sand castle - part 1
FINALLY THERE IS CROSS FIC AH HA HA *runs in circles*
I'm still not sure I like this one, but that's okay, because it's really long. *dazed*
DGM does not belong to me, you can tell by the way I'm not fluent in Japanese. It is a shame, though.
And so many thanks to zephy_magnum, my long-suffering beta, who had to suffer more than usual over this.
And to appease the good beta, a note on language:
So. Is it card sharp or card shark?
IT IS BOTH, OKAY.
Zephy said, “You have clearly made a mistake, because there is no card sharp. It is card shark. I learned this from Ocean’s Eleven.”
I informed her that Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 10th Edition has card sharper or card sharp (n) “one who habitually cheats at cards.”
She pointed out that other dictionaries felt otherwise.
I claimed she was crazy.
She pointed out that I’m the one who thinks days of the week have colors.
It devolved from there.
Happily, wikipedia saves the day! Being…ah…as super-reliable and beyond question as it is. Card sharp, according to wikipedia, has a long and tangled relationship with card shark. Kind of like soda vs. pop, only more tangled and not as well known.
Sharp and shark (and shirker) all come from the German for rogue or rascal, apparently. Hence loan shark and card sharp.
In American English, “card shark” may refer to someone who’s an expert at cards, while “card sharp” may refer to someone who’s an expert at cheating at cards. Then again, they may not have those implications. Or they may. It depends on the region, the dialect, the phase of the moon.
Which is all irrelevant as far as DGM is concerned, because DGM should be in turn of the century English English. Nominally.
I went with card sharp because it’s what I grew up with (California), and Australia agrees, even if the American Midwest thinks I made it up. On top of that, it is a term that only appeared in the mid-1800s, and there seems to be agreement that card shark is a corruption. I choose to believe that it wouldn’t yet have been corrupted by the late 1800s. I have no proof. I admit it. I’m going with card sharp anyway.
Now that that extremely important point has been cleared up…
Sand Castle
If Cross had understood, when he was asked to guard the Fourteenth’s vessel, that what he was really being asked to do was raise some broken little kid, he would have said fuck no.
He hadn’t understood. That was why he’d ended up in a godforsaken graveyard, standing over a tiny boy who couldn’t get God to forsake him if he tried. Cross was not best pleased with the situation.
The Fourteenth had been decent enough, for a traitorous, insane, murderous quasi-human. Decent enough that Cross hadn’t expected him to pick a…well, an adorable kid for his vessel. That was just screwed up.
This fiasco had barely begun, and already Cross was wishing he’d never been born. He usually made it at least a year into a project before the prayers for oblivion started.
He dumped the kid at Rachel’s place. The vessel was obviously going to be good for nothing until he got his head more straightened out, and Cross felt like he could use the time.
The argument could be made, of course, that worrying about the kid was an exercise in pain and futility. Cross had pitched that argument to himself, actually. It was the reason he’d never had an apprentice-young exorcists had a pitiful life expectancy, and there was no sense investing lots of time and energy in a kid who probably wouldn’t live to see twenty. Innocence be damned; he’d leave that shit to nutjobs like Theodore, who thrived on heartbreak.
And this Allen kid stood out as a lousy investment. Your average exorcist had bad odds of survival, but this kid had no odds at all.
The sensible thing would be to keep from getting attached. The sensible thing, in fact, would be to put the kid in a freaking box and feed him through a grate until he changed.
The sensible thing didn’t seem to have anything to do with it. (Klaud Nyne had been heard to remark that Cross wouldn’t know sensible if it stabbed him in the heart. The woman had such a graphic imagination.) For reasons extremely unclear to Cross, he found himself running to everyone he could think of who knew a thing about kids and asking them, “What the hell am I supposed to do with a kid?”
He cared already, and was therefore screwed. Though not as screwed as the kid.
The people he ran to about child care gave him these reasonable responses about consistency and discipline and being understanding and whatever, and he’d say, “No, you don’t understand, this kid is really fucked up.”
And then, to a man or woman, they’d look at him dubiously and say, “Can’t you find someone who would be…well…better at raising children?”
So in addition to everything else, he was learning that nobody had any faith in him, which was goddamn annoying.
* * *
“Hey, kid,” Cross said, standing in the doorway of the kid’s room, a year to the day after he’d dumped him there. “Pack up. We’re going places.”
He’d come to pick up the kid, but only because he felt like he couldn’t put it off any more. It definitely wasn’t because he felt prepared. Still, it wasn’t safe to leave the kid without an exorcist for too long; he was special. The poor little bastard.
And God, he looked like a poor little bastard, sitting in that room. At least it wasn’t as bad as it had been when Cross had picked him up out of the graveyard. That had been bad. That had been a tiny kid following him mindlessly everywhere he went, running into him whenever he stopped, always silent, always with the big eyes and no expression at all.
Goddamn creepy. Obviously Cross had expected the vessel to be creepy, just not creepy like that.
