Chapter 9: One Foot in the Grave
"I know you are Bean Sprout, so I don't have to kill you," came the murmured response. And as Allen pondered that distinctly cryptic remark, Kanda's breathing slowed into the steady pattern of deep sleep. The floral scent was nearly overpowering. Timcampy fluttered up to rest on the pillow next to Kanda's head.
"I don't get it, Tim," Allen yawned as he gave up trying to decipher Kanda's words, his eyes already dropping shut in slumber. Timcampy remained on watch; intricate clockwork had no need for sleep.
Next to the bed, the minute hand of the clock on the nightstand shifted with a soft tock. '6:14' the clock read, already ticking away determinedly at the next minute. 6:14.
Watery sunlight poured in through the large windows on each side of the bed. Allen groaned and rolled over to snuggle deeper into the pillows. Something hard and unyielding jabbed him in the sternum. Pale grey eyes slitted open, then dropped shut.
"Go 'way," he groaned, pushing at the unmoving body next to him. The pale exorcist froze in mid-push and his eyes snapped open. Deep blue stared back, dark and compelling, framed by high-gloss, silky black hair.
"Kyah!" Allen yelped and somersaulted backwards off the bed to land with a loud thud on the floor. "Bugger." The cursed exorcist's mind began whipping down the vital mental checklist that was programmed into all human psyches: who am I? Where am I? Who the hell is this person next to me? What was I doing last night? Fortunately for Allen, the answers to these questions seemed to come to him pretty easily so when the last few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was memory fell into place, all suddenly became more clear.
"Um," Allen halted through his blush, peeking up over the edge of the bed to look back at Kanda. "Good morning, I suppose."
Kanda's incredibly blue eyes blinked back. "Mornin'," he rumbled, his voice rough from sleep and stress and screaming.
"Er." Poor Allen was rapidly running out of cliché statements to make. Where is Lavi when you need him most? "How did you sleep?"
The raven-tressed exorcist blinked again slowly, then stretched carefully. "Mmn." Allen started fumbling through his understandably limited 'what-to-say-when-you-wake-up-next-to-someone-else' phrase reservoirs, not yet having noticed that he was being more or less ignored by the swordsman, who slid from the bed with somewhat less than his usual feline grace and walked carefully and with a slight limp into the bathroom.
Allen's stream of words dried up at the sight of the small rusty stains that marred the darkly striped pajama pants at the bottom of his buttocks. He curled around himself to brood as the feathery tips of Kanda's hair whisked through the doorway to the bathroom and out of sight.
How am I supposed to act around him now? The pale exorcist fretted, worrying the soft fabric of the sheets between his fingers. Every time I look at him, all I can see is someone…oh…less than he was somehow. Do I talk about it? Do I ignore it, pretend it didn't happen, and carry on as usual? That's impossible; no one can do that. Allen tossed back his head, grabbed two fistfuls of snow-white hair, and groaned aloud. He remained in that position for several seconds, lost in his tight, confused world of concern and angst, until the slimy sensation of being watched crawled unpleasantly up his spine. He shot a glance at the doorway to the bath. Ah.
Kanda stood framed on the threshold, his soft black mane falling in sleep-wrought disarray around him and Mugen, unsheathed and uninvoked, held in one hand. The feeling of being observed slipped away like a fish in the depths of the ocean, cold and unseen.
"I think Samuel left the sheath in the other room," Allen observed more to have something to say than anything else. Kanda accepted the piece of information without any sign of gratitude, as was typical. A stab of pique wedged itself firmly between Allen's ribs, its progress toward his heart broken by the soft rapping of well-trained knuckles on the door to the hall.
"Good afternoon, sirs," Lillian's voice had that uncertain but determinedly cheerful tone that healthcare workers tend to acquire in the presence of aggressive but severely wounded patients. "Your laundry is finished—I brought it up because I figured you would fancy a change—and Mr. Harrison wishes to invite you down to a late lunch."
Lunch. The word lodged itself deep in Allen's mind, accompanied by the faint but distinct impression that he was forgetting something important. Realization lit its little candle in his mind—it was too early for light bulbs.
"Wait, lunch?" the white-haired teen inquired, sounding doubtful. "What time is it?"
"A little after two o' clock," came the prompt reply. "May I come in?"
"Nn, oh, yes, of course," Allen gabbled out distractedly. Across the room Kanda's grip on Mugen's hilt tightened imperceptibly as the door opened to admit bronze-haired Lillian in her uniform brown and white. A veritable heap of neatly-folded black and silver leaned dangerously far to the right in her arms and she hastened to deposit it on the thoroughly rumpled bed.
"I brought a few of Mr. Kanda's things from his suitcase, begging you pardon for going through your things, sir," she commented, noting Allen's suspicious look. "Now then, what should I tell Mr. Harrison in regards to lunch?"
Allen's stomach seized control of his mouth and, bypassing his brain as unimportant, the words "we'll be down shortly," tumbled out.
"Very good, sirs," the gentle woman responded with a kind smile before she turned and bustled out, her brown skirt rustling and her starched white apron-strings fluttering behind her.
The younger exorcist chortled happily over his good fortune to have woken just in time for lunch with Mr. Harrison when, suddenly, something rather important came to him. Oh, God! Mr. Harrison is the one who raped Kanda! We can't go to lunch with him! Blind fury rose like a tsunami to break over Allen's head. That bastard! The sheer gall of it—to rape Kanda and then blithely invite us to eat as though nothing had happened. A dark, menacing aura settled over the fragile-seeming boy as he cracked his knuckles loudly, his pale, grey eyes picking up glints of scarlet malice. Still shrouded in his mantle of hate, Allen grabbed the first Black Order uniform that came to hand and started to pull it on over his nightclothes. Kanda watched without comment as the idiot teen dragged on a sleek trench-coat style jacket that was much too long for him. Allen, for his part, didn't notice that something was amiss until he turned toward the door and trod heavily on the trailing hem of the coat in the process. The fabric, specially designed and developed by Komui to withstand the incredible wear-and –tear of Black Order field service, snapped taught, stretched, held, and tugged the cursed exorcist down to land in an ungainly sprawl on the floor. Hissing like a cat, Allen shoved himself off of the floor, his already-flaring temper burning even hotter.
"BUGGER!" he shrieked, all semblance of his usually polite, docile self evaporating in the white-hot fires of his fury. He struggled back out of the uniform—there suddenly seemed to be far more clasps and snaps and zips than there had been when he put it on—and stomped over to the bed, this time expending the extra few seconds necessary to sort the stack into two separate piles according to owner.
"Here," he growled, pushing one wad of clothing in Kanda's direction. A lone pair of black socks teetered precariously for a moment before making a bid for freedom and rolling off the top. They bounced on the floor next to Allen's feet.
