Unburied
Summary: Allen Walker’s stolen button brought out too many strange emotions in Rhode and Tiki. Now that the button’s lost it’s only gotten worse. Struggling to control his own mind, Tiki seeks his family’s help to search a graveyard, which brings back memories for Jasdero.
Rating: PG-13 for violence, death, morbid themes, and disrespect for graves
Prompt: 24.Insanity
She confronted him in a white hallway of the Ark, fierce in her skirts and high shoes.
"You lost it?" hissed Rhode.
"I must have dropped it," said Tiki.
"You promised you'd give it to me!"
"Generous of me. I usually give my souvenirs to another spoiled kid."
"Oh, your little normal friend." She gave the two words different mocking emphases. "I know all about him. You sure like pretending you're not a killer like the rest of us, don't you, Tiki? Just another sane human being. Now find the button for me."
She was being especially vicious. "It could be anywhere," he told her. He knew he'd had it the last time he was in the Ark.
Rhode looked up at him with a moody glare. "Do you think you can get more of that Exorcist than me, hm? I found him first, you know! I took out his eye! And then you go and take his arm, his heart, and his life!"
"Does an Exorcist's death upset you so much?" asked Tiki, with an edge of laughter. He knew she had a fascination for Allen Walker, who was indeed an interesting boy, but it was strange that an enemy's death would cause her to behave this irrationally. Yes, there was an unnatural level of attachment here.
"It was mine!" cried Rhode. "But now. I want my souvenir."
Tiki stood there a moment, fiddling with the buttons of his tuxedo and wondering if he could say no. I have a good idea of where it is, but finding it again'll be a pain. Even if I wanted to find it in the first place.
Rhode stepped back, one step, two. There was a rumbling as a keyhole-shaped door emerged behind her. She didn't take her eyes off Tiki.
"I'll find it," said Tiki. His voice was level. He turned on his heel and walked away from the mad girl and her door.
Rhode said nothing.
Tiki knew that Skinn was in the Ark. A few of his brethren were resting in the same area of the Ark (a maze of bright corridors, small bedrooms, and dining areas) between trips to the world outside. Tiki headed for the kitchen. Sure enough, Skinn was there, chewing on a muffin and staring off into the distance. There was a clear cylindrical jar filled with wrapped candy on the table by which he sat.
"You have to come help me," said Tiki.
"Your mission?" asked Skinn, glancing over.
"I dropped something."
Skinn took another bite of his chocolate muffin.
"It'll go faster with two searching. Perfectly reasonable," said Tiki. When the other man shrugged, he explained, "Rhode wants it back. You could stay here in case she wants to chat, of course, though I should tell you I haven't seen her in this bad a mood for a long time."
Skinn finished his snack in two slow bites. "I'll be your second searcher," he agreed. He stood and filled his pockets with candy from the candy jar.
They were strolling through the halls when Tiki heard running. He turned the corner to find Devit and Jasdero sprinting down the corridor. They both had intent expressions and, impressively, managed to point their guns straight at each other's heads as they ran. Tiki hastily stepped back to avoid colliding with Devit--the twins didn't seem to notice him--but he reached out and caught Jasdero's arm.
"Heeee, let go!" said Jasdero, swinging his gun towards Tiki.
Devit stopped short and turned back, his coat flying. "Whaddya want?"
"You two in a hurry to get somewhere? Not running from Rhode, by any chance?" Tiki released his hold on Jasdero's cloth-wrapped wrist.
They glanced at each other with confused expressions. "No, just running," said Devit.
"If you've got nothing better to do, you should come help me," said Tiki.
"'S it an assassination?" asked Devit. Tiki had caught the twins' interest--they looked curious. Jasdero stood up straighter.
"It involves death," said Tiki. He set off down the corridor with Skinn and the twins.
Devit and Jasdero kept pace with Tiki. Beside him, Devit leered. "Ooh, is the great Tiki asking for help?" On cue, Jasdero giggled.
"He only wants us to help find something," said Skinn, sounding annoyed. Tiki was annoyed himself. He'd planned to keep leading the twins on.
"Find what?" asked Jasdero.
"How exactly's death involved?" asked Devit, prodding Jasdero's head with his pistol for emphasis. "We get to kill?"
They were overflowing with an energy that Tiki hoped he could channel into finding the souvenir he'd promised Rhode. The souvenir he'd hoped not to see again.
There was only one place he'd been since he last remembered having the button. (The destination of a routine job, kill villagers by ones and twos and set the stage for an Akuma.) A tiny village in Eastern Europe, or perhaps farther east than that, where he'd walked back to the Ark's portal in the dusk and, perhaps, let the thing fall. And perhaps he'd covered it with dirt, which took only a slight sideways movement of his shoe. Nothing much, and it was buried.
That might have been how it happened. Tiki didn't remember losing the souvenir on purpose, so he couldn't remember in which spot, exactly, it had fallen from his pocket. But the dirt had been the soft dirt of recent graves.
Devit elbowed Tiki in the arm. "Huh?" said Tiki. "Yeah, maybe," he answered Devit.
"Great," said Devit.
"Fun!" said Jasdero.
The members of Noah's family entered a small room. On the opposite wall was a hardwood doorframe filled with darkness that crackled with electric light.
"It still leads to where I was," said Tiki. Eastern Europe, probably. An isolated area, a day from any other town. Nothing whatsoever to do with Allen Walker.
He paused by the door. The others crowded around behind him.
"Where'd you lose it?" asked Jasdero, close by Tiki's ear.
"A graveyard," said Tiki. I have to want to find it, he told himself. I'm sure I never wanted to lose it.
"A graveyard!" Jasdero and Devit exclaimed at the same time. Tiki heard Jasdero chuckle softly.
"And what exactly is it?" put in Skinn impatiently.
"You'll know it when you see it. It's small, and round, and silver, and patterned, and..."
Tiki's Twenty Questions of a description put Jasdero in mind of the moon, although the moon wasn't small.