This was an improvement, in the sense that the kid had one or two expressions, could take care of his own basic needs, and would every once in while answer a question. Or so Rachel said; the kid still hadn’t said a thing to Cross so far in their acquaintance. He also had no reaction to Cross abruptly reappearing after a year and ordering him around. That seemed unusual.
Rachel had apparently decided to make Allen’s room cute. Cross didn’t know what had possessed her to do that, and he didn’t know how she’d been able to stand it after she’d done it. Light greens and baby blues, fluffy blankets and bright pictures of birds, and in the middle of it all, on the tiny blue bed, was an empty-eyed doll with white hair and an angry scar.
The kid wouldn’t have looked out of place in a jail cell or an especially bleak orphanage, but in this soft room, he was all wrong. All wrong, but he didn’t show any sign of giving a shit. About that or about anything else.
“Come on, Allen,” Cross said. “I told you to pack.”
The doll blinked at him. “Pack?” he asked in a small, hoarse voice, like he screamed himself awake more often than not. Which was going to make traveling with him a real delight.
“Pack,” Cross repeated. “Clothes or whatever. We’re not coming back here.”
The kid stared. He stared long enough that Cross started to wonder if he was actually brain damaged, and then he said, “We?”
“Yeah, kid. We. You and me. We’re stuck with each other; lucky us.”
“Oh.” The kid thought that one over for a bit. “Mana said I wouldn’t be alone.”
So Mana had remembered enough to know they’d be following him. Interesting.
“Good for Mana-he was right,” he said. “You’re not alone.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the kid told him.
Cross might have been inclined to take offense, but it was hard to take offense when the kid looked so miserable it was a wonder he hadn’t just killed himself already. And wouldn’t that have buggered up destiny?
“Maybe it doesn’t,” he said in a reasonable tone, since he wasn’t allowed to be offended. “But if you’re gonna keep living, kid, you’d better figure out a reason to do it. Liking yourself or liking other people are the standard choices, but it doesn’t look like you’ll have any luck with those. There’s always revenge. Figure something out.”
The kid stared at him. Cross couldn’t tell if he was thinking about what he’d said, or if he was thinking about how miserable he was, or if he wasn’t thinking anything at all. Something was going to have to be done about that glassy-eyed look, because Cross couldn’t take much more of it.
“Remember what I told you about akuma, kid?” Cross asked, hoping to startle up an expression.
“Killing them is the only way to set them free,” the kid answered immediately. Cross didn’t particularly like the idea that anything he’d said had been taken deeply to heart, but apparently that did happen with kids. Or so he’d been warned by people horrified by the idea of him raising a kid.
“That’s right,” he agreed, trying not to think about his words getting carved onto the kid’s heart. “So making your dad an akuma, that was a real fuck-up. But killing him afterward, well. That was the only way to make it up to him. Do you understand?”
“You’re wrong,” the kid said. Cross wondered how he was managing to be pathetic, creepy, cute, and really annoying all at the same time. “I didn’t make it up; I have to do more,” the kid was saying. “I have to keep moving forward. I promised.”
“Uh huh,” Cross said, raising an eyebrow. “And you’re moving forward to where, exactly?”
“I’m going to kill akuma,” Allen said, maybe swore, and for the first time, Cross could see the spirit in him. Looked like he wasn’t going to stay a broken doll forever.
“Killing akuma is all I’m good for, so that’s what I’ll do,” the kid concluded.
Allen wasn’t going to be a broken doll. He was going to be much scarier than that.
The Destroyer of Time, a thought whispered.
Not that the kid’s fighting spirit was going to make any difference, in the end.
“Whatever, kid,” Cross said, lighting a cigarette so he could look away. “I’m glad our plans for your future line up. Now pack, and I’ll meet you out front when you’re done. Hurry it up; I haven’t got all day.”
* * *
All the things everyone had told him he was going to have to put up with, taking care of a kid, those things didn’t happen. Allen never had a tantrum. Allen was never willful. Allen never got bad-tempered when he was hungry. Allen was a walking dead thing, and it was disturbing the hell out of Cross. As depressing as the moment of grit and determination had been, it’d been better than this. The only time he showed any sign of life was when Timcampy was playing with him.
Tim was so happy to have Allen around that it was actually kind of cute. He could hardly stay away from the kid, always flying around him and perching on his head and stealing his food.
And he was good for the kid. The day Tim tried to steal Allen’s food, Allen tried to pull it away, and Timcampy bit him-that was the first time Cross had ever heard the kid laugh. It was a happy laugh, too. Probably just as much of a lie as his occasional happy smiles were, but still, feeling well enough to lie was better than not feeling well enough to give a damn.
For the first month, Cross didn’t push the kid much. Just had him run easy, legal errands, clean the clothes, that kind of thing. It was partly out of concern, but mostly it was because they hadn’t run into any akuma. When he looked back on it, Cross could see that the month of easy travel had been a good call. Apparently the kid healed faster while traveling. Given the circus thing, it wasn’t a surprise.
