Author's Note: Yayyyy I'm back, and with a new chapter! XD
Anyway, as you guys have probably realized, I didn't use any of the canon nicknames in this story. Beansprout, Rabbit, you get what I mean. Reason being I didn't think they fit very well, given the characters' relationships with each other... which should become clearer with the next few chapters XD
Now that that's out of the way, I hope everyone enjoys this new chapter! Also, is anyone else as excited as I am for the appearance of GENERAL KANDA?! I know it'll probably be a while yet, but I can't wait ahhhhhh XD
Chapter 4: A Crack in the Line
"I'm pretty sure this counts as harassment," Lavi said.
Lavi's back was pressed against the door of an unused storage room, barely big enough for two people. Kanda had literally waylaid him in the middle of the corridor between his quarters and the training room, thrown the door open, herded him inside, then slammed the door shut with one of his crutches and backed him against it. The latch dug painfully into his side. The wood was hard, the splinters scraping unpleasantly against the fabric of his clothes, and the angle at which Kanda's crutch jabbed into his abdomen ungainly and uncomfortable.
"I don't give a fuck, ginger," Kanda snapped.
The height difference between them was not huge. But it made things almost unbearably awkward when he was the one trying to corner him, and yet the redhead had to angle his gaze downwards to meet his eyes.
"Now that's just hurtful, Kanda." the intensity of his cutting green eyes was at odds with his lopsided smile.
"And now you're just playing the fool." Kanda was in no mood for jokes.
The smile vanished. The redhead stilled, eyes narrowed.
"This had better be good." Lavi's voice was flat.
"For a given definition of good," Kanda growled. And then, because he had always been better at expressing himself with actions than words, he lowered his crutches and reached for the manila packet tucked into his coat. The sound of crinkling paper was almost too loud for the small space.
Lavi took it from his hand, and turned to the first page. He squinted — the small, angular font made for difficult reading in the dim light — and raised an eyebrow in consternation.
"Why are you showing me this? I already know all of it."
Even so, he commenced flipping through the pages, giving each a quick onceover. Reached the end of the file. Started again from the beginning, but slower this time, a frown knitted between his eyebrows.
Kanda folded his arms and leaned back against the wall on the opposite side of the redhead, waiting for the eventual verdict. Not because he did not already know what he was going to say — he did, for a fact — but because he needed to hear the words from the redhead himself. He could feel a headache starting up behind his eyes. His day had already gone to shit, and he had not even had breakfast yet.
"It's gone." the confused look was back, and in force. "But I could have sworn —"
"We know," Kanda interrupted, because his sympathy had gone the way of his patience. "Any clue how this might have happened?"
The redhead's lips were drawn into a thin line, tight with tension.
"It explains why Komui sent Allen out alone. I didn't know, until Lenalee told me yesterday. I'll... I'll have to look into it." Lavi grimaced. "But, Kanda... Kanda, I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know."
"You couldn't have." Kanda's voice was strained, barely above a murmur, but Lavi knew that he was already forgiven. "You weren't here."
That was also true. Lavi had been away on a mission of his own. By the time he had gotten back, Kanda had already left for the train station.
Green eyes flashed in the dim light. Kanda's dark blue eyes were hooded, almost black, in the dim light.
"You don't think," Lavi started, when Kanda suddenly lunged forward, slapping a hand over his mouth.
"Quiet," he hissed into his ear. His arm hung loosely by his side, his index finger pointing downwards at the floor.
Lavi's eyes flickered downwards, following the direction of his finger. Scant light filtered into the room from beneath the door. And then something shifted, and he realized that there was someone standing right outside the door, blocking out part of the light.
Waiting.
The silence writhing in the claustrophobic space between them was a terrible thing to behold.
"Kanda?" a soft voice filtered in through the gap.
In front of him, Kanda scowled, pushed him out of the way and threw the door open with a bang. Lavi winced. Poor, abused door hinges. They were no match for Kanda's wrath.
"Idiot apprentice," he snapped.
"No longer an apprentice," Allen snapped back instinctively. And then something suspiciously like guilt crossed her face, creasing her features, and the girl dropped her gaze. Shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.
"I'm sorry," she started. "I was just passing by, when I heard your voice. Why were you guys hiding in there?" Her nose wrinkled. "It's dusty. And small."
