Attention all people who bother enough to read my A/Ns!!!—
Never, ever, EVER describe a person getting water from a well.... you cant make it sound not-perverted
—.—;
So tired lately... I need more sleep, and it's only Monday TT-TT
Aii… my normal computer's wireless died and my school's computers are (as always) being pains T.T wah, I want life to be easy for once… THE SCREEN JUST WENT BLACK! I THOUGHT I LOST THIS WHOLE FREICKIN' THING!!! 0.0''
About this chapter…. Cold numbs things a lot, and you have to admit… even Kanda has to slip up here and there. I mean… maybe he doesn't talk as much as the others because he has a habit of saying the wrong thing?
...there is a plot moving, but right now, we have to focus on Allen recovering…
This chapter is for Raven (even though she didn't ask for it), because she loved Kanda, and I'm going to try to get the others in here soon!
Disclaimer: ..just because we tend to get sick in the same week, does NOT mean I am Hoshino Katsura-dono!
It was very early in the morning when Allen finally awoke again. His eyes were burning softly, they felt swollen and were probably a dull red. His arms and legs were stiff and felt strange to move after being in the same, knotted, position all night long. The left side of his face felt oddly wrinkled, probably with lack of oxygen underneath the mask.
Was this what it felt like to wear an actual, physical mask? There had never been anything visible he had ever tried to cover except for his arm and, on the occasion, his hair, which attracted it's fair share of looks on a regular basis. The lines around the mask— his jaw, through his face and around his ear— where the edges pressed harshly against his skin stung harshly, as though they had been cut, split through the skin.
The inside of his mask seemed hot and clammy, most likely from the tears which could only have escaped the confines through the very slight cracks between his skin and the material of the mask. He covered the slit of the eye with his still-gloved palm and shook the mask until it released his skin with a slight 'click'.
It slid off his face and was held easily in his hand. The left side of his face suddenly went cold and numb, the air being ruthless in the moment of exposure. His breath caught and he dropped the mask the moment he was able to register the feeling. As the mask fell to the floor, landing with a clatter, his hands flew up to try and cover his face. He pulled his arms back the moment they touched, the feeling of leather against his raw skin even more freakish than the air.
He had fallen asleep, hadn't he? His face tingled numbly as he stripped off his gloves and exposed their skin to the air as well. They too were clammy and freezing, slowly becoming numb.
The air was absolutely frigid, Allen registered in slight suprise. It had taken him an extraordinarily long time to realize it, too. He then registered that he was shivering in the cold, despite his coat and being fully clothed.
His breath froze in little clouds of white water vapor as he breathed. He watched in slight amusement as he blew out of the corners of his mouth and altered the way it came out. From one point, it looked like a chimney, from another, he could make a bubble, and from a last, it almost looked like he was smoking a cigarette. He laughed quietly. He would never catch himself dead smoking. Too many bad memories. He shuddered at some of the more vivid ones, but the earliness of the morning drove the more recent thoughts far out of his mind. Except for his appearance, he thought for a moment it were two or three years earlier, when he was still fifteen....
At that point, the cold became nearly unbearable. He shook as he got onto his weakened legs, falling several times, almost breaking things. It took him a good while, perhaps ten miniutes before he managed to stumble out into the yard. It was even colder than in the house, a thick frost on the yard that reminded him of snow, though it was much too early. This was apparently the first heavy frost, a tad bit late, too, being in mid to late October already. He was grateful momentarily that he had slept in his boots, already being warm in huge contrast to the freeze outside.
His face and hands became completely numb as he continued his walk outside, around to the front of the house, which was in town, rather than the back of the house, which saw into a forest. At the doorstep, he picked up one of the wooden buckets stacked there. Waiting to be filled with water.
In the center of the miniature version of a town square was a large pump well, made out of iron and probably plunged deep into the ground, far below what they on the surface could imagine. He hooked the handel of the bucket over the stub of a nose on the well, letting it hang there, under the nosel. He went around behind it, clutched the large handel, letting out a small sound as the freezing handel touched his bare hands, but pumped nonetheless, ignoring the horrible cold spreading through his arms.
It took a while to unclog the ice from within the upper levels of the well, but when the water came, it rushed up quickly, filling the bucket halfway with two pumps. With a third, he stopped, waiting for the freezing water to stop flowing out of the pump before lifting the bucket again and returning to the house.