He followed Tiki through the portal, and Devit was close on his heels. Jasdero took a few steps to the side to make room for Skinn. The ground was soft, yielding dirt. Although he couldn't make out where they were, he heard the rustle of trees a ways behind him, and above him there were stars, though the light of his headband washed them out. Jasdero waited by the door until he could see his surroundings a little better.
The first thing he managed to make out was a row of rough wooden crosses, little more than branches bound together. Yes, a graveyard. On a ridge to his right, the crosses were silhouetted against the blue-black of the sky. Skinn was trudging down the slope before him and Devit. Tiki followed slowly. He was hard to see because he was wearing a tuxedo, but it looked like he had his hands in his pockets. He was acting reluctant to go down there--what was he, scared? Were there ghosts?
"Man, I hope there are ghosts," said Devit, wandering towards a cluster of cross shapes below. Jasdero could now make out the graves below, so he descended, enjoying the feel of the dirt under his boots, to look for the little moon.
So far as Jasdero could see, the graveyard was small. Only twenty or so crosses, some moldering, clustered there, twenty more across the way there, and a few more away on a ridge. Were those a handful of stone markers behind a cluster of crosses? No houses were visible, and no light except the stars' and Jasdero's own.
The hulking shape that was Skinn had veered left towards the gravestones, Tiki was continuing along a narrow path through the middle of the cemetery, and off to the right Devit was prodding a cross-shaped grave-marker with his foot. Jasdero hunched forward and peered at the ground. He couldn't see it very well. But Tiki's lost thing sounded shiny, so maybe that was okay.
"Tiki, you didn't drop this thing into a grave, did you?" called Devit, voice ringing loudly in the crisp night air.
Tiki's voice came back faintly. "I'm not sure. It might be covered by dirt."
"I'm not touching any nasty corpses," muttered Devit. The grave-marker tilted when he kicked it again. Devit prodded at the dirt at its base with the toe of his boot.
Jasdero stood up straight, since looking at the ground seemed unpromising. He'd been searching for a couple minutes, nearly. He shuffled through the soil--Tiki said the lost thing was hard, and maybe covered up, so he'd have a better chance feeling it than seeing it. If it was in a grave, Jasdero wasn't gonna touch any corpses either, though now that he thought about it he was curious about what they looked like. Probably there were a lot of dried-up old ones and some newer gross ones.
Don't worry, he told the corpses buried around him, all the while poking around the dirt with his foot. Secretly Jasdero's dead too. The different part is he just came back to life and died at the same time. He's alive and dead, so nobody's buried him yet, and nobody will! Jasdero tried to explain to the dead bodies under the ground, but he wasn't sure they were listening. He didn't really care. He just felt like talking to them. Maybe if there were ghosts, those could hear Jasdero?
It was in a... An owl's cry interrupted Jasdero's thought. Jasdero looked up at the black shapes of the trees, past the portal to the Ark. The air was crisp, and only a few clouds covered the stars. It was nice to be with Devit in a graveyard at night. Maybe they'd even find Tiki's lost moon thing, that would show him!
"Devit! Found it yet?" asked Jasdero.
"Nah, who the hell knows where it is," said Devit, crouched behind the group of crosses to Jasdero's left.
Good, more time to explore. Bored with poking around in the dirt, Jasdero picked his way through the crosses towards Devit. He noticed that a lot of them seemed newer. Tiki's work? Maybe some of the dead would haunt Tiki, thought Jasdero with a grin. He placed his pistol against the back of Devit's head. Devit was using a stick to clear dirt away from a skinny stone marker.
"Who's that?" asked Jasdero.
"I dunno. But they don't have Tiki's whatever-the-fuck-it-is."
"Heeee." Jasdero circled Devit and the marker, checking for the little moon. Nothing.
Devit flicked the stick away, gave an exasperated sigh, and stood. He looked around, from the copse of trees to Jasdero to the shape that was Skinn searching the other half of the graveyard. "Where is Tiki? Hey, Tiki!!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Crickets that Jasdero hadn't noticed before stopped, then resumed their noise again.
The cemetery path continued down a hill. That's where Jasdero had last seen Tiki disappear from sight--he'd heard him going in that direction, anyway. Now there was a shout from that direction. A shout that wasn't Tiki's.
Jasdero and Devit skirted the oldest cross markers and crouched beside the down-sloping path where dry, leafless bushes obscured them. Past underbrush and a solitary evergreen was a shack. A shack that must belong to the human figure walking towards Tiki on a cane.
Tiki was just standing in the middle of the pathway. What had he been doing all the way down there if he'd lost something in the graveyard? He was lazy, that was what.
The old man yelled something at Tiki in a language Jasdero didn't know. He guessed it was "get out of my graveyard." Tiki stared at the man.
So there’ll be killing tonight, thought Jasdero. Too bad Jasdevi aren't the ones doing it!
The gravekeeper took a few more stiff steps towards Tiki. Tiki's hand shot out, and the gravekeeper fell over with a fearful, strangled cry. He screamed as Tiki crouched over him and thrust a hand into his chest. In moments, his scream cut off.
The gravekeeper had stopped moving, as far as Jasdero could make out, but Tiki stayed where he was, leaning over the body. Maybe he was feeding his butterflies.
Devit stood up, and Jasdero realized it was silly to keep hiding. He jumped to his feet. He saw that Skinn was also watching Tiki from the verge of the slope.
Tiki didn't turn around for the longest time. When he did, he had something clenched in his hand. He rose and looked up.
"You do know you're the most visible thing in the graveyard," he called to Jasdero.
Obviously anyone who saw his light would think it was a ghost, thought Jasdero. He pointed to the dead man. "Hee! Is he a ghost?"
Tiki glanced over his shoulder. "No, I think he's just gone. Now, do you know what this is?" He held up something between forefinger and thumb. Jasdero was too far away, and it looked like he was holding up nothing.
