The Fine Line

This is long so I will keep the note short: sorry I’m late, sorry this is a crappy chappy, and sorry if I typoed. Essays and finals and whatnot eat my life.

Disclaimer of Detraction: I don’t own D.Gray-man. If I did… the action scenes would be hella lame.

WARNING: Violence and mild mild mild man-lovin’.
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Allen was more or less in full business mode after Lavi and Sable went on their way. He crouched low in the snow, once again getting his borrowed jack wet, as he examined the newly repaired railway. He could see the imprint of a human hand in the iron, as if the person who had lifted it had first pinched it to get a better hold. The fact that the Noah who had done such a thing had just walked away from him and Kanda worried him more than anything else. What could a Noah with that much power gain from walking away? Nothing.

The sun was not high enough for it to be noon but he knew the hour was fast approaching. That would give them perhaps eight hours of light, and then it would be too dark and too cold to search further. There were places he would rather have been than wandering about in the night searching for Innocence.

“Che, Moyashi,” Kanda said in a voice reminiscent of the one he used to use. He sounded as if he too were thinking of nothing but what had to be done. “Look up there.” He tilted his chin to indicate a slow moving train in the distance, clouds of hot steam roiling from its top. As he watched the train eased on its breaks, slowing only slightly. It seemed as though nothing odd was going to happen at all.

“What?” Allen could not see whatever it was that he was looking for. Just a train.

“Wait for it.” Kanda was more patient, even if his tone was the same.

The train slowed yet again but this time something went horribly wrong. The iron beneath it seemed to ripple suddenly as the earth around it wavered momentarily, almost as if it did not completely exist. After a moment a great, green-brown reptilian head lifted itself from that non-existent dirt and lunged at the approaching engine, teeth as big as Allen shredding the metal with ease. The creature’s eyes opened in the light, and they burned a deep purple that belonged to no Innocence that Allen had ever seen. That shining glaze turned slowly away from its latest metallic victim and caught the two Exorcists’ in its sights.

“Is that Innocence?” Allen asked, unwilling to move with those reptilian eyes on him. It was perhaps two miles away, but that would be nothing for something so large. The wedge shaped head turned downward so that its giant mouth gently touched the top of the snow.

Kanda shook his head. “Che, I have no idea.”
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“Um… a really embarrassed Yuu-chan?” Lavi asked as they walked. He had his arms folded up behind his head like normal, and his demeanor had improved a thousand times since the morning. All it had taken was little prank and some encouragement and he was back to being enthusiastic about life again.

“It’s I Spy, Lavi. I can’t see Kanda, so obviously it’s not him.” Sable sighed. He really did suck at her game. Just like the last game. The poor guy had no sense of logic when it came to such things.

“Oh… so it wouldn’t be blood either…”

Sable was frowning at him, almost glaring. “It’s your freakin’ hair, idiot. There’s nothing else that’s red around here.”

Lavi smiled at her with all of his teeth. “I know, but it’s more fun if I actually guess.” And it’s great to make people think I’m dense!

She kicked a rather large pile of loose snow and watched as the dislodged flakes scattered on the gray pavement. She was happy, which was odd. Normally she wasn’t happy unless she was looking into someone’s mind, trying to figure them out, but it was different today. Feeling happy almost made her feel sad. Perhaps Uri is having a bad day, She thought, thumbing the end of her cold, cold nose. It seemed somewhat ironic to her that she would spend time to cheer up Lavi but he would not seem to notice her disheartened sate. She was like the dirty snow in the street; no one ever noticed it was gray unless they fell on it.

“Oi, aren’t you going to guess?” Lavi prodded with a narrowed gaze.

Sable shrugged – she hadn’t actually heard the clue he’d given. “Innocence, which you can’t see, by the way.”

“You read my mind didn’t you?”

