A/N: And here's Chapter 2! Thanks for all the reviews, favorites, and follows!
.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.
Somehow, they got lucky and made it through to the next morning without being discovered or disturbed by wild animals. Feeling like he'd gone crazy at a bar the night before, Kanda woke to a pounding headache and a sensation of severe disorientation. However, unlike with a hangover, memory impairment was not an issue, and to his horror, he found that he remembered what he'd done while under the effects of the akuma's attack. Hating himself, both for giving in to the drug and for having sex with the Moyashi, Kanda pushed himself up onto his side and vomited, feebly hoping that the action would somehow make him forget what had happened. It didn't, but it made the faux hangover fade enough that he could actually think about practical things, like getting dressed and getting them out of the middle of nowhere.
His first order of business was to find their coats and get their naked bodies covered; he didn't want to get dressed until he could get himself cleaned up, but walking around the woods naked seemed like a really bad idea. He draped the Moyashi's jacket over his unconscious body, hiding the evidence of what they'd done the night before, before slipping on his own.
After that, Kanda worked his way to his feet, but he quickly found that he didn't have the strength to walk back to town, much less carry the still unconscious Moyashi with him. They were stuck here until he recovered more or the Moyashi woke up, and given what his fuzzy brain remembered of the day before, he doubted that having Allen awake would help the situation at all; after sex that rough, it was probably going to be days if not weeks before the Moyashi could walk again.
Stumbling on his unsteady legs over to the spot where the fight had occurred, Kanda quickly found the remains of the finder, though the man was now just a pile of ashes. He searched through the oversized pack, knowing that there would be emergency supplies in there, as having the finders carry such things allowed the exorcists to travel light. The first canteen he grabbed was full, and Kanda quickly downed its contents; the water was refreshing and washed away some of the hangover-like symptoms he was feeling.
But while the canteens in the pack were all full, the rest of the supplies were in a poorer state. If the Moyashi didn't wake up, the pitiful rations would last till morning, but with Allen awake, they wouldn't last through a meal let alone long enough to get them back to town. The medical supplies were in a similar condition, and while neither young man was injured in the fight, Kanda had at least been hoping to find something to clean them up with. If he wanted to get cleaned up and put his clothes back on, he was going to have to use the water from the canteens.
The food received his attention first, and he had a quick meal to sustain his energy; he felt a little guilty about eating while the parasite-type was passed out, but Kanda knew from experience that no matter how hungry the brat Moyashi was, he would want to make sure his companions were fed as well, so that feeling quickly faded to irritation towards his selfless companion. After that, he decided that getting clean was more important than having drinking water, as once he was dressed and feeling better, he could go search the woods for a water source - he was probably going to have to go searching for food anyway.
Resisting the urge to just pour the water over himself in a makeshift shower, Kanda tried to ration it out. He grabbed a nearby shirt - years of experience had taught him to ignore that it belonged to a dead guy - and used it as a rag to clean himself up in a much more controlled way. Once that was done, he dressed in the clothes he'd shed the day before and tied his hair back up. While he still felt gross and hungover, he felt a whole lot better now that he was physically clean and properly dressed.
Turning his focus on the Moyashi, he used the same method to clean the boy up. It was embarrassing and he knew that the brat would think he was doing it to be nice, but he just wanted the boy to no longer be half-naked, and he couldn't dress him while he was so filthy; Kanda wanted to forget what had happened as soon as possible and he couldn't do that when the evidence was all over the Moyashi's body. It took longer than he would have liked, and used up far too much water, but he eventually got Allen cleaned and dressed. The boy had thankfully remained unconscious, and after resisting the urge to run him through with Mugen for looking so peaceful, Kanda turned his attention to other things.
He moved what was left of the finder's rations next to the Moyashi; the boy would be hungry when he woke and it was far less annoying to put them where the boy could find them than to get chewed out for abandoning the brat to go searching for more supplies. Then he grabbed the empty canteens and made his way out of the clearing and into the trees.