"It's a button," Tiki replied to his own question. His voice carried well enough in the night, hushed except for a few crickets. "Everyone has them, even old men in a godforsaken place like this. Even you. They're very easy to find."
Nobody else said anything, not even Devit.
"Yesterday, I had a button. It was valuable, more so than this little wooden one, and hard to get. But of all buttons, that was the one Rhode wanted. And we all know Rhode gets what she wants. Unfortunately, I lost the button." Tiki flicked the wooden one off into the bushes. "It must be around here somewhere." He started up the path.
Tiki was making it too easy--Jasdero and Devit couldn't think of anything to say. Skinn shook his head, then found a sturdy-looking gravestone and sat with his back against it. He put a piece of candy in his mouth and crunched it between his teeth.
"Wow, you killed a crippled old guy," Devit finally said as Tiki reentered the graveyard proper. Tiki, irritatingly, walked straight past him.
Jasdero wondered what the hell Jasdevi and Skinn were doing there if Tiki wasn't going to search for his lost button. "Stupid Tikiii, why aren't you looking for it?" he complained. He heard Skinn begin snoring faintly.
"Yeah," agreed Devit.
Tiki crouched and let a handful of grave dirt run through his fingers. "Well, well, looks like it isn't here. Rhode will have to do without. She's spoiled enough as it is." He laughed derisively.
"He's invited us out here to watch him slowly go crazy," Devit said in an undertone only Jasdero could hear. Jasdero giggled.
Tiki stood and smiled at them. His smile held no kindness. "Don't get too attached, boys," he said.
"To what?" snapped Devit. Jasdero tightened his grip on his pistol.
"To boys, or to buttons, or to anything you might lose."
Was he threatening them? Jasdero and Devit raised their pistols to point at Tiki's forehead. Tiki turned and walked up the slope to the Ark door. They sighted along their pistols to follow his progress, and lowered the guns when he stepped through the door.
Jasdero was angry. Tiki had brought them out here and then hadn't searched for the little moon himself at all!
Not two steps past the door and Tiki staggered to his knees, clutching his forehead as if he could rip his own brain out. (The thought crossed his mind that he probably could if he really wanted to.)
Something dark was welling up inside him. Something ancient that wanted to steal all Tiki's control. It was like when he'd awakened to Noah's powers, but this time it would sweep away Tiki himself, taking with it what he had with the other members of the Noah family--and, it went without saying, his other life as a normal human.
Tiki took deep breaths. He sat against the wall and closed his eyes.
He'd met Allen Walker in his other life, where he lived as a traveling laborer--unremarkable but free from care. In that life, he only faced opponents across a spread of cards.
As he faced Allen Walker and discovered that Exorcists could be shameless card sharks, Tiki felt the seed of a strange conviction: this boy could help him go back.
Tiki Mick loved being a Noah. He loved killing. He loved his double life that let him pretend, half the time, to be harmless. He had powers, and purpose, and a home.
But there was a shadow waiting. When he'd awakened, it had been there, swimming beneath the pain, just visible at the edge of his fiery visions. Part of him still hadn't awakened. He'd fought it down, that time, when he felt it threaten to consume everything that he was, but now it was trying to surface again.
The only thing he feared about being one of Noah's family was the possibility of awakening completely as one of Noah's family.
Even being a normal human again would be better than that.
Allen Walker had returned to his thoughts after their little game of cards--even though Tiki and his friends had lost, it amused him to think an Exorcist had unknowingly played cards with a Noah. Tiki knew Allen Walker was special. The Earl had told Tiki of his cursed eye, the one Rhode had stabbed out once, and Rhode had spoken of him with rare interest in her voice. The more Tiki considered Allen, the more his conviction that the boy could destroy the shadow that threatened to consume Tiki's self.
Tiki wondered if Allen really would have been able to help him, or if he'd been imagining things.
It didn't matter now. Pinning vague hopes on one's enemy made no sense, and a job was a job. Tiki had enjoyed destroying Allen Walker there in the bamboo grove.
As always, he'd taken a souvenir.
It turned out Rhode had been thinking about Allen herself. Entirely too much, Tiki felt. "Tell me how you killed him," she'd asked, all smiles, but afterwards she'd glared at him and yelled accusingly, "Why is he gone, Tiki!? Why was it you!?" He wondered at the feelings the boy had dug up in her.
"I'll give you something of his," Tiki had promised. "A little silver button." He'd intended it for Eaze, but if he didn't quiet Rhode's temper she may never forgive him for this kill.
But Allen Walker was all too powerful, for a white-haired Exorcist boy, when it came to in awakening strange emotions in the family of Noah. Perhaps it would be better if he were gone entirely.
Before the day was through, Tiki had dropped Allen Walker's button.
Jasdero liked dead people. He liked them a lot better than living people. That was because dead people didn’t bother him or call him bad things. When they were younger, Jasdero and Devit hadn’t known how easy it was to make the living into the dead, but they did now. Now it was their job.
Jasdero liked his job.
The only bad thing about dead people was that they didn’t do much. Not very interesting. That, and they were dirty. But sometimes you could talk to them, if you felt like it.
Jasdero wandered around the graveyard that held some small village’s dead. He was more interested in finding Tiki’s lost button since he’d left, because maybe it was what had made Tiki go crazy. Removing his headband and holding it so it lit the ground, he overturned piles of grave dirt with his boots, hoping the little moon would spill out. Maybe it was cursed, Jasdero thought excitedly.
He talked to the dead while he searched. Are you dead people cursed? Jasdero said to them as he crossed the graveyard to check the half where Skinn was still napping. Sometimes they say you're cursed when you aren't, heehee! Once they said Jasdero was cursed because there was a demon inside him, and they were going to sacrifice him and sew up his mouth once he was dead so the demon wouldn't get out. But they were all liars, because God was the one sending Jasdero and Devit visions. They're gone now, because God wanted the liars all dead.
Devit was leaning against a cross and keeping watch over the graveyard and copses of trees around them. He absently picked flakes of wood off the cross.
