[Fic] Illusion of Truth - D.Gray-man, Lavi/Kanda, 9/10+
Um. It belatedly occurred to me that I probably should have put some kind of warning on the last chapter, except I can't think of a way to do it that doesn't ruin the impact and give everything away. Extra angst warning, maybe. My apologies to anyone who was upset by it.
One more chapter to go, and I will have posted 35k in ten days. Ahahaha, I'm nuts. And why is it that muses always get loudest when you don't have time to write? I've been off work for almost a year and have hardly written anything, comparatively. Now I'm going back to school in a week, and suddenly they're lining up and beating down my brain trying to get me to write their ideas. @_@
Title: Illusion of Truth
Series: D.Gray-man
Pairing: Lavi/Kanda
Rating: NC-17 in other chapters
Warnings: violence, sex, yaoi, spoilers (I don't usually warn for spoilers, but some of what I know about the characters is manga stuff that hasn't been revealed in the anime yet, just fyi)
Chapter length: 3530
Total length: 31,205
Kanda is starting to wonder if there is a 'real' Lavi.
Eventually Lavi's heartwrenching sobs eased off into normal crying, and he stopped making that awful keening noise. Kanda continued to hold him, not knowing what else to do. It did seem the other man was taking some comfort from his embrace, at least.
When even the crying had turned into the occasional sniffle, Kanda pulled back just far enough to let him get a look at the redhead. Lavi's face was blotched, and the tears had created tracks in the mud on his cheek. He had his eye closed and was struggling to even out his breathing, probably fighting for control.
"Lavi..." Kanda started, but the redhead opened his eye and shook his head wordlessly. Sighing, Kanda rolled his eyes. He didn't know why the other man was objecting to him using the name now, but if it would make the redhead feel better not to be 'Lavi' then Kanda could oblige him. "Fine, Trey then..."
To his surprise Lavi cut him off again, reaching up and pressing a finger over Kanda's lips. "No, Yuu," he said, his voice hoarse but steady. "I'm the Bookman now. I don't have a name."
Staring down at him, Kanda absorbed that. There was something about the other man's expression that suggested he'd been forced to grow up a great deal in the last few minutes, a sort of sorrowful maturity that hadn't been there before. He might not feel like he was ready for the responsibility yet, but Kanda thought he'd do a better job than he gave himself credit for.
"All right, Bookman," he agreed. It felt weird to say it, and he grimaced. "It's going to take me a while to get used to calling you that," he warned.
Lavi - no, Bookman - gave a watery chuckle. "Yeah, well, it's going to take me a while to get used to answering to it, so we're even," he replied. He pulled free of Kanda's embrace and stood, looking shaky but determined. "We have to get back to the city. Obviously the Akuma isn't still here, or it would have killed us by now. It might have decided to use our distraction as an opportunity to ransack Mafeking."
Picking up Mugen, Kanda nodded and stood as well. He deactivated the Innocence and slid it home in its sheath. He could worry about cleaning it later, it would just have to stay muddy for the moment. "What about..." Not certain how to say it, he glanced down at the former Bookman's body.
The new Bookman gazed down at his mentor with an expression that almost managed to be neutral, then looked out over the pit mine. "How deep do you think that mud's gotta be, to have hidden that Akuma?" he asked softly. "Six or seven feet?"
"At least," Kanda agreed, but frowned. "What if it dries up, though?"
Bookman laughed wryly. "Yuu, this is the dry season," he said. "It won't get any drier than this. He deserves better," he added, looking down at his master again. "But it's not like he's got any 'home' I could take him to and bury him. I'm the closest thing to family he had. And we don't have time to bury him here. Help me?" He crouched down by the body, taking the old man's shoulders and preparing to lift him.
Wordlessly Kanda took the feet, and together they carried the body down to the bottom of the mine where the pool of sludge had formed. It seemed horribly disrespectful for them to just dump the old man in, but Bookman was right that they didn't have the time for more. It was better than leaving the body out for scavenging animals to get at, he supposed.
With an effort they swung the body out over the mud pit and let go. It fell near the centre and began to sink immediately, so at least they didn't have to worry about it staying at the surface.
Bookman turned resolutely away, not bothering to watch as the body slowly disappeared under the mud. Kanda put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked, still concerned about the redhead's state of mind.
