Castle Grey

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Chapter 2

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Kanda pounded against the stone, but the girl had disappeared into the wall. Brute force wasn't getting him though the cement, but she had all the answers to this place that he needed. The piano music slowed from the next room without warning. The softer melody cut through Kanda in a different way than the frantic song. That same curiosity he felt for the pianist returned. He didn't realize he cared for music, but he hadn't really heard any before either. Could an Akuma play an instrument? Kanda approached the door and gripped the handle tight before he pushed it open.

His breath caught in his throat.

The boy at the piano didn't stop playing and Kanda couldn't be sure if he noticed him standing there or not. The boy's stark white hair made him seem frail and so did his size compared to the piano. A name drudged up from the bank of Kanda's memory along with a towering sense of longing that didn't strictly belong to him, but he couldn't place its origins either.

"Road, we're you cussing outside?" The boy laughed and the sound jarred whatever progress Kanda made in identifying his sense of déjà vu.

When he didn't receive an answer, the boy sought the source of the footsteps and froze. Kanda tightened his grip on Mugen and tensed, sharp eyes catching his every movement for a threat. For the longest moment the boy didn't react and then he took a deep breath and didn't let it go. He marveled at Kanda like he had never seen another human being in his life. The fingers that curled against his open mouth were a deep hell ember red.

Kanda narrowed his eyes and too late the boy tried to conceal the Akuma in his arm.

"Are you even real?" He asked. Kanda tried to keep his expression controlled, but what kind of question was that?

The boy glanced away and his expression filled with anguish and something else less defined. "The spell around the castle isn't supposed to let anyone inside." He sounded unsure and also like he was pressing Kanda for answers.

The swordsman gave none except for his flat stare.

"I'm so sorry." The boy with the white hair muttered and halted as if he had a hundred thousand other things to say but he didn't even know where to begin. Quiet tears fell from his metallic gray eyes, but the boy didn't acknowledge them. Something in Kanda disconnected. He had no patience for self-pity and he knew how to handle those emotions.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kanda scoffed at the so called master of the castle. The killer all the Akuma around Castle Grey had collected to be near. If he focused on that, nothing else mattered. Even if his heart felt like it was forcing itself against his ribs. "Why are you even talking to me you fucking freak? I'm here to kill you."

For a moment unabashed hurt crossed the boy's face. It was a self-loathing so human that Kanda hesitated to react.

"Oh, of course" The boy said and managed a self-deprecating smile. "It's my fault you're here." He assessed the tip of Mugen pointed at his face, but his gaze drew back to Kanda's. The boy still looked at Kanda like he was every star in the universe compacted in a jar. "I'm so sorry." He repeated. "I didn't mean to trap you here too."

Kanda didn't ask him what he meant. He didn't trust himself to do anything except what he was meant for—to fight. The boy's stares and unquiet regrets faded with the rest of his thoughts into white noise. Kanda narrowed his eyes and evaluated the boy's stance or lack thereof. Either he really did want Kanda to kill him or he didn't think much of his abilities. Kanda chose to believe that latter and gritted his teeth.

"Then just die already." With a katana extended between them, Kanda felt more like himself. He lunged with enough force to carve the puny pianist in two. The boy's arm transformed and took the bite out of the blow. He winced at the gash Mugen left when the swordsmen pried it free.

"Wait." The boy chocked out the word and held his hand out as if to stop Kanda. His face paled to an almost grey color and he clutched at his side. "I can't control—"

Kanda glared. "Shut up." He wanted to break the thing in from of him for daring to speak to him like a person. The familiarity he felt for him chipped away bit by bit. The boy blocked his flurry of attacks, always on the defensive. His protests fell on deaf ears. And then suddenly the boy's stance changed.

He grabbed Mugen mid-swing in his fist and tore it out of Kanda's hands.

The silver in his eyes morphed into a garish yellow color and he hurled the katana sideways. A completely different person stood in front of Kanda then before. The boy stalked him with his eyes. This was how a monster should look at someone. Not as if his heart was breaking in two, but like humans were the shit on the bottom of his shoe.