During the lull, Cross collected information, Allen trailed silently, and Timcampy had fun harassing Allen. It was basically a good month, and by the end of it, the kid was smiling at least once every few days. He was acting almost like a normal kid. A normal exorcist kid, anyway.
If he was going to be so damn happy, it was clearly time to start training him.
* * *
During the month that Cross was inclined to cut the kid some slack, they didn’t run into any akuma. The very day he decided he might want to start training the kid, an akuma showed up. In his more paranoid moments, Cross wondered if this might not be Fate.
He’d always hated Fate. It figured that he’d be stuck trotting around with some epically predestined, saving-humanity-type martyr kid. He had to seriously fight against his instincts to keep from thwarting the Grand Plan just on principle. Logically, he knew that the Grand Plan was, as aforementioned, to save humanity. As such, it was very much in his best interest to let it happen. But still, it rankled. Fate. Most annoying natural force in a very annoying world.
Anyway, the convenient akuma appeared. Cross believed in taking advantage of opportunities, even if they were Fate-driven. He also believed that the best way to learn was by diving right in. So he grabbed the kid, threw him at the akuma, and stepped back to see what would happen.
What happened was that the kid took one look at the akuma, collapsed on the ground, wrapped his arms around his head, and started screaming.
This was not an outstanding first step on the exorcist career path.
Cross absently killed the akuma-Level One, hardly worth waking up for-and went to see what the hell was wrong with the kid.
“Kid,” he said, with a light kick to the ribs for emphasis. “Get up. What the hell is wrong with you?”
The kid switched from screaming to sobbing. Experimentally, Cross kicked a bit harder. Nothing changed, so he settled back somewhat impatiently to wait.
Making a huge thing out of a dead parent, Christ. Parents died. Fucking annoying, but it couldn’t be helped. The brat should be over it by now.
Two cigarettes later, the kid had worn himself down to gasps instead of sobs, and managed to get out, “It…it looked just like Mana.”
Right. That was unlikely, seeing as Mana had only been half-finished. All Level Ones looked essentially the same once they’d transformed, true, but Mana hadn’t really been a Level One, because he’d never put on his skin. He should have been nothing but a skeleton. So what was the kid on about?
“What are you on about?” he demanded. “Your Mana didn’t look like a Level One. And get up before I kick you harder.”
The kid didn’t get up, but he did push himself to his knees, and he sat there, hands on knees, and gave the very last answer Cross had expected. This would turn out to be something of a trend with the kid.
“Not the body,” the kid whispered, staring at his hands. “The…the thing tied to the body? The real person. Not the machine, the person. She was all rotted, and she was crying. She was crying just like Mana.” And then he started crying again, but silently this time, and he stayed stubbornly upright, back straight, eyes forward.
The person but not the machine, he said. Except that no one could see anything but the machine; that was the tricky thing about akuma. If anyone could see the soul, then it would be possible to pick akuma out of a crowd. And that, that would change everything.
“Kid,” Cross said carefully. “When the akuma looked human. Could you see the person tied to the machine then?”
The kid turned to him, startled out of tears. “Of course,” he answered, and then, incredulous, “Can’t you see them?”
Can’t you see them, he said.
“So that’s what you were…cursed with,” Cross realized, and for a moment he felt nothing but incredible, blinding rage.
The kid could see akuma. The kid could see akuma.
If they had known…if, in all these years of fighting, anyone had been able to see…how many lives would that have saved? Might the war have ended already, if even one person had had the same ability as this worthless kid? This brat who cried over a gift so incredible as the ability to see akuma? This little fool who dared to call it a curse?
But he made the mistake of looking at Allen, and abruptly couldn’t hold on to anger at all. Allen was tough to resent at the best of times, what with all the being little and cute and utterly screwed over, and he was hardly at his best. He was, in fact, sitting stiffly in the dirt with tear-streaked cheeks, trying and failing to look tough. When he got like that, it was easy to forget that he was any kind of special; hard to remember he was anything but a tiny kid who had seen too damn much already.
“Sweet Jesus,” Cross muttered. “Okay, kid. Couple things you should know before we go any further down this road. The big one is that no one can see what you see. This is going to seriously affect the way I train you.”
The kid tried to ask a question. Cross talked over it.
“And while we’re on the subject of how to train you, let’s talk about the honor and the privilege that is being a parasite type.”
“Parasite type?” the kid asked. That had been a high-speed question he’d squeezed in. Cross was impressed.
“That’s right. Innocence comes in two flavors: equipment and parasite.”
“Innocence?” asked the kid. Which meant that Rachel hadn’t told him anything, which meant that words would be had the next time he saw her.
Cross had to tell Allen the story about Innocence and God and the Millennium Earl and exorcists and the whole miserable situation, since Rachel hadn’t. He told it at a speed that left no room for questions, and when he got done, the kid looked like he might cry just from information overload.
“And you’re a parasite,” Cross continued. “Which means that your Innocence is a part of you, which means that you can neutralize akuma poison in your body. That’s about the only plus to having a parasite type, because mostly they just suck.” He had to pause to breathe for a second, and absently touched his mask before he thought better of it. Happily the kid was too busy blinking at him in shock to ask any questions about that.