"I'll manage," Bookman replied, but gave him a small, grateful smile. He seemed very firmly entrenched in that unknown third personality now, and Kanda was more certain than ever that it was the 'real' one. Somehow, he didn't think there would be any more slips back into previous personae.
They headed back to Mafeking at a run, side by side as they raced over the veldt. "What if it's not attacking the city?" Kanda wanted to know. "It might have gone to ground to lick its wounds, instead. I did manage to hurt it fairly badly. How will we find it again?"
"Trust me, Yuu, I don't think finding it is ever going to be a problem," Bookman said. "It seems to want you dead pretty bad. It might hole up for a little while, but it'll be back before long. Probably even before it's healed completely. It doesn't seem entirely sane." He paused for a moment, then shook his head. "Lemme rephrase that. It seems even less sane than most Akuma."
Snorting with reluctant amusement, Kanda kept a sharp eye on their surroundings. "It looks like most of the British soldiers have been turned into Akuma, if not all of them," he warned the other man. "We came under fire when we were chasing after you. Not nearly as many Akuma as I've seen in one place before, but a lot more than I would have expected. I think you're right and it must have a way to create more Akuma."
"I'd rather have been wrong about this one," Bookman sighed. "If they were all survivors from the last fight, then we wouldn't have to worry quite so much about one escaping and doing it all over again. We'll have to make sure we get every last one." He made a frustrated noise. "I hate being useless! I wish I had my hammer."
"I wish you did, too," Kanda admitted. Even with two Exorcists this would have been a tough battle. Working on his own, he honestly wasn't certain he could kill the damned thing. "But you don't, so we'll just have to deal with it. We'll worry about taking out the second level first, then go after the first levels. Like you said before, your job will be helping me track them all down."
"And doing dick all otherwise," Bookman muttered sourly, barely loud enough for Kanda to hear him. Kanda chose to save his breath for running rather than answering, because there was nothing he could really say.
Kanda had fully expected another attack by the 'soldiers' on the way back to Mafeking, but they didn't so much as glimpse a patrol on the horizon. Far from making him happy, he worried about the implications. Had they been called off to regroup with the second level, or were they on a rampage in the city right that moment? Somehow he very much doubted that he'd managed to destroy them all on his way to the mine.
The sun was just setting as they reached the outskirts. There should have been people out on the streets, cramming in their last minute errands before the curfew imposed by the British troops came into effect, but everything was eerily silent. The hair rose on the back of Kanda's neck as they ran through street after empty street, with so sign that anyone even lived there.
"You don't suppose they're all Akuma, and they're waiting for us?" he asked Bookman in horror. There was no way he could destroy that many Akuma by himself.
"No, I think they're all hiding," Bookman replied grimly. "Either mewed up in their houses, or in the shafts of the gold mine. There's been another attack. The inn is gone."
"What?" They were still three streets away, and not within sight of the building. Kanda stared at him, and nearly tripped over an uneven cobblestone. "How do you know that?"
Bookman pointed in the direction of the inn. "The line of the rooftops is different," he said. "The inn and both buildings on either side are missing. See the gap?"
Squinting in the direction Bookman was indicating, Kanda finally found the suspiciously empty area in the skyline. He would never have noticed it if Bookman hadn't pointed it out. "Shit," he swore, and picked up his pace. "Taking you as a hostage worked so well, it must have decided to go back for Marysa."
"It hasn't been paying enough attention, then," Bookman replied wryly. "It's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that you don't like her much." He matched his pace to Kanda's, stretching out his long legs and running with an ease Kanda envied.
Turning the corner of the cross street nearest to the inn, they were confronted by a scene of utter chaos and devastation. All that was left of the inn was a pile of debris, smoking and charred in some places and nothing but rubble in others. The buildings on either side had been damaged extensively as well, but nothing beyond them had been touched. It was clear that the inn had been the target of the attack.
Kanda winced. He was still alive, so obviously the lotus hadn't been destroyed, but finding it in that mess was going to take a while.
Faint sobbing reached them as they slowed and approached more cautiously. Kanda had drawn and activated Mugen the moment they'd seen the destruction, and he held it warily before him now. Bookman stayed two steps behind him, far enough back that he wouldn't be in the way if Kanda needed to fight.
