From Dark and Stormy Skies

by amazuppai

There is something scarred into the flesh of his chest, burned into the skin; a mark of power, he recognises, but he doesn't know where from. It is tender to the touch in a way that is not particularly painful, and he wonders where it came from, how recent it is. He files this away in his rapidly growing list of things he does not yet understand.

This has been sitting in my drafts for months now, and I had a recent spur of inspiration, so decided to finish it up and polish it and finally get it off my hands.

---

It is raining when Kanda wakes up, the heavy drops a strange and unfamiliar sensation on his skin. He opens his eyes to dark and stormy skies, black clouds roiling above him and thundering in his ears, seeming too loud, too close, suffocating. He sits up, his hands settling in mud, dark hair falling thick over his face and cascading around his shoulders. The sensation of cold fills his body, settles deep in his bones; he flexes his hand, the movement impeded by the lack of feeling in his fingers.

He rises to his feet, pulling his hair back over his shoulders as he looks around the field he stands in. He catches sight of lights to the south, small flecks of orange-yellow through the grey haze of the rain, so he begins to head towards it, for lack of any other direction. His movements are sluggish, an unfamiliar trembling in his limbs, the feeling strange and infuriating. It doesn't take him long to reach the town, but to him it feels like an age, reaching the outskirts and finding that it's only a small place, the main street stretching into a path that leads out to the hills, and he follows this road until he finds cover in a small backstreet that branches off from it, overhanging roofs providing some level of respite from the incessant rain. He steps into it, leans against the wall, tries to gather his thoughts. He doesn't remember anything useful beyond waking up in the field, and it's irking him to no end.

His attention is caught when a door in the building across from him opens, light spilling out and a boy stepping into the alley, waving to somebody inside before he closes it behind him. Kanda watches as the boy turns up his collar, hunched against the chill as he begins to walk towards the street, then stops when he catches sight of the man watching him, eyes widening at the sight. "Oh," he breathes, blinks, then steps a little closer. "My goodness, are you alright? You're freezing."

He watches the boy with narrowed eyes, trying to figure him out. He didn't think people could have hair that white, not at his age, tinted blue with the night and orange from the street lamps, holding no colour of its own. A flash lights up the sky, the roll of thunder close behind it. "I'm fine," he grinds out, his mouth somehow feeling dry. He licks his lips, catching the moisture of the rain on his tongue. It tastes wrong.

"Do you have a place to stay?" the boy asks, seemingly impervious to his answer. Kanda's eyes flick away briefly as he thinks, a frown touching his lips. If he does have somewhere, he cannot currently remember where it is. The boy seems to understand. "Come with me, then. You'll catch your death out here."

Wordlessly, Kanda follows him out of the alley, down the main street and a few smaller streets branching off it, until he finds himself standing in front of a small, two-storey house. The boy unlocks the door and ushers him inside, tells him to remove his shirt and his shoes (he then remembers he isn't wearing any, so the boy fetches a towel to wipe the mud from his feet) and leads him to what appears to be the living area, embers of a small fire glowing brightly in the hearth. The boy brings the fire back to life with a little prodding and added fuel, then leaves him with a blanket around his shoulders and tells him that he's going to draw a bath.

Kanda doesn't have to wait long before he returns, leading him past the stairs to the bathroom, where a tub of steaming water sits in wait. "There's soap on the basin and towels behind the door," the boy explains, pausing and nervously tapping his hands together. "Um, let me know if you need anything. I'm going to see if I can find some clothes that will fit you."

With that, he disappears, the door clicking gently shut upon his exit. Kanda removes the blanket and hangs it on the rack beside the towels, stepping out of his sodden pants and leaving them haphazardly folded by the door. He catches sight of himself in the mirror over the basin, his breath catching in his throat; he looks strange, soaking wet and caked in mud, lips terse and pale, dark hair held straight and tangled from the moisture. This is not my body, he thinks, but sets that notion aside for now. There is something scarred into the flesh of his chest, burned into the skin; a mark of power, he recognises, though he doesn't know where from.

