A/N: Happy day after laviyuu day, everybody! In celebration of the picture Hoshino uploaded yesterday, I got my butt in gear and finished this half of a story I started back in September. Part 1 is in Kanda's POV and spans forty-nine reincarnations, while part 2 will be in Lavi's POV and cover only one reincarnation. I've hardly started part 2, and will only get to it when the inspiration strikes, so don't wait on the edge of your seat or anything. But the two can stand alone, which is why I'm releasing this part already. It was fun getting a bit sci-fi in this and imagining a world centuries into the future. The only thing I didn't bother with was language, because I don't have the dedication to reinvent dialects and whatnot, so give me a pass on that. Enjoy!

Red Lotus - part one

...

2001-2019

...

When Kanda was eighteen, the demon burst into their farmhouse and killed his father. They lived on the outskirts of town; the whole town itself was nothing more than an outskirt, out in the country with the nearest city a half hour's drive in their rusted old pickup. So there was no hope, when the demon exploded through the kitchen window and stabbed his father through the chest with one long, spear-like arm, of help arriving. No hope of anyone hearing his screams, no hope of running.

He remembers his father slumped in his chair at the table, head hanging to the side, a bloody hole through his middle. There were shards of glass all over the floor, throwing light into his eyes. The demon was huge, and it said something, something he would have understood if his brain hadn't frozen in terror.

Something stronger than that terror surged through him, something that for a split second burned like fire through his veins. And yet, as the demon thrust its spear of an arm at him, he no longer felt a speck of fear.

And then the demon was gone, and a fine dust the color of sludge settled on the glass all over the floor.

The people who arrived next found him sitting on the porch, unresponsive to the golden retriever barking at him and licking his face, hysterical from the smell of blood. Before Kanda's father adopted Kanda, he adopted the dog. Both had been abandoned. Both had been happy with him.

The people that arrived had explanations, condolences, and a request. At the last, Kanda balked.

"I'm going to university," he said. "I can't just go fight monsters for you. Are you crazy? Am I crazy? What the fuck just happened?!" By then he'd been yelling, and one of the people had sedated him – he never felt a prick, never tasted anything, but when he woke up it was dark and they were inside and his father was gone.

"Innocence," they said. "Akuma."

"Exorcist."

"War."

And then: "Crystal," while pointing to the open wound on the inside of his forearm.

He told them to fuck off. They did, reluctantly. He never told them that sometimes – while driving the tractor through the fields, or running with the dog, or sometimes in the middle of class on a hot day when heads sank to desks and the teacher's voice blended in with the drone of the lawnmowers on the sports field – he would experience déjà-vu, though he knew that was never the right word for it.

He does poorly in school and his friends tease him about this just like they tease him about his 'weird foreigner' name, but he just sets his tests on fire with the butts of his cigarettes and doesn't let their laughter affect him. So there are many things he does not know, but he does know that these almost-memories are not déjà-vu, because déjà-vu is things you've already seen and he's never seen any of these things before.

A blind man with headphones over his ears. A glass window spider-webbed with cracks in a gloomy room. A young girl in pigtails, just at the age to start high school, performing a backflip that looked more like she was floating through the air. There is a white-haired boy, too. And a red-haired one wearing an eyepatch. A catacomb, cool and quiet, turning to sand – and when he experienced this memory on the walk home after school had let out for the summer, he'd felt such grief that tears pricked his eyes and he'd staggered into the reeds off the side of the road to clutch at a signpost until the wave passed.

He told the people called Exorcists about none of these things. When the second demon arrives on his nineteenth birthday, a week after the first, this one in the form of an ashy-faced human, he thinks he should have.

...

2048-2068

...

He bumps into a woman in a business suit in the middle of the flooded intersection, and holds the apology he had been about to mutter on his tongue. She had been a bit too solid, a bit too durable. A bot.

Daisya tells him he should treat the robots like he treats people, since they can learn and react as though they have emotions. But Daisya is a foreigner and Kanda has already explained to him that Japan moves too fast for unnecessary formalities on the walkways in the middle of rush hour, much less unnecessary formalities to robots who do not offer them back.

Besides, he does not treat human beings very well either, so that is Daisya's entire argument taken care of.

It is hard to say which is louder – the ruckus of hundreds of feet trampling over the pavement or the ruckus of hundreds of screens broadcasting their commercials, their music videos, their movie trailers. McDonald's and Starbucks are among the first companies to invest in smellovision, so the crossing smells thickly of French fry grease and caramel macchiato.

In this life, Kanda is not an Exorcist. But he has started to remember when he was. Looking back, he remembers more than one self. He remembers snatches of childhood – colorful building blocks, a curly-haired dog that slept on his bed, kids' shows on his parents' tablet computer – and knows that these could not have been from the same life he shared with the flying girl and the eyepatch boy and the white-haired half-human half-Noah. Because that life was the Second Exorcist Project, and he did not have a childhood then.

He thinks he has lived five lives so far – the original that contained that odd troupe of people, the one where the demon that was an Akuma killed his father in their Midwestern farmhouse, two when he did not make it past childhood, and this one where he lives with a foreign exchange student in an oversaturated Tokyo and doesn't always make it to school on time.

In this life he's waited for the Akuma, waited for the Innocence to flare up and burst through his arms and leave their wounds, but neither of those have happened. Instead, in the past year he's had to nurse an ache in his heart that he cannot tell another soul about. That Person.

He remembers Alma as a name and a concept. He loved Alma and Alma loved him back, but they could not be together. Sickeningly romantic, if you ask him, though he has the feeling it was much more than that. When he thinks of the name 'Alma', he tastes mayonnaise on the tip of his tongue as vividly as if he's just downed a spoonful. He hears childish, ringing laughter, and thinks Alma meant some semblance of childhood and friendship in a life where he hardly had either.

He knows that there was an after-Alma, too. He and Alma parted ways, but there was more, wasn't there? Another person. It's all he can think of – this person, That Person, a grating ghost of a laugh that he wants to close his eyes and fall right into. Who is it? He knows, he can almost remember.

'Yuu, kiss me. No, not like that, like you mean it. I know you mean it. Just admit it, you like me, don't you?'

But in this life, a bus plows into Shibuya Crossing right when Kanda is in the middle of it, and he does not have to worry about that ghost of a person any longer.

...

2093-2128

...

He remembers Lavi during reincarnation number six, if he really has managed to keep them straight. This life is one long war, and he remembers Lavi in the snatches between battles.

Red hair, green eye, an exaggerated show-off laugh and a quieter, secret laugh that meant intimacy and trust and things that make Kanda pine like the romantic sap he is not.

'Your hair's so long,' Lavi mumbled, face mostly hidden in the pillow, his good eye just peeking out. He was running his fingers through Kanda's bangs, fingers bumping clumsily into Kanda's forehead. His breath smelled like liquor, like a wild night that should not have happened. 'It's hidin' your pretty face. Let me cut it.'

Lavi had calloused fingers but smoother palms, protected by those stupid gloves he always wore. He could spin stories to help the worst nights pass, lips moving against the crown of Kanda's head as he held Kanda close, words whisper-soft.

'You asleep yet, Yuu? No? Okay, I have another one.' A break for a yawn, Lavi shifting slightly, a thigh sliding further between both of Kanda's. 'Okay, so, this happened in Romania…'

Kanda doesn't remember the stories or what made the nights so bad, besides the obvious – they were fighting in a war back then, too.

Kanda joined the Exorcists when he was ten years old in this life, and by then he already longed for the colors red and green. He remembers more, faster, younger. In each life, he remembers things from every previous life. Memories of memories of memories – sometimes he remembers remembering memories. Sometimes he clutches his head and shuts his eyes and tries to find solace in the darkness behind his eyelids, but there is little solace anywhere inside of himself.

At the age of sixteen, in the mold-scented room at the inn that he shared with his teammate – a crotchety old man who had wielded his Innocence for decades and for that was fearsome with it – he had his first memory of sex.