“That’s why it’s going to affect your training,” Cross concluded grandly. “You should protect other people from getting shot when you can, because they’d die and you won’t.”
The kid looked momentarily happy.
“Or at least,” Cross said with savage glee, “you won’t die right then.” The kid looked less happy.
“Neutralizing the poison won’t necessarily undo the damage that’s already been done,” Cross continued. “Remember that you’re just human, kid.” So far, anyway. “You’re human, and humans can’t take being God’s puppets for all that long before they break. That’s what I meant about parasite types. The Innocence can only push your body into doing things it can’t do for so long before it shuts down. So even if you don’t get killed by akuma, you can expect to age fast and die young.” Well, ‘die’ in effect. “Anything you wanted to ask?”
The kid stared at him silently with a wide-eyed expression of horror.
“Good,” Cross said. “Now get up; we’ve got to find another akuma. You will know it as soon as you see it, and I expect you to take advantage of that. And if you fall down screaming this time, kid, I’ll break your kneecaps.”
* * *
The second akuma was a smoother operation from start to finish. Cross only had to kick the kid once before he started to show willing, so that was good, and he took the akuma down with minimal idiocy, so that was better. The acrobat background was definitely a help, although the year the kid had spent sitting on his ass hadn’t done him any favors.
Cross made the happy discovery that he loved writing up training regimens. Loved. The kid didn’t seem as happy about this discovery as Cross was. (Oh, the tilted-chair handstand pushups, best idea Cross had had in years. Ah, the clattering chairs and the nearly-dislocated shoulders!) The kid had no room to speak, though, because the third akuma was even smoother than the second, and by the fourth he almost looked like he knew what he was doing. Clearly Cross was an exorcist-training genius.
Allen did work hard, Cross gave him that. He worked insanely hard, and he almost never whined, which was creepy but useful. If Cross had a complaint about the kid, it was that he’d adjusted way too quickly to the idea that he was going to die young.
So Cross did what any feeling adult would do, and told the kid that if he really did have a death wish, he should speak now before Cross wasted more valuable time on him.
“I promised Mana I would keep moving forward,” the kid explained. “But if I die while I’m moving forward, then…then that won’t be my fault. Mana won’t be mad. I can go be with Mana, and I’ll have done my best, so he won’t be mad.”
Surprise, surprise, the kid was fucking suicidal.
“I never promised you anything,” the kid pointed out, sounding…well, a bit resentful. This was new, the resentment. Cross generally thought it was a good sign. Resentful was better than suicidal any day. At least, it was in people Cross preferred alive to dead, which unfortunately included the kid.
“No, you never promised me a thing,” Cross allowed. “But if you wander around looking for an excuse to get killed, you’re not really keeping your promise to Mana. Your word is your problem, though.”
For one delightful second, Allen actually bared his teeth. Maybe having a kid around was going to have its benefits after all, if he was going to get steadily more hilarious with time.
If he could work on less suicidal, that might also be nice.
* * *
The kid turned twelve, and Cross went ahead and made him an official apprentice. It felt a lot like resigning himself to his fate.
The kid, who was getting more uppity every day, asked if this made him the official slave, rather than the unofficial slave.
Cross shoved him off a balcony to check his reaction time. Pretty good, actually.
* * *
Hilarity notwithstanding, Cross had quite enough misery in his life even leaving the kid out. Once you’d added the kid in, it was a goddamn unfair level of misery.
As if aware of this, the Earl decided that this was the very time to get feisty. Why, Cross didn’t know. He did have a suspicion, though. His suspicion had white hair and a scar and was currently eating its own weight in mashed potatoes. His apprentice was getting damned expensive to feed.
But whatever the reason, every rumor Cross picked up in every shady, back-alley place that knew about the war whispered the same thing: the Earl was collecting akuma.
He’d always made akuma, but he used to make them and leave them behind. Lately (say, the last fifteen years), he’d been making them and taking them along. Where? Not entirely clear. Asia, maybe. Which, though the kid didn’t know it, was the reason they were heading east. Why? Oh, now there was an ugly question.
Then there were the rumors about the Ark. The Earl had lost control of the Ark. The Earl had perfect control of the Ark. The Earl had a new Ark, and the old Ark had been destroyed. The old Ark was about to be destroyed. The Noah could control the Ark, but the Earl couldn’t. The Noah were rebelling against the Earl. The Noah were looking for the Fourteenth. The Earl was looking for the Fourteenth. Everyone was looking for the Fourteenth.
Dozens of rumors, most of them contradictory. What they all boiled down to, though, was that something was going on with the Ark, and everyone was after the kid. Fantastic.
This brought up the one disadvantage to the kid’s seeing akuma souls. If he could see akuma souls, then Cross was going to have to stop experimenting with akuma for the duration, because the kid would not like it. It wasn’t that Cross cared deeply about the kid’s happiness, but there was a point beyond which he just wasn’t worth having around.
