It had been years since human life had teemed vivaciously on the earth. Robots had been left behind, left to do the work for humans that had long passed away. Still, the people who still remained continued inventing, innovating, and repairing them. It was like an obsession, an addiction. It was a need to leave a piece of themselves behind in a world where they could die any day.
There were a special occupation for each robot. A2 units focused on agriculture and livestock. D9 units focused on purifying what water they could find. K4 units, however, were possibly the most sought after on the thinly-spread market. Not only were they beautiful displays, servants, and companions, but they also doubled as guards, and in some cases (due to their protective nature) they were used to find humans still living in the decrepit rural villages and bring them to newly built cities.
Today was no different for unit K4-NDA. He was currently out of his master's house, looking for any survivors. His master was obsessed with taking in the less fortunate, and he loved to call every kid that stumbled into his house "son" or "daughter." He saw K4-NDA as a son too, the fool.
K4-NDA threw a rather prodigious piece of rubble to the side without batting an eyelash. He rolled his right shoulder a few times, and not hearing a single creak, decided he could keep going forever.
He had heard the cry of pain from miles away; something he was trained to do, but not nearly as well as his companion (or brother, as Master Tiedoll often said) M4 unit. M4-RIE was the least of his worries at the moment though. He had to help whoever was under this.
That being said, it only took a few minutes for him to clear out the large stone chunks. From what he could tell, the ceiling had collapsed in and trapped its occupant. Before him lay a boy, long passed out. His left arm was completely crushed, and there were a few cuts on the left side of his face. When the android reached down to further inspect the injuries, he noticed a pool of blood puddling around the boy's white hair. K4-NDA knew it was too dangerous to move him now, so instead, he settled for a quick healing session for the boy.
He made a fine slit on his wrist with a nail from his other hand, and a vibrant red fluid oozed out. The kid before him was breathing shallowly, but the K4 unit decided it would be safe enough to just shove his wrist to the cracked, pink skin of his lips.
He did, and the boy went silent for a bit as the blood against his mouth seeped past the chapped flesh there and onto his tongue. A few dry swallows later, and he twitched. K4 took that as his cue to pull away just in time for the boy to break out into a session of rough coughs. After a moment, he sat up, blearily blinking and rolling his left shoulder a bit.
"What... Who?" He must have gotten his head smashed pretty hard; either that or he was just slow.
"I'm a K4 unit come to help you. Come." The robot held out his hand. The human looked first at his eyes, then the hand in front of him, then to the characters that seemed to be mere tattoos into the front of the robot's neck. They blurred together a bit, but he could still make them out.
"Ka... Kanda?" Well, he mostly made them out.
"K4-NDA, but you may call me Kanda if that's what you wish, Beansprout." He tugged the boy up, realizing that he was rather short and rather unsteady.
And rather cute.
"Bean... Sprout? My name's... Allen." Allen seemed to be in a daze, but that wasn't a surprise considering he was just crushed.
"Beansprout," Kanda insisted, bending over a bit before scooping up the boy in front of him into his arms. "Let's go." Allen let out a yell, clinging immediately to "Kanda" in fear.
"W-Wait! Wh-where-" but it was too late; the robot was already hopping across the large village to his master's residence.
At first, all Allen seemed to be able to do was scream, but eventually, and unexpectedly, a little bubbling laugh began to tumble out from his lips. The K4 unit didn't seem nearly as disturbed by this as the tears falling back onto his chest, soaking his shirt.
Humans were confusing.
Tiedoll had been gushing all over the new arrival ever since Kanda had brought him home a few weeks ago. He was British; the first fully European human Tiedoll had ever seen out here in Asia. He was enthralled with the unique features in Allen's face, the lightness of Allen's hair, the quirks in Allen's speech.
The entire world had been speaking the same language for some time now. The globalization only proved to raise tensions everywhere: the exact opposite of it's purpose. However, hearing Allen roll off word after word of this new language with the accent of his ancestral tongue almost had Kanda thinking that the new speech wasn't so bad.
Tiedoll wouldn't stop drawing him, crying over how beautiful Allen was, and reassuring him that his scar and his arm only made him more beautiful.
The old man had a way of saying everything Kanda thought, including the fact that his new name was officially "Kanda." He didn't like how the old man had insisted with calling him by his old companion name, "Yuu," anyway.
Allen on the other hand still seemed like a ghost in their house, always distant and almost always silent. Kanda hated it for some reason that didn't make sense to him, and one day, he decided to change that.
"You look like shit, Beansprout." The kid was dirty again; apparently he had forgotten than they had a working shower here. He had been petting a little stray cat before Kanda had so rudely scared it off with his large, creaking footfalls.
"My name's Allen." The British boy was quick to correct him.
"Beansprout."
"What, don't you have enough storage up there to remember? Al-len. It's not that hard." The short boy stood, eyes suddenly engulfed in a fire that Kanda had yet to see since he had arrived. Always, always, Allen was nodding his head, giving a little fake smile here and there, laughing softly and emptily. Now? Now he was alive, and though Kanda could never share in that feeling, he felt proud. He, a lowly little android, brought something to life.
"It's just not important enough information to store away."
" Important ? My name isn't important? I'm sorry, I forgot, you only consider yourself important, right?" Kanda felt his lips twitch up in a way unfamiliar to his recent action completion history. He was smirking, and Allen seemed briefly shocked at the sight.
"That's right. You don't look out for anyone else in this world unless you want to end up a sex doll or a piece of scrap metal." He hummed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, "although I guess for you humans that's something more like, 'unless you want to end up being bought and sold or dead on the street.'" Allen seemed horrified at the mere concept of what Kanda was suggesting, and he began speaking, nearly yelling. It was loud and annoying and far too idealistic to ever be realistic, but it was all so beautiful to Kanda. He kept arguing with Allen because it charged up something within him, a section of machinery his system hasn't used in years.
The emotions he thought had grown numb.
Allen was so beautiful that Tiedoll had began to make little dolls of him. Even after months in the home, Allen couldn't quite understand him. He had so many robots, but he never saw the old man actually make anything other than drawings and dolls. The T1-M unit seemed to be European just like Allen, even though Tiedoll claimed to have never seen a European human before. Kanda and the CH4-OJI unit were both Asian, Japanese and Chinese respectively, and the M4-RIE unit seemed to be in between European and African himself.