"None of your fucking business." There it was. Kanda's favourite line.
Allen looked distinctly annoyed. Opened her mouth as if to reply. Closed it again.
It was Lavi's cue to leave. "You know what, I'll leave you both to it. Lenalee's waiting for me in the training room, and I'm already late." He scratched the back of his head with one hand, then raised a hand to his forehead in mock salute.
Allen turned to him, a soft smile on her lips. The white-haired girl was wearing the infirmary blanket around her shoulders, one hand bunched in the fabric, drawing it close just below her collarbones. The swelling around her left eye had gone down, and although the bruise was still visible, it had faded from the alarming almost-black of the first day to an even purplish blue around the rims of her eye.
Kanda stood a little ways behind her. Their eyes met, cut-glass green to royal blue, and Kanda gave him a sharp, almost imperceptible nod. Lavi felt a fleeting sense of pity, but knew that it was not his place to stay.
The redhead bid them farewell, and jogged off in the direction of the training room.
Allen fiddled with the blanket she had slung haphazardly around her shoulders.
In front of her was Kanda, whose strides were clearly unimpeded by the use of crutches. Allen swallowed nervously, then cleared her throat. "Kanda?"
He did not reply, nor did he break his stride. It was almost as if he was willfully ignoring her.
"Where are you taking me?"
If he had heard, he showed no sign of it.
She wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, stop him and ask him where he was taking her. But she did not dare.
She was already regretting creeping up on him thus; he was jumpy — they both were — after their run-in with Road, which had almost — should have — ended in disaster. She had been a fool to think that he would not notice, when stealth was his element.
The corridor split into two. He turned left without any hesitation, then left again at the next crossroad.
The niggling suspicion that she might already know where he was taking her flitted around the back of her mind.
And then he stopped in front of a familiar door, and Allen knew that she had guessed right.
"Get in," Kanda said evenly. She hastened to obey.
It had been a while since she was here last, but it would seem as if nothing had changed. His room was still spartan. Where her bed had been, before she had been given her own room, was an empty space, all the more conspicuous for its lack.
There came the sound of rustling fabric, directly behind her. "Kanda—" she started, made to turn around, but the sudden feeling of cold steel pressed against her neck stopped her short.
Her eyes widened. Her breathing quickened. She dropped her hand to her side, and the blanket slipped off her shoulders, to land on the floor in a rumpled heap between their legs.
The only sound to be heard was their breathing.
"What did you hear?" His voice was dangerously soft. It made all the hairs on her skin rise, from her arms all the way up to the nape of her neck.
"Kanda?" Her voice trembled. The blade, perilously sharp, whispered against her flesh, its tip parallel to her carotid artery. If she moved, even the slightest fraction, she would bleed.
He was standing directly behind her, so close that she could feel his breath, deliberately measured, warm against her skin. His hair tickled where it brushed against her neck.
"I won't be repeating myself," he said.
"Nothing," she replied, forcing herself to take shallow, even breaths. "I didn't manage to get in close enough to discern what you were saying. But I would recognize your voice anywhere."
And it was true. All those nights in those first months, nightmares after nightmares, the contents of which would fade into mist when she woke up, leaving her with nothing but the salty taste of tears on her lips... His voice had been the only constant, the only anchor she would grab onto to haul herself up, away from the ghosts in her head, towards the light at the end of the tunnel that heralded reality.
Of course, that was before Lenalee had procured the sleeping draught that would, finally, after so many others had failed, keep her nightmares at bay. But she did not think she could ever forget.
He did not lower the knife. For a moment, she thought he was truly going to go through with it.
And then his breath hitched, an almost inaudible sound that she would have missed had she not been standing so close to him, and the knife fell from his fingers. It landed with a metallic clang as the blade bounced off the hard marble floor to land a short ways away. It was getting hard to breathe; the air between them was stretched so thin that it felt almost suffocating.
He pushed her away none too gently, and she stumbled forward.
"Kanda?" she turned, dove-gray eyes wide with concern. He dropped his crutches onto the floor beside him, and sat down heavily on the bed. Buried his head in his hands. Did not reply.