Because he couldn’t experiment with akuma, he wasn’t getting the latest story on the Millennium Earl from them. That tended to make a man uncomfortable, particularly when he was dragging around the biggest liability in the entire war-in both wars. With training and maybe brainwashing, the kid might turn out to be a liability for the Earl. Right now, though, he was a liability for whatever poor schmuck happened to be standing next to him. Which was Cross, in the event.
He should never have agreed to this. Guard duty, what the hell? He’d been young and foolish, he’d had visions of saving the world, he’d been out of his goddamn mind. And now he was going to pay and pay.
And if the kid got up one more time for food, Cross was leaving him with the bill.
* * *
Cross did leave the kid with the bill, and, in so doing, began to discover the most hilarious thing about him to date: he was willing to do absolutely anything as long as he was convinced it was part of his training. Not just do it, but do it to the very best of his abilities. And maybe it was because he’d come up in the circus, but he was willing to consider a lot of strange things part of his training.
After pick up the bill, Cross tried get us dinner. It wasn’t met with the annoyed look he expected, but with the weary-but-dutiful look. Cross came to love that look, not just because it meant Allen would do whatever it was without complaint, but also because it took on a more and more hysterical cast as time went by.
It turned out his apprentice was willing to get dinner by…well, from the look of it, by any means necessary. He was also willing to cover strategic retreats, lie to people who wanted money, and con landladies into renting them rooms they couldn’t afford by sheer force of sweet smile.
He was willing to do really weird things, too, maybe thinking that if he didn’t understand it, he couldn’t decide if it was important or not. Fetch me this obscure, out-of-print book. Clean this rare glass measuring thing, and then tell me how it works. Take care of this man-eating plant named Roseanne; it dies and you die.
Which was not to say the kid was showing no spirit at all. Oh, no. Gone was the ghost of yesteryear, and in his place was a little charmer. Charming, that is, when he wasn’t flipping his shit and scaring people with his crazy, uncontrolled rage.
For instance, he’d once oozed them most of the way into a fancy inn that any idiot could see they didn’t have the funds to pay for. He’d stood in the doorway and tearfully confessed to the owner’s wife the sad tale of the hardships he and his uncle had suffered (never could bring himself to pretend Cross was his father), and it had very nearly worked. Silly wench had been about to let them stay for nothing; the wobbling lower lip said so. Cross’s appreciation for a circus education was at an all-time high.
Then it all went to hell.
At that crucial moment in the proceedings, a guy walked by on the street, eyes firmly fixed above the rabble, which was why he tripped over a dog. In the way of guys like that, he blamed the dog. Shouted at it, hit it with his cane, the usual routine.
Cross tended to think those men were pathetic. It developed that his apprentice had rather stronger thoughts on the subject. Thoughts along the line of kill, kill.
He nearly beat the guy to death with his own cane. Cross’s first thought was, “Christ, I have trained him strong.” His next thought was, “Shit, police.”
Prying his apprentice away was not easy. (Strong, very strong). By the time he succeeded, the inn door was locked and bolted. Not that it really mattered, given the fleeing from the law they were going to have to do.
Cross respected uncontrolled rage, but it just didn’t work for the kid. It was out of harmony with the charm. It was aesthetically displeasing, and that’s the only reason he said a thing about it. His apprentice, predictably, didn’t have the sense to be grateful.
“Now you’re saying I’m not allowed to be angry?” he demanded. The kid was so damned irrational.
“Fuck, be angry, I don’t give a shit whether you’re angry or not. But my advice to you is that you don’t let people see it, stupid apprentice. Your strength is cuteness, and you blow it when you fly off the handle like that. The friendly face gets you miles. My bet is you could’ve made that guy cry over the stupid dog if you’d come at him with the sweet face; told him the dog was yours. You’re good enough. And that’d stick with a guy like that longer than a beating-or it’d stick with him in a more useful way. Just because you don’t feel it doesn’t mean you can’t play it. You should know that, circus brat.”
The kid considered, and then gave him that serious, carving-your-words-onto-my-heart look. Cross hated that look; it was his least favorite look. And if he didn’t like the look, then he liked it even less when he could see the words being instantly put into effect.
Yeah, in a sense he’d wanted them put into effect. Gradually, or something. Not the next day.
* * *
“Stupid apprentice, I don’t even want to know what you’re doing. What I do want to know is what the hell you did with the rest of my clothes.”
His apprentice gave him a thousand watt smile from behind a hand of cards, and the guy he was playing with guffawed. Cross wished them both dead, fuck the war and everything to do with it.
“Bess said she wouldn’t mind washing our clothes,” his apprentice told him with the very same innocent smile that Cross had advised him to use on suckers. “And Mr. Jeremias said he would teach me to play cards until Miss Marjorie finishes breakfast.”
It was over the top. It was over the top, but he was so damn cute it was working anyway. If he started lisping, though, Cross might have to kill him.
“Your boy’s a real natural at cards,” said the aforementioned Mr. Jeremias.
