[he snaps it out, all of his previous lightness vanishing, frustration bleeding into his voice]
It's so that no one else gets the idea that they have to deal with you like they did Camille. Or suspect you if this turns out to be a fucking affinity or curse.
Then not like Camille -- maybe someone who wants an item will kill you on Thursday and then say it was fucking self-defense.
[it's like he doesn't hear when Kanda says 'but fine', bulldozing on in his growing sense of anger and frustration and fear. Lavi knows he's being unfair -- jumping immediately to assume the worst of a group of people who have been kind and fair despite the horrors, but he is not exactly in his right mind, and he was never the type of person to have hope in humanity in the first place.]
If people ask, then tell them you didn't know why I was talking to you at the end.
[He can hear that shift, that pessimism--and he prefers Lavi when he's honest, but that's not the same as watching him spiral, as seeing that old hatred of humanity breaking through, reminiscent of the memories he never asked to see
He doesn't reach out, but his voice is firm, steady.]
I'll be fine.
[Even if someone comes after him--he's still confident he'll hold his own. He hasn't died after all that he's been through; it's hard to picture falling to someone else's hands here, even with his abilities blocked.]
[he should let the words wash over him the way they're meant to -- especially when they're so reminiscent of their earlier conversations, when Lavi had pressed Kanda to behave during trial just so he wouldn't be a convenient target for a mob, and Kanda replied with his usual confidence. he should be logical about this. he should laugh. make a stupid, wry reply about it. say 'i know you will' or 'if you don't, then i'll kick your ass'.
instead, he whirls on Kanda, takes in that firm and steady voice -- and all he can feel is the rush of it -- the desperation and rage that makes him tighten his fist and slam it against the nearest surfaces, scratching his knuckles against the bark of this poor tree.]
But I won't be!
[he thought he'd come to terms with it -- he said he'd kill Kanda when he'd been asked last week -- he'd thought about it -- so many times, and yet, now that he's actually being confronted with it -- that it could be true, or that someone else decides to take the chance that it is --
yuu could die. he'd die. and then i -- ]
You -- This wasn't supposed to be happen like this. I was supposed to know if it was you! I'm supposed to know! I have to know! What the hell is the point if I don't notice!! I have to know so I can -- so that --
[he's working himself up too much and Bookman isn't even here to grab him by the collar and hit him, but he doesn't know if it would help even if he would, he's just looking at Kanda and his long black hair and his steady face and firm voice and thinks of him dying just the same as all the others -- ]
There's probably, like, a thousand different comforting things to say here? Lenalee would know them by heart--it would be so easy for her to reassure Lavi and talk him down from this. Even Allen is an excellent actor; he, too, would probably have some perfectly curated words, if he didn't succumb to the stress himself.
But Kanda is not Lenalee or Allen or Bookman or Marie or Johnny or anyone else who could do this gracefully, so instead he just pulls his fist back and punches him square in the cheek. GET YOURSELF TOGETHER]
[the hit lands because it takes Lavi fully by surprise, and maybe because a part of him is primed for it, waiting for the sensation to shock him out of it. it doesn't stop him from grabbing his face and gaping back at Kanda though because HELLO????
he works his mouth, tasting blood -- and then he SWINGS HIS ARM TO PUNCH KANDA BACK. DIE! EXCEPT DON'T! OH GOD THIS IS SO COMPLICATED]
[NOT YOUR FIVE well Kanda will at least punch him in the solar plexus to wind him and then like, take him down to the ground in a controlled fall. PUTS A KNEE ON LAVI'S BACK LIKE HE DID WITH ALLEN TO KEEP HIM DOWN]
Shut the hell up and listen to me. [CAN YOU STOP LOSING YOUR MIND JESUS CHRIST.] I'm here right now. Even if--if you find out for sure that it was me, it'll still be you. Tell them all that you'll take care of it if you want, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Do you think I'd let anyone else close enough to kill me? Do you think any of them could sneak up on me? Now?
[After weeks of being reminded over and over again that this place is just like home but worse, after last week when one of the people Kanda found most tolerable turned out to be a killer, after everything that happened with Caelus this week--there's no universe in which Kanda would let anyone but Lavi close enough to take him down. That's true regardless of what the monster bound to him may or may not have done. Kanda is not sentimental enough to let anyone else spill his blood willingly. He can't promise he wouldn't fight Lavi off if it came down to it, but--he's very, very sure that no one else would have the slightest chance, even if they tried.
He huffs, getting off of Lavi.]