The villager’s grave wasn’t much different from the other cross-marked graves. The dead villager wasn’t much different from the other dead villagers, or the old gravekeeper lying down the path. Jasdero knew that the dead villagers weren’t much different from the living villagers, either. The dead had only gotten a head start on the end of the world.
Jasdero patted the tip of a wooden cross. It was a graveyard where Jasdevi really woke up. A coincidence, huh? We died, but we came back to life too. Because Jasdero and Devit are Noah’s family!
Jasdero had finished his story for the moment, and made his way through the graves not really thinking about anything.
The button didn't turn up. Jasdero found himself by Skinn, who was breathing steadily as he napped against a gravestone. He had his arms crossed over his chest. Skinn was being almost as lazy as Tiki. "Hey! Skinn!" said Jasdero, poking Skinn's arm with his foot and then jumping back in case he woke up angry.
But the large Noah only grumbled and squinted up at Jasdero. "What?" he asked.
"It's still not found, hee!"
Skinn opened his clenched fist. A silver circle rested in his palm.
"Skinn found the moon!" Jasdero said excitedly.
Devit looked up and picked his way across the small graveyard. "Why didn't you tell us earlier?"
Skinn looked at his hand. "This belongs to an Exorcist," he said angrily.
"Hand it over," said Devit, and extended his hand. “I just want to see it.” Skinn handed it over. His rage seemed to ebb once he no longer held Tiki’s lost thing. Devit stepped closer to Jasdero to examine it. There was a rounded cross pattern on the front. On the back was carved a name.
“Allen Walker,” Devit read.
The moon was only a button.
Through a door, in a dream, Rhode sat clutching herself. She sat on a bed with white lace sheets, stuffed animals and dolls piled around her and spilling onto the checkered floor.
"Why'd you lose it?" she whispered. Twenty years before, she would have cried. Now, she rocked back and forth.
Allen Walker had belonged to her. She had shown him her true nature, stolen his coat, and stabbed out his eye that misled him into thinking his only enemies were machines. It should have been clear to Tiki that she’d found him first. Now he owed her the little button that was the last thing remaining of the strange white-haired Exorcist.
Rhode stared at the checkered floor, unable to say whether her rage or sorrow were stronger. Why did her feelings run this deep? It was almost like she’d pinned some hope on Allen. What hope that was she could not say. Perhaps the simple hope to see him again or kill him in her own way. Or perhaps the hope that Allen would have offered her something, had he lived.
It’s not that Allen’s dead. It’s not that Tiki killed him. It’s that I never had a choice.
When will Tiki come back? He's bringing what I want. He couldn't follow her here, however. Rhode would have to leave the lonely comfort of her dream to find him.
Unable to cry, she slowly stepped down from the bed. Allen Walker, she thought.
She wondered if the silver button, ripped from an Exorcist’s coat and lost, did not have too powerful a hold on her mind.
But oh, how I want the choice…. In an old reflex, she wiped at her eyes.
For want of a button, my mind was lost, Tiki thought as he staggered down the hall with an arm to the wall. Rhode is going to be upset. He couldn’t begin to think what she would try to do to him.
It was funny. He’d imagined Allen Walker, or his memory, had caused Rhode to feel too strongly, more strangely, than she ought. But it was nothing compared to the insensible rage she’d shown when his button was lost.
“Hey, Tiki!”
Distracted by his thoughts and the pressure of fighting down the shadow, Tiki hadn’t noticed the twins standing before him. He stepped away from the wall, pain shooting down his back. A flare of pain echoed it in his forehead. But they made no comment about how he’d been struggling to make his way down the hall. Maybe they thought he was drunk.
“We have something you don’t have!” said Devit, holding a silver button up between thumb and forefinger.
“Heehee! But we don’t want it!” said Jasdero.
“Someone likes to collect filthy Exorcists’ buttons, but it’s not us.” Devit flicked the button at Tiki’s head.
Tiki’s reflexes were sharp. He snatched it from midair. “Thanks,” he said. He rubbed his thumb against it, then checked the back: there was the Exorcist boy’s name.
“Hee! But Skinn found it!” added Jasdero.
“So long,” said Devit, and they walked away with confident steps.
Once they rounded the corner, Tiki stared at the button in his palm again. He wasn’t sure if he feared or welcomed its return. Better give it to Rhode, he thought. She’d deal with it.
He turned around, towards the room Rhode had claimed. His migraine had subsided, and a great dark pressure had lifted from him. Tiki began to feel hopeful.
From a bright hall to a dark corridor lit by candles, Tiki rolled the button between his ungloved fingers. Cheerful thoughts filled his head, thoughts of the vacation he’d spend with his laborer friends once he’d killed those with connections to Allen Walker. He’d bring memories of those times with him through the end of the world, the monster within him be damned.
Let Rhode have her button.
In the shadows, head hung, she stood with her back pressed against her door. Tiki almost didn’t see her. Although he’d almost collided with her, she didn’t look up.
Tiki took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. He lifted Rhode’s hand and pressed the button into it. She lifted it to where it caught the light of a tapered candle, and in the candlelight Tiki saw her expression change from bleary pain to surprise to-was that fear?
It was gone in an instant, a bored look in its place. Rhode held Allen’s silver button to her eye. “It’s just a button,” she said. She sounded bored, too.
“It’s a token of his existence,” said Tiki. Isn’t that what you wanted?
“You keep it,” insisted Rhode, holding it out to him at arm’s length.
“After all that trouble, you-” Though exasperated, Tiki paused. He hadn’t gone to much trouble to search, had he. He hadn’t been in the state of mind to do anything beyond murder an old villager.
“Your kill, your button. But don’t try to give it to that normal boy, or I’ll find him and rip his throat out,” said Rhode in a monotone. “Keep it.”
Tiki took it back, and, unsure, held it in his palm.
With a look over her shoulder, Rhode smiled mysteriously and slipped back into her room. The door clicked shut.
