenalee, that didn't seem possible. They would be forced to return to the Order empty handed.

The redhead swallowed his disappointment and did not think about Tyki. Tried not to think about Tyki. But on the third night, the Noah came to mind regardless of how Lavi fought to keep his thoughts on other things. They had promised to see each other again, but it was only one promise in many – one promise that Lavi did not understand the sentiment behind. Tyki loved him, of that he was certain, but they did not live between the pages of a romance novel where glances and long looks and fated meetings would keep them bound to each other until the end of the war. Lavi knew, looking up at the ceiling with its thick oaken rafters, that if he could spend time with the man he had lived with and talk to him, if he could have a conversation with him, he would know exactly what he wanted to do.

In the dark, it was easy to imagine what might happen. The Noah would tell him that they had different sides to fight for, that it was a distant dream, but that there would still be something there. And Lavi would let him. Lavi would let him walk away thinking that there was nothing that could be done for the two of them.

He didn't want that. Lavi pulled the blankets over his head to hide the ceiling from sight.

– – –

Allen lost contact with his party of Finders, Link, and Timcampy. The Order – meaning Leverrier – was prepared to launch a full-scale search and potentially destroy mission.

Komui was not about to have that.

He looked up at the Frenchman, one hand wrapped around a quill, the other delicately resting on his coffee mug. He would by the boy a week at least. Three days. An hour. He didn't care if he had to beat Leverrier in the head with his favorite cup, he would find a way.

"As you were saying, Mr. Lee?"

Komui cleared his throat. "Yes... as I was saying..."

The world was a very warm place, filled with soft lights and heavy blankets, punctuated by the sound of feet moving across a creaky floor. The touch of fabric on his skin told him that he was shirtless, which meant that someone kind enough to care had found him – maybe Link had followed his blood trail through the snow, or Chouji had won the fight and stumbled upon him in a weeping mess. It didn't really change the fact that Allen was in a warm bed, the pain in his abdomen a distant sort of ache.

The moment he cracked his silver eyes, he regretted it a little, because the soft light was not so soft when not dimmed by the layer of his eyelids. It was sunlight, golden and cutting, white-edged, cold. And the dark figure that was placing as to make the floor protest every so often was just close enough to be recognizable, and just recognizable enough to make the British Exorcist attempt to sit up and scramble off of the mattress and activate his Innocence all in one motion. The result was not pleasant. Pain shot through his abdomen, the muscles tightening without responding as they should have. The bed seemed to lurch – his Innocence flickered to life with an effort.

And the man in front of him, the Noah, paused and turned, his dark, golden eyes round in a familiar expression of surprise. His face swayed for a moment, the only movement between the two of them. His nose grew momentarily blurry. With all of Allen's will, it returned to how it had been, the exact distance from him as the moment he had opened his eyes and realized who was there.

"I see you're doing better." Tyki's voice was somehow heavy, but Allen could not tell why. He could hardly maintain the active state of his Innocence – there was no energy to use in trying to figure out what the man in front of him might want.

He wanted to ask, but his dry throat didn't feel like forming words.

The Noah took a step back before he took the initiative, rocking on the wooden floor so that it creaked much like it had when Allen's silver eyes had been closed. "All alone out there in the woods bleeding like that might have been it for you, boy, if I hadn't been there. But my brother told me that he had lost Akuma, so I thought I might look to see if..." He let the words die, his chocolate irises focused on Allen's left hand. "Do you really have to have that out? Honestly, the last thing on my mind at the moment is anything that the Earl wants and it's terribly distracting. All that shiny and pointy and radiating – doesn't it make your head ache?"

Allen felt that someone had just lobbed a very large brick at him and he had watched it just long enough to understand what was happening before it hit him directly between the eyes. Something very important made sense to him, fell into place in his mind as easily as a ball rolling from the table to the floor. It was almost enough to make him falter, but not quite. Instead, he tilted his head to the side, and swallowed the sandstone boulder that seemed to have clogged his throat.

"You thought..." He fought with a cough and lost before he went on. "You thought I was Lavi." It was a statement, even though it should have been a question.

