Disclaimer: Don't own DGM. Making no money from this.
Notes: Written for and beta'ed by Jaya Mitai, expert plotbunny breeder, silverfox motivator, and protector of the sanity of English teachers who have tried one time too many to explain the difference between to and too, for which I owe pear tarts without the coffee =) And now I will go off to a corner and wait for everything to be AU'ed ^^;;
-x-
He lost the first piece of himself without ever knowing it.
His mother had died when he was three, but he'd known her, known the touch of her hands and the sound of her voice, remembered the way she smoothed down his hair and the graceful motions she made when she knelt, arranging her robes so he could climb into her lap.
Nobody ever told him that he and his sister had been orphaned. He figured it out himself much later, and by then he couldn't quite care. He did not even have the same fading memories that he had of his mother to cling to; all he remembered was the feeling of a heavy hand on his head as he'd clung to his sister's yukata, and the image of a tall, dark shadow outlined in the doorway before the sunlight returned, causing him to scrunch up his eyes, but he had never known the man, and why should he care that he would never see again what he had never seen in the first place? He supposed, much later than that, sometimes, that he could look deeper into the details, the files, find out how his father had lived and died at the Order he now served at if only for his sister's sake, because she likely had never known. But then the flowers would crowd in on his vision and he left it, because they cleared when he was on missions, when he was fighting Akuma.
They told them in thickly accented Japanese that they needed them, the two of them, the strange people in white coats with badges and their servants in the sandy robes. They said that their father wanted to see his children, he and his sister, and they should come with him and not worry about the house or the tiny field or their next meal because this was what the Order had promised their father when he had come to work for them.
Shizuka had agreed in the end despite her misgivings, because she was dutiful and it had been many years since she and Yuu had last seen their father, and because she could and would protect Yuu from anything, anything if she needed to. They left on a ship that night, the two of them each clinging stubbornly to a cloth-wrapped bundle that the strange people had insisted that they need not bring, and he spent the next few days sick before he became used to the rocking motions of the vessel.
They arrived in a bustling city, and he barely had time to learn to stand again before they were being rushed onto a noisy metal beast that roared and screeched and spouted smoke from its head. He wondered who had tamed it, so that it would so willingly carry so many humans in its stomach, and he wondered if he could become a giant metal beast-tamer when he grew up as well.
Shizuka was quiet however, expression more and more withdrawn and thoughtful, and it had been many days since she had attempted to inquire for more information on how their father was currently doing.
There were too many new things to see for him to notice though, even as they turned onto smaller streets similar and different from the dirt paths at home, and his eyes became even wider when the people, dark haired and dark-eyed in the city, changed to so many different colors and shapes and sizes and wearing all types of strange clothing once they entered the great rock of a house they called "Headquarters".
"Please stay here for the night," the man with short, spiky hair that they called Chou told them, showing them to a simple room done in the local style, with sturdy wood furniture and a window high up on a wall. "I will come to get you when it is time for dinner."
"Our father," Shizuka started quietly.
"Will be here shortly," the man said, grimacing, and Shizuka flinched at his expression before straightening her spine and bowing formally.
"Thank you," she said shortly, and this time it was Chou that flinched.
-x-
He lost the second part the next morning before he'd ever fully understood it.
They were taken down to a breakfast of rice gruel and stuffed buns and savory pastries that weighed the lining of his stomach with too much oil. They were asked if they would like to bathe, and after grabbing a change of the clothes they'd brought along despite the Order's insistence that new clothing could be provided, prodded down different hallways flanked by much taller personnel. Clinging tightly to his bundle of clothing and soap, he was nudged firmly into a sterile-looking white room, and realized too late with the sound of a heavy bolt sliding in place that no bath would have locks and guards such as this. Clutching his clothes higher on his chest in confusion and the beginning of fear, he turned to do…something, and a hand shot out, catching him painfully tight under the chin.
"This is Kanda's son?" the man holding him asked, and he understood his name but nothing else and there were other hands settling on his shoulders, rooting him in place now in full terror.
"Yes. Will he do?"