"It's too bad." The boy said. "Having someone else around would have been nice."

"I'm not much in the business of making friends." Kanda stared past him at Mugen. He dove for his weapon, but the boy anticipated his lunge. Twice as fast as before, he caught Kanda by his forearm and twisted it behind his back.

Kanda's arm popped three times, the last loudest and with the grinding of bone. He bit back his outcry and heard a crack of laugher at his expense. "I'm the monster you were asking for." He pressed his mouth close to Kanda's ear, yanking his hair out of the way. "Allen shouldn't have let you get so close or I wouldn't have needed to do this. He's weak, but I'm not."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kanda asked and then he realized didn't want to know. Not knowing made his job a lot easier and he already had the orders to eliminate the master of Castle Grey. Everything else was circumstance. "Whatever, I don't care what you call yourself. Just understand that when I break free, I'll kill you. And even if you let me go, I'll still kill you.

The grip on his arm was meant to crush it.

"Neah, leave him alone." The voice compelled rather than requested.

Road stepped out of the wall and pushed Neah back by planting her fingers on his collar bone. She didn't acknowledge Kanda in any other way and he dropped on one knee behind them. Something powerful passed between the two, a recognition maybe that they didn't disagree with each other except under extreme circumstances.

"Why should I?" Neah demanded. "He attacked me." There was accusation in his voice, but not directed at Kanda. It suggested that Neah's suffering was the one being overlooked.

Road straightened the ribbon Neah used instead of a tie, she brushed finite dust from his white sleeves. She looked at him like she had spent all her life protecting him from the world and regretted it. As if she had robbed him of something. "He's everything. He can be the answer." Road touched his face. "You might not like it very much, but I made him come here. For Allen." her fingers caught on his shoulder. "For. . . you. I need you to trust me."

Kanda heard her when the only thing he could feel was the weakness in his arm. He repositioned himself against the wall with Mugen interlocked in the wrong hand. If either of them bothered to look at him, they would have noticed his disgust. Komui ordered him here because no other exorcist could do the job. He had no interest in being anyone's pawn except the Orders. And if Road was lying to save him, it wasn't for any noble reason.

"I'll talk to him for you. He thinks we're Akuma possessing people, but I'll explain things to him." Road kept speaking even when Noah angled his face away and to Kanda's surprise the monster who scattered his arm nodded, took orders from a little girl.

"Do what you want." Neah shook his bangs over his eyes. The look he sent Kanda promised he wouldn't forget what passed between them anytime soon. "I suppose I'll have to take the innocence from him again though." He hesitated and checked with Road. "Less excessively this time."

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Kanda's prison was more of a chamber than a cell. The kind of room guests would have stayed in back when the castle had visitors. If Castle Grey ever had visitors. The chamber had a musty smelling bed and a dresser once chestnut under its layers of dust. Kanda paced around the room. He rolled up his sleeve and evaluated the purple finger shaped bruises on his forearm.

They took his innocence.

Kanda's fingers fell in the air at his side where his sword should be. Neah had taken something far more personal than the use of his arm from him. If Road and Neah destroyed Mugen, he swore to spend every second of the rest of his life cutting out everything precious in theirs. His innocence did what nothing else in his life ever had, gave him some kind of purpose. Kanda raked his hand over his scalp and he tried not to think about it.

At this point, Kanda would have killed Neah if he were assigned to or not.

The door had bulky chains wrapped around the handles and a huge lock dragging against the floor. Someone went to great lengths to make sure he couldn't escape. Of course, he would anyway.

A window high on the wall caught Kanda's attention. Squeezing though wouldn't be a problem if he could reach it. Kanda glanced around the chamber and his gaze landed on a ratty chair next to the bed. He dragged the furniture under the window to act as a step ladder.

Kanda kicked out the glass and dropped on the other side. Either hallway was clear for the moment. Everything looked alarmingly alike; each stone passageway identical to the other. It was a maze and Road put Kanda in the middle of it.

A clanging sound caught his attention. Kanda jerked against the wall, but no one came around the corner. After a second he realized it was the rattling of chains. Castle Grey had another prisoner.

