theme/day: starlight (optional), day 2.
pairing: established Allen/Kanda, Kanda/Allen.
rating: t for language.
warning: implied character death.
a/n: I wasn't going to post this until tonight, but your lovely feedback has given me incentive to post early. Thank you all for the kind reviews and alerts! I wish I could respond to them all but I'm swamped with homework, so I don't have much time. D: But I appreciate all of you sososo much! This is part one of four, the other three being three other optional themes that you'll just have to wait and see~ But regardless, enjoy, and leave a review on your way out?
starlight, 1/4
This isn't how he pictured himself dying.
When he thinks about death, his thoughts usually focus more around the tranquility of a life-after-death; the world is a horrid place, he knows, and though he's tried to change it there's little he can do except struggle on. But when all the fighting is done and the lights of the show fade away into an empty stage of forgotten props and toys, he can't help the flame of hope that burns in his heart that the life waiting for him when he closes his eyes one last time will be a good one. Not the faraway fantasies in children's storybooks; not an illusion that the mind concocts when desperate for some kind of bright optimism in a dank situation.
But a place of nothingness, where happiness floats around in molecules and little bursts of sunshine erupt on mended flesh. A place without sadness and pain and agony; a place where he can be himself, without the burden of being a soldier.
Where demons don't exist, and exorcists don't exist, because there's no need for exorcists if they have nothing to exorcise.
But when he pictures himself dying, he likes to imagine himself saying farewell to everyone in a haze of painless confusion, before the world swims away and he swims to sanctuary. Sometimes he imagines a hand reaching out to him, and he thinks maybe he can hold on to the thread of reality for just a bit longer. But instead the hand pushes him away, thrusting him into the darkness of the unknown, where only light can possibly await.
He doesn't question it.
But now, lying beneath a moonless sky and clouds hanging overhead, he can only think that this was not how he pictured himself dying.
The white snow, always so cold, has numbed his body; it's stained scarlet with spilling blood, trailing from a wound he can't even see. And above him, looking angry and scared and tense all at once is Kanda, hands and coat attempting to clot the flow of blood that has ceased to fall.
"Don't you die on me," he growls, wiping away some drops from the boy's forehead. "Don't you dare fucking die on me!"
Allen smiles.
Well, it turns out to be more of a grimace than grin, but Kanda understands the gist of it anyways; how sad, Allen thinks, that his most real smile graces his lips when he knows he's about to die. The samurai, always so poised and stubborn and rude, has eyes that betray the anxious emotions flitting through his mind, and Allen doesn't like that look because it reminds him what they've built over the last year.
But still, even as he lays on the cold, cold ground staring at the sad, sad eyes of the man looking down at him, he can't deny the sense of comfort that slowly settles over his body at the realization that his battle is over; he has walked his path and now he's at the end of the road, with broken signs and misleading directions, bringing him to the final journey of his warped life.
"S'okay…" he whispers, eyes at half-crescent. He coughs once, blood choking out of his throat to pool at the corner of his lips. "S'okay, right?"
"You're like the night sky, you know that Kanda?"
"How the hell did you get that?"
"Because you're dark but you're protective, too. The night is always dark and it's always protecting the stars, giving them a place to stay forever. It's like a blanket."
"Are you calling me a blanket?"
"No, you missed the entire point."
"…Well if I'm the night, then you're a star."
"That's the corniest thing you've ever said, isn't it?"
"Shut up, beansprout."
Allen's eyes open a bit more, attempting to focus on the beating of his heart rather than the pouring of his blood; he's becoming lightheaded, the world a flurry of white and black and blue. His breathing is labored and this isn't the death he's imagined.
"We… all die eventually," he chokes out, wincing when it causes a shock of pain throughout his head. "S'only a matter of time…"
Kanda's silent, kneeling beside him and glaring and nervous; he wants to yell and scream and curse the cursed boy for introducing him to any kind of feeling at all.
"Stars aren't supposed to die," the samurai mutters, his hands loosening on the pressure he's been applying to the boy's chest.
"Maybe…" His eyes are nearly closed now, his soul disappearing from the very earth he used to walk on. "I'll be reborn…"
The last thing he sees is Kanda's tiny, tiny smile and the starlight that spills over his onyx hair.