Allen was just confused. Tiedoll couldn't have made all of these robots without a guide or reference, right? He had to know what people outside of his continent looked like. Maybe... He just used the interconnected social communication systems for basic information? The internet was an archaic thing, long since censored by the singular government that had tried to scoop together the world only to lose it to ruin.
He was convinced that Tiedoll had to have seen a European somewhere , but the man also had no reason to lie to Allen. He was just so bewildered by it all.
When he asked Kanda about it, the robot seemed surprised that Allen noticed.
"Isn't this something you should be asking Master Tiedoll about?" He didn't want to answer the eyes looking at him in curiosity. He was afraid of the laughter and the scorn and the past experiences behind those same questioning eyes.
He was afraid.
Wonderful fear. Something he hadn't felt in years. In a lifetime.
It was so beautiful, yet it still brought the machinery in his head to a dangerous rate of spinning. He was short-circuiting right in front of Allen as the pale boy bombarded him with more and more questions.
In the end, he had to carry and steaming Kanda to Tiedoll. Turns out the robot wasn't constructed to handle so many conflicting thoughts at once. In fact, the old man seemed astonished that the cause of his system shutdown was an emotional overdrive and not overwork like it always was.
"I... Didn't even know."
"Didn't even know?" Allen repeated, handing Tiedoll a cloth from a basin of cold water. The man placed it gently over Kanda's face. The robot had gone into a temporary sleep to cool down.
"I didn't even know he was built to process emotions. Those... I didn't think there were any left."
"Wait," Allen glanced down to Kanda, then back to Tiedoll, then to the robot once more. "Didn't you build him?"
"No, no," he laughed a bit at the idea of building his own robot, "I'm only an amateur! I repair the robots I find and give them new names."
"You... Found him?" Kanda was aggravating, but he was a good robot. He carried out whatever order was given to him swiftly and efficiently. Allen was secretly envious of how strong he was too. He couldn't begin to imagine why anyone would throw him out. Even if they needed more compliance, all they had to do was rewire him until his free will disappeared. It was a simple and effective procedure, but looking down at the cooling machinery in front of him, Allen couldn't help but to feel guilty for even thinking of that.
"Yes, yes. I found him out in the dumpster of a mansion. I asked him many many times what had happened to him, but he never answered. Very mysterious." Tiedoll smiled fondly at the memory, but Allen seemed incredulous.
"You opened him up and took a look, right? It's important to know what has happened to your robot."
"Of course not." The man shook his head, hand reaching out to pat Kanda's shoulder. "Yuu has every right to his privacy that I do."
Allen's face contorted in confusion for the umpteenth time that day. He hailed from a very industrial land; somewhere that used to be called England. There, everything was factories and efficiency. He couldn't begin to imagine why anyone would try to show sympathy to a robot. Then again... That was just a lie. He knew perfectly well how attached you could grow to an android.
He took a look down at Kanda again, and once more guilt clawed at his stomach. Could he really think of this man- no, no, he was a robot. Well, he was, but he was also a companion. If Allen didn't hate his guts so much he'd even consider the guy a friend.
The robot guy. Kanda wasn't human.
He couldn't start thinking that he was unless he wanted another incident like Man-
Like unit M4-NA.
Kanda wasn't a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but even he could tell that Allen was being suspicious around him. It was disconcerting to say the least. In fact, after a while, the long gazes and unnecessary moments of contact became outright frightening. He broke the next time Allen "accidentally" laid his hand down on Kanda's knee.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He hissed out, yanking the hand off of his leg.
"Nothing! Nothing! I just thought that I could use your leg like an armrest, you know?" He was grinning a bit, but that was soon replaced with a frown. Kanda wouldn't let go of his hand.
"What the fuck do you think I am? A piece of furniture?" It was mostly just a joke: a way to poke at the love for everyone that Allen liked to boast. The boy hated when people pointed out his moments of apathy or a small, slightly rude action. At least, that's what Kanda gathered over the last few months they had spent together.
The two were sitting side-by-side on a beaten-down sofa. They had been watching tv until Allen decided to get handsy.
Kanda was waiting to hear some pathetic defense or something shot back at him. Maybe even an apology; Allen said sorry often; though it was never directed at Kanda.
The defense, the repartee—the apology never came. Instead, Allen only looked at him confused. It was almost as if... As if he...
As if Kanda had hit the nail on the head.
"Oh, fuck, no," Kanda's face scrunched in disgust, the machinery inside him heating and turning and buzzing too quickly—too much; it was too much, "fuck you." He threw Allen's hand back, standing up suddenly.
"Wait, Kanda!" Allen's voice was laced with bewilderment and something else the robot didn't want to explore. He began to march off, but two hands quickly clutched his wrist. He yanked his arm away; he needed space, and he needed it now.
"Fuck off , Beansprout." He hissed, but the boy just couldn't take a hint. He pulled hard enough to throw Kanda off balance, and he landed with a dull thud on the couch beside Allen. Kanda struggled to stand once more, but he was pushed down.
A hand on his shoulder, two palms on his waist, some claws in his hips, innumerable fingers digging into his legs. He screamed, or at least, the gears inside him did. They whirred at a intractable pace, and he could only choke on something that wasn't there, on air he never needed to breathe anyway. He escaped the only way he knew how.
"Calm down! You didn't even... Give... K-Kanda?" Allen sat, puzzled as to why the robot just stopped moving completely. Did he cause the machine to exhaust itself again? No, that couldn't be it. His hand was on Kanda's shoulder, and the robot didn't feel hot like last time. He felt cold, almost...
Lifeless.
"Kanda?!" Allen quickly fitted the android's cheeks into his palms, tilting Kanda's face to his own. The eyes there remained unmoving, focused on everything and on nothing all at the same time. He looked like a mannequin, like some kind of doll in Allen's hands. The distant stare saw right through him—right into him, and he screamed.
"Kanda! Kanda!" He shook the robot's shoulders, the tears welling up in his eyes being held hostage by his thick, white lashes.
"Oh, God, Tiedoll! Tiedoll!"
M4-RIE and T1-M were both there that day, and although their master was at a loss for the situation, "Marie" seemed to know exactly what was going on. He refused to speak, though, and "Tim" refused to leave Kanda's side, holding the android's large hand in both of his own.