Tiki placed the button in his tuxedo’s breast pocket. I’ll keep this in memory of Allen Walker, he thought, and the things he might have promised us if he’d lived.
Rating: PG-13 for violence, death, morbid themes, and disrespect for graves
Prompt: 24.Insanity
She confronted him in a white hallway of the Ark, fierce in her skirts and high shoes.
"You lost it?" hissed Rhode.
"I must have dropped it," said Tiki.
"You promised you'd give it to me!"
"Generous of me. I usually give my souvenirs to another spoiled kid."
"Oh, your little normal friend." She gave the two words different mocking emphases. "I know all about him. You sure like pretending you're not a killer like the rest of us, don't you, Tiki? Just another sane human being. Now find the button for me."
She was being especially vicious. "It could be anywhere," he told her. He knew he'd had it the last time he was in the Ark.
Rhode looked up at him with a moody glare. "Do you think you can get more of that Exorcist than me, hm? I found him first, you know! I took out his eye! And then you go and take his arm, his heart, and his life!"
"Does an Exorcist's death upset you so much?" asked Tiki, with an edge of laughter. He knew she had a fascination for Allen Walker, who was indeed an interesting boy, but it was strange that an enemy's death would cause her to behave this irrationally. Yes, there was an unnatural level of attachment here.
"It was mine!" cried Rhode. "But now. I want my souvenir."
Tiki stood there a moment, fiddling with the buttons of his tuxedo and wondering if he could say no. I have a good idea of where it is, but finding it again'll be a pain. Even if I wanted to find it in the first place.
Rhode stepped back, one step, two. There was a rumbling as a keyhole-shaped door emerged behind her. She didn't take her eyes off Tiki.
"I'll find it," said Tiki. His voice was level. He turned on his heel and walked away from the mad girl and her door.
Rhode said nothing.
Tiki knew that Skinn was in the Ark. A few of his brethren were resting in the same area of the Ark (a maze of bright corridors, small bedrooms, and dining areas) between trips to the world outside. Tiki headed for the kitchen. Sure enough, Skinn was there, chewing on a muffin and staring off into the distance. There was a clear cylindrical jar filled with wrapped candy on the table by which he sat.
"You have to come help me," said Tiki.
"Your mission?" asked Skinn, glancing over.
"I dropped something."
Skinn took another bite of his chocolate muffin.
"It'll go faster with two searching. Perfectly reasonable," said Tiki. When the other man shrugged, he explained, "Rhode wants it back. You could stay here in case she wants to chat, of course, though I should tell you I haven't seen her in this bad a mood for a long time."
Skinn finished his snack in two slow bites. "I'll be your second searcher," he agreed. He stood and filled his pockets with candy from the candy jar.
They were strolling through the halls when Tiki heard running. He turned the corner to find Devit and Jasdero sprinting down the corridor. They both had intent expressions and, impressively, managed to point their guns straight at each other's heads as they ran. Tiki hastily stepped back to avoid colliding with Devit--the twins didn't seem to notice him--but he reached out and caught Jasdero's arm.
"Heeee, let go!" said Jasdero, swinging his gun towards Tiki.
Devit stopped short and turned back, his coat flying. "Whaddya want?"
"You two in a hurry to get somewhere? Not running from Rhode, by any chance?" Tiki released his hold on Jasdero's cloth-wrapped wrist.
They glanced at each other with confused expressions. "No, just running," said Devit.
"If you've got nothing better to do, you should come help me," said Tiki.
"'S it an assassination?" asked Devit. Tiki had caught the twins' interest--they looked curious. Jasdero stood up straighter.
"It involves death," said Tiki. He set off down the corridor with Skinn and the twins.
Devit and Jasdero kept pace with Tiki. Beside him, Devit leered. "Ooh, is the great Tiki asking for help?" On cue, Jasdero giggled.
"He only wants us to help find something," said Skinn, sounding annoyed. Tiki was annoyed himself. He'd planned to keep leading the twins on.
"Find what?" asked Jasdero.
"How exactly's death involved?" asked Devit, prodding Jasdero's head with his pistol for emphasis. "We get to kill?"
They were overflowing with an energy that Tiki hoped he could channel into finding the souvenir he'd promised Rhode. The souvenir he'd hoped not to see again.
There was only one place he'd been since he last remembered having the button. (The destination of a routine job, kill villagers by ones and twos and set the stage for an Akuma.) A tiny village in Eastern Europe, or perhaps farther east than that, where he'd walked back to the Ark's portal in the dusk and, perhaps, let the thing fall. And perhaps he'd covered it with dirt, which took only a slight sideways movement of his shoe. Nothing much, and it was buried.
That might have been how it happened. Tiki didn't remember losing the souvenir on purpose, so he couldn't remember in which spot, exactly, it had fallen from his pocket. But the dirt had been the soft dirt of recent graves.
Devit elbowed Tiki in the arm. "Huh?" said Tiki. "Yeah, maybe," he answered Devit.
"Great," said Devit.
"Fun!" said Jasdero.
The members of Noah's family entered a small room. On the opposite wall was a hardwood doorframe filled with darkness that crackled with electric light.
"It still leads to where I was," said Tiki. Eastern Europe, probably. An isolated area, a day from any other town. Nothing whatsoever to do with Allen Walker.
He paused by the door. The others crowded around behind him.
"Where'd you lose it?" asked Jasdero, close by Tiki's ear.
"A graveyard," said Tiki. I have to want to find it, he told himself. I'm sure I never wanted to lose it.
"A graveyard!" Jasdero and Devit exclaimed at the same time. Tiki heard Jasdero chuckle softly.
"And what exactly is it?" put in Skinn impatiently.
"You'll know it when you see it. It's small, and round, and silver, and patterned, and..."
Tiki's Twenty Questions of a description put Jasdero in mind of the moon, although the moon wasn't small.
