"I still can't believe I let you talk me into this."
Kanda very nearly rolls his eyes, watching the trees and open hills roll past beyond the window of the train. "Well, believe it, because you're stuck with it now."
Allen sniffs distastefully, averting his eyes to look around the train. "Do gods usually catch trains to get places?" he asks, genuinely curious but mostly trying to piss him off. If he's getting dragged around by magicians, he's going to get them back for it.
"I'm not a god," he says, lifting his arm up to rest his chin in his hand. "Like I said, I'm an Apostle of God."
"Which means what, exactly?"
"It means I'm about to punch you in the teeth." Allen makes a small 'ugh' sound, and Kanda glances over to him briefly before returning his eyes to the window. "I guess we're like... demi-gods, or one step below that. We've got power, but not much of it. We can't just bloody teleport whenever we feel like it."
"That explains the magic," Allen muses, thinking back to the slap of water he'd received. "How do you become an Apostle? Are you born like that, or chosen, or does it develop over time?"
Kanda's face shifts, and Allen suddenly feels like he has somehow said the wrong thing. He doesn't quite make out what flickers across the older man's face, but it makes something churn in his gut, and he reminds himself not to ask that question again. "It's different for everybody," he says eventually, somewhat absently. Allen wonders what happened to him to make him an Apostle, and figures he shouldn't ask.
"If I'm supposedly one of you," he begins instead, "Does that mean I can do the things you do? With the materialisation and such."
"No," he says curtly, and Allen feels a little disappointed, but then he continues. "Each of us has different abilities. Mine, for instance, are mostly based around water. I don't know what you can do yet, so here's hoping it's actually fucking useful, or this is just going to be a waste of everybody's time."
He turns that over in his head for a moment, looking down at his hand, remembering the mottled red flesh concealed beneath white gloves. He supposes these other Apostles will probably help him figure it out when they 'teach him how to fight', or so Kanda says. He hopes the others are nice than the one he's currently stuck with. For now, he moves on, trying to get as much answered as he can. "How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"How old are you really?"
Kanda looks at him. "...Nineteen."
"Oh. I was expecting you to be a lot older."
"Tell me I look fucking thirty, I dare you."
"No, no! I just meant, y'know... You'd kind of expect demi-demi-gods or whatever to be, like, hundreds of years or so, not- Not teenagers."
Kanda sighs, turning back away. "Not all of us are teenagers. It's only a few of us, really. Most are adults or old men. There is one who's a little over a hundred, but she's something of a special case. Now shut up for more than five minutes, I want to get some sleep before my life gets ruined any further."
Allen huffs, but stays quiet, leaving Kanda to get his beauty sleep as he sits back and watches the world go by. It's almost surreal, and if it wasn't so long, he would have assumed he was dreaming. Just yesterday he was performing at a circus in Glasgow, and how he's suddenly on his way to 'somewhere near London' to fight in a war he knows almost nothing about against things he knows he hates. It's a lot to take in so abruptly, and Kanda isn't really making it any better with his curt responses and vague allusions and nasty remarks. Kanda himself is a strange man, even without the stuff he's been spouting. It's odd, he thinks, looking across the booth to where Kanda naps peacefully; for such a powerful being, he seems far too human.
He wakes up just before they get into London, drags himself from the train to the platform to a hired carriage and falls asleep again, leaving Allen on his own again with only the muttered promise that they'd be there soon. He wonders if Kanda is purposely setting out to make this trip awful as he occupies himself with counting the amount of trees and shrubs they pass by on the roadside. It takes four hours and more than two and a half thousand trees for them to reach a small town nestled in the countryside, Kanda rousing himself for the last ten minutes of the trip.
They step out of the carriage outside a small church, Allen keeping close behind as Kanda leads him around to an entrance at the back of the building, the space inside lit by a pair of torches. There is a single guard standing by the door, who gives Kanda a nod and Allen a curious glance as they pass, descending down a flight of stairs to a canal underneath, the air moist and stifling in his lungs. They step onto a gondola docked at the bottom of the stairs, Kanda taking the oar to silently push them down the canal. Allen suddenly begins to feel nervous, wondering what the people he's going to meet are like, what they'll think of him, why they want him there. The darkness seems so much thicker when he's nervous, and he tries desperately to swallow it.