Tiedoll was in charge of watching over Kanda. His son seemed almost... Dead, but the murmuring machinery that whispered through a stethoscope said differently. He was at a lost of words. Kanda wasn't stiff like he was in his overworked mode. Instead, he was a rag-doll, a little toy his Tiedoll's trembling hands.
And those eyes.
And that terrible gaze.
How it saw absolutely everything, understood all, but processed nothing, digested nothing.
How it stored it all away for another time—a stable-enough state that simply couldn't exist in a human imagination.
"Yuu... Yuu is in safe mode." He spoke finally, and Marie seemed surprised that Tiedoll was able to recognize what was happening. Even worse, the expression on Tiedoll's face, the way he stared at the perfectly neutral expression of Kanda's...
He knew what that meant.
"'Safe mode'?" Allen repeated, at a loss for what any of that meant.
"Yes. He is... He's protecting himself by shutting everything unnecessary down. Fine movement, balance, speech," Tiedoll paused for a beat, "emotions."
It was if he was speaking in a language that everyone in the room was fluent in except for Allen. The worst part was that he expected Allen to understand it; he expected Allen to have spoken it all his life.
"I don't... Understand." He said finally, the cold ocean of silence that had passed through the room was killing him slowly, frostbite on his tongue and water in his lungs and hypothermia in his mind.
A harsh wave hit his body, tossing it around like nothing. He looked toward Tim, unsure if he heard the robot correctly.
"Wh-what?"
"Tim! Your language!" Tiedoll's words did nothing to phase the T1 unit.
"I said get the hell out, you bully!" The boy, no, the android, was crying. There was nothing else that could be. Water was spilling from his cheeks. It ran down his cheeks too quickly; it was too thin to be real. Just simple water , not the bubbles of salty, saline tears that real humans had, but...
No matter what, Allen couldn't discredit that full, tumultuous torrent of human emotions that flowed through Tim's eyes, through the skin between his knitted brows, through the tension in his pristine, gritted teeth.
Through the hatred in his disposition.
The distinctly human hatred in his heart.
He stood, frozen. The wave was made of liquid nitrogen, and he felt if someone tapped him he would crumble apart.
However, a warm hand landed on his shoulder, and although Tim's dry ice gaze never wavered, Marie's warm disposition was enough to melt him. He turned slowly to face the man, his eyes lingering on Tim's for a little before flicking to the taller android, senses lost in Marie's voice.
"We need to talk."
"Kanda's not intelligent." Allen was expecting to be scolded. Instead, Marie was saying what he already knew. He opened his mouth to say something, but Marie's blind eyes bore into the wall behind him in a way that demanded silence, so he kept silent. "Intelligence is something most robots have. There are, however, special robots, like me."
A silence engulfed between them, and Marie slowly lifted a hand to point to his eyes.
"I'm blind. I was built to be blind. My optical functions are nonexistent, but that was only so I could focus solely on audial stimulation. I can hear from miles away; theoretically, I have the best hearing ever known. That's how I was designed." Another silence passed, and eventually Marie motioned for Allen to sit down beside him. Now the two were on the same sofa Kanda had shut down upon hours before.
"Kanda's like that. His programming was focused entirely on three things." Marie held up three fingers, facing forward, not even bothering to try to face Allen.
"Battle strategy. Most likely he was a guard for someone." He put down his ring finger, an oddly-colored digit that didn't match the rest of his hand. Allen suspected it had been cut off at some point.
"Emotions and genuine reaction. He was someone's companion. Someone really thought a lot of him. And third..." Only his index finger remained now, and Marie slowly turned to look at him. Blind eyes gazed upon Allen, but they weren't like Kanda's. They merely existed, they were merely there, they perceived nothing.
"Subservience." That hung in the air like a thick, bitter mist, a fog of poison. It was like pepper spray on his tongue, down his throat, and Allen choked on it.
He wasn't very knowledgeable about robots or programming or any of that, but "Emotional Subservient" meant only one thing in the android world.
"You're kidding..." Marie shook his head.
"We're just all waiting for him to tell us. Ever since that meltdown we've known he has emotions, but his pride is keeping him from getting things off his chest."
"My God," Allen rested his face in his hands, eyes shut and brows drawn in frustration, "I... I triggered him. I-I didn't mean to I just-"
"I know," Marie rested a comforting hand on the boy's arm which he felt a bit until his palm landed on Allen's shaking shoulder, "I know."
It had been a few days, and Kanda still wasn't out of his safe mode. Allen's talk with Marie helped him a bit, but he ultimately still felt responsible.
Tim wasn't helping either. Any chance the small android got, he went off on Allen. The small child was usually so laid-back; now he was insulting Allen daily. Any time he found the teen outside, he'd take great pleasure in throwing stones at him.
Any time he found the human concentrating on something, he told him to leave.
Tim demanded that Allen leave.
Evidently, despite his cold heart, Kanda was almost like a big brother to the boy, and Tim wasn't taking Allen's injustices lying down.
He had tried on several occasions to explain himself, but the tiny android only shouted over his claims, sometimes in words and sometimes in extended syllables. Allen was getting tired of explaining himself. Allen was getting tired of hearing all of his own thoughts fly from the mouth of a little kid.
A week had passed, and Tim was only growing angrier. Both Tiedoll and Marie had tried to convince him to calm down, but he was persistent. He saw Allen as a threat, and he saw himself as the only one left willing to defend. This ultimately led to a rather botched attempt at an attack. Namely, Tim catching Allen sitting on the front porch and shouting as he ran up to him, hitting his legs with a stick.
Needless to say, Allen easily put down the siege.
Here he stood, holding Tim up by the back of his collar while the robot flailed and kicked and screamed and beat Allen to the best of his abilities.
The boy simply put his hand over Tim's mouth, shooting him a mother-like glare.
"What on Earth are you doing?" A muffled reply came from behind his palm, so he lifted his hand, raising a brow at the child.
"Revenge!"
"Stop that! I told you, I didn't mean to do that to Kanda!"
"Liar!"
"I'm not lying!"
"Liar, Liar, Liar!" Tim struggled once more, his blue, spiky hair swishing back and forth. "Let me down right now!"