It's not your job to solve mysteries, Stupid Rabbit. So quit losing your mind about it. [Sits down next to him with a sigh.] I don't know what's going on with me. But I won't be in that veil tomorrow. We have time to figure it out, so calm the fuck down.
[Lavi gets pinned to the ground with a grunt, and the knee is perfect in that it prevents him from lashing out again, forcing him instead to EAT DIRT and listen — body shuddering as he tries to breathe. He can’t see Kanda like this, not in his blind spot which makes him cling to his other senses — like his voice.
Lavi listens, pressed into the ground, and keeps lying there even as Kanda gets off and joins him on the ground next to him. He’s too afraid of what his expression might look like if he gets up. Maybe it’d be distraught, or maybe it’d look too much like hope, and wouldn’t that be ironic after everything?
But he doesn’t lash out or yell again, simply closes his eye and feels the exhaustion settle, the fear to become just a part of him again and not all of him. Only then does he roll over to face the sky, limbs bumping into Kanda next to him,]
I don’t want to lose you.
[he doesn’t expect a reassurance or even a response.
He just feels like he needs to say it. Because anything can change, the time they have could shrink to nothing in a blink of an eye, and he’s too tired in the aftermath of his rage and getting his ass beat to think about the consequences of being honest]
More than anyone else here — I don’t want to lose you the most.
[Any other time, and Kanda would call him out for this. He's mellowed since North America, freed from his single-minded pursuit of that person and secure in the knowledge that the Order cannot ever lay hands on Alma again--but the realities of the Holy War have not changed, and there is so little Kanda can do beyond reminding the people around him of their truths. He's grown a touch more open, the slightest bit calmer, but he is no more willing to tempt fate (the Earl, Central, humanoid Innocence, whatever form that may take) than before.
He can't say I don't want to lose you either. He isn't the type. He's barely even allowed himself to think about what he'd do if it really did turn out to be Lavi someday--if their situations were reversed, and he'd been the one to find damning evidence in the last hour. Maybe he's still the same coward that shut down when he turned his blade against Alma, the person who critically wounded Allen in blind grief and rage, but he simply won't even look at the bridge until it's time to cross it.
So he can't say it. But he can sigh--long and weary, a sound encompassing so much more than the events of tonight, or even of this town. It's the exhaustion of a small boy in a cold underground lab, for a boy stripped of his identity and the bonds he could've made with it.
Quietly:]
I know.
[He doesn't often picture walking out of this place, too focused on the immediate problems they've been dealing with. But in the odd moments when he does--it's always the two of them together, stepping through the fog and on the way back to the Order, just like the end of any other mission.
[maybe they are, and wouldn't that be funny? when they're both so quick to assume and accept the worst, unlike their other comrades -- allen and lenalee, krory and miranda and marie. but it turns out that they can hope too, just like the rest can -- for things to go right. as right as they can go, on the heels of so much death and failure. as long as it's not their deaths or failures, Lavi thinks, selfish to the end. as long as it's not yuu or him.
the silence doesn't quite settle, but it's a cover for all the things Lavi could say in return. the things he doesn't feel like saying, just like the mask he's not ready to pull back on.
but eventually, he does push himself up so he can sit too, hissing because being punched in the solar plexus by Kanda HURTS, and slumps sideways, leaning against Kanda in a way that's both exhausted and petulant,]
[He'll allow it with a quiet grumble--which is probably kind of stupid, but he's just proving his own point now. Curses notwithstanding, Kanda is very protective of his space; there are a couple of people here that he doesn't step away from or shove off, but his guard is never truly down around them. Not like it is now.]
No.
[He'll change his mind later, for reasons--but for now, his stance is the same as it was before.]
I've fought him before. He isn't stronger than me.
[Yeah, sure, he'd have the monster on his side and Kanda probably wouldn't be allowed Mugen (would he? none of our executioners have been sword guys. Maybe he'd have Mugen in there), but. He still doesn't think he'd lose to Caelus if he found himself pulled through the veil.]
Lavi trusts in Kanda's judgement for things like this. After all, he's the only one out of the hundreds Lavi has sparred with at the Order who noticed that Lavi pulls his punches during every fight. So he believes Kanda when he says he's stronger than Caelus.]
He's a monster now.
[which he knows that kanda knows and he doesn't even necessarily mean that kanda wouldn't be able to handle caelus as a monster, but still. he figures it's important to remember. that, and]
And he's been pissed with you this entire week.