Like Lavi?

Kanda tracked the jangling sound down the stairs. He hesitated outside of the entry where the rattling was loudest. The door didn't have a handle, but when he pushed, it opened with a creak.

"Is that you again Road? I thought you weren't speaking to me." Perhaps the most handsome man Kanda had ever seen sat flopped on the floor with heavy iron shackles around his wrists and his neck. The chains led from him to the wall and extended all the way across the floor, pooling at his bare feet. He turned his face to the side and revealed scars from deep scratches across his jaw. It was his one obvious physical imperfection, but he didn't attempt to hide it.

"You're not Road." He mused and sat a little straighter. Yellow eyes evaluated Kanda hungrily like this was the most interesting thing to happen to him in years. The man studied his uniform and then grimaced. "Exorcist." He said.

"Is Road the only other person in this place?" Kanda scowled as he tried to make sense of the difference between his imprisonment and this man's. Road seemed to be the connection between everyone in the castle. For the first time, Kanda reconsidered who his real enemy was. "Who is she to Allen or Neah or whoever?" He pursed his lips. "Is she the real master of the castle?"

The man touched his forehead, though his thick brown bangs and smiled. Kanda got the sudden sense that he and Road shared an extensive history. "She might as well be" His grin broadened, but he didn't explain or seem to relish being on the opposite end of a questioning.

"I suppose there's an interesting story for why you voluntarily entered an inescapable castle, exorcist." He dusted the hair out of his eyes and Kanda wondered again what happened to his face, but didn't particularly care either.

Kanda glanced at the window behind him and the man followed his gaze. His scoff bordered on contemptuous. It implied offence for thinking he was too stupid or unskilled enough to scale down the tower. "Think of them as decoration. There's a barrier on any window or door outside. Don't try to throw yourself out of one of those, it won't even kill you." He informed him.

Kanda made a che sound and the man lifted a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Are you an Akuma too?" Kanda asked. He never trusted anything with luminescent yellow eyes.

The man looked at him like he oozed idiot. "Of course not. Why do you think there's a barrier in the first place?"

Kanda opened his mouth to argue, but then he remembered how none of the Akuma outside dared to follow him even when he turned his back to them. "Damn it." He pinched the bridge of his noise. "Then why the hell am I even here?"

"The Order really screwed you over, huh?" Tyki laughed, but then added after a moment, "Never trust anyone and you'll make fewer mistakes" He said it haltingly like he wanted to share more, but couldn't or wouldn't find the words.

"Warning me about Road and Neah?" Kanda scowled and thought about telling him to keep his advice to himself.

"No." That grin again, like his face had forgotten how to make other expressions, but Tyki didn't strike Kanda as particularly happy either. "Neah is straightforward. He will eventually take over Allen's body. Road's the only thing keeping Allen Walker sane and that's always been chancy." Tyki traced the scars on the side of his face. His expression flattened and regressed into a sneer. Kanda suddenly realized that Tyki was more dangerous than he pretended to be. "It's Allen you should watch out for."

Kanda wasn't sure he understood the difference. The names Neah and Allen represented more than interchangeable ways to refer to the boy with the white hair. Before Kanda could ask, he sensed a presence lurking behind him. Kanda turned around just as Road came through the door. They stood across from each other. She pinched her lips sideways at him. If Kanda escaping from confinement troubled her, Road kept it to herself.

Kanda tensed to fight her, but she ignored him.

"I see you've met the exorcist." She said and gravitated to Tyki's side. "He thinks were Akuma." She snickered.

"I heard." Tyki leaned back and his chains rattled with him. He caught Kanda's gaze and held it for a long moment.

Road wrapped her arms around Tyki's neck and hugged him to her side. She patted down his wavy hair. "We won't be stuck in here much longer." Road touched her head to his, but her gaze landed on Kanda. "I promise."

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"Do you want your innocence back?" Road stood behind him with her hands soothing out her skirt. Kanda glared at this little girl with so much power over everyone else in the castle but if she noticed, Road didn't acknowledge his stare. Taking his silence as an answer she smirked. "We're both trapped in here and now you've met all of us. Why not work together?" Road examined her nails. "I hope you're not planning to attack Allen again after last time."