"I had hoped."

Allen tried not to allow himself to feel surprised. "But when I wasn't..."

"What kind of message would that send if I killed you in my attempt to find him? Not the right one. Well, not the right one to him." Tyki looked away and Allen realized that the reason he seemed strange – aside from the look on his face – was the tiredness to his eyes, and the hollowness to his cheeks. Perhaps the Noah had not slept well in the last few days. If at all. "But not killing you puts me in a rather bad situation, boy. I'm a at a loss what to do about that part, but I'll worry about it when it becomes an issue and not before. Otherwise I'll drive myself mad all over again." He waved a hand as if it didn't matter. "Now that you aren't dead, or dying right away, rather, we might be able to come to something of an agreement."

"I don't know if I like that idea." Allen said before he could stop himself. He wasn't in much of a position to argue, however. Bedridden, wounded, lost – there were a number of problems with his current situation, and there wasn't much he could do about any of it.

The Noah looked momentarily put off by the comment, but he didn't snap or react violently. Instead, he started to pace again, slowly and deliberately. "You of all people should know what it is that I'm talking about, Allen Walker. And it isn't something one talks about lightly. At least, not if you're intelligent enough to avoid it." A wild smirk flashed across his face and then it was gone again, masked in the human skin the Noah wore so well. It was as if he was balanced on the edge of a knife, wavering between something that was nearly normal and something that was a monstrous as an Akuma, darker and sadder, even. It made the Exorcist shiver. "I'm talking about love."

Allen frowned, shifted his back against the wooden headboard. The room, he noticed, lacked the personal touches that normally made houses into homes. The headboard did not protest when he put his weight against it.

An inn, maybe?

"For the love of humanity, you – not you, but you – turned your back on your family, your brother, everything you had and everything you knew. For the love of humanity. All of them. Every last one. That's not what I propose to do." Tyki stopped pacing and looked the boy directly in the face. "What I propose is far more delicate a situation than that. I do not love humanity." He held up a single finger on his right hand. It did not mean a thing until he spoke. "I only truly love one of them."

Them. Not you. Not us.

"You're thinking that I cannot be serious, I know." Tyki went on, and took to pacing again, his left foot hitting the same squeaky floorboard every other turn. The coils of his dark hair looked like polished wire in the window's light. "But even if he does not want me, I have to try. I need to know that he doesn't. Otherwise, I'll just keep letting Exorcists go thinking they might know him a little."

"Then what are you proposing?"

Tyki smiled the smile of a man who was used to holding a cigarette between his teeth but wasn't at the moment, so his lips pinched together just slightly more on one side than the other. "I will hand you this war."

For a moment, Allen simply did not understand what had been said. "Sorry? I thought you might have said something about handing me the war?"

The Noah laughed. "A chance for a chance, boy, that's all. If you let me meet him – find a way to get him to a place I tell you, when I tell you to, I will give you the location of Noah's new Ark at a given time. You can do anything you want with the information I give you." He tilted his head to the side a little, and his smile grew a little wider, though it did not turn feline for once. "If I can convince him of my intentions... I don't know. And if you manage to kill the Earl, my family, and the innumerable Akuma they have defending them... I don't know what happens then, either. But it is the only card I have to play this hand." His shrug was almost careless.

"What, for you, would be the best scenario, then?"

"The Earl dies, my brother and my niece live, Lavi agrees that hunting the ghosts of dead prophets and discovering the secrets of history is less interesting than I am."

Allen was somewhat surprised by the sheer honesty in that answer. "Why?"

This time, Tyki did not smile at all. Instead, his eyes turned downward, hiding their color from sight. "The Earl will not understand. There is no good man in all of Sodom for him, no gate keeper, no hope. The three of us – Sheryl and I especially – are too tied to this world to give it up completely."

A part of Tyki was still the man Allen had played poker with on the train.

