Dried Flowers - Chapter 4
DISCLAIMER: I don't own D. Gray-man, UNFORTUNATELY all is into the hands of that crazy woman whose name is hoshino... Because if it was otherwise... D. Gray-man manga wouldn't have become a shapeless and disgusting jumble of nonsenses, and Lavi would have been together with Kanda from a VERY LONG TIME!
WARNING: YAOI hints - if you don't know what this word means, or if you don't like boy/boy relationship this story is not for you, don't say I didn't tell you! You know the song, DON'T LIKE DON'T READ!
The song for this fourth and last chapter is "Labyrinth" by was this particular song what made flash before my eyes the way this story would end, making me decide that I would have used it to give a plausible vision for the latest facts.
The three songs remaining from the initial five gave me no suggestions, so I requested the change for two of them, as it was allowed in the contest's rules. I got five new songs from which I could choose my substitution, and... among them it was her, Elisa, with Labyrinth. I didn't know this song either, but as I listened to it, it struck me hard XD
I really think this song is perfect to describe Kanda's state of mind, the lyrics fit so well in an unbelievable way; and I also liked the song a lot. It's not usual for me to appreciate a song outside the animation world XD
Well, I know what you will think about the ending, but I can't help it... I so want it to be this way! Well, to me it is. So, meh, deal with it.
Beta is aquatix, thank you so much for your precious help!
As always, if you spot any error it's my fault, for changing something the beta suggested XD
Dried Flowers
Chapter 4: Labyrinth
Kanda opened his eyes, finding himself lying on a cold floor. His head was buzzing and every thought put on him a hell of a pain; despite that, he lifted his face up to see where he had ended up, and what he saw below him left Kanda shocked.
That thing... that thing inside the floor was...? No. Or yes? What the hell was going on? And if it really was him, what he should have done? He stood up slowly, moving first on his knees and then rising to his feet. He remained still in that position, staring into space in a daze, thinking.
What now?
Vaguely he noticed Allen's arrival and his little scuffle with the Noah and the Earl, while he was deciding... deciding... If that thing was alive in that state, he had to give it peace.
Kanda moved, jumping into the fray, but before he could do anything the Noah had taken control of the creature whom he have just recognized as his childhood ex-torture companion. The Noah with the weird eyes tattooed on his forehead used his power, hitting him and the moyashi, and Kanda's vision blurred.
He found himself spying on places familiar to him, as if a door into a forbidden world he had sealed in his mind forever was suddenly opened; or so he hoped it was.
He saw himself as a kid again and that sight terrified him despite the irresistible temptation to keep watching.
When he tried to escape from it, Kanda realized he couldn't stop reliving those events.
"Just like a spy through smoke and lights
I escaped through the back door of the world
and I saw things getting smaller
as well as fear temptation."
His captivity passed before him in all pitiful detail; the agony, the sorrow, the futility of it all overwhelmed Kanda and he had to remember even when the image of that woman first appeared into his thoughts.
The parasite. The hateful intruder who mocked scot-free of his conscience and his will, putting in his mouth words that were not his own.
All was repeating like at that time, everything seemed to revive, and Kanda had the sensation of looking himself through a mirror as he penetrated deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of his violated mind.
He was running, and then he was on a medical bed... and then he was screaming. Kanda's sense of reality moulded with pain, the memories of himself mingled with other memories in the labyrinth of his subconsciousness.
In the whirl of emotions by which he was hit, the fog seizing him stifled his perceptions, erasing every sound, even the one of the steps he was moving.
"Now everything is reflection as I make my way through this labyrinth
and my sense of direction
is lost like the sound of my steps
is lost like the sound of my steps."
He was raising a hand to the sky, and... No it wasn't his hand, it was the other's and flowers' petals swirled as far as Kanda could see... And then there was her.
Damn you! Stop appearing before me!
And the flowers, he saw them all around her, touched them with fingers that were not his own... Their dead petals floated in the air, sucked by a nonexistent wind.
A pungent smell struck him and he found himself immersed in a strange fog, his vision obscured while he was heading hell knows where, carrying someone he knew.
"Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog
Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog"
He saw in the distance someone else who was familiar to him: his captivity companion. The boy had so strange an expression, and his words then... Astonishment was painted on Kanda's face when his supposed self-proclaimed friend attacked him mercilessly. He was thrown to the ground, torn.
Confusion, pain, horror... disbelief. Blood. And still her.
Vanish! Leave me the hell alone!
Kanda realized his gripping a sword in his hand only when he saw the blade pierce through the body of his opponent.
