Chapter twenty-nine – Before the war begins
The sharp chill of the hospital air set the small hairs on Kanda's arm on edge and sent an uncomfortable prickle spiralling down the back of his neck as he nursed the cool can of drink from the waiting room vending machine in his clammy hands, shifting a little restlessly on the vinyl couch that was such a bright shade of blue Kanda fancied he could feel the over-whelming cheek of it radiating upward from the seat of his jeans.
Since Allen had admitted to Kanda in the darkened hall far up the other end of the building that it was perhaps time that he confessed to everything he'd been keeping hidden for so long, they'd shifted down into the empty waiting area closer to where Lenalee and Lavi were sitting silent and waiting in the emergency room.
The silence between the four of them now as they waiting for Allen to explain was almost phenomenal and Kanda wished he could have enjoyed it more as he doubted it would happen again. However, his own nerves were screaming loudly in his ears as he stared distractedly out the picture window, watching as faint rays of pink began to stream through the blackened sky; bruising upon dark skin.
The drink in his hands felt cold against his sweaty palms and Kanda wasn't entirely sure why he'd brought it. He had no intention of drinking it, nor did he particularly want it. More than anything, he'd simply hated standing alone and nervous in the empty room while Allen was off fetching their friends, leaving Kanda with nothing but his thoughts.
Kanda wasn't used to that.
So he'd pulled a coin from his pocket and popped it in the garish machine, listening to the almost comforting whirl of mechanics and gears as the aging thing struggled to deliver him his can.
He'd pressed his forehead against the cold glass, taken deep and calming breaths, and wondered why, exactly, it was that he was wound into such a tight coil of tension.
What exactly am I doing here? What do I hope to accomplish? What the fucking hell am I thinking?
And Kanda who had always been vaguely rational and determined to do everything the way he'd wanted, never deviating from his own assigned path and never once glancing over his shoulder to consider alternatives, Kanda found that for all this, he was still unable to tear himself away from the intoxicating addiction that was the enigma of Allen Walker.
Couldn't, for the life of him, take himself away from the way his heart thudded painfully in his chest and his breath shortened with each unguarded smile and irritating quirk that promised him adventure like he'd never known before. Couldn't tear himself away from the thrill, even if it was hidden behind a thick coating of pain and agony that even he himself couldn't make sense of.
Kanda remembered looking Cross in the eye and delivering those very same vows only in fewer words.
Allen cleared his throat, a loud echoing sound in the emptiness of the room and suddenly Kanda's attention riveted backwards, fixating on the small, uncomfortable looking boy whose hands were so tightly clenched Kanda felt a brief flare of worry that Allen's fingers might snap clean off.
"I know I said some things… before, but I just, I'm not… I'm not mad or anything."
Lenalee and Lavi who had been sitting rigidly in their seats, all bruised skin and aching limbs, watching Allen as if their very life depended on it relaxed slightly, just a tad, at the gentle proclamation but the wrinkle twisting their brows didn't fade.
"We know," Lenalee said hesitantly. "What we did was stupid; and we're sorry."
"No." Allen shook his head darkly at that, white hair mussing in the light breeze created by the movement. "Don't be. I mean, yes it was stupid, but it was understandable too. You were worried about me and I wasn't helping." He offered a sheepish smile but it didn't meet his eyes, coloured so darkly from anxiety as they were. "It's my fault, I'm sorry."
"Allen," Lavi rasped, cleared his throat abruptly and tried again, "Allen, it's alright. We really shouldn't have put you in a position like this."
Kanda snorted into his drink and ignored the dark look Lenalee shot him for his trouble. "I'm not sorry," He said bluntly, "And I won't pretend to be."
"Yu-chan!"
"No, it's fine," Allen said airily. "It's Kanda. What more do you expect?"
"But…" Lenalee gnawed at her lower lip, looking distressingly from Kanda back to Allen.
"Really," Allen assured her. "We've just had this discussion, its fine."
They lapsed back into silence for a moment and Kanda was trying very hard to refrain from digging his elbow sharply in Lavi's side if it would stop him from looking at Kanda like he'd kicked a puppy. Not that Lenalee was much better; the looks she was sending him indicated that she perhaps thought he was the most heartless being to walk the face of the earth.
He wouldn't claim she was exactly wrong.
