On that day when we first met

by the27

It was windy that day. Just like the day so long ago, the day of blowing wind and autumn leaves and two boys on the playground across the street – the day, so long ago, the day when we first met. AU. YULLEN WEEK ENTRY. Theme: “Playground"

"On that day when we first met"
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Fandom: -man
Rating: T
Pairing: Kanda x Allen
Summary:
"It was windy that day. Just like the day so long ago, the day of blowing wind and autumn leaves and two boys on the playground across the street – the day, so long ago, the day when we first met."
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. YULLEN WEEK ENTRY. Theme: "Playground"

Author's Notes: Well, I'm getting it done…oh so slowly…-despairs-
This is the playground entry for Yullen week. I hope you all don't think it sucks too bad.

Anyway!

This is AU. Don't like, don't read.

That is all.
Enjoy~

XXXXX

The wind feels the same that it always did.

It whisks your long hair back and forth without mercy, just like it did back then. The irritated expression displayed on your face is the same as it was back then, if but a tad surlier and annoyed, but the same nonetheless. It was back then that I first met you, wasn't it? It was so long ago, on an autumn day such as this, that I became known to you and your rude attitude as the annoying, white-haired boy who lived down the street.

My name was Allen Walker. But you never called me that.

I recall your dark-blue eyes scrutinizing me, examining me, trying to analyze whether I was a threat or just another annoyance. I was quickly classified under the 'annoyance' category and you clicked your tongue in dismissal, turned back to the sculpture you were attempting to make in the sand. Even the sand feels the same as it did that day, soft and smooth and pleasant between my fingers. As you turned you back to me I blinked at you from behind sharp, metallic eyes, wondering what I had done to deserve this cold dismissal. I had only said 'hi', hadn't I?

I was persistent in my attempts to become your 'friend', an idea that you seemed most opposed to. You would try and shoo me off with barbed words, but I would always just smile and let them wash over me, not letting them leave a dent in my jolly disposition. You tried to forcefully send me away, but found out that I was not as weak as I appeared. Eventually, you gave up in your attempts to make me go away, and instead decided that your best course of action was to ignore me.

But I was glad. Glad you didn't try harder to throw me away.

It had been ages since I had managed to find someone who, although reluctantly so, was willing to play with me. We were both young boys, me being slightly younger, with opposing attitudes and even opposing looks – your long, pony-tailed hair was obsidian dark and mine was as white as the snow that eventually came. When it did snow, we would still come out to meet at the playground where we first met, where I first approached you as you made figures out of the playground's sand.

In the course of all this, I managed to learn your name. Yu Kanda.

It was a name that I don't think I ever forgot. Not even once.

We grew older, you and I, and we slowly stopped meeting at the playground where we first met. I started visiting your house instead, which seemed to irritate you greatly but you never kicked me out, so I took it as a sign of approval and kept on coming. Your guardian, an elderly man named Froi Tiedoll, was kind to me – as kind as any man in their right mind would be to a young boy – and we would waste away the days talking and fighting and making memories in that house of yours. We started school, you and I, which led us to become even closer friends than before as we climbed the social and academic ladder together – you became the school heartthrob with the bitchy attitude, and I was the shy but sweet boy that everyone wasn't quite sure about, but seemed sweet and kind nonetheless.

And, despite the new challenges school threw at us, during that time be stayed friends. And that made me happy.

But happiness was something that never seemed to grace Allen Walker for long.

It was on that fateful day when we were in the fifth grade, on another autumn day just like he one that we first met, that I failed to attend school. I'm sure it struck you as odd, since I had never missed a day of school in my life, and you came home that day with every intention in calling me up and demanding my guardian, Mana Walker, what could have possibly happened to me to make me miss school.

And it was on your way home that you saw the glaring, bright yellow caution tape that was surrounding the charred remains of Allen Walker's house – my house, that is, the house that was down the street from yours, across from the playground where we first met.

I vaguely remember the voices and the feelings and the pain as my burned and bleeding body was pulled from beneath the debris – my white hair was dyed ashen gray, from the soot, and dashed with streaks of crimson, from the blood. My now dull eyes were barely focused as I slowly lost grip on my consciousness, but somehow they managed to find your face. Shocked beyond recognition, slightly frightened – and, somehow, worried.

I definitely recall waking up the next day to your face, as I lay beneath the white sheets of my hospital bed while you sat beside me, eyeing me with those sea-dark orbs like you always did. I blinked – half my vision was obscured by off-white bandages, as was my left arm. Looking sideways at you, I mouthed the words 'what happened?', and you almost struggled to answer, as if you were fighting against your own words. Arsonists had targeted our house because of Mana's recent speech regarding the destruction of an ancient church in town to make room for an orphanage, and being the chief of the operation, there were many religious persons who had wanted him gone – and these people had decided to take the initiative. I recall nodding at your words, digesting the information with sorrow in my eyes, then asked my next question – 'how is Mana?'

You told me that Mana was dead.

And the truth you spoke with your eyes told me all I needed to know, and from my own eyes leaking bitter tears at the loss of man who had meant the world to me – my father, my guardian, my idol, was dead and he wasn't coming back. But you sat there with me, never crying, even though we were both young and fragile and you must have been feeling sad as well, you never let one tear fall and instead watched on with those staring eyes as I cried and I cried and I cried.

