Demon's Kiss

A fight for my soul

A force invaded my body. It felt like I was swelling. My skin ached from the pressure. I wanted to scream as the pain intensified. A burning sensation started in my hand, the one I gripped Mugen tightly with. It was an anchor point. Something I could focus on to keep his consciousness from overriding my own.
“No. You won't control me!” I screamed. How do you fight something in your own body? Mugen. It was my link to reality. My link to the land where I left him. Allen's scared face came into my thoughts. I buried it deep inside me. But the warmth it gave me was all I needed.
Wrapping my mind around the foreign force inside me, I created a box for it. Attempting to shove the essence of the demon inside was another trick. Satan fought me. He tried to expand, to break the bonds I rapidly created to house him.
“Not today, Satan. You're mine!” I told him. The neither creatures from Mugen swam up to circle the demon. I could see him now. He raged. Then stopped so suddenly I nearly collapsed the box. That was what he wanted. A weak spot. He saw it the same time I did.
I couldn’t get the wall up fast enough. But I wasn’t fighting this fight alone. Mugen, the guardian always at my side swelled up. The neither creatures blocked his passage. Pain erupted in my head. I screamed. My body arched. Dropping to my knees I fought on. Pain was just a construct. I dealt with it often enough.
Shoving it away, I focused on him again. His energy was strong. Released from the bonds of his cell, he was a formable opponent. Yet I couldn’t use my body to fight him. Nothing had prepared me for felling this helpless. The despair over loosing him filled me. Tears formed in my eyes raining down my cheeks.
Hopelessness. I couldn’t save them. There was nothing I could do. Once more I was weak. Too weak to protect those that I loved. I tried. Tried so hard not to care. I built the walls around my heart so that I could never feel that pain again. One by one they tore them down.
Lenalee, Noise, Alma, Lavi, Allen. Their faces a parade of misery behind my eyes. One after another I watched defenseless, as Satan tore them apart. My own hands reaching for them. My own hand digging into their flesh. Snapping their bones as I pulled them apart.
“IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD! FIGHT KANDA!” Lavi? How was he screaming at me when his head was smashed in half? His own hammer had been used to kill him?.
“I’m right here. I’m not leaving you alone. NOW FIGHT YOU ASSHOLE!” He screamed. Something touched my chest. A warmth spread over my heart.
“DON’T YOU DARE GIVE IN! DON’T MAKE ME END YOU!” a wetness dripped onto my hands. Lavi. Was he? Was this? No! This wasn’t real.
I flung my walls up, protected my mind. A roar like thunder blasted into my head. I howled with the pain of it. Forcing it away, I spun to see Satan there. Was he a bit smaller? Flinging my box back around him I tried to force the lid closed once more. What was it that Lavi told me? Some girl had a box. She only kept hope in it.
“Pandora. You mean Pandora's box?” Lavi’s  voice floated somewhere in the emptiness of my head.
“She left hope for the world. No matter how bad things get, you always have hope.” Lavi. Was he my hope? I reached out. One hand gripping his tightly. My hope. My salvation. I flung the box tighter around the raging demon.
“He is a fool. A dumb rabbit to be boiled and eaten!” Satan screamed from his jail. I glared at him as I pressed my back into the lid. His arms held over his head. His horns stronger than I thought they would be tried to puncture the lid.
“Only I can call him a dumb bunny. Lavi is the smartest person I know. The most loyal. He wouldn’t leave me.” I hissed.
“Not on your life, Yu!” his happy voice filled me.
“Lavi what's…” No not that voice he can’t be here. My concentration broke when I heard it. Not him, God not him! I screamed.
“Allen, go away!” I moaned.
“Allen.” The name purred from the cracked lips of the demon. He was growing larger again.
“He is in the maker of Eden. Tidal would never let him escape. You know that, Yu.” Lavi. Right. Tidal, he had Allen. The boy was safe.
I snarled. “I’m sick of your tricks!” I yelled. This time I didn’t create a box. How was a box to hold a demon. I knew better than that. He was prying tearing apart my mind.  Digging into things that he had no right too.
I flung out, not the box but a fully formed demon trap. A pentagram with the demon symbols. His true named etched into each corner of it. I heard him scream. I held on as I pressed it over his head.
More screams came. My body felt like it was being torn apart. “Hold me together+” I breathed. A strength stronger than anything I had ever known before enveloped me.
“I got you, Kanda.” Lavi's arms tightened around me, holding me together as Satan tried to tear the very fabric of me apart. I dug my hand into his flesh, holding to a reality I wasn’t so sure was real any more.
“I’m real. I’m right here. You're here. I’ve got you.” Just like the stupid rabbit to never shut up. His voice washed over me. Sanity in this insane world. I didn’t listen to everything he said. It was good just to know he was there.
