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Venia
By : saxonjesus
Category: +. to F > D. Gray Man
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Chapter List
- 1-Venia
- 2-Part 2
- 3-Part 3
- 4-Part 4
- 2
- 3
- 4
Part 3:
The aftermath of battle was always confusing. It was a universal law that could not be broken. Always, there would be soldiers screaming, moaning, needing help; sometimes they would live, their fellow soldiers would help them out, but most times they called in vain. It was hard to tell if the silence from where a shout had once come was death or just the tax you paid for overusing your voice.
Lavi pretended not to worry. He had yet to see Angelo, but you could never be too careful...
"Bookman!"
Lavi looked over his shoulder. He'd recognized the voice immediately as that of Captain Marsain.
"Captain," he greeted. The man came up to flank his left shoulder. "Rounding up the men?"
"Yes. Help me out with that one over there. He looks a bit peaky." Marsain pointed to a black man who had a severe head wound. Tears streamed down the man's face, and his mouth was making feverish movements. A hand with three severed fingers came up and made the sign of the cross.
Nodding in acknowledgment, the redhead and the captain tread carefully toward the man in question. His mouth was still flapping, and as they approached him, a buzzing of words reached Lavi's ears.
"--Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen." The man spoke in raspy Latin and made the sign of the cross over his chest once more. The movement splattered blood onto the grass at the man's left side, joining the pool already provided by someone not fortunate enough to say his last prayers.
"Relax, man, you are safe," Marsain said, reaching down and hooking his hands underneath the black soldier's armpits. He heaved mightily, with Lavi assisting once he was at a proper angle. He found the man's fingers among the flattened blades of grass of the ditch he'd hidden in. Perhaps they could be salvaged. Medicine had improved so much since the days when he'd begun recording the battlefields with Bookman.
Blood drenched his uniform as they made it back to camp. Handing the praying man--he had not stopped, even to acknowledge the captain--to a doctor, they went out again to retrieve more of the wounded.
Racing across the field, back and forth, was tedious, tiring work, but Lavi did not stop until his breath came in wheezing gasps. He collapsed in the middle of the field and opened his standard-issue jacket. It was blazing and muggy. He reached for his water bottle, but the canister had taken a hit by some shrapnel and had leaked away long ago. Lavi had been so intent on staying alive that he hadn't even noticed. Perhaps that was bad for his rank as a Bookman, but he could not bring himself to care. All he could muster the energy to think was something along the lines of "thank God it was that and not me."
Of course, that thought implied that he actually believed in God, which, strictly speaking, he did not. Even after all that shit with the Order, it was just too uncanny to believe in a God who would inflict so many evils upon his own creation. Perhaps he was like the Bookmen and looked down on Earth with an impassive eye.
Feeling somewhat recuperated, Lavi sat up. The world blurred and turned. Shaking his head, he made to stand up, maybe let his mind clear, but Nature seemed to like to fuck with him, and it pushed him right back down again. His head landed on something rough. With a great force of will, he lifted his head to see what was obstructing his faint.
It was the leather belt that attached Mugen to Yuu's hip. A few meters away, Mugen's sheath glowed in the intense evening sun.
Abruptly, dizziness was gone--well, repressed. He could function enough to follow the depressions in the grass. Behind him, he heard a call from the captain, but he ignored it. He was not military, strictly speaking. His lover was more important than any damned mission. Yuu was more important than trying to appear objective.
The world spun everywhere but where he focused. Black spots--probably caused by dehydration, the rational half of his brain told him--blotted out his peripheral vision. But he persevered. He just had to find Yuu, make sure the man was alright, and then he could stop, rest. Maybe he could even beg a sip from the dark-haired man's canteen.
A trail of blood began, and odd indentations upturned some of the grass, allowing dirt to show through. A helmet, too large to cover Yuu's head, sat on a root of a tall tree. But to the right, a few strands of long, black hair were caught on a bush.
Oh, shit.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
His brain swirled in the opposite direction of the rest of the world, collapsing his vision until all he could see was a tiny pinprick of light far, far off in the distance. He blinked to make it clear, to try to regain control over himself, but somewhere nearby, someone was huffing like an asthmatic. Lavi had the vaguest suspicion it was him.
