[Fic] Foresight Is 20/20 - D.Gray-man, Kanda/Lavi, 1/12+
After three and a half weeks of working 10-12 hours/day, 7 days a week, I finally had a week off. So what did I do? Stared at blank documents and failed to come up with any inspiration for a story of any kind. Played lots of Suikoden. FINALLY started to work on an update for my website, now two years out of date. Read my old stories over and over, hoping to spark ideas.
So of course, the day before I go back to work for another three or four weeks, I get blindsided by a great idea. *sighs* C'est la vie. Or C'est Lavi, in this case.
Hahaha finally no manga spoiler warnings, because the anime has now caught up to exactly the last thing I read in the manga. Now I'm as clueless as everyone else.
Title: Foresight Is 20/20
Series: D.Gray-man
Pairing: Kanda/Lavi
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, angst, yaoi, swearing, the usual
Chapter length: 3092
Total length: 3092
Forewarned may be fore-armed, but sometimes knowing in advance isn't everything it's cracked up to be.
"Will you stop daydreaming and fucking pay attention?"
Startled, Lavi jerked his head up just in time to see the post he'd been about to run into headfirst. Throwing out his hands, he managed to catch himself against it and prevent his nose from meeting the very solid wooden object, but that didn't save him from the obvious irritation of his companion.
"You are such an idiot," Kanda muttered, glaring at him. "You're drawing attention to us. You've been in a daze all day, snap out of it!"
"Sorry, Yuu," Lavi apologized, far more meekly than was characteristic for him. He should have been laughing and making a joke at his own expense, maybe literally bouncing back from the near miss, but he just couldn't work up the energy. He moved around the post and followed after the other Exorcist, doing his best to stay focused on his surroundings this time.
"What is wrong with you, anyway?" Kanda said, disgruntled. "Even you aren't usually this much of a klutz. If there are any Akuma here, you're going to get yourself killed."
"Nngh. Yeah, I know," Lavi said, sighing and rubbing one hand against his aching eye. "I just can't shake this damned headache. Never felt anything like it. If this is a migraine, I suddenly have a lot more sympathy for the people that suffer from 'em."
Kanda was scrutinizing him, his eyes narrowed. He looked angry and irritated, but then again Lavi didn't think he'd ever seen Kanda not looking angry and irritated. Presumably it did happen occasionally, but Lavi's very presence seemed to make those the default emotions any time the other man was around him.
"Here," Kanda finally said, thrusting a half-full canteen at him. "You're probably just dehydrated. Drink it."
"Why, Yuu. I didn't know you cared." From somewhere Lavi dredged up a sly smile, giving the other man a fluttering look better suited to a star-struck maiden. Kanda opened his mouth, but Lavi beat him to the lecture. "Yeah, yeah, I know. You just wanna make sure I'm not gonna be even more of a burden on this mission than usual, since I'm already hardly better than a useless lump."
Kanda scowled, apparently nonplussed at having the words taken right out of his mouth. Lavi made note of that as a potential strategy for derailing Kanda in the future. "Just drink the damned water."
Chuckling softly despite the way it made his head pound harder, Lavi uncorked the canteen and poured water into his mouth. It was stale and fusty from being in the leather container for so long, but since people in France seemed to believe that wine was far superior to water as a thirst quencher, it was the best he was likely to get. He gulped down a couple of mouthfuls, then recorked it and handed it back to Kanda.
Immediately he regretted drinking it, as it sat uneasily on his stomach and threatened to start a brawl with the stale bread and cheese he'd managed to choke down at lunch. Gritting his teeth behind a pasted-on smile, Lavi refused to allow his body to reject the liquid. Kanda was probably right, he was dehydrated. He'd hardly been able to face the thought of food or drink all day.
"If I hadn't been with you for the last twenty hours straight, I'd accuse you of being hung-over," Kanda said, giving Lavi a sideways look that told him his attempt to act nonchalant about the state of his stomach had failed.