The frost made the walk slippery and dangerous, each uneven step threatening to make Allen fall or drop the bucket and spray freezing water over his already near-frozen form. Or at least it seemed so to him. But everything seemed so much more dangerous lately, so he took his time, as much as he could spare. He took that extra moment to find his balance, he took the extra ten seconds to set the bucket down and pick it up again with a firmer grip.
It seemed like an eternity, but it had been no more than five or ten minutes when he reached the house again. Even the cold within the house seemed oddly pleasant at that point. The house was thankfully small, and so the remaining walk to the living room was only but so far.
A fire from the previous night was dying. Allen sighed, setting down the water and instead picked up the soot-cloaked poker, nudging the remaining coals closer together, blowing on them softly. He pulled some bark off several bits of wood on a nearby stack. They soon caught and flames once again sparked in the fireplace. Gradually, he worked from the small pieces of bark and kindling to larger sticks and finally to actual pieces of chopped wood. They were cut with angles, making them easier to stack and hold.
When the fire was finally blazing fully, the room began to warm again, the smoke going up the chimney relatively well, but Allen pushed back the blaze as far as he could, just in hopes of not suffocating the house with the smoke.
His arms shook in slowly appearing strain as he lifted the water to try and poor it into the large black kettle above the now-roaring fire. He tried his best not to spill any, in fear of extinguishing the blaze, but some did splash over the edge, making the fire crackle and hiss while sending up sparks and steam, choking him and trying to dare him to step back and spill it all in the process.
It took almost everything he had to stand there, in front of a spitting fire and pouring water into it. He was relieved when the water bucket was finally empty and he was able to stumble backwards, accidentally tripping on something on the floor.
His balance, carefully maintained for so long, vanished in an instant, and he fell onto a chair. Thank God he hadn't fallen onto the floor and woken the house up. He lay there, panting softly, head lolling against the hard headboard of wood, trying to find feeling in his arms and legs again. The fire's heat had filled the room by the time he managed to stand again, making the cold as he opened the door to drop the bucket outside again even more unbearable.
It was so wonderfully warm in the room. The left side of his face had stopped tingling and actually felt about as normal as it ever would, except for the stick that still remained from dried tears.
A soft cloth lay nearby him, the fabric's stitches sewn so expertly they might've been by those French machines, though somehow, it looked hand sewn. He picked it up, careful to avoid pulling any of the seams, out of respect for Moa's property. The water was very warm at that point, steam rising off it in wavy columns.
The hot water seemed to burn into his skin, but for once, not a completely unpleasant burning... He rolled it over both sides of his face, trying to get rid of the horrible sticky, clammy feeling on his face. It left slowly, leaving behind the smears of frigid cold of hot water cooling down. Though the room was warmer, the remaining cold attacked his cooling skin brutally. He whined as he rolled the wet cloth— now also turning cold— over the malformed skin again.
"Beansprout?"
Allen spun around, his arms shaking from the reaction to the unpleasance in his face. He turned, only to see Kanda recoil at the macabre his face had turned in to only a month earlier. Oh, that was right. Kanda and Lenalee and Lavi hadn't seen him yet, despite being with him for so long afterwards. They had only gotten seen when they first came to Moa's house and afterwards, gotten him a mask. They had been too panicked to see, most likely.
Johnny was the only one who had seen. He was a scientist, and he had to paint the mask. He was the only one who had seen the complete horror of him.
So he turned quickly, hurting his neck again. He winced in the pain a and gripped the back of his neck with his right hand. He cursed himself for ever taking off that mask and glove. "Dammit, 'Sprout... what the hell are you doing up at this hour?" The voice behind him hissed. Allen swallowed hard, hoping that maybe Kanda would forgive his face. If he could, then maybe there was hope?
"I-I was... washing..." Allen answered truthfully.
"In this cold?" Kanda barked softly, if that made any sense. Then again, it was very early, and no one would being awoken at this hour. "You'll catch something!"
Allen nodded stiffly. He was born and raised in Britain, he knew well the risks of cold. He soaked the cloth in the hot water once more and began to wash his face again, hoping Kanda would just leave. The dark presence behind him stayed fixedly. 'Allen, he's not going to leave...' Damian whispered in his ear, figuratively, of course.