"There is a better chance of success than there would be with the girl. She is an adult already." The man holding his chin tilted his head back so he could look Yuu in the eyes, and Yuu was aware of clothes different from any of the similar sets of outfits most people in the Order seemed to wear, light-colored eyes and short, dusty sand hair made dark by the light behind it. "Welcome to the Order, boy," the man said, and let him go, turning and gesturing to several people in long white coats milling about behind him. "Grant and Lei, stay here. Out of the way, the rest of you." Yuu heard sounds of protest from behind him but that didn't matter because he was being dragged further into the room and pushed onto a cold metal table with runes carved into it, and he'd dropped his clothes and they would get dirty and Shizuka didn't like that even though she would wash them with him anyways because everything was precious and should be treated with the proper care and respect in their house, and where was Shizuka? A hand on his chest shoved him down on his back and he yelled, flailing, until a cold white cloth covered his nose and mouth. There was something choking and sweet filling his lungs as his arms and legs were pinned and strapped to the table, and the man that had spoken to him reappeared in his vision again. "Welcome to the Order," the man repeated in flawless Japanese, but there was an odd lilt to the tone that Yuu couldn't place through the sick cottony fog filling him. "I hope that you will be able to stay."
Yuu closed his eyes.
-x-
He awoke to bright lights and intense pain like every crushed nerve and ache and cut and sickness of heart, soul, and body he'd ever had in his eight years of life except much much worse crawling through every part of him, and he wasn't sure if he was yelling or not because his throat and lungs and tongue and teeth were aching and burning too much for him tell and his face and ears and the tiny, tiny bones in his ears hurt too much for him to hear. The only part of him that didn't hurt seemed to be a spot empty and cold and still of any sort of feeling on the left side of his chest over his heart, and he blinked through blurry eyes—and it hurt to blink and it hurt to breathe—to plead with his eyes as the sandy-haired man loomed over him again. The man placed a hand over the blank spot of feeling on his chest and Yuu might have expected more pain if he'd been able to think, but instead the area of empty feeling began to spread, banishing the pain as it permeated his body, and while there was something impossibly void and gaping about the possessive numbness creeping over all through him, he welcomed the respite.
He opened his eyes again moments later just in time to see glinting steel slash into his bare arm, and he screamed reflexively, jerking at his restraints. The metal table did not even rattle, and for the first time since he had been trapped in the room, he began to cry. He cried as faces crowded around the cut on his arm and he cried as the knife was lifted again and embedded in a leg. He cried as voices made exclamations of approval and wonder as he felt the itch of skin sealing itself over blood and nerves reknitting to their endings. He cried like he would never cry again as an old man with bright badges on his chest and a strange hat on his head leaned over him and prodded at Yuu with a delighted expression of sick love. He lost his voice around the time someone with a wet cloth started wiping him down, and by the time he was dressed and released and turned over to another nameless person who led him out of the room and down a hall, it hurt to swallow and it hurt to wheeze though tears still occasionally dripped down his chin.
Shizuka was asleep in their room when he was pushed in again and he couldn't wake her up no matter how hard he shook her. Curling into a ball with his arms around his knees, he huddled himself as close to her as he could get and prayed that she would waken soon. She didn't stir until hours later, when exhausted and hungry, he had dozed off while clinging to her arm. She ran a hand through his hair, still half asleep, and he was awake instantly, clutching her arm even more tightly than before.
Let her be okay, let her be okay, let her be okay I'll be a good boy please let her be okay, he chanted desperately.
"Yuu? Where were you? Are you alright?" she murmured, blinking dazedly, the confusion clearing.
"Nothing. I'm fine." he said, shaking his head vigorously and squeezing his eyes shut as her other arm wrapped around him. "I'm fine."
-x-
The people came again the next morning and he clung to his sister tightly all through breakfast. Shizuka had been pensive as well, and Yuu tried not to think about what might have happened to her before she'd slept most of the day away. She probably had not slept at all through the night, and he saw her searching for someone, probably Chou from the first day so that she could demand an explanation or find out where their father was. They were met instead with a wall of Order personnel dressed in white that addressed Yuu and strongly implied he should cooperate, for his sister's sake.