"Never been hung-over in my life, thank you very much," Lavi replied, making a face at the other man. "I dunno, maybe I'm coming down with a bug or something. Wasn't there a stomach flu going around the Order just recently?"
Kanda took two large steps away from him, which made Lavi chuckle again. "Great, that's all I need," Kanda sighed. "A partner who's incompetent and sick. Don't give it to me."
"The way you heal? Prob'ly the only bug that could bite you is the Black Plague," Lavi snorted. "Never mind, I'll deal with it. At least there haven't been any reports of Akuma in the..."
Something flashed in the corner of his eye, and he spun on one heel, his hand flying to Oodzuchi Kodzuchi at his side. For one horrible moment he was certain he saw an Akuma's cannon aimed straight at his head, already fully charged and ready to fire. Every muscle in his body went tense, his instincts screaming at him. When he blinked the vision was gone, and all he saw was a very confused looking farmer staring back at him. He barely managed to check the swing of his hammer in time to keep from hitting the poor man. "Wha..."
"What? Did you see something?" Kanda had drawn Mugen and had assumed a defensive position, but hadn't activated it yet. He was scanning the crowd, with no indication that he'd seen the same Akuma Lavi would have sworn he'd caught a glimpse of.
"I..." Lavi looked around again, and his headache surged as the sunlight reflected off the metal side of another Akuma straight into his eye. His hand tightened around his hammer, but again when he blinked the Akuma was gone. A wave of dizziness struck him and he staggered, one hand to his head as he struggled to keep his balance.
"Shit. I think I'm seeing things," he muttered under his breath, his eye flicking rapidly over the people around them, now seeing flashes of metal throughout the crowd. Each was gone as soon as he'd found it, leaving him disoriented and uncertain.
Kanda hesitated, then reluctantly took one hand off Mugen's hilt and reached out to rest the back of his hand against Lavi's cheek. Lavi flinched away, even that light touch making his headache worse, but Kanda had already snatched his hand back with a dismayed and angry noise.
"You're burning up with fever," Kanda said, sheathing Mugen and relaxing his defensive stance. "Small wonder you're seeing things. Why didn't you say you were sick before we left the Order?"
"Because I wasn't sick then," Lavi protested, rubbing at his eye again. Was he feverish? He didn't feel warm to himself, but then he wouldn't, would he? "I've had a headache for a couple of days, but I haven't actually felt sick until now. Give me some credit, Yuu, I wouldn't've gone out if I'd known."
"Hmph."
Lavi wasn't sure if that was meant as grudging acknowledgement or just a general statement on his mental capacity. It didn't really matter. "Look, I'll just sleep this off and prob'ly be fine by tomorrow. I never get sick for long. No big deal."
Kanda shrugged and stalked off, looking like he didn't much care if Lavi was capable of keeping up with him or not. With a sigh Lavi headed after him, cursing his body for betraying him. In front of Kanda, of all people. The only one less forgiving of Lavi's shortcomings than Kanda was Bookman.
Movement to one side caught his eye, and he looked to see a pretty young girl with a basket of fruit on her arm approaching them. "Excuse me, sirs. Would you like some fruit?" she asked politely, holding her basket out to Kanda.
Another wave of dizziness swamped Lavi, but he fought to stay upright. As if time had suddenly slowed down, he saw Kanda start to turn and eye the girl suspiciously - too late, as a glowing cannon had already sprouted from her arm beneath the basket, the familiar whine of an Akuma's bullets echoing in the air as it fired.
Kanda was just a hair too slow to dodge, and the bullets struck him high on his shoulder. He grunted in pain and went down, black stars spreading over his body even as he scrambled to draw Mugen. The virus wouldn't kill him, Lavi knew, but if the Akuma blew his head off while he was down, Lavi didn't think even Kanda could heal that.
Time snapped back to normal speed and Lavi's stomach lurched, and he had to fight not to throw up. He groped for Oodzuchi Kodzuchi, knowing he was going to be too late. The hammer flashed to fighting size the moment his fingers closed around it, and he lunged forward...