Allen, meanwhile, was discovering that white-hot rage was hard to keep going. Anything that burned that fiercely had to be constantly stoked, constantly hurtling ahead, because the slightest pause allowed it to fall victim to its own all-consuming nature. On the other hand, the pale teen thought, underneath the inferno was a scorching bed of coals that could be kept dangerously warm for a very, very long time indeed. As such, the delay incurred by his own mistake had stripped away the red, unthinking haze from before Allen's eyes, but did nothing to assuage the underlying fury.
"Here," Allen repeated a little more gently. Kanda took the clothes wordlessly, but made no sign of changing out of his borrowed night clothes into them. The younger exorcist tried a different tack. "Do you need my help?"
Kanda stiffened and gave him a look that, if not quite so cold as his usual stare, could still freeze a lake solid in midsummer. Allen shivered reflexively; sometimes mental and social coldness was pretty good at translating itself into the physical. When the bathroom door slammed shut a few seconds later, even Allen had to admit that Kanda had resumed some truly Kanda-ish behavior.
It's like he's pretending that it didn't happen, Allen realized. And, in a way, if he hasn't changed and nobody around him had changed, nothing has happened. That's certainly twisted enough to be one of Kanda's mental processes, and it has the added bonus of allowing him to avoid any emotional or social fallout from getting raped. The white-haired young man was a little uneasy with the idea—no one, not even Kanda, could just dismiss their own rape out of hand. Still, Allen reasoned, maybe it is best if Kanda can just be Kanda for this mission. I'm sure that Mr. Harrison is responsible for the disappearances—normal people don't stash dead Finders in their basements. And, adding to the fact that he raped Kanda, Komui will make sure he gets put away somewhere nasty. At least, until he hangs the bastard or something equally unpleasant happens to him. A wicked smile of terrible satisfaction stole onto Allen's features. Oh, yes, that old bastard would suffer. For a long, long time.
A soft click alerted the grey-eyed boy to Kanda's emergence from the bathroom. The taller exorcist looked much the same as he always did. So maybe Allen's sharp eyes noted that the sinful white belt was, perhaps for the first time in its existence, actually strapped tight over Kanda's hips, just inches below the striped one that held his uniform coat closed—in other words: where it belonged. And maybe his raven hair wasn't quite as perfectly pulled back as usual and, sure, Mugen was just stuck under the white belt without a sheath and, yes, there was a slight hitch in Kanda's long strides indicating where a normal person would have been limping; the point was that just because Allen could tell didn't mean that anyone else would. And, if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, Allen had only noticed the changes because he had spent a very long time watching Kanda, for different reasons, since he had joined the Order.
The loud "Che!" that broke up the stream of thoughts was certainly something Allen recognized. The younger exorcist nearly jumped out of his skin at the intrusion of that single syllable. His embarrassment melted into irritation and he shot a nasty look at Kanda before taking refuge in the bathroom and closing the door behind himself with a disgruntled "snap."
"Oh, my God, what a mess!" Allen's disgusted tones were half-muffled by the wood between them, but Kanda could still hear every word. The stoic swordsman assumed that his pale compatriot had stumbled upon, probably literally, the trailing heaps of bandages that he had discarded on the floor. Mugen had been more than sufficient to heal the gouges, bruising, and rope burns that Allen had done his best to treat the night before. However, as Kanda eased himself down to sit on the bed, a sharp bolt of pain jolted up his spine to stab little ice picks of agony into his brain. His breath hissed out between his clenched white teeth and the lithe swords master grudgingly acknowledged that, while he wasn't bleeding any more, there was still a rather alarming amount of…damage.
Allen reemerged just in time to catch the miniscule flicker of pain that ghosted across Kanda's face.
"Are you alright?" he blurted before his brain hesitantly indicated that concern or recognition of his suffering was probably the last think Kanda wanted because it would mean that someone had seen Kanda as less than his perfectly-controlled, impassive self. And sure enough, the tall, slim man responded only with a slit-eyed, baleful glare. Allen backed away, literally and figuratively, his hands held up before him in a gesture of warding. The atmosphere became awkward and tense as the cursed exorcist searched for a way to question his older companion and Kanda projected a dark, intense aura that just dared the pale teen to make further inquiries into what was a personal matter.
"Sooo," Allen laughed nervously a short while later. "Shall we get lunch?" Kanda shot him an inscrutable look and the white-haired teen was instantly floundering. "You don't have to go! I'll bring you something to eat later, I figured that you wouldn't want to be around Mr. Harrison, but I wasn't really thinking. Look, I'm really sorry—"
Halfway through the avalanche of half-formed apologies and spluttering rambles, Kanda rose with only a slight wince. Allen's jaw clicked shut and the younger teen found himself being towed along in Kanda's wake as the sword wielder walked from the room and down the hall to the top of the staircase, where the black-haired man stopped so fast that Allen, who had been sulking along behind him, collided with his black-and-white clad back.
"Ouch! Why did you stop?" Allen yowled.
"Are we going to the dining room?" Kanda asked at the same time, his voice tight.
"Yes," the pale teen responded simply, not exactly sure what Kanda was driving at. For his part, the rave-haired man just turned and glared, his frosted blue stare making it abundantly clear that he was waiting for something. Allen stared back, his own pale grey eyes wide. What is he doing, just standing there? It's not as if he's never been to the dining room…oh…
Allen sighed—so that's what this is about—and pushed past Kanda to lead the way down the stairs, commenting as he went, "you know, you could just ask for directions or help or even a map." He couldn't help but feel put upon when he felt—he didn't need to look, he just knew—the swordsman's stare redouble. They trooped silently through the halls—their boots had not reappeared with their cleaned clothes and so they were forced to shuffle slipper-shod, a far quieter option than their usual thick-soled, hobnailed boots—until Allen turned sharply to the right and pushed open a door to reveal the same long, mahogany table he had dined at the night before. A few steps behind him, Kanda was secretly amazed that the irritating Bean Sprout had actually managed to find the correct door on his first try. He suspected the success was like that of a rat guided through a maze by the smell of food at the end.
Mr. Harrison unfolded himself gracefully from the chair at the head of the table, a welcoming smile crinkling his aged features. The Finder, Samuel, rose as well, his long white robes swishing around him in heavy folds.
"Good afternoon, Allen, Kanda. How good of you to join us for lunch." Mr. Harrison's rich voice had aged like a fine wine—at nearly eighty years of age it was mellow and smooth and captivating. "I heard about your—ah—experience last night and, while they are hardly enough, I would like to offer you my condolences."
