(no subject)
She’d grabbed him by the collar of his threadbare but oversized clothes, fingers twisting into his too-long hair as she’d dragged him to eye level.
“Not worth half as much as the rabbit or fox this should’ve caught if I can’t sell you,” she’d growled, voice low and heavy with her accent. He’d stared back terrified at the wrinkles and scars on her weathered face, and after a moment she barked a short laugh and dropped him back on the ground.
“Whatever else you might never do, you saved a rabbit today,” she cackled as he scrambled off, praying that she wouldn’t curse him as he was running and turn him into the rabbit she’d been expecting for dinner.
It was his first real memory, at least the first that had involved sounds and words.
He wondered what Kanda’s first memory was.
**
Kanda was warm weight against his legs, warm and heavy from where he’d turned around to see if Kanda was okay after destroying that last Akuma and the other boy had slumped forward while standing, sending them both to the ground as Lavi had tried to catch him. He reached out a hand to grip Kanda’s shoulder, feeling the rush of battle adrenaline fade and leave him too shaky-legged to stand for the moment, until he realized a large portion of that warmth was Kanda’s blood soaking through the thick fabric of his Exorcist pants.
**
He gave a yell of surprise as Kanda dodged out of the way, flipping almost impossibly over the robotic training dummy Akuma in the practice room, but a lot of practice and several missions later, his reflexes had improved from what they used to be, and he easily dispatched of the target that had suddenly been thrown in his face.
Turning to rant at the other teen, he was slightly mollified to see that Kanda’s aerial acrobatics had sent him to the far corner of the room where he had taken care of another mock Akuma that had not been visible from their previous position, but that didn’t mean that Lavi didn’t still have a piece of his mind to share. For his part, Kanda ignored him as he always did, carefully resheathing Mugen before leaving the room.
“Last week you were complaining about how you never got any actual practice if you get the same time slot as Kanda since he takes them all out,” Daiysa commented as he retrieved Charity Bell and tossed it back and forth between his hands. Kanda simply snorted as he walked by, and Lavi bet that either Komui had added something to the supplies in the kitchen that day, or Kanda, wonder of wonders, was in a damn good mood.
Daiysa waited until the wooden door had shut behind Kanda before slinging an arm over Lavi’s shoulders. “That’s Kanda’s way of working together,” he said, as if divulging the secrets of the universe. “Took us years before we could get even that much out of him.” He gave Lavi a polite smile that said plainly “nope, I’m not telling you any more even if you ask” and exited the room.
**
He was no doctor, had not yet received training beyond what was needed during their travels, but he’d spent half of his life observing or passing through battlefields, and he was a quick learner.
Kanda wasn’t going to live. No one could sustain an injury like that and live even if they’d been right on a doctor’s doorstep, and they were currently in the middle of the mountains with no hope of their Finder team arriving before sunrise. Kanda would die by the time they’d made it down the mountains, Kanda would die if he tried to transport him by hammer, Kanda would die before the Finders arrived. He would die if he’d been in an operating room right this moment because he’d been cut nearly in half and Lavi had no idea why he was even still breathing. A dark part of him noted that Kanda had been the one that had rushed up the mountain without waiting for backup, but a not so dark part reminded him they wouldn’t have been so deep in the mountains if he hadn’t used the hammer. The darkest part of him whispered, “Bookmen do not deal with death. They record it as history and move on. You have no need to linger.” Yuu would die anyways and he didn’t actually need to record the exact when and how. He could be halfway back to the Order with a concise and depressing mission summary, and have dutifully fulfilled all his duties as both Exorcist and Bookman. How much of a role were Bookman supposed to play in their part in history when they were no longer observers? How much were they allowed to interfere?
When he and Bookman had first joined the Order, the Finders that had been sent to pick them up had been much more friendly than what he would have expected from people who worked for such an organization. The Finders had talked about themselves, asked a bit about him and the old man as people and not as the Bookmen they probably didn’t know they were, inquired if there were any special requests regarding their rooms or uniforms because they could send a message ahead so things would be ready as soon as the new Exorcists arrived. He’d asked the Panda then, what to do, if any of the players in their records got too close.
