Chapter Text
Reever flags you down in the hallway a few days later. "Komui started some new project in the robotics lab," he says. "Looks like he's given up on Cross for the time being."
"Thank God," you say quietly. As much trouble as Komui's robots can cause, they're a less risky prospect than him getting busted for trying to find information about Cross under Central's nose. At the end of the day, Komui is just one normal man whose sister happens to be an Exorcist. He can't afford to piss them off.
(You have a little more wiggle room, but only because your clan tied itself so tightly to the physical infrastructure of the Asian Branch. They can't make you disappear easily because of that - Fou would come out of the branch powered by sheer rage to protect you. But Komui has no such guardian.)
"Yeah," Reever says in agreement. "Never thought I'd be in a position to be grateful for the existence of Komurin Mark Whatever-this-one-is."
"It's good to have something go back to normal," you say, deliberately shifting the conversation away from the dangerous waters of why you're grateful for Komui having gone back to building ill-advised robots in his private workshop. "I'll go check on him when I've got time."
"Thanks," Reever says. "I should be telling you to do your own work, I guess, but... Well, between the attack on HQ and that disaster at North America, our department hasn't recovered nearly enough to spare someone for Komui-watching duty."
"If you need personnel, I'd be happy to lend you some of ours," you say. "There's a pack of greenhorns who have been dreaming of coming to Headquarters ever since Allen first showed up on our doorstep."
Reever hides his exhaustion and grimace under a smile. "Heh. I might have to take you up on that. Get their files together and drop them by my office later?"
"Sure," you say. It's a perfectly legitimate, above-board reason to swing by.
Late that evening, you make your way to Komui's workshop.
It's not as expansive as the one he had at the old Headquarters - few things are. The new Headquarters might be more secure, but it's also a series of cathedrals connected below ground, just out of view of London. A show of Central Agency's power and wealth, the very shape of the buildings a reminder who is really in control.
Komui is talking to himself when you knock on the door - you can just barely hear him over the sound of the drills. "This is just a prototype, of course, but we still want it to move like - who is it?"
"It's Bak," you call through the door. "Can I come in?"
"Of course! One moment." After a minute, the door opens. Komui is still wearing his gear, a welding mask pushing back over his head and his glasses hanging on for dear life underneath. "Come in, come in," he says, stepping out of the way so you can actually do so.
You step inside. The workshop is much smaller than you expected, in comparison to the old one. No Komurins the size of small buildings will be built here, like you've heard about from Reever and other members of Komui's group. The project half-assembled across the largest workbench is only about the size of a person.
The shape of one, too, even if it's just the legs and basic frame of a torso right now, no head or arms. Hmm. There's a wheeled stool at the next bench that you help yourself to, looking at the papers scattered over the table.
Most of them look like design drafts, though there are big black marks across some of the pages, scratching things out. And there's an uncapped ink bottle, but no visible pens, just a graphite drafting pencil. Hmm.
Komui shuts the door tight behind you and locks it. "All right," he says. "We can talk without worry, now. Central doesn't have any ears in here."
You raise your eyebrows. "Are you sure about that?"
"As sure as I can be," Komui says with confidence. "It's a great deal more secure than my office, at any rate."
Well, that much at least is true. "Did you arrange to have Reever send me down here because you had something to tell me?" you ask.
"Mm, not exactly," Komui hums. He pulls his welding mask off and sets it on top of some of the scattered papers, before leaning against the work table with his project on it. "But since it worked out that way..."
"Fair enough," you say. "I'll quit beating around the bush. Why the sudden interest in Cross?"
Komui quirks his mouth, just a little, in a way that makes you think that maybe you were wrong. Maybe he actually was interested in who Alma Karma was, once before, before either of you were born. "I was reading some reports," he says, "and was recently reminded that - well, we have Judgement, but no one was able to locate the Grave of Maria, were they?"
"Isn't that only to be expected?" you say. "Cross kept the Grave in an extra-dimensional coffin only he could summon."
"Which is interesting in itself, considering how similar that is to the Ark," Komui says, "but it's more Maria's powers that I'm interested in. We have multiple reports from the Ark incident that Cross was able to hide the other Exorcists from the berserk Noah by using Maria's song to manipulate perceptions."
You're not an idiot. You can put the pieces together when he lays them out like that. "So you do think he's still alive."
"I think it's a very real possibility, at any rate," Komui says. "And I think Central does as well. That's why they haven't ordered Judgement to be reduced down to raw Innocence."