The warmth of the bathwater comes as a sharp contrast to the cold, at first feeling too hot before he grows accustomed to the temperature, immersing himself in the water. It smells faintly of some kind of perfume, a spice maybe. He reaches to the basin behind him for the soap and begins to work the mud from his skin and through his hair, washing himself until he feels properly cleansed. He finds that the scar on his chest is tender to the touch in a way that is not particularly painful, and he wonders where it came from, how recent it is. He files it away in his rapidly growing list of things he does not yet understand.

He grabs a towel from the rack on the back of the door once he steps out, drying himself and his hair as best he can. There doesn't seem to be a comb anywhere, but he figures he'll ask for one later. He finds a set of neatly folded clothes on the floor by the door and slips into them, finding that they fit fairly nicely, even if the feeling of fabric against his skin still feels somehow foreign. He hangs the towel up and steps out, finding the boy in the kitchen, watching water as it boils. Kanda watches him silently from the doorway, and he only notices his presence when he turns to set a couple of things on the table, pausing at the sight. "Was everything alright?" he asks, giving him a small smile.

Kanda simply nods, watching him take the pot off the stove and begin to distil tea into it. "Comb," he remembers, causing the boy to look up, "Do you have one?"

"Yes, um. One moment," he murmurs, ducking past Kanda and up the stairs, returning a moment later with a comb that he hands to Kanda on his way past. He sets about working through the knots in his hair, watching the boy work as he does so. Now that they're in the light, Kanda notices the scar marring the left side of his face, across his eye and down to his jawline, another smaller one crossing it over his cheekbone. This boy looks almost like a ghost, he thinks, pale skin and paler hair, a mark of death across his face, but there was no mistaking the feeling of warmth in the brief moments they had touched. "Here," he says, setting a steaming porcelain cup down on the table before him, "The tea should help."

He pauses in the rhythmic brushing of his hair, watching curiously as the man pours another cup for himself, then reaches for it, sipping it cautiously. It's hot, but pleasant, a comforting taste in his mouth. He wonders if he has always been fond of tea, and again sets his thoughts aside. "Who are you?" he finds himself asking as he sets the cup back down, meeting the stranger's stormy grey eyes. They remind him of the rain, the mists across the grass he saw when he awoke.

He pauses, puts a gloved hand gently to his mouth. "Oh, my apologies," he breathes, as though he had made some grave error. "My name is Allen, I'm sorry for not introducing myself sooner. And you?"

He's lucky he even remembers that much. "Kanda," he says, the word feeling strange on his lips. It doesn't feel like his name so much as a close approximation of it, a nickname almost, but it is all he has to go on.

Allen nods, thoughtfully taking a sip of his tea, watching Kanda as he finishes working the knots out. "Would you like a tie?" he offers as Kanda sets the comb down, pushing the strands back over his shoulders. "To help keep it out of your face."

He considers it, twisting a strand of it between his fingers. "Please," he replies, and Allen nods, taking the comb and darting upstairs again, returning this time with a band which Kanda then uses to tie his hair back at the nape, leaving two strands loose at the front. It feels more comfortable that way.

Allen clears his throat, catching his attention. He expects questions, and he isn't wrong. "Um, can I ask what you were doing? Out in the storm like that, I mean. And hardly dressed."

He thinks about it, taking the cup of tea and leaning back against the wall. "I don't know," he says honestly, frowning into the clear, brownish liquid. Confusion flickers over Allen's face, and he can understand why. He wants to understand as well. "I was... asleep, I think."

"Asleep?" he repeats, a little dubiously, "In the alleyway?"

Kanda shakes his head. "The field. North of here."

His brow furrows, head tilting a little to the side. "You were sleeping in the field?" Kanda nods, aware of how dumb he must sound. "Why? I mean, in this weather on its own I wouldn't want to go out there, let alone poorly clothed to take a nap."