And then something hit him hard in the face, shutting down the sea of memories. Vaguely aware, Kanda perceived the world around him tremble, and was swallowed by it.
When he managed to see again, he found himself overcome with debris, wounded in many places although was already healing.
Adult again. That, then, was the reality?
Kanda saw the thing that the Noah was trying to control moving to meet him, greeting him in a mocking way. He watched the boy returning to the form he had nine years before, and accusing him of his present condition as a servant of the Earl.
Without hesitation, Kanda told the creature that he would have destroyed him again just because of what he had become: an Akuma. Although no one expected such a reasoning from him, Kanda was willing to give his once torture companion the craved peace, in the only possible way.
But that Akuma was damn strong and on its second attack the thing succeeded in wounding Kanda so severely that caused his persecutor to emerge once more. She called him again and the Japanese Exorcist couldn't avoid listening to her.
He had to win, to survive to find that woman... and get rid of her. Kanda increased his synchro rate with Mugen and activated the subsequent illusions, determined to annihilate the enemy at any cost. His vision blurred, those memories once again began to flow like a black and white movie suspended in time and space, of which he was the main character and simultaneously he wasn't.
"I see my memories in black and white
They are neglected by space and time"
All Kanda's efforts to banish back again that past which didn't belong to him, closing it carefully in the most remote drawers of his mind, were thwarted in a flash. He had neglected everything to get to forget it all and thus regain control of himself, giving up to each aspiration, to hope for a future. Renouncing even to Lavi.
Kanda had let the Bookman apprentice going away from him, and for what?
Reality began to appear as a set of far forms to him, and everything Kanda's mind could register was the fury of battle, the roar of blood pounding in his ears.
"I store all my days in boxes
and left my wishes so far behind"
He was no longer sure of what he was doing, nor certain about where he was or what was happening to him.
All Kanda understood was having to win at all costs to finally be free.
But the fatal blow he had intended for the Akuma pierced someone else instead, someone who in some undefined time must have replaced his real opponent. He was... moyashi!
But why?
Why someone who had to be on his side was defending a fucking Akuma?
Kanda heard himself accusing the cursed boy of being just a damn Noah, and then something else was thrown on him: the Akuma.
He grabbed it confused, dismayed, estranged. What was happening to him?
Why it was all so vague, and his perceptions so hazy?
It felt like he was struggling in a maze, completely lost in the welter of his released emotions. Reality was muddling up with the Earl and Noah's lies and his comprehension capability was lost into nothingness together with the sound produced by his boots.
"I find my only salvation in playing hide and seek in this labyrinth
and my sense of connection
is lost like the sound of my steps
is lost like the sound of my steps."
Surprisingly, at some point the Akuma destroyed itself in his arms protesting senseless absurdity, and Kanda collapsed to the ground, his body ravaged.
Through the veil of suffering from his slowly healing wounds, Kanda heard the agonizing Akuma talking to the other Exorcist about things that were almost ridiculous if they were real. And... if they truly were?
As an incessant chant not wanting to leave him in peace those words penetrated the fog that enveloped his mind, getting to him and adding to the vortex of memories.
Kanda could smell them again, the lotus flowers... and someone held out his hand towards... and that smile calling him from the thick and pulsing fog that blinded his eyes, that face he wasn't able to see completely, obscured under the shade of memories.
Kanda ardently desired he would be able to run away from all this, but his footsteps got lost into the haze as well as his profaned mind.
"Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog
Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog"
And so that woman was dead. A part of him laughed like crazy at that revelation, but another one instead was astounded. So she was an Exorcist, and the scientists had used her brain cells on his self-proclaimed friend.
What a terrible joke. That's why he felt so natural an urge to kill that particular Akuma... Speaking about destiny.
What should he do now? If, as from the look of it, his ex-companion was about to die again, knowing that it was final this time, would the memories vanish?
Kanda tried to get up, but the world around him was confused and fuzzy and Allen's words got to him muffled, distant and indistinct. What was the moyashi asking him?
Without understanding how come he ended up doing it, Kanda found himself running with something cold clasped in his arms, and from his mouth came impossible words, no, it couldn't be him the one uttering them... he simply couldn't...
And he was... running away? Where? With what?
He saw himself mirrored in the other Exorcist's eyes: he was... smiling?
What the fuck...?
His eyes lowered, and Kanda's conscience screamed being a prey of horror: he was holding the remains of the Akuma. And then he was swallowed by a blinding light.
When Kanda could see again he didn't recognize more than a gate closing itself and he heard something muttering by his side, but he wasn't sure of what it was saying.
