A/N: Another discarded potential entry to dgray-contest on LJ's week# 1 theme, sin.
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Magma
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There is a grace to this, Allen realizes, watching him.
He has always thought of death as an ugly thing, asymmetrical, reeking like iron. He is not wrong.
And yet, neither is he right. Seeing it like this, the flash of curving steel, the sprightly dance of blood in the flat air, the swift falling of the final dark... there is grace, though it is cold and sharp.
When it is over, Kanda walks past him, the dark sweep of his long coat a little ragged around the edges and damp in places. His eyes have not changed. They are narrow and deep as always, with no hint of cruelty or of kindness in their stagnant depths.
He's so young, Allen thinks inanely. Hardly older than me. But he carries death as if it's wrapped around his spine.
"Wait," he says before he even realizes what he means to do. His hand reaches out, unbidden, to catch at the edge of a black sleeve.
Kanda turns to look at him, and his gaze is still as a windless lake.
The words die in Allen's throat. He lets go. "Where are you going," he tries to say, "why are you going," but the words stick like thistles in his throat. Whatever Kanda is, it is something more than human-- or less- and beyond Allen's reach. Whatever fragments of soul remain within his broken heart are scattered and worn. All the king's men could not make them into something whole and lovely again.
All that is left now is rage, cold and relentless, against something untouchable. He takes it out on the Akuma, and the Noah, but it never abates. Allen thinks it must be like drinking wine to soothe a raging thirst.
They broke him, but they will not fix him, and Allen cannot.
Kanda vanishes around a stony corner. Allen wonders if his eyes are any different now that Allen is not watching him, and realizes with a wrench of grief that they probably aren't. His bare pretenses to humanity are the lie, not the cold shale beneath them.
At the heart of the stone, however, Allen has seen the firelight of an indomitable heart, and now he will stop at nothing to breathe it back to life.
Kanda will hate him for it.
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A/N: Not entirely happy with Kanda's characterization. Sigh.