Maybe someone said something, but before the pinprick was snuffed, Lavi thought he heard Captain Marsain shouting at him to get up.
His body couldn't function without water, though.
………
They were staring at him. Trying to decide what to do with him, he supposed. The Major had been taken into another room, and Yuu hadn't seen or heard anything from him in the few hours he had been held. Maybe they didn't think he could speak Spanish, which was true. They probably couldn't speak English either. They looked vexed, kind of like when Yuu had been trying to learn the language of the Bookman, though thankfully, he thought in retrospect, the grammar had been based on Chinese. He chuckled to himself as the two men in front of him bickered back and forth over what to do.
He was feeling a bit light-headed. Probably from blood loss and lack of water. It was sweltering in the prison cell they had him in.
Finally, it appeared the two men had come to a decision. One man, the older of the two, began a series of hand gestures, that looked to Yuu as if the man was asking him if there was a tree on the square moon, where the birds were eating the fish. But that was just a rough estimate. His face must have given them all the answer they needed.
The second man pushed the older one away and began to speak in very slow, very simple English.
"What... is... the General... planning? Where will.... they attack... next?" The young man didn't have a very strong accent.
They didn't think he understood English.
In retrospect, he should have just kept his mouth shut, but he wasn't exactly in a proper state of mind when he said, "I can understand you, you stupid Spaniards."
They didn't take to insults too kindly, as the older man withdrew a hammer.
There was an odd crunching sound. Then Yuu realized it was his leg.
A dull throb prompted him to look down. Yuu didn't get disturbed easily, but he was more than a little sickened by the appearance of his leg. Halfway down his shin, the line of bone was broken. Blood was running everywhere, moving down the newly-created cliff that was his leg like a waterfall. Most of the skin around the hammered area was broken or ripped or stretched, though the worst bit was the shard of bone that was pressing a hill into the top of his leg. He looked up at his assailants and blinked nonchalantly until the throb turned into an agony so profound that it stripped color away, whitewashed his world for at least a minute.
Gritting his teeth together, involuntary tears leaking from his eyes, he waited for his vision to stabilize. It was hard to remember pain like this. Before, pain had been a numb thing. It hadn't been sharp and throbbing. Pain was fleeting and something he could overcome without a second thought. Now it actually felt real, like this was something that could kill him if he only let it.
But he wouldn't let it, he would just have to overcome this heightened level of agony and keep going, just like before.
Looking up, he saw the two men staring at him, waiting for him to start screaming, pleading for mercy or some shit. They were going to be disappointed, he would give them no such satisfaction.
They were mumbling to each other in rapid Spanish. Confused, this had always worked before, what were they supposed to do now?
Fucking amateurs. They didn't understand that this was war, they had no idea what real war was. This was only child's play, like toy soldiers on the march. They did not know of an enemy that could strike fear at the very mention of its name.
You could inflict pain upon your enemy until the very limits were breached and information was yours for the taking , but it took an artist to truly break a weathered warrior with only the thought of the torture that was about to be inflicted upon them. These recruits were no artists, they were fumbling apprentices at the hands of Michelangelo. He chuckled a little at how unsure these men were.
He was really making them uncomfortable. It was probably the amount of blood leaking from both the bullet and hammer wounds. It had created quite a pool on the dirt floor. He watched it for a moment as it slowly grew. It didn't seem like a lot--he'd lost more and survived... on second thought, he wondered just how much he could lose before he passed out.
"You apprentices are missing quite a bit in the brains, aren't you? Bet you can't even hold a sword..." Yuu mumbled in Japanese. He dearly missed Mugen. Though it no longer hosted active Innocence, the blade was beautiful and never stained. He wanted to show the two clueless idiots how torture was really done.
They wouldn't miss a few of their fingers, he reckoned.
The dunderheads shuffled closer together, whispering hurriedly to each other. One of the captors, the one with the ludicrous handlebar mustache, hunched his shoulders as if he was trying to curl into a ball. Yuu understood at once and smirked.
"You are naïve."
The two men rocked forward into each other until the rigid lines of their heavily starched uniforms nearly touched. Quietly, they conferred, giving him side-long glances that would have worried Yuu had his wound not expelled an alarming amount of blood. He decided that maybe English was a better route.