The words reached him altered and his brain didn't seem to fully register them, as if it was unable to focus on the present. The incessant chanting that didn't want to leave him was trying again to penetrate his mind's defences...
"Words sounds music and I'm spinning
Words sounds music and I'm spinning out"
Or maybe it was all a terrible nightmare, and he would wake up any moment now close to Lavi. Kanda prayed with all his being it could be so, and ordered himself to to open his eyes... Instead it turned out he was hugging something else, whispering words of comfort.
It was certainly an atrocious dream, but then why the hell couldn't he wake up?
The Akuma in his arms murmured something else, and Kanda discovered that he could not break free... oh, the world around him swirled in so strange a way!
Perhaps if he had waited there long enough the rain would came to purify him, washing away all that horror.
"But I want to stay here
'Cause I am waiting for the rain
and I want it to wash away
everything, everything, everything."
All that pain, and the unbearable smell of by now dried lotus. All those memories that bombarded his altered consciousness, his clouded mind struggling to maintain a drop of reason in this madness.
"Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog
Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog"
And then there was nothing anymore. She had stopped calling, and the cancer inside him to respond. Was he free?
The realization of it left Kanda petrified in the position in which he was, his face turned toward the strange sky standing above him though his closed eyes couldn't see it.
The lotus petals swirling constantly before his eyes had vanished in the fog along with the image of her.
Finally.
"Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog
Scent of dried flowers and I'm walking through the fog
Walking through the fog"
"Yuu?" Hearing that familiar voice calling his name partially shook him out of the state of apathy into which he had fallen, but even if his eyes suddenly opened Kanda didn't raise his face to look at the source of the sound.
"Yuu?" the voice called again, and this time Kanda reacted by focusing his gaze on the owner of that voice. "Are you okay?"
Lavi? No, impossible, he couldn't be here... It wasn't real, the stupid nightmare was making a fool of him again. He blinked his eyes a few times, trying to fully focus the figure in front of him through the veil obscuring his vision.
The young Bookman appeared to be surprised by something, perhaps by the expression on his face, as Kanda perceived two trails of tears riding his cheeks. He met Lavi's only eye and saw concern in it; the redhead took a step forward, holding out his hand toward him, but Kanda kept staring incredulously at him convinced the redhead was just a figment of his hallucinating mind.
"What's that ya're holdin'?" asked the apparition.
At the question Kanda stiffened, realizing that there really was something pressed against his chest, that imaginary Lavi was right.
Suddenly he let go of his grasp shrinking back, horror painted all over his worn out face, and that thing fell to the ground with a thud, partly cushioned by the sand covering the soil.
The remains of the Akuma that had once been his captivity companion stared lifeless at Kanda. That same thing who claimed to hold the woman whom he so hated. Finally a corpse.
"I don't know." Kanda said, hoping that her death had written the word 'the end' on dreams and memories.
"Ya don't know?" Lavi repeated even more surprised.
"No. Not..." Kanda swallowed hard. He was no longer certain of anything, neither of having lived the last events he remembered, even less so about what really was the stump next to him. Not to mention the place where he was or the fact that he could see Lavi in front of him asking those awkward questions. "I..."
"I struggled a lot, y'know, t'get Allen opening this damn gate t'come an' take ya back." Lavi's image said sitting by his side and putting a hand on his shoulder. "He raved ya'd somethin' personal to fix. I've to thank Lvellie if I'm here"
Kanda gave a start, both for what it was just revealed to him and the touch of those fingers on his bare skin; the contact was real, Kanda could feel it... he was there with him... Lavi.
He looked at the redhead with wide eyes, as if he was seeing the other man for the first time at that very moment.
"Lavi?" Kanda murmured drowning in the smile that the young Bookman addressed to him, and Lavi nodded. How much he had desired to have the other man back there for him, for him only! It was like he had suddenly awakened from the damn nightmare possessing him, his mind clear again and lucidity regained. He turned towards the Akuma. "It's what is left of those crazy experiments the Black Order did." Kanda explained flatly, tightening his fists against his body. "He was my captivity companion at the Asian Headquarters before Mugen chose me."
Lavi's expression showed a genuine bewilderment; Yuu had never spoken so openly about what he had suffered by the Black Order before he had become an Exorcist, although the redhead had always suspected that it wasn't so different from the treatment the scientists reserved for Lenalee.
He got up, approaching the Akuma's lifeless body.