Bookman had looked almost torn for a fleeting half second before he’d sighed with a troubled expression and commented that if Lavi was asking a question like that, then he very obviously wasn’t Lavi yet and he’d better get to work on that first. And he’s not quite sure at the moment just what kind of a Bookman he’d make, because he’s afraid, as he is, there’s only one way to stay true to this record.
And then Lavi’s guts twist inside him because he knows Kanda took that blow for him, and Bookman as he is, he wouldn’t want to die alone.
**
“Hello.” The young woman stared at him curiously through the tall grass and flowers of the field. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
He says nothing back, continuing to watch her in wary silence, but she smiles, instead.
“You evacuated with the hospital, didn’t you?” She motions to her eye where a patch now rests over his. “I am glad you are alive. Blessed are the living,” she murmurs in the greeting of the area.
She lifts her basket of flowers and stands, then waves to him. “I’m bringing these to the church in town if you’re lost?”
She looks back to see if he’s coming but doesn’t try to close the distance between them or touch him, so quietly, he follows.
**
He talks to fill the silence that is not, because the sound of what’s passing for Kanda’s breathing rasps too heavily in the confined space of their shelter. He says whatever comes to mind, random snippets of his travels, leaving out identifying details because even now his training overrides and the histories must be kept secret from those with no need to know. Truth, it should be Kanda telling him his story so that someone else could remember, record it; so he would have his ink on paper at least in the end even if it was shelved away in a back archive never to be read. But then again, Kanda was extremely private and notoriously uptight; perhaps he preferred no one to know and to leave only the image he had created for others as his page of history. Maybe that’s why his own ramblings are veering to the odd memories from before he’d met Bookman; they’ll be keeping each other’s secrets, and he can almost force a smile at that. He tells himself that Kanda wouldn’t want anyone watching as he huddles closer to the fire, jacket and traveling cloak serving as bedding for the dying teen behind him, all other spare clothing having been sacrificed for bandages, but the truth is, he doesn’t want to see the process. Bookmen recorded battles, wars; they saw humans killed slaughtered crushed cut break die every day. It was so easy to take a life, gone, empty, faceless, limp and forgotten by the roadside, but now he was faced with the process, bloody and stubborn and tenacious and painful, named with a face behind him, and death was easy but apparently it was very hard to die, and some part of him was afraid of what would happen, to him, to Lavi, to Kanda, to Yuu, if he looked.
**
They’d sent him to the orphanage run by the church as soon as he could stand; the hospital needed the beds and the church could use the extra hands. She visited him often, or rather she visited the children sheltering with the church, usually with something sweet or brightly colored, but she would spend time with him at the edge of the woods where he went to avoid the other children while still staying close enough to watch them when they were given a break from their duties. Perhaps it was because he was silent, still learning the language, but she talked of her marriage, of her family, how her own home was far from here; about the friends and pets she’d had, of her husband and the duties expected of her, of the town and her own limited knowledge of the war hovering at its edges. Sometimes he pretended to be busy doing something else and sometimes he would just sit and stare at her while she talked. If he was away from the crowds when she arrived, she would go find him, and he started hanging back at the old tree stump come Wednesdays.
She always smiled at him even when he never returned it, and he’d stopped believing in equivalency long ago, but it didn’t hurt to answer back and get a brighter smile in return.
**
He hadn’t seen much of Kanda after his first mission together with the Japanese teen and Lenalee, but Lenalee had recruited him into greeting returning Exorcists and Finders from missions, and Panda didn’t mind him doing so as it often resulted in firsthand information.
He was waiting at the docks with her now, the boat carrying Kanda, returning first with the Innocence from a mission with his teammates, slowly coming into view.
“Y’do know that Yuu-chan will probably just blow you off, right?” he asks the girl beside him, expression saying obviously “what a poor sweet girl you are, you really shouldn’t bother with a bastard like him”.
Lenalee smiles, the torchlight throwing long shadows across her face, and shrugs. She is easily both more open and impossibly closed on the subject of Kanda than almost anyone in the Order other than Kanda’s teammates or maybe Komui, and he files it away as another challenge to crack some rainy day because Kanda’s boat has arrived.
“Welcome home, Kanda!” Lenalee greets cheerfully, and he slips on an open grin to follow suit, but what comes out instead is, “Whoa, Yuu! You should be in the infirmary!”