"Excuse me, sirs. Would you like some... ah!" The girl - still completely human, just now walking towards them - shrieked when Lavi's hammer suddenly slammed into the ground in front of her. He nearly hit Kanda, still standing and perfectly fine, and the other Exorcist swore and leapt out of the way of the blow.
The girl had dropped the basket and was screaming, her hands up in front of her face to protect her, and other townspeople were closing in with confused and concerned shouts. As far as they could tell, Lavi had just attacked a helpless girl completely unprovoked. Lavi wasn't sure just what the fuck was going on, but somehow he knew the girl was an Akuma, and had to be destroyed before she could transform.
Shifting his grip on the hammer shaft, he sent it flying sideways to crash into her. This time her shriek had metallic overtones to it, and he saw the blue flash of the cannon in her hand charging in the instant before the hammer struck her. She exploded, the sure sign of an Akuma destroyed by Innocence.
"What the hell..." Kanda stared at him, stunned, but Lavi didn't have time to explain.
"Behind you," he shouted, spinning to lash out with his hammer at another Akuma trying to sneak up on their side. This one had already partially transformed, its cannons almost fully charged as it aimed at him. He blocked the bullets with the hammer head, then struck back hard enough to flatten it, vaguely aware that it was the same farmer that he'd earlier thought he'd seen transform.
Kanda had drawn Mugen just in time to block another attack from his rear, and then they were surrounded. There were at least half a dozen, maybe more; Lavi couldn't be sure of the count because he kept seeing their grotesque bodies, only to blink and find himself looking at a seemingly normal human. He didn't quite dare to attack the ones he wasn't sure of, so he stuck to defending and let Kanda deal all the damage.
Whether it was half a dozen or half a hundred, first level Akuma couldn't possibly hope to defeat someone of Kanda's calibre. The swordsman dispatched each one with ease as they transformed, until finally all that was left around them was a series of craters and ashes where the Akuma had been.
The rest of the townspeople had apparently fled in terror, and Lavi couldn't blame them. Hopefully none of them were Akuma; the monsters tended to be too stupid to think of dissembling like that, but there was a first time for everything.
With one last look around to ensure they were alone, Kanda flicked Mugen to the side to clean it and slid it home in its sheath. "How did you know?" he demanded, turning to Lavi. "That girl. She hadn't actually done anything suspicious. How did you know?"
"I..." Words failed Lavi, and he stared back at Kanda with his heart pounding in his throat. 'I saw her attack you' didn't exactly seem the right thing to say, not when it was obvious nobody else had seen any such thing. "I just... lucky guess?"
Kanda grimaced. "We can't afford to guess, Lavi! What if she'd been human? Not everyone who comes up to an Exorcist is an Akuma. Sometimes they're just people too ignorant to know better."
"But she wasn't human," Lavi pointed out. The excuse sounded weak even to him, and he winced. Kanda was right, and he knew it.
"That's it," Kanda declared, making a chopping gesture with one hand. "You're off this mission. I'll handle it myself. I didn't need a partner in the first place, but Komui's almost as much of an idiot as you are. Go find an inn and sleep it off until you can tell reality from delusion."
Rubbing his eye, Lavi had to admit he didn't have much of an argument to offer. "You're prob'ly right," he admitted. "I dunno what the hell is wrong with me."
"Come on," Kanda said, and this time when he turned away he did watch over his shoulder to be certain Lavi was following. "And try not to attack anyone on the way."
The loud knock on the door dragged Lavi out of his feverish dreams, but it took him a moment to realize he was awake at all. When he forced his eye open he thought he saw Kanda standing there in the doorway scowling at him, but when he blinked he saw only the heavy wooden door. Then he blinked again and Kanda was back, with a ghostly outline of the door half obscuring him.