"Hey, idiots, you won't get your information if you let me die." He was rather proud of how calm he sounded. Like he hadn't just been mutilated.
…………
His nostrils... were burning. Kind of like someone had replaced his mucus with acid.
"Fucking smelling salts!" He shouted, sitting bolt upright. The room blurred even as it appeared to him, and he clenched his jaw to keep down the nausea swirling in his stomach.
A firm hand pushed against his chest, sending him straight back into the bedroll.
"Stay down, lad, there's no rush." The voice was that of Captain Marsain, who must have carried him back from the woods after he had, embarrassingly enough, passed out.
"Gotta get up, haveta go find 'im. He's still alive, I tell 'ya!" His senses were only about a third of what they normally were, but even in his dazed state, he knew that Yuu was in trouble and needed help. And no second rate captain was going to stop him. He struggled to free himself from his captor, but his effort was useless, his muscles still lacking the necessary water for action.
A few moments later, a tanned, generous hand thrust a tin cup into his grip, and after draining several cups' worth, his vision finally cleared.
Sitting up, gingerly this time, Lavi scanned the room. No Bookman in sight to have witnessed his outburst. He stood up and was displeased to notice that he was still shaking, but he began to pack his things anyway. He'd need food and water for a trip of an undetermined amount of time. He continued his work quietly for a while, ignoring Marsain completely, until the man's curiosity finally got the best of him.
"Where do you think you're going?" The captain asked with a heavy sigh.
"I told you, I'm going to find my scribe. He has a tendency to disappear and let us all think he's dead when he's really off being an overconfident idiot," Lavi grumbled, trying to remember where he had put that one notebook.
"How do you know he's alive? You have to have some clue. My Major is missing as well, and I need to know if there's any hope he could be alive."
"There was a set of footprints in the woods, leading from where his sword was. It appeared as though he had met someone in that same area, but there was no fight, so they must have known each other. Then sometime during that meeting, three other sets of prints appeared and then they all walked off in one direction. So yes, I do think they are alive, and I am going to get them back. Whether you come with me or not."
The captain raised his hands, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find words. "You think I'd leave an idiot like you to do a covert operation alone?"
Lavi wanted to be offended, but he realized the captain had a point--he had gravitated back to his forty-ninth persona quite a bit (Yuu's influence, no doubt), and if there was one thing "Lavi" was terrible at, it was being secretive and quiet. He nodded, took the insult gracefully, and gestured for Marsain to tell him what they would need to do.
…………
It might have been very late or very early; it was difficult to tell when your cell had no windows. His attendants and would-be torturers had been relieved by the nighttime guard who had the bad habit of dragging the heels of his heavy military boots.
It was also tough to say how long he'd been there. A couple days at the least. He had been taken for interrogation a few other times, but they had not harmed him like in the first session. His care wasn't inhumane, they gave him food and water, and bandaged his leg, but nothing else. His injury throbbed constantly and had swelled up to an unhealthy size. He hadn't tried to stand up or move from the wooden bench in his cell because his last attempt had resulted in the world moving out from under him and his head hitting the ground.
The sound of boots scraping against dirt grew louder again and the night guard stopped in front of the heavy wooden doorway. It opened with the sound of jingling keys. His attendant was a younger man, tan with black hair. He placed a plate of food on the ground about half a meter away and walked out. The routine never deviated; he never spoke, or whistled, or did anything but walk the hallway and pass out food.
Though he hadn't eaten anything the previous time he had been given the simple prisoner's meal of bread and water, he wasn't hungry. Which was a bad sign, so the dark-haired man gingerly leaned down and tried to reach the meager portions. It was stale but edible, except that his body didn't understand that it needed nourishment to survive and heal, and it quickly expelled any remaining sustenance from his system.
He swayed forward, and the world flipped upside down. Back aching, leg throbbing, he turned his head so his cheek rested on the dirt floor. It stank a little, especially with his nose so close to the chunky pool of his dinner.