Foraging for food and water was not Kanda's forte, but General Teidoll had made sure that all of his apprentices learned basic wilderness survival skills to help them succeed as exorcists, and he knew quite a bit about botany, so he was far from being completely lost. The nearby stream was noisy and easy to find, but after that, things got a little harder. There were no edible plants around, and Kanda knew better than to take the berries from the bush he couldn't identify, as it was far better to leave food behind than to take something poisonous; normally his healing could fight off such a thing, but in his currently strained state, that was an unnecessary risk.
In the end, he returned to the clearing with full canteens and a bundle of firewood. He was disappointed with what he'd found, but the Moyashi was still out, and as long as he stayed that way, food wouldn't be an issue.
After taking a brief rest to regain the strength he'd spent out in the woods, Kanda built a fire. He spent the remainder of the day and night tending to the fire and sleeping on and off. With the Moyashi unconscious, he couldn't allow himself to sleep through the night, but he also knew that he needed rest if he was going to make it to town in the morning; they just didn't have the supplies to stay out in the woods until they recovered.
In the morning, Kanda ate what was left of the rations, made sure the fire was out, and gathered up the still unconscious Moyashi. The trek back to town was long and difficult, though it got infinitely easier once they reached the road and he no longer had to fight his way through the woods. When they arrived in the town, the innkeeper tried to force hospitality and medical care on them, but there was no way Kanda was letting those pathetic little villagers find out what was wrong with the Moyashi, so he bullied his way to the phone. After a quick call to Komui, they were headed back to headquarters through the same ark gate that had brought them there.
.x.x.
The moment they stepped into the entry hall, Kanda collapsed from exhaustion and strain; now that he knew that they were safe, he could no longer fight against how poor he was feeling. He woke up a few hours later, in a bed in the infirmary with an IV in his arm. His gut reaction was to tear out the needle and escape to his room, but as he became more awake, he beat down that instinct. He was still wiped out from their ordeal, and he knew that the nutrients in the IV would aid his natural healing abilities much more efficiently than simple food and rest would - Komui had beaten that into his head rather forcibly. Besides, the Moyashi was in the bed next to him, and Kanda was not going anywhere until the boy was awake and they could talk; he desperately needed to know if Allen remembered any of what had happened out there.
A nurse came into the room to check on them, and when she saw that Kanda was awake, she immediately left again, presumably to fetch Komui, as he arrived just a few minutes later. He couldn't help laughing at the disgruntled scowl on Kanda's face. "I'm glad to see you left the IV in. You're severely dehydrated and malnourished; you're going to need all the help you can get recovering from that. I'm surprised that you were able to get yourself back here, much less do it while carrying someone else."
His nervous laughter faded, and he fixed Kanda with a very serious stare. "You were only gone for three days, so how is it that you both are in the same condition as someone who had spent weeks lost in the woods?"
Kanda just stared silently at the wall behind him; he didn't have the words to explain what had happened to them. Komui tried several different questions, but the samurai didn't react to any of them. Eventually the supervisor realized that he wasn't going to get anything out of Kanda, so he sighed and gave up. "Look, I know what happened to Allen. I know you don't like him, but I imagine that witnessing his rape was still a pretty traumatic experience, especially given how beat up he is. I get that you don't want to talk about it. But I do need your side of the story for the reports, so don't take too long to get over it, ok?"
It took everything Kanda had to wait until Komui was gone before he reacted to what he'd just been told. For the moment, it was a huge stroke of luck that Komui thought he had merely witnessed Allen's rape, but depending on what Allen remembered, that could come back to bite him; he might be facing some very serious trouble for raping the Moyashi. Because now that he had taken a good look at the brat, it did look like the boy had been attacked. He was only safe if Allen remembered nothing and he could make up a story about what had happened. If Allen remembered enough to name him as the man who had done that to him, no one was going to believe that they both had been drugged.
On the other hand, he wasn't so sure that he wanted Allen to have forgotten what happened.
As much as he didn't want to admit it, the part of him that had liked Allen before this whole ordeal liked the boy even more now. And while that was completely unacceptable, he also couldn't deny that he didn't want the sex to be a one time thing. He didn't want to dwell on his feelings, but he was unfortunately stuck in a place where thinking was pretty much all he could do.