"I don't know," Kanda mutters, grimacing a little as he tries to piece it together in his mind, to figure out anything. "I don't remember."

Allen pauses then, understanding a little. "What don't you remember?"

"Anything," he says, and Allen sets his cup down. "I woke up in the field, and I don't remember anything beyond that."

Kanda watches as Allen puts a knuckle against his mouth in thought, tapping it a little against his lips. "You don't have any cranial trauma?" he asks, and Kanda shakes his head. He hums thoughtfully, looking up to the roof as if the answer would be written in the wood. "Strange," he murmurs, then sighs, visibly deflating a little. "I suppose there's nothing we can do, right now at least. Tomorrow we can try and figure out if there's anything that might trigger your memory, if you like."

He thinks about it, taking another deep sip from his cup. There are some things that feel vaguely familiar, like the taste of the tea and the tie in his hair, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that there may be more. "That sounds fine," he tells Allen, who gives him a warm smile in return.

"For now, though," he says, setting his empty cup down by the sink, "I think it would be a good idea to rest. You can take my bed if you like, or I can set up a futon in the living room."

"The living room is fine." He flicks Kanda another smile as he steps past, rummaging around in the cupboard under the stairs to pull out various bedding and drag it over to the living room. Kanda helps him spread it out, the two of them pausing once it's finished.

"Alright," Allen says, clapping his hands together. "Well, I'm just upstairs if you need me. You can help yourself to whatever you like." He lingers a moment longer, flashes a smile, then heads back upstairs, a door clicking shut in his wake.

Kanda is left to his own devices in a house that looks barely lived in, sparsely furnished with little to no personal effects. Clean, orderly. He likes it. He feels a little frustrated, somehow feeling tired after waking up only a couple of hours ago, but the events thereafter have worn him out, and perhaps even the journey before that, whatever that may have been. He is acutely aware of the scar on his chest, pulsing with faint warmth and the pattern of his heartbeat. He desperately wishes to know why.

That night, he dreams of voices, reaching out to the edges of the Earth in a language he knows but cannot grasp. He does not understand their depth, but the messages convey vague allusions of what they contain, filling his head with images he doesn't remember and whispers in his mind. They repeat one word, over and over and over again, and he thinks it might be his name, but he doesn't understand it, he can't catch the syllables. Another voice interjects, smaller, gentler, whispering his fake name, Kanda, Kanda, Kanda, and then he is staring at the worn wood of the ceiling.

He rouses himself from the throes of whatever that was and seeks out the bathroom, returning to small noises of clatter from the kitchen. He follows these to find Allen preparing breakfast, morning tea already brewing on the table. "Did I wake you?" he asks once he catches sight of Kanda's entry, pausing when the man shakes his head in answer. "Did you sleep alright?"

Well enough, he thinks, but feels he should be a little more polite than that. "Yes," he replies simply, sinking into one of the chairs by the table. He watches Allen's backside as he cooks what he thinks is more than enough for both of them, white hair tied back with a neat red bow. It's strange that he cooks with gloves on, Kanda thinks, his eyes settling on the movements of those concealed hands, strong and practised, yet somehow the fabric manages to stay clear of everything but the inevitable dust. It occurs to him that Allen may have something to hide beneath them, which, coupled with the scar on his face, does not seem unlikely, but he does not care to delve into it.

There is little chatter over breakfast, Allen mostly talking to himself around mouthfuls of the three full servings on his plates, outlining his plans for the day for Kanda's review. It seems fairly stable; start out at the field he woke up in for any clues, work their way back to town along the same route he took, and, if that doesn't spark anything, wander through the town for any other clues. Kanda has no ideas of his own, so he holds no objections to the route, and they set out immediately once they've finished eating and Allen has cleaned up.