He followed Tiki through the portal, and Devit was close on his heels. Jasdero took a few steps to the side to make room for Skinn. The ground was soft, yielding dirt. Although he couldn't make out where they were, he heard the rustle of trees a ways behind him, and above him there were stars, though the light of his headband washed them out. Jasdero waited by the door until he could see his surroundings a little better.
The first thing he managed to make out was a row of rough wooden crosses, little more than branches bound together. Yes, a graveyard. On a ridge to his right, the crosses were silhouetted against the blue-black of the sky. Skinn was trudging down the slope before him and Devit. Tiki followed slowly. He was hard to see because he was wearing a tuxedo, but it looked like he had his hands in his pockets. He was acting reluctant to go down there--what was he, scared? Were there ghosts?
"Man, I hope there are ghosts," said Devit, wandering towards a cluster of cross shapes below. Jasdero could now make out the graves below, so he descended, enjoying the feel of the dirt under his boots, to look for the little moon.
So far as Jasdero could see, the graveyard was small. Only twenty or so crosses, some moldering, clustered there, twenty more across the way there, and a few more away on a ridge. Were those a handful of stone markers behind a cluster of crosses? No houses were visible, and no light except the stars' and Jasdero's own.
The hulking shape that was Skinn had veered left towards the gravestones, Tiki was continuing along a narrow path through the middle of the cemetery, and off to the right Devit was prodding a cross-shaped grave-marker with his foot. Jasdero hunched forward and peered at the ground. He couldn't see it very well. But Tiki's lost thing sounded shiny, so maybe that was okay.
"Tiki, you didn't drop this thing into a grave, did you?" called Devit, voice ringing loudly in the crisp night air.
Tiki's voice came back faintly. "I'm not sure. It might be covered by dirt."
"I'm not touching any nasty corpses," muttered Devit. The grave-marker tilted when he kicked it again. Devit prodded at the dirt at its base with the toe of his boot.
Jasdero stood up straight, since looking at the ground seemed unpromising. He'd been searching for a couple minutes, nearly. He shuffled through the soil--Tiki said the lost thing was hard, and maybe covered up, so he'd have a better chance feeling it than seeing it. If it was in a grave, Jasdero wasn't gonna touch any corpses either, though now that he thought about it he was curious about what they looked like. Probably there were a lot of dried-up old ones and some newer gross ones.
Don't worry, he told the corpses buried around him, all the while poking around the dirt with his foot. Secretly Jasdero's dead too. The different part is he just came back to life and died at the same time. He's alive and dead, so nobody's buried him yet, and nobody will! Jasdero tried to explain to the dead bodies under the ground, but he wasn't sure they were listening. He didn't really care. He just felt like talking to them. Maybe if there were ghosts, those could hear Jasdero?
It was in a... An owl's cry interrupted Jasdero's thought. Jasdero looked up at the black shapes of the trees, past the portal to the Ark. The air was crisp, and only a few clouds covered the stars. It was nice to be with Devit in a graveyard at night. Maybe they'd even find Tiki's lost moon thing, that would show him!
"Devit! Found it yet?" asked Jasdero.
"Nah, who the hell knows where it is," said Devit, crouched behind the group of crosses to Jasdero's left.
Good, more time to explore. Bored with poking around in the dirt, Jasdero picked his way through the crosses towards Devit. He noticed that a lot of them seemed newer. Tiki's work? Maybe some of the dead would haunt Tiki, thought Jasdero with a grin. He placed his pistol against the back of Devit's head. Devit was using a stick to clear dirt away from a skinny stone marker.
"Who's that?" asked Jasdero.
"I dunno. But they don't have Tiki's whatever-the-fuck-it-is."
"Heeee." Jasdero circled Devit and the marker, checking for the little moon. Nothing.
Devit flicked the stick away, gave an exasperated sigh, and stood. He looked around, from the copse of trees to Jasdero to the shape that was Skinn searching the other half of the graveyard. "Where is Tiki? Hey, Tiki!!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Crickets that Jasdero hadn't noticed before stopped, then resumed their noise again.
The cemetery path continued down a hill. That's where Jasdero had last seen Tiki disappear from sight--he'd heard him going in that direction, anyway. Now there was a shout from that direction. A shout that wasn't Tiki's.
Jasdero and Devit skirted the oldest cross markers and crouched beside the down-sloping path where dry, leafless bushes obscured them. Past underbrush and a solitary evergreen was a shack. A shack that must belong to the human figure walking towards Tiki on a cane.
Tiki was just standing in the middle of the pathway. What had he been doing all the way down there if he'd lost something in the graveyard? He was lazy, that was what.
The old man yelled something at Tiki in a language Jasdero didn't know. He guessed it was "get out of my graveyard." Tiki stared at the man.
So there’ll be killing tonight, thought Jasdero. Too bad Jasdevi aren't the ones doing it!
The gravekeeper took a few more stiff steps towards Tiki. Tiki's hand shot out, and the gravekeeper fell over with a fearful, strangled cry. He screamed as Tiki crouched over him and thrust a hand into his chest. In moments, his scream cut off.
The gravekeeper had stopped moving, as far as Jasdero could make out, but Tiki stayed where he was, leaning over the body. Maybe he was feeding his butterflies.
Devit stood up, and Jasdero realized it was silly to keep hiding. He jumped to his feet. He saw that Skinn was also watching Tiki from the verge of the slope.
Tiki didn't turn around for the longest time. When he did, he had something clenched in his hand. He rose and looked up.
"You do know you're the most visible thing in the graveyard," he called to Jasdero.
Obviously anyone who saw his light would think it was a ghost, thought Jasdero. He pointed to the dead man. "Hee! Is he a ghost?"
Tiki glanced over his shoulder. "No, I think he's just gone. Now, do you know what this is?" He held up something between forefinger and thumb. Jasdero was too far away, and it looked like he was holding up nothing.
"It's a button," Tiki replied to his own question. His voice carried well enough in the night, hushed except for a few crickets. "Everyone has them, even old men in a godforsaken place like this. Even you. They're very easy to find."
