Chapter twenty-five – Curiosity killed the…

The atmosphere in the room was stifling, intense and just a tad nerve-wracking. Not that Kanda was nervous. No, he was merely curious and a little tense. After all, he was standing in front of the man who might be able to finally answer some question for him and he said finally with no sense of exaggeration.

The silence continued to stretch and Kanda took the opportunity to properly study Marian Cross without the forms of two women draped eagerly over him.

He was tall, even more so than Kanda himself, and held an air of smug confidence, like he could handle anything that came his way without an ounce of surprise and Kanda, for one, thought that may indeed be the case. His long, red hair was tossed lazily over his shoulder and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses sat jauntily on his nose and, much to Kanda's annoyance, the right side of his face was obscured by a stupid little half-mask. Did he think it looked cool? Mysterious? Kanda snorted at the notion. Ridiculous more like it.

The silence had yet to be broken and Kanda was slowly becoming aware that in the moment he'd been using to take a look at and judge Cross, the man had been doing the same to him – for some reason this unnerved Kanda. Maybe it was the blank look in his one visible eye, completely unreadable?

The Japanese teenager scowled; he didn't like to be studied like that. Kanda folded his arm protectively in front of his chest and glared challengingly at the man before him, putting as much heat in the gaze as was possible. This got him a raised eyebrow in amusement and only served to further irritate the already annoyed – but when wasn't he? – teenager.

Just when the silence was becoming unbearable Cross shifted, the sofa creaking beneath him, and leant forward. "What are your plans with Allen?"

Caught off guard Kanda merely stared at him. Plans? What plans? Why the fuck would he have plans for Allen? What the fuck did that even mean?

"The fuck?" He snapped crudely, hoping to convey his irritation with the well-used phrase.

Cross's expression did not change and he calmly repeated himself, "What are your plans with Allen?"

"I don't know what the fuck you mean by that!"

Cross sniggered and cast a glance towards his wineglass and frowned, as if disappointed by the lack liquor. "What I mean, boy, is what exactly are you attempting to accomplish by hanging out with my idiot of an apprentice?"

Kanda frowned. Accomplish? He didn't hope to accomplish anything by hanging out with the retarded Sprout! It just kind of happened! Admittedly, he did hope to learn about the dark secrets that Allen seemed to be hiding, but that was more or less because it was driving him crazy hanging out with the brat and being kept it the dark. It wasn't as if he were hanging out with Moyashi to learn them, more so that he wanted to learn them because he was hanging out with him.

If that made much sense.

Is the term 'hanging out' really the right one to describe your relationship with him? A voice whispered tauntingly at the back of his head, or do you have something more in mind?

Frustrated now – with himself and with Cross for bringing up such thoughts – Kanda's scowl deepened. Now was neither the time nor the place to dive into the depths of these strange… feelings. Time for that later.

Or you're just planning to ignore it for ever…

Kanda was fast wishing that little voice at the back of his mind would disappear forever.

"I have no plans," he said stubbornly, "And I don't know why the fuck you would think I did."

Cross observed him with what may have been suspicion or may have been expectation or perhaps, and, the most likely, a mixture of the two.

The elder man leant back on the couch but continued to maintain eye contact with Kanda, looking like for all the world the pair weren't total strangers. Speaking of, Kanda realized with a gut sinking feeling, the man had known his name earlier… His full name. Fuck, what did that even mean?

"There are two types of people in Allen's life," Cross said suddenly and Kanda's attention was pulled back, "People that know him," Cross held up one finger, "And people that don't," he held up a second finger, "It seems you fall into the latter category.

Kanda wanted sneer that that was generally the case for most people, being known or not, but there was a certain tone, a certain vibe, in what Cross has said that prevented him from doing just that. This was his chance, he deduced suddenly, to pursue answers.

"Well," he said cautiously, "It'd help a whole fucking lot if someone were to actually tell me some shit about him. Then I wouldn't have to waste so much god damn time trying to figure it all out."

The corner of Cross's lip twitched and it looked – although Kanda couldn't be sure – that the man was smirking. Almost. It was hard to tell with only half of his face visible. That fucking little mask was really beginning to piss Kanda off. Seriously piss him off.

"What do you know about Allen?" Cross asked in his deep voice, tone almost bored or careless such was the man's ambiguous attitude.

"That he's really fucking annoying," Kanda said without hesitation, "And all this other random shit that doesn't really made a whole fuck load of sense to me."

"Such as?"

"The fuck does it matter? That he's terrified of needles, suffers violent ass nightmares, some vague shit about this 'Mana' dude and some 'NOAH' people," Kanda paused to look at Cross with a sneer, "And that he seems to despise you."