That is the usual order of business when an Exorcist dies and their weapon can be recovered. The raw Innocence is extracted and given to Hevlaska, who in turn then entrusts it to one of the Generals when she thinks the time is right for it to seek a new Accomodator. But it's news to you that Cross' primary weapon hasn't been given that treatment.
"Makes sense when you put it like that," you say. "Just be careful when it comes to poking your nose into Cross, all right? We can't afford to lose you now."
Komui's smile in return is... If you didn't know him so well, you'd think it was just one of his usual gentle, reassuring smiles. But he started his climb up the ranks in your branch, a gangly kid your age who managed to impress your mother enough that she sent him on to Headquarters, because even she could tell that that was where he really wanted to go. Other than Lenalee, you're the person alive who has known him the longest.
For Komui, that smile is sharp, and not the brittle kind of sharp that's being pushed to its limits.
"Don't worry about that," he says. "I have a plan for dealing with Central."
That's somehow more worrying than him poking at Cross. "Komui..."
"Sorry, Bak," and he seems to genuinely mean it. "It's on a need-to-know basis right now."
"And I don't need to know?" you ask.
That gets Komui to falter for the first time. He looks off to the side, towards the project on the table. "Not yet," he says finally. "Not that I don't trust you, of course. But if you knew... Well, you'd break out in hives at the very least, so please believe me when I say that this is easier on everyone. And... When the time comes, please forgive me for not telling you now."
That doesn't do much to quell the anxious feeling in your stomach. "When you say things like that, you're going to give me hives anyway," you say.
"Sorry," Komui says.
You huff, and say, "I'll leave it alone for now, but it'd better be worth it."
"If nothing else, it should buy us some breathing room," Komui says. And before you can think to question him further, he says, "Since I have you here, I don't suppose you know anything about hydraulics?"
You don't know shit about hydraulics. You're a magician, not an engineer. So you take the hint and get out of dodge before Komui strong-arms you into helping him with the latter.
You can't help the feeling that you've left with more new questions than you got answers.
----
"Maybe you can turn into a bird instead," Timothy is saying to... nobody you can see. "Then you can at least wink at people even if you can't talk."
A pause, like there actually is another person he's carrying on a conversation with, and then, "Really? I didn't know that! Maybe you should be a parrot, then."
This is, normally, not behaviour that's cause for concern, when it's coming from Timothy. He's a chattery kid, and his Innocence has an intelligence of its own that can only be heard by him. But Tsukikami only knows things that Timothy knows, unless it's about Innocence and his powers.
You stop lurking and step around the corner. "Timothy, who are you talking to?"
There's a flash of movement almost too fast to follow, and Timothy freezes. "Nobody! Just Tsukikami!" There's a book about birds spread out in his lap as he sits in the room he usually takes lessons in.
"Really?" you ask, doing your best to sound scolding. It's a tone of voice that works on the entire science department, and Timothy's expression withers, but he doesn't confess.
"It's okay," says another voice, one that emanates from somewhere around your ankles. You've heard it before. "Lenalee's cool, she's not going to tell anyone."
"You sure?" Timothy looks skeptical.
"Yeah," says the Innocence that tried to comfort you when you were upset before. He(?) pokes out from under a couch cushion before fluttering up to the back of the couch, behind Timothy's shoulder, where presumably he was sitting before you came in. You think he's grown a bit larger than he was before.
"Oh," you say. It makes sense that you wouldn't be the only person who ran into that Innocence, but it still surprises you. Still, it's good for Timothy to have more friends - there's not anyone his age around the Order. And if the other person has managed to convince him to study, even better. You've never seen him willingly open a book on his own before.
If Emilia was here, she'd be overjoyed. You suppose that you can't tell her, though.
"What do you think?" Timothy says, looking up at you. "Do you think Angel would make a good parrot?"
"I still think a dove is more classic," the Innocence says, pouting. "Also, there aren't any white parrots."
"You could be albino. There's albino everything. I asked Allen about it because I'd only heard of white hair on young guys if they're albino."
The mention of Allen makes something in your stomach twist. You ignore it and step closer, sliding in next to Timothy on the couch. One of the furnishings that came with the new headquarters, it doesn't have any memories packed into it yet.
"Angel?" you ask.
"He won't tell me his name," Timothy says, folding his arms in a pout and letting the book fall open across his knees. "So I started calling him that, since he said his job was to protect the Exorcists. Sort of like our guardian angel, I guess."
"To protect the Exorcists..." you repeat thoughtfully, raising your eyebrows at the shape of Innocence on the back of the couch.
