Who you were doesn't matter around here.

It's all about who you are now.

Maybe those words were meant to be comforting. Maybe they should have been comforting.

To Allen in that moment, they only felt like a death sentence. Like they were trying to kill the lingering traces of whoever he'd been. Maybe he was being dramatic, but it truly felt like that was the purpose of the words when they were spoken.

Anyhow, Allen found himself walking aimlessly among the hallways of the mansion. He didn't really have anywhere to go and, he realized, he didn't have anything to do. He had contented himself for the entire day with reading about the various monsters that inhabited his world. It had the duel purpose of appeasing his interest in the world and hopefully making sure he didn't fall prey to them again.

He thought he could spend some time talking to Lavi about his origins, but after the response that attempt garnered, all he had wanted was to get out of that room as quickly as he could. He could go to sleep, except he wasn't tired and he didn't know when he would be . . .

His Origins.

The words all but literally slam into his mind without any trigger or warning.

How strange, Allen thought. Even stranger, it took him a few seconds to even understand what his own thoughts meant. His origin or at least the closest thing he could get to identifying as his origin without Lavi's help was the basement. The lab.

It was the first place Allen remembered seeing. It was the place he had woken up in and, as far as could be ascertained, he'd been completely created there. Surely if any hints about who he was besides this blank slate existed, it would be there.

. . . But did he really want to do that?

Lavi had been very clear about his annoyance at Allen trying to find out about his past, if such a thing even existed for him.

If he went back to the lab for that specific purpose, then he would be doing something that he actively knew the vampire wouldn't like and although Lavi had never said anything about restrictions on where he could go in or around the mansion during the tour, he wasn't sure if he was truly allowed back down there.

The basement level had been pointedly left out of the tour (along with Kanda's rooms) the redhead had given him of the home.

He'd made some mistakes and missteps since he'd awakened - it certainly felt like he'd made far too many for the short amount of time he'd been awake - but he'd made those mistakes by not knowing or understanding what his roommates wanted of him.

To do something that he already had a feeling would be heavily frowned upon was a marked change in mentality for him. One he couldn't quite convince himself he was ready for.

Besides the can of worms that could be opened if Lavi caught him doing it, he wasn't sure how he would be able to look his guardian in the eye ever again afterwards even if the vampire did not find out about it.

And there was something else.

In conjunction with his thoughts, Allen's feet had taken him to the edge of the stairwell that led down to the basement level. There it was again.

For all his mental references to it being the "Basement" or the "Lab"; deep inside himself, he had given it another name. The Dark Place. He could argue and discuss with himself all he wanted. He could make all sorts of decisions, but the real thing he needed to convince himself of was this. Going down there.

The same feeling he had confronted earlier, the one that spoke of a darkness and a chill that would drive any rational person away. Allen certainly felt driven away, but Lavi worked down there. It almost made Allen think that the older man was more insane than he showed off.

Who else could go down there and stay down there like it was nothing? Or maybe Lavi was uncomfortable down there, too? . . . Unlikely. It was his area, after all, he controlled what happened down there.

In an echo of the last time he'd found himself staring into that foreboding abyss, Allen turned on his heel and headed back down the hallway without even bothering to try and brave the Dark Place.

Hopefully the rest of his days weren't going to be like this because otherwise this was going to be a long lifetime, but for now he wasn't about to venture into the basement. He could find something else to busy himself with until he was ready to sleep, but not that.

He wasn't ready for that.

Kanda was contemplating.

He did that a great deal, he would admit. Simply sitting in his quarters on his bed and staring off into space or out of a window was not in any way unusual for him. At the moment, he was specifically thinking about a little, white haired creation.

He would say that the . . . boy . . . definitely wasn't what he had expected, but it dawned on him during his contemplation that it was difficult to quantify exactly what he had expected. Something - someone - who was obedient, that was easy enough to say.

Kanda would allow dissent in small doses from the beings around him, something he had learned over the years was necessary in some capacity when dealing with people other than himself, but he required subservience over all else. He was Yu Kanda, a high demon. Other creatures, be they monsters or humans, held no candle to him and they shouldn't dare to act like they do.

While there was an adjustment period, to be sure, the Rabbit understood this exceptionally well. He'd watched the vampire for a good time before acting on his surveillance. Despite being caught by humans and contrary to everything about his appearance and personality, Lavi was indeed an observant and intelligent individual. Honestly, the personification of competence.

It was why Kanda had saved him all those decades ago with the intention to make the vampire serve him and continued to have the redhead serve him to this day. It was nothing he would admit out loud, but the other man was an asset. One he would not suffer losing, no matter how frustrated he might get sometimes.