The boots dragged away, echoed off into the distance. That was good. Yuu wasn't all that keen on letting others see just how weak he was. He wished for his lotus, something that could just make the pain go away and let the wound heal. More footsteps approached, but they were different than the security guard's. Probably just some Spanish fucker come to taunt him. A couple of them had done so already, obviously having nothing better to do than stand in front of a miserable prisoner's cell while his leg rotted off.
Murmured speech drizzled down on his face like a purifying, awakening rain. The pain didn't lessen, but his grip on reality became a little less fuzzy. Sudden, thunder-like clanging yielded a voice that stood out starkly against the dark, silent prison.
"Jesus fucking Christ!"
"Shut up!" Another voice admonished in a whisper. The jolt had brought Yuu's awareness, once swirling abovehead, crashing back into his body, but he could not identify the second person.
He figured it was just his imagination. It would be too... convenient to get away from here so soon. It was probably morning--it was so hard to keep track of time--and the two people were on their way to take over for the nighttime guard.
"I'm sorry, it's just--motherfucker." A limping gait now accompanied the footsteps Yuu had heard earlier. Maybe if he talked to the approaching people, they would reveal themselves as the Spaniards they really were and not who he desperately hoped they were.
"Y'never were goo' at stealth, Lavi," Yuu said into the darkness. Perhaps he should worry about how numb his lips were, how motionless his tongue was.
"Yuu?" The rabbit's voice called. The limping gait disappeared and was replaced by uneven, hurried steps. The person's arrival was announced by the clashing sound of something very heavy and very solid hitting the bars. He turned his head in the direction of the noise and realized that light had come with it. He saw a dimly-lit shock of red hair hidden behind a bandanna that may or may not have once been part of a uniform. The redhead looked smudged and a little battered, but his half-worried, half-elated expression and his one working eye identified him immediately. Apparently, he hadn't been hearing things wrong, hadn't been hoping so hard that his shaky reality had bent itself to his whims.
"Lavi?" He asked, just to make sure. His tongue still wasn't working all that well. In fact, it more or less just flailed in his mouth, making his question sound more like Uavi.
"Oh, shit, it's you. Thank God. Okay, hold on just a moment, I'll get you--Jesus eating Peter! Captain, look at his leg!" Lavi's exclamations were quiet, but they echoed like everything else in this goddamned cell. It was then that Yuu realized that the second set of footsteps had caught up, revealing the self-assured face of Captain Marsain, who, even in a crisis, managed to remain authoritative. He reminded Yuu a little of Cross in how he stomped over the world, actually.
"Fuck, well get him up, we still need to find Brown." Marsain handed Lavi his rifle. "Use that for a crutch, just hurry it up! I'm going to look down the hall."
Lavi pulled a key ring from his side and began fitting different keys into the lock, jiggling them every once in a while. Yuu jumped when he heard the click that announced he was free.
Then he heard shuffling.
Lavi was already pulling him up, heaving him so that he was leaning against the man's shoulder, but the shuffling grew closer during this struggle. Yuu could not speak, for any slight noise would echo down the hallway and give them away at once. Weakly, he tightened his fingers around Lavi's shirt. He tried to pull, but most of his energy had left him after his latest attempt at eating had gone awry.
The redhead stiffened. It seemed that he, too, had noticed the footsteps. With patient strides, he dragged the two of them away. Yuu imagined that maybe they were following the same path as the captain, but he really had no idea. His vision was gone. Though he knew Lavi had light with him, black spots had covered his vision until what little he could see was obscured. Sounds, too, were getting distant, but he was still conscious, still taking every other step with his good leg. The going must have been slow. Yuu's waterlogged mind tried to make him move faster. Each breath was becoming an impossible effort. His legs crumpled. Someone caught him, pulled him up, kept him moving. Who? Lavi, right.
Were they out yet? No, they couldn't be. He still... still needed something. What? Oh, of course. He was such an idiot sometimes.
"We're not leaving without Mugen."
He wasn't sure if he'd said it or not. His hearing was still gone, his vision still missing. But he needed Mugen or he wasn't leaving at all.
Let them torture him all they wanted. Mugen was his sword.
………….
Locating Brown was a bit of a difficulty. The Spanish base had three buildings. They'd chosen the one that had looked most heavily guarded, but the Major hadn't appeared in it. The second building was behind a long, grassy field of tents, and the third stood a great distance away, like a lone bastion protecting the land from heathen Americans.