-x-
He lay dying in the smoking wreckage of what was left of the building that had housed one of the most secret operations of the Black Order the next day, the earth and sky and sun red-black blood-soot, the strange entity that called itself Mugen—if you wish to call me, the voice had said, tone musical and reedy like a flute—having sucked-eaten-burned his life as it had been forced into him and he'd pleaded for strength, power, a way to do something, anything against the people surrounding him, against the threats they'd made against Shizuka, against the lies, lies! they were telling about his father, his family. The man from the day before was standing over him again, one arm hanging awkwardly while blood dripped down his face, and he gave a hoarse laugh when he saw that Yuu was still alive.
"This is the only thing you left standing for a half-mile around," the man said in Japanese, waving a lotus blossom from the pond that had been in the courtyard of the building weakly in front of Yuu's face with his good arm. "I wonder why? The position of that pond is rather interesting, though you should know better than I do what happens to cherry trees, shouldn't you?"
The man sat down with a pained grimace so he could stare at Yuu's face again, and he wanted the man gone as he breathed his own blood and choked. The man dropped the lotus onto Yuu's chest and ran a thumb over Yuu's eyebrow for a moment before grabbing one of Yuu's hands and placing it over the lotus along with his own.
"I already knew they could do the first part," he said, and Yuu wanted him to shut up, because for some reason his skin was prickling all over again, and his senses, which had been fading, were coming back, and there were colorful snakelike symbols creeping and crawling all over his vision. "I knew a long time ago they could do the first part, but it made no difference because it still killed them, killed them all. Is this telling us to respect our limits and leave God's work to God? My brother never got a chance, you know,"—and the hand over Yuu's tightened and the symbols flared—"which is why I'm here. But now,"—and he leaned so he was hovering over Yuu, so he could look Yuu full in the eyes again—"I'm not so much sure if it might not be a curse. You are synchronized now, and you will be able to draw more deeply on the Innocence than most others, but you will see the price as well. The price runs quickly though, and that possibly, may even be a blessing."
The man gave a faint smile and he mumbled something rapidly under his breath, the band of the heavy ring on his finger pressing into the back of Yuu's hand, and Yuu could move again, clawing and scratching as he fought to turn over before retching up bile onto the stained earth.
"Perhaps you can tell me one day if you know." The man's voice faded, growing distant as Yuu managed to leverage himself just enough so that he could collapse on his side, flowers obscuring his vision.
It was several hours after that before he managed to crawl to the body of his sister, the man nowhere to be seen, and another after that before people that proclaimed they were from the "Asia Branch Headquarters" arrived. Again there was babbling and shouting and loud yelling that sounded like accusations, this time accompanied by a few shakes and slaps. He hung limply in their hold because it didn't matter anymore, with the third and most important part gone.
-x-
He did not remember much of the next few months. Figures in white would occasionally drag him out of the room he stayed in, one exactly like the one he had shared with Shizuka, to be gingerly poked and prodded at with various instruments, and every few weeks, smug figures in suits instead of uniforms would crowd around him and discuss something in a language he didn't understand. For the most part, they left him in the room they had given him with the glowing green gear that had hovered next to him since the wreckage of the building and the earthen pot that he had received the only time he had spoken to ask for it. He put the lotus in the pot and stayed as far away from the green gear as he could, until one day an "officer" arrived in his room, packed up his non-existent belongings for him, and pulled him and the green gear out of the room and into another wing of the building. He was given a different room, barer than the one from a bloodbath and a lotus ago, and the next day, they began taking apart his language and customs. There were tutors and lessons and exercises and routines and drills, and he robotically went along with them while putting in the least effort possible because he didn't know what else to do. The Western furniture of his room and the tools of the classrooms, once so strange to him, now simply existed, and despite himself the languages they were teaching him were taking hold because no one ever responded to him if he didn't at least use some form of one of them, and he was punished when he did not understand his instructions. The faceless walls and endless hallways of the building and the limited area of the town closest to it slowly became the only world he knew, as drained and washed as his room and his memories from before the China Branch.
-x-
They forced the glowing gear into his hands again almost half a year after the "incident", because "even if it kills him and we lose the Innocence, they're both useless and wasted as they are now". They took him to a fortified room with "precautions" in place and surrounded him from a distance with people with weapons and made him hold the gear, touch it for the first time since that day, and as he closed his hands around it, he remembered clearly for the first time since everything had happened, remembered everything that was and everything he had done and accepted it because he'd done it and he'd always been like that and Shizuka had said that that was a good trait for a young man to have though her little brother was not very good at actually showing it in a straightforward way.