You can't ask what that's supposed to mean, with Timothy here. Even if he's a smart enough kid to figure out that there's something happening in the Order, you want to protect him from the darkness that lives here as long as you can.
Fortunately, Timothy is perfectly content to go on talking. "So I suggested that he should disguise himself as a bird, because that's about the same size, and now we're trying to figure out what kind of bird. And it turns out parrots can talk like people, so I thought maybe..."
"It's a good thought, I just don't know if it would work," the Innocence - Angel is as good a name as any, you suppose - says. "Not in time to really be useful, I mean. It takes kids a couple years to learn to talk, right?"
"That's because babies don't know what words are," Timothy says with all the certainty of youth. "They have to figure that out first."
You catch yourself smiling.
"If it's for a disguise, I think I have to agree with Angel that a dove is the best bet," you say. "There's a flock of pigeons that roosts on the bell tower." You watch them from your window, sometimes, and you've seen Krory watching them, too.
Actually, quite a few people spend time watching those pigeons, who were at the old Headquarters when that shape-shifting Noah, Lulu Bell, led their invasion. But Central doesn't seem concerned with them, even the ones that sit right outside the windows.
Timothy hangs his head but mutters a quiet, "I guess you're right. Still, it would be nice if you could talk to other people..."
"Don't worry," Angel says. "I have a plan, it's just going to take a while."
You say, "You're speaking to us just fine, aren't you?" The confusion in your voice hangs in the air, even as you make a deliberate effort to pitch your voice lower sop that it doesn't carry.
"It's because you're Exorcists whose Innocence is part of your bodies," Angel says. "You can hear me because I'm using your Innocence as a sort of relay. Nobody else can hear me."
You become incredibly aware of the weight at your ankles again. Then again, that first time you met, didn't his voice get louder when you activated your Dark Boots?
"I guess that makes sense," you say. "Or at least as much sense as anything about Innocence does." You've never heard of Innocence that could connect with other Innocence like that - except, no, Hevlaska's ability to read synchronization rate is kind of like that, isn't it? Perhaps it's something unique to people whose only form is the Innocence itself.
What a terribly sad and lonely existence, even more than the other Exorcists. No wonder he bonded with Timothy so quickly.
From outside the room, you hear Emilia's voice calling - "Timothy? Where are you this time? It's time for your lessons!"
"Shit," Angel says, which is not going to help Timothy's bad language at all, before diving down into the couch cushions again.
Timothy yells, "I'm reading, Emilia!"
"I find that hard to believe," comes a voice from the other side of the door. You shift your weight to help disguise the weird bumps in the back cushions, careful to not actually put too much into it. You don't know if it's possible to hurt Angel that way, but you'd rather avoid it if possible.
"It's true," you say just as Emilia opens the door. "Timothy was reading to me about birds." The book, after all, is still convincingly open in his lap.
"Oh, Lenalee, I didn't expect you to be here," Emilia says, pausing in the doorway before she comes in. She takes in the sight of you and the book in Timothy's lap incredulously. "I suppose if you say that he was actually reading, then it must be true."
"I told you," Timothy grumbles, folding his arms briefly. The motion makes the book start to slide from his lap, and he reflexively catches it.
Emilia sighs, but she's smiling underneath. You think Timothy showing any interest in birds is going to set the theme for the reading he's getting for the next two weeks, minimum. "Well, all right," she says. "I planned to have us work on maths today, but if you've already been doing reading with Lenalee, I suppose we can continue with that. Sorry for troubling you, Miss Lenalee, but I can handle it from here."
"I don't mind," you say. "I wish I'd gotten the chance to read with my brother like this when I was younger."
"Still, I'm sure you must have better things to do..." Emilia says.
You hesitate. Something wiggles behind your back, and Angel's voice says, unheard by Emilia, "Don't worry about me. It's pretty comfy back here."
"All right," you say aloud to both of them. "I guess we'll meet up and talk again later?" You turn your head towards Timothy, but your words are directed at Angel.
Timothy seems to understand, though, because prior to coming to the Order he was a burgeoning master criminal (at least if you ask Timothy himself), so he just nods and says, "Yeah! We can look at the doves up on the roof sometime."
"Aren't they just pigeons?" Emilia asks.
"Pigeons and doves are actually the same bird!" Timothy says, launching into it with enthusiasm. He frowns down at the book and starts turning the pages. "It turns out that the pigeons we normally see were bred by humans for carrying messages..."
