Title: the appointments we keep
Disclaimer: I don't own DGM.
Pairing: Slight potential Yullen.
Summary: The war is over, the exorcists have dispersed. Then Kanda and Allen met again in a village where scarlet fever was spreading. But when Allen turned back, Kanda was gone again.
AN: So there are no actual appointments in this story... I just happened to like this title.
This was not meant to turn out like this, but somehow it did. Oh well. Perhaps I'll simply revamp/rewrite this when I have some time.
Hope you'll enjoy this. As always, constructive comments are appreciated.
I.
Four years after the war, Kanda found himself on board a dusty, sooty train, the great call of the train's engine ringing in his ears. In many ways, life was better now that the Earl was dead and gone, but his habits had changed little in the intervening years.
In the evening, the train stopped at a bare, whitewashed station. The conductor announced that there was a problem with the tracks ahead, and so the train would be stopping there for two hours.
Kanda frowned but got off to stretch his legs. The little garden by the station was an idyllic one, with flowers blooming all around, tiny bursts of colour in the darkening world. Kanda found a path at the end of the garden, and followed it. Later on he would wonder why he had made the choice to follow the little winding path away from the station.
The winding path led to a small pond past which ran a dusty road. At the end of the road there was a dip in the land, and Kanda allowed his legs to lead him into what appeared to be a decrepit village where dirty children ran around barefoot.
"Don't come any closer, young master!" shouted an old woman seated nearby. "The fever's spreading. You don't want to catch it. It's nasty, that it is."
"What fever?"
"The scarlet fever," the woman said. She shook her head and crooked a finger at a faraway figure. "The physician there has been here for a fortnight, trying to nurse them children out of it. But it's catching."
Kanda looked up and away in the direction the old woman had pointed. Less than eight houses away stood a man in coat and vest, his buttons glimmering in the fading golden sunlight. There was something familiar about him… something which made Kanda's temper rise. That was a man he would have killed if he was still an exorcist and had all the authority of the Order to – Kanda stiffened. An exorcist. A familiar aura.
The Beansprout.
Kanda frowned, shielding his eyes against the sun. Indeed, the physician had flowing white hair, neatly tied with a trim ribbon. It was Allen Walker, who was now patting a child and talking to what appeared to be a worried mother.
Allen Walker. Here. In a hidden part of England, now a physician, trying to heal a village of sick children. Kanda almost wanted to laugh.
Then the Beansprout looked up. Across the short distance their eyes met, and a host of memories flooded Kanda's mind. The Order. Lenalee. Lavi. Akuma. Death. Pain.
Then he blinked, and the Beansprout was gone, vanished somewhere into the depths of the village. Kanda shook his head, ignored the stifling burden of the years and the ache of his fears, and took the path back to the train.
II.
Four years after the war, Allen Walker, physician, decided that he would visit his old master Cross in Ireland.
Somehow or other, Allen boarded the wrong train and found himself in a dilapidated village south of London. There was an outbreak of scarlet fever here in this village where the children played in pig pens and the women cooked with water drawn out of dirty wells, here where the earth was cruel and living hard.
And so Allen had put down his bags and opened his suitcase of tools and medicines, and gathered up the sick children into the empty halls of the ancient, moth-eaten chapel. There he watched over the children as they coughed, as their skin burned, as they suffered.
Two weeks into his stint, Allen took a recovered child back to her mother. He waited outside the leaking house as the woman thanked him over and over. Then he looked up, as if on a hunch, and saw a tall man at the entrance to the village, dark hair flowing over his shoulder.
He had only ever known one man like that; only one man with hair like a river at night, only one man with that deadly presence, that ramrod straight posture. Kanda Yu, former exorcist. Allen opened his mouth, ready to call out his former comrade's name – but found himself being pulled into the house by the child's grateful mother.
"A minute," Allen said, detangling himself from the woman's clutches, and rushing out the door.