"Not until you believe me!" Tim huffed before beginning to swing back and forth in Allen's grip. He continued for some time, Allen being too bewildered to do anything about it. That would prove a fatal mistake, though, for as soon as Tim was close enough, he twisted his body to the side and landed a tiny but powerful kick to Allen's crotch.
The robot was dropped, and the human fell, clutching his thighs as he took to a fetal position. Tim continued to hit him with the stick in defiance, laughing almost evilly in accomplishment.
Allen was dealing with two very real, very intense sources of pain, and although his poor groin was slowly working it's way back to normalcy, the branch hitting him wasn't going away at all.
Well, it wasn't for awhile at least, but suddenly, that too stopped.
At first Allen thought it might have been a trap, but when he looked up, he saw Timothy crying in joy as he clutched a leg. Following said leg up, Allen made eye contact with another android.
"K-Kanda..." The tall robot, who looked even taller now that Allen was laying down, stared down at him. For a brief moment, the boy feared those empty eyes would return once more, that the android would collapse, that Kanda would break once more, and it would be all his fault.
But, instead, the robot picked up Tim then sent a sound kick to Allen's shoulder.
Surprised, he cried out in pain and confusion.
"Wh-What-"
"Bastard. I'm waiting." Allen was holding his injured shoulder in his hand, nearly wanting to cry from pain. It was his left shoulder, the same that was crushed months ago by debris.
The same arm that Kanda saved.
"Waiting?" He struggled a bit, but managed to shift until he was sitting on the wooden porch once more. "For what?"
"Christmas." Kanda rolled his eyes. "An apology, dipshit."
"Apology?!" Allen cried out, now standing once more, expression furious.
"Yes, unless Tim here knocked the sense out of you with that stick, I'm expecting an apology."
"You saw that?"
"Of course;" Kanda smirked, adjusting the boy in his arms to rest on his hip, "It was quite the show."
"You asshole ! Why'd you even wake up if all you were going to do was torture me?"
"I just realized that if I kept sleeping, I couldn't make your life a living hell." The android chuckled at how frustrated Allen seemed. "Plus, this little guy here wouldn't stop licking my face." Surprise brought the British boy out of his rage, and he turned his attention to the tiny dog peeking out behind Kanda's foot.
"T-Tim?!" The dog barked, and the boy in Kanda's arms spoke a confused, "huh?" "Ah, no no, not you, Tim, I meant Tim!"
The boy only looked more confused, but it made a little more sense when the tiny, blonde dog raced up to Allen, leaping into his arms. Immediately, he took to lapping at Allen's face as he giggled wildly, eyes filling up with tears of joy.
"He must be a pretty loyal pet if he came all this way just to save your sorry ass." Kanda scoffed, turning back to the house. "I'll be waiting."
"You're not getting an apology until I get an explanation." Kanda froze, eventually looking over his shoulder at Allen. They both stood like that for a bit, staring at each other, a little cutie in their arms contrasting with their death glares.
"...tch." Kanda turned forward once more. "We'll talk later." And he strode off, Tim demanding cookies as he approached the kitchen. At the opportunity for food, the other Tim jumped out of Allen's arm, dashing into the house. His owner laughed before running in after him as well, calling that he deserves some sweets too.
It was late at night a few days later, and Allen had fallen asleep on the porch. Despite the weather being quite warm, nights were still chilly this time of year. That being said, Kanda was in charge of this kid's well-being, so he brought him a blanket.
Allen was cute. That much wasn't up for debate; he had a little baby face that just made everyone want to pinch at it and kiss it. A sleeping Allen was no different. The kid's hair had grown a little since the time he was here, and the shock of white was softened against his sweet features. Strands fell down, reaching toward his lashes and brushing against his lips. Kanda stood, staring at him for a good few minutes, processing how sweet he looked bathed in the moonlight, how innocently he sat, head lolled into his shoulder and hand folded in his lap, a book fallen to the floor beside him. He was too precious for his own good.
Kanda draped a cover over him and tucked it in around his shoulders so that it wouldn't fall down. He could always just wake him up, but he was reluctant to ruin the moment. For some reason it just seemed priceless and immaculate, and he just couldn't. Instead, he softly carried another chair over and placed it delicately down beside Allen's. He couldn't feel "cold," and he didn't need "sleep," but the machinery inside him did have specific temperature standards he had to adhere to, and every once in awhile it was necessary for him to enter into a recharging state.
That's how he justified pulling the large, fluffy blanket around himself as well and falling into sleep mode beside the British boy. The cover of the porch roof would protect them from any undesirable weather, and Kanda could wake up in an instant if there was any real threat, so he let himself enjoy this moment, systems slowing and chest rising up and down in a perfect, fake rhythm programmed into him.
When Allen awoke, he was unusually warm and cozy. He thought, for a moment, that maybe Tim had fallen asleep on him. It felt like his fur all over Allen, but it wasn't quite right. Was he in bed? He could have sworn he fell asleep out on the porch. Maybe someone carried him back? Begrudgingly, he opened his eyes with a yawn. No amount of guessing would come to the equivalent of actually just looking and finding out.
As his lashes fluttered apart, he was meant with a large expanse of soft blue fluff. The blanket was draped over him, leaving no window for cold air save for his left side, but that was draped over the seat next to him. He followed the blanket over and up, surprised to see a sleeping Kanda there. For a brief moment, he forgot about the man being an android. The rising and falling of his chest, the slight part in his always smooth lips, and the way his brows were raised in unrestrained relaxation just made him seem so human that Allen forgot.
In his memory lapse, the boy reached over, the blanket on his left arm tumbling down his chest and leaving his shoulder open to the cold air. He wasn't wearing his gloves, he realized drowsily, so his dark, marred hand was out in the open for all to see. Fire had once eaten away at it, and if it hadn't been for Kanda, the appendage would have stayed crushed and unusable under a rock with himself attached. The least he could do in thanks was show the man some affection. He delicately reached out, fingers just barely brushing against Kanda's perfect cheek. The small touch, however, soon had the man's eyes slowly opening as well. Kanda couldn't stay asleep if someone was touching him. Allen mused that he was a light sleeper, but his heart almost stopped when those intense eyes, mere inches from his own, stared at him in a bit of surprise and confusion, an expression before unseen on Kanda.
