FT: Okay, Three Forms of Trouble seems to be doing nothing but collecting digital dust, so I wrote this to make up for its lameness (when I last checked the story it had 40 views on chapter one. Chapter 2 only had nine. I can take a hint.). The story will be taken off the site shortly, so don't fret. This is a pseudo sequel to Wait, which was a fem Allen/Kanda story. It's a bittersweet story, so grab your hankies if you're sensitive.
This darling is Teen rated, and the only thing you need worry about is ruining your keyboard.
What If
She was free.
For some reason, she was released.
Her 'heresy' forgotten, her honor restored.
She was free.
Nothing, not the war, not the Akuma attacks, not anything, could tarnish the moment in which she wrapped her slender arms around his neck and kissed him in front of everybody.
Freedom.
Even though it was days, months, years, before the war ended, time seemed to elude them.
They lost friends, gained new ones, and remembered those that might have been.
She didn't want to stay in England, the memories of pain were too thick, like the fog that encased everything in the humid summer days in the London streets. He agreed with her.
Before they left, the Innocence vanished; the only memory of their presence was the weight of which their accommodators carried with them.
There were strange bits of happiness to match the losses.
Krory, who had lost his teeth, found that he had a full set still, even after the Innocence vanished in motes of light.
Marie proposed to Miranda, even after she had tripped backwards on some solid ledge in the air and spilled boiling hot water on the man. But it was, Marie admitted, a moment that they would back on and laugh about. If Miranda ever stopped crying hysterically about it.
Kanda proposed as well, far from prying eyes, in a quiet grove deep in the forest that he trained in. She accepted; it was against her feeling to decline.
But somehow, (they suspected a certain red-head was involved) the news got around, and Tiedoll, the soft, emotional man that he was, demanded that a wedding be held post-haste; his former pupil's protests be damned.
They didn't have much, many people had already left, and there were more ghosts in the chapel then there were people.
But Lenalee, Miranda, and Cloudnyne managed to scrounge together enough un-embroidered white fabric to make a wedding dress, and Tiedoll somehow managed to talk Kanda into a suit that had been stripped of every piece of Order-related regalia.
The ceremony wasn't long, just a few sentences spoken by Komui, and no celebration afterward.
There were well-wishes and fond farewells, and one by one, everybody drifted away, not to the rooms of which used to be called home, but out onto the streets, to the stations that would take them far, far away from the lonely and echoing building where they lived and died.
They decided to ferry over to Japan, where people were gradually returning to, in small, halting trickles. Kanda found a home far from Edo, where the sprawling lands were littered richly with bamboo groves, and where she could find work without the stain of her former master following her.
And they lived there, struggling at first, with more falling then walking, sloshing mud off their bodies rather than simply soaking in the ease of their new lives.
It was a comfort, a struggle, and they agreed that it was worth every second.
So when she found out she was pregnant, they held a small celebration of sorts with their few neighbors, who congratulated them profusely, and wished them well.
Even the temple priest who was, by all rights, too far away to care rang the temple bells in their honor.
'It is a sign,' he told them 'that we are in fact alive.'
Their son was born in the spring, with grey eyes and silky black hair. They called him Haru.
He never stopped moving when he was awake, always running off to some distant object, like to his father in the field, or his to mother doing the laundry.
They wanted a second child, and they had a darling girl in the winter, with hair that was white and blue, blue eyes. Fuyu.
She was quiet where her brother was loud, observant where her brother was oblivious. But they had both gained their parents' tempers, and were charming when they wanted to.
They had a second son, in the summer, with black hair and blue eyes, the very image of his father, but so much like his mother they called him Mana.
Their second daughter shared the white hair and grey eyes of her mother, but was too much like her father for her mother to resist calling the infant Yuu.
But time passed, with few words received from their old friends, except when Miranda and Marie appeared out of nowhere with their squalling son. Tiedoll had passed on, Kanda was told, peacefully. In his sleep.