[that was not hard to notice at all, the sudden absence of someone who'd always been around Kanda, all the pointed silences and ignoring on Caelus's part -- while Kanda had been the same as usual,]
I already told him last week that I wouldn't trust him. If he thought that would change, he's an idiot.
[Caelus has followed him around enough to know what he's like; if he still reached out for the impossible anyway, that's on him. Kanda won't change who is for someone he's only known for a few weeks--and today just proved he was right not to.
Personally, he thinks Caelus would probably be suffering more now if Kanda had given him what he wanted, but. He keeps that to himself.]
[if lavi hadn't set up an insane amount of dates and then had to listen to Caelus talk about how he's going to die single then he might not have made the connection between that and this moment, an inkling of a feeling that he knows what might have occurred.
but for once, he doesn't want to ask the follow up question, for some reason. maybe the reason is that it doesn't matter now. or maybe it's just the disquiet at the realization that he might have encouraged Caelus to do something that Lavi would have told him not to do, if he had known. because he's seen this happen so many times, and he knows how futile it is. it's definitely not because he feels fidgety and anxious about the tiniest possibility that Kanda would have been fine with it, or accepted whatever it was with an eye roll and tch -- like he has with Lavi on so many occasions. of course not.
god. he flips out once and spills his feelings everywhere and now he can't get a grasp on any of them,]
I'm planning on seeing him later, after I talk to the Masks. Are you gonna go to the pyre?
Yes. [He won't change that either. By now, he's a little more trusting of the barriers, but--it's the only thing he can do. Whether he'll talk to Caelus or not... that's up to Caelus, really; but either way, Kanda will be there like always.]
...See if he'll tell you more about where he got that note.
[If Caelus has nothing left to lose, maybe he'll fess up. Kanda isn't stupid enough to not realize he would've had a chance at getting that information, had he played along earlier in the week--but he isn't that sort of person, and wouldn't know how to be even if he wanted to try.]
[HE WAS SETTING UP DATES BETWEEN PEOPLE NOT FOR HIMSELF
He figured Kanda would go -- and well, it'd look more suspicious if Kanda wasn't acting his usual self after the end of trial. Lavi touches his face absentmindedly, and nods. He'd almost forgotten about the note after this hellish week, damn. It doesn't even occur to him that Kanda could have found this out himself if he said yes to whatever Caelus was asking him -- simply because he can't imagine Kanda ever putting himself in a situation where he'd had to be dishonest and lie?
[A different sort of person would reach out after all of this, probably. Even for the barest of seconds, someone with an ounce of emotional competence would know that this is the perfect moment for it: a squeeze of the hand, a touch to the shoulder, anything.
Kanda, instead, simply stands for a minute, studying his face a little longer--searching, maybe, for Lavi's thoughts, for who the man in front of him is right now. But he doesn't say anything else; he simply turns to head back towards the pyre, taking up his usual spot.]
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[Because for some WILD reason they seem to think the DGMs would cover for each other? Weird. Why would they think that.
But he won't argue because he has nothing else to give; no admiss of guilt but no proof of innocence either, unless Lavi has some other way.]
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[he tries to opt for something light, but the tension is very clearly there,]
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[If they find something else, if Kanda starts behaving strangely--he has to be able to trust that Lavi will follow through.]
ENJOY THE CONCERT PIXI STOP TAGGING ME
[he snaps it out, all of his previous lightness vanishing, frustration bleeding into his voice]
It's so that no one else gets the idea that they have to deal with you like they did Camille. Or suspect you if this turns out to be a fucking affinity or curse.
WE HAVE 10 MINS
I doubt they will from the way they talked earlier. But fine.
[He won't fight Lavi in this one; he'd rather not deal with the hassle of being targeted, even if he wouldn't be angry at whoever did it.]
SLAPPYHANDS YOU
[it's like he doesn't hear when Kanda says 'but fine', bulldozing on in his growing sense of anger and frustration and fear. Lavi knows he's being unfair -- jumping immediately to assume the worst of a group of people who have been kind and fair despite the horrors, but he is not exactly in his right mind, and he was never the type of person to have hope in humanity in the first place.]
If people ask, then tell them you didn't know why I was talking to you at the end.
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[He can hear that shift, that pessimism--and he prefers Lavi when he's honest, but that's not the same as watching him spiral, as seeing that old hatred of humanity breaking through, reminiscent of the memories he never asked to see
He doesn't reach out, but his voice is firm, steady.]
I'll be fine.