The Exorcist felt is Innocence turn back into the arm it usually took the shape of, and felt his back settle a little more uncomfortably against the wooden headboard. His stomach gave a momentary protest at having to take just that little bit more weight, but he ignored it. Now was not the time to show any more weakness than he already had – it was the time to think as much as he could, and try to understand what exactly he could be agreeing to, what exactly he could be hearing. It was difficult. Everything hurt, which was distracting. And the way Tyki wavered in his white shirt – like the floor was too hot in front him so the heat lines were making him dance – was making the boy feel somewhat sick.

Allen ignored it all. "What will you do if Lavi... if Lavi wants you?" He could not bring himself to talk about love to the man in front of him.

"I don't know. Run away, I suppose."

"Run away?"

Tyki looked mildly exasperated. "How should I know what will happen? I don't have a plan that goes beyond bringing us together – and even that only really made sense to me in the last half hour waiting for you to wake up. I don't plan to stop him from killing Akuma, and I plan to murder every one of you, if he'll let me. What more do you want?"

The Exorcist did not know what he wanted, but he felt the slightest bit assured that Tyki was not laying some elaborate trap for the apprentice Bookman. Allen did not want to trust Tyki – a part of him rebelled at the very thought – but he knew that he should, that Lavi would never forgive him if the two them lost this chance. He could not tell if the thought came from himself or the other person who sometimes seemed to share his skull, but it did not really matter. It was the right thing. A chance to end the war – a chance make Lavi happy—

A chance at Kanda. Allen perished the thought.

"I want to know first." Allen said logically, and watched Tyki's grayish skin pale just marginally at the words. He waited a moment for the Noah to protest before he went on. "You tell me when and where the Ark will be, and I will tell you what mission Lavi is currently on. If you hurry, you find Lavi. If you don't, it's a lost chance and you'll have to wait for fate to find him for you. If your information proves false, the Earl will believe anything his brother tells him, even from the wrong side of a war." He had never imagined saying that. He had never wanted to. But it came out of his mouth as easily as his exhaled breath, and it made more sense to him than trying to keep information from a man who seemed to be in love.

Tyki seemed to think about what had been said. He twitched a bit. After a few heartbeats, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a match from his pants. Smoking, he seemed calmer, but the thoughtful expression never quite left his features. "Fine." He said after a long moment, and blew the salty air away from Allen's face. "The new Ark will be in Madrid on the twenty-third of the month, likely in the southern most part, probably over a catholic church. That day, the Earl will be more or less preoccupied with other things. If you pick the right moment, I would say a few hours before dinner, he will not be on the Ark itself, but hardly anything else will be either. It would make an easy target, assuming you have big enough guns." He took another long drag and – suddenly – sat directly on the floor with his legs folded up in front of him, the same way he had on the train. The tiredness that hung on him seemed even more pronounced.

Allen wasn't sure what to say. The truth, he supposed. "Lavi is in the slums of Bucharest, searching for Innocence with Lenalee. Even if there's nothing there, he should at least be there until tomorrow."

Tyki's face was a strange combination of fear and hope. "Really?"

"Yes."

The Noah tucked the cigarette in his mouth and smiled grimly around it, grinned as bright as Allen had ever seen him. But there wasn't anything murderous in the look. That had sank below the surface somehow. "Wonderful. Now, if you wouldn't mind bleeding, I'll put you right back in the woods were I found you."

Allen tried not to feel annoyed. "Excellent plan, Tyki Mikk. Absolutely spectacular."

There were Akuma on the fourth day. They fought like caged tigers, ruthlessly, but had less aim than was logical – shredding through houses, burning through churches, shooting at anyone and anything that moved. It reminded Lavi of what he had heard of the fight that had killed Daisya, though he could not imagine that it was the same any more than he could imagine the reason for so many Akuma to be around. He only knew, with his back pressed to the brick of a bank, facing the wooden side of the city hall, that he had been hit by too much glass the last time he'd been standing under a window, and blood was running down the side of his neck and into his jacket.

Winter was in full swing, Lavi noted, watching plumps of frost form in front of his mouth every time he panted, and he wished it was just a little warmer. If the blood on his neck had not been freezing, he might have been strong enough to hold in his shivers and hide just that much better than he could now.