A murmur against his throat, Good, Yuu, breath hot and wet, hips rocking into him, the disorienting feeling of being filled, shivers under his skin, so good –

The memory passed in an instant but gooseflesh had erupted up his arms and legs. His body was hot and strung tight, and he'd bit his lip and hugged his pillow to himself to keep from reaching into his pants while the old man snored on in the next bed over.

Now he is twenty-five, and already too tired. Old man Bula and his fearsome Innocence died in battle a couple years back, and now Kanda is in charge of a pain in the ass apprentice who thinks herself tougher than nails but really is just headstrong and reckless. Kanda feels old.

"General!" the girl cries – and Daisya would tell Kanda to call her by her name, but Daisya was lifetimes ago – right before the ceiling explodes. Bricks and metal beams fall; alarms start sounding. The security system in the walls announces in its smooth female voice the location of the intrusion, but it is hardly audible over the debris thundering to the ground.

"Well, look who we have here," says the Noah that is suddenly in front of them in a slant of moonlight. He has long hair, tightly spun and pulled back off of his face, and mean golden eyes. "General Kanda. I've been looking forward to this meeting."

"Go," Kanda says to the girl.

They are too far from their destination; there had been a traitor somewhere along the information line who had fed them the wrong coordinates. No chance of backup arriving in time. No reception on any of his devices – wrist strap dead, in-ear dead, backup cell dead. The isolation gives him déjà-vu. He remembers the glass on the kitchen floor and his father's dead body, and then he remembers something completely new: Lavi's teeth grit in fury, hammer the size of a small house glowing green over his shoulder.

"Let her go," the Noah says, waving a hand flippantly as the girl listens for once and runs. Kanda hears her feet pound away through the twists of metal.

He has a feeling that this Noah has made sure nobody will respond to the alarm system still speaking coolly around them. He activates Mugen's double illusion, and the battle begins.

...

2193-2214

...

Sometimes Mugen is a part of his blood, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes there is Lenalee, and Komui never far, and sometimes there is not. Once there was a Beansprout – a jagged scar through his blind left eye – who would steal Kanda's food off of his plate, but he went and got himself ambushed one day and Kanda could not save him. Sometimes there is an Order, and sometimes Kanda fights on his own.

In this life, the war he returns home from was one between humans, fought out in the wastelands so as to preserve civilization. Artificial intelligence helped each side. The world is beginning to truly frighten him.

But he returns in one piece after turning in the rifle that shot skin-melting lasers rather than metal bullets (by now blades are so obsolete they serve only as decoration on the walls of the richest, or as tools used at the dining table). He turns in his armor, gets a holo-badge added to his holo-ID which is kept on record up in the clouds. They say he is a war hero, and he thinks, Fuck these assholes.

Home doesn't exist, so he rents a single room in a dilapidated part of the underground called the Scrubs. The rich have gotten richer with time and the poor have gotten poorer, but in the Scrubs there is less technology to learn, fewer ways for people he doesn't want to talk to to keep in contact with him. He watches his soldier's recompense slowly dwindle, and hopes that in this life the Akuma war will catch up to him before he has to find some other reason to stay alive.

Or Lavi. But he's losing hope in Lavi. It's been so long, so many lifetimes of memories. Sometimes he feels like his mind won't be able to handle storing so much and he'll just start screaming in the middle of the street. People will point and stare, but in this part of town they will leave him well alone.

He remembers lying in bed and touching Lavi's cheek, their toes nudged together under the covers. Lavi's good eye watched him, drooping with fatigue. Rain drummed against the walls. The lamp beside the bed flickered. When Kanda's thumb ran over Lavi's lips, Lavi smiled.

'I love you,' Kanda said.

In an exhale as he tucked his head beneath Kanda's chin, Lavi said, 'I love you the most.'

Kanda doesn't know what else he keeps having to live for if not to find this person.

And then, on the morning of his birthday – a day he celebrates by cutting the split ends off of his hair with whatever sharp object he has around – he returns from his grocery run to find a child slumped against his front door. The kid is covered in grime, face smudged with gray, but when Kanda nudges him with a foot and gets the kid to open his eyes, he thinks, No.

He gets the kid inside, feeds him a hot meal, and then tells him to wash up – "Less than five minutes, or I'll skin you alive for taking all the hot water."

The kid comes back out, grimy clothes but hair a clean, vibrant red falling all over his very green eyes. He can't be more than six years old.

In this life they have finally met again, and Kanda learns that that means very little at all.

"What's your name?" he grunts when the kid is eating his second bowl of soup, which was going to be Kanda's dinner.

"Dunno," says the kid. Broth dribbles down his chin.

"Why were you in front of my house?"

"I got tired there."

Stubborn, very stubborn.

"Do you have a home?"

"Outside."

The kid sleeps under a scratchy secondhand blanket in Kanda's living room, which is the only other room besides the bedroom; the bathroom is like an afterthought. None is big enough for its purpose, but the two of them fit. Kanda doesn't name the kid, who's perfectly fine going by 'Kid' and who calls Kanda 'Kanda'. They are actually very close, by Kanda's standards.

In the morning they eat breakfast, usually some sort of plain porridge, with sugar or nuts or pieces of fruit if the kid's gone stealing the day before. "You say it's bad, but you're gonna eat this stuff anyway," the kid said the first and only time Kanda tried to scold him – and that had only been because Kanda felt it was the expected thing to do. After breakfast they brush their teeth together, and Kanda goes to work tending to the local flower garden while the kid gets into all sorts of trouble, probably.

The kid brings home books, one after the other, and not small ones either.

"You can read?" Kanda asks him when the first book appears – History of Mobile Transportation of the 22nd Century.

The kid looks scandalized, an expression not at all diminished by the snot nugget stuck in his nostril. "Yeah, but can you?"

Kanda remembers burning failed tests with his cigarette butts, his friends' laughter in the background. He remembers the Beansprout calling him Bakanda, and Lavi telling him to 'Read a fucking book if you're so damn bored.'

"Yes, I can read," he says, poking a finger into the kid's forehead.

The kid is loud with laughter and loud with theories about how the world works, how it should work, how it will work one day. How he'll travel the globe when he's old enough, and will learn all there is to learn and then figure out how to do things better. The kid makes a library out of the living room, and asks Kanda questions like "What do you think the first robo-humans were like?" and always knows exactly where Kanda placed his lost hair ties.

On his second birthday with the kid, he remembers learning Lavi's real name.

They were sitting on top of a bed. Lavi's fingers played against his knee. With a broad smile, Lavi said, 'Liang Si. But I don't think I'm really Chinese. I mean, look at me.' He gave his hair a tug. 'So I guess I don't know if it's really my first name, or if I even had one. Real Bookman-ish, huh?'

'Well, I'm not really Japanese, if you want to talk –'

Lavi had silenced him with a kiss. 'No, I don't want to talk about how you're not a real person or whatever because that's a bullshit conversation.' Then he'd run his fingers through Kanda's hair, and when they got to the ends he'd tightened his grip and tugged, just enough to pull Kanda's head the slightest bit back.

He'd grinned, and Kanda had grinned too. And then Lavi pushed him down, crawled over him, and said with a glint in his eye to match his grin, hand still tight in Kanda's hair, 'I love you very much, Yuu, so don't go saying stupid shit or I'll get angry.'

And so Kanda also remembers that he liked having his hair pulled.

After two years, when the kid is maybe eight years old and tough as nails, just like Kanda's apprentice how-many-times ago was, the human war starts again. Kanda leaves the kid with the neighbor that refers to them as father and son, and knows that the kid will not only be in good hands, but will be okay without him. There is already so much wisdom behind those green eyes, so much awareness.

"When you get back, I might be gone, you know," the kid says, arms around Kanda's middle. The force of his hug says that he doesn't know if Kanda will be back or not.

Kanda puts a hand on the kid's head. "I know."

"But maybe I'll see you when I'm exploring."

"We'll see."

"Don't let a robot kill you."

Kanda breathes out a chuckle, then hugs the kid back, then says goodbye.

...

2323-2342

...