“My apprentice,” Cross corrected in an outraged hiss, stalking over to get a better look at this…farce.
Jeremias, Cross noted on inspection, was precisely the type of man that Allen usually took against on sight. Bulky, squinty-eyed, short on both words and temper. Allen didn’t have many prejudices, but one of the few was personified in Jeremias.
And yet here they were. Buddies.
On closer inspection, it became apparent that Jeremias’s skill with cards was not the kind of skill men acquired by playing honestly. Fast hands. Incredibly fast hands. And the kid had always been dexterous.
Cross thought it might be wise to walk away from this while he could still plead ignorance.
The knowledge would be useful, though. For one thing, he’d be leaving his apprentice with more bills from now on. God knew there was plenty of debt to go around.
“I’ll be out until tonight,” Cross said, and thought, Hell, may as well test how far he can stretch the charm before it breaks. Learn by doing. “When I get back, you’re going to tell me about Russia. Most of Europe is easy enough, but getting into Russia’s always been a bitch. Ask around and check how easy it is to cross the border and where it’s easy. We need to do it without flashing the cross; I don’t want anyone knowing where I am. Ten years ago it was just a matter of money in the right hands. Find out what’s changed, find out who’s important, find out who can be bribed.”
“Bribed with what?” his apprentice asked incredulously. All of that, and what the kid was worried about was the money. Right.
“And get money for bribes. We need to be there next month, so hurry the fuck up about it. You get all that?”
“Yes, master,” the kid said with smile. Only those who knew him well would recognize it as completely deranged. Not bad, apprentice.
“Tonight, then. And fold my goddamn clothes this time.” And Cross strode out of the room with a spring in his step.
“Damn, boy,” he heard just before the door closed. “Your master always that much of a dick?”
“He’s my master,” Allen replied blankly. Cross smirked, and went to see a man about some illegal documents.
* * *
In fact, it took more than a month to get to Russia, which meant they were skating closer to winter than Cross would have liked. He punished his apprentice accordingly.
Punishments were every bit as fun to devise as training schedules. Every. Bit.
And, Christ, he’d had to do something, because otherwise the kid was bound to notice how light the training was getting. Cross didn’t like it; the whole situation was ridiculous and unsafe. But if the kid never slept, he was going to be off, and if he was off and Cross ignored it during training, he was going to die. Unacceptable, under the circumstances.
The kid had ugly dreams. Like most people with ugly dreams, he tried to dodge them by not sleeping at all, which just made the dreams all the worse when exhaustion won out. Cross knew how the mind liked to store shit up for the instant you let your guard down.
Cross knew all about ugly dreams.
If he was feeling honest, Cross could admit that the month deadline had been impossible, and that the kid was actually pretty good at getting information. He was quick, and most of what he found out wasn’t wrong. Rare, for a first-timer.
At least, Cross was assuming this was Allen’s first time illegally crossing borders. He hadn’t personally spent any time tailing Mana, though, so for all he knew, Allen had illegally crossed borders while learning to walk.
The other thing he’d been using to keep the kid’s mind off his troubles was the debt. Nothing like new troubles to distract you from the old ones. Looking back on it, it might’ve been a bad idea to foist all the debt off onto him. He was a responsible type; he wasn’t happy to just let debt sit. Apparently he’d decided that the only way to cope was to become a card sharp right now. That meant a cute little kid running to a string of seedy bars and asking various shady men, hey, wanna game?
In the unlikely event that the kid survived akuma, Order scientists, the Millennium Earl, and the hostile takeover of his own brain, he would only go on to be killed in some dive afterward. Unless the dives got him first.
He was such a bad investment. He’d always been a bad investment, and he got worse every goddamn day. Cross was getting really, really tired of running thug interference. Maybe he ought to let some of the scrawnier thugs through, just so the kid understood what he was letting himself in for.
On the other hand, Cross had to admit that the card expertise was useful. And damned funny, besides. It had even been funny that time in Lithuania when the kid had scammed everyone in the bar out of everything they had and nearly been murdered. Cross had had to menace bystanders; it had been classless and stupid.
The expression on the kid’s face had made it all worthwhile, though. Apparently, up to that point, he’d thought that Cross would just leave him to die if he got caught.
A bit of the gratitude wore off after Cross made him spend the next four hours kneeling on the stone floor of their crummy room reciting, “I will not get caught,” over and over until he was hoarse. It wore off, but it didn’t disappear completely.
Gratitude. Almost as unsettling as the words-carved-on-the-heart thing.
Further to which, Cross was unhappy to note that by now, he had a pretty good idea of what the words carved on Allen’s heart were, between listening to the things he’d said during nightmares and fevers, and just watching the way he acted. There weren’t all that many words.
From Mana: “Keep moving forward,” “I love you.”
From Cross: “Find something to live for,” “Only let them see what they want to see.”
When those were the words that guided your life, you were just about bound to be crazy, and the kid was no exception. But he was learning to do crazy with such style. Cross had to admire it.