"Good," the man replied without missing a beat, "He'd be rather twisted if he didn't." He seemed to think on this statement for a second before correcting himself, "More twisted than he already is."

Kanda snorted. "Is that really what somebody's parent should be saying about them?"

"I'm not his parent," Cross snapped, almost surprising Kanda with the quickness of his denial. "His father left him in my care should anything happen to him," a brief pause and a frown, "Which it did and I landed the idiotic kid."

"His father?"

"Mana," Cross said carelessly with a wave of his hand. "They weren't related by blood but either of them would throw a tantrum if you insisted it made them any less of a family."

"What about Allen's real parents?" Kanda prompted. He wasn't exactly sure when he'd stopped referring to Allen as 'Moyashi' and rather by his given name.

Cross shrugged, "Dumped him on the street when he was a runt. Probably weren't too happy giving birth to a kid who looked like it'd been possessed by Satan."

A small flickering of pity and anger stirred in the depths of Kanda's icy cold heart. What kind of people tossed a child – their own child – out merely because he's appearance was a little different to that of which they were used to? They had to be some pretty sick fucks. Whoever they were, Kanda hoped they had a shit load of suffering heading their way in the near future.

"It's just a fucking arm," He muttered, "It's not like he was born with two bloody heads."

Cross raised an eyebrow and shifted so he was leaning forward slightly again. "Oh? You've seen his arm then?"

"He's my roommate," Kanda deadpanned, "You can't exactly hide something that noticeable for long."

"You've seen his scars too?"

"Of course I've seen his fucking scars."

Cross looked mildly amused as he returned to reclining back in the soft leather of the seat. It was starting to annoy Kanda with how the elder man was treating all this like it was one big game.

"That's unusual…"

"What is? Seeing his scars?"

He received no answer and, if the vaguely contemplative expression on Cross's face was anything to go by, the man hadn't even heard him. Kanda used the lull in conversation to chance another question.

"What happened to his father?"

"I told you. Dumped him when he was a brat."

"Don't fuck with me! You know who I meant!"

Cross snickered a little and adjusted the already completely neat collar of his jacket, disregarding Kanda as he did so.

"He died when Allen was eight. He'd always been very sick – physically and mentally – and one day he approached the wrong kind of man in an alley," Cross's voice didn't hold the slightest amount of repentance, as if talking about the death of a man he'd clearly known well didn't bother him in the least, "Allen was with him of course. Got to see the only man he'd ever considered his father knifed for his crazy talk."

Admittedly, Kanda was a little surprised. He'd always known that whatever Allen had had with Mana had ended tragically but it was a little different to hear it actually voiced. It was hard to put that cheerful, smiling – and fucking annoying face – with a sob story of a past.

"Is that where he got all those scars?" Kanda asked instead of voicing his unease.

"The one over his eye, yes," Cross replied, tapping his glasses lightly.

Kanda frowned deeply and sought clarification, "But not the others?"

"That is what I said."

"Then where the fuck did they come from?"

Cross gave a mock shrug. "He had them when I met him."

The frown on the Japanese youth's face deepened. "You said he didn't get them from the attack that killed his father."

"He didn't."

"But you said – "

"I know what I said."

Something finally dawned. "You didn't meet him right after the attack?"

Cross's mouth twitched slightly in a way that said 'Bingo'.

"When did you meet him then? Who did he stay with before he met you? I thought you said Mana left him in your care?"

"To answer your question," Cross replied smoothly, "I met Allen when he was twelve. It took a little time for me to get in contact with him."

"Four years?" Kanda asked incredulously, thoroughly irritated. Partly due to the way Cross had just dodged his question and partly because that was a fairly weak excuse for not swooping in and looking after Allen immediately following Mana's death.

"Things surrounding Allen are more complicated than you imagine," Cross informed him with a certain degree of seriousness, "It may be difficult for somebody who's not beautiful to understand but there was many things happening that I couldn't disrupt. An order to things."

"Order to – I don't know what happened to Allen in his past but whatever it was clearly happened to be fucking traumatic and you attempt to justify it by – "

"Exactly. You don't know. It does you know favours to attempt to dig it out."

Kanda paused in the process of ranting to stare at Cross. "What?"

Cross straightened up in his seat and met Kanda's eyes with a piercing stare. "What I mean is that unless you're thoroughly committed to staying with Allen regardless of absolutely anything that has happened or will happen, you've got no business searching into his past."

Kanda wasn't too sure what to make of the sudden turn of conversation. It was almost like the man was being – god forbid – protective of his young charge he so readily cussed out.