[Even if someone comes after him--he's still confident he'll hold his own. He hasn't died after all that he's been through; it's hard to picture falling to someone else's hands here, even with his abilities blocked.]
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instead, he whirls on Kanda, takes in that firm and steady voice -- and all he can feel is the rush of it -- the desperation and rage that makes him tighten his fist and slam it against the nearest surfaces, scratching his knuckles against the bark of this poor tree.]
But I won't be!
[he thought he'd come to terms with it -- he said he'd kill Kanda when he'd been asked last week -- he'd thought about it -- so many times, and yet, now that he's actually being confronted with it -- that it could be true, or that someone else decides to take the chance that it is --
yuu could die. he'd die. and then i -- ]
You -- This wasn't supposed to be happen like this. I was supposed to know if it was you! I'm supposed to know! I have to know! What the hell is the point if I don't notice!! I have to know so I can -- so that --
[he's working himself up too much and Bookman isn't even here to grab him by the collar and hit him, but he doesn't know if it would help even if he would, he's just looking at Kanda and his long black hair and his steady face and firm voice and thinks of him dying just the same as all the others -- ]
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There's probably, like, a thousand different comforting things to say here? Lenalee would know them by heart--it would be so easy for her to reassure Lavi and talk him down from this. Even Allen is an excellent actor; he, too, would probably have some perfectly curated words, if he didn't succumb to the stress himself.
But Kanda is not Lenalee or Allen or Bookman or Marie or Johnny or anyone else who could do this gracefully, so instead he just pulls his fist back and punches him square in the cheek. GET YOURSELF TOGETHER]
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he works his mouth, tasting blood -- and then he SWINGS HIS ARM TO PUNCH KANDA BACK. DIE! EXCEPT DON'T! OH GOD THIS IS SO COMPLICATED]
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[HE'S EVEN MORE INFURIATED THAT HE DODGES/ROLLED WELL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER???? launches himself at him so he can knock Kanda to the ground
with a five. bye lavi]
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Shut the hell up and listen to me. [CAN YOU STOP LOSING YOUR MIND JESUS CHRIST.] I'm here right now. Even if--if you find out for sure that it was me, it'll still be you. Tell them all that you'll take care of it if you want, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Do you think I'd let anyone else close enough to kill me? Do you think any of them could sneak up on me? Now?
[After weeks of being reminded over and over again that this place is just like home but worse, after last week when one of the people Kanda found most tolerable turned out to be a killer, after everything that happened with Caelus this week--there's no universe in which Kanda would let anyone but Lavi close enough to take him down. That's true regardless of what the monster bound to him may or may not have done. Kanda is not sentimental enough to let anyone else spill his blood willingly. He can't promise he wouldn't fight Lavi off if it came down to it, but--he's very, very sure that no one else would have the slightest chance, even if they tried.
He huffs, getting off of Lavi.]
It's not your job to solve mysteries, Stupid Rabbit. So quit losing your mind about it. [Sits down next to him with a sigh.] I don't know what's going on with me. But I won't be in that veil tomorrow. We have time to figure it out, so calm the fuck down.
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Lavi listens, pressed into the ground, and keeps lying there even as Kanda gets off and joins him on the ground next to him. He’s too afraid of what his expression might look like if he gets up. Maybe it’d be distraught, or maybe it’d look too much like hope, and wouldn’t that be ironic after everything?
But he doesn’t lash out or yell again, simply closes his eye and feels the exhaustion settle, the fear to become just a part of him again and not all of him. Only then does he roll over to face the sky, limbs bumping into Kanda next to him,]
I don’t want to lose you.
[he doesn’t expect a reassurance or even a response.
He just feels like he needs to say it. Because anything can change, the time they have could shrink to nothing in a blink of an eye, and he’s too tired in the aftermath of his rage and getting his ass beat to think about the consequences of being honest]
More than anyone else here — I don’t want to lose you the most.
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He can't say I don't want to lose you either. He isn't the type. He's barely even allowed himself to think about what he'd do if it really did turn out to be Lavi someday--if their situations were reversed, and he'd been the one to find damning evidence in the last hour. Maybe he's still the same coward that shut down when he turned his blade against Alma, the person who critically wounded Allen in blind grief and rage, but he simply won't even look at the bridge until it's time to cross it.
So he can't say it. But he can sigh--long and weary, a sound encompassing so much more than the events of tonight, or even of this town. It's the exhaustion of a small boy in a cold underground lab, for a boy stripped of his identity and the bonds he could've made with it.
Quietly:]
I know.