Kanda gives him a narrow-eyed glare and squeezes past him to get to the stairs; this close he can see all the cuts and bandages peeking through what’s left of the Exorcist’s jacket and the way Kanda is barely holding his side as he ascends the stairs with a slight limp. He turns to see why Lenalee hasn’t moved to support him as he would have expected her to, but she’s staring away at a corner, and she puts a gentle hand on his arm when she notices him moving towards the stairs after Kanda.
“I’ll be giving the Innocence and my mission report to Komui,” Kanda says, back turned, from halfway up the stairs, and there’s a tiny little half smile on Lenalee’s lips but her bangs are hiding her eyes.
“You never ask? At all?” he asks in surprise when he’s sure Kanda is gone. All the other returning Order members were usually more than happy to chit chat for a bit; he hadn’t expected that of Kanda Yuu, but in the state the other boy had returned in, he hadn’t expected Lenalee of all people, to remain silent.
“It wouldn’t be fair if I did,” she answers softly, then turns to brightly greet the second boat docking, carrying the Finders.
**
He stops for a moment, just to catch his breath, and there is silence which sinks Lavi’s heart pounding in his ears to his stomach and stomach churning to his knees in twin lumps of ice in a way that hasn’t happened in years even as he’s been expecting it for the last few hours. He reminds himself to breathe, he’s seen it all before, or at least the results of it, even knows what should be done afterwards, and this is no different from the endings of any of his previous records.
How many more of these would he have to write before they were done here?
Then there’s an odd keening cry and he jumps as something hits his back, Kanda’s hand flailing, faint sounds of pained thrashing, and he thinks not again, how much more, how much more to take?
How much more for Kanda?
This is what you signed up for.
…I know.
He turns and scoots closer, brushes damp hair out of Kanda’s eyes and gently latches onto a weakly flailing wrist. Kanda’s forehead is hot but his hand is ice, cold like fire, and Lavi tastes blood on his tongue again, a different battle.
He squeezes Kanda’s hand gently between both of his and tries not to wince as the other boy makes that pained wheezing cry again.
Shh. Shh.
Whose record would it be?
Shh.
**
She’s smiling when she accuses him of sending the messages to the enemy, because she’s seen him running off, seen him with the soldiers. The smile is foreign and familiar, her hands holding tightly onto the white glove of the dashing young man with an arm around her waist, the man that’s accompanied her to the church several times these last few weeks. The man smirks, and his shadow’s back, settling gentle and rough sleek around his heart.
He is able to prove he has done no such thing, worthless as his life is compared even to a rabbit’s; though oddly, the memory comforts him now, and by the time the actual details of the transactions have been unearthed a good two weeks later, the dashing young man and the mayor’s young wife had disappeared and the enemy was camped on the outskirts of the town.
He is almost impressed at how well the young man had carried out his plans. As for her, he no longer feels anything. No love, no hate, no anger, no sadness. She just was. She had been unhappy, and in a way, detached and too close to the part the shadow was covering; he knew, understood, that humans were vicious selfish foolish creatures and that she had been only sixteen and living for the first time and the choice might even have pained her, and even then it wouldn’t have mattered. It just was.
There’s an old man in the village he’s never seen before, he notes. A traveler from someplace very distant who had arrived a few days after the young man that had now disappeared had. The old man has been watching him, he realizes, but the old man’s eyes are different from the way the others’ had watched him. They did not presume or judge or comment; they simply noted what was happening. It was oddly comforting, in a way, how they had not asked him to play some part he did not understand.
**
He stares at the carnage around him in shock, and for the first time in a long time, actually feels something real curling his intestines as his blood pounds.
The hazy orange of the flames pull the shadows in a blurry dance, and he almost doesn’t see the strange old man he’d followed come up behind him.
The old man is silent, he simply comes up beside him, and they watch what remains of what was once two armies, not particularly glorious armies, but armies whose leaders had both felt enough of a need to converge here this day. An army that a young man had believed in enough to use a girl’s heart to gain them entrance to this field, and an army that had probably taken that man’s life on the same field they were instructed to protect.
“Why?” he asks after a moment, and the old man turns to face him.
“Why what?” the old man answers.