Cloudnyne had settled down, started a family of her own.
Zakolo had returned to prison, saved from his past crimes, but the man had returned nonetheless.
Krory had vanished somewhere in Europe, possibly far away from his old home, but nobody knew.
Lavi, or rather, the Bookman, had gone off to watch and record the resolutions of the many wars that the Earl started.
Lenalee and Komui were somewhere in China, running some small business that kept them afloat.
Their allies had moved on, with the Church exerting the full might of its religious power on the people.
Marie had told Kanda in private that he and Miranda were going to vanish into the grip of the Americas, because the Central Agency seemed bent on demonizing the saviors of humanity.
Kanda declined the offer to join them, and the next day, his oldest friend and his wife departed.
As he watched the black shapes of their bodies grow smaller, Kanda knew that he would never see them again.
She was beside him, her arms wrapped around his waist, her cheek pressed to his back.
They had each other, and for them, it was enough. For the moment.
Time kept passing them by and the tiny outcropping where their home, their village resided on became busier.
Life returned to a country that had been sealed away from the world, and they watched as they world passed them by.
But they were happy. A soft smile, a kiss against a cheek, a warm hand against a slightly chilled one. Memories made, held, and for her, written down.
Sometimes, she would wake from the phantoms of terrible pain urging her to hunt an evil that no longer existed. Her love was always there, holding her close, keeping her from running through the house in terror, like her life had been a dream.
He had pains, where the 'Om' had been, holding his life and heart hostage to a cruel past, and a crueler fate. She kissed the spot when she saw his hand starting to move towards the place.
They said that it would be better if they never told their children, to know that their parents had risked so much for so little, but as their children grew, those children asked questions, and questions could not be ignored.
They told the story in small portions, hoping to stave off nightmares, trying to spare their beloved children that pain.
So when the questions began, they started tucking in their children, with soft words and kisses brushed against their brows.
'I'll always love you.'
When their children grew into adolescence, they began to range farther and farther away, meeting new people, seeing new sights.
One day, they sat on the veranda of their home, smaller –older- now, with the tentative company of a pair of cats, when they had their first grandchild.
The house became noisy again, with the coos and babbles of young children, and the cats, in an effort to keep pace, had a litter of loud kittens.
It was the beginning of autumn, nearly fifty years after that last taxing battle, that he passed on.
Peacefully.
Like his master.
She followed shortly after, a day later.
Their oldest, Haru, told his children that his parents had loved each other so completely, that the thought of one without the other was abhorrent.
But he also told his children, that when his parents had passed on, he had seen his parents in the sky, younger, happier. Surrounded by people he had never met, but had been told about.
They had been welcomed warmly, as if the crowd there had been waiting for them.
He called his youngest son –who was born that year in autumn- Allen.
And when Allen grew, he married a woman named Yuu.
But before that day came, Allen would tell his father that he heard a soft sweet voice telling him something.
Live well, and be happy.
It was followed by gentle laughter and murmurs of agreement from voices he didn't know.
But he would honor that sentence, and live like it was his last day.
He would wait only for somebody special to arrive.
Because waiting for something to happen would take too long.
Allen's and Yu's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren agreed, and they followed that simple advice.
And they knew, without a shadow of doubt, that Allen and Yu were waiting for them.
Always waiting for them, with warm smiles and soft embraces.
~~Fin
FT: Sorry. This is younger than TFoT (originally written in 2006), but it was after I had watched Sliding Doors (back in 2010), and I fully blame Gwyneth Paltrow and her performance for this story idea. When I scrawled out the first version, it was a page long. When I revisited it (while throwing away the written version of TFoT) I saw that it was lacking details and period correctness. It still doesn't have true period accuracy, but I wanted forgiveness for the multi-chapter bore fest I started up. I think I'll stick to one shots from now on.
As always, reviews are loved, because it means I'm doing something right.
Til next time,
Fuyu Tatsu