They found Marysa in the remains of the tiny backyard, the dry grass liberally strewn with wreckage from the building. She knelt beside the body of her father, crying into her hands. Her hair was falling out of its pins, and her dress was torn and dirtied. Blood showed dark against the pale blue cloth in several places, but not all of it was hers.
It wasn't difficult to tell how Dirck van den Dool had died; they'd seen another corpse far too similar very recently. The man's body had been crushed into the ground, then run through from above with a large object.
Kanda glanced over his shoulder to see how Bookman was taking it, afraid the reminder would be too much for him. The wound of his master's death was still too fresh, and it might not take much to break through the wall the redhead had put over the hurt.
To his surprise, Bookman's eye was fixed on Marysa rather than Dirck. "Yuu," he said as he moved up beside Kanda. He kept his voice too low to carry, but it was flat and devoid of emotion. "Look at her arm."
Confused, Kanda looked back at Marysa. Her sleeve was the bloodiest part of her dress, and it looked like her hand had been inured as well. Her entire left shoulder and upper arm were soaked with blood, but oddly, there didn't seem to be any damage to the dress.
He opened his mouth to ask what it was Bookman had wanted to draw his attention to, but realization blindsided him before he could get the first word out. Left shoulder and upper arm. Left hand. Those were the places he'd wounded the Akuma, back in the pit mine.
Could they really have been living with an Akuma all this time and not have realized it? Kanda was perfectly capable of believing that anyone could be a potential Akuma, no matter how innocent they seemed, but surely Bookman and Trey would have seen some sign of it in the six months they'd spent at the inn? "You don't seriously think..."
He was talking to himself, because Bookman had already moved past him. He had his 'Trey' face on, his expression full of concern and fear for Marysa as he hurried towards the girl. "Marysa! What happened?" he called, and his voice was Trey's as well.
Looking up from her hands, Marysa sniffled once and wailed as she threw herself at the redhead. Kanda tensed, expecting Bookman to dodge, but the other man caught and held the hysterical girl in a tender embrace. Now thoroughly baffled, Kanda tried to figure out what was going through Bookman's head. If he thought Marysa was the Akuma, why was he letting her get so close?
"It was awful," she sobbed into Bookman's shirt, clutching at him. Unlike the redhead, her face didn't go blotchy from crying; even dishevelled and dirty, she looked like a pretty little doll. "The monster came back, and it said it had k-killed you and Kanda, and that it was going to kill us because you'd h-hurt it, and then it started tearing the inn apart! Papa tried to s-stop it, and he told me to run, but it... it..." With a renewed burst of tears, she buried her face in Bookman's chest. "And now Papa's dead, and I'm all alone! I don't want to be alone, please, Trey, you won't l-leave me now, will you? P-please..."
Bookman had gently manoeuvred her so they were standing in profile to Kanda. Now he drew back, running his hands down her arms as if he intended to clasp her hands reassuringly in his. Instead when he reached her wrists he clamped down hard, stepping back and jerking sharply to twist her arms behind her back. He ended up with her held out away from his body, his hands tight on her wrists as he pulled them up between her shoulder blades. "Do it," he told Kanda, turning an empty gaze to the other Exorcist.
"What? Trey! You're hurting me!" Marysa cried, struggling. "What are you doing?"
A flicker of impatience crossed Bookman's otherwise blank expression. "What are you waiting for, Yuu? Run it through!"
"Trey!" Marysa shrieked as he yanked her wrists higher to stop her from fighting. "Trey, please, you can't do this! I don't understand, please don't hurt me, please! I love you!"
Kanda stood frozen, Mugen held tightly in his hand, staring back at Bookman. It wasn't uncertainty over whether Marysa was really the Akuma that stopped him. It was the utter lack of expression in the redhead's visible eye.
As Trey, the other man had lived with Marysa for over six months, thinking she was a normal girl all that time. He'd made friends with her, laughed and played with her, comforted her when she was upset. Even if he completely believed that she was the Akuma, anyone else would have shown some trace of regret or remorse at being forced to kill someone they'd known that well.
Kanda had listened when the redhead explained that the Bookmen didn't see other people as anything but pieces of history, but he hadn't really understood. Even the revelation that it was only in his last months at the Order that Lavi had started to lose track of when he was acting hadn't quite driven home the idea that for the rest of those years, Lavi hadn't cared about them. That even as he laughed and teased them and proclaimed himself their friend, they had been nothing more to him than subjects to be written about.