He tries to think of how to say it, how to explain the shadow, but in the end it was still the first word that worked the best. “I don’t know. Just…why?”
“You are a strange child.” The old man looks him over carefully and he tries not to squirm under the gaze. “You ask all the wrong questions. But since you asked, I do not know, either. Maybe they know, and they are the ones who will not lie.” The old man gestures to the still forms on the ground.
He hesitates for a moment, but decides to plow on. “But I can’t ask them. I want to know. Is there another way?”
“All the wrong questions again. But there are those who ask.” The old man pauses for a long moment, and he wonders what the old man must be thinking, with so many more years’ worth of knowledge and probably lots of real learning in his head. “That is what we search for. You show potential boy; if you truly wish to know, you might find some of what you are looking for with us. I can give you a day to decide.”
“Thank you, but there’s no need,” he says after a moment, letting the images sear themselves into his mind. “There is nothing left here. But I think I’ve found something.”
The old man snorts and starts moving away, and once again he follows, the way he’d followed the old man following the soldiers earlier that day.
“Big words boy. I should kick some sense into you, but you still have a day.”
**
He’d fallen asleep sometime during the night, willing his heat into Kanda’s hands because maybe, maybe, as long as he could still feel the blood throbbing at the juncture of Kanda’s thumb, this record could hold, hold, now and hold, and he wouldn’t know what might change, forever different, if a heart might be, was there.
He wakes with a stiff neck and sore shoulders, the fire cold, his hands empty. He starts and topples over in a tangle of ruined Exorcists’ coats; rolling onto his stomach he looks behind him and finds Kanda gone. Cursing, he pushes to his knees reaching for his hammer; what animal would have been bold enough to have gone past him and dragged Kanda’s body away but then leave without attacking him, or even without him noticing? There were stories about witches in these mountains as well, or if Kanda had been turned into an Akuma-
He hadn’t been there. Even in the end. Because he’d fallen asleep and now even Kanda’s body was gone-
There’s a shuffling sound from nearby, and he curses again for not noticing until now. Bringing his hammer out, he turns as quickly as he can on his knees and prepares to invoke, then almost drops his weapon because his hands have gone numb.
There’s snow falling outside the cave, the first snow of the season, early in the mountains, a few flakes swirling in the blocked sunlight piercing into his eye, and this, this painful thudding of each disbelieving heartbeat through his veins, this must be what it felt like to go mad.
**
“You can stop staring at me like that now,” Kanda snaps irritably when they’ve finally entered the gates of the Order under the eyes of the Gatekeeper; and the voice is still Kanda’s, definitely Kanda’s, less hoarse then it had been this morning when he’d been standing in front of the cave, moving with a limp and ordering Lavi to get a move on while a million possibilities had raced, tattered, through the redhead’s mind.
Dumbly, he had obeyed, strung so high that if he’d been at the Order longer the Finders would have commented on how quiet he was being, because it took all of Lavi to never let Kanda out of sight, always keeping himself between Kanda and the Finders, waiting for some slip of movement to change from what he knew about how Kanda should act with dark ironic dread, ready to finish what he’d been trying to avoid at any given moment if necessary, and if he’d really had any energy to spare, he’d much rather have spent it by just putting his head outside the train window and screaming. The daze he probably should have felt a good half a day earlier is finally starting to settle in, and Kanda, almost approvingly, as far as he ever shows any emotion other than irritation and indifference, shoves past him and adds, “You can also let go of the hammer now, rabbit.”
“Rabbit? That’s a new one. How’d that one come about?” Lenalee has apparently recruited Daisya this time around, and only now does Lavi remember that he’d said too much when he’d thought that Kanda was dying and he didn’t know how much the other boy had heard or remembered now that he was, for some reason, miraculously (mysteriously…wonderfully) alive.
Blessed are the living…?
Kanda blinks in confusion at the expression that flits across his face, and his mouth opens as if he’s about to ask something. Shutting it with a scowl, he whips around, one hand still pressed instinctively to the healing skin of his side.
“Che. How should I know? Must be the dumb look that’s always on his face.”
Daisya raises an eyebrow and Lavi knows there’s another story there somewhere. Lenalee looks something between fond, annoyed, and exasperated, and he gives her a grin to let her know it’s alright.