The first order of business is, apparently, to buy Kanda some proper clothing, since Allen's clothes barely fit him and the boy apparently likes to fuss. "We can't have you improperly dressed, especially this time of year," he says defiantly, and drags him down to the tailor. There he finds clothes that feel more comfortable on him, high boots and a thick coat that trails around his calves. He cringes a little at the price, steep even by his uneducated guess, but Allen hands it over easily and ushers them back out again.

He pauses once they step onto the street, his expression vaguely critical as he looks Kanda up and down. "What?" Kanda bites at him, uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

"Much better," is all he says, and Kanda tries not to show his surprise. "Now, to business."

Last night's rain still lingers over the town, the pale grey sky reflected in the patches of ice between the cobbles, the crisp air heavy with moisture as he follows Allen to the northern edge of town where he then steps ahead to lead them across the muddy grass of the field, until he comes to a stop some ways out, staring at the sodden dirt beneath his feet. "Here," he says, turning to look back at the town, at Allen.

Allen looks around, steps around him to inspect the ground in a fairly wide radius. "Is anything coming to you?" he asks, frowning at something and crouching down to inspect it. There is nothing beyond the memory of waking here, so he says nothing, and Allen seems to understand his silence. "Come here," he then says, beckoning Kanda over, so he steps forward to lean over the boy and understands why he'd been frowning. "The grass here is burnt," he murmurs, taking off the glove of his right hand to run pale, thin fingers over it. "Do you know if it was like this when you were here?"

"No." He'd been too caught up in all this to bother noting what colour the grass was, and probably couldn't have seen it in the dark either way.

Allen hums, wiping his hand off on his pants and replacing the glove, standing up. "I've never seen ground where lightning has struck before, but if I had to guess, I'd assume that's what happened here. It's just..." He trails off, and Kanda looks at him, catches the vacant, confused look on his face. Then he shakes his head, that ever-present upturn to his lips returning. "Alright, let's follow your route back to town. Lead the way."

They walk in silence back towards the town, down the main street until they come back to the alley they had met in. Kanda notices that the door Allen had used last night appears to be a back entrance to the bar on the corner, but nothing else occurs to him, and he is beginning to grow more frustrated. "It's alright," Allen tells him, and begins to lead him through the town, explaining that he hadn't expected to gain much from that trip anyway. They wander the streets for a time, pausing at whatever catches their eyes, shop fronts and street vendors and a stray cat that Allen has apparently befriended, working their way through the city until they stop at the public library, quaint as far as libraries go, but, as Allen says, it is good enough to get the job done.

It smells of dust and old parchment when they step in, and Kanda finds the scent oddly familiar, comforting in a way that his heart knows but his mind does not remember. They take to choosing books at random and flicking through them, Allen's advice simply being "Pick up whatever takes your fancy," and he does, browsing his fingers along the spines of worn books and pulling out any that make him pause. He does this until the weight begins to strain the muscles in his arms, then moves from the shelves to the tables among them, setting his selection down and settling in to read them. Allen joins him a short while later, having chosen just a few books on something Kanda doesn't care to read, and the following hours are silent, filled only with the sounds of their fingers across pages and the occasional sigh.

There is something familiar about this, he thinks. He knows, somehow, that he has done this before, sitting in a room lined with worn tomes with a companion reading beside him, but he is unable to place who or where or why, considering he is quick to discover that he thinks reading is an arduous waste of his time. His eyes browse over the words without really taking them in, boring him enough that he sets aside all but the illustrated encyclopaedias to flick through.

He stops on one drawing that stands out to him, a simple illustration displaying various kinds of swords, his eyes drinking it in as his calloused fingertips brush over one in particular, long and thin and slightly curved. He knows this, more than he currently knows anything else, as though it is ingrained into his very being, an extension of his own body. "I'm a swordsman," he mutters, as though speaking it confirms what he already knows deep in his gut. Allen looks up at him, eyes wide as he watches the thoughtful awe on Kanda's face. "I had a sword like this, once. It had a name, but I can't..."