Now, looking at the total lack of emotion in the redhead's eye, Kanda finally understood what it meant that his lover was the Bookman.
And a traitorous part of him now had to wonder whether Bookman would be able to casually hold him for slaughter the same way he was doing now with Marysa. Had anything 'Lavi' said to him been the truth? Yes, he'd admitted that Kanda had gotten under his guard, but wouldn't he have assured Marysa of the same thing if she'd asked? Did their relationship actually mean a damn thing, or was the real reason the redhead had been insistent on leaving him behind to carry on as a Bookman been that he'd never actually cared in the first place?
Kanda couldn't be sure, and the uncertainty paralysed him for that critical moment.
"Yuu!" Bookman exclaimed, irritated now. "What are you... shit!"
With a shriek of inhuman anger, Marysa writhed in his grip and suddenly began to expand, dropping her disguise as a normal human and taking on her true appearance as the Akuma. Bookman was forced to let go and scramble back out of the way to keep from being crushed, and he swore.
"You!" the Akuma cried, turning and lashing out at Kanda. He broke free of his vicious circle of doubts just fast enough to dodge, hitting the ground hard and rolling to avoid the stab of its claw that he knew was coming. It wasn't terribly creative in its attack patterns, which was the only thing that kept him alive as it came after him.
"This is all your fault!" it raged, striking at him again and again. He managed to get Mugen up to block each blow, but only barely. It was too damned fast for him to try to counter or parry in any way; it was all he could do to keep himself in one piece. "Trey loves me, I know he does!" it continued. If it had been truly alive it would have been frothing at the mouth, it was so lost in its anger. "He was going to stay with me forever and love me always, and nothing was going to come between us. Until you came! You changed everything, you did something to him and now he's different! If I kill you, then everything will go back the way it was!"
Bookman had been right, Kanda realized with a chill that ran down his spine and nearly made him stumble. No Akuma could ever be referred to as 'sane', but this one was a lot more unhinged than most.
Taking a chance, he broke the pattern of strike-and-block and ran to one side, forcing the Akuma to turn to follow him. It started to lash out again, then hesitated when it realized that Bookman was now directly behind Kanda. It couldn't hit Kanda without striking them both.
That moment of respite was all Kanda had needed. "Kaichuu: Ichigen!" he shouted, and Mugen's blade dissolved into the swarm of Hell's Insects. They shot straight towards the Akuma, and it shrieked in fear and disappeared.
It reappeared on the roof of a nearby building, perched like a grotesque and massively oversized bird. "This isn't over!" it hissed. "I'm going to kill you and get my Trey back, if I have to destroy the entire city to do it!"
Kanda sent the Insects after it again, but it vanished once more. This time it didn't return. Judging by its previous tactics it had probably run off again, but he didn't let his guard down as he called the Insects back into Mugen's blade.
"Why did you hesitate?" Bookman demanded angrily, coming up to him. "We had her cold, Yuu! You could have ended it right there! Didn't you believe me that she was the Akuma? The wound pattern matched exactly!"
"No, I believed you," Kanda replied, subdued as he looked back at the redhead. He searched Bookman's eye for some sign of the truth, wondering if he would even know it if he saw it. How many layers of illusion were there to this man? How deep did the deceit go? "I just... your face, your expression, it..."
Understanding filled Bookman's gaze, and his face went carefully blank again. It was that same neutral expression he'd used before to hide what he was feeling - if he was feeling anything at all. Maybe it wasn't a mask after all. Maybe this was the 'real' him.
"You realized that I didn't feel a damned thing for her, even though I'd been pretending to be her friend all this time," Bookman concluded with unsettling accuracy. "Did you think I wasn't telling you the truth when I explained things to you? Or did you just not believe it was possible for a human being to be that ruthless?"
"I've seen plenty of ruthless, heartless humans," Kanda answered him slowly. "I've even met some who were just as good as you at acting like they weren't. I just... if it had been me who was the Akuma, would you feel remorse? Or would you be just as empty as you were for her?"
Bookman met him stare for stare, still not allowing anything to show in his face. "Yuu, if you have to ask that, then part of you already believes I wouldn't care. And nothing I say or do will convince you, because you'll always wonder if it's just another lie, another act." He swallowed, and grief and regret flitted briefly through his eye before he got control of his expression again.