Fair enough for now, Yuu. Fair enough.
“Not worth half as much as the rabbit or fox this should’ve caught if I can’t sell you,” she’d growled, voice low and heavy with her accent. He’d stared back terrified at the wrinkles and scars on her weathered face, and after a moment she barked a short laugh and dropped him back on the ground.
“Whatever else you might never do, you saved a rabbit today,” she cackled as he scrambled off, praying that she wouldn’t curse him as he was running and turn him into the rabbit she’d been expecting for dinner.
It was his first real memory, at least the first that had involved sounds and words.
He wondered what Kanda’s first memory was.
**
Kanda was warm weight against his legs, warm and heavy from where he’d turned around to see if Kanda was okay after destroying that last Akuma and the other boy had slumped forward while standing, sending them both to the ground as Lavi had tried to catch him. He reached out a hand to grip Kanda’s shoulder, feeling the rush of battle adrenaline fade and leave him too shaky-legged to stand for the moment, until he realized a large portion of that warmth was Kanda’s blood soaking through the thick fabric of his Exorcist pants.
**
He gave a yell of surprise as Kanda dodged out of the way, flipping almost impossibly over the robotic training dummy Akuma in the practice room, but a lot of practice and several missions later, his reflexes had improved from what they used to be, and he easily dispatched of the target that had suddenly been thrown in his face.
Turning to rant at the other teen, he was slightly mollified to see that Kanda’s aerial acrobatics had sent him to the far corner of the room where he had taken care of another mock Akuma that had not been visible from their previous position, but that didn’t mean that Lavi didn’t still have a piece of his mind to share. For his part, Kanda ignored him as he always did, carefully resheathing Mugen before leaving the room.
“Last week you were complaining about how you never got any actual practice if you get the same time slot as Kanda since he takes them all out,” Daiysa commented as he retrieved Charity Bell and tossed it back and forth between his hands. Kanda simply snorted as he walked by, and Lavi bet that either Komui had added something to the supplies in the kitchen that day, or Kanda, wonder of wonders, was in a damn good mood.
Daiysa waited until the wooden door had shut behind Kanda before slinging an arm over Lavi’s shoulders. “That’s Kanda’s way of working together,” he said, as if divulging the secrets of the universe. “Took us years before we could get even that much out of him.” He gave Lavi a polite smile that said plainly “nope, I’m not telling you any more even if you ask” and exited the room.
**
He was no doctor, had not yet received training beyond what was needed during their travels, but he’d spent half of his life observing or passing through battlefields, and he was a quick learner.
Kanda wasn’t going to live. No one could sustain an injury like that and live even if they’d been right on a doctor’s doorstep, and they were currently in the middle of the mountains with no hope of their Finder team arriving before sunrise. Kanda would die by the time they’d made it down the mountains, Kanda would die if he tried to transport him by hammer, Kanda would die before the Finders arrived. He would die if he’d been in an operating room right this moment because he’d been cut nearly in half and Lavi had no idea why he was even still breathing. A dark part of him noted that Kanda had been the one that had rushed up the mountain without waiting for backup, but a not so dark part reminded him they wouldn’t have been so deep in the mountains if he hadn’t used the hammer. The darkest part of him whispered, “Bookmen do not deal with death. They record it as history and move on. You have no need to linger.” Yuu would die anyways and he didn’t actually need to record the exact when and how. He could be halfway back to the Order with a concise and depressing mission summary, and have dutifully fulfilled all his duties as both Exorcist and Bookman. How much of a role were Bookman supposed to play in their part in history when they were no longer observers? How much were they allowed to interfere?
When he and Bookman had first joined the Order, the Finders that had been sent to pick them up had been much more friendly than what he would have expected from people who worked for such an organization. The Finders had talked about themselves, asked a bit about him and the old man as people and not as the Bookmen they probably didn’t know they were, inquired if there were any special requests regarding their rooms or uniforms because they could send a message ahead so things would be ready as soon as the new Exorcists arrived. He’d asked the Panda then, what to do, if any of the players in their records got too close.