Groaning, Lavi turned and buried his face in the pillow. It was soaked with sweat, as were the sheets tangled around him. Although he always slept in at least his pants and shirt when on a mission, this once he'd stripped down completely. He was grateful he had, or he'd have been forced to finish out the mission in clothes that reeked of sweat and fear.
The knock came again, echoing painfully in his pounding head. "Yeah, what?" he rasped out, struggling to raise his voice enough to be heard beyond the door which might or might not still be closed.
There was a pause, then he saw Kanda sigh. Which was a feat, considering he had his eye closed and face still turned away. "I'm guessing you're not up to coming with me to hunt down the damned Innocence today, either," Kanda grumbled.
Lavi tried to sit up, and his stomach rebelled. He gagged and choked on bile, but managed to keep himself from throwing up. Barely. Not that there was anything left in his stomach; he'd lost everything yesterday after he'd first gotten to the room, and just the thought of dinner had sent him burrowing under his blankets in an attempt to hide from the world.
"No," he groaned, clenching his fists in the sheets as he fought for control of his body. "Fuck. I think... I'm even... worse." He had to force the words out between the pulsing of his headache, hardly able to focus enough through the pain to form the thought in the first place. "Sorry... Yuu."
"Not like you're much use at the best of times," Kanda said, but the imaginary Kanda in Lavi's mind's eye actually looked a bit worried. That made Lavi certain it was just a hallucination, because the day Kanda was worried about him was the day they all went ice-skating in Hell.
The hallucinatory Kanda hesitated a moment longer, but finally turned away and left Lavi to suffer in solitude. Lavi just lay there for a long while, drifting in and out of fever dreams.
He dreamed mostly of the other Exorcists. Allen was playing poker against a bunch of the researchers, with that wicked gleam in his eyes that promised no mercy to his opponents. Johnny was already down to nothing more than his boxers and his pearls, and Reever wasn't doing much better. Lenalee danced through the air, her Dark Boots giving her proverbial wings and trailing a path of death and destruction in her wake. The Akuma she danced with exploded one after another, providing a concussive counterpoint to the melody only she could hear. Krory was sitting in a cafe near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, munching on a baguette and watching the world go by around him with wide-eyed innocence. Bookman's quill scratched over parchment, ink flowing smoothly onto the paper to form the symbols of the secret language of the Bookmen, capturing lives and battles into condensed strings that would be read by some future Bookman a thousand years away. The comforting sound finally lulled Lavi into something closer to a true sleep, familiar to him from hundreds of nights spent listening to his master do exactly that.
When he woke, he thought his fever might have finally broken. His headache was still there but much better, and the clammy sheets felt warm against his body instead of cool. Shuddering at the sensation, he untangled himself and staggered over to the stand with the basin and ewer. With shaking hands he poured water into the metal basin, splashing almost as much on himself as he got into the small tub.
The water was blessedly cool against his skin when he plunged his hands into it, and he sighed with relief as he splashed it onto his face. It dripped from his skin back into the basin, and he frowned. Was the water... pinkish? Had it been before? There was no reason for it to be, either in the ewer or now.
Lifting his hand, he rubbed his forehead and winced when his headache suddenly increased again. He looked at his fingers, and his eye went wide with shock and dismay. There were reddish-brown flecks on his skin, slowly turning the water droplets pink as they dissolved. Worse, he could feel something warm and viscous running down his cheek now, as if he'd flaked away a scab and reopened a bleeding wound. But he hadn't been injured in that fight. Had he?
His stomach clenched with something far worse than simple nausea, he looked up into the mirror mounted on the wall above the basin. It was dim and flawed, but more than clear enough to show him the blood crusting his bangs and the skin of his forehead. A fresh rivulet was trickling down over his face, bright red against his pale skin.
Frantic now, he splashed more water onto his face and scrubbed away the blood, uncaring of the renewed pain. When the water was red in the basin like a thin parody of blood, he finally looked up again.
