Aaaaaaand we're back! It has been a while. I've had the worst year of my life. I've graduated. I've been places. I've done things. I've had a fantastic fall. This next segment is the last. Updates will be sporadic; there's no longer any plot I have to write, just bits and pieces to pave the way to the end of the story. Thank you so much to any and all who have read this. This piece has basically grown up with me, and while I can't say it's my best work, it's my work. That's all. Hope you guys can find something in here to enjoy! Somehow we've had two (2)? new readers in October 2022. If statistics are to be believed. Could also be a very loyal reread—whatever the answer, welcome aboard! We love to have you here.
Oh, and IcyLady you are absolutely correct about your last comment (;
Kanda woke up warm with the tail end of a dream slipping out of his mind, almost too fast to catch it.
First he had to remember where he was, on a hard mattress in a guestroom; that he'd been sleeping, four hours at most; that he'd been dreaming, since what he knew he'd just seen hadn't happened to him; that this was important. Letting it go now meant he'd never dream it again. If he was lucky. He would never see it again if he wasn't.
He had to fight it. The forgetting. Try and remember what was in there that mattered.
He pushed himself up in bed. His breath didn't come. He waited there for seconds waiting for something to happen. All that happened was his heart beat in his neck. Try again.
Moving, he pushed the covers over and sat in seiza. Hands on knees. Knees on ankles. The air in the room was freezing even if the window was shut, pushing the sweat that slid down in waves. Try again.
It was easier to get his throat open once he focused on the body like they'd taught him. He didn't know how they had got a soul to match to a different body. Whatever the trick was, it didn't work that well. Kanda spent so much time trying to stay here that it felt like he wasn't even meant to.
A few gasps later, he'd soaked his lungs in air, and he was conscious. Pathetic. Now: what was so important?
The memories were going away as he grew into this body more and more. While his legs lengthened, his hair grew, his skin healed into welts of scar tissue that covered him over, whatever person he used to be got covered up. He used to tell the difference because there was only one time he'd ever been tall, but now as he saw women eye-to-eye and the men didn't tower over him, it was all the same. Whatever memories came back did in dreams.
Those were hard to remember. At least when he saw things appearing, disappearing, people becoming different people, seasons changing when he was awake, he knew they were memories. In dreams the fragments were all as real as the dumb dreams about missing a train or tripping over his own feet. Then afterward, he lost them.
He didn't wake up scared this time. He woke up wanting. He could start there.
Kanda scanned the room for anything that would remind him. Newish build. Wood. There was barely any room between the foot of the bed and the wall, just enough for two backpacks and two long pairs of boots. The hook on the back of the door was wrapped around with mounds of bandages. Beside him, Daisya had rolled out from underneath the blanket to the edge of the bed. He'd taken both their coats to bed because he was getting cold, the idiot, but he'd kicked them over the edge of the bed.
It was warmer in the dream. The wheat field? No. Kanda tried to let his thoughts drift and tried to concentrate at the same time. The dream wouldn't come back to him if—
A noise ripped through the silence he was trying to make. Even at night, he couldn't get any damn peace.
Glancing down at Daisya, he wondered if it was worth waking him up. That would stop him snoring. Wouldn't stop the noise. Shoving the pillow down over his face would solve the problem.
Kanda reluctantly got to his feet and slid off the bed, touching down on the cold boards with feet that were close to losing feeling. He draped Daisya's cloak and the blanket back over him, took his own coat, belted Mugen in place as close to silently as possible. It helped to move. Moving around would let his brain focus on searching. It had happened before. It would be hours into the day when he saw the wrong kind of lamp or fencepost and felt himself gag as everything he remembered shoved its way on top of his life.
There were other reasons he couldn't sleep. A walk was one of the only things he could do. Any light would wake up his teammates, who would be a pain in the ass for the rest of the day. He didn't even need to look to stay quiet.
Keeping his eyes on the bed as long as he could, Kanda closed and locked the door behind him and made his way into the street.