The gear seemed to vibrate when he touched it, some sort of ancient and hidden energy flowing through his palms and into him, and distantly he heard it speak again. It spoke in the language that he hadn't heard in half a year, and he clung to it, clung to the familiar cadence and the rhythm as it waited for him to decide. Mugen, he thought, remembering. Mugen. You were my father's sword. I want you to be my sword. And Mugen hummed in his mind where it had been silent, and Yuu found himself there, staring at his reflection in his mind as the shape of a blade flared blue through the rusty fog of it all and he knew it wasn't enough as surprised murmurs rose around the room and the cube in his hand glowed with clear fire.
Not enough as he was right now, he needed more. So when the various people watching, observing, people whose names and ranks he'd never bothered to remember started yammering about their plans for his "Exorcist training" and "reforming the Innocence", he tightened his grip on Mugen and told them sharply in their own language, the first time he'd ever directly addressed them, the same sentence echoing firmly in his mother tongue in his previously silent mind, that Mugen was a katana, greater than the ones he'd seen in Sensei's dojo, and would be forged as such.
The eyes of the man from Central with the stupid mustache gleamed, and he glared right back.
-x-
One day, the strange old man that strategically left plates of food lying around whenever Kanda was hiding in the kitchens away from all the staring and whispering and examinations and people made a beckoning motion towards the cabinet Kanda was curled up in as he left for the day.
Kanda followed carefully a safe distance behind, ignoring the guard that was watching him from even further away and ready to run at any moment if needed, but he was led to an open airy room with sunlight and flat cushions and grass mats, and he wanted to kick off the slippers he was wearing so he could feel the weave beneath his feet.
The old man pulled out two smaller mats and sat down on one of them cross-legged; after a moment, Kanda pulled the second mat farther away from the old man and sat down gingerly as well. They said nothing the whole time they were there, the old man sitting with his eyes closed, but Kanda found he preferred the silence and the absent-minded way the old man was ignoring him to the hushed whispers and thick tension and guards stationed within shouting distance that always seemed to surround him wherever else he went. They sat like that for a while, and Kanda was dozing off when the old man got up without any obvious discomfort of his knees at all, and still ignoring Kanda, left the room and returned to the kitchens, passing by the guard, who looked rather rattled compared to when they'd previously left.
This continued for the next few days whenever Kanda managed to "sneak" to the kitchens after his lessons, and on the fifth day, he addressed the old man for the first time since they'd met.
"Do you see the flowers?" he asked quietly, gripping his knees and letting his untrimmed hair fall in front of his eyes.
The old man opened one wrinkled eye to peer at him and returned his question with another question instead of a correction or an order the way his tutors did. "Do you see flowers?"
"Lotus," he replied, because he was punished if he didn't answer the tutors, and he spread his hands to indicate the way they surrounded him and the way their petals seemed to want to swallow him up, because he was punished if he did not explain enough even when he did not know the words or have the inclination to elaborate. "They are waiting."
The old man's other eye opened and he smiled widely so his teeth showed, smiled like he knew everything and nothing in the world and rested a hand on Kanda's head. Kanda wondered when he'd moved close enough to be within reach, but then the hand was gone and the old man's eyes closed again.
"It is all an illusion," the old man stated serenely, and after a moment Kanda closed his eyes and thought of nothing as well.
-x-
There was a girl at his lessons the next morning. She was younger than him and had her long hair in two thick tails that bounced around her face, the only sign of life reflected in her wide, dull eyes. She was eager to please, however; either for fear of punishment or because she still had something to hope for, and Kanda already knew she would soon pass him in their lessons and it wasn't just because she didn't need to learn Mandarin along with the English, French, and German.
He was surprised when she joined him in his sparring lessons, however, because it was very apparent that she wanted no part of fighting, and this was the first time he bothered to wonder what more exactly this Order wanted them for if they were trying to force someone so unwilling to learn to fight. The instructor made the girl continue despite her reluctance, over and over again until it was almost painful to watch. Kanda liked the sparring because it helped him to concentrate, to forget, forget in the way he forgot when he was in the room with the mats and the flowers would fade into the background, but the girl's discomfort was distracting him. The way she knew her discomfort distracted him, and the way that made her even more uncomfortable and withdrawn in her moves only served to annoy him even more.