Bookman had looked almost torn for a fleeting half second before he’d sighed with a troubled expression and commented that if Lavi was asking a question like that, then he very obviously wasn’t Lavi yet and he’d better get to work on that first. And he’s not quite sure at the moment just what kind of a Bookman he’d make, because he’s afraid, as he is, there’s only one way to stay true to this record.
And then Lavi’s guts twist inside him because he knows Kanda took that blow for him, and Bookman as he is, he wouldn’t want to die alone.
**
“Hello.” The young woman stared at him curiously through the tall grass and flowers of the field. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
He says nothing back, continuing to watch her in wary silence, but she smiles, instead.
“You evacuated with the hospital, didn’t you?” She motions to her eye where a patch now rests over his. “I am glad you are alive. Blessed are the living,” she murmurs in the greeting of the area.
She lifts her basket of flowers and stands, then waves to him. “I’m bringing these to the church in town if you’re lost?”
She looks back to see if he’s coming but doesn’t try to close the distance between them or touch him, so quietly, he follows.
**
He talks to fill the silence that is not, because the sound of what’s passing for Kanda’s breathing rasps too heavily in the confined space of their shelter. He says whatever comes to mind, random snippets of his travels, leaving out identifying details because even now his training overrides and the histories must be kept secret from those with no need to know. Truth, it should be Kanda telling him his story so that someone else could remember, record it; so he would have his ink on paper at least in the end even if it was shelved away in a back archive never to be read. But then again, Kanda was extremely private and notoriously uptight; perhaps he preferred no one to know and to leave only the image he had created for others as his page of history. Maybe that’s why his own ramblings are veering to the odd memories from before he’d met Bookman; they’ll be keeping each other’s secrets, and he can almost force a smile at that. He tells himself that Kanda wouldn’t want anyone watching as he huddles closer to the fire, jacket and traveling cloak serving as bedding for the dying teen behind him, all other spare clothing having been sacrificed for bandages, but the truth is, he doesn’t want to see the process. Bookmen recorded battles, wars; they saw humans killed slaughtered crushed cut break die every day. It was so easy to take a life, gone, empty, faceless, limp and forgotten by the roadside, but now he was faced with the process, bloody and stubborn and tenacious and painful, named with a face behind him, and death was easy but apparently it was very hard to die, and some part of him was afraid of what would happen, to him, to Lavi, to Kanda, to Yuu, if he looked.
**
They’d sent him to the orphanage run by the church as soon as he could stand; the hospital needed the beds and the church could use the extra hands. She visited him often, or rather she visited the children sheltering with the church, usually with something sweet or brightly colored, but she would spend time with him at the edge of the woods where he went to avoid the other children while still staying close enough to watch them when they were given a break from their duties. Perhaps it was because he was silent, still learning the language, but she talked of her marriage, of her family, how her own home was far from here; about the friends and pets she’d had, of her husband and the duties expected of her, of the town and her own limited knowledge of the war hovering at its edges. Sometimes he pretended to be busy doing something else and sometimes he would just sit and stare at her while she talked. If he was away from the crowds when she arrived, she would go find him, and he started hanging back at the old tree stump come Wednesdays.
She always smiled at him even when he never returned it, and he’d stopped believing in equivalency long ago, but it didn’t hurt to answer back and get a brighter smile in return.
**
He hadn’t seen much of Kanda after his first mission together with the Japanese teen and Lenalee, but Lenalee had recruited him into greeting returning Exorcists and Finders from missions, and Panda didn’t mind him doing so as it often resulted in firsthand information.
He was waiting at the docks with her now, the boat carrying Kanda, returning first with the Innocence from a mission with his teammates, slowly coming into view.
“Y’do know that Yuu-chan will probably just blow you off, right?” he asks the girl beside him, expression saying obviously “what a poor sweet girl you are, you really shouldn’t bother with a bastard like him”.
Lenalee smiles, the torchlight throwing long shadows across her face, and shrugs. She is easily both more open and impossibly closed on the subject of Kanda than almost anyone in the Order other than Kanda’s teammates or maybe Komui, and he files it away as another challenge to crack some rainy day because Kanda’s boat has arrived.
“Welcome home, Kanda!” Lenalee greets cheerfully, and he slips on an open grin to follow suit, but what comes out instead is, “Whoa, Yuu! You should be in the infirmary!”
