UPDATES! I am currently hanging out at CONBRAVO! So I'll be off to enjoy, but I'll leave you with this.
Lungs expanded deeply as the young man stirred, his silver eyes opening to a bleary sky and a throbbing head. A soft groan escaped his lips, his hand reaching to clasped his forehead, his white locks threaded through the marred fingers. Everything hurt, everything ached; his mouth tasted of bile and his body felt stiff and sore.
He couldn't focus, couldn't think straight. Legs shuffled wearily, a scraping of stone and gravel reaching his ears above the high-pitched whistle that seemed to live within his ear drums. Neck in pain, Allen turned his head to look to look around, the world still a bleary mess but the smell of death and blood was strong and burned his nose.
The slim torso slipped up from the place he lay, his eyes looking towards the clearing world. His hands touched where he lay, the stone cool beneath his fingertips and the gravel running beneath his hands.
"I see you're awake…"
Hands clasped his ears as Allen told himself the voice was not real, that he wasn't listening to this. His throat swallowed thickly, taking the acrid stench with it, the taste making his stomach churn and vomit erupt from his lips, his body turning as he coughed up his sick. Back heaving, the young man pulled his body up, his head tuning around to a sight he wished he never saw.
The world was unidentifiable, black and red splashed the sky while the ground was broken with chunks of brick and rock, smoke spewing up while bodies lay near and around him, some still holding screaming faces while others weren't even identifiable as human. For a moment, Allen was sure he was dead, rotting somewhere in the pits of hell though the voice in his head told him otherwise. Had he been dead, the voice, another soul, would have moved to another host, to another body, finally letting him live in peace.
Trembling, Allen tried to pull him body up off the ground where he lay, his legs refusing to move without searing pain running through them and keeping him confined to the ground. Hissing in agony, Allen turned from his bile, his body shuffling as best he could towards an exit, a safe haven, a hope, anything.
"Where are you going?" the voice cackled mercilessly, losing the sweet tone it had first spoken to him with.
Allen remembered it too well; his body, starved for blood, had been up against a wall in an alley, the boy still fresh from the loss of his father, wishing death upon himself so that he might have release from the torment of life. It was then he was spoken too, sweetly coerced into taking a victim, and then another, and another. And so the pattern went, him taking lives at the voice's command, him feeling stronger and revitalized. He vowed to spare the innocent, murdering only the pedophiles that lusted after him and the muggers that jumped him.
Everything went to hell after a year of it, when he blacked out and woke with the blood of a family on his hands and covering his mouth and body. Horrified, he had run, run from the town he had called home, run from a life he had, run from everything. It was the only thing he could do, run. Yet, no matter how fast he ran, no matter how quickly his feet pelted over the ground, no matter desperately he bolted from home to home, the voice followed him, the kind tune changed into a roar, the creature within him terrifying him to the very core the animal resided in.
"Wh… What happened?" Allen whispered, his voice hoarse and each breath he took hurt his throat, as though he had swallowed an animal that had clawed its way to freedom out of his mouth.
"Everything!" it replied happily, "my victory, for instance."
"Vict…"
Realization struck the young man, his eyes wide as he stared once more out at the bodies around him, the destruction, the death, the carnage.
"No," Allen whispered. It couldn't be, this couldn't happen. He was fighting this, he was strong, he was always told so, by Mana, by others. "No…" his head shook slowly, trying desperately to dispel the illusion, to shake his thoughts away. "NO!?"
"Yes," the voice replied, clearly enjoying its victory over the younger. "Yes," Allen felt defeat sink into his core, the horror he had caused the only thing he could see. "YES!"
Allen felt tears bloom in his orbs, his pain cutting deep and torturing his very soul, what fragments he had left. He was supposed to be strong, he was supposed to be winning. Lavi… Lavi was supposed to find the cure, Kanda was supposed to give him strength, to kill him if this thing got out.
Kanda…
He remembered their night, remembered being together, remembered the feeling of euphoria and love that coursed through his veins as he listened to Kanda's words. His love had been accepted and returned.
He remembered the words Kanda whispered to him, the I love you.
Kanda…
Allen struggled to get up, to look for him, to look for the man who had come to care for him and he the hunter. He needed to move, knowing that Kanda, the stubborn young man would be following his trail of death to kill him as Allen wished. There could still be time, the world could still survive, still exist. There was still-
"Hope?"
The young man tried to ignore the beast whispering to him, his body turning to flip over to his stomach. Legs tucked under his legs, the young man began standing slowly, his body shaking and wobbling like a newborn foal.
"There is no hope!" The animal cawed, "you've lost!"
"I can win," Allen whispered, "I can WIN!"
"Oh can you?" the creature taunted, "with him over there?"
"Over…"
Not even Allen's heartbeat could be heard in the silence that overcame him, his eyes wide and his body stilling. There was nothing that could describe what he saw, what he was looking at.
"No…"
Allen's whimper came out above a whisper, the world seeming to still and his body paralyzed.
"No… no… no… NO!"
Legs gave out beneath Allen as he tried to run to the body, his arms helping him move towards Kanda, his voice continually calling for the elder.
"Kanda! KANDA! KANDA!"
Ground and dirt shuffled beneath his legs as he dragged himself to the hunter, his hands reaching to rub Kanda's arm and to shake his limp body. He told himself the elder was faking, that his open eyes meant nothing, that he would cough and move, that the torn abdomen and chest he sported were nothing for someone like Kanda.