Allen fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment before taking a deep breath, stealing himself, before he barged on forwards. "As you probably know, I, uh, spent some time at that facility that you went to … visit…" His gaze flickered disapprovingly for a moment but he was back on track, not giving himself a chance to back out from this promise.
"When I was little, after Mana died, I didn't know what to do with myself. I remember sitting by his grave and wondering what was going to become of me. And then…" he trailed off for a second, swallowed deeply and fixated his silver gaze on the floor. "And then I met him."
"Him?" Lavi repeated, frowning deeply as he shuffled forward on his chair, wincing unpleasantly as his aches throbbed.
"The Millennium Earl."
He fancies himself an Earl…
Kanda's stomach may have been guilty of jumping just a little as Cross' words floated back to him, the infuriatingly casual lilt in his voice as he'd spoken closed sentences and riddles, driving Kanda insane.
"You know an Earl?" Lenalee asked, baffled. "Do we still even have those?"
Allen gave a shaken little laugh and linked his thin fingers together again, staring down at the creased white material of his gloves. "Not …exactly. That is to say, it was more of a self-appointed title. That man… He had little to do with nobility."
The listening trio exchanged worried glances at the bitter tone colouring Allen's words but remained silent all the same. This was the first time in their long acquaintance that Allen was opening up, sharing and lifting the burden that rested so heavily upon his shoulders; and they were willing to share it, now that he was letting them.
"The Earl, well… He took me in, told me he was a friend of Mana's; that he'd look after me. And I – being young and so fucking stupid – believed him."
Kanda winced at the harsh cuss that slid from Allen, fighting the irritating impulse to go over and rest a comforting hand on his shoulder. Kanda wasn't the comforting type, not really, and he wasn't sure, in this situation where Allen was finally – finally – delving back into the horrors of his past, what he was supposed to do.
Luckily for him, Lenalee pulled herself upright and slowly made her way over to sit beside Allen, allowing one dainty hand to drift over to his knee, smiling unsurely up at him but keeping her words to herself.
An irrational feeling of anger flooded violently though Kanda with such force he almost jolted.
"It's, um… I went with him and, at first, it seemed alright; good even. They gave me my own room and everything, and there were a lot of other kids my age and I was mourning Mana, so I wasn't… I wasn't really paying attention; I didn't care what happened to me."
Lenalee look scandalized at this and opened her mouth – maybe to assure Allen of his worth, maybe to scold him for his recklessness – but seemed to think better of it at the last minute and jammed it closed again, her vibrant green eyes glittering in disapproval.
"I must have been there for about a week before things started to change. I was introduced to Rhode."
Lavi's visible eye widened almost comically. "As in the –."
"You met her earlier tonight, I believe," Allen cut tiredly over him and, chastened, Lavi closed his mouth once more. "You may have noticed that she tends to be… a little eerie."
Kanda does snort a little at this but it goes unnoticed in the moment of fixation.
Allen twisted his fingers together and flexed them almost absently in his lap as a means of distraction, clearly drifting away from the dreary hospital waiting room with the rattling vending machine standing lonesome in the corner. However, Kanda wasn't certain the place to which he drifted was better than the reality in which he sat.
"It was… The NOAH weren't who they claimed to be; not that they really claimed to be anyone – I was that out of it after Mana… Well, when they came to get me."
Even after all these years, he still couldn't talk about Mana's death.
"Rhode wouldn't let me be, she always wanted to 'play' whether I wanted to or not. She was attached but although to begin with it was seventy-two hour long rounds of monopoly played with a knife in the middle of the board, and then it was nails on my skin and arms twisted behind my back and deranged laughter when I spoke… And then I met the others, her 'family'."
"Family?" Lenalee echoed morbidly.
"In all but blood," Allen replied with a grim twitch of his lips. "About then I was starting to come out of my shell just enough to notice that things were not right at that institute; so many children spread across so many age groups and not a single ring of laughter in the halls, not ever. Everybody was so pale, so scared. Some of the children dressed in long coats even in the warmest weather and for a place so small and secluded, the rate of individuals suffering from deformities was astounding." Allen looked up and Kanda caught his eye. "Like me."
Lavi and Lenalee furrowed their brows and Kanda looked downwards. "Like you?" Echoed Lavi.