"I'll only say this once," Kanda begins suddenly; Allen jumps, and Kanda casts a curious glance down at him before returning to watching the canal stretch out before him. "Don't wander off, or you're likely to get lost, and nobody's going to look for you. I'm sure someone who cares more than me will give you a tour of anywhere you'd need to know. Don't backtalk, and do as you're told. This place will chew you up and spit you out within the first month, so I don't expect to see you around much."
Allen frowns at him, dubiously cocking an eyebrow. "Thank you, Kanda. That's a great help, really makes me feel welcome," he bites, but he puts the tips to mind; any information on this place has been hard to come by, so he'll take what he can get.
They stop at a small platform, tying the boat down before they step off, and Kanda leads him up the sole stairwell in the concrete. Allen notices a faded cross engraved in the wall by the entrance, and puts it to mind as they ascend, heading through a long tunnel at the top to find themselves in a large, open space, the halls breaking off in levels from what appears to be a central chamber, which descends even a few floors below them. Kanda spares no time for gawping, walking straight towards an elevator to the right, hardly waiting for Allen to step in beside him as he sends it up more floors than he cares to count. Allen does his best not to fidget throughout the slow ascent, Kanda stock still beside him.
They finally stop close to the top of the building, and the doors open to reveal an Oriental girl about Allen's age, her dark hair tied up either side of her head and a warm smile beaming across her face. "Kanda's back!" she exclaims as they step out, clapping her hands together. Her eyes fall on Allen and her expression falters a little, changing to curiosity as he gives her a meek smile. "This is him?"
Kanda scoffs. "Yeah. Tag," he mutters, then turns to leave.
"Kanda!" the girl barks at him, and he stops, turning a little to glare at her. "Where are you going?"
"He's here, my job's done, I'm out of here."
She huffs, but lets him go, watching him stride off through the hallways for a moment before turning back to Allen. "Sorry about him. He's always so grouchy, but you learn to like him. Sort of. Anyway, welcome to the Order! My name is Lenalee, I'm another Apostle."
She seems too young, too bright to be somebody who fights in a war. He couldn't imagine what she'd be like in battle. "Allen Walker," he says simply, holding his hand out with a smile.
She takes it, shaking it firmly before stepping back. "You're much younger than I imagined you'd be," she muses, looking him up and down. "How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"Really? Gosh, you're the youngest Apostle we've got now. It was me for a while there, since I'm only seventeen. Come on, Allen, I'll show you around a little before we go meet with the supervisor."
He can't say no, so he lets her lead him through the mess of stone hallways and open rooms, trying to keep track of it all as she explains each room, going through the private dorms, the grounds department, the cafeteria, working her way up to the briefing rooms and offices. She stops in front of one of the office rooms, the door a much more expensive wood than most of the others. He notices the same cross shape as downstairs carved into both doors, just above the handles.
"Well, here we are," Lenalee says, looking at the doors as though they house some kind of strange beast. "This is the supervisor's office. I'll warn you now, he can be a little... eccentric, at times, but he's really a good guy. He'll tell you most of what you need to know." Allen wondered what kind of warning that was as she opens the doors, and he steps through with her into a large, round room, the walls lined with bookshelves all the way to the roof, the contents of which appeared to be mostly strewn about the floor. He tries his best not to step on anything. "Brother," Lenalee calls, heading for the large desk that sits in the middle of the room, a man dressed in white slouched over it. "This is Allen. He's the one Hevlaska told us about."
This catches the man's attention, and he looks up from his work, his eyes settling on Allen. "My word," he breathes, then stands up and steps around the desk in one fluid motion, walking up to vigorously shake Allen's hand. "Please excuse the mess, we're in the middle of a routine clean. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, mister...?"
"Walker," he replies, a little stricken with the man's exuberant attitude.
"Mr. Walker! Excellent. My name is Komui Lee, I'm the head of the European branch and the supervisor of the Order's grounds team. On behalf of the Order, I'd like to welcome you to our ranks."
"Thank you, sir," Allen replies evenly, "But I'm afraid I never agreed to join your ranks."
He blinks. "Oh. Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry, I just assumed that your presence meant that you had. My apologies! Would you consider joining us?"
"I'd prefer to know more about it before signing up," he says, giving an apologetic smile.
