I wanted to have this whole thing done in February and look at us now. Who'd have thought. If I don't finish by March, you all (five of you including my bestie) have permission to shoot me. Thanks everyone who read so far, even those long since absent and moved on!
"Here," said Kanda, and that was it.
Kanda's feet even slowed before he said it. He padded forward like a cat. Every moment was controlled towards an end: don't alert the akuma.
The strength had come out of both of them like steam.
In Marie's case, strength came out of him as steam. He panted from the short, quiet run. Both of them had no more reason to rush. There would be a long way to go before the night was over. He needed to catch his breath as soon as he lost it.
Marie took the chance to assess their surroundings. Here, Kanda had said, so it must be here.
There wasn't any sound that came from here except a faint clanking. Something long, loose, and metal swayed in the breeze against another metal surface. That couldn't be the Charity Bell. All other texture in the landscape was the reflection that the stone made. The Finders shouted to each other along the bay while the akuma took pot shots.
Kanda had led them out of the warren of streets into a courtyard. He said nothing either. One loose chain, one boy's heart, and Marie couldn't pick out even a trace of someone else.
"What? Tell me," he ordered. For once, he told himself, he would act like the team lead. He had let the two juniors have their own way far too much of the time.
"He looks dead."
Kanda's boots ground against the stone as he changed position. He would be standing at the base of the structure, craning his neck to look.
"Something chained him up. On the lamppost," Kanda said.
That was what Marie could have told him. He should have known who it was from further away that the body wouldn't made the noises that it should have. Not even the comatose Fallen Ones were as silent as this grave. There was still the draining of the flesh.
"If there's no injury, cut him down," Marie told him.
He heard the space of a silence while Kanda came to terms with what he had to see. There was no answer for him.
Marie waited, and did not speak.
Several seconds later, Mugen slashed the chains with a dirty 'shhk.' Iron, thick, half-rusted. Marie wanted to throw off his amplifiers and cover his ears to block it out.
Now wasn't the time. It wouldn't help.
The body fell with a thud just as heavy as its step should have been light.
Not on to the stones. The spine snapped back when Kanda caught it. Working down the corpse, the arms flailed, the knees cracked, each part seemed to spasm in place. Hearing the smack of dead meat like that would change someone else. Marie had already changed, and still he had to keep himself from vomiting.
Kanda himself had seen it happen before. Though Marie knew that well, he still didn't want to put another weight on his slim shoulders now. They had a time limit before the old man slipped out of their reach and into the Noah's. He wouldn't let Kanda make this decision.
Marie stood next to him. He touched the corpse's knee to check that the flesh was stiff and uncontrolled. The three of them together, and still he only heard two hearts.
Daisya made bigger mistakes than this!
Marie lifted his hand.
That was what he couldn't stand. Daisya should have gone down kicking and screaming. At least, Marie thought that with how loud he was, he might get warning first for when he died. Being right about that was no comfort when the noise came through his golem's mouth.
It sickened him as much as the smell of intestines that had suddenly loosed up.
"Kanda…"
The cloth flapped around the body. There'd been no muted tap where that corpse would have been let down. Kanda still was holding it up to the night breeze as it blew.
"I'll check."
"I don't hear him," Marie said.
The thicker canvas of Kanda's cloak swept back. He'd sunk down so fast into a crouch that the tail of it fell on its own, fluttering below Marie's chin.
The corpse didn't make any such sounds. The steel toes on its boots picked out one tink and then another, and that was it. Kanda hadn't dropped it or laid it down. It was still stretched between his arms.
"I can't see any marks," said Kanda logically.
The fabric whispered over itself where Kanda pushed Daisya's cloak away from the body. Right now he was going over the corpse with the same attention to detail he should have used for homework. Marie didn't want to imagine what it looked like. He did anyway. The bandages unstuck with a tck and furled on the ground with a shff. No blood clots snapped while Kanda stripped the body. One clean corpse…
Marie paused.
It was affecting his judgment, being here, even if he didn't feel impaired.
Finding Daisya was odd in itself. He should have known before, what it meant. That there was a body meant that no Akuma had killed him. Any human would have had to have hurt him, to have left a mark. It could have been Daisya's own Innocence or an unknown piece, but Marie couldn't find any even when he reached for it. Only Mugen answered. Besides, Daisya synchronized well. There was never any danger of Falling for him.
So, it was a Noah.
Marie was grateful that he didn't rely on sight anymore. Having one scene in front of your eyes would force the other senses to fade. Any signs that could be useful were subordinate to one narrow band of view. As he was now, he could say for certain that nothing a hundred yards from here was moving. The only reason Marie didn't freeze with fear was the confidence he had in his hearing.
They must have missed the Noah by minutes. It was here, hunting, somewhere in the night beyond. The threat it posed wasn't aimed at the two of them. Chances were, it was after Tiedoll.