He growled to her one day as they were walking down the halls to the practice room that his sister was the best swordfighter he'd ever known, and if she was going to remind him of his sister, the least she could do was do it properly. To his surprise, that seemed to make the girl fonder of him, and he found her seeking him out when he was practicing alone in the training rooms. They trained together after that, often silent the whole time except for the occasional grunt or shout, and the girl improved significantly. He felt a misplaced sort of pride when she managed to defeat her instructor one day, and confused at himself and at remembering how they had used Shizuka to threaten him when he'd first arrived at the Order, before he'd known what they were, he looked away when her eyes sought out his for affirmation. She still looked for him outside of their lessons and practiced with him after that in spite of his cold reaction, and Kanda tried not to feel relieved at her continued presence as a sparring partner or when she would come into the room when he was meditating and sit there playing with the ends of her hair until he got up and she would follow behind him at a distance to dinner. But when she called his name for the first time, called him Yuu, the way the tutors had no right to, pretending they knew everything and that they were his friends, he'd scowled and stomped away, shocked by the intensity of his own reaction and stubbornly telling himself he didn't care about the frightened and bewildered expression on her face, didn't care if it wasn't fair to push her away for something she hadn't done. She called him Kanda a few days later when they met again in the hall, her voice hesitant with an odd understanding but without fear, and he felt a strange respect for her even as he reminded himself that he was nothing to the world now.
-x-
The general arrived at the China branch a week and a half later. The old man, or at least he seemed old to Kanda, peered at the two of them over his bristly mustache and through his thick glasses, then sighed and rubbed his glasses with the hem of his worn traveling tunic and told them that they would be going along with him on his next mission so they could get a better idea of what they were here for.
They left early the next morning, each carrying a small pack on their backs and outfitted with new black Exorcist uniforms. They ended up in a small village that night where they confirmed the rumor of livestock vanishing into thin air in a wide grazing field that lay between two villages. It wasn't until the next morning, when they were milling after the Finders in search of breakfast among the busy market stalls that the trouble began.
It started with Lenalee, who had been restless since they had arrived in the village, and was getting progressively more unsettled with each passing moment. The streets were filled with people, some from several towns over who had come to buy or sell at the big weekly market that centered on the village, and they were squeezed and bumped as they made their way through the crowds. The general seemed to want to take both of them by the hand but Kanda refused because he no longer wanted anyone touching him and Lenalee was clinging to Kanda's sleeve with both her hands too tightly to do anything else with them.
They proceeded this way for part of a street, the general glancing back every few steps to make sure they were not lost in the throngs of people, and Kanda was seriously contemplating gutting the next person that crashed into him, the image of half of a young scientist sprawled across a section of smoking wall from over a year ago conveniently pushed to the back of his mind, when Lenalee stopped, jerking Kanda to a halt with her. She was staring at the back of a young man with long hair tied back loosely at the nape, a look of crushing disappointment in her eyes, and Kanda was prepared to snap at her when she suddenly let go of his sleeve and ran into the crowds. He shouted then, but Lenalee was fast even without her boots activated, and she was small enough to burrow quickly among the moving legs now that she was no longer aimlessly following along.
Cursing, he chased after her, not caring whether the general knew that his two charges had taken off or not, and he barely managed to keep the dark material of Lenalee's uniform in sight as the people he barreled through yelled after him in surprise and annoyance. He caught up with the material finally after nearly following the wrong person around a corner before catching his mistake in time, but the thugs that had hold of Lenalee by an arm and the back of her collar had also noticed him.
He'd been too sloppy, he realized, and not as prepared as he'd thought he was to fight anything and everything, even humans, even when there was no longer anything tying him to anything. The hand that came down on the side of his neck finished its job before he had time to pull Mugen, currently forged to a length he could carry, out of its sheath, and he dropped limply to the dust.
-x-
He was tired of waking up with strange men standing over him. At least this time around he did not seem to be the focus of their attention. Lenalee was curled up next to him on the ground, eyes wide but completely silent. When he tried to shift his weight so he wasn't pressing against his bound arms, her mouth opened in surprise and relief before she suddenly looked like she was about to cry. He glared at her, trying to silently tell her not to make any sound or movement that would give them away, but it seemed their captors were about to come for them anyways.
