hahaha i want to reread all of dgm so i can be in pain :')
all the way down
He's some kind of numb for the first few hours after it happens. Maybe even empty, but Kanda knows what empty feels like and this is not it.
This is like acceptance filling him up to the brim, stretching his flesh and cracking his brittle skin to accommodate itself. He doesn't even know what he's accepting. Or maybe he does and he's just pretending not to because it's easier.
It's always easier to show the opposite of what he's really feeling. Anger is just so easy. Ignorance is easier.
Indifference just settles in without effort.
But this?
This hurts.
This hurts so bad, it's hard to breathe. And that's always been hard—breathing, it's always taken so much effort and power. This makes it worse. Kanda hates it, hates this complication, hates feeling like this because it reminds him too much of the past. The before; before Allen, before Lenalee and Lavi, before his black uniform.
Before, when he'd stood over rubble, blood and death. Before when he'd looked up at the blue sky while chaos was all around him and a sinking feeling in his gut weighed him down, too much like it does now.
Kanda inhales as long and quietly as he can to convince himself of something as fake as he is. He closes his aching eyes and tries to summon sleep.
But that is out of the question. Sleep is a bliss he has no reason to enjoy; sleep will really make him numb, make the ache of his bones and his ghost scars throb. Sleep will rid him of these thoughts racing through his brain, so fast and so jumbled, he can't decipher; like they're a different language altogether.
Sleep will mean that when he wakes up, this will all be over. The crumpled and tattered page will have turned and moving on, getting over it nicely and hastily paved on the makeshift, invisible road in front of him.
Alma will be just a memory, just a voice inside his head. Still-shots of his ugly crying face, his smile and his eyes filled with so much hope and tenderness.
The thought almost wants to disgust him. But he can't summon that. Not in this moment. Not when he's still at this stage. When he hasn't moved and he hasn't slept and he hasn't gotten some liquor.
Kanda sits up, his long hair shifting, falling around him like a tangled, blood-caked shawl stitched together with comfort. He turns his head a bit, a soft tilt to it that's almost robotic.
Alma is still some kind of corpse next to him, eyes closed forever, lips slightly parted, tear tracks dried to salt. Or maybe even dust.
Yes, he thinks, dust sounds better. Dust breaks into tiny pieces that break further and break some more until there's nothing but particles in the air, drifting around the world, becoming nothing so slowly but still somehow existing…
Kanda blinks and looks away from him, looks down at himself. He's covered with dried blood, with bruises taking their time to heal and welts for scars that swell and ache so tenderly when he brushes the rough pads of his fingers over them.
Grains of sand pepper his chest, his back, arms and shoulders like golden freckles on his pale skin. But Kanda knows better than this; his skin is too perfect, too unblemished. What he is won't allow such a thing like patches of freckles… Not like the Beansprout who has them across his cheekbones. So pale, they would continue to be missed if not for the number of times Kanda has gotten in his face.
Beansprout…
Allen…
Allen….Walker…
Kanda furrows his brow and turns to Alma again. Allen… A Noah… The Noah inside Allen awakening… because of him.
His head pulses. So… So many thoughts… So much pain from his half-healed wounds… So much… to be angry about… It's… So hard… to… breathe…
Kanda stands up, legs unsteady under him, the sand so traitorous. Inside—whatever there is, whatever is left of him and who he is and who he was… That part, where they all mix and make him not Yuu, but Kanda, is numb. That part aches so inexplicably.
"Alright, Alma," he sighs, voice low and soft and weary. "Alright."
This is it.
He stumbles as he turns, steadies himself enough to pick up Alma's corpse.
This is it.
He is alive.
He has things to do; this is not over. Time to turn the page.