A flash of red hair quickly passing by made him inhale the hospital air sharply. His heart made an irregularly huge jump when he realized that the guy on the hospital bed was led to the emergency department. Terms like 'crashed hipbones', 'smashed ribs' and 'critical state' reached his ears, sent his mind on a rush and soon he found his own legs leading to the doctors. The constant repetition of the word 'no' swirled in his head as he finally caught up with the bed where he found Rabi. The absence of his usual bandana around his forehead was a clear sight of how serious the situation was. Each breath brought faint lines of blood out of the corners of his lips.
"What's wrong with him?", his own voice trembled. "Tell me."
"My apologies but we are not allowed to give any further information to the outsiders until we can state the situation clearly. His injuries are very critical and we will do the best to save him. I personally ordered a surgery right now. We will provide a detailed report when we are finished.", was the plain answer.
Bullshit. They never told anything. They almost never told about death even if it concerned… Concerned who by the way? Who was the young Bookman for him?
It didn't really matter at the moment.
He would think about it later. He would also shout at the stupid redhead for not paying enough attention in battles and ending up as a complete mess of crashed bones and bloody breaths.
Kanda was left alone as the bed disappeared behind the emergency door. Taking steps towards the bench in the waiting room was unbelievably hard. Kanda couldn't think. Images of Rabi's laughing face, the sound of his voice telling silly jokes or unsuccessfully flirting with women were mixed with his dirty heart, painful expression of his visage and growling sounds of his breath.
Surprisingly, Kanda could not handle this state of Rabi. Rabi was supposed to smile and laugh.
He was supposed to live.
The picture of Rabi's body hidden in a dark wooded coffin with a huge silver cross on it made Kanda want to vomit his last meal.
Kanda saw many people die. He heard many people screaming, breaking apart and taken away by the Akuma virus. At some point, he stopped caring. He was never actually human, so he never reached out for humanoid emotions. Everything was doomed to die, every human being. Every time Kanda was confronted with deaths of the former exorcists he just kept on going. He simply held Mugen tightly and kept on slashing the bodies of Akuma.
Alma taught him, that even the strongest weapon has its end. Even Kanda was doomed to die someday. Perhaps it was the only human thing about him.
Kanda did not let Alma die alone. Something inside Kanda began to break when the last bit of Alma's Akuma body was placed in his arms right before he just shattered. The small pieces of Alma were mixed up with Kanda's memories and the passed out together.
Rabi should be the only witness of his, Kanda's death. This was his decision if he is about to die someday. At that point, Kanda concluded that Rabi was not allowed to die until this scenario comes to be the cruel reality of this world. Rabi was simply not allowed to leave Kanda alone.
Kanda was always jealous of the way Rabi was thinking. Always full of hope and joy no matter how shitty the situation was. Rabi was optimistic despite of the fact that he was a Bookman. Rabi was always looking at the bright side of life. Sometimes Kanda would catch himself realizing that with Rabi around and despite his annoying babbling Kanda could think clearly enough to save both of them. Even at night when Kanda was developing strategies and troubled by some blind areas in his plans his eyes would slide to Rabi's sleeping face. The way Rabi would murmur in his sleep would relax him and when Kanda would stand or lie right at Rabi's side he would come to a perfect solution.
Again. Rabi was not allowed to die now.
Kanda's eyes caught the doctors rolling the bed with Rabi all covered in a white blanket. A rush at the clock has shown Kanda that four hours have passed. He met the tired eyes of the doctors in their sweaty faces.
Finally the doctor that talked to Kanda earlier looked in Kanda's face. A moment passed as they were just staring at each other in full fear of the words that might come out.
Finally the silence was broken.
"God really blessed this boy. We did our best. He is out of danger now.", was his short announcement.
A wall inside Kanda fell apart and his shoulders sunk in full relief.
"We will put him in a good room and watch after him every second hour"
Every second hour? They'll better watch after him every minute, those fools.
"I don't care about your watching. Show me the room.", Kanda found his cold demanding voice again.
"Well, his state is still not stabilized again..", the doctor began.
"I think you might have problems with hearing or understanding me. I remember saying that I don't care about your stuff.", Kanda cut him off.
The doctor massaged his sides. "Just do whatever you wish.", the doctor said unfriendly due to his exhausted state.
From that moment Kanda didn't leave Rabi out of his eyes. He watched the assistants rolling up the blanket and leaving Rabi's face and his chest open. The lower part of his chest was put in bandages as well as his arms. His face was cleaned from blood and now perfectly calm. The wires on his chest and his arms connected his body to various technical equipment that indicated his constant and very slow heartbeat.
"He is asleep now. He lost much blood and needs a rest. Maybe he will sleep for a day or two. We will send some assistants at nine o'clock.", the doctor announced as he left the room not caring much about Kanda anymore.
This was exactly Kanda's world. A world full of ignorance, a world where no one cared about other people. But deep inside him this feeling hurt him a bit. As time passed, ignorance became his antidote. It made Kanda's breathing less heavy when he watched the world burning in the fire of war and destruction.
But with the young Bookman in front of him his ignorance sometimes trembled.