Komui slams on the breaks and the gridlock of cars behind them begin honking their horns. The driverless solar car ahead of them has tuckered out again. They don't perform well on cloudy days, but the city's street-level public transport bureau apparently spent millions on them so they clog the roads and sometimes get people places, and oftentimes don't. Kanda sees the passenger turn around and grimace apologetically at them through the back window.

"Should we try up a level?" Komui asks, finger already hovering over the levitation button on the dashboard. They are right beside an aero-ramp – the lane is marked by a floating string of green lights that connects the ground road with the air road above.

From the backseat, Lenalee says, "The aero-motor's still too low. It has to recharge more."

"You should be buckled," Komui says to her.

Lenalee sticks out her tongue.

"You should be buckled," Kanda says from the passenger seat. Lenalee lets out a huff, but buckles up. Then Kanda turns to Komui and says, "If we're going to see a dying man, shouldn't we be hurrying up?"

"Up it is!" Komui says. He hits the button. There is a whir as the wheels retract and the car begins to hover, and then they are slanting their way back into moving traffic.

In this life, Komui and Lenalee are very much like the originals, and Kanda is something approaching happy. Komui drives like a maniac, always on the ass of whoever's ahead of him. He's also always trying to fix the car up with new tricks – make it charge faster, make it run on sun backup, make it run on air pollution. Lenalee warns him constantly that if he tries to add too many fancy tricks to it, they'll just end up with a car that doesn't run at all.

The Order in this life is fractured and far-flung, and has little money to dole out to help them along. Kanda, Komui, and Lenalee are all that's left of the European branch, but at least the war of Not Really Good versus Kind of Fucking Evil – as Kanda has come to think of it through the lifetimes – has reached a stalemate. Both sides are desperately trying to figure out how to actually end a war that has been recorded in history as ongoing for millennia.

The world has changed so much. There are so many more people, for one. Traffic has become multi-tiered because if everyone on the road was restricted to the same level, the streets would be unnavigable.

But there are fewer languages, maybe twenty. Kanda knows English and some German, and no Japanese, which Lenalee says is sort of embarrassing. Lenalee knows English, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, German, and a few others that Kanda can't think of. Overachievement at its finest, but it makes her damn useful.

The skyway traffic moves along smoothly, but Kanda has never liked the way the windows all glint into his eyes at this level. Elbow against the window and cheek on his fist, he lets his eyes fall shut, feigning a calm he does not feel. For what feels like the hundredth time, he replays his most recent memory of Lavi.

He had woken up late in the morning, and turned over to see the sun spilling through the crack in the curtain and onto the empty space in the bed beside him. He got up, wooden floor cool and a bit rough beneath his feet, and made his way across the short space to the front door. Outside, in the sun, Lavi sat on the step. Beyond him were sprawling green plains doused in golden light.

'Morning,' Lavi said, sending a smile over his shoulder. He wasn't wearing the eyepatch. Whether his right eye had once seen or hadn't, it was blind now, the iris a paler green than his left. He held out a hand, and Kanda took it and sat down behind him, legs on either side of him.

'You shouldn't let me sleep in,' Kanda said, arms going around Lavi.

'Your body knows what you need. You should listen to it.'

The sun hitting the side of Kanda's face made his eyelids droop. It took so much willpower to not just lean against Lavi and fall asleep again. His entire body felt too heavy.

'Three years,' Lavi said. He laughed quietly, a self-depreciating edge to it. 'I know this is shitty of me, but I sometimes thought we wouldn't last this long.'

'We'll last longer,' Kanda said into the warm skin on Lavi's nape.

Every time Kanda thinks of this memory, he can smell sandalwood soap and feel the downy hairs on the back of Lavi's neck against his lips.

Every time he thinks of this memory, he wants to stab Mugen through his chest just to make the longing stop. He knows, in a way that has never required anyone to explain it to him, that he must not take his own life. If he interferes with the cycle of his deaths and rebirths so directly, he will lose his chance to ever find Lavi.

And, more sinisterly: if he ever dies and someone tries to bring him back, he will return to search for Lavi as an Akuma. Another reason not to make ties with people who don't know better.

The dying man is in a private ward on the top floor of the hospital. They park in level twenty-two of the tower across the way, take the moving walkway straight into the hospital's twenty-second floor lobby, and then ride the elevator up to floor fifty-seven.

Kanda catches Lenalee sending him glances that he tries to ignore. The inside of the elevator is all mirrors, though, so he sees Lenalee's suspicious frown from all angles. The man they are meeting goes by Bookman. Kanda already knows that in this life their timing was off, and he'll get to see Lavi die for the first time.

The room is dark, with heavy curtains over the windows. Bookman lies in bed, gray and thin with folds of loose skin on his face. The blankets are pulled up to his armpits, and his arms are crossed over a thick book on his chest. He regards them for several long moments, eyes perceptive and measuring. In the gloom, Kanda cannot see their color.

Komui starts the talking, and Kanda tries not to listen to the creak of the old man's voice in response. The room smells sweet to hide the smell of sterile equipment.

'The worst death would be one where I'm just lying around waiting for it to happen.'

Kanda caught the apple Lavi tossed his way. 'What if it was peaceful?' he asked, bemused. They were in a park in a quiet town, probably looking for Innocence.

'You can't ask another question until you answer this one, Yuu. But for the record, lying around makes me antsy, unless I'm sleeping.'

Kanda bit into the apple. 'I don't know what the worst death would be. I'd just live through it. Remind me why I'm playing this stupid game with you?'

'You don't think it'll happen sometime?' Lavi asked, his round-eyed curiosity still quite young. He was new to the Order, still trying to get to know everyone, already a thorn in Kanda's side. 'Okay, fine, I'll ask the next question. Ummm…would you rather eat soba filled with dirt for every meal, or go bald for the rest of your life?'

Lenalee elbows Kanda surreptitiously in the side, bringing him back to the present. He'd been starting to lean to one side, and quickly rights himself. He ignores her very searching look.

Finally, Bookman lets his arms fall away from the book so Komui can take it. "Everything you need to know about the Noah is in here."

Komui picks it up, cracks it open, and goes slack-jawed. "It's all in code."

The old man smiles, the last flickers of a grin that would have been much more exuberant when he was younger, and almost certainly paired with a grating laugh. "Have fun."

...

2413-2443

...

He doesn't want to do this anymore. How many times has he tried? It feels like hundreds.

It is maddening, being a child and remembering loving and being loved so fiercely. It is maddening, growing up in love with a memory; growing up to understand love every time and to understand that Lavi means everything, Lavi is the one he loves in every way and cannot stop loving. To be sixteen, and seventeen, and eighteen, and looking. And fighting. And hoping the war will be kind this time. It never is.

To be nineteen, and twenty, and twenty-one (if he ever makes it that far), and seeing red in a crowd, or features that look familiar, and feeling his heart seize even though it is foolish to hope so much. And then watching until he is sure that person isn't Lavi before carrying on again.

His goal is so singular that it has expanded upon itself. He sees Lavi everywhere, hears him everywhere, sometimes is so sure that Lavi is nearby – he can feel it, he knows he must be close, that they are missing each other by minutes, by seconds, that Lavi is above while he is below, that they are on opposite sides of a wall that spans too long for him to get around in time.

Or his mind is just playing tricks on him. Wishful thinking gone on far too long, telling him that after so many near misses they are getting closer and closer to doing it right this time.

He tries to find as much interest as he can in the changing of the world. He tells himself he is blessed to be able to see centuries go by, but it's been centuries and he's yet to believe in God, so 'blessed' is never what he feels. The world he knows has gone from something that felt so much smaller, to something that is pushing perilously past itself. Nothing reached as far into the sky as the buildings do now, as the jets that breach above the Earth's atmosphere. How long until the buildings that live up to their names by scraping the sky snap and fall back to their bases? How long until passenger planes attempt to shuttle people too quickly and too high and fling themselves from the Earth entirely?