This time there was nothing hiding the ugly marks that spread across his brow, marching over his skin like swollen stars. They were already seeping fresh blood, but he could see them clearly enough to know what they were. No Exorcist - and especially no Bookman - could possibly fail to recognize that pattern for what it was.
The Crown of Thorns stigmata... the Mark of Noah.
So of course, the day before I go back to work for another three or four weeks, I get blindsided by a great idea. *sighs* C'est la vie. Or C'est Lavi, in this case.
Hahaha finally no manga spoiler warnings, because the anime has now caught up to exactly the last thing I read in the manga. Now I'm as clueless as everyone else.
Title: Foresight Is 20/20
Series: D.Gray-man
Pairing: Kanda/Lavi
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: violence, angst, yaoi, swearing, the usual
Chapter length: 3092
Total length: 3092
Forewarned may be fore-armed, but sometimes knowing in advance isn't everything it's cracked up to be.
"Will you stop daydreaming and fucking pay attention?"
Startled, Lavi jerked his head up just in time to see the post he'd been about to run into headfirst. Throwing out his hands, he managed to catch himself against it and prevent his nose from meeting the very solid wooden object, but that didn't save him from the obvious irritation of his companion.
"You are such an idiot," Kanda muttered, glaring at him. "You're drawing attention to us. You've been in a daze all day, snap out of it!"
"Sorry, Yuu," Lavi apologized, far more meekly than was characteristic for him. He should have been laughing and making a joke at his own expense, maybe literally bouncing back from the near miss, but he just couldn't work up the energy. He moved around the post and followed after the other Exorcist, doing his best to stay focused on his surroundings this time.
"What is wrong with you, anyway?" Kanda said, disgruntled. "Even you aren't usually this much of a klutz. If there are any Akuma here, you're going to get yourself killed."
"Nngh. Yeah, I know," Lavi said, sighing and rubbing one hand against his aching eye. "I just can't shake this damned headache. Never felt anything like it. If this is a migraine, I suddenly have a lot more sympathy for the people that suffer from 'em."
Kanda was scrutinizing him, his eyes narrowed. He looked angry and irritated, but then again Lavi didn't think he'd ever seen Kanda not looking angry and irritated. Presumably it did happen occasionally, but Lavi's very presence seemed to make those the default emotions any time the other man was around him.
"Here," Kanda finally said, thrusting a half-full canteen at him. "You're probably just dehydrated. Drink it."
"Why, Yuu. I didn't know you cared." From somewhere Lavi dredged up a sly smile, giving the other man a fluttering look better suited to a star-struck maiden. Kanda opened his mouth, but Lavi beat him to the lecture. "Yeah, yeah, I know. You just wanna make sure I'm not gonna be even more of a burden on this mission than usual, since I'm already hardly better than a useless lump."
Kanda scowled, apparently nonplussed at having the words taken right out of his mouth. Lavi made note of that as a potential strategy for derailing Kanda in the future. "Just drink the damned water."
Chuckling softly despite the way it made his head pound harder, Lavi uncorked the canteen and poured water into his mouth. It was stale and fusty from being in the leather container for so long, but since people in France seemed to believe that wine was far superior to water as a thirst quencher, it was the best he was likely to get. He gulped down a couple of mouthfuls, then recorked it and handed it back to Kanda.
Immediately he regretted drinking it, as it sat uneasily on his stomach and threatened to start a brawl with the stale bread and cheese he'd managed to choke down at lunch. Gritting his teeth behind a pasted-on smile, Lavi refused to allow his body to reject the liquid. Kanda was probably right, he was dehydrated. He'd hardly been able to face the thought of food or drink all day.
"If I hadn't been with you for the last twenty hours straight, I'd accuse you of being hung-over," Kanda said, giving Lavi a sideways look that told him his attempt to act nonchalant about the state of his stomach had failed.
"Never been hung-over in my life, thank you very much," Lavi replied, making a face at the other man. "I dunno, maybe I'm coming down with a bug or something. Wasn't there a stomach flu going around the Order just recently?"