You exchange smiles with Emilia and stand as she comes over to look over Timothy's shoulder on the other side. "Good luck," you say. "See you later, Timothy."
"Yeah, see ya," he agrees, giving you a thumbs-up.
You take your leave, then, with questions still churning around in your mind.
A guardian angel for the Exorcists... Well, God only knows that you need one, with so many people from Central still in Headquarters. You'll do whatever you can to help him out and keep Central distracted in the meantime. For now, that means just acting like you normally do.
...Which means reporting in to see what your next mission will be. You sigh, and turn down the hall to head downstairs. At least you have something to look forward to when you get back.
----
Having a secretary assigned by Central is truly a pain.
It isn't even that Bridget Faye is a bad person, or that she's intentionally spying on you for Central (as least so far as you can tell). She's just a person who has a very different idea of how things should be run than you do, and right now, her work ethic is even more of a wall between you and your goals than usual.
(For once, your goal isn't just avoiding paperwork to catch an afternoon nap, after all.)
Central either doesn't know or doesn't care that morale is far more important for those who are actively on the lines of combat than being driven like workhorses. That group doesn't just include the Exorcists, these days; between the invasion of Headquarters and the incident at the North American Branch, a lot of your Science Department guys have been having a rough time, too. People who weren't supposed to be on the front lines got dragged onto them, because the Earl has no real concept of the rules of engagement. A career paper-pusher from there just has no way of understanding that time to slack off is what gives everyone the guts to want to live another day, in a world that doesn't care if they live or die.
No, it isn't that Bridget has done anything wrong. But God does she get in your way with measurable consistency.
And, well, she is a plant from Central. Who knows who she might tell if she knew anything about what you were really up to. If she started spreading the word around, well...
You're keenly aware that while you might be allies at the moment, you don't actually have any way to control Alma Karma, and you're not entirely sure how stable he actually is at the moment. Probably more stable than he was as an Akuma, but beyond that?
You don't want to test it. Bridget isn't a bad enough person that you want her to die for the crime of blabbing to her real superiors, and you have no doubt that that is a possibility if she found out just why you spend every moment you can grind out in your workshop. You're smart enough to guess at what Alma would be willing to do to protect his independence, and it's not like there's anything you could do to stop it if things went south.
He might become a Fallen One, if he raised hands against the Order - but then again, he hasn't yet. It might not be possible anymore, without a body to corrupt; certainly there's no way to go about testing it.
You sigh at your thoughts, which prompts Bridget to look up from her own work and raise her eyebrows at you. "Something the matter, Director?" she asks.
"Just thinking about the budget," you say. It gets you a look of commiseration.
"Paying things off to recruit Timothy Hearst certainly made our margins slim," she agrees. "And the losses at the North American Branch..."
North America was further into Central's pockets than average. Innocence rarely appears in the Americas, and when it does, it's usually on the east coast of North America. The Biblical Flood wasn't entirely a metaphor, and so far as you've been able to tell, it was that which washed the Innocence to all the corners of the world. There's always been a bias towards finding it in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. The whole thought behind establishing the branches in America was the concern that lack of personnel might cause you to miss some, but there have only been a handful of potential Innocence incidents in the last few years.
Instead, North America in particular was a development branch of the Order, improving the technology used to assist Finders and Exorcists in the field. You don't know if it was a tactical move on the Earl's part to also deprive you of your supply of barrier generators and communication golems, but that's certainly been the side effect.
"It's been one thing after another lately," you say, somewhat in agreement. "At this rate, the budget will put us out of the war before anything else does. Even the Vatican doesn't have limitless coffers."
"That's Central's problem, Director, not yours," Bridget says, which is a more sympathetic stance than you expected her to take. "For right now, do you think we'll be able to make it work?"
"I talked to Bak about borrowing a few of his people," you say. "Reever put the bug in my ear that he might be willing. If we do that, but keep paying them out of the Asian Branch budget, I think we can do it."
You slide the papers you've been staring at for the last hour across your desk so that she can look at them. For all that she's supposed to be your assistant, you often feel like she's the one really in charge, and that feeling isn't helped by the way she nods in approval after a moment reading the upside-down math.
"If Director Chang finds it acceptable, then we'll submit it as-is," she says. "And work on getting approval for his people to come through the Ark. We're incredibly lucky that the two largest branches of the Order are still connected; we should take advantage of it while we still can."