That was where he would have to look next. Behind him, he heard labored breathing and the heavy fall of boots. There was a murmur below those noises, but Marsain drowned it out and instead raised a fist into the air as a signal for the man behind him to halt.
Bookman's lackey--scribe, fuck-buddy, whatever--had been in bad shape, meaning that Brown could possibly be dead already. However, as long as another building existed, hope could not be snuffed out.
"Mugen..." The murmur was finally close enough to be understood. "Mugen... Mugen..."
"Who the fuck is 'Mugen?'" Marsain hissed into the darkness. "Some old lover?"
"No," Bookman answered in a whisper, "it's his sword."
"Well, get him to shut his mouth," he snapped.
"Mugen," the dying man insisted. Marsain turned around so as to make him shut up, but Bookman had already covered his lackey's mouth.
Though building one had been swarming with soldiers, the third seemed relatively deserted. Making their way down into the lower level, where the prison was most likely located, there didn't seem to be anyone at all. Which didn't sit well with Marsain. There would be guards down there if they felt like there was someone to guard.
He rounded a corner ahead of the Bookman to scope out potential danger. Still nothing, but he checked the cells anyway. Brown was in the last cell in the corridor, and he was in much worse shape than Kanda had been. Even through the hazy hallway light, the pool of blood around the man was visible.
The only problem was that they didn't have a key to the cells of the third building. They would have to wait until a guard appeared to... acquire them.
So they waited. An hour. Marsain was normally a patient man, but with his Major dead or dying and the constant mumbling in the background, it was enough to drive even the Pope to think about committing murder.
Just when he had begun to consider putting the man out of his misery, the distinct sound of keys jingling down the hall wafted toward them. His relief was almost too much to bear, and the captain was immediately in position, ready to strike.
Anyone in the hallway would have only heard a light thud as the approaching guard was tackled to the floor, knocked out from the force of his head impacting the wall, and the faint jangle of keys disappearing into a corridor.
Marsain let himself feel a tiny thrill of victory as the cell door swung open, but the joy was soon overwhelmed by sadness. He examined his Major, surprised that the man still held any pulse at all. Picking him up gingerly--he was fragile, his breathing shallow, and Marsain intuitively knew that the man was close to death--he made his way into the hall to join the Bookman. It was hard to ignore the warm, oozing feeling of another man's blood dribbling down his shoulder and back.
He turned around, faced Bookman and Kanda (who was still idiotically muttering after his sword as blood dripped from his leg). Not daring to shift in order to signal their retreat, Marsain simply led the way.
It was still dark outside as they left the building, and the lawn was still nearly deserted. The rescue mission, for all intents and purposes, looked like a success. Still, he moved cautiously and stayed as low as he could with a man on his back. They reached the first building without a problem, but as he positioned himself so that he was hidden in the shadows, he saw that the exit was fairly well guarded. He needed to think.
He needed a plan that would distract the troops long enough for them to escape with the two wounded men. Think, think, god damn, would he stop mumbling?! It was impossible to concentrate when someone was mumbling so close to his ear, especially since it made his heart jump in pace for fear of discovery. He turned slightly to shut the man up when... silence. Golden, heavenly silence. Unnerving silence. Kanda, whose face was maybe a foot from his own, had finally shut his trap.
The man's gaze was not entirely lucid, yet it was extremely focused on a point out in the distance. He scrabbled a bit on Bookman's back, as if yearning to dismount. A solitary hand waved its way above Bookman's head before letting it succumb to gravity's pull.
"Mugen," Kanda said. Marsain waited for the litany to continue, but it did not.
Bookman gasped and slowly raised a finger to point along the path of Kanda's gaze. Marsain turned to look as well, but all he saw was the silhouette of a pacing soldier. He carried a lantern with him, and its light shone off something bright and silver hanging from his belt.