Kanda took two large steps away from him, which made Lavi chuckle again. "Great, that's all I need," Kanda sighed. "A partner who's incompetent and sick. Don't give it to me."
"The way you heal? Prob'ly the only bug that could bite you is the Black Plague," Lavi snorted. "Never mind, I'll deal with it. At least there haven't been any reports of Akuma in the..."
Something flashed in the corner of his eye, and he spun on one heel, his hand flying to Oodzuchi Kodzuchi at his side. For one horrible moment he was certain he saw an Akuma's cannon aimed straight at his head, already fully charged and ready to fire. Every muscle in his body went tense, his instincts screaming at him. When he blinked the vision was gone, and all he saw was a very confused looking farmer staring back at him. He barely managed to check the swing of his hammer in time to keep from hitting the poor man. "Wha..."
"What? Did you see something?" Kanda had drawn Mugen and had assumed a defensive position, but hadn't activated it yet. He was scanning the crowd, with no indication that he'd seen the same Akuma Lavi would have sworn he'd caught a glimpse of.
"I..." Lavi looked around again, and his headache surged as the sunlight reflected off the metal side of another Akuma straight into his eye. His hand tightened around his hammer, but again when he blinked the Akuma was gone. A wave of dizziness struck him and he staggered, one hand to his head as he struggled to keep his balance.
"Shit. I think I'm seeing things," he muttered under his breath, his eye flicking rapidly over the people around them, now seeing flashes of metal throughout the crowd. Each was gone as soon as he'd found it, leaving him disoriented and uncertain.
Kanda hesitated, then reluctantly took one hand off Mugen's hilt and reached out to rest the back of his hand against Lavi's cheek. Lavi flinched away, even that light touch making his headache worse, but Kanda had already snatched his hand back with a dismayed and angry noise.
"You're burning up with fever," Kanda said, sheathing Mugen and relaxing his defensive stance. "Small wonder you're seeing things. Why didn't you say you were sick before we left the Order?"
"Because I wasn't sick then," Lavi protested, rubbing at his eye again. Was he feverish? He didn't feel warm to himself, but then he wouldn't, would he? "I've had a headache for a couple of days, but I haven't actually felt sick until now. Give me some credit, Yuu, I wouldn't've gone out if I'd known."
"Hmph."
Lavi wasn't sure if that was meant as grudging acknowledgement or just a general statement on his mental capacity. It didn't really matter. "Look, I'll just sleep this off and prob'ly be fine by tomorrow. I never get sick for long. No big deal."
Kanda shrugged and stalked off, looking like he didn't much care if Lavi was capable of keeping up with him or not. With a sigh Lavi headed after him, cursing his body for betraying him. In front of Kanda, of all people. The only one less forgiving of Lavi's shortcomings than Kanda was Bookman.
Movement to one side caught his eye, and he looked to see a pretty young girl with a basket of fruit on her arm approaching them. "Excuse me, sirs. Would you like some fruit?" she asked politely, holding her basket out to Kanda.
Another wave of dizziness swamped Lavi, but he fought to stay upright. As if time had suddenly slowed down, he saw Kanda start to turn and eye the girl suspiciously - too late, as a glowing cannon had already sprouted from her arm beneath the basket, the familiar whine of an Akuma's bullets echoing in the air as it fired.
Kanda was just a hair too slow to dodge, and the bullets struck him high on his shoulder. He grunted in pain and went down, black stars spreading over his body even as he scrambled to draw Mugen. The virus wouldn't kill him, Lavi knew, but if the Akuma blew his head off while he was down, Lavi didn't think even Kanda could heal that.
Time snapped back to normal speed and Lavi's stomach lurched, and he had to fight not to throw up. He groped for Oodzuchi Kodzuchi, knowing he was going to be too late. The hammer flashed to fighting size the moment his fingers closed around it, and he lunged forward...