Before Allen Walker closes it off, she means. For however much it matters, you don't think he will. Even if Central has as good as excommunicated him, Allen still considers himself an exorcist, and he'll leave the Ark open to help his comrades as much as he can.
"He's always had my back where it counts," you say. "I believe that concludes everything for today?"
Now you're getting the raised eyebrows again. "That eager to escape back to your little lab, Director?" she asks.
"I don't know what you're talking about," you say, putting on your best innocent smile. It doesn't work on Bridget Faye any more than it does on Lenalee or Reever, but it provokes much the same reaction - an exasperated sigh of defeat.
"Just don't make anything that will cause damage to Headquarters," she finally says. "We really can't afford it this year."
"No destructive robots," you say. "I promise."
And hopefully that guy won't make a liar out of me.
----
Since Lenalee confirmed that there actually was someone watching you, you've been able to relax quite a bit, and that in turn has led to you messing things up less - or at least, more in line with the amount you trip, stumble, and lose your grip in ways that cause problems for others. And now that you know for sure, you've started paying attention to who else seems to know about the other presence in your midst.
There's not many. Even most of the other Exorcists don't seem to know that there's anything going on. Aside from Lenalee, the only ones you've noticed who seem preoccupied by it are Timothy and Krory.
It doesn't escape your notice that the four of you are the ones left who were closest to Allen. Chaoji never forgave him for what happened on the Ark, and he was never close with any of the Generals, having been Cross' apprentice.
(You aren't really anyone's apprentice. Your Innocence is so unique that there's no one who could have taught you to use it effectively. You spent a month training directly under Hevlaska, in her dark pit surrounded by the glow of Innocence waiting for the chance to become the weapon of Exorcists, and then you got sent back out to the field.)
You know that Kanda came back. But he was gone again, by the time you got back from your mission, that time, and now he seems to have disappeared again. Everyone says he was smiling, which you can't imagine. If it wasn't for the fact that he became a Crystal-type too, you'd think it was an imposter, but Innocence wouldn't tolerate that.
If Kanda had stayed, maybe you would ask him. He and Allen were... Not close, exactly, and yet at the same time you think they understood each other better than most of the other Exorcists. From what you heard about the North American Branch Incident, you think they have more of an understanding now. (No one who was there has really wanted to give you details. Central wants all the details, but they had their own witnesses, so at least they haven't been harassing the Science Department about it.)
You're musing about it hard enough that you almost trip and fall out the window at the end of a hallway because you lost track of where you were going and the floor was freshly mopped. Luckily, a string grip catches your shoulder before you take too horrible of a tumble - all that happens is that you bang your knees against the stone windowsill.
It stings, but going out the window, with all of its glass, would have been a lot worse. You wait for your breathing to catch up with the near-miss, and then say, "Thank you, Marie."
Noise Marie helps you back from the window with a smile. As always, he's calm to the point of unrufflable. "No need to thank me," he says, and then, "You sound distracted, Miranda."
"I guess I was," you say. "Maybe I should go take a nap." You've only slept six hours in the last two days again.
Marie's smile widens, just a bit. "Maybe, but then you'd miss General Tiedoll's return," he says. "He's brought Kanda back."
That gets you alert again, any thought of your bed immediately forgotten. "He did?" you ask. "I didn't think Kanda would let anyone bring him back again."
"The General has his ways," Marie says. His brow above his closed eyes moves in a way that's something like a wink, and you smile, relaxing again. "He's been handling Kanda since he was an angry little kid. If anyone could..."
"Alright," you say, "then let's go welcome them home. Even if it's General Tiedoll, I'm sure Kanda gave him a hard time..."
"He always does," Marie agrees. He helps you to your feet, then pauses. The way he goes still, turning his head very slightly, you can tell he's listening for something.
"Marie?" you ask into the stillness, after a moment. He doesn't shush you, so whatever he's listening for must have gone quiet. "Did you hear something?"
"I'm not sure," he says. "It sounded like it was just a dove that got into the vents shuffling around, but... My strings are vibrating." He 'looks' down at his hand, where Noel Organon rests in its deactivated form as a series of rings.
You go stiff. "An Akuma in the vents?" you say. "Or that Noah?"
"No," Marie says. "It doesn't feel like an enemy."
You blink, but then... Ah. You lean in close and say, "It's okay. Lenalee thinks they're a friend."
Marie's eyebrows rise, his eyes opening in surprise. But he must sense your intent at secrecy, because he doesn't question any further, simply nodding his head. "We should get downstairs, then, or we're going to miss the General," he says.
"Right," you agree. "Let's go."