He trails off, narrows his eyes at the drawing and picks up the book to bring it closer to his eyes, examining every detail, every pencil line. It is not exactly the same, but it is so, so similar. His fingers twitch with the memory of it, solid and real in his hands. "Would you like me to find more books on that?" Allen asks, his expression showing confusion but a spark of hope in his eyes.

"It wasn't of this language," he remembers, holding up a hand to tell Allen to wait. It was... an illusion, he thinks, but that doesn't feel quite right. The scar on his chest itches, and he knows he is close. "Mūgen," he breathes finally, relaxing with the knowledge, but then there is a sharp burning sensation in his arms and the book clatters from his hands.

"Kanda?" Allen calls, getting up from his chair and stepping around the table as Kanda doubles over with the sudden pain, knuckles turning white as he curls his fingers into fists. There is a hand on his shoulder, solid and cool. "Kanda, what happened? Should I get help?"

"No," he bites, breathes, then, calmer, "No. It's alright." He takes a few careful breaths as the pain begins to subside and change, from sharp flames to quiet embers that sting in his forearms. He can feel liquid on his skin, and he pulls his sleeve up to find bright crimson rolling in beads from deep scores in his flesh.

"Oh," Allen whispers beside him, awe striking his face, and then he rummages around in his pockets to produce a handkerchief, gently dabbing it against the wound and wiping the blood away, moving afterwards to the identical mark on the other arm. "Did you always have these?" he asks, glancing up to watch Kanda's expression, which is focused intently on the new scars.

"No," he says, furrowing his brow. He brushes his fingers over the markings, the flesh around them tender and red, runs his fingertip over both lines, presses it into the point where the cross meets. They weren't there before, but now, seeing them there, he feels more at ease, safer somehow. He isn't sure exactly what it is, but he knows they carry some kind of deep meaning for him, and now he is determined to find out what. "I'd like to... meditate on this," he tells Allen, taking a moment to find the word he was looking for.

Allen seems to understand, neatening the books on the table before he leads Kanda back out, cautious as they head back to his house. Allen leaves the moment they return, asking if he needs anything before claiming he's going to run some errands and leaves him alone in the house. Kanda sits himself down in front of the dim fireplace, crossing his legs and taking a deep breath, counting the seconds between, and his fingers absently trail up to the thin raised lines beneath the sleeves of his shirt, still warm in his skin.

He rolls up his sleeves, exposing them. They've begun to darken, he notices, almost black in the darkest part of the scars. He closes his eyes, breathing in the dry air of Allen's little townhouse, picturing the sword in his mind. "Mūgen," he whispers to the air, and he feels liquid burst warm from his arms, opening his eyes to find it dripping down into the carpet. Perhaps he was mistaken in choosing to try it here, but as he brushes his fingers over the soiled fibres of the carpet the blood comes clear, trailing behind his fingers and curling in the air beneath them as he lifts his hands up.

Curious, he focuses his attention on the rest of the blood staining his arms, hovering his hand over it and thinking of it in the same way as that from the carpet, and he is not disappointed; it moves with his motion, following his will almost as easily as the limb itself. He thinks of the sword again, and he realises now that the silver was not stained with blood as he had first assumed. He runs his other hand over the opposite arm, gathering the liquid there and holding the two collections before him, swirling and rending between his hands. The third time is the charm, he thinks, and wonders where he'd heard that. "Mūgen," he says again, more forcefully, a command rather than a simple name, and the blood morphs and joins together in the air in front of him, his eyes unblinking as they take in the sight of it forming the shape of the blade he somehow knows so well in his mind, moulding solid steel where there had once only been liquid.

He reaches his hand up to close gently around the hilt, and as it falls into his grip he feels like he is coming home. This is where he belongs, he thinks, running his fingers down the smooth length of the blade. This is his, more than anything has been or ever will be, more a part of him than even his own soul could hope to be. He rises to his feet and gives it an experimental swing, careful of his surroundings, and the feeling of it rushes in his veins, sharp and cool like the blade itself. It almost makes him giddy, but he won't practice with it just yet; he feels as though he should wait for an opinion from someone who seems to have their head more together than he currently does.