"Beansprout?" His voice lacked that morning groggy quality, and of course the first words he spoke would be an attempt to piss Allen off, but he couldn't help but to giggle at the man.
"G'mornin... Sleep well?"
"I..." Kanda looked almost confused; it was as if he thought Allen was joking. "Yeah... You?"
"I slept very well," is fingered pressed lightly against the tip of the android's nose in amusement. "thanks to a little kindness from a certain someone."
Immediately, Kanda realIzed he was busted. A flush rose to his cheeks, and he tried his best to cover it up with, well, the cover.
"Couldn't let you freeze; Tiedoll would kill me, say I was out for revenge."
"Really now?" Allen decided it'd be a good time to pull his hand back from the other.
"Yeah."
"You're cute when you lie." The boy's words hung in the air for a few seconds before quite spectacularly crashing down on Kanda's shoulders.
"Y-You bastard! " He sat straight up, unceremoniously ending their moment as the blanket rushed down his chest. His cheeks were bright red, and his hair was disheveled, and his eyes were just so vivid and intense.
Allen felt himself lost in them for a brief moment before he suddenly saw the world flip over.
More specifically, he felt his chair tumble over and he followed suit, an angry Kanda stomping away from the scene. He was dazed, in pain, and too confused to even speak, but he couldn't help but to laugh, sunshine kissing at his pale flesh as it filtered in through the gaps of the wooden banister. He laughed until he cried, and he cried until he could breathe no longer, and at that point he figured he had laughed enough for one day and definitely should go cook something for breakfast. He, of course, set the chair right and folded the blanket to take in, but his cheerful humming stopped when he saw that he had lost his page in his novel. Sighing in frustration, he picked the book up and shook his head. Oh well; he'd figure it out.
It was a few weeks later when Allen had finally caught Kanda alone. It was nearly a reversal of roles: the android was out late on the porch, staring up at the sky. Allen joined him, silently seating himself on the porch step beside the android.
"Hey."
"Mm." Kanda seemed engrossed in the heavens, but when Allen looked up, he only saw a clouded, grey expanse.
"What's so interesting up there?" He mumbled curiously, turning his head to the android.
"Everything." Was the only response he received, but the boy wasn't about to just let it end that way.
"I can't see anything at all."
"Sucks to suck." He gritted his teeth in irritation, but tried his best not to show his anger. A few silent moments ticked by, Allen looking melancholy the whole time.
"I've never seen a star." This finally made Kanda look at him, subtle surprise in his features.
"So you were born after the light cloud was developed?"
"Well, I was born the year they started using it, actually."
"You don't look twenty."
"Nineteen, actually."
"I see..." Kanda briefly looked back to the sky before returning his attention to the human once more. "Do you... Want to see?"
"What?"
"Do you want to see a star?" Kanda's expression was completely neutral, but it inundated Allen with an excitement he barely kept under wraps.
"Yeah, but-" Kanda put a hand over Allen's mouth and placed a finger over his own lips.
He then brought his fingers down upon his arm, seeming to punch something in. The Brit nearly asked what he was doing, but Kanda had already held out his hand, a pulse emanating from his palm. Allen nearly had a heart attack, clutching onto Kanda's left arm as the robot continued to seemingly control the world with his right. Eventually, the expanse around him fell to blackness; a darkness he had never before seen in his life. He was frightened.
His eyes starved for something, anything bright, and they landed upon the refulgent ocean above his head. Not only were there stars , but entire galaxies, shimmering clouds tossed up far, far away from earth winked down at him. The twinkling expanse was topped off but the vivid white orb in the sky. He gasped, never seeing the moon so clearly before.
His eyes widened substantially, drinking in all the universe had to offer: it's stunning nebulae and its nebulous lamps that floated, bright and white, yet so much more. Allen never knew just how colorful the sky was, but nothing could compare to the blue, violet, and indigo arches stretching out across the sky and crashing back down along the horizon. It was here, where few trees reached up and brushed the sky that a series of green and fuchsia bursts lit up towards the heavens as well.
There was white all over, spattering beautifully over a canvass that, on no single part, was black alone. Instead, the universe gave to him an exquisite mix of a dulled rainbow, like a dark layer of soap suspended evenly over a still body of water.
He continued to look out into everything, and Kanda continued to simply watch the boy's expression. He really did look like a child now, his eyes filled with wonder and his mouth agape in a stunned smile. After a few moments of staring in wonder at the porcelain skin and snowy hair and silver, glittering eyes that reminded him a little too much of diamonds, however, he decided to look up as well.
Just in time to see a streak fall across the sky like the swift strike of a sword.
Allen jumped, a small, adorable "ah!" Reaching Kanda's ears.
"What was that?! Was that a missile? A bomb?" The robot kind of pitied the boy who was looking up at him in genuine fear. He shook his head, a little, natural smile tugging at his lips.
"A shooting star."
"Is... Is that the name of a spacecraft or?"
"No, no, you're safe. It's just... A piece of rock hurdling through space. It won't harm you."
"What if it hits Earth?" Allen felt that Kanda simply wasn't seeing the severity of the situation.
"Well, they usually do."
"Then we're in danger!"
"No, I said you're safe, didn't I?" Kanda flicked the boy's forehead, earning him quite the pissed expression in return. "They burn up in the atmosphere, and by the time they reach earth, they're about the size of a grain of rice, if not smaller." Allen raised his brows in surprise before turning back to the sky in awe.
"Why are they so bright?"
"Well, the accepted reason is that they have so much energy as they fall at high rates towards Earth that it's converted into light."
"Are there... Other reasons?"
"Other people like to say they're so bright because they're so filled with hope." He snorted at his own statement, but Allen was intrigued, but only flicked his gaze over to Kanda for a second before returning to space.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Legend says, if you see a shooting star and make a wish, it'll come true." He would have chuckled had it not been for his surprise at the determined look in Allen's eyes.
"I wish... I wish you would tell me about yourself!"
"You don't say it aloud, Beansprout!" Suddenly, Allen was just staring at him expectantly.
Kanda sighed in exasperation, bringing a hand up to bury his face in.
They stayed that way for awhile, but eventually, Kanda shook his head.
"You first."
"Wh-what?"
"I said," Kanda turned his body to face the visibly beaming boy more, "you first."