"Pity you're awake, kid," one of the men told him in Mandarin so heavily accented with the south that he couldn't make it out. "But it's your lucky day because you won't need to walk to market like the rest of them." Lifting Kanda up by the collar, the man gave him a shake before setting him stumbling on his feet. Lenalee was roughly shoved up behind him, and they were herded to a rickety loaded market cart and tossed unceremoniously onto the back.
He caught sight of Mugen beneath several layers of grass mats and wrapped trinkets and small vases half underneath where one of the men was sitting, and shifting so his bound hands were hidden by the side of the cart, he braced himself and pulled his left thumb out of its socket. He blamed the flare of pain, doubled as the tight cords of rope constricted around the injury as he pulled his hand out of the bindings, on his inattention to the unfamiliar sounds of soft approaching mechanical whirring. The curse was working to snap the bones back into alignment even before he'd started pushing them back into place as discreetly as he could, and in pain and panic, he mistook the sounds of the men next to him shouting for those of him being discovered. The screaming, however, and the cries of the panicked carthorse caused him to look up into the darkening sky. It was the first time he'd seen real Akuma, three of them, all "Level Ones", but what surprised him was not the horror-almost-awe he felt at seeing their grotesque existence with his own eyes, nor the thread of fear that he'd never done this before and had no idea how it would really work. It was the clear ringing hunger and determination, purpose, that was radiating from Mugen like the sound of a temple gong. Mugen was calling and he answered.
He shoved away the man sitting on top of Mugen as the Akuma closed in, and his hands, the ropes still tangled around his right one, closed around the hilt just as a bullet seared through the wood of the cart in front of his nose. He swung Mugen up wildly, the sword still sheathed, and there was the sound of a shout and a large thump as Lenalee barreled into the Akuma, her arms still bound. He managed to draw Mugen then, and hacked fiercely any way he could as Lenalee continued kicking and pummeling the Akuma from any angle possible. The Akuma attempted to pull away, but Kanda got another hard hack in just as Lenalee landed on it with all the speed and force behind her unbalanced tiny weight, and there was a loud metallic whine before the explosion sent both of them flying.
It took him a moment to realize that his vision had cleared and what he was focusing on was the remains of the cart and everything and everyone on it crumbling into black dust; there was another shout above him, and he sat up quickly, Mugen still gripped in his hands as Lenalee landed beside him. The two remaining Akuma seemed to be retreating, but they were heading rather purposefully toward where he suspected the Innocence was reported to be located, which was also in the direction of the next town. Lenalee bit her lip but looked determined, and Mugen nudged him firmly in his mind, so he cut the ropes around Lenalee's arms and was running after the Akuma when he felt small arms wrap around him and his feet leave the ground.
Lenalee grunted at the unaccustomed weight, and he flung his arms around her first in sudden surprise then for balance, but they were still moving faster than if they'd been running. The waving grass rippled like watery golden wings on the earth below them, and a year ago he would have stared in simple delight instead of wondering if he'd be able to do something similar with Mugen someday. He shouted over the wind for her to drop him on top of the closest Akuma, and they landed on it together as Lenalee's arms gave out. This time though, they were better prepared, and a deep, clean slash with Mugen coupled with several persistent, forceful kicks from Lenalee as he was yanking Mugen out of the Akuma's shell with both hands did the job. He felt Lenalee's hands grab for him again through the explosion, but a piece of flying Akuma hit him full in the stomach and he was thrown out of her grasp.
It took longer for his vision to clear this time around, and something inside his belly had definitely been crushed. He picked out Lenalee's tearful face before he registered what the shadow behind her was. He wanted to yell at her to move, to yell at her for being distracted from the battle, he wanted to tell her that he didn't care what happened to him and he wouldn't blame her if she left him and he didn't care if she cared because this was the only way he'd planned or expected to end up after that building of the China Branch had gone down in smoke and rubble and better here than on the operating table even as he knew they were both about to die and it was all utterly useless. But the only real thought that made it through was that he had too many faces living in his nightmares already, and he didn't want the weight of Lenalee's because she was someone he knew and Shizuka's was enough. He managed to pull the speed and strength from somewhere to stumble up and fling himself on top of her; he heard her shouting and thrashing so he tightened his arms and legs around her, trying to keep her covered as he jerked from the impact and screamed and convulsed as the Akuma bullets burned their way in.