The pentagram slipped lower. One of the horns touched it. Satan cried out in pain as it burned him in a golden light. I pressed further. The horns began to glow. Satan’s screams were echoing in my head. It hurt but not like before.
Lavi's voice was growing louder. He was drowning out the pain of the demon's screams. I forced the cage of the pentagram around his head. A necklace of golden white pain erupted from the demon. He dropped to his knees.
“You cannot save him. He is already destroyed. My fathers faith is worthless against the wrath of my name!” Satan struggled to get his feet under him. He tried to reach up to push on the pentagram.
“Lavi chant his name. His real name. Lend me your strength!” I whispered my throat raw from the screams. I heard it. Softly at first. If only we had another. The power of three would be all I needed to defeat him.
My voice joined with Lavi's. As I forced the pentagram further around him I called his name, his true name. Taking away the power he had over me as I forced him to abide by my control.
What was that? Another voice was joining us. It was strong. A strength I had never encountered before. Who could have come to help? Lavi who is with you.
“Concentrate Kanda, don’t let up.” He whispered to me. Right. Fight one fight at a time. My voice had wavered, weakened in the distraction. Satan had managed to stop the force of the pentagram covering his arms. I pushed back shoving it down to trap his arms against his chest.
Once more my voice joined the others. I chanted the name. Then the binding spell. Over and over we pressed deeper. I felt my mind clearing. The fog Satan had pressed into it. I recalled my father the day his bloody hand held out the sword to me.
“Take our curse upon yourself, my son. Fight like you have never fought before." Mugen had joined his power with mine that day. I defeated the demon that killed my family. At nine I was alone in the dark with the dead bodies of the only people I had ever cared for.
That day my heart had shattered. The walls were built as I dug their graves. One by one I buried all the pieces of them I could find. I knew I had buried myself with them as well. Wondering for days without food or water I stumbled across a man painting. Collapsing beside his satchel.
It was a few days later that I woke to him talking to me. He told me who he was. What he was. A fighter of demons. That’s what I wanted to become. To be strong enough to kill all of them. The man, he tried over the years he knew me. Tried to break into the walls I had built. When had I let him in? I was never sure. One day I just knew he had taken up a place in my heart. It was the day I left him. I couldn’t face him knowing I would fail to protect him too.
Tidal. His strength had saved me more times than even he knew. His love for me in the face of my hostility… Nothing in my short life had prepared me for him. Yet he had opened me up for all the others to come.
“I will tear his heart out and eat it with your hands!” Satan cried.
“No, you won’t. Because I just won.” With the strength my foster father built in me, I forced the rest of the pentagram over the demon. Once it touched the ground he howled once more. I laughed. He was trapped.
“My will is stronger than my body.” I told him. I slumped forward. Breathing hard. Satan ragged but it didn’t hurt me any longer. I opened my eyes to see Lavi holding me.
His strong arms wrapped around me as he stroked my hair. “Yu, come on, wake up buddy.” He pleaded with me. My hand squeezed his.
“I’m alive your stupid rabbit." I whispered as I lifted my head to look into that emerald eye. One of his hands left my body. I was sure it was going for the hammer at his side.
“If you don’t stop using my first name I am going to kill you!” the venom wasn’t in my voice. Yet he got the message. His shoulders relaxed. His laugh, once so annoying to me, washed over me now. It filled me with hope of the new day that was dawning.
“It's him. He won!” Lavi whispered. When I was strong enough to pull away from him I looked up. His mentor stood behind him. Although small in body Bookman's spirit was large. It had been him that had joined us in chanting the true name of the demon now locked inside me.
I didn’t defeat him alone. I used them all. All of my friends joined with me. They will never know, but they were there. Bookman handed me a bottle of water as I sat up away from Lavi's chest.
“Thank you.” I whispered. The world spun as I tried to hold myself up. Lavi steadied me, raising the bottle to my dry cracked lips. I looked at him over the end of the bottle. When I drank about half of it he lowered it. His eyes dropped from mine.
“I heard you.” I told him. “I felt you here, helping me.” I whispered to him. He smirked.
“You know I wouldn’t let you fight alone. I never have.” He eyed me from under that flame red hair. I smirked.
“You're still stupid.” I stated as I took the bottle from him. I sipped on the rest of it. We sat in silence as I finished the water. I felt my body responding to the after math. I was tired but I wanted to see him. My gaze traveled back to where I knew he was being kept safe.
“Come on, I’m sure they are just as anxious to see you.” Lavi helped me stand. Mugen gripped in my hand. I swayed. He steadied me once more. Together we went back to the others. One day I will tell Tidal just what he did for me. But not today. I’m not ready for that yet. Today I overpowered the Prince or wrath. Now I was ready to protect them all.