She smiled at him so that her face wrinkled up like a child’s. “No, I just have talent. Come on, this looks like as good a place as any.” She pointed at a nearby shop; the elderly keeper could be seen sweeping the snow from the inside, his old eyes focused. Someone like him would take note of local happenings, so whatever information he could share seemed worth having.

Talent, Lavi shook his head. If she calls that talent, the rest of us are ham-fisted children.
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“Ideas?” Allen glanced to Kanda when he saw that the thing wasn’t looking away and wasn’t disappearing. As he spoke the creature’s talon like claws ripped out of the earth, shredding snow and dirt and metal like paper. Great gouts of dirt were flung high in the air as the thing wriggled its shoulders past the hole it had made; pulled its leathery wings into the frigid light.

“Che, kill it?”

“That does not sound like a good idea considering it’s not –” Kanda blazed past him at a run, his hand on his sword, his black hair waving behind him like a cape. Allen sprang into step behind him, his feet working faster than his mouth. “Kanda! It’s not a demon! Stop! We can’t kill it!” But the Japanese man didn’t seem to hear him. “Kanda!”

I guess he does have a point, He thought as he ran, but his pace did not slow. “The Innocence is most likely inside of it, baka. There’s nothing else we can do.” But even if he does, his point is moot.

It made Allen sad to think that Kanda was right about this. It made him even more sad when he saw that the creature – dragon, thing – followed them with it’s eyes as if it knew what they were, as if it could think. Sentient things that contained Innocence were just depressing to destroy, even if they were soulless.
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“Uri, this may be the moment of your redemption.”

“Or my damnation.”

The man beside him laughed lightly. “Ah, such is the way someone like you would think.”

“Someone like me isn’t supposed to think.”

The smile in the other man’s voice was not something he liked to hear. It made his skin crawl. “No, you are not but you still do. You feel too much for a Noah.”

“I’m no all Noah.”

“Pity us all for that.”

He grunted in annoyance. “If I were all Noah that thing wouldn’t be about kill those two. Besides, I thought your philosophy was pity no one.”

The hand on his shoulder did not reassure Uri in the slightest. “There are some things that all humans feel,” The hand squeezed slightly, just enough to be uncomfortable. “It is learning to rise above such feelings that make us superior.”

Then maybe… I don’t want to be superior.
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Even before Allen could speak to it, the dragon attacked them. On closer inspection he realized that the green-brown scales were metallic, the fangs nothing but sharpened steel. It was a machine. A machine that could not think beyond killing.

Kanda’s blade flashed in the sunlight, clanging noisily against the claws that the creature swung at him. A crowd had started to gather in order to see what had happened to the train, and their calls soon had the entire city filing out of their houses to see the mystical thing that had crawled out from the belly of the earth. Allen took up residence on an over turned crate, attempted to yell out of the gathered people that things were not safe, that they should turn back – but Kanda knew it was useless. People would not listen until someone or something died. It was how people were. Secretly they all wished for danger, all wanted to see something horrid.

They soon got their wish.

The street suddenly turned into a wash of black and twisted souls, screams of horror echoed from the tall buildings as any number of akuma filled the sky like clouds. There were too many. Allen would have no chance of slaying them all. For every one his eye located and his arm shot, two more would appear, killing the people in the street. Not one came at him.

“Kanda!” He called over his shoulder, blasting a rather ugly pair away from a younger girl and her mother.

“A little busy, dear.” Kanda managed. The monstrosity was moving with a speed that seemed impossible for something so large, its deep purple eyes followed his every movement, and its hand-like forward appendages blocked every attack he posed. There was no winning with just his sword this time. He would have to do something more drastic.

“There are akuma everywhere, I can’t kill them all!”

“Che, be there in a moment…” He leaped away from his prey to run his fingers over the edge of his blade, the words that evoke its power dancing on his lips.

A sudden pressure on his back stopped him mid phrase. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Kanda-san,” The voice was eerily familiar; the hand on his back placed just so that he turned there would be no escaping whatever it intended. “That’s no demon you’re fighting.”

