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The questioning, as it were, dragged on for days. And Allen really wouldn't call it questioning, simply because he was not actually allowed to speak. It was essentially Komui and Lenalee defending him to the top brass of the Black Order, trying to convince them that Allen was not actually a Noah anymore. That was all well and good, except that Allen himself couldn't say whether or not Nea was gone (and wasn't that the worst sort of nightmare).
So Komui would drop some story about Allen's bleeding heart, or talk about how Nea and the Earl were connected and therefore if one was dead, so must the other be. The Brass would respond in turn, saying that Allen simply did not matter as a person if the Fourteenth was still a residence, or how did they know that the Earl hadn't just reborn himself and Nea was sleeping, waiting for the right chance?
And then the Brass usually degenerated into a rant about how Allen was a traitor to the church and as such should be killed at best, imprisoned for life at worse, blah blah blah. Allen was getting sick with of people he didn't know telling him he needed to die.
Allen listened to them squabble for hours, feeling exhaustion creeping up into his bones like a disease. Lenalee sometimes sat next to him, her head sometimes drowsy on his shoulder, sometimes boredly picking at her fingernails. Occasionally she would go up and defend his case as well, though it was mostly just her threatening to destroy anyone who tried to hurt Allen.
Her pity was almost unbearable.
After the second day, Komui managed to convince the Brass that Allen should not be locked up overnight again. Komui had used the evidence that even if the boy tried to escape, he wouldn't get very far because of his atrophied muscles.
Allen hated his pity too, but was thankful enough about getting him out of his cell that he kept his thoughts to himself.
Even so, he was to be accompanied by a member of Crow at all times (was there something familiar about this situation? He could quite recall…). With this thought in mind, he decided he should pay Lavi another visit, see if he had calmed down after a few days.
Lavi had not calmed down. In fact, when Allen arrived at his room, it was to the alarming sight of Lavi jamming all of his personal belongings into a bag, pausing every minute or so to regain his breath, but doggedly continuing all the same. Allen watched the frenzied motions for a minute or so, bewilderment fading slowly into annoyance.
"What are you doing?" Allen asked quietly, pushing himself into the room. The Crow followed him like a great, silent, disapproving shadow.
Lavi looked up at the intrusion, but quickly dismissed Allen once he realized who it was. He didn't even look twice at the Crow. "I'm going after the Bookman."
"Lavi," Allen said tiredly, feeling all of his irritation drain away. "You're not strong enough, you can barely use a wheelchair."
"I don't care." Lavi said, not quite angry, but not altogether steady, either. "I'm his apprentice, he needs me. I've made him wait long enough."
Allen grimaced at the thought of having this conversation under the Crow member's unforgiving eyes. He turned and said, as softly as he could, "Can you wait outside, please?"
The Crow frowned at him, looking as though he would rather do anything but. But then he looked over at Lavi, who was glaring at the shirt in his hands, and something in his eyes softened slightly. He gave a sharp nod, turned on one heel, and shut the door behind him.
The silence left behind was heavier than solid iron.
"Bookman is not going to stop caring about you just because you can't follow him." Allen told Lavi gently, sympathy curling at his stomach. "He spent two years searching for a cure for you because he wanted to, not because he wanted you to repay him somehow." After a moment's consideration, he added, "That's not how caring about people works."
Lavi tensed a little. "If I remember correctly," he said, with devastating coolness, "You're not exactly the authority on caring about people."(3)
Allen felt all breath leave his body.
He'd known, logically, that Lavi knew about his relationship with Mana. He'd known that because the Bookman had been told the story of his cursed eye, Lavi also must have been informed. Allen had been peripherally aware of the chink in his armor exposed to the Bookman and his apprentice, but he hadn't worried about it. After all, the Bookman was above the history he was recording, and supposedly cared little about the actual events, certainly not enough to use them in a hurtful way against Allen for personal reasons.
He'd….he'd never, ever even considered the possibility that Lavi might use it against him. Because Lavi was something like a friend, and that wasn't what friends did to each other.
Allen grabbed the breathless hurt that callously thrown statement had called, and twisted it into a little ball. And then, he turned it into anger, and threw it at all the emotions he'd been storing up inside-disgust at the pity, anger at the undeserved mistrust from the Black Order, and fear that their suspicions were not just suspicion-and let it erupt.