Allen stiffened, paled, and started to tremble with suppressed fury, his eyes fixed on Kanda's face. The sword wielder gazed levelly at the old man, then inclined his head a bare fraction of an inch—that was all the acknowledgement the stoic man was willing to give. Shock ripped through Allen like lightning, paralyzing his limbs and fluttering his heart. When he came 'round from the surprise, he couldn't hold back the livid shriek that spewed forth like lave from some turbulent volcano.
"You bastard! You condolences? Yeah, because that's going to—"
"Allen!" Samuel gasped, interrupting the pale-haired boy's fledgling rant. "How on earth could you be so rude to our host? This is so unlike you!" And, turning back to Nigel, the Finder began a litany of apology, begging forgiveness for the exorcist's crass behavior. Allen sucked in a deep breath to maximize his volume for the next diatribe, but no sooner than he had parted his lips, Kanda's velvet voice, still rough from ill-treatment, stoppered up his words.
"You are making a scene, Bean Sprout."
Allen deflated in confusion and, in the midst of the soft babble of the Finder's placations and Mr. Harrison's soothing, accepting responses, he sank down into a chair at the corner of the table furthest from Mr. Harrison. Kanda settled himself nearby on the same side of the table—not so close to Allen as to draw comment, but certainly closer to Allen than to the Finder and Mr. Harrison by some small number of seats. The pale teen was slightly mollified by this development, but the strange confusion that had descended upon him refused to be shaken and he passed the lunch in silence, unmindful of Samuel and their host's light conversation on the topic of the topography and natural beauty of the area. So absorbed was he in his own introspective thoughts as he mulled over the odd puzzle presented to him by his companion's behavior that he hardly touched the food available, consuming only five plates of the marinara-drenched pasta, several plates of various salad and almost a gallon of the rich chocolate pudding—a mere appetizer compared to his typical gluttony. He did, however, notice when Kanda, having been served, apparently against his will, his own helping of the creamy dessert, pushed the deep bowl of pudding toward Allen with the back of his spoon, a look of disgust on his face.
"Do you not want you pudding?" Allen asked wonderingly—the idea was totally foreign to him—before remembering who exactly he was talking to. He knew lots of people with sweet-teeth, but Kanda was the only one he had ever net who lodged within himself the antithesis of the sweet-tooth, the ultimate anti-sweet-tooth. For his part, Kanda just gave him one of his best sneers—one that was generally reserved for the nasty things that appeared on the bottoms of shoes after a stroll though a poorly-tended dog park—and even deigned to comment with all his usual nastiness: "I thought that inside a trash heap would be the best place to put it."
The sword wielder's words stung more than Allen would care to admit, but it was a familiar sting that was therefore pleasing and confusing by its very nature of normalcy. Still, no amount of confusion would ever stop him from accepting sweets from Kanda, so the pale, miraculously-slender teen dug into his second round of dessert while pondering his current quandary. Why can't Kanda just behave like normal people in situations like this? Rant, scream, tremble with fear, accuse, rain hate, cry out his crime, not bloody stay calm. This is insane, this is not right; not even Kanda could do this. He would just blow a gasket and start chopping everything in a five mile radius to bits with Mugen. But I saw him! I saw Mr. Harrison there in the window in his room. The door was locked—nobody could get in. So why is Kanda acting like this? Anger and violence are his defense mechanisms. Something is wrong. And with that revelation lodged firmly in mind, he kicked Kanda under the table so that, when the abused young man looked into his face with murder in his eyes, the pale teen could whisper under his breath: "We need to talk. After everyone goes to bed for the night." Kanda just looked away, his handsome though bruised face expressionless once more.
See? There—anger when you kicked him, Inner Allen chimed in. He's still perfectly capable of responding in his traditional manner, so by all rights Mr. Harrison should be laying in a pool of gore right now. Probably several pools, one for each severed limb. Allen squelched the voice firmly, deciding to focus instead on the last gelatinous spoonful of pudding that he was chasing around the bottom of his bowl with his spoon. Around him there was a short period of bustling while the servants Lilith and Lane gathered up the cutlery, flatware, and debris of the lunch. The bowl in front of him was whisked away by an industrious Lilith, the small glob of dessert still cowering against one side of the bowl, fatally speared by the edge of the silver spoon. Samuel cleared his throat loudly, distracting their host, who was dabbing decorously at his lips with a linen napkin.
"Was there something you wished to ask, Samuel?" the old man said kindly, his eyes crinkling with his smile.
"Yes, Mr. Harrison," the Finder responded instantly. "You mentioned last night that you might be willing to show us where the disappearances occurred?"
"By all means. Indeed, I already expected this eventuality and the horses and carriage stand ready even now. You will have to forgive the speed at which the carriage travels—it will be much slower than what you are used to, no doubt, but I have grown old and my strength is no longer what it once was." And with that, the elderly gentleman rose to his feet and began to exit the room.
"The Finder's bodies."
Everyone had been following after Mr. Harrison like ducklings after the hen, but they stopped short at Kanda's cryptic comment. Allen was exasperated: yet one more oddity in a long series of oddities. Honestly, the man should come with his own code book. Samuel frowned openly at the exorcist while Nigel's brow furrowed with polite puzzlement.
"Excuse me?" the dapper gentleman said after a while when it became apparent that no further explanation was forthcoming. Allen, after his long, arduous experience with Kanda, was one step ahead in the game of guessing Kanda's meanings from the short and oft-mangled sentence fragments that the Japanese exorcist was so prone to employing in the place of an actual conversation with actual complete sentences.
"He wants to know if we are going to see the Finder's bodies before we leave," Allen translated grudgingly, still angry with the old man.
"By all means, if that is agreeable to the three of you," Mr. Harrison replied.
Samuel and Allen took one look at the stormy expression on Kanda's face and decided unanimously that yes, it would be agreeable to them, if only to spare them substantial unpleasantness at a slightly later date.
"Well then, since we are all agreed," Nigel commented, "we will have to go out to the carriage anyway. It is some distance to the crypts; my forefathers felt that it would be best for all concerned if the dead were not interfering with the daily needs of those still living."
"I can imagine that it would be problematic for them to be buried in the area of the vegetable garden," Samuel agreed whole-heartedly with the sentiment of the previous generations of Harrisons.
"It would indeed," rejoined the old host as he ushered them out the same door by which the Black Order trio had entered the mansion on that first night. By the stables waited a gleamingly black carriage drawn by two well-matched bay mares. The servant Lane was already seated on the box, reins in hand and the long crop dangling limp above his head. The springs creaked quietly as the four stepped up into the plushly-upholstered interior one after another and plumped themselves down on the seats. Lane had since then sprung down from his seat and he closed the door behind them with a definite click. Mr. Harrison opened the windows on each side of the carriage swiftly, drawing back the velvet curtains and tying them out of the way with their silken cords. The manservant waited patiently until the elderly gent—clearly quite used to doing things in his own time and with his own steady pace—was quite done before he spoke.