[He doesn't often picture walking out of this place, too focused on the immediate problems they've been dealing with. But in the odd moments when he does--it's always the two of them together, stepping through the fog and on the way back to the Order, just like the end of any other mission.
Maybe they're both foolish and naive after all.]
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the silence doesn't quite settle, but it's a cover for all the things Lavi could say in return. the things he doesn't feel like saying, just like the mask he's not ready to pull back on.
but eventually, he does push himself up so he can sit too, hissing because being punched in the solar plexus by Kanda HURTS, and slumps sideways, leaning against Kanda in a way that's both exhausted and petulant,]
Are you going to use the swamp?
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No.
[He'll change his mind later, for reasons--but for now, his stance is the same as it was before.]
I've fought him before. He isn't stronger than me.
[Yeah, sure, he'd have the monster on his side and Kanda probably wouldn't be allowed Mugen (would he? none of our executioners have been sword guys. Maybe he'd have Mugen in there), but. He still doesn't think he'd lose to Caelus if he found himself pulled through the veil.]
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Lavi trusts in Kanda's judgement for things like this. After all, he's the only one out of the hundreds Lavi has sparred with at the Order who noticed that Lavi pulls his punches during every fight. So he believes Kanda when he says he's stronger than Caelus.]
He's a monster now.
[which he knows that kanda knows and he doesn't even necessarily mean that kanda wouldn't be able to handle caelus as a monster, but still. he figures it's important to remember. that, and]
And he's been pissed with you this entire week.
[that was not hard to notice at all, the sudden absence of someone who'd always been around Kanda, all the pointed silences and ignoring on Caelus's part -- while Kanda had been the same as usual,]
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That's because he's an idiot.
[Don't worry about it]
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You say that about everyone who gets mad at you.
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[It's not his fault if it's always true!!!]
I already told him last week that I wouldn't trust him. If he thought that would change, he's an idiot.
[Caelus has followed him around enough to know what he's like; if he still reached out for the impossible anyway, that's on him. Kanda won't change who is for someone he's only known for a few weeks--and today just proved he was right not to.
Personally, he thinks Caelus would probably be suffering more now if Kanda had given him what he wanted, but. He keeps that to himself.]
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[if lavi hadn't set up an insane amount of dates and then had to listen to Caelus talk about how he's going to die single then he might not have made the connection between that and this moment, an inkling of a feeling that he knows what might have occurred.
but for once, he doesn't want to ask the follow up question, for some reason. maybe the reason is that it doesn't matter now. or maybe it's just the disquiet at the realization that he might have encouraged Caelus to do something that Lavi would have told him not to do, if he had known. because he's seen this happen so many times, and he knows how futile it is. it's definitely not because he feels fidgety and anxious about the tiniest possibility that Kanda would have been fine with it, or accepted whatever it was with an eye roll and tch -- like he has with Lavi on so many occasions. of course not.
god. he flips out once and spills his feelings everywhere and now he can't get a grasp on any of them,]
I'm planning on seeing him later, after I talk to the Masks. Are you gonna go to the pyre?
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Yes. [He won't change that either. By now, he's a little more trusting of the barriers, but--it's the only thing he can do. Whether he'll talk to Caelus or not... that's up to Caelus, really; but either way, Kanda will be there like always.]
...See if he'll tell you more about where he got that note.
[If Caelus has nothing left to lose, maybe he'll fess up. Kanda isn't stupid enough to not realize he would've had a chance at getting that information, had he played along earlier in the week--but he isn't that sort of person, and wouldn't know how to be even if he wanted to try.]
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He figured Kanda would go -- and well, it'd look more suspicious if Kanda wasn't acting his usual self after the end of trial. Lavi touches his face absentmindedly, and nods. He'd almost forgotten about the note after this hellish week, damn. It doesn't even occur to him that Kanda could have found this out himself if he said yes to whatever Caelus was asking him -- simply because he can't imagine Kanda ever putting himself in a situation where he'd had to be dishonest and lie?
That's Lavi's job.]
Alright. I'll meet you at the pyre later.
[so that they can all stand vigil together]
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[A different sort of person would reach out after all of this, probably. Even for the barest of seconds, someone with an ounce of emotional competence would know that this is the perfect moment for it: a squeeze of the hand, a touch to the shoulder, anything.
Kanda, instead, simply stands for a minute, studying his face a little longer--searching, maybe, for Lavi's thoughts, for who the man in front of him is right now. But he doesn't say anything else; he simply turns to head back towards the pyre, taking up his usual spot.]
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