There are murmurings of finally being able to reach other planets, of being able to set up habitation elsewhere in space. There have been whispers for centuries but now, finally, seven hundred years after his birth, those whispers have turned into murmurs, have turned into glowing signs on the sides of the highways and the skyways (but not the jetways the highest up; humanity has yet to throw advertisements that high).

Get married today, celebrate your fiftieth anniversary on Gliese 667 Cc!

The world has shrunk. The upward building is to make up for the loss of land and the spread of sea. Out on the ocean, the few times Kanda has broken from the cities he's always found himself gridlocked in, he's seen the wind turbines, little specks of white far far away. From any beach they look like thick flocks of gulls. Sea travel is hardly necessary anymore, so they provide few obstructions.

The rest of the water is mapped out into highways much like the ones on land, though invisible, for trade. So humanity has come far and has learned to harness the elements for unlimited energy – he knows the oceans tides are involved in this as well somehow, though in no life has he become a studious person and he learns what he does in snatches from life around him.

Humanity has compacted upon itself. In this sense, the world of his past felt so much larger, so much more sprawling. There was distance to cover, quiet to find in solitary spaces. Trees, plains, open skies, dirt. But he knows Lavi, and knows Lavi must be in the thick of things.

He prefers the ground level, prefers walking and, if he must, the many-story buses and trams that whisk him from place to place much quicker than he enjoys. Staying on the ground puts him with the poorest, those who still drive automobiles with rubber tires that roll on cement and must be plugged in every month to recharge. He feels closest to the past here. The hostels he stays at – communal, slapdash, shared meals in the canteen and shared bathroom spaces (though everything is voice-operated; speak and it shall be done) – usher in an eclectic mix of people, largely travelers. It feels somewhat like staying at inns used to, and somewhat like the Order used to.

During the day, he passes the signs flashing Gliese 667 Cc! and scoffs at them. He doesn't think humanity will get that far.

He thinks, Let me find Lavi before the skyscrapers break to pieces and crush all of humanity beneath them.

And sometimes he truly hates himself, the times when the frustration and the longing and the heartsickness combine in the perfect way to make him feel exceptionally helpless, and make him believe that he will never reach the end of his search. People always seem to be able to tell when he has hit this low, because this is when they reach out to comfort him. He wonders when he became so transparent.

It's only ever with the ones that smile at him like they contain an entire sky full of sunshine in their souls that he goes with.

"You're in love," the man this time says from beside him, propped up on an elbow and looking down at him in curiosity.

Kanda turns his face away. His hair is everywhere, and the pillows are numerous and soft, and the bed is still made beneath them, though rumpled.

"Is that what you were trying not to say? Their name?"

Kanda licks his lips, watches the goldfish moving idly in the wall, in their backlit tank. This man does not try to touch him after they are through, and he is grateful for this.

"Yes."

The man hums. His skin is dark and his hair falls in long, purple locks, and Kanda knows him little enough to think he is kind.

"What happened?"

Kanda shuts his eyes.

"If it's cruel of me to ask, then don't tell me."

Though he hasn't tried to, Kanda knows he could count the number of times he's ended up in situations like this on both hands. Which is not many for the amount of time he's been allotted, but it still feels like too much in his long, lonely life. He feels treacherous and detestable each time, and wants someone to punch him in the face, wants Lavi to punch him in the face. Wants Lavi.

"Time happened."

"Hm," the man says, a sound that holds a touch of humor but is consoling all the same. "Doesn't it always."

A while later, after the man has dressed and Kanda has continued lying on top of the covers, head still toward the wall, the man says, "You look tired. Do you want to rest a while? Or would you prefer to leave?"

"I don't care."

"Here's some water," the man says, and Kanda hears a clunk on the bedside table. "The bathroom's down the hall. There are towels in the cabinet there. I have work now. Please don't take anything."

The goldfish swim in the wall, and someone is home in the unit above because Kanda can hear their footsteps. Through the silencing blinds and outside the window the skyway traffic zooms by. The front door shuts with a click; the man is gone. Kanda lets the quiet that is not quite quiet press in on him, wrap him up like that clinging plastic that was used once upon a time to cover food, that children could suffocate in. Maybe if he doesn't move, doesn't blink, he'll be able to forget to breathe, too, and he'll just slip away without effort so he can start again and do better next time.

Of course it is not so easy. He gets up, he showers, he does not look at himself in the mirror. He dresses, and thinks about leaving a note in thanks, but doesn't want it to be taken as for more than just the shower, so instead he leaves his towel a heap on the bed.

In this life, too, the Akuma catch up to him. A swarm in the middle of Central Park, they bob above the imitation trees and people scream and turn to dust and die. Kanda draws Mugen, already gleaming in activation.

He prefers the lives where he is not the only fighter.

...

2573-2595

...

Of course there are the long, dragging stretches of time that are neither good nor bad, but just exist. In hours. In days. In years. Going by. While he just lives. Sometimes he'll go years without a new memory, and all the old ones will mercifully dull. Or perhaps he's just grown a thicker skin, desensitized, anesthetized.

Eventually, like a promise, a new memory will come along and stir up all the old ones, and it's all the way back to square one.

On a hot summer's morning he staggers away from the fruit stand, vision slanting sideways. The memory spins through his head, and he knocks into people in his search for somewhere isolated to ride it through.

The room they shared was murky, moth-eaten drapes blocking the windows. Inside was a disaster area, pillows and papers and fabric littering the floor.

'You're just a shit personality wrapped up in a shit human being!' Lavi yelled, face contorted in anguish. He was ripping open drawers and throwing Kanda's clothes back at him. A shirt hit Kanda square in the face and fell to the ground. A pair of pants to the stomach, also falling. A belt flung haphazardly, thin leather cracking hard against Kanda's cheek. Lavi faltered, rage gone in an instant.

'Shit, I didn't mean –'

'It's fine,' Kanda said. His cheek stung. He knows he deserved it, even though he doesn't know why.

They had long, rough, passionate make-up sex. Fingernails down backs, blooms of red sucked into skin, Lavi's fingers pulling his hair. Afterwards, Lavi stroked his face, saying, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I shouldn't've said it, I love you.' Then he burst out crying, and Kanda held him. This was the night Kanda didn't think they would make it. But they did. For three years, at least.

The memory fades. He finds himself huddled on the ground against a wall, shaking and sweating.

"Are you all right, dear?" says an old woman, hands on her knees as she peers down at him.

He wobbles to his feet and around her, leaving her question unanswered. The sun warms him but doesn't stop the shivers. His stomach is empty and his pockets are as well, no money to buy food.

The world now is struggling with all its height and all its technology. Infrastructure is crumbling and signals are lost in the sky all too often. He might have even missed a war with the robots, because he hasn't encountered one of those in this entire life, and he is twenty-one so far. The mecca cities still exist but they have gotten shorter and greener – real green, not holograms or element-resistant plastics or whatever other nonsense people have tried to replace plants with.

More people live in the junk cities, which are a mix of old and new. Buildings pieced together from wood and metal and brick, low enough for the sunshine to reach the ground. At the markets, organic fruits and vegetables are just starting to appear as the newest dietary fad. Kanda would steal, but the vendors have eyes so hawk-like they would be fit for Exorcist training, all of them. But no Akuma yet, in this life.

He turns a corner and freezes. Several display stands away: red hair, slouchy posture, a gaudy scarf slung over a shoulder, and a ringing laugh Kanda has heard like an echo in his head so many times he knows it by heart.

He is about to hurry over, but then Lavi turns slightly his way and Kanda sees the hand in his. The person next to Lavi laughs as well, knocking their shoulders together playfully. They are lost in their own little world, the two of them, browsing the stands but so intent on each other that little hologram hearts might as well be floating around their heads.

In this lifetime, Lavi loves someone else.

"Kanda's just half your name, isn't it?"

Kanda gives Lavi a level stare, spoon halfway to his mouth. He had collapsed from hunger, and Lavi and Lavi's lover had taken him first to the clinic at the center of town where Lavi's lover works to make sure he was all right, and then home to feed him a proper meal.