“Get away from me or I’m going to kill you.”

There was no mirth in the man’s response, no sarcasm. “Please do, you’d save me the effort. Oh, drat, he’s seen me. Do me a favor and survive this. So I can help you.”

“Help me? Che, then die where you stand Noah.”

“Mmm, not really an option.”

And then Kanda was flying.

Allen watched in horror as Kanda went hurtling across the snow, toward the akuma that wasn’t an akuma. It looked like one, but lacked a soul in his eye. There was nothing he could do but watch as it lifted a talon at the man coming toward it, ebon nails aimed to kill or brutally maim. He felt himself moving slowly in the direction of it, his feet shifting as if to stop the inevitable once again, but this time he was too far – there was no way to stop Kanda from striking.

He struggled to get his legs out in front of him with his sword, but he managed. It was only on impact that he realized how much of a bad idea that had been. His still weakened bones crumbled under the pressure, his sword went through the creature’s appendage but the creature’s appendage also went through him. He saw rather than felt the claw that went into his right shoulder and came out his back, cutting bone and sinew, threatening the few fully functioning parts of him that he had left. The fingers of his right hand unwound themselves from Mugen’s hilt as he hung there in the hand of his enemy, broken and useless.

“Kanda!” His name was echoed from two mouths at once as he was slammed to the ground, and pinned. Well, he thought distantly, I guess I should have listened to that ‘taking it easy’ thing Allen suggested. Che, hindsight is always perfect.

“Yuu-chan!” Lavi screamed, slamming his hammer into the creature. Bookman’s cold heart, logic, reason, fear, and pessimism be damned – he wasn’t going to stand by while something killed his friend.

“Get him and go!” Sable called from the place he had left her on the street corner. “We’ll come as soon as there is a ‘we’!”

The old shop owner had been very liberal with his information – indeed the Finder that had come before them had been very unlucky not to hear his tale. Whenever a train came, a creature like none they had seen would come up from inside the Earth and destroy it, but it would always vanish directly after. Three times it had happened before the people started to disappear when they went looking for it. Those words had sent Sable and Lavi back to the others faster than the sound of gunfire ever could.

Sable closed her eyes and thought for a moment, calming herself long enough to imagine what she wanted to fight with. The Innocence in her forehead flashed beneath its cover as it absorbed the word she empowered it with. “Pyre,” She said gently. A primal word for fire.

A stream of heat erupted passed Allen’s face and the demon directly to his right vanished in a chaotic swirl of smoke and ash. He turned to see Sable with her hands out to either side, flames dancing from her fingertips as she felled her enemies with her words. He had never seen her fight before, though he had heard the rumors. Where his Innocence told his nerves what was needed to fight, hers informed her brain and then her brain told it what to do; in essence her thoughts became her weapon.

“C’mon!” She called when she saw him looking. “There are too many! We have to get out of here!”

“But the people—”

“Aren’t going to live much longer if we keep knocking demons into their houses, let’s go!” She took hold of his right jacket sleeve and tugged hard, leading him in no direction.

“Go where?!” He demanded, searching the increasingly muddled street for Kanda and Lavi, or maybe even just Kanda. I couldn’t have lost him again, could I?

“There!” She pointed, but Allen did not have the chance to see. A falling slab of roof caught the back of his head before she could pull him to safety.
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Kanda felt like he had been run through with a pole. And then he remembered. He more or less had been.

“Yuu-chan’s coming around!”

Goddamn stupid rabbit! Has to talk so loud when my head feels like shit.
Hmm… I’m in a mood.

“Che,” He blinked opened his eyes to see a grinning face framed with wild red hair, a single green eye smiling at him like something out of a cheesy kid’s movie. “Where’s the Moyashi?”