It is nearly dark when Allen returns, stepping through the door with paper bags in his arms and shaking off the rain that had once again broken outside. He seems surprised to find Kanda sitting in his living room with a sword resting on his crossed legs, but gives him nothing more than a curious smile as he passes through to leave his haul in the kitchen before returning, looking down with bright sparks of curiosity in his eyes. "Where did you get it?" he asks, crouching down to examine it more closely but still keeping his distance.

Kanda looks at him, then down at the sword, running his fingers over the cool surface of the blade. "I made it," he says, and he knows that Allen's furrowed brow means that he should say more. "I shaped it from my blood. This is Mūgen."

Kanda watches in silence as Allen marvels at the weapon, grey eyes wide with wonder; he reaches a hand out to touch it, but hesitates, glancing up at its wielder in askance, and Kanda lowers his eyes in silent confirmation. Allen gently brushes his fingertips over the smooth crimson steel of the blade, thumbing the guard, his hand moving across the hilt. "It's beautiful," he murmurs, and as he looks back up at Kanda with a warm smile on his lips, there is a glitter in his eyes that makes them seem fuller, brighter, like waxing moons, but then it is gone again and Allen stands back up to head for the kitchen where he had left his things, rummaging through the bags and talking about the various things he had bought for dinner, small talk, most of which Kanda had never heard of but seemed fine enough.

The rain lets up just as they are finishing their meal, the night still dark and the chill seeping in through the walls. "The townspeople say it's going to snow tonight," Allen muses quietly as he is cleaning up, pausing to look out the kitchen window at the droplets on the glass and the black abyss beyond, and then he gives a small chuckle, more to himself than to Kanda. "The first snow of the season. It's hard to believe that it's already this time of year."

Allen retires shortly afterwards, and Kanda is not far behind him. He looks at Mūgen where he had placed it gently across the sitting chair in the living room, touching his fingers to the cool blade; he needs to find a sheath for it, or a way to return it to his body. It is unsafe to leave a naked blade here. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath in, releasing it slowly, keeping the image of how he had forged the sword clear in his mind, and he calls its name once more. Blood seeps from the scars in his forearms, trailing down his wrists and forming a solid as it falls past his fingertips, polished crimson to match the blade sitting in his hands when he opens his eyes, smooth and perfect. He takes the sword and delicately slips it into the sheath, the blade sliding in smoothly and the hilt finding its place with a gentle click, and he smiles. He feels much safer with it resting solid and real beside him, though he is not sure what he wants to be safe from.

He dreams of an open field and dense woods beyond, the sun warm on his back and the grass cool beneath his feet. You are free, they say, multiple and gentle in his mind, and he takes a tentative step forward. You are free. Go forth, for you shall not return. You are free. He breathes out, stars spilling from his mouth like silver glitter in the mist from his lungs, closing his eyes to have the sunlight filtering through his lids. Something flutters in his chest, washes over him like a breeze, and his eyes slide open, watching the grass wave like oceans before him. Go, they say, and he begins to walk.

He wakes to a silence more thick than any he has known before, the world still dark and the fireplace glowing weakly beside him. He doesn't bother trying to coax it back to life, instead focusing on investigating the silence, his sheathed sword grasped in his hand as he steps quietly through the house, peering through the window at the front of the living room, one of few lamps on this street illuminating the snow that sits orange in its glow across the ground, flakes still falling in a way that he finds calming, mesmerising almost. He does not remember the last time he has seen snow, if he ever has at all; it's beautiful, gently dancing through the air before settling on the ground, pale and glowing.