It was a little bit like throwing fire into a room full of hydrogen.
"One thing I do know," Allen hissed, black rage in his voice, so strong that Lavi physically recoiled, but he didn't care, Lavi had thrown the first fucking stone, "Is that love doesn't have a fucking time limit."
Lavi flinched as though he'd been slapped. "Allen." He whispered.
Allen let out a disgusted snarl, and scooted his wheelchair around. It didn't really create the exit he wanted, though, so in the doorway he kicked up his wheelchair brakes, replaced the foot rests, and rose from the seat. He left the chair in the doorway (ignoring his startled shadow), and strode away, anger still boiling beneath the surface. He might've heard his name, but he was too furious to respond.
How dare he? How dare Lavi use his past against him, when he knew that would hurt more than anything else?
Allen stopped in the middle of the hallway, bringing up his hand to his mouth to muffle a sob. He'd-he'd thought-
Lenalee and Komui, with nothing but pity in their eyes. The Black Order brass, calling him a traitor and screaming for his death. Lavi, words like acid. Not a friend.
What was the point anymore?
He was just a freak, born and raised for the war. There was nothing that was his, nothing that he cared about besides his friends-and they weren't his friends anymore, not really. He was mostly crippled and even when he recovered he sincerely doubted any decent form of work would take him.
Everywhere he looked, there was nothing.
He'd never expected to survive the war. But even when he did, he found that there was nothing more to live for.
Allen let out another sob, barely managing to keep it stifled behind his single hand, his single, weak, useless hand. Almost on instinct, he turned towards the training grounds. When he'd still been part of the Order, that was where he'd gone to think through things, and that's where he needed to go just...needed to clear his head. Just for a little while. Then he'd look at his options.
"Walker?" The Crow asked tentatively from somewhere behind him.
"I'm fine." Allen said, drawing his hand across his eye to wipe away his tears. "I'm going to visit the training grounds."
The Crow said nothing, so Allen went.
When he entered, Kanda was already there, running through kata with his sword. Allen thought that it was a little late in the day for Kanda to train, but then again, it had been two years since they had trained together. A lot could change in two years. A lot had changed. That was the whole problem, wasn't it?
Allen stood in the doorway for a few seconds, simply watching the graceful, flowing movements of an experienced swordsman in his element. Even though his fingers were still splinted, his technique was impeccable. There was something rhythmic about the blade, and the placement of the feet, almost like a dance of some sort. It seemed like forever since Allen had last glimpsed this side of Kanda, the one that didn't snap and snarl at all who tried to get close. His emotions settled a little with the serenity of the air in the room.
And that's when Allen's body reminded him that he couldn't go stomping off in a huff anymore, because his muscles were barely even there. The adrenaline that had sustained him left him abruptly, and it was all he could do not to collapse on his shaking legs. As it were, he had to prop himself up on the wall next to him just so he wouldn't fall over.
Kanda continued his kata, even though he must've realized that Allen was there by now. Allen was only relieved that he hadn't stopped, not sure he'd be able to deal with….any part of Kanda right now.
Allen watched for a few seconds more, before deciding to let himself slide to the ground in a slow, controlled descent. The wall was very handy for this maneuver, and within a minute he was safely sitting on the floor, arm curled loosely around his knees, which were pulled to his chest. The Crow, who had stopped behind him in the doorway previously, looked out of place and uncertain of what to do, now that Allen was sitting. Eventually it seemed as though he decided to wait outside again, though Allen couldn't help but wonder what the older man was thinking, considering last time he'd been alone with a friend had ended with him trapping his friend in a room with his wheelchair.
Allen sat there, simply watching as Kanda ran through all of his kata, and felt the tight knot of emotion fade ever-so-slightly. He was just-tired, of everything, including his own state-of-mind. He wanted to rest his burning eyes for a moment or two-not fall asleep, just….
"...no, I have him. That Crow he was with said he had something to handle back in the Bookman Junior's room." A sharp snort. "Something about a wheelchair?"
Allen heard voices encroaching in on his awareness, but he was also warm and drowsy, and his muscles ached with fatigue. He didn't move.
"Yeah, Allen and Lavi had a bit of a fight." Komui said, and then there was a rush of static as he let out a sigh, the golemn faithfully parroting his words. "I'm not exactly sure what was said, but Allen put on the wheelchair brakes and left it in Lavi's doorway. Because of Lavi's muscle atrophy, I assume he wasn't able to remove it by himself..."