-x-
There were bright lights again, but instead of the sterile white ones of the lab, these were a more muted lamp yellow. His eyelids were too heavy and he couldn't keep them open, but the large, calloused hand on his forehead lifted and he heard someone proclaim, "He's awake."
Awake meant that he was alive. Awake meant that he wasn't dead. The occasional twinging of something in his stomach as it rearranged itself probably meant he wasn't dead, but he should be dead, and possibly Lenalee as well; he'd probably been hit by at least thirty of those blasted bullets all at once. He tried to move his arms, because if he really was alive his arms should also move, and his clumsy hand brushed against the now familiar shape of Mugen.
I am Innocence, Mugen reminded him. And we are bound deeper than any equipment-type would be. Mugen was silent for a moment as Kanda tried not to think about why that was because he'd already accepted it, but there was still too large a tangle of emotions he didn't need attached to the subject at the moment. Mugen hummed, satisfied, and continued. Did you really think you could die from Akuma, that I would let you die from Akuma, as long as I am in you?
You will always be in me, he thought groggily. That's what they said at the last exam. There's no way to take us apart now. He remembered also how the people from the Central branch had murmured about what a loss and failure it was, and he felt strangely defensive even as he wondered if Mugen regretted their current state as well.
I chose you, Mugen said simply. In the end I chose you. I'm not the only one, it added, almost smugly, and Kanda found that he could open his eyes now and blink at the people surrounding him.
"Shizuka?" he murmured, but it was Lenalee, crying in joyful confusion as she clutched at his arm. There was the general, hovering over him and looking so relieved that he might not have told the old man off for looking so fatherly and concerned when they weren't even related even if he had been able to dredge up enough energy to speak. There was Mugen in his other hand, humming a lullaby in his mind, and he caught sight of the paintings hanging on the wooden walls of the room, scrolls of Chinese calligraphy and Western-style landscapes like the people from Central favored, daffodils in a blue and white vase, brighter than even the lotuses scattered around it, and he was lying on blankets and bamboo mats and down pillows and cotton comforters surrounded by pieces of himself in this room, pieces held together by no more than spider-threads of the shapes between them as his web of circumstance and time moved on.
Is there fate? he wondered silently, but it wasn't a question he felt like contemplating at the moment, and it wasn't a question he really needed an answer to.
"You probably don't believe in our God, my child, but I thank Him that I was able to arrive in time and that you both are alive," the general said instead, almost in response. The large, cool brushed over his forehead again, and he fell asleep with Lenalee still attached to his side.
-x-
He left the China branch two weeks later. They could have left earlier; he had been healed by evening and it had only been a day trip back to Headquarters to hand over the recovered Innocence, but he rather suspected General Tiedoll has insisted on staying a week longer than their preparations would have taken sketching the countryside and learning all about the customs of the area so that they could be there to see Lenalee off.
The general had wanted to take both of them as apprentices, but news of how Lenalee had tried to run away, despite the general's insistence that it had been a misunderstanding, had caused an uproar among the higher ups that not even the general or Lenalee's fight against the Akuma had been able to placate. She was to be sent to Central with the inspectors the next time they visited the China Branch where she would undergo special training in the branch better equipped for honing the abilities of Exorcists. Kanda suspected the Finders that had been with them on the mission, or maybe one of those people that were always following him around the buildings of the China Branch had even followed him out with the general, and he suspected that another reason Lenalee was being sent so far away was so that she would no longer have anywhere to run to. He wasn't sure what he could say to her about that, so he'd stood rigid and stony-faced as Lenalee was led to the door of a different train once they'd reached the station.
"We will visit you when we can," General Tiedoll called to her, and she tightened her grip on her suitcase and bowed.
"Kanda!" she said suddenly, and he was forced to meet her eyes. "I'll learn how to meditate. Then I can meditate with you next time." She gave him a quavering smile when he nodded stiffly, and then she was pulled through the door.
They watched the train leave the station, and Kanda heard a gusty sigh from above him before the general moved away. "It's time to go. We will travel this way to meet up with Marie," the general stated, and Mugen hummed its agreement as they turned and left the China Branch behind.