It is bizarre to find himself sitting across from a Lavi who is so open to strangers, who has already offered him a free night in the tiny guest room. The lover is off at work, and this Lavi already wants to know more about him.

Fuck it, Kanda thinks, embracing the masochism. He says, "Kanda Yuu."

"Kanda Yuu," Lavi repeats, as though weighing it in his mouth.

Hearing his given name in that voice hurts with a pain as real as an Akuma bullet hitting home, filling him with toxins. Kanda puts his spoon down.

"You don't like being called Yuu?" Lavi asks.

"Not many people have called me that."

"Where were you heading?"

"Nowhere."

"Then what are you doing here? You're not from around here, are you?"

"No. And passing through."

Lavi furrows his eyebrows, looking at him like he is a tricky puzzle to solve.

"If you want to earn up some money for your travels, there are always spare jobs around town."

Like the masochist that he is, Kanda embraces the not-so-subtle invitation to stay.

"To the left a bit…okay…hold it there!"

The metal frame rattles as Lavi hammers the nail in. Today he has brought Kanda along to build slapdash houses like the one he lives in, yesterday it was picking lettuce in the fields, tomorrow it will be who knows what. This Lavi does physical tasks, has short hair, has one blind eye that he shows to the world as bold as day.

When the site manager calls for a break, Lavi and Kanda head for the shade of a sheet metal awning. Dust kicks up around their heels and never quite settles all the way back to the ground. Lavi takes a long swig from his canteen and then tosses it Kanda's way. "You're kind of good at everything, aren't you?" he says, impressed.

Kanda hates the way he can see this Lavi coming to love him. With trust and compassion, completely platonic. Blissfully unaware of Kanda's feelings for him. This Lavi is the type of person who likes everybody, and whom everybody likes.

Lavi's lover is kind but non-intrusive, leaves Kanda alone without making Kanda feel unwelcome. They are peaceful and level-headed, a perfect counterbalance for Lavi's vibrancy and volume. And when Kanda sees the two of them together, he sees how perfectly happy they are. Lavi's expression holds the same adoration Kanda has grown used to seeing in his memories.

He stays a week because he loves wallowing in his own misery, loves making it worse, loves suffering. It's finally the blade to the chest he's wanted for so long, his fucking wish come true.

Several dozen lives ago, when he was still coming to grips with being reborn over and over, a practicing Buddhist told him all about the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Good karma leads to a happier rebirth while bad karma leads to an unhappier one. But in Buddhism you're reborn as rocks or animals or whatever, never the exact same miserable person with the exact same miserable purpose in life, reduced to one aim and one aim only.

Win him away, he tells himself. Break them apart. Steal him. You've looked for so long, he's yours.

But Lavi never belonged to him, and he never deserved Lavi in the first place. He never felt, in that life they had together, that he was ever really good enough – not open enough, not happy enough, not considerate enough, not thoughtful enough. Lavi's eye was always so green full of love – and the two states were indivisible, 'green full of love' – but Kanda always felt that greenness and that love was misplaced, looking upon him.

He could not do something as loathsome as trying to drive a wedge between Lavi and his lover now and expect any love at the end of it. Though maybe it would make his karma bad enough that he wouldn't have to be reborn as himself again.

When they part ways at the end of a week, Lavi gives him a clap on the back. He hasn't been at all deterred by Kanda's coolness in this life, either.

"If you're ever passing through again, or just run out of money and need to eat, there's a place at the table for you here."

"Thanks," Kanda grunts, already walking away.

When they part ways in this life, Kanda feels like a fool.

'Come on, Yuu, just put your feet in the fucking water.'

Lavi was dragging him down the beach. The air smelled briny, the sand was scorching beneath his feet, and the tide was just beginning to come in, rushing like white noise.

This must have been after the war, because Lavi had a heavy pack over one shoulder that he dropped so he could grab Kanda's wrist with both hands. His clothes were loose, in light colors turned the dingy grayish-brown of travel. A bandana across his forehead held his braid and all its flyaways out of his face. He looked so carefree, eye alight with joy, smile brighter than the catch of sunlight on the ocean waves.

Kanda dug in his heels. 'I'm not going to fucking step in the water.'

'God, I'm not sayin' swim in it! Just step in it, you won't drown!'

'What's the point? I don't want to.'

'Yuu!' Lavi threw out his arm, motioning at the vast expanse of blue before them. He was still grinning, looked like he would start laughing at any second, or just turn to light himself. He was breathtaking. 'We're at the ocean! The ocean, Yuu!'

And then he threw his arms around Kanda's middle and lifted.

'What the hell are you – Lavi!'

Kanda struggled, and Lavi struggled to get a better grip on him, stooping for one of Kanda's legs and hauling it up. With Kanda in half a princess hold, and Kanda trying to knee Lavi in the gut, they hobbled around for a few steps. Lavi's laughter rang loud and infectious, and by the time they were sprawled in the sand, Kanda was laughing too.

...

2761-2780

...

He's found the lotuses. The stems and leaves stretch tall out of the water, the tallest he has ever seen them. The flowers are white tipped with pink, fanned out wide to take in the sunlight. Kanda follows the only path, a meandering trail of dirt and rock that twists snakelike through the greenery, with a growing thrill in his gut. He is days from the last town he left, but it feels like years. Feels like freedom. The sky stretches blue and endless, a sky that seems never to have known clouds. He is almost running.

A turn and he sees it. Past the ledge is the open water of the lake, with thick bunches of lotuses on both sides. Just docking is a boat, and when Kanda steps to the edge his shadow falls over the man sitting there.

Lavi looks up from the lotuses, flinches and squints, and brings a hand up to shield his face from the light. His eyes – both of them so breathtakingly green – take Kanda in. There is a thick smear of mud across his nose, and his skin is a warm color from so much time in the sun. He smiles up at Kanda, curious and welcoming, and says, "Hi there, stranger."

"What is that?" Kanda says, pointing at the mud on Lavi's nose.

Lavi has taken him home and offered him lunch, which is cooking now in a tall tin pot on an ancient-looking stove. A rich, savory smell fills the tiny cottage. Lavi stirs the pot with care, but sends Kanda an amused glance.

"It's mud. I know you know what that is, 'cause it's all over your boots."

"Why is it on your nose?"

Lavi covers the pot and takes a seat in a creaky rolling chair. He pulls it up to the table across from Kanda. "To protect a cut from the sun. The villagers say if you mix dirt with the lotus water, it's got healing properties, or protectional properties, I forgot which."

"You're putting mud into a cut on your skin. What if it becomes infected?"

Lavi shrugs a shoulder, like disease is not so very big a threat at all. His skin is so tanned that Kanda already finds himself wanting to touch it, to see if it feels as warm as it looks.

"What's your name?" he asks, because he wants to be able to call him Lavi already, if that is the name he goes by this time.

"Well, I go by two," Lavi says, and Kanda has already predicted them both. "Liang Si, but the people here have a hard time with that so I go by Lavi. How about you?"

"My name is Yuu."

"Yuu, huh?" Lavi lifts his eyebrows. "Tell me where you travelled from, and I'll tell you about me. If you're interested."

Kanda feels it – the trill in his chest, the fluttery feeling all around, like moths alighting on his skin. This is it. It is here.

"It's a long story," he says.

Lavi chuckles, then swivels around and picks up the pot from the stove. He sets it on the table and swivels once more to open a drawer, from which he draws two long utensils that are part fork and part spoon. Spork, Kanda remembers, from several centuries earlier.

Lavi hands one of them to Kanda, their fingers colliding generously, and then uses the other to twirl up a thick, green noodle from the pot. "I live in the middle of nowhere. I have time."

Lavi calls himself a part of the village that lies half a mile yonder, but Kanda can tell he doesn't truly consider himself a villager. He is solitary, but happy to have Kanda's company. Kanda sleeps on a reed mat in front of the door, since the only other downstairs room is the kitchen, and that is mostly filled by the table, stove, and underground cooler box. Upstairs is a bedroom – a simple room with a simple bed – that can only be reached by steps from the outside. It is a house that has pulled in its shoulders, trying to be as narrow as possible. It is made completely of wood, though, and to Kanda this is friendly, so he likes it more than he will admit.