Allen grimaced and his fingers slid up from his knees, grasping loosely at the cotton of his left sleeve. "My arm it…" He trailed off and licked his lips. "Well, it hardly matters. But, what I'm getting at is that all was not well."
"We…" Lenalee trailed off and shifted a little in her seat, casting an uncertain glance at her assembled friends. Her fingers tugged lightly at the bandages wrapped tightly around her injured shoulder, an unintentional tell of her nervousness. She didn't seem to notice the way Allen looked like he'd just been punched in the gut as he tore his eyes away from her bandages. "When we were out at the forest, Kanda said… Well, it's more like he came up with a hypothesis."
Allen gave a weary smile and looked up to meet Kanda's eyes. "I bet he did."
Something spun like a web of electricity down Kanda's spine as he looked into Allen's age-old eyes, all trauma lurking at the edges and quiet acceptance at the forefront. The thought bloomed in his mind before he could stop it; I'm going to protect you if it's the last thing I do.
Because at the end of the day – as they sat here bloodied, broken and bruised – it was what Kanda had been trying to do all along.
Clearing his throat roughly, Kanda tossed Lenalee a glare and worked to keep his face straight under Allen's watchful gaze. "It's not a hypothesis," he grumbled, "more like a natural conclusion."
"Oh, look at Yu-chan using big words," Lavi teased and Allen kicked the leg of his chair for him.
"Go on, let me here what you've decided," he encouraged gently and Kanda's heart may have stuttered a little at the sheer trust in Allen's eyes because fuck it all; if that didn't make a man feel like the top of the world, he didn't know what did.
Shuffling awkwardly under all the attention, Kanda scowled up at the ceiling, took a deep breath and said with as much conviction as he could manage given the volatile nature of the statement, "the institute was experimenting on people; on children."
Somewhere far off from the tension that flooded the room, a clock ticked loudly into the silence and the vending machine Kanda had visited what felt like hours before rumbled discontentedly in the background. Casual white noise that preluded the destruction that Kanda felt like they were edging towards.
"Mhm," Allen murmured after a moment, and, all though Kanda was still examining the dirty tiles of the ceiling, he could hear the tell-tale creak of Allen's chair as he shifted. "Yes, that's certainly something to conclude."
"So," Lavi began nervously but Allen held up one gloved hand to silence him and the redhead obediently withdrew.
"The NOAH… They recruited the lonely, the damned and the desperate – and I was all of the above. People that wouldn't be missed, children who wouldn't struggle, children like me. And then, in that haunted building in the middle of that isolated forest, they showed us what it truly meant to be afraid. Everything and anything; they did it all. Experimental drugs, examining disfigurement, causing disfigurement, testing the limits of the body… It was far from pleasant, as you might deign to imagine."
Kanda tore his eyes from where they were aimed skyward and saw Allen smiling that smile; the one that was anything but happy, the one that drove Kanda mad because out of all of Allen's expressions, this was one the he hated the most. All bitter edges and sharp self-loathing, something beyond his mask of elegance that made Kanda feel like he'd been kicked in the gut.
Nobody seemed to know what to say and Allen remained quiet a minute, smiling that demented smile into the silence before he spoke again. "They took something of a liking to me, I'm afraid. I'm not certain why, it might have been because they knew something of Mana – my father, that is – but I soon became the favourite experiment. They pumped me full of so many experimental drugs that sometimes weeks could fly by and I wouldn't even notice. They had something of a plan for me and it didn't matter if I consented."
"Cross mentioned that," Kanda blurted before he could stop himself. "Before he whisked himself out that door like the fucking bastard he is, he mentioned it briefly."
Allen jerked up. "He did?" He asked sharply at the same time Lavi exclaimed; "You met Marian Cross?"
In one swift movement Allen turned his attention back onto Lavi. "You know about Cross?"
Lavi looked appropriately abashed for a second before he nervously redirected his attention to Kanda. "You never told us you met Cross! When did this happen?"
"No, wait," Allen demanded. "Let's go back a step. How do you know about Cross? I haven't really mentioned him before; he's maybe been bought up once or twice in passing."
"It's," Lenalee fumbled for words for a moment, "well, to be honest, we maybe-kind-of-might-have looked you up and, uh, done a bit of snooping."
Allen levelled an unimpressed look at her. "Lenalee, after tonight I more than believe you lot have done your fair share of snooping."