As it turns out, Allen had an android of his own long ago, when he was only a child. It was an M4 unit just like Marie. M4s specialized in care: mostly in the form of parental guidance. Where as Marie was especially built to watch and teach blind students, M4-NA, or "Mana" as Allen used to call the android, was built to care for orphaned children specifically.
Allen lived in a small human reserve run by androids (mostly M4s), and it was a blissful and peaceful existence. The air was still and dry just like everywhere else, and the barren land was bereft of any animals, yet life here was still easier than it would have been alone. However, one night a gang of men surrounded said reserve. They were a ruffian people left over from the extremists still alive after the big war, and they were looking for new lackeys. Needless to say, a boy an intensely red arm and a giant, expression-filled scar carved into his face made the unique—and therefore valuable—candidate.
"Mana" had seen to it that Allen could escape unscathed and even slipped him the location of an older android, one that could guard the boy. The gang, however, did what they usually did to resistant androids and scrapped Mana, believing the lie the robot told him:
"The boy has already left."
Of course, watching that before his very eyes wasn't the end of Allen's story, no. From his tiny, secret hiding spot between the walls, he could only see what the tiny ventilation holes there allowed, and he remained silent as Mana had earlier commanded he do.
They ripped at Mana, bit by bit, piece by piece. These tall, ugly, disgusting men and women tore into his father as if he were a toy. The experience had left him so shaken that even after the gang was long gone, he stood, trembling and silent in the wall. He hadn't gathered the courage to emerge until the day after, and when he saw the few torn apart pieces of Mana the men left behind, he wept.
The next day, he began his journey. The several hour trek to the reserve a few miles away left Allen ready to pass out. He had always been an ill child, then again, were there really any healthy children left in the world? The pollution coupled with residual nuclear waste and light clouds left nearly every human body completely ruined. In fact, the light clouds were making Allen the angriest. The nanobots were constantly leaving a metallic taste in his mouth, and he kept coughing, his throat completely destroyed because of them. The slight illumination of the bots was handy at night though. He could see perfectly because of the clouds. That was, after all, their purpose: light the way for everyone at night so that no secret actions can be taken. The government was crumbling so quickly that it was hardly more than a few old guys sitting around a table telling the leading gangs politely to behave, but they were still desperately trying to hold onto what little power they could.
After making it through the hot, dry wasteland separating the two reserves, Allen received close to no consolation at all. The new android, M4-RIAN, was an M4 unit, but he was not focused on taking care of Allen (or children in general for that matter). Instead, he focused on women, and more specifically, on helping women find suitable men. This, apparently, required him to spend time intimately with them for some odd reason, and this led to him slowly building up mountains of debt. Even if the women provided houses and clothing and food, "Marian" insisted on drinking fine wine day in and day out.
He was a robot; he couldn't even get drunk.
No matter how many times Allen told him this, the android continued in his drinking habits, and to make matters worse, he pushed all of his debt on Allen. The boy suffered through years of running from debt collectors, doing odd jobs 24/7 , and hiding from angry citizens he had robbed via cheating in poker.
Eventually he had saved up enough money in his (appropriately dubbed) "I'm getting the hell out of here" fund, and he bought himself a train ticket, several months supply of water and imperishable food, some clothes, and a suitcase.
He was transported to a deserted village and he took with him Marian's small little dog, Timcanpy. There were no people there, but it was by a small freshwater stream. The water source and fairly good soil even allowed for some farming, and Allen thrived there for quite sometime. He was kind of lonely, though, and eventually he began to think of moving out to somewhere more populated. He was beginning to feel less human with the lack of social contact, Besides, he promised Mana he would never stop moving forward, and he had been rather stationary in his village thus far. Guilt and solitude compelled him to start packing. The same day he was to move out, money and food stored up to survive another train ride, the abandoned building he had been staying in collapsed. He remembered screaming, a giant surge of pain, and fuzzy crying, but after that he passed out.
"The last thing I really remember about any of that is your face, actually..." Allen chuckled nervously as his tale came to an end. He scratched delicately at the back of his neck as his gaze met Kanda's once more. Blood rushed up to his cheeks at the sight of stardust dancing in the android's irises. His expression wasn't tight now; it was soft and sweet and almost sympathetic. Allen felt his own hands relax, lips parting just a bit in surprise at Kanda's beauty. It was nearly artificial, like a model or a doll. His hair was the dark sky itself, long and silky and speckled with lights refracted from millions of miles away. He nearly blended into the dark expanse around him, as if he was only one small part of the universe.
That wasn't right though, because Kanda was right here before him, and Kanda was so much more than that. He was tangible and he was touchable and he was here . His skin shone, and the whites of his eyes were ineffably striking, illuminated solely by the evanescent moon and omnipresent starlight, and maybe that's what he really was. A star: a galaxy. Allen entertained the thought that maybe, just possibly, Kanda was his own universe: a tumultuous expanse of emotions and beauty wrapped into a lone man.
Suddenly, a hand, soft and warm and smooth and long, landed upon his shoulder. It broke him on his trance, but it only made his blush worse, eyes widening a fraction as Kanda smiled—truly smiled— right in front of him, inches from his face. The ephemeral expression faded to a calm, and Allen felt his heart lurch forward, pounding into his sternum with enough force to nearly make him giggle. He held it down, though, for Kanda's hand shifted from his shoulder to his side, resting delicately on his waist.
"I..." His lips pressed into a thin, frustrated line, and Kanda's eyes flicked down, uncharacteristically evasive. Allen leaned forward just a tad, head tilting to the side in curiosity. Kanda couldn't ignore that diamond gaze, so he took a deep breath before nodding. "I lost someone too."
The boy felt a tug on his soul at Kanda's morose smile that reminded him so much of himself.