"Excuse me, sirs. Would you like some... ah!" The girl - still completely human, just now walking towards them - shrieked when Lavi's hammer suddenly slammed into the ground in front of her. He nearly hit Kanda, still standing and perfectly fine, and the other Exorcist swore and leapt out of the way of the blow.
The girl had dropped the basket and was screaming, her hands up in front of her face to protect her, and other townspeople were closing in with confused and concerned shouts. As far as they could tell, Lavi had just attacked a helpless girl completely unprovoked. Lavi wasn't sure just what the fuck was going on, but somehow he knew the girl was an Akuma, and had to be destroyed before she could transform.
Shifting his grip on the hammer shaft, he sent it flying sideways to crash into her. This time her shriek had metallic overtones to it, and he saw the blue flash of the cannon in her hand charging in the instant before the hammer struck her. She exploded, the sure sign of an Akuma destroyed by Innocence.
"What the hell..." Kanda stared at him, stunned, but Lavi didn't have time to explain.
"Behind you," he shouted, spinning to lash out with his hammer at another Akuma trying to sneak up on their side. This one had already partially transformed, its cannons almost fully charged as it aimed at him. He blocked the bullets with the hammer head, then struck back hard enough to flatten it, vaguely aware that it was the same farmer that he'd earlier thought he'd seen transform.
Kanda had drawn Mugen just in time to block another attack from his rear, and then they were surrounded. There were at least half a dozen, maybe more; Lavi couldn't be sure of the count because he kept seeing their grotesque bodies, only to blink and find himself looking at a seemingly normal human. He didn't quite dare to attack the ones he wasn't sure of, so he stuck to defending and let Kanda deal all the damage.
Whether it was half a dozen or half a hundred, first level Akuma couldn't possibly hope to defeat someone of Kanda's calibre. The swordsman dispatched each one with ease as they transformed, until finally all that was left around them was a series of craters and ashes where the Akuma had been.
The rest of the townspeople had apparently fled in terror, and Lavi couldn't blame them. Hopefully none of them were Akuma; the monsters tended to be too stupid to think of dissembling like that, but there was a first time for everything.
With one last look around to ensure they were alone, Kanda flicked Mugen to the side to clean it and slid it home in its sheath. "How did you know?" he demanded, turning to Lavi. "That girl. She hadn't actually done anything suspicious. How did you know?"
"I..." Words failed Lavi, and he stared back at Kanda with his heart pounding in his throat. 'I saw her attack you' didn't exactly seem the right thing to say, not when it was obvious nobody else had seen any such thing. "I just... lucky guess?"
Kanda grimaced. "We can't afford to guess, Lavi! What if she'd been human? Not everyone who comes up to an Exorcist is an Akuma. Sometimes they're just people too ignorant to know better."
"But she wasn't human," Lavi pointed out. The excuse sounded weak even to him, and he winced. Kanda was right, and he knew it.
"That's it," Kanda declared, making a chopping gesture with one hand. "You're off this mission. I'll handle it myself. I didn't need a partner in the first place, but Komui's almost as much of an idiot as you are. Go find an inn and sleep it off until you can tell reality from delusion."
Rubbing his eye, Lavi had to admit he didn't have much of an argument to offer. "You're prob'ly right," he admitted. "I dunno what the hell is wrong with me."
"Come on," Kanda said, and this time when he turned away he did watch over his shoulder to be certain Lavi was following. "And try not to attack anyone on the way."
The loud knock on the door dragged Lavi out of his feverish dreams, but it took him a moment to realize he was awake at all. When he forced his eye open he thought he saw Kanda standing there in the doorway scowling at him, but when he blinked he saw only the heavy wooden door. Then he blinked again and Kanda was back, with a ghostly outline of the door half obscuring him.
Groaning, Lavi turned and buried his face in the pillow. It was soaked with sweat, as were the sheets tangled around him. Although he always slept in at least his pants and shirt when on a mission, this once he'd stripped down completely. He was grateful he had, or he'd have been forced to finish out the mission in clothes that reeked of sweat and fear.