Nobody else said anything, not even Devit.
"Yesterday, I had a button. It was valuable, more so than this little wooden one, and hard to get. But of all buttons, that was the one Rhode wanted. And we all know Rhode gets what she wants. Unfortunately, I lost the button." Tiki flicked the wooden one off into the bushes. "It must be around here somewhere." He started up the path.
Tiki was making it too easy--Jasdero and Devit couldn't think of anything to say. Skinn shook his head, then found a sturdy-looking gravestone and sat with his back against it. He put a piece of candy in his mouth and crunched it between his teeth.
"Wow, you killed a crippled old guy," Devit finally said as Tiki reentered the graveyard proper. Tiki, irritatingly, walked straight past him.
Jasdero wondered what the hell Jasdevi and Skinn were doing there if Tiki wasn't going to search for his lost button. "Stupid Tikiii, why aren't you looking for it?" he complained. He heard Skinn begin snoring faintly.
"Yeah," agreed Devit.
Tiki crouched and let a handful of grave dirt run through his fingers. "Well, well, looks like it isn't here. Rhode will have to do without. She's spoiled enough as it is." He laughed derisively.
"He's invited us out here to watch him slowly go crazy," Devit said in an undertone only Jasdero could hear. Jasdero giggled.
Tiki stood and smiled at them. His smile held no kindness. "Don't get too attached, boys," he said.
"To what?" snapped Devit. Jasdero tightened his grip on his pistol.
"To boys, or to buttons, or to anything you might lose."
Was he threatening them? Jasdero and Devit raised their pistols to point at Tiki's forehead. Tiki turned and walked up the slope to the Ark door. They sighted along their pistols to follow his progress, and lowered the guns when he stepped through the door.
Jasdero was angry. Tiki had brought them out here and then hadn't searched for the little moon himself at all!
Not two steps past the door and Tiki staggered to his knees, clutching his forehead as if he could rip his own brain out. (The thought crossed his mind that he probably could if he really wanted to.)
Something dark was welling up inside him. Something ancient that wanted to steal all Tiki's control. It was like when he'd awakened to Noah's powers, but this time it would sweep away Tiki himself, taking with it what he had with the other members of the Noah family--and, it went without saying, his other life as a normal human.
Tiki took deep breaths. He sat against the wall and closed his eyes.
He'd met Allen Walker in his other life, where he lived as a traveling laborer--unremarkable but free from care. In that life, he only faced opponents across a spread of cards.
As he faced Allen Walker and discovered that Exorcists could be shameless card sharks, Tiki felt the seed of a strange conviction: this boy could help him go back.
Tiki Mick loved being a Noah. He loved killing. He loved his double life that let him pretend, half the time, to be harmless. He had powers, and purpose, and a home.
But there was a shadow waiting. When he'd awakened, it had been there, swimming beneath the pain, just visible at the edge of his fiery visions. Part of him still hadn't awakened. He'd fought it down, that time, when he felt it threaten to consume everything that he was, but now it was trying to surface again.
The only thing he feared about being one of Noah's family was the possibility of awakening completely as one of Noah's family.
Even being a normal human again would be better than that.
Allen Walker had returned to his thoughts after their little game of cards--even though Tiki and his friends had lost, it amused him to think an Exorcist had unknowingly played cards with a Noah. Tiki knew Allen Walker was special. The Earl had told Tiki of his cursed eye, the one Rhode had stabbed out once, and Rhode had spoken of him with rare interest in her voice. The more Tiki considered Allen, the more his conviction that the boy could destroy the shadow that threatened to consume Tiki's self.
Tiki wondered if Allen really would have been able to help him, or if he'd been imagining things.
It didn't matter now. Pinning vague hopes on one's enemy made no sense, and a job was a job. Tiki had enjoyed destroying Allen Walker there in the bamboo grove.
As always, he'd taken a souvenir.
It turned out Rhode had been thinking about Allen herself. Entirely too much, Tiki felt. "Tell me how you killed him," she'd asked, all smiles, but afterwards she'd glared at him and yelled accusingly, "Why is he gone, Tiki!? Why was it you!?" He wondered at the feelings the boy had dug up in her.
"I'll give you something of his," Tiki had promised. "A little silver button." He'd intended it for Eaze, but if he didn't quiet Rhode's temper she may never forgive him for this kill.
But Allen Walker was all too powerful, for a white-haired Exorcist boy, when it came to in awakening strange emotions in the family of Noah. Perhaps it would be better if he were gone entirely.
Before the day was through, Tiki had dropped Allen Walker's button.
Jasdero liked dead people. He liked them a lot better than living people. That was because dead people didn’t bother him or call him bad things. When they were younger, Jasdero and Devit hadn’t known how easy it was to make the living into the dead, but they did now. Now it was their job.
Jasdero liked his job.
The only bad thing about dead people was that they didn’t do much. Not very interesting. That, and they were dirty. But sometimes you could talk to them, if you felt like it.
Jasdero wandered around the graveyard that held some small village’s dead. He was more interested in finding Tiki’s lost button since he’d left, because maybe it was what had made Tiki go crazy. Removing his headband and holding it so it lit the ground, he overturned piles of grave dirt with his boots, hoping the little moon would spill out. Maybe it was cursed, Jasdero thought excitedly.
He talked to the dead while he searched. Are you dead people cursed? Jasdero said to them as he crossed the graveyard to check the half where Skinn was still napping. Sometimes they say you're cursed when you aren't, heehee! Once they said Jasdero was cursed because there was a demon inside him, and they were going to sacrifice him and sew up his mouth once he was dead so the demon wouldn't get out. But they were all liars, because God was the one sending Jasdero and Devit visions. They're gone now, because God wanted the liars all dead.
Devit was leaning against a cross and keeping watch over the graveyard and copses of trees around them. He absently picked flakes of wood off the cross.