You stayed there with me, Yu Kanda. You made sure I had someone strong I could cling to. You let me sob softly onto your shoulder, and although you criticized me for being a weak little crybaby, you never pushed me away. Through the dark nights and the long days where my mind was wracked with even darker thoughts, you stayed with me and gave me a light to follow. Even if you never meant to, you saved my life, back then. You saved me in so many ways.

And I think it was then, so long ago, that I began to fall in love with you.

We entered middle school together – even through you were two years older than me, Mana had wanted me to start school as early as possible, and so were happened to end up in the same grade. I was now the outcast, the one everyone tried to avoid, the white-haired boy with no father and a deformed arm and a scarred face. At first, I was teased, but you readily came to my side, defending me from the cruel words of the other students. Your reputation as my protector spread like wildfire throughout the school, and soon rumors began to swirl about us and our 'relationship.' You didn't seem to take to kindly at that, and quickly silenced these mutterings with as little violence as you could manage (which, unfortunately, was a lot, considering your already violent nature), and although this got you suspended from the school a few times, eventually all rumors about us ceased, and you were happy. And that made me happy as well.

Even though I was an outcast, people came to respect me, almost, because of you. We made friends together – two of our closest (although you would never admit it) being the perverse, redheaded genius Lavi Bookman and the other a shy, kind girl named Lenalee Lee. What was first just the two of us became the four of us, and we all graduated middle school together and entered high school as a close group. You were still always grumpy, I was still kind but reserved, Lavi was still witty and Lenalee was still the level head of us three. It was on an autumn day just like this, during the beginning of our freshman year, that I thought about all the things that had changed since the day we first met.

During these years I questioned myself about the feelings I held for you, the infamous Yu Kanda. They had only intensified since that day back when we were children, and I knew that there was no way I could love you any more than I already did. My heart would ache to see your face, would soar whenever your dark-blue eyes met mine, would beat faster at the mere mention of your name. Ignorant of my feelings for you, you treated me just the same, and so many times I felt like telling you, but I always terrified that your reaction would be one of disgust and that you would finally, after all these years, finally throw me away – and I don't think my heart would survive if you had done that. All the way through our junior year in high school I never said a word, and inside my heart would pain me so with the weight of all the love I couldn't share.

And it as also in that junior year of high school that I really began to die.

I noticed that my body was slowly becoming weaker with each passing day – it became so bad that I eventually couldn't even run halfway around our school's track without gasping for breath I had somehow lost so quickly. I was taken to the doctor by my adoptive father – Marian Cross, who was certainly not like Mana at all, but I still put up with him because it would be a hassle not too – where they diagnosed my problem as leukemia; cancer of the blood.

And I was going to die.

The knowledge that my days were numbered didn't faze me as much as I thought it would – I was able to put on a smile around people and act like it wasn't a big deal. That fake smile would fool everyone except for my three close friends; Lenalee, Lavi and you. All three of you knew how much I was hurting inside, and you all did your best to make it better. Maybe it worked. Maybe.

The day finally came when I became so weak I couldn't even lift myself out of bed. Marian was a business man who traveled quite frequently, and when he wasn't there you would come and take care of me – you, Kanda, who had put up for me for so long, who looking upon my dying body with no tears to shed. It was funny, seeing how much you called me a crybaby, that I didn't cry at all until I was alone with you. You were the only one who would see just how broken I was inside, just how much I wanted to live. And you would never cry with me, but you would hold me – actually, you more let me cling to you than actually hold me, but to me it felt the same. And I was happy, oh so happy that you were always there, so happy that I cried even more than I already did, and I finally told you how happy you made me, just moments before I finally died.

It was so sudden that, if I recall, you didn't even realize it until you registered that my warm breath was no longer tickling your neck, that I was even limper than before in your arms. You laid me back down in my bed and stared at my still form for so long, so long that I thought you had died as well – but then you suddenly sat up and stormed out of the room, hollering for someone to call the doctors, being rude and violent all the way. Just like you always were.

At my funeral, you weren't there. At first I wondered why, before I overheard a conversation between a stoic Marian and a weeping Tiedoll about how Kanda had refused to attend the funeral of Allen Walker, insisting that he had more important matters to attend to.

You were walking purposefully across the street as they said that, across the street from your house where the playground still stood, the playground where we first met. It had changed quite a lot since we had last bothered to come here – tanbark had replaced sand and new structures replaced old, but it was still a playground where our first memories together were shared. You stood there, on an autumn day just like the fateful one where we first met, letting the wind blow your hair and that annoyed look still plastered on your face.

And it was then, and only then, that you allowed a single tear to fall from your cheerless, dark-blue eyes.

XXXXX

…wow, a depressing fic right before Christmas, how kind of me x,D –tears-

Anyway, I do believe this fic is the longest one so far in the Yullen week series, hoorah for me, and I still have two more to go before I will FINALLY be through. Thanks go to everyone who reviews these fics, seriously, thank you all, you make my day. Hopefully I can get the last two fics up my either today or tomorrow, wish me luck plz! 8,D

Till next time,

-27