…
Stepping out from the shadow of the door, he could only see one other late-night wanderer. The town wasn't big. Short wood-and-plaster houses, one paved street. There was also one building here with the lights lit. A bakery. There was nothing else to look at, so he walked towards it. He stayed close to the houses. If anyone grabbed him, he could fight it off, but if anyone saw him, they were going to ask questions.
His bare feet skipped around puddles where yesterday's snow had melted. The shopfront wasn't open, just the back. Out here he could only see the reflection of the baking fires and candles from back behind the counter. Shutters hid everything but the glow. Except, over the door someone drew a table. Wooden boards, big white cloth, wheat and bread in a basket—
White cloth. Flowing. Wind. Yellow hair.
She was there.
That was why he wanted.
Who he used to be was someone different from what Kanda was now. Whatever he felt—it was like hearing underwater. Everything just came out muddy and twisted. He couldn't feel scared without feeling angry, couldn't blush without hating it, couldn't feel angry without feeling sick. That's what the old man just didn't understand. He couldn't just leave him behind.
The body he had wasn't human, the soul he had wasn't his, everything he felt had to come forced across whatever separated himself from him. It was like trying to drink water through the glass. One time he ran for hours without drinking in the Second Exorcist tests. By the time they gave him water he thought his throat was bleeding. He felt it. The water was just there, on the other side, and all he could do was remember it.
His body moved past the shop down the street and he didn't even know it.
At least there was always water somewhere. He didn't even know if she was alive. Still. It hurt that she wasn't there with him. Not thinking about it took effort. Thinking about it made him want to crack his own chest just to make it stop. He was trapped in a fishtank watching his own life outside the glass, his lungs hurt, and he couldn't breathe here.
Kanda moved uphill now, stepping on the cobbles of the sloped street. He could just loop back to the other alley, then around the inn and back. He had what he came out here for. It was colder than he'd thought. His breath was freezing when it hit the air.
She'd been with him. They had to run. He'd been scared and stern, but she just…laughed, and he hated her for making fun of him when he was so scared that one of them was going to die.
In the dream. That was what it'd been. Did she ever do that to him when they were alive together? Probably. It seemed right.
The town was too small to have streetlamps. The clouds had cleared from yesterday. That meant the stars where white up in the sky between the stark black rooftops. Even if it was going to make him dizzy, Kanda kept his eyes raised.
There was a river of boiling water that they had to jump over. She disappeared into it. He stopped and ran down along the bank, then she was there at the end. Where it met the sea. They were carrying a corpse wrapped in a shroud with them. In the end they had to dive into the cold ocean to not get burned. The same dark grey ocean where he'd seen Daisya swimming. That was all bullshit. The memory was just that she was there, running with him.
It didn't help Kanda to remember that. He'd been an exorcist. There was a lot of running. It didn't even help to remember her. All that meant was that his guts hurt.
There was no exorcist at the Asian branch like her. No one at HQ. The others that went down to the African branch sent letters. He asked—Marie asked them if she was there. A woman with yellow hair. He couldn't give another description. Whatever her face was, all he saw was the mouth, grinning at him. There was one woman like that he'd seen. General Nine wasn't her. The old man said there wasn't anyone in the American branch who was the same age.
She'd been an exorcist. She was probably dead.
As long as his own soul felt like an infection his body was fighting, it didn't matter. He couldn't just stop looking for her. That was the only part of the real him that was left. Who he was, who he'd been, that person loved her. Kanda just needed to find her like he needed to breathe.
She was all he had left of himself. Kanda knew that and left her.
Kanda was the one in this body, Kanda wasn't him, he was someone else, he loved her, Kanda had nothing, he would find her, Kanda would become him, Kanda decided to kill or die.
When he finally tripped and fell sideways into someone's windowsill, he brought his eyes back to the street. He could see even less than he could before with his head spinning like this. It helped him focus on the things he saw with someone else's eyes.