Kanda confides that he escaped the compulsory military enlistment, which is partially the truth, and Lavi offers him shelter without question. Lavi doesn't say how long the offer stands for, and Kanda doesn't ask.

"Fighting's shit stupid," Lavi says as they make their way down the path toward his boat. He runs his hands through the lotus leaves leaning over the pathway – great, elephantine swaths of green larger than a human head. "Sometimes you gotta fight for yourself, sure, but wars? You'd think we'd have learned by now, but I guess humanity's still not that bright."

The hair at Lavi's nape is already damp and darkened by sweat. His shirt is loose and wide-necked, revealing lots of skin, lots of shoulder muscle and back muscle.

It's been a week, and this morning Lavi declared that Kanda would come with him onto the water. ("I'm not going to make you swim, jeez. Besides, it's shallow enough that you can stand in it. I won't make you stand in it! We're gonna be on the boat!")

"Why do you trust me?" Kanda says, the words slipping out as he stares at a knob of Lavi's spine and imagines reaching out and touching it.

"Huh?" Lavi stops walking and looks over his shoulder.

"Nothing," Kanda says quickly, looking away.

"I have nothing worth stealing."

There is a hint of wistfulness in Lavi's tone, drawing Kanda's eyes back. But Lavi just has his eyebrows raised, that verging-on-amused expression he wears so often.

"And you'd gain nothing by taking advantage of me, because I don't know any important people or have any important information about, well, anything important, so –" Lavi finishes with an easy shrug, another staple of his. His grin goes full-blown. "I just figured I'm such irresistible company that you can't bring yourself to leave."

Kanda tsks, Lavi laughs, and they continue on their way.

Before Lavi lets Kanda into the boat, though, he insists, "Seriously, Yuu, take off your coat. You can't wear that thing when you're under the sun with the water reflecting all around you, you'll overheat."

"It's fine –" Kanda starts to say, but Lavi steps right up to him, takes hold of his lapels, and pushes his coat off of both shoulders. It hits the ground with a fwump. Lavi is already clambering into the boat, but Kanda's cheeks feel burning hot.

If this Lavi isn't his Lavi, he doesn't know if he will be able to handle trying again.

When they are floating in the open water and Kanda has finally loosened his grip on the sides of the boat, he says, "Why are you the only one who does this?" He motions around them. Insects flit over the water, leaving hundreds of tiny, fleeting ripples. "Nobody else farms the lotuses?"

Lavi lets out a little laugh. "As much as they say the water's magic, they're actually kinda scared of the lotus. Not of the lotuses themselves, but there's a legend. Something about a girl growing up centuries ago in this town, which used to stretch all the way to the water's edge. One day it seemed she'd been struck with some sort of magic. She funneled this magic into the water, and the lotus roots sucked it up and the flowers all bloomed at once. But then a demon came, lured by the smell of the magic in the air. The girl was unable to tame the monster she unwittingly called here, so it destroyed the village and killed many people before a bunch of sorcerers killed it and took the girl away. They say that she returned around a decade later as a ghost to haunt the lotus fields, always calling out for her loved ones and cursing the demons who took them away from her."

Lavi's expression has gone serious, eyes downcast, as though he too is haunted by the story. A shiver waits at the base of Kanda's spine, ready to skitter all through him. He could listen to the way Lavi's voice melds and shapes words all day, even though they have the power to frighten him.

But then Lavi looks back at Kanda and breaks into a grin. "But I've been here for years and haven't heard a peep, so I'd say if the poor ghost ever was here, she's moved on by now. Anyway, the villagers love eating this stuff, so I make an okay living out here."

With just the water around them, Kanda cannot look at Lavi too hard because there is nothing else to pretend to do if he gets caught. So he paddles, and pretends to pay rapt attention to Lavi showing him how to harvest the seedpods, but really he is thinking about Lavi undressing him of his coat, and maybe more.

He feels Lavi watching him – just a quiet, inspecting stare – and it makes his heart beat faster.

"So tell me," Lavi says, once they are paddling their way back to where he docks the boat, a floor full of seedpods around their feet. "What's with that sword? Is it real? Is it like some family antique?"

Mugen sits propped in the front corner of the house, and in his recklessness Kanda has taken to leaving it there. It is so peaceful here, he can hardly imagine anything bad ever happening.

"Yes. And no."

"Do you use it ever?"

"I haven't for a while."

"You're not gonna kill me, are you?"

Lavi is grinning, and Kanda feels his own lips twitch.

"No, I'm not going to kill you. I thought you trusted me?"

Lavi ducks his head, trying to hide his smile. But he is too curious, and peers up at Kanda from beneath his fiery fringe.

"So what's it for? You fight people?"

Kanda shrugs, and Lavi knocks their knees together, laughing. It is a small boat for two people.

"Okay, okay, all part of your mysterious past. Ya know, for a long story you left a lot of stuff vague."

"I like being mysterious."

"Wow, Yuu," Lavi says, and Kanda is addicted to hearing his name, addicted to all the ways Lavi can say it. "How enticing."

"I have feelings for you," Kanda says.

It's been two weeks. He is not going to waste time. He cannot afford to. His biggest fear is that, even though Lavi lives in isolation, somehow someone else will come along and fall in love with him and take him away. Kanda has been in love with Lavi for two weeks and several hundred years, and it is almost too much to bear anymore.

"Huh?" Lavi says sleepily, turning partway around. He is frying lotus roots for breakfast, his hair sticking out every which way, sleep still crusted in the corners of his eyes.

Kanda's heart aches and longs and bruises itself with the force of its beating.

"I have romantic feelings for you."

Lavi's eyes snap wide. Oil drips off of his wooden spatula. The lotus roots pop and spatter in the pan.

"Sorry," Kanda says, heart deflating.

"Um." Lavi's cheeks are very pink, and his eyes fall shy of Kanda's. "I think that I could probably develop them back, but give me some time to figure it out, okay?"

"Of course," Kanda says.

They eat in stifling silence. Kanda feels Lavi glancing at him, again and again in quick bursts, but cannot muster the will to look back. After breakfast he starts to leave, maybe for the village, maybe just to walk. He leaves Mugen in the corner so that Lavi knows he's isn't leaving, but he doesn't get more than five paces beyond the front door before Lavi grabs his wrist.

"You're still coming with me to the fields, aren't you?" Lavi says in a panicked rush.

Kanda imagines them packed into the small boat with his confession swirling around them. Lavi must imagine the same thing, because he drops his gaze and says quietly, "You don't have to."

Kanda doesn't.

Each morning, Kanda rises before Lavi and treks the mile to the well (which is half a mile farther than the village, completely ridiculous but the villagers are afraid of their water source being too near the lotuses), fills the pails for the day, and treks back. It gives him plenty of time to think beneath the coral-hued sky, before the birds have begun their morning ruckus.

"I don't want you to go," Lavi said the night that Kanda confessed. He was standing in the doorway, about to go up to bed. The only light came from the moon and stars in the sky and the candle flickering in Kanda's hand, so his features were indistinct. His voice, though, sounded pained. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable. But I don't want you to go."

"You asked for time," Kanda said. "I'll give it to you."

"Thank you," Lavi whispered. The floorboards creaked when he got upstairs, and then went silent.

In the days that followed, Kanda went with Lavi into the lotus fields, but sat at the end of the path while Lavi floated out onto the water. If Lavi paddled far Kanda couldn't see him, but if Lavi stayed nearby Kanda watched him – watched his arms shifting the paddle from side to side, the careful way he'd hook the seedpods with the end of his paddle and pull them near, his fingers pushing the hair out of his eyes and off of his neck.

Often, Lavi would catch him staring and blush bright enough to match his hair, but he never told Kanda to stop so Kanda didn't. He would return to the shore and hand Kanda seedpods one by one to put into a sack, and their fingers would collide generously. On the walk back to his house, the blush would have extended to the back of Lavi's neck, a deep red beneath the darkest section of his tan.