The building in front him began to shake and rattle from gunfire on its opposite side. He pulled his hammer up in front of him and tried to focus on the other side of that building, imagining that he might be able to summon fire in a place that was out of sight.

He'd only done that with things that were in the immediate area – like right behind him – but he didn't want to expose himself right now. So he closed his eyes and focused on that side of the building, and drew a mental seal on the ground there. It took so much effort, so much time, that he did not feel pain until he was lying on his side in a pile of rubble, agony searing up his side. Still, he mumbled the words to invoke fire and felt the Innocence in his hands respond accordingly – and smiled crookedly at the scream of an Akuma burning alive. Or maybe burning undead. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he couldn't see anything but red when he blinked his eyes open and his ribs felt like they'd been shattered like the windows. Rolling onto his back caused the pain to grow almost sickening.

Icy cold water – just this side of rain – began to hit him softly in the face. Lavi thanked whatever god was listening that it was getting the blood out of his eyes, and then almost took back the sentiment; the water was too cold. He heard thunder roll in the distance.

Something exploded a few streets over. Lenalee was still fine.

It felt like a small eternity before Lavi could stand the pain enough to drag himself to where the bank wall used to be, and an even longer one before the rain had cleared his vision enough for him to see that the building in front of him was gone. He glanced down at himself and winced at his ribs. Something large and flat had hit him very hard. His feet tried to give out from under him and he teetered, slipped, and finally pitched to the side toward the muddy, cold cobblestones.

Lavi put out his hand and pulled his Innocence to the side, and finally closed his eye.

The hands that caught him were so gentle he almost didn't understand why he had stopped falling. He only realized, after a moment, that the scent was terribly familiar, the warmth a striking memory. Distantly, it occurred to him that there were no more explosions, no more sounds of battle. There was only unrealistic silence and arms cradling his impossibly sore ribcage, and the scent of cigarettes and the press of a warm, solid chest to the side of his face.

In a whisper that was hardly audible to Lavi's abused ears, a tender voice spoke. "Are you alright?"

It was like a dream, but that nightmares never turned into good dreams. It was always the reverse. But Lavi did not want to care. Instead, he allowed his eye to open and he looked up, looked at the face of the man he had left not very long ago at all, and felt something.

Someone had lit a dark, an all-consuming fire, in his chest. Someone had shoved an ice-sickle into his heart. Whatever had happened, Lavi found himself desperate and thankful and frightened at the dark, cruel, loving face in front of him. The fear died away, replaced by understanding. This man, this Noah who was holding him, had ended a battle at the drop of a hat for his sake, and now held his life like delicately spun thread between his fingers. And Lavi could not even feel the slightest bit frightened.

He could only feel warm.

"Tyki..." The name felt somehow like it didn't mean what he meant it to, and it sounded far too impersonal. Lavi fought with himself, unsure what he wanted, until he met the older man's eyes and saw, beneath the external concern, behind those soft golden eyes, there was something that was neither kind nor gentle. The thing behind those eyes, nameless to him, had been there from the start and would always be there, even in the moments when Tyki seemed perfectly human. It was not new. It had been there longer than Lavi had been. And at the moment, the redhead did not care. "Tyki."

The Noah blinked at him with a somewhat disbelieving expression. "Oh... don't cry... Lavi... I didn't mean to – wait, am I touching something—"

The apprentice Bookman threw himself at the older man without a care for what someone looking might have thought. He buried his fingers in the man's hair, snagging the band from the back of Tyki's head, and pressed his lips to the Noah's. Perhaps it was the spontaneity of the kiss that parted Tyki's lips so easily, and perhaps it was Lavi's enthusiasm that made the older man catch him up in his arms and pull them closer. The passion of the movement, the complete disregard for everything else – that was what put Lavi at ease. He had seen the dark behind that Noah's eyes, and he understood what it felt for him.

He understood that if he kept on, there would be no going back, and that he could not simply walk away from the past the way he could the future. Lavi knew it all in the span of that kiss.

Breaking away was the last thing Lavi wanted, but he allowed his feet to flatten and their mouths to part all the same. Though physical communication conveyed so much, it did not explain everything. It could not say what Lavi wanted to most at that moment.