Perhaps he hadn't given the lesser species his due in the end, though. Due in part to his own apparent ignorance of the process and the massive accomplishments of his own life, Kanda had not really thought the process of creating a being like he had commissioned to be an overly arduous one.

Difficult perhaps, but nothing Lavi would be unable to do and for the most part, the demon was correct. The vampire, with his usual diligence and premeditation, proceeded to create a being that looked absolutely perfect and truly did come to life. The being that came up with the unexplained name of Allen appeared to be as human as the body parts it - he - had been made up of.

What came with Allen's resurrection was apparently human level intelligence and a will of his own. Oh, he certainly had that.

Kanda groaned as he recalled his first meeting with the Rabbit's spawn. Whatever unnamed expectations he'd had when he'd seen the creation and approached him had been blown apart pretty immediately.

He had never been challenged so furiously and so frequently in such a short amount of time than he had in that instance. It had angered him greatly, pushing him to points of cruelty that were unusual even for him. The demon would not argue that he felt guilt or remorse for how he head treated the creation he'd commissioned in those moments.

However, he would at least say that he may have been too hasty, a bit too angry. Too emotional. The boy was young even in appearance and even younger in actuality. Kanda had been short tempered with Lavi, as well, during the adjustment period when the vampire had first started serving him.

There were some missteps or miscommunications as the two monsters got a feel for each other's personalities and how they played off of each other. Things were yelled. Things were broken. Moving on.

Lavi had the advantage of being a more calculating person by nature despite his more bouncy and excitable personality. Being a lone vampire that needed to feed off of humans, who were fearful and had a habit of producing the odd vampire hunter from their populace, had also taught him how to instinctually act with hesitance. He knew how to blend in and lay low long before Kanda started watching him.

Allen, it was easy to tell, had none of this on his side. He seemed to have few experiences with anything as far as Kanda could tell and while the boy definitely had a more demure appearance and aura about him, it also became readily apparent that he had a hot-blooded personality underneath that, which Kanda would privately admit was eerily reminiscent of his own.

The boy could apparently turn from quiet and unassuming to a riled up cat, hissing and spitting with a vengeance. And he could do so faster than Kanda could adjust. That was one of the main points of the matter, wasn't it? Kanda saw him, watched him, and approached.

From doing so, he thought he knew what to expect when he began to interact with the boy and when that changed before he could gain ground, he got irritated and the resulting actions from that agitated the boy.

It had taken some time for Kanda to be able to acknowledge that there may have been something wrong with how he handled the situation - that he might have been as much at fault (in his own way) as Allen had been for the disagreement getting so out of control. Again, it was nothing he would admit aloud or to anyone else.

Yet, he now thought that he had pushed too far much too quickly. Had expected too much of the boy before the situation had truly had time to settle.

He wasn't there to cater to the whims of a child or the curiously protective vampire that created him. If anything, Allen was created to cater to him, but Kanda ultimately decided that he could find it within himself to extend some understanding to the boy.

The concept of doing so was not the most displeasing thing Kanda had found himself forced to consider during his existence . . . although it was still mildly unpleasant.

Besides, distasteful or otherwise, the demon didn't seem to have much of a choice in the matter.

As had been pointed out to him by a nosy redheaded vampire directly after the fight, if he continued on the same path of behavior without changing a thing about his approach, fighting will likely continue to happen. They wouldn't achieve anything from that and everyone involved would continue to be upset. He hated when the Rabbit was right about something.

Kanda had been quite resistant to changing his approach for some time after the argument, but he had calmed enough to consider it in a more practical way. He sat and he considered how to proceed anew when he was forced to abandon his home to follow the suicidal idiot of a boy into the surrounding woods.

He had stalked steadily into the woods after the boy, but he hadn't used his demonic speed to track the boy. That proved to be something of a mistake as when he found Allen moments later, the boy was right in the middle of being attacked by one of the bottom feeders that lived in the forest. Letting his demonic nature take control quickly resolved the situation and because Kanda wasn't feeling particularly angry at the time, he even let the bottom feeder live.

He would admit to not having put much effort into conversing with the boy after saving him, but the demon still thought it had gone well. Not dissolving into uncontrollable fighting was something, at least.

At least the boy seemed inquisitive enough, the questions less annoying than Kanda may have assumed them to be. He wasn't sure why he was caught off guard by the white haired boy's lack of knowledge about demons in general, but he was.

Something he would fix later. He couldn't stand incompetence from those around him and that especially went for Allen, since his presence had a special purpose. Something he would have to approach the boy about soon, since he's about had his time to adjust.

Allen (or whatever he wished to call himself) was his, after all. Time to see what human relationships had that his didn't.