A/N: This flashback takes place when Allen is on the run from the Order. So obviously, this is where this story deviates from the original cannon story. It'll cover some of the stuff with Alma, focusing on Allen and Kanda's relationship, and hopefully explain the situation with Neah. Also, there won't be a lemon in this flashback. Sorry. But you just got one last chapter, so I'm not too sorry.

.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.

~Three Years Earlier~

I felt horrible. There was no other word to describe it. I had made my choices, and my Moyashi had been the one to suffer for it. He was paying for my mistakes. It was too late now, but maybe I really should have trusted him with my past. Maybe we wouldn't be in this mess if I had just told him about Alma and the Second Exorcist Project one of the many times he had asked. Maybe things would have turned out differently if he had known the truth beforehand. Maybe I wouldn't have stabbed him and awoken the Noah inside him. Maybe he wouldn't have ended up arrested and imprisoned.

But dwelling on what-if's wasn't going to help me find him now.

The only way to ease my guilt was to find him so that I could apologize to him. He needed to know that I still loved him. That finding the woman I had been looking for didn't change the way I felt about him. In fact, after being confronted with the love of my past life, I think I loved the Moyashi even more. I needed him back. And that meant finding him first.

It irritated me that he had run off instead of waiting for me to come back, but I was certain that the Order wasn't telling me the whole story behind his disappearance, and the bits and pieces I had gotten from Lenalee confirmed that suspicion. So I didn't blame him for running away when they had locked him up like a criminal. I blamed myself for putting him in that situation in the first place.

Finding the Moyashi turned out to be every bit as much of a pain as I had anticipated it would be. Allen was Cross' apprentice; he knew how to disappear. Even with Johnny's help, it took much longer to track him down than I would have liked. And of course, once we did find him, he put up a huge fight and ran away. This was going to be a hell of a lot harder than I thought.

.x.x.

I was heartbroken. There was no other word to describe it. Of all the things I could have felt after learning that the man I loved was the result of human experimentation - anger, confusion, betrayal - a sense of loss overwhelmed them all. I had thought that, unlike everyone else in my life, Kanda was actually mine to keep; he had even wanted to have children with me someday. But instead, it turned out that he had lived a whole other life before dying and being brought back as the man I loved. He didn't just have a life without me, he had a life with a woman he loved, and now she was back. My heart was in pieces. Over both my own loss and theirs.

With everything that was going on, Yuu was obviously not thinking clearly - otherwise he never would have hurt me, much less stabbed me with his Innocence. So I would have to be the one to be level-headed. I would be gracious and bow out. My, now-former, lover deserved a peaceful end with the woman he loved, and I could give them that. So when he asked, I didn't hesitate. I opened the ark and let him go.

What happened after that is a bit of a blur. There was some nonsense about the Fourteenth awakening and me committing treason, and I found myself locked up in a cell without proper food or even medical attention for my wounds. But I didn't care. I had lost the love of my life, and it was taking everything in my power to not let myself be swallowed up by my grief. The charges against me were something to fight, a reason to go on with my life. And I would do that. Yuu had always made it very clear that he hated my tendency to play the martyr, so even though he was no longer mine, I would show him that I could change. I would survive this.

So when the opportunity to escape arose, I took it. The Order thought I was a threat, and while I was grateful to Tyki and Road for their help, I could never align myself with the Noah family, so I would go my own way. I was alone and that was the way it was meant to be.

I was not expecting to get found by an exorcist. Apocryphos and the akuma could find me easily enough if I spent too long in one place, but the finders and exorcists were always easy to evade. I cursed myself for being so inattentive, but that was when I noticed something far more important. It wasn't just any exorcist that had found me. It was Kanda. He was alive and back with the Order.

I was happy to see him looking so healthy, and frustrated that he had rejoined the Order after everything they'd done to him, but more than anything, I felt my heart breaking. The attempts that I had made to put the pieces back together were rendered useless as the shards crumbled back to the floor. It took everything I had not to break down in tears at seeing the man who was no longer mine.

I wanted to throw myself into his arms, but I knew that I couldn't. Aside from the fact that we were in public, he wasn't mine to hold anymore. There was also the very critical detail of him being in his exorcist uniform. He was with the Order, so he was there to bring me back, and I couldn't let that happen.

But despite my attempts, I couldn't escape from him and I found myself cornered yet again. And while I was normally on the same level as Kanda, I was weakened from all the fighting and running I'd done in the last few weeks, so if this came to a fight, I wasn't so sure that I would stand a chance against him. Fighting off the Noah inside me was really doing a number on me, and my broken heart definitely wasn't helping with that. So instead, I found myself pitifully begging Kanda to let me go. "Please. Just let me go. I can't go back there..."