An hour passed while Kanda watched Rabi's chest getting high and low. He realized that he was standing a long time just two steps away from the bed. He refused to believe the fact that he was wasting his time in the small sterile room. With a quite hiss he turned his back to Rabi and walked towards the door only in order to turn back annoyed and take place on the window plane. His eyes brushed the crawling darkness outside the building. He caught a quick sight of the hospital workers while another memories of Rabi floated into his mind. It was a very calm and warm memory of Rabi lying on the grass, tired of all the books he had to read. Kanda's mind got soothed by this picture. He fought against the sleepy feeling hugging his heavy eyelids until he lost himself in one more memory. Another picture glued both of them together in which Rabi walked at Kanda's side through a small town with their hands constantly touching by accident.
Kanda woke up ten minutes later. The first thing he did was checking up on Rabi. The young Bookman was still asleep and his breathing was accompanied but the constant pieping sounds of the equipment. Hearing the sound Kanda relaxed again. He noticed that Rabi's breaths became more regulated.
The next hour Kanda slept in a ten minutes rhythm. He switched between recalling different images of Rabi and almost manically looking at the young man on the bed. He also registered a young nurse coming into the room and writing a report on Rabi's state. She tried to convince Kanda that Rabi was no longer in danger, that Kanda could leave no. All Kanda did was giving her a very cold look and his typical hissing.
Time kept on passing as Kanda left his place and stood directly near Rabi watching him lie on the white bed, sleeping, dreaming. Breathing.
As he got confident that no one will interrupt the harmonic play of the pieping of the monitor and the ticking of the clock he reached out to brush some red locks from Rabi's free eye. The faint locks were still wet; either from sweat or from blood, Kanda couldn't say exactly. His fingers went tired to the high cheekbone and trailed down the cheek feeling tough skin of Rabi's face. Afterwards, Kanda met warmth under the redhead's chin and his pulse beating against Kanda's fingers. Small attributes, proves of life freed Kanda from the earlier worries. His silent prayers for Rabi staying alive, staying with him in this world became his soothing mantra for the past seven hours.
Kanda was never patient with humans to begin with. His desperate struggle for seeing Rabi awake and safe again surprised him enormously. But as long as he was comfortable he should stop thinking too much.
He didn't notice how he fell asleep again. It was near Rabi's bed that he sunk to his knees. He didn't notice the time passing by or the nurse coming again or even her trying to wake Kanda up. The only thing he really noticed was that he finally got some real sleep without dreams or nightmares. The second thing Kanda noticed was a quiet hustling and fingertips brushing slowly through his black hair. Kanda shook his head slightly as too push away the heaviness of his eyelids. He lifted his head to the origin of the rustling only to meet an half open emerald eye full of joy and warmth.
Rabi's dry lips were curved into a smile as he stopped brushing Kanda's hair and send his hand full of wires to rest near the samurai's face.
"Yuu..", came out a cracky voice out of Rabi's lips."I kinda prayed to all Gods I've ever read about to wake up after this hell and see you in the first place. Halleluja."
The statement sent Kanda's mind on rush. Nevertheless, he successfully concealed his joy and happiness with a cold and neutral frown but held in as he felt that his left hand is being squized. His eyes followed the impulse and registered his own hand resting in Rabi's much wider palm. The redhead's thumb placed small circles on Kanda's hand.
"Idiotic hare", Kanda's eyes went small in disgust but the simple hearing of Rabi's voice was an irreplaceable morphine for his nerves. "What the hell happened to you? I simply cannot leave you alone without you getting in trouble."
A muffled laugh escaped Rabi's throat and brought faint line of blood to the corners of his lips. Kanda got alarmed and immediately pressed his sleeve to the Bookman's face washing the lines away. Rabi wrinkled his face and sighed in relief.
"Don't worry, Yuu", he replied, "I get this kind of injuries pretty often. My ribs will become iron or metal someday. Well, at least this is what my doctor is saying."
Rabi's shaking hand managed to capture Kanda's fingers before the samurai could pull away.
"Do you need something? Shall I call the doctor?", Kanda did his best to ignore Rabi's warm palm and his burning fingers around his hand. He didn't really knew why exactly he wasn't able to pull away or just command the Bookman to stop. His fingers did the opposite: they found their way between the heat of Rabi's fingers lacing their hands together. Cold skin met hot flesh.
"Why that? The only thing they'll do is giving me stronger painkillers. Ya know Yuu. I'd rather take your presence here with me even if it would mean to stay in this sterile as hell room for month."
Another smile from Rabi. Another annoying playful wrinkles around his tired eye and almost everything about this moment let Kanda stay where he was.
"Will you stay? Just until I'm capable of speaking probably and listen to you shouting at me for not paying attention?", was the last Rabi could say after closing his eye, taking a deep breath and turning his face towards Kanda. Kanda's heart stopped for a moment.
"Stupid rabbit", Kanda replied as he saw the doubling of medicine on the monitor which sent Rabi to sleep again.
The sound of Rabi's heart bumped gently against Kanda's ear through the bondaged chest. The deep and calm breaths brushed the samurai's hair every time Rabi exhaled.
Kanda hadn't freed his hand from Rabi's soft grip.
The main thing he enjoyed about being accompanied by Rabi is the fact that even the silence was joyful. And the silence they shared together consisted of parts of their skin touching and slow synchronic breaths.
Unfortunately, no one not even Rabi or Kanda himself saw the faint line of the samurai's lips curving into a thin smile full of relief.
The last thing Kanda didn't notice was the sun breaking through the dark sky as he got carried away by a beating heart of a certain rabbit.