But the road was empty, all dust and soot and silence. There was no sign that Kanda had ever been there.
III.
After the war
The war was over. The Earl was dead and the remaining Noahs subdued, and the juggernaut of carnage had come to a final, juddering stop.
The fight had ended two days ago, and yet ash still fell from the grey sky, carried in the bosom of the chilly wind. The Finders, those who were not dead or heavily maimed, dug graves and built bonfires to cleanse the earth of the putrid, decaying mess of bodies and twisted, seared metal.
So many dead, so few alive.
Allen watched the Finders trample through the dead brown grass, struggle through the mounds of ashes. There was no peace here, no joy, though the Earl had been vanquished and the world saved for now. It had been a heartless war, and a tragic drawing of the curtains.
Lavi joined Allen, hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers. "Allen," he said.
Allen turned, tried to smile. "Lavi, how's Bookman?"
"Recovering," Lavi said. He leaned against a rotting post, resting his cheeks against his hands. "He'll be fine soon, the doctors say."
"And then you'll leave?"
"That's right," Lavi said.
"Where will you go?"
"I don't know, truthfully," Lavi said. "I've seen enough of war for now. But… who knows where the Clan needs us to go?"
"You've done well, Lavi."
Lavi looks at Allen. "You've done well too. You've saved the world."
"I simply did what I had to do," Allen said.
"Kanda is leaving too," Lavi said. "He says he's going to wander around for a while. Two lifetimes of suffering… that's more than a man could bear. And where will you go, Al?"
"I don't know," Allen said. He looked out at the iron-grey horizon, and felt the wind in his hair. "But it's enough to be free."
Allen was one of the last to leave the Order.
Lavi and Bookman left after the mass funeral; Bookman's right arm was still in a sling when they bundled themselves into a carriage and left on a long road to an unknown destination. Allen waved goodbye from the road, watching until the familiar head of red hair blended in with the setting sun.
Kanda left next, with nothing but a tiny suitcase and Mugen strapped to his back. He left in the night, leaving behind only a short note and a clean, empty room.
Allen lingered on in the half-damaged Headquarters, eating with the remaining scientists and personnel who were overseeing the dismantling of the Order. Then, in the heart of winter, Allen packed his bags and walked into the future.
IV.
Five years after the war, Allen found himself settled into the role of resident physician at an apothecary in London.
One evening, on his way home, when the purple clouds had strung themselves across the sky like glistening cobwebs and gas lamps coming alight in the streets, Allen paused at the entrance to a tavern and looked in.
Across the aisle he saw him again – dark eyes and hair like night. Kanda Yu, in the flesh, again.
Allen walked in and sat across from Kanda. Kanda looked up, raised an eyebrow.
"Beansprout," Kanda said.
"BaKanda, why are you here?"
"Why can't I be in London?" Kanda said.
"I thought you were wandering around."
"I've wandered for four years."
Allen swallowed. "Last year… you were there. At the village of D –"
"Yes," Kanda said. "I was on my way to Marie and Miranda's wedding."
"Wedding!"
"Yes, I said wedding, idiot."
"They didn't invite me…"
"They couldn't find you at your last address."
"Oh," Allen said, thinking hard. "Oh, yes, I moved around that time."
"I met the idiot Bookman a few months ago," Kanda said.
"How is he? Is his name still Lavi?"
"Yes. He won't change it again."
"This is making me miss the old days," Allen said.
"Don't be silly," Kanda said.
"Where will you be going from here?"
"Nowhere."
"Nowhere?"
"I'm looking for a job in London," Kanda said.
"How long do you intend to stay?"
"I don't know," Kanda said, with a shrug. His dark eyes looked into Allen's. "Until I decide to leave."
Allen looked back at Kanda, and he smiled brightly. He did not know why – yet – but this meeting with Kanda had made his heart lighter. The weight of the things left unsaid between them in all the intervening years still hung on a string between them, but Allen was ready to relearn the scope of the future.