Man it's hard to get back into the swing of writing -_- But, enjoy this chapter!
Lacquer - 7
"You smell funny," Allen remarks, scrunching up his nose, pointed delicately away from Lavi's direction. Tangerine sunlight washes over the sheets he fingers, continuing upwards to tint his pale skin with a surreal glow.
"…Fanny?" Lavi repeats, distracted by the golden sheen of his normally silver hair.
Allen shakes his head, "Funny. As in strange," Lavi wrinkles up his face in concentration, leaning forward to read his lips better and asking him to repeat, and after a few more tries, Lavi gets it.
"It's Kanda's fault, because I was helping him with the horses," He pouts, making sure to make a sound accompanying his facial expression. He kneels on the chair to rest his elbows on Allen's bed and wiggles cheerfully, making Allen giggle as the bed shakes on its rattly legs, "I know how to ride horses, just like everyone else, but Kanda rides 'em pretty. He can do jumps and takes care of the horses all by himself. They listen to him, but they just buck me off when I try to make 'em do stuff," Allen laughs, and Lavi smiles, satisfied. He imagines the sound to be small copper bells, pleasant and full-throated, tumbling out of his wide lips and past the front teeth that show when he laughs. He's certainly more used to laughing than Kanda is, who laughs rarely and with his head turned away, unaccustomed muscles letting the motion fall quickly, unlike Allen, whose laugh lingers at the corner of his mouth in a smile that is slow to fade.
"I want to meet him," Allen murmurs at length. Lavi wiggles again, this time in discomfiture.
"He doesn't like soldiers," he blurts out, "I don't know why, but probably for the same reason everyone else does," at Allen's crestfallen expression, he adds, "But he'll come around. Kanda's really nice, you'll see," he scratches the back of his head, "Well, he's really mean, but only because he's embarrassed to be nice. He's nice inside," Lavi says with a firm nod.
O.o.O
"What time is it?" Allen asks, collapsing on a seat at the end of the sick bay, legs trembling in the aftermath of strain and effort they have been denied for weeks. He gets his breathing under control as he feels the seat underneath him, the cushion soft with use and the wood sporting scratches his fingernail gets caught on.
"Six in the afternoon," the nurse says kindly. Allen takes that information in, and tries to reconcile the particular shade of darkness through his right eye as belonging to twilight, "And when you feel up to it, we'll go right back to bed."
"Yeah," Allen says. He can't tell if her noncommittal kind voice is honest or not, unsure of how to read tones without the faces accompanying them for clues. It was only a short walk from his bed to the end of the sick bay, but even so, his muscles twitch and jump underneath his skin, and there is a vague lightheadedness shrouding his head.
It had been his first foray into the world without his sight. And even though he was sure that the path was clear for him, heard the nurse tell people to move out of the way and to just walk straight ahead, he still inched each step forward one by one, vacillating and scared of what the next step would bring. Logic told him that she would stop him when they reached the end, but he was still putting a step forward into thin air, unknowing of how far it was to the end, what the floor looked like, whether there was anything spilled on it, broken on it. It was a step into the unknown, into a black abyss, and despite his smiles and reassurances that he was alright, he was—is— terrified.
"You ready to go back, child?" and there's a hand suddenly grabbing hold of his own. He jumps, startled at the sudden touch, and then nods.
He is walking forward, and that is all that matters.
O.o.O
"Will you stay with him?" Lavi pleads, casting a glance at the impatient throng of children in the doorway, "Please," he adds, when Kanda's face darkens and he looks about to shake his head.
Kanda huffs and whacks Lavi's head, but replaces Lavi nonetheless at the chair next to Allen's sleeping form.
You owe me one, he glares.
Lavi rolls his eyes and clutches the children's storybook closer, "Fine, how about I do one of your chores?"
Kanda shrugs and turns his face away, lifting it only after he's sure Lavi's left. He turns to look at the boy with the snowy hair, and thinks This is the person that Lavi…
He wonders what's so special about him that Lavi visits him every day, and wonders angrily which army he was from, fingers curling into stony fists all of their own accord. And yet, he can't seem to direct the anger at that pale, scarred face, much as he wants to.
O.o.O
Allen wakes up before Lavi comes back. Kanda doesn't know what to do, watching those eyes flutter sightlessly. It takes a moment, but Allen suddenly frowns, hand reaching out blindly toward Kanda, even though his eyes stays fixed on the ceiling, "Is someone there? Lavi?"
Kanda takes that hand before he thinks twice about it. Both of them jump at the contact, and Kanda drops it again, but Allen leaves it hanging in midair.
"You're not Lavi…"
Kanda almost shakes his head, but then remembers and is at a loss. He finally gets an idea and takes that pale, small hand, and traces with his other hand, clearly and carefully, N-o on Allen's palm. Allen looks confused for a moment, and then understanding dawns on his face. Kanda is mesmerized by the expressiveness of his face.
"Oh. Are you his friend then? He's always talking about you. Kanda, right?"
He feels sort of foolish doing this, but he would feel even more so if he just squeezed his hand or did something equally vague as that, so he traces Y-e-s. Belatedly, he thinks Lavi talks about me?
Allen squirms a little and says, "It tickles."