The villager’s grave wasn’t much different from the other cross-marked graves. The dead villager wasn’t much different from the other dead villagers, or the old gravekeeper lying down the path. Jasdero knew that the dead villagers weren’t much different from the living villagers, either. The dead had only gotten a head start on the end of the world.
Jasdero patted the tip of a wooden cross. It was a graveyard where Jasdevi really woke up. A coincidence, huh? We died, but we came back to life too. Because Jasdero and Devit are Noah’s family!
Jasdero had finished his story for the moment, and made his way through the graves not really thinking about anything.
The button didn't turn up. Jasdero found himself by Skinn, who was breathing steadily as he napped against a gravestone. He had his arms crossed over his chest. Skinn was being almost as lazy as Tiki. "Hey! Skinn!" said Jasdero, poking Skinn's arm with his foot and then jumping back in case he woke up angry.
But the large Noah only grumbled and squinted up at Jasdero. "What?" he asked.
"It's still not found, hee!"
Skinn opened his clenched fist. A silver circle rested in his palm.
"Skinn found the moon!" Jasdero said excitedly.
Devit looked up and picked his way across the small graveyard. "Why didn't you tell us earlier?"
Skinn looked at his hand. "This belongs to an Exorcist," he said angrily.
"Hand it over," said Devit, and extended his hand. “I just want to see it.” Skinn handed it over. His rage seemed to ebb once he no longer held Tiki’s lost thing. Devit stepped closer to Jasdero to examine it. There was a rounded cross pattern on the front. On the back was carved a name.
“Allen Walker,” Devit read.
The moon was only a button.
Through a door, in a dream, Rhode sat clutching herself. She sat on a bed with white lace sheets, stuffed animals and dolls piled around her and spilling onto the checkered floor.
"Why'd you lose it?" she whispered. Twenty years before, she would have cried. Now, she rocked back and forth.
Allen Walker had belonged to her. She had shown him her true nature, stolen his coat, and stabbed out his eye that misled him into thinking his only enemies were machines. It should have been clear to Tiki that she’d found him first. Now he owed her the little button that was the last thing remaining of the strange white-haired Exorcist.
Rhode stared at the checkered floor, unable to say whether her rage or sorrow were stronger. Why did her feelings run this deep? It was almost like she’d pinned some hope on Allen. What hope that was she could not say. Perhaps the simple hope to see him again or kill him in her own way. Or perhaps the hope that Allen would have offered her something, had he lived.
It’s not that Allen’s dead. It’s not that Tiki killed him. It’s that I never had a choice.
When will Tiki come back? He's bringing what I want. He couldn't follow her here, however. Rhode would have to leave the lonely comfort of her dream to find him.
Unable to cry, she slowly stepped down from the bed. Allen Walker, she thought.
She wondered if the silver button, ripped from an Exorcist’s coat and lost, did not have too powerful a hold on her mind.
But oh, how I want the choice…. In an old reflex, she wiped at her eyes.
For want of a button, my mind was lost, Tiki thought as he staggered down the hall with an arm to the wall. Rhode is going to be upset. He couldn’t begin to think what she would try to do to him.
It was funny. He’d imagined Allen Walker, or his memory, had caused Rhode to feel too strongly, more strangely, than she ought. But it was nothing compared to the insensible rage she’d shown when his button was lost.
“Hey, Tiki!”
Distracted by his thoughts and the pressure of fighting down the shadow, Tiki hadn’t noticed the twins standing before him. He stepped away from the wall, pain shooting down his back. A flare of pain echoed it in his forehead. But they made no comment about how he’d been struggling to make his way down the hall. Maybe they thought he was drunk.
“We have something you don’t have!” said Devit, holding a silver button up between thumb and forefinger.
“Heehee! But we don’t want it!” said Jasdero.
“Someone likes to collect filthy Exorcists’ buttons, but it’s not us.” Devit flicked the button at Tiki’s head.
Tiki’s reflexes were sharp. He snatched it from midair. “Thanks,” he said. He rubbed his thumb against it, then checked the back: there was the Exorcist boy’s name.
“Hee! But Skinn found it!” added Jasdero.
“So long,” said Devit, and they walked away with confident steps.
Once they rounded the corner, Tiki stared at the button in his palm again. He wasn’t sure if he feared or welcomed its return. Better give it to Rhode, he thought. She’d deal with it.
He turned around, towards the room Rhode had claimed. His migraine had subsided, and a great dark pressure had lifted from him. Tiki began to feel hopeful.
From a bright hall to a dark corridor lit by candles, Tiki rolled the button between his ungloved fingers. Cheerful thoughts filled his head, thoughts of the vacation he’d spend with his laborer friends once he’d killed those with connections to Allen Walker. He’d bring memories of those times with him through the end of the world, the monster within him be damned.
Let Rhode have her button.
In the shadows, head hung, she stood with her back pressed against her door. Tiki almost didn’t see her. Although he’d almost collided with her, she didn’t look up.
Tiki took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. He lifted Rhode’s hand and pressed the button into it. She lifted it to where it caught the light of a tapered candle, and in the candlelight Tiki saw her expression change from bleary pain to surprise to-was that fear?
It was gone in an instant, a bored look in its place. Rhode held Allen’s silver button to her eye. “It’s just a button,” she said. She sounded bored, too.
“It’s a token of his existence,” said Tiki. Isn’t that what you wanted?
“You keep it,” insisted Rhode, holding it out to him at arm’s length.
“After all that trouble, you-” Though exasperated, Tiki paused. He hadn’t gone to much trouble to search, had he. He hadn’t been in the state of mind to do anything beyond murder an old villager.
“Your kill, your button. But don’t try to give it to that normal boy, or I’ll find him and rip his throat out,” said Rhode in a monotone. “Keep it.”
Tiki took it back, and, unsure, held it in his palm.
With a look over her shoulder, Rhode smiled mysteriously and slipped back into her room. The door clicked shut.
Tiki placed the button in his tuxedo’s breast pocket. I’ll keep this in memory of Allen Walker, he thought, and the things he might have promised us if he’d lived.