There is a muffled shout from upstairs, Kanda whipping his head around to face it, followed by a quiet whimper that he knows could only be Allen. He slowly heads up the stairs, the wood creaking slightly beneath his weight, finding himself in a short hallway with only two doors to his left. He picks the first one, giving it a gentle knock, waiting for the muffled response of affirmation before he pushes it open. "Oh, Kanda," Allen breathes, wiping his eyes with a quiet sniffle, and then glistening silver eyes meet his in the darkness, flicking briefly down to the sword in his hand. "I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

He had been dreaming, Kanda realises, watching the tremble in Allen's hands and the horrified look in his eyes. He sets his sword down against the wall just inside the door, closing it behind him as he steps in. "No," he replies simply, walking over to stand before Allen where he sits with his knees drawn on the bed. He looks into those eyes for what feels like an age, young and scared even as his lips pull up in a nervous smile, and he can only think that this is a man stuck in an endless cycle; Allen is strong, resilient, made only moreso because of whatever horrors plague him, and it seems that the stronger he gets, the more he breaks. Kanda shifts around to sit on the mattress beside him, silent and unsure, and Allen finds the words before he can even begin to seek.

"I'm sorry," he says again, small and gentle and frail in the darkness, one man against the world. "I have dreams, sometimes, and they often aren't good."

"What do you dream about?" Kanda asks him, eyes set on the window adjacent to the bed even though it is too dark to see through, and Allen seems hesitant. From Kanda's own experience there has only been voices, surreal landscapes unfolding around him as he floats within his conscience and listens to their whispers; he has no way of knowing, so perhaps listening to another's recounts could help him place what should and should not be there.

Allen's hands shift uneasily in his lap, free of their gloves for the first time Kanda has seen, his right hand playing over the darker skin of his left, his eyes losing what little light they held as his lids fall heavy over them. "Shadows," he murmurs, and Kanda looks back at him. "Memories that aren't mine, people I can't recall the faces of. A life that doesn't belong to me. Maybe it's yours," he jokes feebly, "Since you can't remember any of it. But no, it's his, and I'm stuck remembering it."

"His?" Kanda repeats, but Allen only shakes his head, closes his eyes. He understands; Allen has probably said more than he is comfortable with already. If there is one thing Kanda knows, it is silence. It has long since been his companion.

"Kanda," Allen says quietly, drawing his attention. "What if… What will happen when you get your memories back?"

"I won't," he says simply, and Allen's hands still in his lap, silver eyes snapping up to his face. The voices of Kanda's dreams keep playing over in his mind, and while following their commands somehow unsettles him, this is something he has his own convictions to follow. He clears his throat, runs the pad of his thumb over the scars beneath his sleeve. "Whoever I was, I'm free of it now. I can do whatever I like."

Allen watches him with growing curiosity, but there is something else in those eyes that Kanda has trouble placing; his closest guess is fear. "And what would you like to do?" he asks tentatively, voice thin in the darkness.

He thinks about that for a time, and, not unusually, comes up with nothing. "I don't know," he says honestly, and it holds a deeper meaning than he'd expected. With no recollection of who he was, he doesn't know where he should go, what he should do.

"Then stay," Allen says, Kanda's eyes flicking up to meet his, "Just until you find something. To give you somewhere safe until then."

"Funny you should talk about safety," he murmurs, his lips twitching upward, "When you are the one that needs security." Allen looks away, at that, back down at the hands he holds in his lap. Kanda takes a moment to just look at him, to take in this strange boy in his entirety, his smile never faltering in public but hardly ever there when he's alone. "Why did you stop?" Kanda asks quietly, "In the alleyway last night?"

Allen looks at him for a moment, then sighs, a forlorn smile touching his lips. "I've been in a similar place before," he explains vaguely, memories playing over in his mind. "Nobody helped me when I needed it, and I… I didn't want to let you go through the same thing."

Kanda wonders, once again, what has happened to Allen to make him such a person, far too kind and far too empty. He is grateful for it either way; humouring the thought of where he would be if Allen had been like other people, had walked straight past him, makes him all the more thankful that he hadn't. "Thank you," he says earnestly, probably the most sincere thing he's said in his life, and Allen gives him a smile that makes him feel at home.