When he ran after that Noah, it was this body doing it. Not him. Kanda lost his grip. Betrayed her. The last real thing that he'd felt was love for her. Life since then was an unreal thing. This was the illusion.
The lotus was real.
…
Kanda's feet took him back to the first street while the sky turned black to blue, through the mud, up the stairs, then to the room where it took him three tries to fit the key in the lock. He didn't feel frozen. Still made his grip weak.
He still eased the door closed.
Daisya had taken over the bed since he left. At least he wasn't snoring. One arm was thrown out over his had and one somehow was looped under his own leg. Of course he'd rolled into the middle of it. He never made life easy for anyone else if he could help it.
Scraping the mud off his feet, Kanda hung up the coat and Mugen before he stopped again and wiped his eyes. He had two hours before dawn. More until Marie woke them up. He always had a soft spot.
He climbed into his side of the bed slowly. He wasn't about to wake Daisya up now. He'd talk. That was something Kanda didn't want now and wouldn't want later. There'd be questions. Daisya never stopped asking if he knew there was an answer he didn't know. He got more out of Kanda than he'd told anyone except the old man. Marie didn't need to ask. He knew. Maybe Daisya wasn't hounding him for answers yet, but that was only because he still thought Kanda was human.
If he asked about this, he was going to get whatever answer came to Kanda when he was too tired to even put his own boots on. That wasn't a risk he could take.
Bit by bit, Kanda took the covers back and relaxed. His head spun right back into the stars when he closed his eyes. Something kept him awake, though. The dip in the mattress, the warmth on one side of his stomach. He could feel the outline of somebody else.
Separate.
Daisya ran hot. It was a pain in the summer when they had to share. Kanda had tried to make him room with the old man the first time they were travelling together. Right now, he didn't mind. He could feel him there without having to touch. It was close enough to just think about what that would feel like. Hell, it would be as real as anything else he'd seen tonight.
Eyes closed, Kanda counted his own pulse. Too fast for sleep. He'd lie until the morning.
Something moved.
Daisya had to know he could hear it. After Kanda bent himself out of shape around his body, he rolled himself right back over to his side. Bastard.
"You woke me up," Daisya murmured. "You went out?"
"Yeah."
"I can feel your cold feet."
"I was quiet."
"Yeah," Daisya agreed, "You were."
Well, if he was going to move, Kanda wasn't going to stay contorted like this. He curled back into fetal position under the scratchy wool blanked, pulling said feet up underneath him. Daisya had only opened his eyes a crack.
"Want to talk about it?"
"No," Kanda said.
There was a soft sigh. "I figured. 'Night."
Kanda needed to sleep. The bed was warm, and even the mattress felt better than before. He'd regret staying awake any longer. Maybe he'd see her again. The room was still dark, too dark for anyone to see who didn't have his eyes. They were already falling shut. His body was going to sleep without him.
He bit his lip.
"How long were you up?" Kanda asked.
"Mm?"
"How long."
Daisya breathed a laugh, then shifted the blanked as he rolled to face him. Could he even see his face? Kanda hoped not.
"Don't worry about it."
"Why?"
"It's weird if you do." Daisya grinned. "You put the covers back on me, I overheated. Now get back to sleep."
Kanda just sighed at that. It was impossible to talk to Daisya. He just avoided the subject and turned it back on you.
He needed some rest.
A few minutes after he closed his eyes for the second time, he felt something brush his hand. One of Daisya's. His limbs were all over the bed, but one arm rested just close enough to Kanda that he could feel it there.
Kanda waited.
He could hear the push and swell of his breathing. Daisya was already under.
He counted to sixty.
No shuffling. No moving around. The stars in his eyes were almost going out again.
Kanda turned his palm over.
And fingers closed on it, a loose fist that wasn't any bigger than his own. It felt like solid earth.
He let go and turned his back to Daisya. One arm snaked around his shoulder while he lay there. The other crossed his chest.
Then Kanda slept.