They still eat their meals together, but other than going out into the lotus fields after breakfast, they spend the rest of their days apart. Lavi goes into town to sell his harvest, while Kanda takes Mugen into the tall grass fields beyond the lotuses and practices. Afterwards, sometimes he will bathe in the section of the pond Lavi showed him that is surrounded by reeds and is shallow enough to sit up in. Yesterday, Lavi came across him while he was there, went as red as sunset, and stammered "Shit, sorry, didn't mean, I'm gonna, sorry," before tripping over his feet to get away.

Kanda considered slipping under the water and not bothering coming back up, but not really, because he hadn't missed the way Lavi's eyes had gone all over him in those frantic moments.

Lavi stands, cross-armed, at the front door this morning. It is tantalizingly picturesque – small, shabby house in the open country, lotus fields rising up in the background, sunrise tinting the sky yellow, the man he loves waiting for him.

"Is everything okay?" Kanda asks when he is a few paces from the door.

Lavi eyes the yoke over his shoulders discontentedly. "You don't have to do that every morning."

Gently, Kanda lowers the pails to the ground and unhooks them. "I have to repay you somehow." Lavi looks like this is a concept he doesn't understand, so Kanda explains, "I can't take up room in your home for free."

"You aren't just taking up room. You being here is enough."

Kanda leans the yoke against the side of the house, picks up the pails, and brings them inside. Lavi has to step aside to let him through. He smells like sweat, like a restless sleep.

After breakfast, Kanda follows Lavi to the lotus fields. He twists his hair up off of his neck and holds it in place with two stiff twigs, and watches Lavi float around the lake. When Lavi returns, he takes the seedpods that Lavi hands over. Routine as usual, until Lavi gets out of the boat and then stands unmoving, like he's suddenly found himself lost.

"Is everything okay?" Kanda asks for the second time that day.

Lavi starts, looking at Kanda and then quickly away. "Yeah, everything's fine."

Kanda hefts the sack of seedpods over his shoulder and starts to turn.

"Um, Yuu," Lavi says, in the same moment he catches Kanda's arm.

Kanda turns back around. Lavi's fingers trail down to his wrist, and goosebumps erupt over his skin. He waits for Lavi to look at him.

Finally, Lavi does. His eyes are so green and his blush is so red, and Kanda's heart stops.

"Could you kiss me, please?"

It is all Kanda needs. He drops the sack, takes Lavi's face in his hands, and kisses him. Long, but chaste. The touch of Lavi's lips, after so long, is enough. Only right before he pulls back does he catch Lavi's lower lip between his own.

He watches, contentment swirling warmly in his stomach, as Lavi's eyes slowly open.

The tip of Lavi's tongue pokes out and swipes over his lip. And then he seems to remember Kanda is still there, still holding his face, and his eyes go a little wide. In the end he laughs, turning his face into Kanda's hand. "That was nice. Yeah, I like you."

"That was fast."

Lavi's smile hinges on teasing. "I've probably known for a while, just didn't know I knew, you know?"

"I don't know what the hell you're saying."

"That's okay," Lavi says. He lifts his chin, inviting. In this life Kanda is the one who is slightly taller, and he did not think much of it until this moment, when he sees Lavi looking coyly up at him.

He kisses Lavi again, and this time Lavi kisses him back.

He is so happy. He is with Lavi, and he is so happy.

At night he sleeps in Lavi's bed – too small for the both of them, but they manage just fine. In the morning their feet touch under the breakfast table. When Lavi isn't paying attention, Kanda will touch his cheek, his ear, his mouth, so amazed that he finally gets to. Lavi blushes but there is always something bold in his eyes, a wonder of his own at this new relationship unfolding before him, with the man who appeared before him in the lotus fields.

"I'm going to teach you how to swim," Lavi says this morning, leaning back in Kanda's embrace, hands against Kanda's chest.

"What? That's a horrible idea," Kanda says, arms tight around Lavi's waist.

"You won't drown," Lavi promises. "Plus, it's a good skill to know, with how much water exists and all."

"Later," Kanda says, touching his forehead to Lavi's.

"Later today."

Later today, Kanda lies on his back in the water, Lavi's hands beneath him. The sun is too bright and the water is too wet and too everywhere, and he hates this very much.

"Yuu, you're gonna have to let go of my arm."

"I hate this already."

"Yuu. If I stand all the way up water doesn't even reach my hips. You're fine."

"I want to stand up too."

"Yuu." Lavi's head looms into view, blocking out the sun. "Do this for me, and I'll give you a present." He says this meaningfully, quirking an eyebrow.

Kanda relents with a tsk. Lavi mutters, "Jeez, you're so hot-blooded." And then he counts down, and pulls his hands out from beneath Kanda's back, and Kanda flails and sinks and pops back up spitting water.

"That wasn't bad!" Lavi says through a fit of laughter. "Again, come on."

Kanda tries again and again, though the water lapping at his ears and distorting sound nearly makes him shudder. The bugs that flit all over the water's surface don't seem perturbed by the obstacle he presents, and flit all over him instead. None of his dark looks deter Lavi, who gives him a peck on the cheek after each attempt and insists that he is getting better.

"Hey, Yuu, I think you're doing it!"

Kanda holds his muscles very still, doesn't even dare blink. He's floating. Lavi is standing there, away from him, and he is here, on the water and not underneath it. It still laps at his ears in its spooky way and a bug lands on his chin, but he bobs gently, the sun warming every part of him above the water line.

And then his vision skews, lightheadedness rushing over him. The lotus stalks turn dry and reedy, the sky overhead fills with thick plumes of smoke. He's reaching – gloves in tatters, sleeve in tatters, sunlight glinting off of his fingertips – for that suffocating sky. Lotuses around him, brittle yellow reeds around him, his eyesight dulls. A monster flashes into his vision, one spangled eye –

"Yuu! Yuu!"

Kanda coughs violently. Water spews out of his mouth, leaving his throat raw. Lavi is holding him up, and as soon as Kanda has finished retching and realizes what happened, he scrambles the rest of the way to his feet.

"Shit, you okay?" Lavi says, rubbing a shaky hand between his shoulder blades.

Kanda's legs feel nearly nonexistent; he isn't about to risk a step. "I'm fine."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made you –"

"Lavi, I'm fine," Kanda snaps, harsher than he should have. He pushes hair out of his face and can't bring himself to look Lavi in the face. That memory was different from the others, and leaves his heart racing like none of the others have – a horrible, helpless fear.

"Yuu, you're bleeding."

So he is. Red wells out of the back of his hand and spreads, diluted by the water, over his knuckles and wrist. He looks at it as though it is part of a dream, not his own flesh and blood. The smell of smoke clings deep in his nostrils.

"Probably one of the razor bugs. They can be nasty things, but don't worry, they aren't venomous or anything." Lavi's voice is still shaky, but he's trying hard for the both of them. He bends over, sticks his arm into the water up to his shoulder, and comes up with a handful of clay. "Here, stick this on it. Magic, remember?"

He takes Kanda's hand and smears the muck all over it.

Kanda blinks hard, willing away the last of the fog in his head. Lavi looks at him hopefully, fearfully, regretfully. Kanda manages a bemused look at his hand.

"This is ridiculous."

"Magic," Lavi says with a wink, his way of showing his relief. Then he smears the mud on Kanda's arm. "You had another cut. I guess the bugs like you."

"Fuck off."

"You've got one on your face, too," Lavi says, voice softer, and Kanda knows for sure he's lying. Still, he lets Lavi smear the disgusting stuff all over his cheek, and then he pulls Lavi close and kisses him.

Lavi's arms go around him, one hand into his hair, no doubt smearing the disgusting stuff there, too. His grip betrays his lingering distress – he tugs at Kanda's roots.

"Let's go home," he mutters against Kanda's lips.

Kanda smirks. "I thought I was the hot-blooded one."