Kanda gives him a narrow-eyed glare and squeezes past him to get to the stairs; this close he can see all the cuts and bandages peeking through what’s left of the Exorcist’s jacket and the way Kanda is barely holding his side as he ascends the stairs with a slight limp. He turns to see why Lenalee hasn’t moved to support him as he would have expected her to, but she’s staring away at a corner, and she puts a gentle hand on his arm when she notices him moving towards the stairs after Kanda.
“I’ll be giving the Innocence and my mission report to Komui,” Kanda says, back turned, from halfway up the stairs, and there’s a tiny little half smile on Lenalee’s lips but her bangs are hiding her eyes.
“You never ask? At all?” he asks in surprise when he’s sure Kanda is gone. All the other returning Order members were usually more than happy to chit chat for a bit; he hadn’t expected that of Kanda Yuu, but in the state the other boy had returned in, he hadn’t expected Lenalee of all people, to remain silent.
“It wouldn’t be fair if I did,” she answers softly, then turns to brightly greet the second boat docking, carrying the Finders.
**
He stops for a moment, just to catch his breath, and there is silence which sinks Lavi’s heart pounding in his ears to his stomach and stomach churning to his knees in twin lumps of ice in a way that hasn’t happened in years even as he’s been expecting it for the last few hours. He reminds himself to breathe, he’s seen it all before, or at least the results of it, even knows what should be done afterwards, and this is no different from the endings of any of his previous records.
How many more of these would he have to write before they were done here?
Then there’s an odd keening cry and he jumps as something hits his back, Kanda’s hand flailing, faint sounds of pained thrashing, and he thinks not again, how much more, how much more to take?
How much more for Kanda?
This is what you signed up for.
…I know.
He turns and scoots closer, brushes damp hair out of Kanda’s eyes and gently latches onto a weakly flailing wrist. Kanda’s forehead is hot but his hand is ice, cold like fire, and Lavi tastes blood on his tongue again, a different battle.
He squeezes Kanda’s hand gently between both of his and tries not to wince as the other boy makes that pained wheezing cry again.
Shh. Shh.
Whose record would it be?
Shh.
**
She’s smiling when she accuses him of sending the messages to the enemy, because she’s seen him running off, seen him with the soldiers. The smile is foreign and familiar, her hands holding tightly onto the white glove of the dashing young man with an arm around her waist, the man that’s accompanied her to the church several times these last few weeks. The man smirks, and his shadow’s back, settling gentle and rough sleek around his heart.
He is able to prove he has done no such thing, worthless as his life is compared even to a rabbit’s; though oddly, the memory comforts him now, and by the time the actual details of the transactions have been unearthed a good two weeks later, the dashing young man and the mayor’s young wife had disappeared and the enemy was camped on the outskirts of the town.
He is almost impressed at how well the young man had carried out his plans. As for her, he no longer feels anything. No love, no hate, no anger, no sadness. She just was. She had been unhappy, and in a way, detached and too close to the part the shadow was covering; he knew, understood, that humans were vicious selfish foolish creatures and that she had been only sixteen and living for the first time and the choice might even have pained her, and even then it wouldn’t have mattered. It just was.
There’s an old man in the village he’s never seen before, he notes. A traveler from someplace very distant who had arrived a few days after the young man that had now disappeared had. The old man has been watching him, he realizes, but the old man’s eyes are different from the way the others’ had watched him. They did not presume or judge or comment; they simply noted what was happening. It was oddly comforting, in a way, how they had not asked him to play some part he did not understand.
**
He stares at the carnage around him in shock, and for the first time in a long time, actually feels something real curling his intestines as his blood pounds.
The hazy orange of the flames pull the shadows in a blurry dance, and he almost doesn’t see the strange old man he’d followed come up behind him.
The old man is silent, he simply comes up beside him, and they watch what remains of what was once two armies, not particularly glorious armies, but armies whose leaders had both felt enough of a need to converge here this day. An army that a young man had believed in enough to use a girl’s heart to gain them entrance to this field, and an army that had probably taken that man’s life on the same field they were instructed to protect.
“Why?” he asks after a moment, and the old man turns to face him.
“Why what?” the old man answers.
He tries to think of how to say it, how to explain the shadow, but in the end it was still the first word that worked the best. “I don’t know. Just…why?”