Kanda snorted again loudly. Allen squinted open his eye, and found himself staring at the empty training mat, where Kanda had been practicing not long before. He blinked once or twice.
"Kanda, there is nothing funny about-"
"They're both fucking cripples and the brat locked his wheelchair in the doorway. What's not funny about that?"
Well, when Kanda put it that way.
Komui was silent for a moment, and Allen could almost imagine him searching for his patience. Or trying not to laugh, because Kanda had a habit of pointing out what was funny but offensive in any situation. Allen thought it was a bit like a useless superpower, only more likely to get Kanda punched in the face. Then, Komui finally said, "If he's still sleeping, can you wake him up at some point so he can sleep in his room? He's having a bit of a stressful time right now."
Kanda let out a grunt. "I thought he might. You mind telling me what the hell put that look on his face when even the fucking Noah couldn't?"
Allen raised his head a little, frowning, almost perfectly in time with Komui's sharp, "What look?"
Yeah, Allen asked silently. What look?
Kanda was quiet for a second, and Allen could almost see him scowling thoughtfully at the floor. Then he said, in a tone that was not quite done figuring out where it was going, "There was a look some of the men under my command used to get. Usually it was the finders. They would get to the point where they couldn't take any more and killed themselves. The beansprout had that exact look. Has."
Allen almost got up then, to tell Kanda off for reporting to Komui about his emotions. Kanda wasn't his keeper, not like the damn Crow was, and anyway, the ex-general didn't know Allen. He was just making a stab in the dark based on past experiences with his men, which fine, but-
Oh. He had been thinking about not carrying on anymore, hadn't he.
So he stayed silent, and continued to listen.
Komui seemed to digest this with sadness but no surprise. "It would be easier if he would talk to us, but...he won't. Not even to Lenalee. We're defending him as best we can to Central-he's getting questioned by them about the Fourteenth, by the way-but it's made more difficult because we don't really know what happened to Allen, or what the Fourteenth did when he had control of the body."
"He's fucking-after everything, Central-" Kanda broke off with an angry snarl. "No, I'm not surprised. And he's not talking to you because you're all fucking giving him pity and coddling him and shit. The beansprout got taken over by the Fourteenth when the war was at it's most violent. I know he's seventeen and all, but if you keep….treating him like he's still a child, he's going to self-destruct or some shit."
Komui was quiet, and Allen thought that it was probably a stunned silence. Maybe his mouth was slack, or his eyes were the size of dinner plates. He was in good company.
"That was…" Komui began delicately. "Surprisingly mature of you, Kanda."
"Have you forgotten sending me all of your damn child finders?" Kanda snarled in response.
"I see you've become a fine parent for your-"
"Oh fuck you." Kanda said, and destroyed the golemn.
Allen didn't even bother to hide that he'd been awake the entire time, just watched with calm eyes as the ex-general entered the training room in a huff. When Kanda noticed, he let out a low stream of curse words, immediately changing directions so that he stopped in front of Allen. "You were listening to that?"
"Did Komui really put all the youngest finders under your command?" Allen asked curiously, tilting his head up so he could see Kanda's properly.
He was not actually expecting a rational answer, so when Kanda shook his head and moved to sit next to Allen, he was a little shocked. "We didn't have a lot of exorcists at that point." He grunted out. "My command was one of the safest, because I would actually go out and kill shit without waiting for the Brass to get their head from their asses and tell me to."
Allen blinked, but then accepted that response-it made sense, of course. Komui detested the child soldiers, and always had; if not for Central, there would've been an age limit years ago. But Komui would've made every effort to keep them safe, and with very few exorcists left in the world….yes, Kanda had probably gotten more than a few followers at the time. It would explain the maturity as well-being responsible for the well-being of children changed people.
"But if you were listening in, you fucking nosy-"
"You weren't exactly trying to be quiet, Bakanda-"
"Oh my god shut the fuck up."
They fell into quiet, and the nostalgia was so strong Allen could almost taste it. He felt a little startled, a little breathless at how natural their interaction was. He was surprised by how much he had missed it.
"Anyway," Kanda said, shaking his long black hair out. "I meant every word. You need to...talk about shit. To people."