"You are," Lavi says. He kisses Kanda again, full of breath. "But me too right now, so let's go."

They return home and enjoy each other, tumbling into bed muddy and waterlogged, giving unspoken apologies and reestablishing bliss. Things are fine, Kanda tells himself, desperate to believe it. That was the first memory he's had since finding Lavi, and he would be happy for it to be the last if it was any indication of what else is lying in wait.

"You sure you're okay?" Lavi says, lifting his mouth from Kanda's nipple. A worry crease forms between his brows, and Kanda thumbs it away.

"Yes, I'm sure."

A month passes. The bliss lingers. When they wake up in the morning, it is to each other's sleepy smiles, and sometimes Lavi playing with Kanda's hair, which he says is the prettiest thing he's ever seen.

They work under the sun, and Kanda wears Lavi's light clothing, and his skin bronzes. When the days are over they retire to the same bed, where Lavi mouths along the swoop of still-pale skin below Kanda's clavicles.

Lavi's hands are big and have a lot of strength behind them, but when their fingers tangle he always lets Kanda push him down onto the mattress. He lets Kanda touch his skin as much as Kanda wants, lets Kanda trace his muscles – long, wiry ones that come from routine and self-discipline. He lets Kanda tickle him, too.

Lavi is ticklish from the waist down. A finger poked into his hip, his thigh, the arch of his foot, and he is laughing and laughing, head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, hands grappling for Kanda's hair or shoulders. Kanda has two favorite attacks. One is running his fingernails lightly through the hairs on Lavi's legs, which makes Lavi kick and wriggle like a mud grub and sometimes retaliate by wrapping him in a playful chokehold.

His absolute favorite is hooking a hand beneath Lavi's knee and bending it. It is Lavi's most sensitive spot, so by now he is always at least giggling. But Kanda can silence him instantly by scraping his teeth beside Lavi's kneecap. Lavi will suck in a breath and watch with dilated pupils as Kanda kisses the spot he just ran his teeth over.

Still glowing from being under the sun all day, one leg bent open and out, desire heavy in his eyes, Lavi is a delectable sight like this.

"Don't stop," he says, fingers threading through Kanda's hair.

And Kanda makes love to him.

The cut on his hand is not healing. Lavi is worried about it, but Kanda waves him off and wraps the wound in cloth to keep it out of sight. He knows what it is. The open sore won't go away, and no medicine will heal it.

It stings constantly. He always wakes before Lavi and takes the cloth wrapping off, but the relief of having nothing touch it is slight at best. He wonders how much longer he can ignore it.

The worse ache is the one in his heart. Lavi sleeps on, back to him, hair such a vibrant splash of color against the white linens and Kanda's own dark strands. Kanda listens to Lavi breathing, slow and even, a sound that tries to soothe him to his very bones while the throb in his hand tries to chase that peace out.

Lavi inhales sharply, then stretches. Kanda has already wrapped his hand back up before Lavi turns over.

"Hey, Yuu?" Lavi says, voice cracking with fatigue. Still, the smile he gives Kanda is loud with affection, even with half of his face in the pillow.

Kanda rubs his thumb over Lavi's hipbone. "Hm?"

"I like your nose," Lavi says. He pokes Kanda in the nose. "It's crooked right here. Did you break it?"

"No. Maybe. Probably."

Lavi breathes out a laugh, fingers fluttering over Kanda's lips. He snuggles closer, nudges his feet between Kanda's.

"This might sound kinda crazy, but…d'you ever get the feeling we knew each other before all this?" He traces Kanda's lower lip slowly, eyes watching like he is transfixed. "Being with you is so easy, it's like falling into an old habit."

A world of possibility opens up before Kanda. If Lavi could remember, too… If Lavi could remember, they could have everything, this love and their first one. Kanda's entire world, bookended. Complete.

That whole world, contained in this man before him, the quiet hush of his breathing, the fuzz of hair on his legs, the calluses on his hands that are capable of such care, the intelligence in his eyes. And the way he laughs too much and speaks too loudly, and loves Kanda so fiercely that Kanda sometimes want to fall apart from the force of it.

He slides his hand up Lavi's cheek. "I love you," he says. His throat goes tight; he almost feels like crying. The emotion works itself into his voice. "With everything that I am, I love you."

Lavi's expression crumples. "I love you too, so much. I love you, Yuu."

He would die for Lavi, in any lifetime. He would die for Lavi in this one. In this life, a few months of bliss is all they were allotted.

The village burns. Ghostly wails, eerily like the security alarms from centuries past, seep through the wooden boards of Lavi's house, where Lavi and Kanda huddle on the second floor. The sky is dark from the smoke fanned this way by the breeze. The fire will not be far behind.

"Whatever you do," Kanda says, holding Lavi's face in his hands, putting every plea he can into the eye contact. "If I don't make it, whatever you do, do not try to bring me back."

"Yuu, what –"

"Promise me."

"Yuu." Lavi shakes his head. The candle in the corner flickers, showing first the love marks along his collarbone, and then the fright in his eyes. He tries to pull Kanda's hands away from his face, but the back of Kanda's right hand is slick with blood, and his own slips against it. "Yuu, what are you saying?"

"Promise me."

"I don't understand what you're saying!"

"If I die!" Kanda shouts into Lavi's face, except here's that choking feeling again, once more like he's going to cry. They were so close to having everything. "If I die, no matter what it does to you, no matter how much you may want to, you cannot try to bring me back!"

Lavi's eyes well up and spill over in the time it takes Kanda to blink. "What do you mean, if you die?"

"You saw them," Kanda says. Lavi's tears don't stop, so he presses his forehead to Lavi's and closes his eyes. He tries to soften his voice. "You saw what flew past. I can kill them. I will kill them, but it may take me as well. But I can buy you the time to escape."

Ah, yes, here are the tears. He feels them squeeze through his eyelids and gather on his lashes.

"We can both run," Lavi says, but his voice is thin, lacking conviction.

Good, Kanda thinks. He understands.

"We can't. They will follow me. If they catch up, you'll likely die. I can keep them from coming any nearer."

"Yuu." Lavi's voice breaks, and he sobs: "Yuu."

"I love you."

"Please don't do this."

Lavi's hands holds his so tightly Kanda is sure he'll be able to feel the pressure all the way out to the battlefield, all the way through the fight. He wonders if Lavi knows how much strength this gives him. He doesn't speak again until he's sure his breath won't hitch.

"I love you."

Lavi throws his arms around him, clings to him, and Kanda allows himself a few more moments. He mourns silently, so in love, so cruelly in love.

"You'll beat them and come back," Lavi says, muffled, into Kanda's shoulder. "I'll be waiting for you, okay?"

"Yes," Kanda says, because he doesn't have the heart to say no, and because he wants it to be true so badly. He works his arms between them and pushes Lavi away.

Lavi's face is puffy and red, his eyes as bright as his hair. Kanda says, "In every life, Lavi, I love you."

Lavi's hands are careful on Kanda's face, wiping away his tears, fingers trembling, mouth trembling more. Kanda should take one last kiss, should not take one last kiss.

"I love you the most," Lavi whispers.

"Promise," Kanda says, feeling his world fall apart. "Promise you won't try to bring me back. Promise, please, that you'll run. I'll find you again."

"I promise."

"Now go."

"Yuu."

"Go!"

In the end, he doesn't have to take the kiss, because Lavi takes it instead. A strong press of his mouth that presses his nose to Kanda's as well, transferring his tears to Kanda's skin.

Kanda has never entered a battlefield with a heart so heavy. He feels Lavi like a force behind him, retreating and doing everything in its power to pull him with it, the strings of their hearts connected by something stronger than any tangible force. Each step he takes already feels like it is killing him, the strings uprooting and tearing patches of his heart with them.

No matter how small, there is a chance, and he will fight with every last ounce of his being, with forty-nine reincarnations worth of love and anger and desperation, for the happiness he'd finally found.

"Mugen," he says, drawing his sword from its sheath, his skin tight where the tears have dried into tracks. "Activate."