"You're underestimating the depth of what you're trying to uncover. If you continue to try and look into it with a half-hearted attitude you'll only wish you hadn't. You'll do more harm than good. I'm warning you, I really don't care what Timcanpy says about what's going on between you two but I don't believe you have what it takes."

Although by nature a slow thinker Kanda was able to deduce he was being insulted and his motivations for maintaining a friendship with Allen were being question and was something about Timcanpy just mention? He opened his mouth to angrily retort.

"The fuck are you – "

"Leave." Cross said bluntly. "I'm telling you to leave Allen alone. The brat cares about you and it'll only hurt him if you get dragged into the thick of things and it'll hurt him twice as much when you up and go for your own safety. I'm telling you to leave Allen alone. Go back to doing whatever you did before you met him."

Kanda was admittedly stunned. However, he was also furious at being told what to do and the emotions mixed unfavourably together to create a thick haze in his mind.

Who the fuck did Cross think he was bossing him around like that? Who the fuck did he think he was questioning the extent to which he may or may not care about Allen? He was basically accusing him of leading Allen on only to turn around and leave when things got too serious. There were several things wrong with that deduction – one being that there was nothing going on between the pair of them and he most certainly wasn't leading anyone on – but that wasn't what annoyed him the most.

What annoyed him the most was that he had no clue how to go about refuting what had just been said when he himself wasn't even sure of what the current relationship between the two of them was.

How did you put into words? Were they friends? Best friends – Kanda shuddered at the wording –? Or something else entirely?

Despite Kanda's very apparent aversion to close contact he allowed Allen to be nearer to him than anyone else he knew. Fuck, the kid even slept in his bed and he'd be lying if he said he didn't, for a fleeting moment when his mind was hazy with sleep, think that there was a certain charm to having the familiar weight next to him in the darker moments of the night.

That wasn't the extent of it either. On numerous occasions the pair of them had both admitted to one another that they were in possession of some feelings that couldn't be adequately translated into words.

However, they had never acted upon these subtle cues which meant – in Kanda's logic – that there was nothing between them. Right?

Kanda wasn't a very good thinker is his clearest moments and, not surprisingly, he wasn't able to quickly come up with a conclusion to the accumulation of months' worth of interactions on the spot while under so much stress. No, rather he was just succeeding in giving himself a headache.

Looking up, Kanda decided to answer Cross as honestly a he could.

"Fuck you," No one ever claimed he was the most eloquent speaker, "I don't understand what the fuck you were just talking about but I'm not going to run away with my tail between by legs the more I learn about Allen – even if it puts me in danger."

"So you're saying –"

"I'm not making any commitments," Kanda said bluntly, "All I'm saying is that I'm not gonna ditch the Moyashi like you think I will."

There was a moment of silence while Cross stared at him. Kanda might have said the man looked surprised but it was ridiculously hard to tell – the man had a near perfect poker face. Finally, he spoke. "You know the old adage?"

Kanda's mouth was pressed into a thin line as he wordlessly returned the penetrating gaze.

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"Isn't there a second part to it?" Kanda asked with a frown.

Cross almost smiled. Almost.

"There is."

"Well? What is it?"

Cross doesn't answer him and they remained in silence for the next minute or so before Kanda noticed a subtle change in atmosphere. It felt almost like he'd passed some kind of test. Like Cross had, if only a little, approved him; although it was difficult to tell with that man.

With no words being exchanged Kanda risked asking in a guarded tone, "What's NOAH?"

A thin, red eyebrow arched, seemingly approving of the boldness of the posed question. "It's an institution."

For a moment Kanda's mind struggled to dredge up the correct meaning for the word that was rarely used in his own vocabulary. "Institution?" He echoed.

"That's what I said."

Kanda tried not to allow his annoyance to slip through but there was a noticeable tightening in his words. "What was it for?"

Cross didn't answer immediately and just stared right at Kanda. Finally, after a substantial silence he said, "They took in young, parentless children."

"An orphanage?"

"… I suppose."

The way Cross had delivered those words didn't ring completely true. Kanda hesitated, unsure.

"It wasn't… really… Was it?"

"You're catching on a bit now, kid."

"What was it then, if it wasn't an orphanage?"

Cross let lose his first real grimace since Kanda had met him. "Illegal, that's for sure."

Kanda debated pointing out that Cross himself wasn't exactly an outstanding citizen but decided not to at the risk of losing the small window of opportunity he had to ask question. He took a discreet glance at the door. What the hell was holding the Sprout?

"The people who ran the institution," Cross said, startling Kanda who had been far too focused in gazing at the door, "they all started off in positions similar to Allen."