Allen stared. "Wow."
Kanda bared his teeth.
"How long did it take you to come up with that?" He asked, wonderingly. "It sounded like a lot of effort."
Kanda made to get up. "I'm not going to sit around and let a fucking cripple insult me-"
"Wait!" Allen shouted, lunging forward to grab Kanda's wrist to stop him. But his depth perception was still awful because he only had one eye, so he missed by a good inch and almost fell over because of it. He took a few breaths, like he always had to after getting violently reminded of his new disabilities, before settling his posture back down.
Kanda had luckily stopped anyway, and was watching him with an unreadable look.
"Look, I'll talk, but it has to be you." And Allen couldn't believe he was saying that, but… "I don't want anyone's pity, and I don't want advice on how to make myself better. I'll ignore it if you leave the golemn there to record our conversation, but it has to be to you."
Now Kanda was really staring. "Don't you hate me?" He asked incredulously.
Allen met his gaze with a hardened eye. "And that's why I'm willing to tell you."
Kanda looked as though he wanted to throw his hands up into the air, but was too proud to. Instead with struggled with himself for a second, obviously warring with the strong sense of responsibility being a general had given him, and his opinion that Allen Walker was at any given moment a complete waste of space to him.
Responsibility won out, but only just.
"You're fucking weird." Kanda told him, and visibly settled himself more comfortably on the floor. "If you start crying, I'm not going to hug you."
If Allen were feeling more confident that he wouldn't actually start crying, he would've made a snarky quip back. As it was, his emotional stability was so fragile at the moment that he was actually a little worried he would break down. He was just hoping that if that occurred, Kanda would look the other way until he could get himself under control.
He nodded weakly, and then began to talk.
"There's-this is going to sound unbelievable and unrelated, but I promise I'm going somewhere." Kanda sent him a look that said, 'that's hardly reassuring'. "But there's um, a place in your head where all your memories and...stuff are stored. And I guess normally people's souls just develop with the person's personality, but…
"Mine really….didn't."
Allen paused and grimaced, because even thinking about it was frightening.
"The Fourteenth, he...he was implanted in my head years ago, and even though he was dormant, he….shaped my head space, I guess, so it was how he wanted it to look. He couldn't affect my personality, but he made certain…"
Allen could feel his breath coming faster.
"He made certain that my-memories, my soul, they were all built on his. His soul, that is. I could still function as myself on the surface, but below that he was there."
He smiled a little, bittersweet, at the floor, because in the end...in the end, it hadn't really mattered if he'd fought. The Fourteenth had always already been there, some creeping lurker in the shadows, waiting for the right moment. And the worst part-the part that kept Allen up at night, that sometimes gave him the most terrible panic-was that he hadn't noticed. He hadn't been able to tell when someone else was in his head, changing him. For all he knew the Noah could still be there, could still be waiting to...to change him. It was one of the main reasons he hadn't fought that hard when Central had come for him-because in the end, did they really know that the Fourteenth was gone?
"Beansprout?"
Allen jumped a little, having completely forgotten that Kanda was there. He frowned when he realized that he'd been so caught up in his thoughts that he had stopped speaking entirely. "Sorry, just...thinking. Anyway.
"When he decided that it was time to take me over, everything just….came out. He used the control he had on my soul to contain me in this-I guess the best descriptor for it is chair? It was all a little strange. I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. But he put me there, and made sure I could watch as he deconstructed my soul.
"He erased memory after memory, and eventually I stopped...being able to remember things."
Allen shuddered at the reminder-he remembered, very clearly, when he'd forgotten that his name was Allen. He'd known he had one, he was aware that his friends (the red one, and the black haired ones, and maybe the curly haired-) called him that, but he hadn't been able to recall it. That had been….
He shook himself, before he got lost again.
"It got to the point where I couldn't even remember who I was, much less the Fourteenth."
Allen finally glanced at Kanda, to gauge how he was taking the whole story. He didn't look angry at all, or even disgusted; he just looked completely calm, staring out at the far wall. Allen had never seen him so still.
Since there was no visible reaction, he took it as his cue to carry on.