"So this was the failed experiment they used t'play with dark matter." Lavi said examining the remains more closely. It looked like a clay doll now broken, the cracks of time that crossed up the entire body to disfigure its face.
"You knew?" Kanda said, shaken by that revelation.
"One of the agreements Bookman made provides the knowledge of all the Order's secrets. We've studied this as well. Just, I didn' know ya were involved, Yuu." Lavi murmured in a sorrowful tone, turning back toward the other Exorcist. "How had ya kill 'im?"
"It's not my work. It self-destructed." Lavi gave him a quizzical look, and Kanda was forced to give further details. "I'm the reason."
"Yeah, I guess ya were friends." He held out his hand to help Kanda up, but the samurai looked away from him pointing his gaze to the ground, so Lavi knelt again in front of the Japanese man.
"No. And I don't want to talk about it." Kanda replied when a hand forced his face to look toward its owner, and he had to meet that incredible green eye capable to read into his soul.
"Ya were cryin', Yuu." Lavi pointed out, brushing a tear with the finger with which he held the young man's cheek. "Y'can't deny it."
"I wasn't in my right mind." Kanda protested in an icy tone, sharply moving the other youth aside and finally getting to his feet, just a bit wobbly on his legs.
He wanted to leave that place immediately but he had no idea how to do so. He was about to try calling Komui through the earring-communicator that the man had given him, when he felt his wrist being grabbed and himself dragged back to collide with something warm: Lavi's body.
"When all this is over, I'll take ya away with me, Yuu." the Bookman apprentice whispered with a voice full of emotion, embracing Kanda tightly, his face buried against the hollow of the other's neck. "Forgive me for not havin' had enough courage to decide doin' this b'fore..."
Lavi knew perfectly well that this was the worst time to ask for forgiveness, but given the almost desperate current situation he was afraid he wouldn't have another chance.
Kanda went immediately stiff in Lavi's arms, breath caught in his throat.
"Let go of me, you idiot!" He hissed, trying not to let his voice sound desperate, so thirsty for those words but aware of their falsity. "I hate it when you make a fool of me!"
Lavi, however, didn't seem willing to listen. Rather than loosening the tight embrace, the redhead clenched his arms around Kanda even more, taking his breath away. Kanda really wanted to rebel, to hit him and escape by force from Lavi's grip... Instead he was paralyzed, his eyes wide with astonishment. The problem was that he had wanted so much to hear those words from the Bookman apprentice's lips that he was almost about to accept them as being true.
"You've never b'lieved me, even now, but I've always told ya the truth." Lavi continued encouraged by Yuu's lack of reaction, slightly moving away from him to be able to look into the other youth's beautiful dark eyes. "I love you, Yuu. From the depths of this heart I shouldn't have. I want ya stayin' with me when the war'll be over, despite the Bookmen Clan's rules."
Kanda stared at him in disbelief with his lips just a bit parted in front of the sincerity that shone from Lavi's speaking tone and which he could clearly read in his only eye. If really Lavi had never lied to him, then he'd been a colossal idiot to push the redhead away by treating him as if he felt towards him nothing but lust, pure and simple physical desire. Because he perfectly well knew that it wasn't at all the case.
"Lavi..." Kanda could not keep himself from whispering the redhead's name, surprising himself letting his hands slide behind the young man's back. He returned the embrace in which Lavi had wrapped him up, clinging desperately to the redhead after all this time spent wishing that this could happen.
"Will ya come with me?" Lavi then asked, casting him a sweet smile, the expression hopeful and yet veiled with a thin layer of fear.
Kanda nodded slowly, unable to convert into words the feelings he felt for the young man who clutched him tightly to his own body. The embrace suddenly became more stronger; that quiet assenting motion, to Lavi, meant more than a thousand words. He knew very well how difficult it was for Yuu to express what he felt, and the fact that he consented to go with him - implicitly admitting their relationship in doing so - left Lavi with the hope that Kanda also harbored some kind of affection for him.
Kanda lingered in the reassuring warmth the contact with Lavi's body conveyed to him, trying to sort out the confusion reigning inside his mind; concentrating in the attempt to make a logical sense out of the recent events, Kanda hardly jumped when the other Exorcist slightly departed from him, seeking for his eyes.
"It's time to throw ourselves back into the battle." Lavi observed with a touch of melancholy and a shiver of fear, given the difficult situation in which the other fighters were in. "What ya wanna do with...?" he said then, pointing to the remains of the Akuma.
Kanda turned to look at it and just then the mutilated body crumbled, leaving only a little heap of ashes to mix with the sand that was the soil of that place. The Japanese Exorcist shrugged, shooting a careless glance towards Lavi.
