Thank you to all who review! I'm amused at the talk about Allen. Apologies for the lateness: I got back from vacation and have been running around since then. No Backing Out is also getting worked on.

Enjoy!

Lacquer

Kanda becomes broody when Lavi mentions they’ve brought a soldier boy in. Lavi does not catch on at first—it takes him several hours to realize that Kanda’s lack of words is not due to his hands being busy washing basins, but because he is in fact ignoring Lavi. He has to skip back to their last conversation to see what it was that caused this not-so-spontaneous and not-so-rare bout of disregard. Ah. The soldier child.

Kanda refused to see the boy, his gaze dark and unforgiving when Lavi suggested they go see what the damage is, but Lavi let it go. After all, he’s not the only one wondering why there’s a soldier here—and not in a curious way. They can’t tell whose side he’s from because the uniform was too stained and ripped to discern, but to most, it only matters that he is a soldier for them to resent him. Not for the first time, Lavi wonders what Kanda’s story is. It’s rather obvious that his bitterness and unease about the soldier child is connected to his experiences with them. Lavi suspects that he—certainly his life, or family—was thrown asunder by the war, represented by the soldiers.

Lavi tries to get Kanda to talk about it. Kanda locks himself up in his room that night and refuses to open the door for Lavi.

O.o.O

The hospital vibrates with the strength of the rumors—there is a soldier in the castle, being tended like all the other neutral, innocent patients. It sparks furious debate that Lavi becomes dizzy trying to follow, lips flying and becoming tangled until they’re meaningless lumps of skin moving in spastic flashes. He catches the drift of the kaleidoscope of opinions after a day. Most protest his stay, but little by little, concessions are made due to his age, or his condition. Lavi feels none of that sympathy, and none of that resentment. Only curiosity.

O.o.O

He runs into Allen for the first time late at night, just like with Kanda. This time, there are no nurses about, and Lavi has no candlestick to light his way. The hallways are ink-black, but the night is humid and warm. He tries to imagine what the cicadas must sound like, but the sound he conjures up in his head is vague and fuzzy.

There is nothing to warn him. No sound, though he later imagines Allen must have made some. No light either, just a sudden something grabbing his legs and then he falls face-down on a writhing warm thing that takes him several struggling heart-stopping seconds to realize is a body.

He untangles himself after a few seconds of panic, and scoots back to catch his breath, peering into the darkness until he can vaguely discern a shape. Is it a patient, or an intruder…?

A cold finger lights on his hand, trembling and slight, and Lavi jumps but regains his composure as he realizes it is asking for help, grasping at his hand but only able to reach with that one little finger. He traces the hand, going up along a slender arm and running abruptly into hard, cold metal. One of the statues has somehow fallen on him, the leaden arm pinning the boy’s arm to the floor.

“I’ll help you. I’m gonna lift this thing up, and you’re gonna get out of the way, okay?”

He feels for the edges of the statue, takes a breath and heaves, lifting and pushing at the same time, and feels the brush of cloth against his knees as the boy rolls over. There is an empty, unsatisfied feeling inside him as he drops the statue with a wheeze but there is no responding thud or clang, as if his effort did not reach the world, was only personal and did not exist. He cannot even hear the grunt he feels his throat make as he stands back up, holding out a hand to the body on the floor. The figure lies on the floor, and Lavi places that hand on its back, feeling the up and down motion and the quivering of the stick-thin body.

“I’ll take you back,” he says, reaching to sling the boy’s arm over his shoulder, and that’s when he realizes there is none. The left shoulder ends in a neatly bandaged stump. Lavi closes his eyes for a moment at the queasiness in his stomach at the feel of empty air where there should have been a limb, and takes the other arm instead. The boy is dead weight against him, taking small, shuffling steps, shaking with fear, or exertion, Lavi’s not sure. Lavi stops when the steps do, takes a breath, and hoists the body into his arms, noting how small and light it is. It lays lifeless like a drape in his arms.

Lavi can’t hear the shallow breathing, nor the groans, but he feels the feverish warmth that radiates from his slight body, and feels the frantic press-in, push-out of the ribcage pressed against his own. The baby fine hair tickles his chin and smells of alkaline blood and deeper still, clovers.

There are lips pressed against his neck, and Lavi wishes he could hear what those lips are murmuring in butterfly brushes against his pulse.

O.o.O

Lavi goes to see him the next day, counting the beds to make sure he’s got the same one as the night before, but there is no need. There’s only one patient that small with a missing arm. Allen, as the nurse tells him he’s called, is fast asleep, though that implies sweet dreams and restful slumber. There appears to be neither here.

“Shit, should he even be able to walk in this condition?” Lavi tsks, and the nurse shakes her head, saying something too fast for Lavi to catch more than “not possible” and “worse today.” He catches the gist.

The boy’s face is grisly, sickeningly pale, that ugly translucence that reminds Lavi of raw fish. Only parts of it are pale. The majority is discolored and swollen, one eye bandaged and the other purple and green and nearly swollen shut. His whole abdomen is covered in stained, rusty gauze, as well as that hideous stump of an arm…

He looks like death warmed over, but that doesn’t quite cover it. It’s more like Death got called away seconds before getting his job done, and just left the body there for the world to finish it. His breathing reminds Lavi of a fish once it has stopped struggling. Just deep, desperate gasps, not even rushed, but timed. There is not much else to comment on, his body is still, thin and wasted, as his muscles atrophy from the stress to it.