"Kanda…" Allen whispered, sound disappearing from the world as he sat next to the corpse of someone he connected with so intimately, one of the only people who treated him as a human and not the monster he was. "Kanda… come on…" something wet slipped down the pale cheek, Allen unaware he was crying, "Kanda…?"
This was not supposed to be happening, the elder was supposed to kill him, not the other way around, not like this.
Allen shook his head; this was an illusion, Kanda wasn't dead, he couldn't die, not at his hands. Kanda couldn't die.
"KANDA!"
His scream echoed in the vastness of death, only he the one that could hear it. Tears down his cheeks and his lungs expelling the loudest and most desperate scream since Mana's death; he had lost.
Everything he treasured, everything he loved, destroyed by his hands. There was nothing he could do, the monster that he was. He could not help, he could only harm, only kill, only destroy, just like the vampire.
There was no difference between him and the beast within him, he knew that now. They were one in the same, one monster, one body, one soul, one mind. To think there was something else that craved destruction, something else that told him to murder, to kill, was foolish. There was only him, only he who wanted to kill, only he that craved death and destruction.
"Kanda," Allen whispered, his forehead lowering to touch the cold one of his once lover, "Kanda…" his words were whimpered through a trembling lip and thick tears. "Kanda… I'm sorry," his breath shuddered as he inhaled deeply, "it's my fault… I killed you… oh God I'm so sorry…"
The laughing never ceased, tormenting Allen through his grief, the taunts became louder and louder, promising to swallow him up in the darkness of his soul.
"Why!?" the young man screamed to the sky, "why me!? WHY!? WHY COULDN'T I JUST DIE!?"
A jerk ran through his body, his tears ceasing from his eyes and his screams quieted. Gulping down air, Allen looked down at the weird feeling in his gut, the sight making his heart leap for two very different reasons.
There, in his taunt stomach, was a blade; a blade he knew well.
His lips found their way into a smile as he looked towards his lover, the eyes open and glaring up at him as Kanda was known to, his hand clutching the hilt of Mugen, Allen blood slipping over his curled fingers.
"Kanda…" he whispered, tears flowing down his face at the thought of leaving the elder, "… thank you…"
Death would come, finally. There would be no more carnage, no more pain, no more of him. He would no longer exist, no longer survive to cause death and destruction.
Allen felt odd; he felt euphoria before something began burning. It spread throughout his body, fire underneath his unable to be cooled by the touch of ice or water. He couldn't scream, couldn't move, couldn't do nothing but remain, forced to burn in the fires of Hell for all eternity.
"LET ME GO!"
Someone screamed. Was it another sinner, another man or woman turned to evil and forced into the fires of this place with him? Allen tried to turn his head in the inky blackness, finding nothing to see, no one but him in this darkness.
"NOW!"
There it was again, the voice of a man, eerily familiar and just as angry as he remembered. Tears bloomed in Allen's eyes. He knew that voice, he knew who it was that was screaming in agony.
He had sent Kanda to Hell.
Tears spilled down his cheeks at the knowledge that he had sent someone he loved to the place he would be suffering for eternity, to have that person suffer along with him.
"No…" Allen felt his voice breath, "no… Kanda…"
"Not yet!"
Lavi?
White hair turned to look around once more in the unseeing black. There was nothing, no one, but him.
There was no light in his tunnel, no source to run too no hope to cling. So why, why did he feel this burning desire to live, to breathe, to move.
Something brushed over his hand as it moved.
Moved?
It was ten Allen saw. There was light, a pinprick, but there, a shining ray.
How?
How could light exist in this world, this world of Hellishness?
It became brighter, brighter than he anticipated. Brighter than he ever thought. It washed over him, hitting his body and bathing it in the hope that it brought. It burned his eyes and hurt his body, the taste of it so sweet it was almost bitter.
His eyes were bleary as they opened to the ceiling, the white matching the sheets and the walls of the room his body was laid in. There was something in his arm, something that he felt as he moved, something that dug into the vein, almost as distracting as whatever was stuck to his chest that caused the machines to beep and rise.
He was alive…
Somehow, someway, he was alive, with nothing around him dying, with nothing decaying. No death, no blood, no corpses.
No voices.
"Let me go!"
Allen pulled his body to the glance into the room that the voices emanated from, some sort of argument.
He was weak and sore, there was pain everywhere. Despite this, he stood, pulling everything out of him as he forced his body to the carpet and then to the doorframe. Hands clutched at the wall, his body pulled towards the voices that were struggling to force the young Japanese man to his bed, his hair free and his body clad in the similar garb Allen was.
"Kan… da…"
All three stopped at the sound of the soft voice, their heads looking towards Allen as the young man leaned in the doorway, his body slumped and almost daring to collapse to the floor. For a moment, no one dared disturb the silence, Kanda still supported by the other's hands as he looked through matted bangs at his young lover.
"M… Moy… ashi…"
All at once, everything crashed around Allen. Tears streamed down his face, hope flooded his system and his body collapsed into the arms of the elder that managed to break away from Lavi and Tyki and push his body to Allen, a smile on both their lips as Allen, for the first time in a long time, slept as a human.
Not the last chapter, but close. Reviews please?