"W-what do you want, Kanda?" He asked, bowing to the silent demands radiating from the focused Japanese man.
"Turn around, Beansprout," Kanda said coolly. Allen could just imagine his friend, strong, beautiful, graceful, stoic, everything Allen could never hope to be. He envied Kanda, being so strong and effortlessly powerful. Never caring about anything unless the situation called for it. Was that what he was doing now?
Slowly, Allen did turn around, still holding the cloth on the left side of his face, pretending to still be washing. The cloth soon grew cold and almost painful on his face and in his grasp, but he did take it away from his face nor slow the scratching movement over the tender skin. Too fearful. "Take the rag down, Beansprout," Allen's hands held it firmly on his face. "Take it down," Kanda hissed, his voice dropping lower. Allen took in a rattling breath but didn't move his hands.
"Beansprout," Kanda advanced. Whether intentional or not, he scared Allen. More than normal fear. More than anything. It was revived trauma. It was the faces of all the soldiers who touched him in Central. It was the look of all the people he had hurt when insane. It was the face of the people whom scared him most of all. It was the face of a person who would stop at nothing to do something.
Allen felt tremors run through his body as the beating of his heart suddenly became unbearably loud, shaking the world, knocking him off balance as Kanda came closer. The world lost it's color as the samuri morphed into the nameless faces that had tortured him the past two years. The six months of hell before he lost. Completely.
The floor felt harder, like the metal. Like the iron. The black, black iron. It was a different kind of pain that rocketed through him in the moment his head collided with the wood. His hands trembled. That was the only thing he knew other than the impossibly loud heartbeat. The voices were mushed and slurred.
God, he thought he was going to die as the arms circled around him and dragged him to his feet.
He didn't realize how much more careful the guard was this time. It didn't matter much, it just meant he had to be in good condition for whatever they were going to do to him. Whatever hell they had today. What had it been yesterday? Why was he asking that? Yesterday was weeks ago. Time didn't matter, it was all slurred together, painfully fast heartbeats accelerating his life. Speeding the precious few years he had left.
"Beansprout!"
His lungs reactivated. Everything snapped back into focus, real focus, not the old. Not the mix of images and colors and emotions that his mind had mostly blocked out, but not enough to keep them out. He was lain out on a piece of furniture, in Moa's house. Kanda was leaning over him with probably the most worried look he would ever get out of him.
And then the older male sighed. "Damn, they really messed you up, didn't they?" He asked. Allen didn't reply. His expression did enough. The half-opened, glazed over look. He couldn't move again. He couldn't even twitch his finger if he wanted to. He was so tired, too tired for that.
Kanda was staring right at his face, the left side. That was the only thing that kept him still clinging to consciousness. The look of absolute horror that had replaced his worried expression so instantly. So suddenly. "God damn..." Kanda muttered. "Now I know why Johnny cried after seeing your face the first time..."
Before Kanda even realized he had said it out loud, Allen had taken the sentence and warped it into his own meaning. His own reason of what it meant. His eyes began to heat again, but he couldn't let it happen. He couldn't cry again. He was getting too weak, he couldn't cry again. Boys his age weren't supposed to cry...
Johnny hated him! Hated his face, his horror show that he wore on his sleeves! Hated the scaly, withered and burnt flesh of his arm and the painted, twisted, swollen face. The ugly things he had seen and done and been though— Johnny was in the science section after all! He probably had access to all of the records Levirrier decided to put out about him to the Order.
The way he reacted to the experiments, the way he had tried to kill so many guards in every escape plan. Johnny would know every horrible, brutal thing that Allen had done in central... and he could forgive him as long as he had forgotten everything... but now...
Now he had turned into something that reflected the sins he had committed, the acts against nature and the natural way. Everything bad had come back to him and twisted his arm and face into a reflection of those things. Those freakish, demented things he had done in absolute rages and when in his right mind...
He really was a monster. Just like the guards had said. He made his friend cry...
There was only one thing to do then...
And so Allen cried as Kanda stared in horror, not understanding until it was too late— Allen had fallen asleep crying again. He didn't realize how to explain what he meant until it was just too late to try.