"Where would you like to go today, sir? I believe the village is holding some sort of festival today which you may find of some interest." Lane's voice and tone were plain but strong. Mr. Harrison's own tones sounded, for the first time, as if they reflected his age in truth as he gave directions to his loyal servant.
"Thank you, Lane, but I am afraid that I have business of a more pressing and somber sort to pursue before I indulge in and great merry-making. My road today will be to the crypts and then, perhaps, depending on the state and desires of these three gentlemen, we will go down to the market road where the villagers disappeared."
Lane crossed himself quickly and sighed. "As you wish, but I don't thinks that there will be any good to be found in being tangled up in this mess."
"Perhaps not," conceded Nigel, "but I am afraid that by our very location we have become involved whether we would wish it or not."
The manservant just nodded and, after a small shift of the carriage as he remounted the box, the carriage trundled forward.
None of the four passengers seemed inclined to make small talk on the way to such a grim destination and as such simply fell into their routine behaviors when faced with some dull and unpleasant boredom. Samuel produced a small notebook and began scribbling in it with such haste and intensity that it was a wonder that the wood of his pencil did not catch fire and turn his pile of papers into a merrily-crackling conflagration. Mr. Harrison withdrew an oddly-formed rosary from an inside pocket of his jacket and began counting off the beads, his lips moving silently all the while. Allen noted absently that there was no cross on the rosary—if truly it was one at all—but instead a naggingly, hauntingly familiar glyph, before turning his gaze out the window in order to stare out into the cloudy, misty afternoon. They were passing through the same pine forest they had traversed on their way to the mansion and the foggy air was condensing in pearlescent beads on the ends of the deep-green needles then dropping in crystalline perfection to the deeply mulch-covered floor below. The carriage wheels made scarcely any sound on the thick carpeting and really the only accompaniment to their passage was the jingle of harness and the occasional snort of one of the horses. Kanda appeared to be similarly occupied, though his outward stare did not reflect his actual state of meditation.
Five, then ten minutes passed, the time stretching out peaceably into fifteen minutes. A tall, cold square building slipped into view through the mist. It took very little additional time for the four to draw up beside the chill stone façade. Lane reined the horses to a standstill and opened the carriage door to offer his assistance to any and all who any who may so require it. Once they were all afoot, Lane leapt up once more to his customary position and crossed himself again.
"Begging you pardon, sir," said he, "I'm going to drive the horses back down the path a bit, on account of their not liking this place any more that I do."
"Very well," Mr. Harrison allowed. "Do come back every half-hour so that we need not stand about in the fog and damp for a needlessly long time."
Lane nodded, touched his fingers to his forelock, and carefully wheeled the mares 'round and set off back the way they had come only moments earlier.
"Well then, this way, please," the old man sighed, still very much appearing as a wise and world-weary sovereign when confronted with the stubborn superstitions of his less learned subjects. Allen, however, understood perfectly the disquiet that Lane had felt at the thought of entering the crypt: a sort of ageless foreboding hung over the marble-and-granite monument to Nigel's predecessors, a somber gloom that acknowledged and humbled them in their living presence and seemed resigned to wait patiently for one, ten, one hundred years secure in the cold knowledge that all things must die and enter into its province. The white-haired boy held no illusions that they were trespassers here in a realm over which no mortal man may lay claim, though he might own the land upon which the remembrances of the dead stood and indeed may have wrought it out of the materials of the earth with his very own hands. As the heavy, solemn weight of absolute certainty in the ending of all things pressed down upon them, Allen felt small and young. He glanced out from under the snow-white fringe that fell over his eyes from his downturned head at the other three members of the party.
Nigel, who paced forward to unlock the tall iron gate that stood guard before the heavy wooden door of the mausoleum, looked bent and shrunken—an old man who, while still clinging tenaciously to the last threads of life, was bowed and worn down by time and care until only the essential spirit remained to drive the withered husk of mortal casing, all youth and its vigor long since spent. A chill shivered over Allen's skin when Mr. Harrison, in whom he had only now perceived the true ravages of age, opened and passed through the dark, age-stained doorway: a certain smugness hung in the air—the monument to ending, almost sentient with its understanding of life, knew that it would receive this man, the latest of its familial horde, soon, for time was rapidly consuming the vital spirit and the spool of his life was swiftly running bare. Mr. Harrison though, his hair—as white as Allen's own—glowing luminously in the contrasting dark of the first room of the crypt, stood defiant in the face of the end of his days: an old oak gnarled and wracked by passing storms but not yet ready to let the rot of years spread through its dense heart or to draw up its mighty roots and fall, even while waiting for this winter or the next to finally strip away all choice and strike it down with a single frost-rimmed blast.
Samuel followed closest behind Nigel, his pale robes drawn tight around his body to ward of the unnatural chill of the place. Wrapped as he was in yards of pale fabric, the Finder appeared a spectral figure, some ghost wading through the curling mists with a disembodied head, crowned with a messy spill of chocolate hair, floating above. Samuel's face—well-made, if a little plain—was drawn and pinched by worry and suddenly Allen could see him as he appeared to the ancient crypt: a man of middle years, currently passing into the long twilight of his life, who, just now looking forward out of the bright and irrepressible optimism of youth—at which age death is only a distant figure on the horizon easily ignored and dismissed, has caught sight of that same specter and realized that none of the infinite array of paths stretching out before him may lead him away, for that same black shape waited eternally at the end of each of them, everywhere and nowhere all at once. The brown-haired man hesitated in all his movements, unwilling to be drawn forward through time on his chosen road but unable to resist. Fear of the greatest unknown flickered on the edges of his expression, yet he, too, entered the crypt, his shoulders hunched as though to protect the fragile column of his neck from the cold kiss of the reaper's blade, comforted only by the long years before him still unspent.
Allen paused undecided for so long on the threshold of the mausoleum that Kanda just behind him grew impatient and pushed past, striding into the marble chamber with his head held high. Allen could not see the twisted black tattoo that marked Kanda's chest and shoulder, sending out creeping tendrils up his neck and down his arm and back, but he had heard the hurried conversations between worried Komui and snappish Kanda and he knew that the sword-wielder's life was ending, perhaps even more quickly than Mr. Harrison's, sustained only by this long by the obscure curse that allowed him to take a death-blow and still continue fighting, death coming instead to one of the shell-pink petals of the glass-cased lotus in Kanda's room. The pale-eyed teen had seen the flower that measured out the Japanese man's life and counted off his deaths, petal by petal, until the day it would wither and Kanda would fade away with the last delicate flush of the bloom. And yet Kanda seemed unconcerned by the menace of the tomb; he had already made his peace with death and had come to terms with his own—the crypt could not intimidate him with something he already knew well. Of all of them, he was the least troubled, but still not entirely unaffected: Allen just barely glimpsed the casual brush of the fingers of the swordsman's right hand across his own chest just over his heart. The man's inky tresses gleamed once in the darkness then succumbed to the shadow, giving up their brilliance.