He opened his mouth, and Tyki began speaking.

"I came to find you as soon as I found out where you were." Tyki breathed, and his hands slid up a Lavi's neck to touch the sides of his face. The man's hands were terribly warm compared to the cold winter air, and they stuck just briefly in the drying blood on Lavi's neck. "I know that there are other things we should talk about, other things that I would like to do, to say, to find out – but there isn't the time. Whatever your answer, I swear to you that I don't have it in me to kill you, otherwise I would have already." The Noah looked the apprentice Bookman directly in the eyes and whispered. "Can I see you? Can I find you and be with you even if you can't give up your war? Can we slip away unnoticed and fight ruthlessly when people look? Or can we make something more of this? I love you. Just you. Even if I am not kind, and I am not human, and I am not what you wanted, I love you."

Lavi almost managed then to say something, but the Noah shook his head and stopped him.

"Do not tell me that you do not know if you love anyone. I already know. That isn't what I want to hear. I only want to know... will you disappear for the rest of the day, and spend it with me?" There was something horribly broken in the Noah's voice, something that went deeper than what his words implied. Perhaps the tiredness in his eyes made it more obvious, or the set of his shoulders. Whatever it was, he was as easy to read as an open book. "I only ask for the day, Lavi, if that is all you can give. I won't demand... things of you. I won't..."

The apprentice Bookman cut him off with a kiss. "Tyki..." Lavi did not know if he would regret it – if he would live to regret it – but he shifted so the tips of his fingers played at the fringe of the Noah's shirt. "I don't honestly know if I know what I want exactly, but when I knew that you were you..." He tried to find a word for the feeling in his chest, a way to describe the warmth. He didn't know. "Where can we go?" He asked instead, and watched even the darkest part of his lover's eyes turn bright. The color did not change – the irises remained the same gentle gold – but something else turned tender and loving. Perhaps it was hope or desire or loyalty. Whatever it was, the dark, the part that was supposed to be evil, expressed the emotion just as well as the human mask outside of it did.

"Anywhere." Tyki said softly. "Absolutely anywhere."

"And what will we do?"

"Pretend that you don't have a choice to make."

Lavi didn't quite smile. "I do not want this to be goodbye."

The Noah reached as if to gather him up in an embrace, stepped forward as if to press them flush. It would have been perfect – it would have been what Lavi wanted – but they never made it that far. A streak of red and black, a flutter of lace, and Tyki was crouched six feet away, his open coat billowing in the wind caused by such a quick movement. He stayed that way, with one leg out to keep him low, and his right hand pressed to the ground between his parted knees. He was suddenly alert, like an animal prepared for an oncoming attack.

This time, Lavi saw Lenalee come at the Noah, and saw Tyki barely dodge the pointed toe of her boot. There was no exchange of blows. Only the Exorcist threw herself into the fight.

Tyki met Lavi's eyes for just the slimmest of moments, as if searching for permission.

The apprentice Bookman closed his eyes and lowered his head.

It was over in a fraction of a second, or at least stopped. There was a sound like breaking ground, and a loud thump. And then silence. The redhead lifted his eyes to see the two combatants standing ten yards away from each other, Lenalee breathing deeply, Tyki sporting a small cut on the edge of his cheek.

"May I please kill her?" Was all the Noah said, and it was enough to make the girl stop her assault before it could start again.

Lavi almost laughed. "I'd rather she just let us go, really. I'll be back, promise." But it wasn't really a promise, and he knew it. It was more or less a lie. There was a very large chance that if he left with Tyki, he would prefer to never come back to the Order again.

His heart ached because of Yuu.

"Why?" Lenalee screamed the words, and he saw when she turned to him that there was dried blood on her right shoulder, bruises on her face. She had not hidden in the shadows and taken a few wounds as she could – she had darted to the front lines and taken far more damage because of it. "Why do you want to go with him? Why do you think—"

"Because I love him, Lenalee! Would you walk away from Komui – kill Komui – if he was on the wrong side of your war? Or would you do what you could, find some way to find some sacred place where you could be together for as long as you can?" Lavi realized belatedly that he was yelling at her, and that her lavender eyes were wide with shock. "It isn't the same, and I know that. In all likelihood, I will die if I go with him, and he will die if he stays around me. But we'd rather pretend that the world isn't like that than live in fear of what we know is going to happen anyway. And I know. I know that you think it's stupid of me to do this when there is Yuu and all the others. Honestly, I know that it is. Logic never makes that much sense to emotions."