And he was right, damn him, he was right. Kanda instantly wondered if that momentary sorrow had been real, or calculated. How could he ever be sure?
One more chapter to go, and I will have posted 35k in ten days. Ahahaha, I'm nuts. And why is it that muses always get loudest when you don't have time to write? I've been off work for almost a year and have hardly written anything, comparatively. Now I'm going back to school in a week, and suddenly they're lining up and beating down my brain trying to get me to write their ideas. @_@
Title: Illusion of Truth
Series: D.Gray-man
Pairing: Lavi/Kanda
Rating: NC-17 in other chapters
Warnings: violence, sex, yaoi, spoilers (I don't usually warn for spoilers, but some of what I know about the characters is manga stuff that hasn't been revealed in the anime yet, just fyi)
Chapter length: 3530
Total length: 31,205
Kanda is starting to wonder if there is a 'real' Lavi.
Eventually Lavi's heartwrenching sobs eased off into normal crying, and he stopped making that awful keening noise. Kanda continued to hold him, not knowing what else to do. It did seem the other man was taking some comfort from his embrace, at least.
When even the crying had turned into the occasional sniffle, Kanda pulled back just far enough to let him get a look at the redhead. Lavi's face was blotched, and the tears had created tracks in the mud on his cheek. He had his eye closed and was struggling to even out his breathing, probably fighting for control.
"Lavi..." Kanda started, but the redhead opened his eye and shook his head wordlessly. Sighing, Kanda rolled his eyes. He didn't know why the other man was objecting to him using the name now, but if it would make the redhead feel better not to be 'Lavi' then Kanda could oblige him. "Fine, Trey then..."
To his surprise Lavi cut him off again, reaching up and pressing a finger over Kanda's lips. "No, Yuu," he said, his voice hoarse but steady. "I'm the Bookman now. I don't have a name."
Staring down at him, Kanda absorbed that. There was something about the other man's expression that suggested he'd been forced to grow up a great deal in the last few minutes, a sort of sorrowful maturity that hadn't been there before. He might not feel like he was ready for the responsibility yet, but Kanda thought he'd do a better job than he gave himself credit for.
"All right, Bookman," he agreed. It felt weird to say it, and he grimaced. "It's going to take me a while to get used to calling you that," he warned.
Lavi - no, Bookman - gave a watery chuckle. "Yeah, well, it's going to take me a while to get used to answering to it, so we're even," he replied. He pulled free of Kanda's embrace and stood, looking shaky but determined. "We have to get back to the city. Obviously the Akuma isn't still here, or it would have killed us by now. It might have decided to use our distraction as an opportunity to ransack Mafeking."
Picking up Mugen, Kanda nodded and stood as well. He deactivated the Innocence and slid it home in its sheath. He could worry about cleaning it later, it would just have to stay muddy for the moment. "What about..." Not certain how to say it, he glanced down at the former Bookman's body.
The new Bookman gazed down at his mentor with an expression that almost managed to be neutral, then looked out over the pit mine. "How deep do you think that mud's gotta be, to have hidden that Akuma?" he asked softly. "Six or seven feet?"
"At least," Kanda agreed, but frowned. "What if it dries up, though?"
Bookman laughed wryly. "Yuu, this is the dry season," he said. "It won't get any drier than this. He deserves better," he added, looking down at his master again. "But it's not like he's got any 'home' I could take him to and bury him. I'm the closest thing to family he had. And we don't have time to bury him here. Help me?" He crouched down by the body, taking the old man's shoulders and preparing to lift him.
Wordlessly Kanda took the feet, and together they carried the body down to the bottom of the mine where the pool of sludge had formed. It seemed horribly disrespectful for them to just dump the old man in, but Bookman was right that they didn't have the time for more. It was better than leaving the body out for scavenging animals to get at, he supposed.
With an effort they swung the body out over the mud pit and let go. It fell near the centre and began to sink immediately, so at least they didn't have to worry about it staying at the surface.
Bookman turned resolutely away, not bothering to watch as the body slowly disappeared under the mud. Kanda put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked, still concerned about the redhead's state of mind.
"I'll manage," Bookman replied, but gave him a small, grateful smile. He seemed very firmly entrenched in that unknown third personality now, and Kanda was more certain than ever that it was the 'real' one. Somehow, he didn't think there would be any more slips back into previous personae.