Allen was left alone on the wide, shallow steps leading up and into the mausoleum. He wondered if the others had also perceived the changes that had come over each person as the deep-set door swung open or if those brief flashes of truth were no more than phantasms created by his left eye. He rubbed at that eye irritatedly, delaying the time at which he, too, would allow himself to be swallowed up by the black mouth of the monument. As he stood, he imagined what the others might see in his face, whether his curse glowed black on his skin like the tarnish on silver, a visible corruption and sign of his folly.
"Allen?"
Nigel's soft call jolted the pale-haired young man from his contemplative reverie.
"I'm sorry, I just got distracted," Allen called back, suddenly seized by the urge to remain with the group rather than linger in the eerie, mist-shrouded forest and he scampered up the steps and was within seconds back among the company once more.
"It would be best if we were not separated—such occurrences in such places often have an ill effect on the lone party," Mr. Harrison explained gently, his words further softened by the low volume unconsciously adopted.
"I agree," Samuel averred, a certain heartiness born of fear coloring his words. Kanda just ignored them both and Allen had the suspicion that of all of them Kanda alone was immune to the fear, but not the supernatural aura, of the place.
"The vaults are actually down in the earth below; this entrance is a small chapel used during funerary and memorial services," Nigel said softly, moving toward what appeared to be a deep pit in the floor. The old gentleman held up a lantern in his hand—Allen hadn't even noticed him take it down from the carriage—and in the soft gold light that dripped from it, the four could see descending down into the gloom the beginning of a steep staircase hewn from a dark grey granite.
"Please watch your step," their host continued. "It remains very cold in this valley year-round and we get very little sun even in the summer due to the great height of the mountains on either side, so it may very well be that the steps are icy due to moisture frozen out of the air. The steps go on for some way and it would be a terrible misfortune should one of you fall." So saying, he began to step down into the earth and the little trio from the Black Order followed close behind, the lantern held out before them like a beacon, a reminder of the light and life of the world above held bright in the small, dancing flame. Allen counted the steps at first, but they soon became slick with frost as Mr. Harrison had warned they might and all of his attention was devoted to putting one foot in front of the other without pitching forward into a headlong tumble into the bowels of the earth. Their breath puffed out in ghostly plumes as the air grew colder and more still. It seemed an eternity before the steps leveled out into a slate-flagged landing far below the surface. The ceiling was fairly low—perhaps seven-and-a-half feet above the floor—giving everything a cramped, claustrophobic feel, especially as the light illuminated only a small circle into which all four attempted to crowd unconsciously. The little room, ten feet square at the most, opened up directly ahead into a chamber of indeterminate size, concealed almost entirely by the nearly palpable darkness.
Into this great room stepped Mr. Harrison and he held the lantern aloft as high as the ceiling would allow. Pale fingers of light spread like molten gold, burning away the gloom. Allen gasped and recoiled, his eyes wide. Samuel muttered something incoherent and clutched one hand to his mouth. Kanda "tch"-ed with his usual flippancy and allowed one hand to slide up to rest on Mugen's hilt.
Laid out on slabs of snow-white marble were the bodies of ten men clothed in uniform robes of dusty khaki. Each one was contorted and deformed grotesquely, arms poised in various positions, fingers crooked into claws, eyes staring blankly out of twisted faces pierced by the corpse-black pit of their gaping mouths.
"They remain in the same position as when they were found. Their bodies were oddly stiff—more so at least than can be attributed to rigor mortis alone. The temperature is below freezing here, as you may have noticed, so their bodies have not decomposed very much, if at all," Mr. Harrison intoned, his voice strangely flat.
"Oh, my God," whispered Samuel brokenly. "What happened to them?" Allen found himself wondering the same thing because there did not seem to be any visible wound on any of them; at least, none on any of the ten close enough to see—perhaps six of the ten bodies. No blood stained the Finder's white and the clothing was unchanged from the time it had been issued, its protective folds hiding everything except the faces of the men.
"A doctor was called to determine if he could the cause of death," Nigel, like Samuel, sounded very strained. "He said that he was entirely unsure of the ultimate cause of their condition, but also that it appeared as their hearts had simply stopped. Almost as if they had been…frightened to death."
Samuel gulped so loudly that everyone heard it.
"Please bear in mind that the doctor, like Lane and all of the folk in this area, is highly superstitious and would not perform any full examination. He truly never touched the bodies themselves, so I cannot guess as to the accuracy of his diagnosis," Mr. Harrison tried to assure Samuel. It did little good; Allen could see that Samuel was starting to think that they may be superstitious for some good reason.
"Get a report going to send back to Headquarters, Finder," Kanda growled and his delivery was particularly impressive since his breath wreathed his face in a pale cloud like the smoke from a dragon's jaws, belying the fires that raged within, withheld only by choice. "We need to know what killed them."
With shaking hands, Samuel retrieved from his pocket a small, black, bat-winged golem. The mechanical creature's one red eye blinked open and it sprang aloft to hover over the Finder's left shoulder. Allen suddenly realized that Timcampy wasn't with him—hadn't been with him all day. He wondered momentarily where the usually-loyal golden golem was, but was quickly distracted by the Finder approaching the first twisted corpse to begin his report.
"August 3rd, 4:02 p.m." The golem began to emit a soft whirring sound as it began to record the audio track. "We—Exorcist Allen Walker, Exorcist Kanda Yu, Finder Samuel Marren, and host Mr. Nigel Harrison—are standing in the crypt of the Harrison family." The hovering golem's scarlet eye radiated faint light while it took video feed for transmission to Headquarters, casting a warm glow on the corpses that returned to their cold flesh the pink flush of life. Allen had to curb his imagination, which had no problem with showing him flashes of a future in which the Finder's corpses, restored to terrible life, lurched up off their cold tables to clutch wildly at the four intruders. "The deceased is a male Finder, identification number 079442—" there was a cold rattle as Samuel dropped the ID tag he had lifted from around the corpse's neck. The little metal disk clattered back down onto the marble, anchored by the fine chain that held it to the dead neck. "His limbs are oddly rigid and the body and face are both contorted. The tongue is protruding and is very pale. There do not appear to be any visible wounds. I am going to undress the body now." Samuel rummaged in the folds of his robe, retrieving a pair of heavy shears.