"If he had taken any more, I would've been destroyed." Allen admitted conversationally. He...vaguely remembered that time, but he found it very hard to describe. It had been to the point where anything he thought was almost immediately forgotten, just a continuous stream of babbling thoughts that neither ended nor paused. And he supposed that if he were to feel it again he would recognize it instantly, but at the moment he could barely imagine it. Actually now that he considered it, remembering having no memories was a very odd sensation. He knew logically that he'd had no access to what he did now, that his amnesia had been soul-deep, but his recollection of that time hardly did it justice.
Souls were tricky business, after all. It was best if he stopped trying to think about it, before he went mad.
"Anyway. Then he just…. Came to me. He told me the war was over, and that I could go home now." Allen looked at the ceiling and laughed self-deprecatingly. "I didn't even recognize who was talking me. I asked him where I was and if he would mind helping me out of the chair."
Kanda made a choked noise in the back of his throat. Allen couldn't help grinning at him widely in amusement. "I know. But…" He sobered. "What I didn't know was that the-the Fourteenth...when he was destroying my mind and replacing it with his own, he….he was keeping all the pieces of my soul, just not in an...orderly fashion."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Kanda butted in finally, his impatience getting the better of him.
Allen shot him a glare. "It means that when Nea finally left my head he left me in pieces. I spent five months trying to put myself back together."
And oh, it had been exquisite hardship.
At first he hadn't even realized that anything was wrong-his soul, anyway. No memories and no idea what was going on, the manifestation of his soul had awoken to an endless black sea of shattered thoughts, the broken moon high above his head. He had puzzled over the silence, and the bright light of the moon, and the swirling eddies of emotion, not once wondering if he himself had a name. It was only when he'd touched one of the pieces of memory that he'd realized something was wrong, that he was….incomplete, somehow.
He'd spent what seemed like years collecting every scrap from the black sea, the moon his only company, wondering what would happen once he collected them all. And the more he collected, the more he thought, the more he remembered.
The soul collected the memories of a young circus boy named Red, with suspicious grey eyes and blood-colored hair. He touched each piece as though it was precious, because somewhere deep down he knew that it was. And at the end, when the circus boy named Red was completed, all sharp corners and battered determination, the soul changed to match him.
The soul became Red.
And then Red continued searching, continued picking clean the bones of his thoughts, bringing them back in with greedy enthusiasm. He found the many shards of Allen the Apprentice, and the tall red one who soon became Cross the Master. He found the horror of debts, and the bright pride of sending the tortured soul of an akuma to God, and the many places he traveled. And at the end, when the soft-spoken, world-weary Apprentice called Allen was completed, the soul changed to match him.
But as he'd collected more and more pieces of himself, Allen the soul had also become more and more aware of the fact that these events had actually happened. There was a war out there somewhere, and he was stuck here, trying to piece together the disaster Nea had left behind him.
"I got a bit impatient at the end, though." Allen said, wincing a little. He'd been very careful putting together Red and Allen the Apprentice, because his soul had been such a young thing, and curious about its history. It treated every memory like it was made of gold, and so now he remembered his childhood more clearly than he did even before his coma. But after that... "As time passed, I realized that the events that I was piecing together were still happening. I wanted to get out as quickly as possible, and as soon as I knew how, I forced myself awake. But I think…." He let out a shaky laugh, rubbing his face with his single hand. "I think I'm missing something."
Kanda narrowed his eyes, fingers clenching and unclenching reflexively around his sword. "How do you mean?"
Allen lifted his hand into the air, and examined the pale smoothness of his skin. It was weird to think that he would never have a weirdly colored arm again-maybe now he would be let into the churches without having to wear long sleeves. "Sometimes I try to think back to that time just before I was taken over, and I feel as though...someone important isn't there."
He frowned, trying to figure out what exactly he was feeling, trying to put it in a way Kanda could understand. However he was having difficulty with it as well, and vocalizing any of the tangled mess of his head seemed next to impossible.
Allen opened his mouth to try, because Kanda deserved that much at least-
"Walker, it's almost past your curfew." The Crow said, poking his head through the doorway. For a brief second, the sensation of wrongness and something missing turned into something unbearable. But it passed before Allen could pin down why, and he was too tired to worry about that as well. So he simply sighed, nodded, and said goodbye to Kanda.
He left the swordsman sitting there, staring thoughtfully into nothing. Allen wondered what he was thinking so hard about.
3. I didn't actually intend for Lavi to be such a little jerk, but it just turned out that way.