The words were pathetic and desperate, but they made Kanda pause. The look he gave me was strange. "Who said anything about going back?"

I couldn't tell if he was genuinely confused or if he was trying to trick me. But then Johnny tugged on his sleeve and whispered something in his ear. I was briefly jealous of their proximity, but my attention was recalled to the current situation when understanding lit up Kanda's face. "Oh. You think I'm with the Order."

The comment made me scowl, and I practically spit my response at him. "Aren't you? You're wearing your jacket and you have your sword back."

He clicked his tongue at me, instantly back to his usual, easily annoyed self. I didn't know what to make of the sudden change in his demeanor. "I went back because I thought that's where you were, moron. I was looking for you."

The answer caught me off guard, and before I knew it, he was in my personal space. I flinched away but found that I couldn't escape. Only, instead of restraining me like I expected, Kanda kissed me. We had kissed many times before, but this one was really strange and I didn't know what to make of it. As he spoke, Kanda brushed my hair behind my ear in that loving way he always used to do. "There's lots of things I need to say to you, but let's start with: I'm sorry."

The apology confused me even more than the kiss did. "You're sorry? What do you have to be sorry for?"

The raw emotion on Kanda's face was stunning. If we were still together, it would have been wonderful seeing him open up like that, but now, it just hurt. "I'm the reason you're in this mess. I love you, yet when my past came back to haunt me, you were the one to suffer for it. I hurt you, emotionally and physically, and then I left you behind to deal with the fallout alone."

The words confused me greatly. I didn't understand why he would be apologizing to me like that or why he was claiming to still be in love with me. Trying not to cry, I buried my face in his chest, unable to actually face him while I asked him a question whose answer was sure to contradict everything he'd just said. "What about Alma?"

"What about Alma?" I looked up when he repeated my question, only to find that the only emotion on his face was confusion; he genuinely didn't understand why that was important. "I got my closure, and now I can move on. With you. The real love of my life. We can be together and there's no one left to get in our way."

The tears fell. Softly at first, but it was only a matter of seconds before I was sobbing in Yuu's arms. He was still mine. I hadn't lost him.

He snickered as he wrapped his arms around me. "Che. Baka Moyashi. Did you really think that you had lost me?"

I elbowed him for the comment, but instead of laughing at his attempt to tease me, I found myself collapsing in pain. But I wasn't alone anymore. Before I could hit the ground, Yuu had me in his arms, lifting me up and holding me close to him. The concern on his face was oddly comforting, so I let myself pass out. I had my lover back, so it was time to face Neah directly and tell him that he couldn't have my body.

.x.x.

The little idiot actually thought that I had left him over this, that finding my previous lover had somehow erased the two years he and I had shared together. I wanted to be offended by his lack of trust in me, but it was my own refusal to share things from my past with him that had made him think that, so it was all technically my fault. But he'd been set straight now, and he had no problems with taking me back, so at least he didn't think we were broken up because he didn't want to be with me anymore.

Of course, once I finally got him set straight, he immediately passed out. I wasn't too worried at first. The Moyashi looked horrendously exhausted, like he hadn't slept since he left the Order - he probably hadn't had a decent meal since then either. So I chalked the collapse up to him not taking care of himself.

But then his skin started turning gray.

His breathing grew shallow as he curled in on himself, obviously in pain, and that terrified me. The Moyashi wasn't simply neglecting his health; the Fourteenth was trying to take over. There were a lot of things I felt in that moment - worry over the fact that Allen hadn't beaten him off yet, guilt for stabbing him and awakening the Noah in the first place, and annoyance at myself for falling for Allen so hard that I was actually having to deal with multiple emotions - but panic topped the list. I didn't know what to do next, how to help my Moyashi, or if it was even possible to help him.

Fortunately for my pride, Johnny was the only witness to my out of character reaction, and he didn't even notice it. When presented with something new and unusual, he jumped straight into curious scientist mode, and while that had been incredibly annoying in the last few weeks, it was actually helpful now. He babbled a few things about noahfication that I didn't understand before taking control of the situation. "Are you ok carrying him or do I need to go find an inn and then come back for you?"

"I've got him. Lead the way."

We found an inn relatively easily, and though the innkeeper was irritatingly interested in the unconscious Moyashi's health, she did give us a discount on the room because he was sick.

We got Allen settled on the bed, and then came the hard part: waiting. There was absolutely nothing I could do to help him, and that was terrifying. Johnny did some first aid type things to keep him from actually getting sick, but I was completely useless. All I could do was sit there and wait.

I couldn't even wait in silence like I wanted though, because when Johnny was nervous, he talked, and I apparently made him very nervous because he wouldn't shut up around me. "I'm curious. I couldn't hear what you were saying to him earlier, but how did you know that kissing him would make him listen to you? And why would you even choose to do that in the first place?"