"Would your Headquarters not be better equipped for such an examination?" Mr. Harrison asked, sounding discomfited.
"Yes, but, unfortunately, delays can happen and bodies decompose before a full autopsy can be performed, so all of us Finders learn to do a basic postmortem examination—checking for obvious things and the like—that is relayed to Headquarters via golem. That way, even if the body id damaged or destroyed before it can be returned, Headquarters gets some information at least." By the time he had finished speaking, Samuel had cut through the cold-stiffened fabric of the Finder's garments and peeled them back, exposing dead, pale flesh. There was a tricky moment when the edge of the slice got caught on one twisted arm, but the fabric fell away soon enough. Samuel had to draw several deep, bracing breaths before he could continue without his voice shaking beyond all understanding.
"The statement that there are no visible wounds must be revised." The Finder gulped again, but plowed on with the quiet desperation of those fulfilling a terrible responsibility. "The chest is…crushed…the ribcage looks as though some huge, blunt force was applied. I don't think that there is a single rib that remains unbroken. There's remarkably little bruising of the flesh above and around the ribs, but it seems fairly likely that the internal organs were pierced by bone fragments. That was probably the cause of death. The limbs seem fine: nothing abnormal is apparent." So saying, the Finder bowed his head and drew the fallen Finder's clothes back together again as best as possible given the circumstances, then moved across the hall to the next body, the golem following behind like a faithful hound.
"Male Finder, 043967, odd abrasions like scratches on the face—cheeks and forehead especially—descending on to the neck." The grim litany was punctuated by the disproportionately loud slicing of the shears through fabric. "The torso, oh God, the torso looks like it was shredded using a machete; huge slices have been cut into the shoulders, chest, belly—there are no wounds that would be caused by stabbing force, though. Everything is slashed…" Samuel pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth and ducked his head as he had with the first corpse. "Note that there does not seem to be any blood. The flesh is clean, no bruising is apparent. I don't know what the hell could have done that, but that's the way it is."
Kanda "hnn"-ed in agreement from his position just beside the Finder, from which he had been surveying the dead men as Samuel briefly checked them and recorded footage. While the other three lingered in a state of abject horror at the condition of the bodies, Kanda seemed almost clinically interested. As the Finder struggled to compose himself, the Japanese sword-wielder moved on to a third dead Finder then stood waiting impatiently for Samuel to resume his inspection. It took a couple of moments for the chocolate-eyed Finder to fight down the bile rising in his throat, then he joined the black-haired exorcist.
"Another male Finder, very young, 063392." As Samuel pulled gently on the tag around the young man's neck, the dead Finder's head lolled to one side, rolling away from the stump of the neck. "The subject has been entirely decapitated—"
"It looks as though he was already dead when it happened," Kanda commented, interrupting Samuel's report and pointing to the perfectly smooth cut. "The cut would have to have been made with a powerful stroke with a sharp blade because it is so clean, but the cut is also on a perfectly flat trajectory through the throat—it would have been parallel to the ground if the Finder was standing."
"What does that have to do with him being dead? Being dead tends to preclude standing," Samuel snapped, the uncomfortable situation fraying his nerves and temper. Kanda shot him a withering glance and clutched at the hilt of Mugen thrust through his belt as though he was going to give the brown-haired subordinate a personal demonstration of the difference being alive made to a cut.
"Cuts through the flesh are very rarely on a flat trajectory because blades deflect off of bones and clothing. Also, it is very hard to make a flat cut on someone living because they move and struggle—or even are just knocked sideways by the force of the blow—all of which make angled cuts. Also, people tend to pull down at the end of a cut because they are swinging on an arc with the radius being the arm; the stroke gets weaker toward the end so people pull down to maintain the force of the blow."
Allen goggled. It was probably the most Kanda had said in days—on the entire trip, for sure—and it was on an incredibly gruesome topic. It would figure. Still normalizing, Inner Allen insisted. He knows bladed weapons better than anything else, so it is a topic of interest that he would be willing to talk about—conveniently delivered in bite-sized pieces so those of us who don't spend our whole lives learning how to wield a sword would understand.
"Why would someone cut the head off a dead body?" Samuel asked aghast. Kanda just "hnn"-ed: his typical response when he either didn't know or didn't care to respond. The Finder continued with his monologue when it became clear that the black-haired exorcist had nothing further to say on the matter. "Once more, there doesn't seem to be any blood. The flesh visible in the severed neck seems oddly pale and the veins and arteries have collapsed. There is no blood, dried or frozen, visible in the exposed veins or surrounding tissue."
Time stretched on oddly as they worked through the rest of the bodies in a long litany of destruction: shattered bones, mangled limbs, torn flesh, pulped organs, and a frightening and eerie lack of blood with which to lubricate the gore. Allen felt ill and faint by the time they reached the last body, the result of a mixture of stress, hunger, exhaustion from the night before, and the gloomy, suppressive aura of the crypt.
"Male Finder, 028357," Samuel's voice droned on, muted by the unfocused nature of the pale teen's attention. "This is the last one of the ten…" Allen's mind drifted again, only to be returned to reality by the sudden cessation of the sound of shears slicing through the sturdy fabric and the dry retch from Samuel followed by a soothing murmur, indistinct and soft, from Nigel. The Finder had his back to the last body, doubled over with both hands on his knees and his head down. Mr. Harrison had one hand on his back, gently patting. Kanda looked slightly pale, but it could easily have been a trick of the light, which was almost nonexistent in the crypt. Curiosity and morbidity piqued, Allen sidled forward until he stood next to Kanda, who had remained by the Finder's side as the examination continued.
"What is it?" the cursed exorcist asked as he approached.
"Che," was the only verbal answer from Kanda, but before Allen could start to feel slighted, he caught sight of what had made the Finder gag. The skin of the corpse's torso had been flayed away and removed in strips, revealing the freakishly bloodless muscle and sinew beneath. The left half of the ribcage didn't seem to fit right and even as he watched, Kanda reached out, seized a rib between two fingers, and lifted. The whole half swung back as if it was on hinges, revealing the body cavity beneath. The slick, thin sheet of the diaphragm divided the brownish coils of intestine from the grey, squishy sponge of the lungs, but where the heart should have been was nothing—or, rather, nothing that should have been there. The empty space had been filled be a fine silver chain with a cross attached. The pure metal glinted up mockingly at them, the small portion of its surface clouded with gore in no way dimming its gleaming radiance.