“You are a strange child.” The old man looks him over carefully and he tries not to squirm under the gaze. “You ask all the wrong questions. But since you asked, I do not know, either. Maybe they know, and they are the ones who will not lie.” The old man gestures to the still forms on the ground.
He hesitates for a moment, but decides to plow on. “But I can’t ask them. I want to know. Is there another way?”
“All the wrong questions again. But there are those who ask.” The old man pauses for a long moment, and he wonders what the old man must be thinking, with so many more years’ worth of knowledge and probably lots of real learning in his head. “That is what we search for. You show potential boy; if you truly wish to know, you might find some of what you are looking for with us. I can give you a day to decide.”
“Thank you, but there’s no need,” he says after a moment, letting the images sear themselves into his mind. “There is nothing left here. But I think I’ve found something.”
The old man snorts and starts moving away, and once again he follows, the way he’d followed the old man following the soldiers earlier that day.
“Big words boy. I should kick some sense into you, but you still have a day.”
**
He’d fallen asleep sometime during the night, willing his heat into Kanda’s hands because maybe, maybe, as long as he could still feel the blood throbbing at the juncture of Kanda’s thumb, this record could hold, hold, now and hold, and he wouldn’t know what might change, forever different, if a heart might be, was there.
He wakes with a stiff neck and sore shoulders, the fire cold, his hands empty. He starts and topples over in a tangle of ruined Exorcists’ coats; rolling onto his stomach he looks behind him and finds Kanda gone. Cursing, he pushes to his knees reaching for his hammer; what animal would have been bold enough to have gone past him and dragged Kanda’s body away but then leave without attacking him, or even without him noticing? There were stories about witches in these mountains as well, or if Kanda had been turned into an Akuma-
He hadn’t been there. Even in the end. Because he’d fallen asleep and now even Kanda’s body was gone-
There’s a shuffling sound from nearby, and he curses again for not noticing until now. Bringing his hammer out, he turns as quickly as he can on his knees and prepares to invoke, then almost drops his weapon because his hands have gone numb.
There’s snow falling outside the cave, the first snow of the season, early in the mountains, a few flakes swirling in the blocked sunlight piercing into his eye, and this, this painful thudding of each disbelieving heartbeat through his veins, this must be what it felt like to go mad.
**
“You can stop staring at me like that now,” Kanda snaps irritably when they’ve finally entered the gates of the Order under the eyes of the Gatekeeper; and the voice is still Kanda’s, definitely Kanda’s, less hoarse then it had been this morning when he’d been standing in front of the cave, moving with a limp and ordering Lavi to get a move on while a million possibilities had raced, tattered, through the redhead’s mind.
Dumbly, he had obeyed, strung so high that if he’d been at the Order longer the Finders would have commented on how quiet he was being, because it took all of Lavi to never let Kanda out of sight, always keeping himself between Kanda and the Finders, waiting for some slip of movement to change from what he knew about how Kanda should act with dark ironic dread, ready to finish what he’d been trying to avoid at any given moment if necessary, and if he’d really had any energy to spare, he’d much rather have spent it by just putting his head outside the train window and screaming. The daze he probably should have felt a good half a day earlier is finally starting to settle in, and Kanda, almost approvingly, as far as he ever shows any emotion other than irritation and indifference, shoves past him and adds, “You can also let go of the hammer now, rabbit.”
“Rabbit? That’s a new one. How’d that one come about?” Lenalee has apparently recruited Daisya this time around, and only now does Lavi remember that he’d said too much when he’d thought that Kanda was dying and he didn’t know how much the other boy had heard or remembered now that he was, for some reason, miraculously (mysteriously…wonderfully) alive.
Blessed are the living…?
Kanda blinks in confusion at the expression that flits across his face, and his mouth opens as if he’s about to ask something. Shutting it with a scowl, he whips around, one hand still pressed instinctively to the healing skin of his side.
“Che. How should I know? Must be the dumb look that’s always on his face.”
Daisya raises an eyebrow and Lavi knows there’s another story there somewhere. Lenalee looks something between fond, annoyed, and exasperated, and he gives her a grin to let her know it’s alright.
Fair enough for now, Yuu. Fair enough.