Kanda lets go of his hand, perplexed as to whether that means he doesn't want him to do it or what.
"Here's your food, Allen," the nurse maneuvers her tray of food for the patients, her efforts saved when Kanda reaches and takes one of the bowls from the tray and lays it on the bedside table, "Thank you, Kanda. Have you and Lavi eaten?"
Kanda nods, and the nurse cocks her head, "Where's Lavi? This is the first time I've seen you here."
Kanda pretends he's holding a book and turning the page, and the nurse's face brightens in comprehension, "Oh, with the children. It's so good of him to do that. You boys help us out so much here."
Kanda shrugs uncomfortably, and the nurse heads on to the next bed, leaving them in silence. Allen reaches out carefully, feeling the table-edge gingerly and sliding his fingertips until he touches the bowl. Kanda wonders if he'll need any help, but he's not going to offer it, and the boy has a mouth he can use to ask if he really does need to, so Kanda remains still and watches.
Allen finds the spoon, and he twists in his bed to reach easier. Everything takes longer— dipping the spoon, lifting it up carefully, bringing it with that same painstaking care over to his mouth, little by little to avoid spilling whatever is inside, and he sticks his tongue out slightly like a feeler, as if to make sure he doesn't aim wrong and tries to feed his cheek instead.
Slow as the process may be, it is steady, and Allen has clearly had some practice with it, because it is not as chaotic as Kanda would have imagined it to be. There are still some spills, and near-misses with his mouth, but Allen's expression is determined, his lips pressed together as he struggles with bringing the precariously-balanced spoon through the air. When he reaches the bottom, trying to get the soft vegetables left there, his bowl slips with the push of the spoon against its side.
Kanda debates it, but that only makes him feel even more reluctant, so he stops thinking about it and just reaches out to steady the bowl. The ceramic is warm to the touch.
Allen stops and blinks at him, and finally smiles, beaming and much too bright, "Thanks!"
Kanda watches, remembering his own frustrations with his voice, with feeling helpless and useless. He thinks this might just be worse.
O.o.O
It's queer how abrupt the transition between sight and darkness is. Within a few days of consciousness, he realizes that he no longer faces people with his eyes when he listens to them, but with his ears.
It's like looking at a picture upside-down. It's awkward, and details obvious when in its correct position are missed with this new twist. But the knowledge of what it looks like right-side-up is helpful. Blindness is like that.
He knows that what he has in his hands is a glass, and that helps him—he realizes what a circle feels like when he runs his finger along the rim, and the difference in hardness between a glass cup and a wooden one when he digs his fingernail in, the contrast between the cling of glass and the tok of wood. He comes to distinguish the different blankets they use—whether they're made of yarn, or cotton, sown with an expert hand in fine stitches or with an apprentice's hands in larger loopholes. He runs his hands over his face and compares the bumps his fingers glide along to the mental image he has of his face.
O.o.O
Kanda stands at the doorway of the once grandiose ballroom, feet poised just behind the threshold into hell as he watches Lavi and Allen. The moans and groans of the dying, of the ones being called into a place beyond human understanding, chokes him and makes his stomach curl unpleasantly. He still can't stand the low, bass rumblings of death playing eenie-meenie-minie-mo with the patients. He still can't stand coming back here.
Lavi can't hear it, so it's understandable that he has no problem waltzing in and making himself at home within this market of putrefying flesh, its vendor a product of their very own: war. But Allen… Allen can hear it, and Kanda doesn't understand how he can stay a second longer in this place.
O.o.O
Sound is the most important indication people give him of their existence, and he finds himself straining his eardrums to pick up any and every vibration out there informing him of his new world. He lies there one day and tries to distinguish all the ranges of sound, becoming attuned to them little by little, all the white noise of quotidian life being filtered layer by layer until he can easily focus on each one at whim. First are voices. Then bird calls outside, and he sorts through those one by one as well. Then he catches the splash of water, heavy and deep, and assumes it must be a patient washing. He hears the swish of the nurses hurrying footsteps, and the familiar groans of wounds and infections that lull him to sleep, a comforting, if morbid reminder of his life before. He can't do much more than discern and identify the noises, however—deciphering what they mean is a vague travel mark far off in the road.
O.o.O
Now that he's met him once, Allen begins to think about Kanda. All he has is the reminder of Kanda's hands, barely bigger than his own, warm and holding his despite the hesitance and unease with which they did so. He wonders if he'll ever be able to see how beautiful Lavi says he is. He hopes Kanda will come back so he can find out for himself.
O.o.O
The times without Lavi are boring and reminders of the ache in his body, lessening steadily as it may be. Lavi tells him all sorts of interesting stories—about cities Allen's never heard of, forests with witches living in them, strange villages where they wear tall, fluffy hats to protect themselves from the cold, about Kanda, and how he tried to feed a baby bird in secret until Lavi found him and together they built a house for it. Allen doesn't talk back much because Lavi can't read his lips very well, but that's alright because Allen would rather listen to Lavi than talk about himself. Lavi is the sunlight in Allen's newly night-shrouded life.
I had to do stuff with Allen-- I realized most of the story is from Kanda and Lavi's point of view, and we needed more Allen ^_^