"Male Finder, 028357," Samuel repeated weakly, his back still toward the corpse. "The chest cavity has been…has been…"
"Broken apart so that the ribs fall back like a door. The heart was removed and replaced with a silver cross," Kanda interrupted, his voice calm and controlled. Samuel turned his head enough to give Kanda a grateful look. Nigel nodded at the Japanese exorcist in acknowledgement of what he had done for his subordinate teammate.
"I think," the elderly gentleman said softly, his rich tones muted and aged by the heavy silence of the crypt. "I think that we have spent enough time down here for today. I believe that we should go."
Allen nodded his agreement vehemently, as did Samuel, who recalled his golem and ordered it to end its recording and send the footage to Headquarters as soon as possible. Kanda hesitated for a moment then canted his head slightly to indicate his amenability to their host's idea.
They were a very subdued group as they walked slowly back up the slick, cold stairs, led on by the single dying star of the lantern Nigel carried. Its light was fading steadily as the lamp oil burned low and claustrophobia clutched at Allen with cold hands as the dimming light made the walls loom larger and close in. The stairs never seemed to end, stretching on forever between two black voids. The cursed teen started to tremble—the walls aren't falling, I won't be buried alive—the mantra ran through his mind over and over, but it was not until the white-haired young man stumbled at the top of the stairs and fell to his knees on the cool marble of the entry chamber that his heartbeat began to calm. He pressed his hot, sweat-slicked forehead to the cold stone, unable to shake the feeling that he had escaped from something terrible. Kanda, who had been just behind Allen on the way up, stepped out of the stairwell over Allen's bowed form, planting one heavy, booted foot on Allen's red-skinned cursed hand in the process. The stoic man glanced down as if trying to discover why there was an irregularity in an otherwise perfectly smooth floor and removed his foot, but Allen, who was ready to seize on any emotion that would allow him to escape from the insidious fear that had been all but smothering him, thought he could see the glint of cruel satisfaction in Kanda's eyes when the younger exorcist yelped and snatched his hand back to cradle it against his chest. Allen let out a soft hiss of anger and rose, his terror momentarily forgotten.
Pale, watery sunlight fell through the still-open door and glowed merrily on the white marble. The pastel light was echoed once the four stepped back out of the mausoleum onto the crushed gravel path that led the short way back to the carriage road. The sun had already sunk below the jagged heights of the mountains that surrounded the valley and long, black shadows lay tall on the ground. Grey mist, the same fog that had clouded their journey out that afternoon, rolled in thick drifts. The carriage was nowhere to be seen.
A low, dying groan drew Allen's attention; Mr. Harrison had swung the sturdy oak doors of the mausoleum closed. It boomed hollowly when it bumped back into its frame—the same sort of noise that accompanied the settling of a coffin lid. Even the rust shriek of the wrought-iron gate was less terrible than that dull, cold sound of the oak door. Allen was glad when both gate and door were locked closed and Mr. Harrison pulled a golden pocket-watch from inside his jacket and flipped it open to inspect it critically.
"Lane should be back around with the carriage very shortly," the old man—God, how he seemed to have aged in the last few hours!—said softly, and, sure enough, the sound of hooves and jingling harness became audible in the muffling drifts of mist. Neither the horses nor Lane were calmer when the manservant drew the bay mares to a halt. The mares' ears flicked back and forth and they stamped restlessly. Lane dismounted the box while giving the impression that he would rather do just about anything else.
"You were in there for a long time," the brown-haired servant said not-quite-accusingly, shuffling his feet a bit. "It's nearly a quarter 'til eight."
"Yes," Nigel spoke kindly but firmly. "And we are understandably quite hungry. We would like very much to return to the manor."
Lane appeared to think that a good idea and he sprang to assist everyone into the carriage. No sooner than had the last the quartet settled into their seat and the door had closed, Lane guided the horses around in a tight semi-circle and, with a crack of his long whip, sent them trotting back down the path.
Inside the carriage it was silent. None of the four met each others' eyes or conversed, electing instead to stare unseeingly at a fixed point. Nigel was counting the beads on his rosary with incredible speed, the long loop of beads sliding smoothly through his fingers. Allen found his pale-grey eyes drawn magnetically to the dangling metal glyph where the cross would usually hang. The metal glinted dully in the light from the window—the lamp had been returned long since to the hook on the outside of the carriage—its shine quite unlike that of gold or silver. The sight of it made Allen remember with horrible clarity the grisly cross in the last Finder's chest cavity and Allen wrenched his eyes away.
The return trip took less time than the outward one had and only a few minutes later, Lane had wheeled the horses into the courtyard between eh house and the stables and reined them to a halt. Lilith stood at the back door wiping her hands on her apron, framed in the rich, golden light from inside the house.
"Dinner's done!" she called. "Best you get yourselves in to the dining room while it's still hot."
They took her advice and trooped down the hall to the familiar wood-paneled room. Lilith had insisted that they shed their "filthy boots," so their footsteps were little more than soft thumps that were soon echoed a thousand-fold on the roof when the sky broke open and it began to rain. Dinner, like the carriage ride, was a silent affair and it ended quickly as no one, not even Allen, was truly tempted to linger over the warm cobbler and mulled wine that Lilith had brought out for dessert, no matter how good it was. The matronly woman didn't seem insulted, however, she merely leveled an understanding look on them all then hustled them—including Nigel, her own employer—all back to their rooms, assuring them that a hot bath had been run in each of their rooms.
Kanda followed on Allen's heels through the quiet mansion, stopping just as Allen did just outside the door to the pale-haired exorcist's room. Allen gazed at Kanda blankly.
"Aren't you going to take a bath in your room?" the cursed exorcist asked. A muscle in Kanda's cheek jumped and something—was it fear?—flashed through the sword wielder's deep blue eyes. The white-haired boy noticed it instantly and the distracting burden of all of his thought fell away so that he remembered clearly exactly why Kanda had been in his room in the first place.
"Oh. Um…would it be okay if I used the bath in your room while you used the one in mine?" Allen thought that perhaps he wasn't being quite fair to Kanda, who so obviously didn't want to be left alone for any length of time—he hadn't been separated from the younger exorcist all day except for when he had used the bathroom that morning—but Allen was still irritated a little by Kanda's behavior. If he spent all day pretending it didn't happen, then he can damn well pretend that everything's fine for a little longer, Inner Allen snarked. The pale teen relented a little when he saw the fain traces of worry appear in the cobalt fields of Kanda's eyes. "Look," he soothed in his best reasonable tone of voice. "I'll leave Timcampy with you—he's still in the room—and if you need anything, I can still hear you pretty well through the walls. Will that be okay?" Kanda hesitated for so long that Allen thought he was going to refuse his offer, but at last the swordsman let slip a few quiet words.