They headed back to Mafeking at a run, side by side as they raced over the veldt. "What if it's not attacking the city?" Kanda wanted to know. "It might have gone to ground to lick its wounds, instead. I did manage to hurt it fairly badly. How will we find it again?"
"Trust me, Yuu, I don't think finding it is ever going to be a problem," Bookman said. "It seems to want you dead pretty bad. It might hole up for a little while, but it'll be back before long. Probably even before it's healed completely. It doesn't seem entirely sane." He paused for a moment, then shook his head. "Lemme rephrase that. It seems even less sane than most Akuma."
Snorting with reluctant amusement, Kanda kept a sharp eye on their surroundings. "It looks like most of the British soldiers have been turned into Akuma, if not all of them," he warned the other man. "We came under fire when we were chasing after you. Not nearly as many Akuma as I've seen in one place before, but a lot more than I would have expected. I think you're right and it must have a way to create more Akuma."
"I'd rather have been wrong about this one," Bookman sighed. "If they were all survivors from the last fight, then we wouldn't have to worry quite so much about one escaping and doing it all over again. We'll have to make sure we get every last one." He made a frustrated noise. "I hate being useless! I wish I had my hammer."
"I wish you did, too," Kanda admitted. Even with two Exorcists this would have been a tough battle. Working on his own, he honestly wasn't certain he could kill the damned thing. "But you don't, so we'll just have to deal with it. We'll worry about taking out the second level first, then go after the first levels. Like you said before, your job will be helping me track them all down."
"And doing dick all otherwise," Bookman muttered sourly, barely loud enough for Kanda to hear him. Kanda chose to save his breath for running rather than answering, because there was nothing he could really say.
Kanda had fully expected another attack by the 'soldiers' on the way back to Mafeking, but they didn't so much as glimpse a patrol on the horizon. Far from making him happy, he worried about the implications. Had they been called off to regroup with the second level, or were they on a rampage in the city right that moment? Somehow he very much doubted that he'd managed to destroy them all on his way to the mine.
The sun was just setting as they reached the outskirts. There should have been people out on the streets, cramming in their last minute errands before the curfew imposed by the British troops came into effect, but everything was eerily silent. The hair rose on the back of Kanda's neck as they ran through street after empty street, with so sign that anyone even lived there.
"You don't suppose they're all Akuma, and they're waiting for us?" he asked Bookman in horror. There was no way he could destroy that many Akuma by himself.
"No, I think they're all hiding," Bookman replied grimly. "Either mewed up in their houses, or in the shafts of the gold mine. There's been another attack. The inn is gone."
"What?" They were still three streets away, and not within sight of the building. Kanda stared at him, and nearly tripped over an uneven cobblestone. "How do you know that?"
Bookman pointed in the direction of the inn. "The line of the rooftops is different," he said. "The inn and both buildings on either side are missing. See the gap?"
Squinting in the direction Bookman was indicating, Kanda finally found the suspiciously empty area in the skyline. He would never have noticed it if Bookman hadn't pointed it out. "Shit," he swore, and picked up his pace. "Taking you as a hostage worked so well, it must have decided to go back for Marysa."
"It hasn't been paying enough attention, then," Bookman replied wryly. "It's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that you don't like her much." He matched his pace to Kanda's, stretching out his long legs and running with an ease Kanda envied.
Turning the corner of the cross street nearest to the inn, they were confronted by a scene of utter chaos and devastation. All that was left of the inn was a pile of debris, smoking and charred in some places and nothing but rubble in others. The buildings on either side had been damaged extensively as well, but nothing beyond them had been touched. It was clear that the inn had been the target of the attack.
Kanda winced. He was still alive, so obviously the lotus hadn't been destroyed, but finding it in that mess was going to take a while.
Faint sobbing reached them as they slowed and approached more cautiously. Kanda had drawn and activated Mugen the moment they'd seen the destruction, and he held it warily before him now. Bookman stayed two steps behind him, far enough back that he wouldn't be in the way if Kanda needed to fight.
They found Marysa in the remains of the tiny backyard, the dry grass liberally strewn with wreckage from the building. She knelt beside the body of her father, crying into her hands. Her hair was falling out of its pins, and her dress was torn and dirtied. Blood showed dark against the pale blue cloth in several places, but not all of it was hers.