“…Is— Is he going to make it?” Lavi suddenly asks, because there is a strange feeling in his gut, a strange squeezing of his lungs. He doesn’t think this poor thing is going to make it. He’s just so small, and so… so dead looking, and even his hair agrees, pale as a ghost. He wants to touch it, and wonders how that cloud-pale straw could have been the same silk that tickled his chin the night before.

Lavi doesn’t know whether the nurse responds or not, as her back is turned to him, but he doesn’t need his ears to interpret the solemn shake of her head after a moment’s hesitation.

O.o.O

Kanda kicks him and sends him a glance that clearly says something along the lines of What the hell’s up with you? and then flicks his hand: Talk.

“Didn’t know you cared,” Lavi says with raised eyebrows, pouring the water buckets into the tub. He wipes his face, airs his shirt, and says, “You haven’t seen him yet.”

Kanda frowns, following suit, and when they’ve fanned and nurtured the fire warming the tubs for the patients, they leave the former-ballroom, now washing room, and head down the grand, dusty carpeted stairs and into the front foyer. Kanda wants more of an explanation for Lavi’s sudden distraught silence.

They stand in a five-foot-wide bubble of silence; Lavi waves to one of the nurses he’s come to be friends with, and there is crying coming from a nearby room. Hurried footsteps run constantly up and down the hall, various cries, murmurs, calls. The stomp of horses and shouts signal the arrival of new injured outside.

Always so noisy here, Kanda thinks, closing his eyes.

He jumps when Lavi takes his arm, his single emerald eye laying a firm gaze on him, “You’re coming with me. I don’t care if he’s a soldier; he’s not the one who did that stuff to you. He’s just a kid.”

O.o.O

Kanda’s resentful struggles, which continue all the way to the sick bay, cease abruptly when he sees the condition the kid is in. He swallows, glancing quickly at his own arms, where bandages still cover the now mostly-healed burns, and realizes that he got off easy. Physically, at least.

He casts a quick glance at Lavi, whose gaze is strangely pained and intent on that struggling, flailing creature, pale and sickly as dirty wash-water.

“I think,” Lavi chokes out, “he’s going to die.”

O.o.O

But he doesn’t. His recovery is miraculous. Not in speed, but in existence. The nurses attribute it to willpower. Lavi won’t quite agree, until the day Allen opens his eyes again.

O.o.O

Kanda doesn’t know how to deal with his lack of voice yet. Lavi doesn’t know how Kanda used to be before, so he doesn’t know if his aloofness and gruff, curt behavior is a result of his experiences or if he’d always been like this, but he can tell that some of it is due to this helplessness of his.

Lavi’s there when Kanda runs into a patient one day. Corners, tricky things, but once they both right themselves, and the other person is sputtering apologies, Kanda whirls around and storms away. Not fast enough for Lavi to miss the way Kanda had hesitated for a moment, on his face the closest thing to longing Lavi had yet seen. Longing to say something, to express his thoughts and emotions to other human beings. Sorry, is what Lavi’s sure he’d meant to, been about to, say. Unable to say anything, what other option does Kanda really have left but to leave?

Lavi follows Kanda, unable to follow the footsteps, and so having to run even faster to keep up with the swing of the ponytail that leads him to the garden, where Kanda sits on the ground, back pressed against the stone bench he usually meditates on, facing away from the castle, his prison, his helplessness.

Lavi sits on the bench and counts the castle windows, careful to not touch Kanda.

O.o.O

Sometimes Lavi feels like a ghost. His steps make no sound he can hear, as if he’s floating, and his knuckles skitter soundlessly on the iron armors. He drops paper into the fireplace one day, and even though there are sparks that fly and almost sting his skin, there is no sound. It makes him feel lonely and empty. Though, he thinks wryly, if it were up to him, he’d be the best thief in the world.

He goes deep into the woods one day, and screams, screams, screams, and feels like no one can hear him. He screams until his voice is raw, but he feels empty because if it wasn’t for that, he wouldn’t know that he’s just spent the better part of an hour screaming. It’s as if his existence does not touch the world.

Kanda appears suddenly in the clearing, and Lavi’s sure that there was plenty of noise—branches breaking and leaves crunching—but to him, Kanda just appeared out of nowhere.

He looks disheveled, breathing hard, with his hair strewn all over his face.

What happened? Kanda demands, looking Lavi all over, as if expecting a bandit or a broken bone. When it becomes clear that there is nothing wrong, and his barely-concealed anxiety was for nothing, he scowls and turns away, but Lavi calls him back.

What?

“You heard me?” Lavi clenches his hands repeatedly, and maybe the coiling and uncoiling of loneliness in his stomach shows on his face, because Kanda’s scowl smoothes out as he says, You were yelling pretty damn loud. He takes a breath and adds, Don’t do that again.

Kanda holds his hand out, and Lavi takes it, but he ducks his head and can’t hold back the few tears that manage to break through. They’re of bitterness, that he can’t even hear his own voice, but they’re of relief too, that at least there’s someone else who can.