"Fine. I don't care."
Allen thought the statement was pretty ridiculous given how much he obviously did care, but he let it slide. "I'll be back as soon as I'm done; I still need to talk to you about this morning." At that, Kanda's expression became guarded and wary. The younger exorcist ignored it and opened the door and stepped into the room. Timcampy hurtled out of the shadows in one corner—Lilith had left most of the lights on, so the shadows were relegated to only a few places—and bit Allen's ear firmly as punishment for having been left behind. True to his nature, Allen whined at Tim for a bit about "not being nice" then gave the golden golem orders to stay with Kanda. If a golem could look disgusted Timcampy did, but the loyal golden machine obligingly hovered around Kanda's head before settling disrespectfully on top of the highest point of Kanda's pony-tail. It looked ridiculous, but Allen managed to keep from laughing until he had seen Kanda settled in as much as possible and he had escaped next door to Kanda's room for his own bath.
As Lilith had promised, the bath—twin to the one next door—was already filled with steaming water and Allen stripped hurriedly and threw himself into its warm embrace eagerly. He washed away the day's grime swiftly then swam to the stairs so that he could recline comfortably in the water with no fear of drowning. He was glad that he had made time to be alone—he needed some space to think before he talked to Kanda, especially since Kanda was now wavering between his attempt at normalcy—as though nothing had occurred—and a rawer, less-guarded Kanda Yu, one that had been hurt and was still curiously sensitive, seeking comfort and assurance.
I wonder why he didn't seem at all bothered by being around Mr. Harrison all day. I would have thought that we would be adding another corpse to the crypt given that Kanda's usual response to anything out of the ordinary is violence or the threat of violence. It just doesn't make sense. Even if he was trying to act as if nothing had happened, he had the perfect opportunity to get his revenge while we were down in the crypt: we were alone and neither I nor Samuel was in any condition to stop him. Other than Nigel, there's only Lane and Lilith, so it's not like there would be a huge number of people who would notice immediately that he was gone, especially given that Kanda would probably notice them, too, and kill them as well to cover his tracks.
Allen shifted lower on the steps so that he could submerge his ears. He blew a few bubbles reflectively.
It's not like the Black Order is going to announce to the world that Kanda killed a whole household for revenge—that would only hurt the organization and, ultimately, the world itself. Sure Kanda might get punished, but what honestly can the Black Order do to him? Send him on more missions as punishment? He hates being at Headquarters, so that's no punishment. Confine him to Headquarters? He'd make everyone so miserable with his foul attitude that he'd reverse the punishment onto everyone else. If he is acting normally, than his normal action would be to seek revenge against the party that wronged him, which would be Mr. Harrison, so either Kanda is completely ignoring the fact that he was raped and suppressing his most basic instincts—which seems unlikely given how much he would normally go for revenge—or Mr. Harrison wasn't the one who raped him. But that's impossible: I saw him in Kanda's room that night and no one entered the room after me that I didn't know about. This doesn't make any sense.
Allen could feel himself falling asleep, so he half-crawled up the stairs so that he could lay his torso on the cool marble tile around the bath with his legs trailing in the water.
I just don't understand. Maybe he only looked like Mr. Harrison? But only Tyki and Lulubell transformed like that, and they're both dead. I don't think an akuma could do it, and why would an akuma want to do that to Kanda anyway? And what about those bodies?
Allen yawned. The bathroom was well-heated by the warmth and steam of the bath and he was emotionally exhausted. His eyelids drooped.
Damn, he thought mildly. I'm going to fall asleep. Good thing I left Tim with Kanda so he can call me when he decides I've taken too long. His eyelids slid shut over his pale-grey eyes and Allen fell asleep almost instantly sprawled out on the bathroom tiles, warm and tired.
A while later, the door of Allen's room clicked shut—it had been left open so that Timcampy could go between the two rooms as necessary. Kanda was sitting cross-legged on the bed with Mugen across his knees, his hair still damp from the bath and falling unbound over his shoulders while he polished the Innocence blade with a soft cloth. The swordsman's grip tightened on Mugen's hilt and he glanced toward the door then relaxed.
"You took forever, Bean Sprout," he snarled at the white-haired boy who had just snuck in with a sheepish look on his face. "I was just about to send that stupid golem to get you."
"What did you want to talk about?" Kanda continued gruffly, sheathing Mugen then leaning the Innocence blade up against the nightstand with a quiet reverence while the pale young man crossed to room so that he could sit down on the bed next to Kanda.
"Couldn't it wait until you got dressed?" the Japanese exorcist added in disgust when he noticed that Allen had returned dripping wet and wrapped in his towel. The younger man just grinned contritely at him, something odd lying just below his expression.
"No."
Allen's voice was odd, Kanda noticed then, as he opened his mouth to let loose a scathing retort, Allen shoved a soft wad of fabric into his mouth, nearly choking him, just as his arm transformed into that familiar, scaly white claw and pinned the swordsman to the bed.
Kanda's deep blue eyes widened first with shock, then terror, but he was so startled by this development that he couldn't move, couldn't struggle, couldn't speak. At least, not until the white-haired boy used his other hand to tear away the pajamas Kanda had dressed in after his bath and allowed his own towel to slide away, revealing an impressive erection.
"You know, Kanda," the pale boy commented in that same odd voice. "You really ought to be more careful." He smiled dazzlingly as he said this then thrush roughly into the sword wielder's unprepared and un-aroused body with no warning. Kanda's eyes rolled back and his back arched off the bed in agony, his arms and chest constrained still by the huge white claws. Blood spilled from his ripped anus to splatter on the sheets below. The white-haired young man smiled wider and started thrusting, and Kanda began screaming in earnest, even the loudest of his howls smothered into near-nonexistence by the fabric in his mouth.
"Shh, shh, Kanda," the grey-eyed teen whispered into Kanda's ear, his hips still moving against Kanda's own. "It's just Bean Sprout, right?"
Deep inside Kanda something broke and tears, hot and stinging, rolled down his cheeks.
"Don't cry, Kanda, it's okay," the younger exorcist breathed against the Japanese exorcist's skin. "Don't cry, okay?"
Kanda didn't hear him; he was already gone, locked away in some corner of his mind, trapped in a whirlwind of razors—agony, fear, and betrayal. The tears kept flowing, bright and clear.
Authors Note: Well, that was a depressing post after such a long absence. Thank you for reading if you managed to make it this far. As it is, it is after midnight and I have classes tomorrow (yay, college) so this little note will be very short. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly assure you, my readers, that this story will be completed. Some of you may have given up hope by now, but do not count me out just yet.
Review or send me a message if you want to talk about something that came up in the story.
Thanks again for reading, I appreciate it.