“Oh, yes Yuu-chan, I’m fine. No, it will heal with time, thanks for being concerned. And no, I don’t think you’re going to die, even if a normal person would kick the bucket from all your wounds.” Lavi smiled and nodded at him, pointing out the sling that held his left arm to his chest.

“Baka, how’s Allen?” Kanda demanded again. Obviously Lavi was fine; otherwise he wouldn’t have been there to greet him on waking.

A slight rustling sound later and he had his answer. Allen’s face came into view from the left, scrapped and battered but still better off than he’d expected. He looked tired, very tired, but otherwise healthy. His round silver eyes shown with a happiness that warmed Kanda’s heart like nothing before, and made him want to reach up to touch that beautiful face and cradle it in his hands so he could never forget how happy it was. His left hand came up shakily; Allen caught it and pulled it to his face wordlessly.

“Ah, good.” He grinned.

Allen snickered lightly at him as his hand came forward to stroke the hair away from Kanda’s face, his palm was bandaged but his fingertips still connected with the other man’s skin.

“Did you miss me, Love?”

“Ewww,” Lavi feigned.

“Che, shut up, baka.” Kanda glared without moving his head. “I was worried.”

Allen made a face that was more or less disbelieving. “Yes, you were worried. You were unconscious for two days and you were worried.” His hand kept touching his forehead, even though there was no more hair to move.

“Che, that must be why you’re tired.”

“No, I’m tired because Lavi refuses to wake up to take his shift of watching over you.”

That made him laugh at little, which hurt. “Che,” He cocked an eyebrow and glanced at Lavi, aware that what he was about to do might make his red haired friend die of laughter or embarrassment. “There’s room in this bed for two, if you want to share.”

The light from Allen’s shining smile drowned out whatever Lavi did. “Gladly.”

“Gah, you two are like newlyweds,” Lavi sighed, moving to the window as Allen clamored into bed with Kanda. He was okay with it now. Sure, he would always want something like that, would always feel the tiniest twinge of regret that he was not yet that happy with someone, but he would be able to smile and be happy for them regardless.

Allen quietly laid his head on the part of Kanda’s chest that wasn’t covered in bandages and wrapped his left arm around his waist. He had wanted to sleep like this both of the previous nights, but had had to restrain himself for fear of harming the samurai in his sleep. Those worries were more or less gone when Kanda’s arm wrapped around his back and pulled him into a sideways, one-armed embrace.

“Che, if we were newlyweds we’d be blushing.”

“You are blushing, Love.”

“Shush.” Kanda kissed his forehead lightly. It seemed strange to him, but he felt happy. And relieved. He wasn’t the slightest bit worried about what had come of the thing that had attacked them, he wasn’t even worried about what had happened to the Innocence they were supposed to have gotten; he was perfectly content to just lie there in his lover’s arms, taking in his scent.

“Kanda?” Allen asked quietly, his voice too low for Lavi to hear.

“Hm?”

“I’ll tell you what happened exactly later, ‘kay?”

“Mmhmm.”

“And I love you.”

Kanda smiled broadly down at him, knowing that Allen’s mind was once again focused not on the fact that he was alive, but on the fact that he had almost died.

“I love you too, Moyashi-kun. Now get off my arm before it falls off.” His voice was so playful, that Lavi had to look, even if it meant seeing them lock lips. Aw well, He thought with a heavy sigh, They really are cute when they aren’t killing each other.

“Oi, Yuu-chan! Get that bean out of your bed before it breaks you!”

“Che, shut up damn rabbit.”

“But if Moyashi-chan kicks you—”

“I’ll pin him.”

Lavi’s shoulders slumped. “What? And break your bones further? Moyashi-chan! Get up. Have some reason!”

But the white haired boy did not respond. He was already drifting away on a Kanda scented dream.
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I know, I know, they get hurts lots – but if they didn’t, I wouldn’t have a reason for the next chapter. There will be revelations! Repercussions! And explanations! And soonish, depending :(

Love and hugs to all of you! I just wish I could have given you a better chapter…