"We were both K4 units, but they never called us by our unit titles. I was still K4-... I was still 'Kanda,' and he was... 'Karma,' but they called me 'Yuu' and his name was 'Alma.'" Sometime during his narration, Allen's hand had intertwined with Kanda's free one. "We were both built to be guards, and we worked for the... Mafia boss or whatever the fuck he was. He was... A character. Liked to chop people up for fun. Spent a fortune on hiring engineers just to build pain censors into us. We were, in short, his toys. Cut us up and watched as we healed up like magic. It was amusing for him and Hell for us. It only got worse when he got bored of us and tossed us to his kids. They were both young adults, a boy and a girl. Had control issues." A pause filled the air, and Kanda crossed his legs almost uncomfortably in the silence. "Spent another fortune on programming emotions into us. Used us for dolls, only... Differently. " The implications were obvious; Allen gulped but remained silent. "Just as sadistically. Alma was their favorite though. Alma was..." Allen waited for a string of compliments, for an foggy stream of romantic consciousness slipping from Kanda's lips. "The most annoying kid ever: Idealistic, loquacious, stupid." A dry scoff left Kanda's mouth instead, and Allen had no idea why he would have expected anything different. "But his smile was beautiful. It was like... A child's, even though he was never had a childhood. Neither of us did. They liked to break him because he had hope left to break. I was..." A little intake of breath, "I was boring . Wasn't emotional enough. Considered it a fault in my programming.
"No matter what, though, Alma, that fucking moron stayed positive. Had this idea that we could... escape. I... I was stupid enough to play along.
"They caught us countless times. Over and over again. Punishments escalated with each capture. Eventually they... They..." Allen squeezed his hand; it was an assurance. Kanda could stop if he needed to, but the gesture was so oddly... Sympathetic. Completely human. He had to keep talking.
"They made us fight. To the death. It was... It was my fault. I told them that I couldn't give up if that asshole kept being hopeful and shit. No one could give up with his presence. They used that against me.
"I couldn't fight my programming, and Alma couldn't fight his. As soon as they commanded, we started fighting. Alma... He wasn't as strong as me. I was built to be the better guard; he was the better companion. In theory, we were a perfect pair, but... As enemies... He didn't stand a chance."
"Kanda... I'm so sorry." His thick accent brought the android to a soft chuckle.
"Not your fault. They trashed me anyway. Turned me off first of course. Just left me to rust. The only thing I remember after that is Master Tiedoll waking me up, and, I guess, here I am."
"Well. That's... Good, right?" He gave the robot's hand another squeeze, and for the first time in those few moments, Kanda looked up into Allen's eyes. That smile—incredibly handsome and sweet and glimmering like some sort of treasure—was back on Kanda's face.
"Yeah. Right."
The two stayed there for a moment, Allen undergoing a mental debate. Kanda was so close and so beautiful, and the fact that he was an android was becoming less and less significant. The teen was without words, stuck only with the feelings churning in his stomach. Before he could act on anything, however, Kanda had a hand on his cheek, thumb tracing the scarlet line on his porcelain skin.
"You're so beautiful, you know? Like... Like a constellation." A silence. A tilt. A kiss.
They were kissing, and Allen's eyes were closed to the world, his senses closed to anything that wasn't Kanda. Their contact was soft and gentle, normal belligerence forgotten momentarily. Night wind left butterfly kisses on their skin, and the stars continued in their winking, desperate to separate the two stars beneath them, but they couldn't. Nothing could. The two neutron stars beneath them were colliding and falling into their own small black hole, and nothing could pull them out.
The universe stopped its incessant buzzing for a bit, and in that space, filled with a semi-silent susurrus from distant trees, Kanda and Allen separated on their own violation, eyes carrying a dazed mirth, something so blithe that neither could define it.
There was still a tacit acknowledgment though, one of silent sweet nothings and implicit determination.
They stayed that way for who knows how long, just staring at each other, but the sudden flickering of the light clouds functioning once more interrupted their concentration. It, of course, wasn't enough to break it completely. No, the light merely added a curtain between them and outer space, and all space between them faded as well.
Tiedoll suggested the idea of a wedding, but Kanda nearly took off his head for saying that right in front of the whole family.
"It's not like you guys do a good job at being subtle." Tim rolled his eyes, and Kanda's sword was suddenly at his throat instead of Tiedoll's. He screamed and hid behind Allen.
"C'mon, Kanda. Don't be mean to Timothy or Tiedoll. They're just being caring."
"Shut up, Beansprout. I didn't ask for your opinion."
"Oh here we go again..." Chaoji muttered, sneaking away from the table as silently as possible.
"The names, Allen , JerKanda." The teen stood suddenly from his seat at the table, and his and Kanda's glare was practically sending lightning across the room.
"Some things never change." Marie sighed, a smile on his lips as he finished cleaning up the dishes. He didn't turn when he heard more shouting and some crashes; Kanda could fix that all later. Plus, Tiedoll and Timothy's melodic laughter was more than enough for pay for whatever he'd get stuck with cleaning.
They were wed on Allen's "birthday." Something people used to call "Christmas." It was only the family present, but that's all that Allen and Kanda really needed (maybe it was even a little too much for Kanda).
A new house was built beside Tiedoll's. They two were rather attached to the porch that they fell in love on, but they had to move on, even if the move was only a few yards away. It offered them a semblance of privacy, and Kanda finally felt comfortable to begin constructing an old dream. A garden soon stretched out behind their house, stark green in a field of barren, ugly, brown rock. It seemed impossible, like an oasis in a desert of despair, but before long it surrounded not only Allen and Kanda's house, but Tiedoll's house as well. Timothy had successfully figured out how to construct a safe frequency magnetic field, and the light clouds avoided where they lived, but the androids still functioned perfectly. After a year or two, they seemed to have a field all to themselves, a large pond in the middle where flowers reached out to the sky. Only, they weren't alone anymore. Animals hid among the foliage, and Allen was once again awed at the little piece of human existence that Kanda unfolded before him.
Chaoji was just putting up some clear radiation shielding around the property when he spotted two travelers making their way to the pair of houses. Two men and a woman who looked onto the plot of land as if it wasn't real.
A few more years passed, and a whole new village was built. It was self sufficient, complete with a man-made (or, rather, android-made) freshwater stream, garden upon garden, fresh air, and radiation protection. Allen was thriving in the new surroundings, taller and stronger than ever before (though still shorter and weaker than his husband). Tiedoll, however, had fallen ill. Not because of the new surroundings, but because of old age. In all honesty, Kanda had never seen a human survive so long in the sheer level of pollution around them. He was surprised Tiedoll was as old as he was before he finally collapsed one day with fever.