"Positions similar to the Moyashi?"

Cross ignored his parroting. "The whole thing was originally started by one man."

"Who was he?"

There was the sound of a snort. "He liked to fancy himself an Earl."

"An Earl?" Kanda repeated in bemusement. Cross looked at his expression and seemed to find something amusing about it.

"Exactly. He's nuts. He started recruiting people who he felt had what it took to become part of a select, chosen few. Eventually they started to go by the name NOAH."

"So wait," Kanda said abruptly, brows furrowed, "The NOAH are –"

"A group of people, yes," Cross interrupted impatiently in a tone that implied the young teen was lacking in mental capacity, "who ran several different institutions for the purpose of attempting to further establish their little regime. Unfortunately, it was them who found Allen immediately following the death of Mana."

"How did they find him?"

"They knew Mana's brother," Cross said helpfully, "Neah."

"So it wasn't coincidence then?"

"Nothing happens by coincidence," Cross said, looking strangely at Kanda, "Remember that."

"Right," He muttered, "anyway, you've got custody over Allen now, right? They don't have anything to do with him anymore, right?"

Cross gave him with an unimpressed expression. "Have you been listening to anything I said or are you just naturally unbeautiful and stupid? It's not so simple."

Kanda felt his neck heat up at the ridicule and opened his mouth to angrily snap back only to have Cross talk over the top of him.

"Remember how I mentioned that the Earl liked to recruit from people with a similar position to Allen?"

"Yes," Kanda answered grouchily, "What has that…?" He trailed off as something seemed dawn on him. "He wants to recruit Allen, doesn't he?" Cross gave him a satisfied look, like he'd finally caught up with what's going on. "That's why all this shit surrounding NOAH won't go away?" The elder man gave a nod to encourage Kanda to keep on talking, keep the thought train alive. "And… that's a really, really bad thing… for some reason…"

Cross nodded as he pulled some cigarettes out of his pocket and casually rested one between his lips before flicking his lighter and turning the end a dark amber.

Kanda's already apparent frown deepened. The more he tries to sort out the information rapidly piling up in his head, the more confused he became. At the moment he was chasing himself in circles attempting to sort through the new data on the situation regarding Allen's past. It was irritating because – despite the long conversation he was currently engaged in with Cross – he realized there were still so many pieces of the puzzle missing.

Fucking bloody –

"You've never actually explained with the NOAH do," Kanda said after rapidly deciding his brain would explode if he kept trying to jam together his acquired knowledge in its incomplete state, "You haven't told me why the want Allen or how you become worthy of their shitty little group."

Cross breathed out a mouthful of smoke and the light grey mist swirled menacingly around Kanda's head, causing him to narrow his eyes in order to keep them from watering from the sheer potency of the fumes. Fuck, what bloody strength were those cigarettes?

"I think that's enough talking for now," Cross mused, flicking some ash off the end of his smoke and smirking up at Kanda's enraged expression.

"Enough – what – but…"

Cross snorted loudly over Kanda's rage filled stuttering. "I think I've told you more than enough. Figure out the rest as you go along."

"Are you telling me to wing it?" Kanda asked in a disbelieving voice.

"Matter of interpretation," Cross said as he leant forward to stub out the last of his cigarette in the ashtray on the table before him, grinding the butt so the white carcass melded into the blackened charcoal remains before getting to his feet in one swift move, tossing his hair carelessly over his shoulder – in that instant Kanda thought he saw a familiar flash of gold sitting on his shoulder hidden beneath the waves of red – and approaching what looked to be a moth bitten curtain.

"What are you doing?" Kanda asked suspiciously.

No answer was given and he simply watched with deepening concern as the elegant man swept aside the dark blue cloth to reveal a fucking backdoor. Before Kanda could stop him he turned the doorknob and slipped easily out into the back alley behind it.

Brain finally catching up with the situation, Kanda took several steps forward and called after him, "Wait a fucking minute! Where the fuck are you going?"

Cross paused to look over at him, golden eye oddly serious compared to the rather infuriating conversation they'd just had. He said only one thing before he slipped out into the cool night to vanish untraceably, as Allen would later bemoan to Kanda with an accusing tone as if the other had allowed him to disappear.

Kanda still hadn't a clue what Cross had meant by the cryptic parting remark and had wisely chosen not to mention it to Allen until he was able to deduce what exactly it meant.

"Look out for the Fourteenth."

Curiosity may have killed the cat, Kanda thought with a grim smirk, but satisfaction is what brought it back.

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A/N: AND SO THE PLOT THICKENS.

I have no excuse for the gaps between updates. I apologise.