It wasn't difficult to tell how Dirck van den Dool had died; they'd seen another corpse far too similar very recently. The man's body had been crushed into the ground, then run through from above with a large object.
Kanda glanced over his shoulder to see how Bookman was taking it, afraid the reminder would be too much for him. The wound of his master's death was still too fresh, and it might not take much to break through the wall the redhead had put over the hurt.
To his surprise, Bookman's eye was fixed on Marysa rather than Dirck. "Yuu," he said as he moved up beside Kanda. He kept his voice too low to carry, but it was flat and devoid of emotion. "Look at her arm."
Confused, Kanda looked back at Marysa. Her sleeve was the bloodiest part of her dress, and it looked like her hand had been inured as well. Her entire left shoulder and upper arm were soaked with blood, but oddly, there didn't seem to be any damage to the dress.
He opened his mouth to ask what it was Bookman had wanted to draw his attention to, but realization blindsided him before he could get the first word out. Left shoulder and upper arm. Left hand. Those were the places he'd wounded the Akuma, back in the pit mine.
Could they really have been living with an Akuma all this time and not have realized it? Kanda was perfectly capable of believing that anyone could be a potential Akuma, no matter how innocent they seemed, but surely Bookman and Trey would have seen some sign of it in the six months they'd spent at the inn? "You don't seriously think..."
He was talking to himself, because Bookman had already moved past him. He had his 'Trey' face on, his expression full of concern and fear for Marysa as he hurried towards the girl. "Marysa! What happened?" he called, and his voice was Trey's as well.
Looking up from her hands, Marysa sniffled once and wailed as she threw herself at the redhead. Kanda tensed, expecting Bookman to dodge, but the other man caught and held the hysterical girl in a tender embrace. Now thoroughly baffled, Kanda tried to figure out what was going through Bookman's head. If he thought Marysa was the Akuma, why was he letting her get so close?
"It was awful," she sobbed into Bookman's shirt, clutching at him. Unlike the redhead, her face didn't go blotchy from crying; even dishevelled and dirty, she looked like a pretty little doll. "The monster came back, and it said it had k-killed you and Kanda, and that it was going to kill us because you'd h-hurt it, and then it started tearing the inn apart! Papa tried to s-stop it, and he told me to run, but it... it..." With a renewed burst of tears, she buried her face in Bookman's chest. "And now Papa's dead, and I'm all alone! I don't want to be alone, please, Trey, you won't l-leave me now, will you? P-please..."
Bookman had gently manoeuvred her so they were standing in profile to Kanda. Now he drew back, running his hands down her arms as if he intended to clasp her hands reassuringly in his. Instead when he reached her wrists he clamped down hard, stepping back and jerking sharply to twist her arms behind her back. He ended up with her held out away from his body, his hands tight on her wrists as he pulled them up between her shoulder blades. "Do it," he told Kanda, turning an empty gaze to the other Exorcist.
"What? Trey! You're hurting me!" Marysa cried, struggling. "What are you doing?"
A flicker of impatience crossed Bookman's otherwise blank expression. "What are you waiting for, Yuu? Run it through!"
"Trey!" Marysa shrieked as he yanked her wrists higher to stop her from fighting. "Trey, please, you can't do this! I don't understand, please don't hurt me, please! I love you!"
Kanda stood frozen, Mugen held tightly in his hand, staring back at Bookman. It wasn't uncertainty over whether Marysa was really the Akuma that stopped him. It was the utter lack of expression in the redhead's visible eye.
As Trey, the other man had lived with Marysa for over six months, thinking she was a normal girl all that time. He'd made friends with her, laughed and played with her, comforted her when she was upset. Even if he completely believed that she was the Akuma, anyone else would have shown some trace of regret or remorse at being forced to kill someone they'd known that well.
Kanda had listened when the redhead explained that the Bookmen didn't see other people as anything but pieces of history, but he hadn't really understood. Even the revelation that it was only in his last months at the Order that Lavi had started to lose track of when he was acting hadn't quite driven home the idea that for the rest of those years, Lavi hadn't cared about them. That even as he laughed and teased them and proclaimed himself their friend, they had been nothing more to him than subjects to be written about.
Now, looking at the total lack of emotion in the redhead's eye, Kanda finally understood what it meant that his lover was the Bookman.