"We are not going on a detour for what may be his damned sword," Marsain said in a hushed but firm voice. Bookman slowly got to his knees, ignoring what was very plainly an order in disguise, and set his lackey down on the ground. Obviously, he needed to clarify. "If you move from this position, I will--"
Bookman held a finger to his lips, winked in an infuriating manner, and sprinted after the glinting soldier. Damned Bookmen! They never fucking listened! It had been exactly the same with that old biddy the red-haired one had replaced. Just marching around with no respect for authority, like she thought she was some godly creature sent down to offer insight into the war. Bull fucking shit. See if he waited around. There was a perfect opening between guards right now, and if he moved within the next minute, he could make it to the exit.
Too bad his heart was in the way. Don't leave anyone behind. That was a mantra that had been drilled into his head since day one. He could not leave a wounded and helpless man behind, regardless of if he was formally a part of the army or not. Kanda had befriended (well, tolerated was probably a better word) a good bit of the company during the weeks he'd been training. Like it or not, Kanda was a soldier, and he was injured; Marsain couldn't leave him behind. What would the men think of him then? Not a whole lot, that was for sure.
The sound of the grass rustling pushed his breathing from his chest to his throat. Careful to keep support of the still-bleeding Major Brown, he shifted so that he could pull out his handgun. Sacrifices would probably have to be made if he was overpowered or discovered, but he would alert attention to himself unless necessary. Often, people could be taken out without the need for loud, booming weapons.
Marsain secretly hated guns; they were too gory, too violent, too damned noisy for his good graces. But no one would ever be the wiser to that fact.
The grass rustler drew closer, enough so that Marsain could identify heavy breathing. Whoever was coming at them was coming fast. He had an inkling, but he cocked his gun, just in case. Major Brown shuddered on his back.
"I've got it!" Was the triumphant whisper from the grass rustler. It was, as Marsain had expected, Bookman. He wouldn't say it aloud, but he had sort of hoped the man would be killed while in pursuit of the sword.
They still had enough time to make it.
"Good, then pick up your scribe and hope you have enough stamina to get out of here."
Bookman complied, and then they ran, each trying not to jostle his charge too much. Kanda moaned a little bit at the rough treatment, but Brown stayed silent. He was probably unconscious from blood loss. Marsain made a mental note to check on him as soon as they were far enough away from danger to safely take a rest.
…………..
Lavi was entirely out of breath when they stopped at the stream. He hoped Yuu couldn't hear how heavy his huffing was becoming, or at least that the dark-haired man wouldn't mention it.
It had been a long journey away from the Spanish encampment. At least a mile or two. They had stopped briefly once they had reached the dense brush about a half mile outside of the camp, but that had only been to regroup and check on the two wounded men. Since then, it had been almost straight jogging. It had been years since this level of fitness had been required of Lavi, and he found himself a stranger to the strain it put on his body. Every muscle screamed to stop; his lungs shuddered with each gasped breath; his heart beat so hard that Lavi thought it might be keen on leaping out of his chest. It would be a strange image, he had thought to himself as his feet monotonously continued their work, if his heart actually did shatter his ribs and burst from his chest--not that he would be able to see it bouncing up and down off the leaves and twigs of the forest floor, dead as he would be, but he liked to think that perhaps it would keep trudging onward. Perhaps his heart was just urging him to move faster.
He'd given up on that hypothesis when his throat began to burn with each breath, needy for water and rest. His heart just wanted him to keel over like the rest of him did.
There was little grace to the shrugging maneuver he used to dislodge Yuu from his back. The man had passed out perhaps three hours before, Lavi could tell because his grunts of pain had ceased, but he'd come to after another hour or so. It was hard to pull himself up from the ground to assess the damage to his lover, but Lavi managed the task just the same. In these times, when energy seemed elusive, Lavi wondered if his Innocence, no longer active but still in existence, was helping him out.
"You still bleeding?" He asked while prodding at Yuu's shoulders and arms, searching for injuries.
"Che," was all he got as a response. Taking that as an affirmative, the redhead removed his army jacket and took his undershirt in hand. He ripped off a nice long piece that could possibly serve as a bandage and abandoned Yuu's arms in favor of his broken leg.
"Looks infected," he mentioned, pointing out a particularly swollen spot, complete with dark purple skin.
"Your powers of deduction amaze me," Yuu said in a tone that to some might have sounded aggressive. It was sarcasm, though. Yuu's emotions were somewhat... jumbled on occasion.