He should thank Daisya for drawing it out of hiding. Whatever he'd done, it bought his team some valuable time.
Kanda didn't seem to realize it yet. He was still on the ground with the body.
A breeze passed over the square. The roofs scythed through the sheaves of wind, splitting it up before it could thrum between the buildings and chill him any further.
Marie thought about that trade. The rest of his life might not have been much next to the next ten-odd years he'd thought Daisya would survive. His and Kanda's together shifted that balance. It may be that it was no trade at all, and they would all end up dead alongside the general.
A Noah. Didn't Kanda say that one had trapped him in a dream state?
If Daisya wasn't…
The illusion broke over Marie's head like an egg. No. That couldn't be.
Dreaming or not, he would have heard Daisya's heartbeat from this close. Kanda would have checked for a pulse immediately. There was no chance of life.
Ting
The metal hook at the tip of Daisya's hood skidded across the cobbles. Kanda must have slid the hood down over his head to checking for head wounds. He wouldn't find anything there, nor did he expect to, Marie was sure of it.
It wouldn't help to say so.
Marie stayed silent while they let the truth sink in. Even when Kanda set the body down. The stiff limbs smacked softly. Then he heard the folds of the cloak's fabric as they rasped against each other. Kanda would have moved his hands up under Daisya's cloak to feel along his ribs.
The sounds fell apart from a clear image of the body and its holder to an abstract mix of materials. Marie tried to remember what was wool and what was leather. The metal that clinked against itself could have been his earrings, the tips of his boots, the last of his Innocence, or even a chain that Kanda failed to cut.
Through it all, there was the sharp, sticky noise of bandage unpeeled from sweating skin. The corpse was cold.
Marie he had to turn away just then. Without being able to see, it still felt wrong to face the two of them like that.
"The Science Division will find out what happened," he said. "The Noah's powers aren't predictable."
"He's not injured," said Kanda.
Eventually, the soles of Kanda's shoes told Marie what happened. He'd made his peace with not knowing.
Kanda shifted position so that he was no longer kneeling, but crouching, one foot flat on the ground. He must have pulled the corpse across his knees. Marie heard his free hand tap the stomach first and then the hollow of Daisya's throat, like a doctor's. How long had he been there? Was there even a part of Daisya that he'd left unseen?
Marie swallowed his bile.
"We can't wait longer. They may be tracking us."
"Tch."
The noises folded up in reverse as Kanda rolled back the bandages, re-buckled and re-tied, then straightened the cloak back over the body.
"We don't have time."
Knees cracking, Kanda stood up.
He hadn't moved it at all. The corpse was still held in his arms instead of the shoulder carry that they used. Daisya's head, Marie knew suddenly, had sunk against his chest. Kanda's heartbeat resonated through his skull.
Kanda really was gentle.
Of the things he could tell him, Marie hadn't sunk low enough to say any.
He rested his hand on Kanda's shoulder. For a moment, Kanda tipped his head against it. He held Kanda. Kanda held the corpse.
…
They crept downhill cautiously. There were still Akuma in the streets, hunting, though nothing more than Marie could handle. Mugen stayed sheathed. From the moment they found Daisya, Kanda's hands never left his body.
Daisya had told him he and Kanda had…some kind of understanding between them over Kanda's mission. Marie hadn't wanted to pry.
Even with his head laid under the pillow, he couldn't always miss some of the sound that came from the neighbouring room in the inns they went to. They talked late into the night together, though he couldn't always make out the words.
Sometimes, when he saw Kanda in the Order's halls before dawn, he knew he'd come from a different room.
Daisya never had told him everything. Had that been a secret he was keeping? Marie couldn't even bring himself to think so. He didn't care enough to lie to him. More likely, he forgot that he'd never said anything. He just went straight to complaining about the latest in Kanda's obscure muttering.
Their funeral procession carried on through the twisting streets as Marie stopped himself from understanding. Worrying about Kanda when Daisya was dead and Tiedoll was being hunted down would help no one. Kanda would tell him what he needed to.
Losing Daisya wouldn't be the worst thing that had happened to him.
Marie did understand that part.
His own best friends that he had seen die were a part of his life still. They didn't stop hanging around the halls where they'd all grown up. Marie couldn't unpick them from himself. They were still the last things he saw.
Daisya…his time with him now felt like a bubble that had just snapped closed. He felt more worried about cleaning up after him. Telling the bereaved that he had survived their children wasn't something he wanted.
He got so far as to wonder what he'd have to do to break the news to Daisya. Then he remembered what the problem was in the first place.
Marie was reaching, in a way, for a glass on the table he remembered setting down some time ago. It wasn't there. There wasn't any reason that it should have been. Daisya never should have travelled this far west. Him being absent here was natural.
"I'll go to Bodrum. After we find the General," he said.