* * *
Cross had decided on Russia because he knew a lady there who had a bar, a cousin in the Order, and some sidelong connection to the Bookmen. She collected information with an effortless, terrifying grace that Cross lived in awe of. Moscow was much further north than he wanted to go, but information was information, and good information-particularly in the absence of his akuma network-was a rare enough commodity that the thousand mile detour might be considered cheap. Or at least not out of the question.
He was also looking forward to Sofiya’s first look at his apprentice. In fact, her reaction alone might make the detour worthwhile.
* * *
“Dear God, you’ve found another one just like you.”
Allen’s smile slipped at that, but in the spirit of his new determination to smile no matter what, he managed to prop it back up.
Sofiya snorted, unimpressed. “Cross Marian,” she said, raising an eyebrow and folding her arms. “I thought you wouldn’t show your face here again after the last time my husband beat you.”
“Ah, dearest Sofiya,” Cross said with genuine fondness. “How could I stay away?”
She snorted again. “Well, don’t stand in the street,” she muttered grudgingly. “I don’t want people to realize that I know you.”
She stepped back, then, after a moment of hesitation, turned and headed up the stairs. Cross decided that she most likely wanted them to follow, and so he did, with a bag-dragging apprentice trailing after.
“One night!” Sofiya announced, flinging open the door to a tiny room with one tiny bed, which meant the kid would be sleeping on the floor. “One night, and then you are gone, Cross Marian. Gone before my neighbors have seen you.”
“Does this mean the noble Alexei is away?” Cross asked, peering curiously around the doorframe, checking for booby-traps.
“My husband is downstairs in the bar,” Sofiya informed him. “And I am going now to tell him that you are here. You will have time to prepare yourself before dinner. That is when you can ask your questions as well. And you!” She turned to glare at Allen. “That smile may work on your English girls, but in Russia, the women will steal your money and leave you in a gutter for a face like that.”
Allen, bless him, ducked his head sadly and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. My master hits me if I don’t smile.”
Sofiya stared. After a good, long pause, she turned slowly to Cross with a look of disbelief. “Cross Marian,” she said. “Where in God’s name did you find this?”
“Found him in a gutter,” Cross said, and noted that his apprentice had to bite his lip against a smile.
“He is just like you. I did not realize there could be two,” Sofiya said with some horror, then marched out, slamming the door behind her. They stood and listened as she clomped down the stairs, swearing in Russian.
“She likes you,” Cross informed his apprentice. His apprentice collapsed onto the bed and really, honestly laughed.
* * *
“What is it exactly that you are wanting from my wife, Sofiya Nikolayevna? Always you come here, always this same greedy face, morda kirpicha prosit. I have said to Sofiya Nikolayevna, ‘Why is it that this man thinks he can come here, to Alexei Ivanovich’s house, and ask his wife questions, ah? Why does he think he can make these demands? Who does this man think he is?’ This is what I ask her. And do you know what she tells me?”
Cross shook his head, trying to look less greedy and more trustworthy and sincere.
“She tells me that you think you are a great general from this Black Order.”
“I do think that,” Cross agreed.
“Do not interrupt me when I am talking, or I will beat you more than I did the last time,” Alexei said with a scowl.
Cross shrugged and sat back.
“She tells me you think you will save the world. Why would you do this? Who has asked you to save the world? I have not asked you. If you had asked me, I would have told you to let the world burn itself out like the pile of shit that it is. Lucky for you, Sofiya Nikolayevna does not feel this way, and so she will help you. As for me, I am sick to death of the sight of you in my house. If it happens again, I will kill you.” Having covered the important stuff, Alexei stood, his chair scraping back loudly. “That is all I have to say to you.”
And he left. Allen watched him go with wide eyes until the front door banged shut, then turned to Cross with the curious face that Cross was coming to loathe.
“What does morda kirpicha prosit mean?” he asked, eyes alight with interest.
“That Cross Marian’s ugly face is asking for a brick,” Sofiya explained helpfully, settling into Alexei’s vacated chair.
“Oh,” Allen said, apparently delighted. Cross rolled his eyes.
“Get lost, stupid apprentice. Don’t you have money to make?”
Allen snapped from delighted to sullen in an instant, then remembered to cover it up with the smile. If he didn’t learn to smooth that out, it wasn’t going to do him any good.
“Fine,” he said in a carefully even voice. “Please try not to spend any more money before I get back, master.”
“Don’t worry,” Sofiya said grimly. “He won’t be leaving the house.”
Thus reassured, his apprentice headed out, casting a last, dubious glance over his shoulder.
“What is it you wanted to ask not in front of your boy, Cross Marian?” Sofiya asked the second the door closed. “Is it that you don’t want him to know what he is? Or is it that you thought that I did not know?”
Cross smiled, and thought that he might just have fallen for Sofiya all over again. “I know better than to think there’s anything you don’t know, lovely Sofiya.”
“Don’t let my husband hear you call me that. Blood is very difficult to get out of the wood,” she said, giving him a Look. “Interesting that you don’t want your boy to know. If you were someone else, I would wonder if you were worried for him. But you have never cared for anyone but yourself.”