I shrugged. When I had kissed the Moyashi, I had forgotten that Johnny was there, and it seemed like that was coming back to bite me. But on the other hand, Johnny clearly wasn't going anywhere, so maybe it would be a good thing if he knew that Allen and I were in a relationship. "Kissing him has always been an effective way to calm him down."

"Oh. Alright." He nodded once, but then his whole body froze. "...Wait. No. That's not alright. How on earth do you know that? Have you actually kissed him before?"

Johnny continued to babble, but before I could think of anything to say in my defense or to throw him off track, he figured it out. "It's more than just kissing, isn't it? You two have slept together. That's why you really came back, isn't it? To be with him." He suddenly turned into an excited little kid and latched onto my arm. "Have you told him you love him?"

I scowled in embarrassment and shoved him out of my personal space. "Of course I have. Don't be stupid."

The rough response didn't faze Johnny, though he did refrain from touching me again. His grin only got brighter as he sat down beside the bed. "Good. He's going to make it through this. He has something to fight for."

I wished I could share his optimism. I desperately hoped that I meant enough to Allen that he would fight for our relationship, but I had to be realistic. He was fighting a Noah for control of his own body. That wasn't a fight he could win just by declaring that he had things to live for. There was also the brat's martyr complex to consider. It was entirely possible that he didn't even realize that he had things to live for.

Not knowing what to say in response, I put an end to the conversation. "He's going to be hungry when he wakes up. We should probably get him some food."

Johnny didn't even protest the change in subject. He was immediately on his feet and headed towards the door. "On it!"

I sighed in relief at the silence that followed his absence, but then I turned my focus back on the unconscious Moyashi. He looked so frail and small, and it made my heart ache. I once again found myself desperately wishing that I could do something - anything - to help him.

It was about ten minutes later when Allen finally woke up. But even though his skin was pale and his eyes were silver, I knew it wasn't him. His aura was all wrong. That was the Fourteenth Noah sitting on the bed.

My reaction was immediate. Mugen was drawn and placed against his neck in less time than it took to blink. But I didn't know what to do from there. My training screamed at me to kill the Noah in front of me, but that Noah was in my lover's body. I couldn't kill him without killing Allen, and I couldn't kill Allen. At least, not until I was one hundred percent certain that my Moyashi was no longer in there; if there was any chance at all that he was still alive, I had to hope for it.

The Fourteenth didn't even bat an eye at the blade against his throat. In fact, he seemed to be annoyed rather than scared. "Can you put that away so that we can have a civil conversation?"

It was weird that he wanted to talk to me, but I didn't want to talk to him. "I can't do that. I'm-"

"I know who you are. The kid is an open book to me, so I know exactly how many times you've fucked him in the ass." I was so stunned by the comment that he was able to push Mugen away from his throat quite easily. And his next words made the blade fall uselessly to the ground. "I even know how many times he's come in your ass. So unless you want that information to become public, drop the sword and listen to what I have to say, ok?"

I'd learn later that Neah was just toying with me and didn't actually know all the details of my sex life like he claimed, but at the time, it was a very effective way to manipulate me into actually listening to him.

He smirked at the look on my face. While normally an attractive expression on the Moyashi, this was just wrong. "Look, just promise me that you won't touch him for the next few weeks. I don't think either of us want me to wake up and find myself in the middle of one of your love-making sessions."

My disbelief helped me find my tongue. "Really? That's all you want? For us not to have sex?"

He nodded. "From you, yes, that's all I want. I'll need a bit more than that from Allen while I'm stuck in his body, but once I'm free, you'll be free to fuck him to your heart's content once more."

I wanted to question him about that, to find out if he truly meant to imply that he was going to give the Moyashi back to me, but before I could get a single syllable out, Neah was gone. That dark aura vanished and Allen's body collapsed on the bed, once again unconscious. I didn't know what to make of the conversation that had just happened, but the Fourteenth had made a very good point about abstaining from sex. I definitely did not want to end up sleeping with him instead of my Moyashi.

.x.x.

I was getting really sick of seeing that eerie lake and the even creepier forest that surrounded it, but if everything went according to plan, this would be the last time that I would have to come here. Neah was standing right beside me, so I immediately faced him and started listing out my demands. "Look. I'm not-"

He cut me off before I could finish a single sentence, and weirder than that, he actually looked relieved to have me face him outright. "Good. You're here of your own free will. That means you're finally ready to listen to me."

I blinked at the comment. "Why would I-?"

"Because I don't want your body."

That was definitely not what I was expecting him to say. "What?!"

He smirked knowingly at me. "Are you ready to listen now?"

I nodded, not trusting myself to not say anything stupid. If Neah truly didn't want to take over my body, I desperately needed to know what it was he was really after.