The entire village seemed to care about the guy; they brought him food and water and flowers and gifts. Some people tried to give him precious trinkets of theirs, but he only wanted them to keep their possessions. He was a humble man, and there was no reason death should change that about him. He hung on for another good year, almost fooling Kanda into believing that he would make a full recovery. However, one night the man called Kanda into his room. It was sad to see Tiedoll try to wander around on his own, so Kanda helped, an arm around his master in support. Tiedoll, for some reason, thought that was very appealing, and he said as much.
"Little Yuu-chan's always been so cute~. Glad to see that hasn't changed." The old man laughed at the glare he received before nodding over to his dresser. Kanda took the hint and half carried his master over without a word. Once there, he let Tiedoll go, and the man shuffled through the drawers. "I was thinking about how you don't need your air processing unit anymore... No use in filtering pure air, right?"
Kanda watched in curiosity, very subtly trying to peek at whatever Tiedoll was trying to find.
"Well, I thought to myself, what could Yuu really use? More than anything else, what does Yuu want?" A sudden "ahah!" left the man's lips, and he pulled out a small mechanical cube and two rings. "As I was saying, while I wondered and pondered, an old saying appeared in my head:"
Tiedoll gestured for Kanda to pull off his shirt, and once he did, the man checked his power cell just out of habit, pushing the tube back into place and snapping the "tattooed" cap back on. He then popped opened the panel on the right side of Kanda's chest, fumbling around before pulling out the aforementioned air filter.
"'If you live to be one-hundred,'" He shuffled a bit, setting the filter down on the dresser. "'I want to live to be one-hundred minus a day,'" Tiedoll snapped the new machinery into place with ease, a gentle smile on his face as he closed the panel. "'So I would never have to live a day without you.'" He concluded by placing the rings in Kanda's hand: two silver bands, intricately marked by microchips along the inside.
"You-"
"I thought to myself, 'why think this?' Because it really is an old thing. Something my mother was told by her grandfather who was told by his so many great grandmothers or something or another, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it fit you well."
"So this is..."
"A life-mediating capacitor."
"They take years to build!"
"I've had a lot of free time on my hands lately." The old man chuckled, slowly meandering over and sitting down on the edge of his bed with a soft "oof."
"Master, you can't be-"
"Ah, ah, ah~ we talked about this."
"T-t... Tiedoll, you can't really be serious. What about-"
"Me? Oh, please, these old bones won't last me more than a month at most. I just want to see my son happy before I pass away; is that too much to ask?"
Apparently it was, because Kanda was suddenly doing something he hadn't in years: he was crying. Water streaked down his cheeks which were dark red in shame. He was ashamed that he took his Master's attention away from himself for years, and he was ashamed he had nothing to give in return.
"Now now, I said I want to see my son happy. This isn't exactly what I imagined, you know."
"You... Asshole. Why?" Tiedoll laughed, shaking his head at the obviously stupid question.
"I love you, Yuu. Told you many many times before. You're a son to me."
"But-"
"No buts! Just go tell Allen right now. Tell him you have a surprise for him. He'll probably cry just like us old fools." And true enough, when Kanda looked up from the rings in his hand, Tiedoll was trying his best to wipe at the never-ending streams pouring from his eyes. Kanda couldn't help but to scoff at him even though he was in a rather similar situation.
"I'm surrounded by idiots." He sighed, arms encircling the man, and the hug was returned with all the force Tiedoll could muster.
Allen really did cry when Kanda brought it up. At first he wouldn't agree to it. He couldn't deal with Kanda's life depending directly on his own. The machine would shut Kanda down as soon as Allen's human body died, and he didn't want that. He wanted Kanda to live on for the both of them, but after two days of constant bickering, Kanda convinced the man that that life isn't what he wanted. A life after losing someone else he loved wasn't what he wanted.
Allen put the ring on, but he wasn't happy about it. Kanda fixed that with a few kisses and the promise of cuddling later even though he was the world's most awkward cuddler. Allen was obsessed with the practice, though, so he buried his mild discomfort in favor of comforting his husband.
Tiedoll was right after all. His body quit on him a little less than a month after giving Kanda his gift. The funeral was somber and silent, and the mourning period seemed to take over the entire tiny village for nearly a year. It prospered further, but in a slow, maudlin black. Eventually, however, that too lifted, fleeting as all concepts in life are, due to the birth of a small child that the citizens could collectively crowd around and spoil rotten. It gave them all hope, and curiously enough, Kanda and Allen both found out that they absolutely hated the concept of taking care of children.
"Ever get tired of seeing me get older?" The two were quietly sipping tea when the question was brought up, and Kanda looked up from the book he was reading to raise a curious brow at his husband. It was true that Allen lacked his signature baby face now, but what replaced it was a gentle jawline and soft cheekbones. It was sweet and subtle just like the man, and Kanda scoffed.
"Ever get tired of seeing the same old thing every day?" It was true; he hadn't changed a bit since they first met. He was designed to look twenty, and even though Allen was about thirty by now, Kanda has yet to age a day.
"Never."
"Then there's your answer."
"Could have just answered it normally."
"Appreciate when I try to be different, you prick."
"Jerk."
"Sprout."
"And in all these years of marriage you still don't know my name."
"'Course I do. It's Beansprout."
"JerKanda."
"Fucker." And at some point during their bickering, Allen had come to sit on Kanda's lap, sprawling over him in an obvious attempt to aggravate him. To top it off, he kept swatting at the android's book with his left hand. Kanda ended up growling and tackling him to the ground, giving him a merciless punishment of tickling. By the way Allen giggled, it was almost as if he was still a boy, and from the elation Kanda felt, it was almost as if he was living out a childhood he never received.
Kanda looked down at the boy in front of him, unable to hold down a smile as tears leaked out from those diamond eyes. His little constellation rubbed at his cheeks, a few little giggles passing his lips still.
He leaned down, giving those cute little lips a peck before humming.
"I think I prefer this to your sad attempts at comebacks."
"Oh, shut up, you ass." But they still smiled at each other, stuck in some ineffable moment wrapped in the tacit understanding that was more than machinery and oil, bones and blood. Two souls peered out from their eyes, and they spoke and danced and laughed, but in reality, Kanda was just giving his husband an incredibly romantic noogie.
Author Notes: I hope you enjoyed! If anything about this AU is confusing, please feel free to ask questions!