"We are sorry if that helps." Lenalee had the good grace to blush as if she was well aware that no; it didn't actually help.
"I'm not," Kanda declared bluntly, "and I never will be."
"I expect that of you, Kanda," Allen sighed. "You're never exactly satisfied with whatever I'm willing to share."
Irrationally, Kanda felt a surge of annoyance. "You don't share bullshit with me; I always happen to stumble across it because we share a room. Your arm, your pills, your nightmares; even Cross you only shared to get me to back the fuck off."
"Pills?" Lavi and Lenalee echoed in alarm and Allen waved off their question with an irritated flap of his hand.
"You really think that? That I only tell you things because I have to?" There was a mix of hurt and accusation in his voice and Kanda felt his own annoyance filtering away at the genuinely bothered look on Allen's face. After a moment of staring he mutely shook his head. Allen let his breath out in a noisy gust before straightening up and looking Kanda dead in the eye.
"So – not that I ever doubted you were keeping secrets from me – what was it exactly my Master told you?"
Look out for the Fourteenth…
Kanda gritted his teeth. "Nothing. Not really… just bits and pieces. Most of which you've already covered."
Because Kanda wouldn't, couldn't, share. Something about the way Cross had uttered it, calling back softly in the darkness as he flitted out of sight made it seem that it was made for Kanda's ears and his ears only.
Allen raised an eyebrow at him but otherwise did not pursue the query further. After a moment he let out a huff, ruffling his hair with one gloved hand. "And then my Master came – I must have been about twelve – and he took me away from that place. I don't remember much about the details; I was drugged, hurt and wishing I would just die already. By the time my memories begin to become cohesive, the building had already burnt down. Cross never did tell me the details, but I'm fairly certain he had a hand in putting it up for investigation; the fire was NOAH's doing, covering their tracks, I'm sure."
Allen looked thoughtful for a moment. "After that he took me on as something of an apprentice; I'm still of the opinion that may have been solely because he didn't like the ring of 'adoptive father' or 'foster father' or any such thing; much rather be called Master."
The room was quiet in the wake of Allen's tale. Nobody certain if he intended to continue speaking, nobody certain of what to say to a person who had just barred their whole soul, told their hideous, bloody past after so long of keeping it a secret.
In the end, it was Lenalee that broke the silence, scooting closer to Allen and wrapping her arms around his shoulder, burying her face in his neck. Blinking in surprise, one of Allen's hands automatically went up to rest in her hair. "Lenalee?" He prompted; surprisingly gentle for someone who had not five minutes ago declared he had been a subject for human experimentation.
"I'm sorry." Lenalee's voice was muffled but audible none-the-less. She tightened her grip on Allen's shoulders. "I'm so, so sorry."
"Lenalee, you have nothing to be sorry over," Allen smiled. "It would be a lie to say that I'm not; I'm sorry it happened and I'm sorry I kept it a secret for so long. All the same, nothing's going to change pretending it didn't happen or crying over it; it did happen, and I've got to learn to live with that."
Her grip tightened further still and this time a slight sob was heard. "I'm sorry, Allen. I'm sorry."
Kanda's jaw ticked quietly and he closed his eyes to the sound of Lenalee crying for their friend, to Lavi's own soft sniffles that he thought he was concealing so well, to the sound of Allen's soft mummers of comfort which was completely unfair; it should be them comforting him.
This was his life now; blood and bruises and crying in hospitals rooms of a past that wouldn't change and a future that was looking uncertain and looming dangerously close on the horizon. The possibility of losing friendships and the something more he had with Allen.
When did that happen? How did that happen? When was it, exactly, that he went from reading in the gloom and silence of his own room and polishing Mugen when he felt lonely to feeling physically sick at the possibility that a person – a friend, something more – might be lost to him.
Allen did this to him somehow, made him feel like he never had before and at the same time made it impossible for Kanda to wish for those days of simple solitude to return. Because Kanda would sooner go down fighting with blood on his face and a snarl on his lips than concede Allen to what the kid seemed to believe was his fate.
He didn't know why. He didn't know when. He didn't know how.
But, what he did know as he sat in the empty hospital waiting room with a drink warming in his hands and the large window behind him spilling in early morning light, the muffled cries of anguish from his friend echoing in his ears, was that he wouldn't let it go.
Not for anything.