And a traitorous part of him now had to wonder whether Bookman would be able to casually hold him for slaughter the same way he was doing now with Marysa. Had anything 'Lavi' said to him been the truth? Yes, he'd admitted that Kanda had gotten under his guard, but wouldn't he have assured Marysa of the same thing if she'd asked? Did their relationship actually mean a damn thing, or was the real reason the redhead had been insistent on leaving him behind to carry on as a Bookman been that he'd never actually cared in the first place?
Kanda couldn't be sure, and the uncertainty paralysed him for that critical moment.
"Yuu!" Bookman exclaimed, irritated now. "What are you... shit!"
With a shriek of inhuman anger, Marysa writhed in his grip and suddenly began to expand, dropping her disguise as a normal human and taking on her true appearance as the Akuma. Bookman was forced to let go and scramble back out of the way to keep from being crushed, and he swore.
"You!" the Akuma cried, turning and lashing out at Kanda. He broke free of his vicious circle of doubts just fast enough to dodge, hitting the ground hard and rolling to avoid the stab of its claw that he knew was coming. It wasn't terribly creative in its attack patterns, which was the only thing that kept him alive as it came after him.
"This is all your fault!" it raged, striking at him again and again. He managed to get Mugen up to block each blow, but only barely. It was too damned fast for him to try to counter or parry in any way; it was all he could do to keep himself in one piece. "Trey loves me, I know he does!" it continued. If it had been truly alive it would have been frothing at the mouth, it was so lost in its anger. "He was going to stay with me forever and love me always, and nothing was going to come between us. Until you came! You changed everything, you did something to him and now he's different! If I kill you, then everything will go back the way it was!"
Bookman had been right, Kanda realized with a chill that ran down his spine and nearly made him stumble. No Akuma could ever be referred to as 'sane', but this one was a lot more unhinged than most.
Taking a chance, he broke the pattern of strike-and-block and ran to one side, forcing the Akuma to turn to follow him. It started to lash out again, then hesitated when it realized that Bookman was now directly behind Kanda. It couldn't hit Kanda without striking them both.
That moment of respite was all Kanda had needed. "Kaichuu: Ichigen!" he shouted, and Mugen's blade dissolved into the swarm of Hell's Insects. They shot straight towards the Akuma, and it shrieked in fear and disappeared.
It reappeared on the roof of a nearby building, perched like a grotesque and massively oversized bird. "This isn't over!" it hissed. "I'm going to kill you and get my Trey back, if I have to destroy the entire city to do it!"
Kanda sent the Insects after it again, but it vanished once more. This time it didn't return. Judging by its previous tactics it had probably run off again, but he didn't let his guard down as he called the Insects back into Mugen's blade.
"Why did you hesitate?" Bookman demanded angrily, coming up to him. "We had her cold, Yuu! You could have ended it right there! Didn't you believe me that she was the Akuma? The wound pattern matched exactly!"
"No, I believed you," Kanda replied, subdued as he looked back at the redhead. He searched Bookman's eye for some sign of the truth, wondering if he would even know it if he saw it. How many layers of illusion were there to this man? How deep did the deceit go? "I just... your face, your expression, it..."
Understanding filled Bookman's gaze, and his face went carefully blank again. It was that same neutral expression he'd used before to hide what he was feeling - if he was feeling anything at all. Maybe it wasn't a mask after all. Maybe this was the 'real' him.
"You realized that I didn't feel a damned thing for her, even though I'd been pretending to be her friend all this time," Bookman concluded with unsettling accuracy. "Did you think I wasn't telling you the truth when I explained things to you? Or did you just not believe it was possible for a human being to be that ruthless?"
"I've seen plenty of ruthless, heartless humans," Kanda answered him slowly. "I've even met some who were just as good as you at acting like they weren't. I just... if it had been me who was the Akuma, would you feel remorse? Or would you be just as empty as you were for her?"
Bookman met him stare for stare, still not allowing anything to show in his face. "Yuu, if you have to ask that, then part of you already believes I wouldn't care. And nothing I say or do will convince you, because you'll always wonder if it's just another lie, another act." He swallowed, and grief and regret flitted briefly through his eye before he got control of his expression again.
And he was right, damn him, he was right. Kanda instantly wondered if that momentary sorrow had been real, or calculated. How could he ever be sure?