Kanda scoffed and crossed his arms. She wanted to blackmail him. His immediate reaction was to tell her to go screw herself.

She narrowed her eyes at his arm, but didn't remark on his fast healing either. "It's just dinner. Don't look so sour. Frowning all the time will give you wrinkles, you know?"

"Dinner?" Kanda scoffed and tried to pick apart her intentions toward him. She couldn't think he was that stupid. "So you can poison me?"

Road sighed and kicked the feet of her platform heels. "Against my advice, Allen asked to see you. I think he wants to apologize." She made a face at the concept of saying sorry to anyone, and even though he agreed, it made Kanda dislike her more. "Will you come with me to the dining room?"

"Why would I do that?" Kanda asked.

"Did I not ask nicely enough?" Road wondered and she tapped her cheek. "If you don't go to him, he'll come to you. It's been years since Allen's seen another person."

Kanda stopped himself from asking how that was possible. He gritted his teeth because the image of the boy with white hair at the piano had dug deep into his psyche. More a part of Castle Grey, willing or not, than anyone else here. Kanda questioned how he knew that or anything else about Allen Walker. He didn't seem like a stranger. Just someone Kanda didn't know he never met until now.

A glint of satisfaction shadowed Road's yellow eyes. "Coming after all?" She guessed and couldn't suppress her smugness.

The sound of her voice shattered the desperate feeling Kanda had to come face to face with Allen again. He almost refused just to spite her. "What about Mugen?" He asked.

Road didn't answer him. She led Kanda through the intricate passage ways, not getting lost once, despite the numerous twists and turns. Kanda wondered again if she created the maze like hallways on purpose to keep him from discovering something he shouldn't. They didn't' make conversation, but Kanda studied her. For a little girl, Road wasn't very childlike. She stopped in front of a wide door with curved handles and then turned to address him.

Kanda narrowed his eyes, but she made no move to attack him. "There's something else I should mention." A last minute clause, some request Kanda couldn't agree to. He scoffed, but her expression remained stern. "Don't mention Tyki to Neah or Allen. Ever." She gauged his reaction, or utter lack thereof.

Kanda tsked.

The relationships of the people trapped in Castle Grey didn't concern him. "Whatever." He assumed the giant doors led to the dining room and strode past her. Road didn't follow.

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At the head of a long table, meant for at least a dozen people, a boy with white hair lounged alone. The chair beside his had been dragged out, but the rest of the table appeared untouched. Road's place, Kanda thought and wondered how these three people ended up together. Four if he counted the other person allegedly living in Allen's head. Maybe there were many people in a way not strictly supernaturally related.

The longer Kanda watched Allen, the less he understood why he felt drawn to see him again. In a context other than fighting. "There's nothing special about you." Kanda realized and felt relief in proportion to his disappointment.

Allen startled and stood up. He hovered as if unsure whether he should approach Kanda or not. Even from afar, steel colored eyes swallowed Kanda's whole. The swordsmen took a step backwards.

"Is it broken?" Allen asked and a second past before Kanda realized he meant his arm.

The distrust Kanda felt for all of them returned in double. The person in front of him stole Mugen and engineered Castle Grey's curse. He narrowed his eyes. "No thanks to you." He glared. Kanda flexed his fingers; his arm had all but healed.

Allen breathed like he only just remembered how. "That's good. I'm glad you're okay."

He peered into Kanda's eyes for long intervals, still fascinated, but he tried to hide it by occasionally glancing down at his soup. Kanda had no patience for that kind of thing and fought the urge to mock him. "I'm Allen by the way. I guess we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other." He offered to shake Kanda's hand.

"I know who you are." Kanda turned himself away. "And I don't really care."

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1. I edited that first part soooo much. Too much? I don't know. Any feedback is appreciated.

2. Next chapter Kanda finds out just how twisted Allen, Road, and Tyki's relationship is.

3. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter. May an endless eternal amount of good karma come your way.