She took a cautious step forward. When he did not look up, she took another, then another. Reappropriated the knife, as well as her blanket. Crossed the rest of the room soundlessly. Stopped in front of him, then held the knife out to him, handle first.
"You dropped your weapon." Her voice was still shaky, as she pulled the blanket close around her shoulders once more.
When he did not respond, she swallowed, then placed it carefully on the bed beside him.
"For what it is worth, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
She knew that he understood exactly what she was referring to.
She left the room, pulled the door gently shut behind her. The mechanism caught as the door clicked shut, a note of finality.
He remembered, that night he had found her, almost two years ago. It had been winter, on a night so cold that his breath came out in puffs of spinning white, suspended in the air like tendrils of smoke. He had been on his way back from a mission when he spotted the crumpled heap, stark beneath the light of the full moon, a blemish marring the pristine, all-encompassing white of the landscape.
She had been a waif of a girl, with greasy white hair which clung to her nape and bangs that stuck out in all angles. Desperate grey eyes, too wide for her pale face. Her fingernails, caked with dirt, dug into his arm, drawing blood.
I can't remember. I can't remember anything.
The only thing she had was her name.
He had dragged her all the way back to the Order, where the infirmary had taken her in, put her in clothes too large for her, and laid her on bed sheets reminiscent of the white he had found her lying on.
Her lifeless, unblinking gray eyes had looked straight through him, made his skin crawl. She was a porcelain doll, pale eyes and paler skin, that promised to shatter and fold under the lightest touch.
There was nobody behind that gaze.
The first thing he had done had been to go to Komui's office. She's not my fucking problem. Foist her off on someone else.
Fucking general responded to his frustration by throwing her into his room, thrusting her into his care as his apprentice. He still resented him for that.
The first few months had been the worst. Nightmares after nightmares, night after night. The shadows under his eyes were twin to her own. Thrashing violently in her bed, fists knotted up in the blankets. Some nights he had had to hold her down, to prevent her from hurting herself.
Wake up!
Dead, dead eyes, blank and glassy. Not even a spark of recognition.
We are operatives, working for the Black Order.
Everyone in London knew what the Black Order stood for. Merciless cruelty. A shadowy syndicate that struck back against its enemies, and which struck hard.
Mafia stronghold.
My name is Kanda Yuu.
A mute doll, staring through him. Skin cold and clammy to the touch.
Your name is Allen Walker.
It took months. Months for her to feel safe enough in her own skin in the Order, months before the nightmares slowly ceased, as if she had weaned herself off them.
As it turned out, to everyone's surprise, Allen was gifted. Extraordinarily gifted. She was agile, light-footed, and eager to learn. Kanda had been pleasantly surprised when he had handed her a knife, and almost lost an eye in return.
They moved from knives to grappling, and finally, to guns.
That last bit had been hard. Ridiculously hard. Kanda refused to touch a gun. Allen pushed. Kanda refused to tell her shit. Allen peppered him with questions, then attempted to force a gun into his hand. Kanda would tell her that it was none of her goddamn business. Allen would reply, tersely, voice dripping with sarcasm, that she was his business.
Those days, their training sessions ended in screaming matches more often than not. Order personnel from the other end of the hall would hear and know to keep away from that part of the building. Once Kanda had even stormed into Komui's office, almost ripping the door off its hinges with the force of his rage, and stuck his knife into his desk, narrowly missing the general's fingers.
The desk would never be the same again.
Eventually, miraculously, they made it past that stage, due in no small part to her affinity for guns. The loose-limbed comfort they brought her, the pistol grips slipping gloriously into her gloved palms as if they had been made to fit. They afforded her a freedom that she did not previously have, not with knives, and not with grappling. Not least to the degree that Lavi and Lenalee specialised in, anyway.
After months of training together, Kanda had deemed her fit for active combat. He had marched her down to Komui's office, and demanded that he cut him loose of his obligation to her.
As if in retaliation for his ruined desk, Komui had assigned her to him as his official partner for future missions, then cheerfully ordered them to get along.
Allen had had to hold him back from inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Lavi had cornered him once, his expression carefully blank, his green eyes solemn.
Was it worth it?
He had deigned not to reply, choosing instead to shove the redhead off of him. And in that moment, he knew, as well as the redhead did, what his answer was.
Yes. Yes, it was.