The knock came again, echoing painfully in his pounding head. "Yeah, what?" he rasped out, struggling to raise his voice enough to be heard beyond the door which might or might not still be closed.
There was a pause, then he saw Kanda sigh. Which was a feat, considering he had his eye closed and face still turned away. "I'm guessing you're not up to coming with me to hunt down the damned Innocence today, either," Kanda grumbled.
Lavi tried to sit up, and his stomach rebelled. He gagged and choked on bile, but managed to keep himself from throwing up. Barely. Not that there was anything left in his stomach; he'd lost everything yesterday after he'd first gotten to the room, and just the thought of dinner had sent him burrowing under his blankets in an attempt to hide from the world.
"No," he groaned, clenching his fists in the sheets as he fought for control of his body. "Fuck. I think... I'm even... worse." He had to force the words out between the pulsing of his headache, hardly able to focus enough through the pain to form the thought in the first place. "Sorry... Yuu."
"Not like you're much use at the best of times," Kanda said, but the imaginary Kanda in Lavi's mind's eye actually looked a bit worried. That made Lavi certain it was just a hallucination, because the day Kanda was worried about him was the day they all went ice-skating in Hell.
The hallucinatory Kanda hesitated a moment longer, but finally turned away and left Lavi to suffer in solitude. Lavi just lay there for a long while, drifting in and out of fever dreams.
He dreamed mostly of the other Exorcists. Allen was playing poker against a bunch of the researchers, with that wicked gleam in his eyes that promised no mercy to his opponents. Johnny was already down to nothing more than his boxers and his pearls, and Reever wasn't doing much better. Lenalee danced through the air, her Dark Boots giving her proverbial wings and trailing a path of death and destruction in her wake. The Akuma she danced with exploded one after another, providing a concussive counterpoint to the melody only she could hear. Krory was sitting in a cafe near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, munching on a baguette and watching the world go by around him with wide-eyed innocence. Bookman's quill scratched over parchment, ink flowing smoothly onto the paper to form the symbols of the secret language of the Bookmen, capturing lives and battles into condensed strings that would be read by some future Bookman a thousand years away. The comforting sound finally lulled Lavi into something closer to a true sleep, familiar to him from hundreds of nights spent listening to his master do exactly that.
When he woke, he thought his fever might have finally broken. His headache was still there but much better, and the clammy sheets felt warm against his body instead of cool. Shuddering at the sensation, he untangled himself and staggered over to the stand with the basin and ewer. With shaking hands he poured water into the metal basin, splashing almost as much on himself as he got into the small tub.
The water was blessedly cool against his skin when he plunged his hands into it, and he sighed with relief as he splashed it onto his face. It dripped from his skin back into the basin, and he frowned. Was the water... pinkish? Had it been before? There was no reason for it to be, either in the ewer or now.
Lifting his hand, he rubbed his forehead and winced when his headache suddenly increased again. He looked at his fingers, and his eye went wide with shock and dismay. There were reddish-brown flecks on his skin, slowly turning the water droplets pink as they dissolved. Worse, he could feel something warm and viscous running down his cheek now, as if he'd flaked away a scab and reopened a bleeding wound. But he hadn't been injured in that fight. Had he?
His stomach clenched with something far worse than simple nausea, he looked up into the mirror mounted on the wall above the basin. It was dim and flawed, but more than clear enough to show him the blood crusting his bangs and the skin of his forehead. A fresh rivulet was trickling down over his face, bright red against his pale skin.
Frantic now, he splashed more water onto his face and scrubbed away the blood, uncaring of the renewed pain. When the water was red in the basin like a thin parody of blood, he finally looked up again.
This time there was nothing hiding the ugly marks that spread across his brow, marching over his skin like swollen stars. They were already seeping fresh blood, but he could see them clearly enough to know what they were. No Exorcist - and especially no Bookman - could possibly fail to recognize that pattern for what it was.
The Crown of Thorns stigmata... the Mark of Noah.