“No, I never have,” he agreed. It sounded so plausible. Crying shame it was a blatant lie. “He’ll be useless to me if he finds out. He’d probably be paralyzed by grief or something equally annoying.”
“Would he?” she asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow. She tended not to believe anything Cross said. “Or would you?” she continued with a considering frown.
Cross smiled winningly and reached a little desperately for the vodka.
“Tch, men,” Sofiya said, apparently willing to let it go. “So, the Fourteenth. There is one puzzle solved. What is it you want to know?”
“The Earl’s gathering akuma,” Cross said, tipping his chair back and holding his glass speculatively up to the light. “I’d like to know why. Failing that, I’d like to know where. Any news about the Ark would be nice. If anyone’s seen any Noah around. Anything like that.” He emptied his glass and let the chair slam back to all four feet. “What do you know?”
“What do I know?” Sofiya asked scornfully. “Here I am on the edge of the world, and you have to come to me to ask what I know. Unbelievable.”
“You have magical information-gathering techniques,” Cross informed her. “You’re my intelligence hero.”
“You are a fool and you always have been, Cross Marian,” Sofiya said pityingly. “And you want to know about the Ark. I hate to think what idiot thing you will do once you know. The Earl has a new Ark he is building, that is what I hear. Obviously because he cannot trust the Ark that belonged to the Fourteenth, he is making one of his own. I have not seen any Noah, but it does not mean anything; I do not know them. As for the akuma, you know why he is gathering them; your stupid questions are a waste of my time.”
Cross said, “I was hoping you would tell me I was wrong.”
“And your stupid lying to yourself, that is even more a waste of my time,” Sofiya sneered. “But where. I’m sure it is Japan. People in Japan, they love death too much.”
“And Russians don’t?” Cross asked with a smirk.
“Russians love regret; it is not the same thing,” Sofiya told him. “Russians love hating the past, sometimes they try to destroy the future so that there will be no more past to hate-Russia has her problems. But it is not the same thing as loving death, loving the dead. Japan, she loves death, and they are too much alone on their strange islands. That is why the Earl took them.”
Cross generally tried not to ask Sofiya where she got her information, figuring that it would probably annoy her, and in that case there would be no more information. But sometimes he couldn’t help himself.
“Japan’s been cut off for centuries, Sofiya. How did you manage to find out anything about them?”
“How?” She looked surprised, as if the answer should be obvious. “My sister has moved to Vladivostok, who can say why. Thousands of miles from nothing, full of tigers, Vladivostok. But her husband fishes, and he was tired of Irkutsk, and he moved them so far. The islands where he fishes belong to Russia or Japan or no one at all, and when the men who fish are not fighting, they talk to each other in a strange language that doesn’t belong to anyplace on land. Fishermen are all the same. They talk about fish and weather and their homes, but mostly about fish. Still, they will tell each other strange things that happen, and my brother-in-law tells these things to my sister because she is bored by stories about fish. Every two years, I will get a long letter from her. When they finish the railroad, it will be much faster, but for now it is very irritating. Vladivostok, unbelievable. Moving from Moscow to Irkutsk to Vladivostok, unbelievable. My brother-in-law is a stupid man. But you see that it is easy to know these things.”
Cross saw that it was easy to know things if you happened to be related to all the most usefully placed people on earth, but he didn’t feel the need to say so.
“That is all I know that will help you,” she said with a sniff. “See, you have come hundreds of miles for so little, and now my husband will kill you if he sees you again. You are as stupid as my brother-in-law, and now you must also pay me. You must tell me everything you know, and I know how you hate that, Cross Marian.”
* * *
In the event, they got two more days to rest at Sofiya’s before she booted them. This was because the kid had, miraculously, made a friend of the terrifying Alexei.
He refused to tell Cross how it had happened. Refused. Cross had very nearly begged him before he’d realized what he was doing. All he knew was that it had something to do with the two of them ending up in the same bar, a game of cards, a brawl, and his apprentice’s timely use of the phrase morda kirpicha prosit.
Thinking it over, that might be all the explanation Cross wanted.
The terrifying Alexei had then decided, based on their newfound blood brotherhood or what have you, that Allen’s thirteenth birthday wanted early celebrating. Cross couldn’t pretend to understand why.
“This year is an important year in a man’s life,” Alexei informed his equally mystified wife. “This is the year Allen Walker becomes a man. That foreigner,” and here Alexei sneered at Cross, “knows nothing of this. He would treat this year like it was nothing, that is how stupid he is. So we are the ones who must celebrate it, or Allen Walker will never be a man.”
“God forbid,” Sofiya murmured.
As coming-of-age celebrations went, Cross supposed it hadn’t been too annoying. There had been a lot of vodka and very little talking. Allen had been tortured all night with random phrases in Russian that Alexei expected him to memorize, which had been pretty entertaining.
They left Sofiya’s place on a high note. Cross wanted to remember this forever, because he was absolutely sure that it would never happen again.
Part 2