"Looks like we won't have to worry about it." he stated flatly, picking up Mugen from the place where it was abandoned when he had landed onto the sandy ground at his arrival there.
Lavi fumbled with his Golem, demanding the Gate's reopening, and the frantic sounds coming through the device were clearly sign that the battle was still raging; nevertheless it seemed that Allen had managed to reconcile his own problems with theirs, because an expanding light materialized out of nowhere in the thin air, creating a passage. The Bookman apprentice moved to enter it but was held by the shoulder.
"Lavi." Kanda called him, and the redhead turned to look at him, surprised. "I love you."
Lavi's single green eye opened wide in shock hearing that statement coming from Kanda's lips, but he was even more astounded by the blow that hit him full in the stomach together with it.
"Ouch!" he exclaimed making a wounded and outraged expression, but above all disappointed after being for a moment under the illusion that Yuu was going to show him his true feelings. "What was that for?" Lavi protested sullenly, pressing carefully on the injured area.
"For leaving me all this time." Kanda said succinctly walking through the Gate with disdainful decision.
Lavi could not help laughing as he ran after him.
"Wait for me, Yuu-chan!"
Final Notes:
The first who dare to say "Mugen hadn't to be with Kanda" gets immediately killed by Mugen itself.
I refuse to recognize this thing, Kanda would NEVER EVER separate from Mugen, even if he was lobotomized! He'd rather stab himself with Mugen to take it with him than leave it behind him! Kanda is perfectly capable to do everything with just one hand, so it's totally absurd that he could throw Mugen at anybody to grab whatever shit he had to... and then leaving it to the idiot as well!
And, I finished this story before chapter 201 came out; but I decided not to modify the ending, because it fit well as it is in my opinion, given the fact that Kanda didn't know what was going on with Allen at that moment, so he could assume that Allen's pained sounds had to be from the battle, and not because of his current 'bondage' condition... While Lavi, who perfectly new it all, could most likely not say anything about it before going back.
Moreover, with this last chapter of "Dried Flowers" I officially drop reading D .Gray-man manga. This is my truth, and it bothers me to even bear out the little I conceded. From now on I will go my own way basing myself only on the true Kanda; I'm sorry but the one we saw from the moment he stabbed that meddler, Allen (it was him the one who had to blow up together with his little Akuma friend), is only a bad imitation of the Kanda we know and love. So I don't want to know how low he would fall from now on.
Besides that, for those of you who didn't know and were thinking that hoshino's clever idea was VERY original, well I care to let you know that it's all COPIED. Looks like that good woman isn't able to do anything but steal others ideas and things. First she copied drawings from other manga, then the full drawing style of a particular mangaka she likes at that very moment... Now she is copying plot parts, too.
This last foolishness comes from Star Trek: the Next Generation. Yes, that's it!
For those of you who are not into Star Trek, I'll explain something before solving the mystery. Trill are an alien race that lives in symbiosis with another race; each Trill host into his/her body a member from the other race, because they don't have a physical shape suitable with their intelligence, giving them adequate "bodily support" they miss. The bond is so deep, and each of the two can see all memories and knowledge from the other.
Now to the point. One of this Trill, a male, had a romantic relationship with a female member of the Enterprise crew (doctor Crusher for the ones who know), a really serious thing either. One day he got a mission and... he got injured! And... OH NO! He died!
But just the host was going to die, so the symbiotic creature is transferred to a new host... and... HELL NO! It's a WOMAN!
Oh my, what a COINCIDENCE. Sounds like something familiar... So, the woman goes to the other host lover, and tell the poor prostrate female doctor: "It's still me, all "name of the dead man here" memories are in me now. I love you. If you want we could be together as we was."
The female doctor's face → O_O "Err... I'm sorry, but I can't do it."
CORRECT ANSWER. Someone can't tell you something like this and you instantly accept it like it was the proverbial 'manna from heaven', that's simply absurd. Especially for someone grown up with the church rules saying "same sex= Mortal Sin". So Kanda's reaction it's the most out of character thing of the whole universe. First because it wasn't him the one involved with that woman, and wanting to be precise and coherent to his reactions he couldn't feel other but deep hate for her; same thing if we want to blame the unwanted memories from Kanda's donour, since the man was a churchgoer too. Especially him, I say, was a devoted person compared to Kanda.
But that's beyond the point, the basic thing is that it's all copied XD Congratulations, hoshino!
If now you're all like "wow, she's seething venom", YES. I AM.