Lenalee stood there, looking at him, blinking with tear-filled eyes. "What do I tell them, Lavi? What do I tell Kanda?"

Lavi looked down at Lenalee's feet, at the pair of blood-red boots glistening in the sunlight. She was cut out for this, had been, just like Allen. He wasn't. Lavi had not been meant to be an Exorcist or a Bookman or anything of the sort. Maybe his first self had, but that person was not the same as he had been nine months ago.

"Tell him I want him to be happy." Lavi whispered. It was perhaps the truest thing he had ever said. "I should tell him that. I want to. I want to explain so much to him, and I don't want to hurt him. He... what he went through to find me..." His certainty wavered, but he caught himself. If he backed out now, if he changed his mind because of what he had found in the cellar, there would be no end to this at all. What had happened there was simply another aspect of Tyki, the dark part, that smiled just as brightly as the man outside. A part that, like the rest, loved him. "There is nothing I can do to make this fair."

"Lavi—" She was crying, it was obvious by the choked off sobs in her voice.

"Don't." He looked up and met her gaze, held it. "Don't ask me to stay."

"Why not?"

"Because I do not want to be cruel."

"What are you saying?"

Lavi clenched both of his hands into fists and squared his shoulders, ignored the pain that rippled up his chest with the tightening of his bruised flesh. "I am not going back to the Order with you."

"But Lavi, your family—"

"I have no family. I have no friends. I have no future." He said the words like a litany, and heard his voice grow louder with each word. They did not hurt they way they should have. It was true that the people of the Order meant something to him, but they were not the things she labeled them as. They were not as important as the concept of family that had been taught to him. "If I cared as much as you seem to think I do, would I not be reluctant? I have left people on the battlefield to die, Lenalee, I can walk away from you standing here. And that is what I intend to do."

No blow could have felled her so quickly, no blade could have cut her so deeply. Lenalee simply slumped to the ground without words and cried in a voice that almost did not sound human, loud and wretched. The sight of her so torn by her desire to bring him home and her desire to see him happy was not enough to make Lavi feel anything besides what he knew he was obligated to. Pity. It was not empathy. He knew then, felt then, his own darkness, twisting around his heart.

This was the right thing to do. No matter what he and Yuu had had, what they might have had, what they could have had, this was still better than lying to himself and to the world. Tyki would see that inside they were the same, and he would understand that their masks were equally well worn. Yuu never would. Yuu would try to make the mask real. Yuu would never love the man who had walked away from so many dying, had killed by inaction. Yuu couldn't. To have a chance, the apprentice Bookman would have to lie. Lying was not love. Even if Lavi did not truly know what love was, he understood that honesty was an integral part of it, and a part that he would never be able to have as completely as he could with Tyki.

Lavi looked at the Noah, and knew that his face was cold and blank and dark. He saw desire and acceptance and understanding behind the older man's eyes. The warmth, despite him, welled in his chest like a wave. It did not make sense to him how he could feel so much for this man and nothing but he had been trained to for the girl beside him.

"Take me home, Tyki." Was what the boy said, and he moved to pick up his Innocence and holster it without a backward glance. "Your home."

Next time: Allen and the Order, Kanda and the truth, Lavi and sexual frustration! Look forward to the next installment of: SSP!

And... for everyone who was hoping for the OTHER pairing... I have a fic for that with chapter one and part of chapter two written. Once chapter two is finished, I'll start posting it. So no worries – you will get your does of that delicious thing. It took a lot of thought and planning and effort to get this fic to go this way, but I'm really happy that it did. I just hope that you guys are happy too, and keep your eyes out for the new fic in the next month or so.

See you next chapter!