"We'll have to amputate," Lavi said sagely. He pulled Mugen from his belt and placed it just above his lover's knee. "Otherwise the infection could spread."
He only had to wait half a moment before the dark-haired man was sitting upright and making a grab for his sword. Lavi lifted it out of reach and tutted, smiling.
"That's no way to treat your surgeon, Yuu-chan," he teased. For effect, he waved Mugen tauntingly. Yuu crossed his arms and glared at him.
"If you'll let me examine it, I'll see if I can do anything about your leg." Yuu nodded blearily and gestured for him to continue. His leg was grotesque, lumpy, a mixture of purple and green. Blood was crusted over most of Yuu's leg from the knee down, and it oozed steadily from the top of the break. Lavi was a little nauseous, but he swallowed it back as best he could and soaked the bandage-to-be in the stream. With careful movements, he cleaned off as much as he could. Yuu yelped when Lavi got too close to the break. It quickly turned into a steady moan, especially when the redhead managed to find a bullet wound on his calf. He hissed, and though Lavi wouldn't mention it, a few tears fell down the man's cheeks.
He refilled his water pouch in the stream and then gave it to Yuu, who took it, drinking with such speed that he lost quite a bit in the waterfall that fell from his chin. Lavi would have smiled, would have found the moment endearing, had Yuu not been so gravely injured. Instead, he put himself back to work, slowly working away all the old blood and staunching the flow of that yet to come. After a good while, his task finished, Lavi snatched up a nearby branch, breaking it to size with his foot, and ripped more of his undershirt so that he could create a splint.
Turning around to check on Marsain, who had been awfully quiet for some time, Lavi froze. The captain was slouching. The man carried himself tall and proud, with authority, confidence. But now, he looked withered, withdrawn, and a little lost.
"Captain?" Lavi asked hesitantly. He wasn't sure he wanted to peek in on the man's vulnerable moment. He was wary of Bookmen and had made his enmity toward Lavi very clear. He was stand-offish and cold at his best, so seeing him at this fragile moment was bad. Bad because Marsain would know that he had seen it, would know that Lavi would remember it forever and would more than likely write it down in a record that could, at request, be made known to the proper benefactor. The Order had used such knowledge; the governments used them, too. Private citizens, often with money, came calling to learn about certain historical facts. The Bookmen were a utility of the world. Everyone on the planet could potentially view what Marsain would see as a moment of weakness. Such knowledge could humiliate him.
"He's dead."
It was a simple statement--short, one of the smallest sentences in the English language--but it was spoken in a hushed, wavering tone. Each syllable wobbled like a table with one leg too short. And when the captain turned around, Lavi averted his eyes. He did not want to have to record what he saw there. The sadness, the loss, he'd felt it so many times that he could not bear to write it down, rehash all the pain his fledgling heart had once felt. So many had died, so many that he had come to love. And when he'd thought Yuu was dead...
Blinking back tears, Lavi forced himself back into his Bookman persona. He stood, stony, with an uncaring mask hardly covering the raw emotion he felt in tangent with Captain Marsain.
"That's a pity." His voice was hard, merciless.
Marsain looked blankly at him, eyes narrowing with each passing moment. He opened his mouth to speak, but a voice drifting up from the ground beat him to it.
"Lavi, shut the fuck up. We both know how he feels, so stop pretending."
The redhead watched as Marsain closed his mouth and turned around, pulling in a sharp, labored breath as he picked up the dead man.
"Let's go," the captain ordered. Lavi's eyes welled up. He did know how the man felt. The suffering he'd gone through when he'd thought Yuu was dead would never be forgotten, but this was different. Brown was supposed to be ink on paper, dammit!
Wiping at his leaking blind eye, Lavi bent down and scooped Yuu up, swinging him onto his back. "Yes, sir," he said quietly, trudging along after the man.

……………..

A/N: And that's part 3. Part 4 will have sex, so it won't be safe for work. Not that part 2 was all that safe, but <<;; it was a short scene, yeah? Anyway, the ending is nigh! :( Again, happy b-day, Lavi. ^^)
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Venia	By : saxonjesus Category: +. to F > D. Gray Man Views: 1355 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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