In response, Kanda grunted. Was he relieved he didn't have to? Would he come alongside Marie? He didn't know.
Kanda's boot cut a sharp ch-chk as he missed a lip between two flagstones.
There was something that drove Kanda that he would never tell him. Tiedoll knew more than he had told Marie, but when he did tell, he had let slip that Kanda was more than human. Marie had been surprised by that, and then he'd swallowed it down. Whatever the reason, he expected that Kanda would be less.
Marie kept pace with Kanda. Some days he had to hop to keep up, now that Kanda had grown so much. Tonight he put the toes of each foot just level with the heel. They were drifting downhill like fog, not walking.
He could not see Kanda's face.
Marie regretted it for the first time in some time. There was no sound from Kanda that would tell him what the right thing was to say.
Nothing would do for the time being.
The only mercy was that he couldn't see the corpse Kanda held to himself. The mourning, for him, would be later, when he moved around a space where Daisya had been and couldn't find him there. Without seeing the corpse or touching it, there was no evidence. There was no voice that would be cracked or distorted. Death was only absence.
He could keep himself on his feet until it started to wear at him.
"Kanda…" he said.
"Are you hearing something?" Kanda asked quietly.
"No. There are some gunshots closer to the edge of the city," he reported. "Nothing within threat range. The Finders trapped the ones that stayed by the harbour."
"Hm," said Kanda.
Marie cursed himself while he padded along behind Kanda's lead. Their time alone was almost over. The Finders' conversations were starting to float up to them from the shoreline along with the break of waves. That stiff seaside scent was the same everywhere.
He'd avoided it long enough.
Though Kanda would lie to him, he should still hear it. The only thing he could do now for Kanda was to do what he was supposed to, so that Kanda didn't have to.
"Are you all right?" he asked lamely.
"Yeah."
"You don't have to—"
"Keep listening for Tiedoll," said Kanda.
He quickened his pace to try and get away from Marie. At least, he couldn't think of any other reason. How…childish. It was childish, and Kanda was still a child in more ways than not. Was he eighteen? That was the last birthday Marie remembered. One year younger than he'd been.
"Then you need to keep watch for him," he said, not meaning to.
He could feel the noise Kanda made more than he heard it, and he heard his footsteps tighten again into a faster rhythm.
"Kanda, I can't see."
No answer. Marie lengthened his stride again, knowing Kanda would have to run if he wanted to outpace him.
"There is no way I can tell what you want. You haven't even told me where this leads. I've followed you."
Suddenly, Kanda slowed down again. Marie didn't hear it, he only felt the change in how the air moved, the eddies stopping where they'd curled off of Kanda's back.
"Are you still able to complete our mission? I can't understand that much from what…noises I hear from you, the ones that you don't hide. Tell me."
They had stopped. Kanda breathed soundlessly. That didn't mean quietly—Marie knew what he was talking about when he said it. He could hear that Kanda was there from his pulse, from the sound of his lungs filling, but the noise of air scraping past his lips was gone. Whether consciously or not, he was trying to block out Marie's only point of reference. There weren't even footsteps.
The point of noise that was Kanda was fading rapidly from Marie's sense of here. It was like some hand had reached down and plucked him up from the earth.
Marie's own measured breaths felt awkward in that silence. He was only talking to himself.
A bitter taste welled up in his sinuses, like a glass of brandy he took too quickly. It made his eyes water.
Kanda finally took his chance to breathe again when he tried to swallow that sensation. His pulse surged wildly, like he'd been underwater and was only now breaching the surface.
"Nothing's changed," he said evenly. It didn't match his heart. "We leave Daisya with the Finders. If they don't have news, we look for the General."
Daisya, he had said, not the body.
The avenue they stood on didn't run directly down to the port. Like most in the city, it snaked diagonally between cross-streets. The closed-in space bounced enough noise back from Kanda's words that Marie could remember where they were.
"All right," Marie said.
It was more unsettling than he could have predicted. With a nod, he ordered Kanda forward. The both of them broke into a light run without agreeing to. There was no point to staying here.
During the night, another thread had come out from the woven sounds of the city. There were more Innocence users somewhere within earshot. For Marie, that could be miles away, but it still meant that the people of this town had someone new to guard them. He and Kanda were no longer needed.
Lee must have ordered all exorcists to the city who could reach it. Having travelled through the night, they were here in time to draw off the ones that hadn't yet been trapped or reduced to dust.
Marie cursed them for being so late.
I wanted to use Marie's perspective to leave some ambiguity in Kanda's reactions. His whole relationship with Daisya and Alma each in-canon is so contradictory, it felt weird to write it for him! Marie on the other hand-he's the only person in this goddamn building I respect (the only one to say Daisya's name after he dies. Lavi and Lenalee do also flash back to him). Let me know if you had any thoughts on the series, now that it's done! I can't imagine what I'll do with my free time now that the beast is (mostly) slain