Komui seems to take this as the right answer either way. "Right you are!" he beams, grinning at him. "I'd be happy to tell you all about us, but first I've got a few questions for you. You are an Apostle, aren't you?"
"So I've been told. I can fight the demons, if that's what you mean."
"That's not all there is to being an Apostle, but I don't think we need to go into that. Do you have any family, a profession, people that know you well?"
It sounds like a weird question, but these people seem to know a bit about him already, so he wouldn't be surprised if they knew a little about his history, too. "I don't have any family, sir. I earn my keep by travelling with different circuses, so there aren't a lot of people that know me. Aside from Cross, who took me in for a few years."
"Hold on. Cross Marian?" He nods, almost shuddering at the name. "You know him?"
"Too well," he says, then pauses. If they didn't even know his name, then how could they know Cross'? "Is he somehow involved in this?"
Komui frowns, thoughtful as he leans back against his desk. "He never told you about the Order?"
Cross being part of the Order is almost too coincidental to him, but thinking back on the years he'd trained with him, it began to make sense. "No, sir. I mean, all he ever even alluded to was that he had superiors somewhere, but he was always so carefree that I never really believed him."
"Yes, that sounds like him," he muses, absently rubbing his chin. "Cross Marian is one of our Marshals. They rank very highly, even among the Apostles. They attain their rank through their unbridled strength. We have five of them now, but Marian has been missing for six years now. We mostly assumed him dead."
Allen tries not to be a little hurt at the fact that his master had never told him any of this, consoling himself with the knowledge the Cross never tells anybody anything that they don't explicitly need to know. It's been a bane in his side for years. "I can assure you that he is very much alive," he tells Komui, a little distastefully. "At least he was last time I saw him, and he's not the kind to die so easily."
He smiles at that, as though there's some joke that Allen unwittingly took part of. "No, I don't doubt that. When was the last time you saw him?"
"Nearly a year ago. He disappeared on me too, actually," he adds, frowning at the memory of the last encounter he'd had with the man. He's lucky he doesn't have some kind of cranial trauma.
Komui gives a thoughtful hum, Lenalee looking a little confused where she stands beside Allen. "Well, I suppose we'll just have to explain it from scratch then," he says eventually, pushing off from the desk to head towards the door. "Would you like to come with me? I have something I'd like to show you."
Lenalee apologises and heads off to do some other work, leaving Allen alone as Komui leads him through the halls. The corridors all seem so empty to him, long and dark and built from cold stone, yet somehow they all feel so warm and lived in, a constant presence lingering in void spaces. Occasionally they come across people in the halls, guards at the doors and strangers dressed in white, and Allen sometimes catches their hushed comments as they pass, murmured words of his hair, his scar, my goodness, he's so young, do you think he'll survive? He tries his best not to pay them heed, but the words linger in his mind, winding themselves between his concerns and confusion and question upon question he needs to make time to ask about later.
They take a different elevator to the one he had come up in, a platform rather than a box. Komui takes them down beyond the ground level, down into the basement, stopping only at the bottommost floor, a short corridor stretching out before them, lit either side by flickering torches, leading up to wide double-doors carved in rich redwood and accented with silver, cross-shaped crests embossed in the wood of either door. "Your examination is first," Komui explains, walking down the short hall to stop just before the doors, Allen close in tow. "Hebah's lovely, despite what you might first think." He doesn't have long to dwell on what that vague comment means, watching with wide eyes as Komui grasps the handles and pushes the doors open.
Allen has to hold in a gasp as the doors swing open, his breath catching in his throat as he looks on. The chamber is vast, taking up perhaps this entire floor of the basement, empty and dark but somehow warm. There are symbols carved into the floor in what he recognises to be an ancient circle, known only to him through his master's use of what he thought was taboo, the lines somehow illuminated and glowing pale blue. In the centre of the chamber is a raised platform, a small moat of water around the base, pipes placed around the edges gently trickling into the main body. It is on this platform that a woman sits, bathed in light- No, emanating light, coming from somewhere deep within her body and gently pulsing with her heartbeat. Her hair nearly covers her entirely, a brighter white than even his own, hints of blue light streaking through the thick strands that drape over her form and the platform, tendrils dipping in the water and sprawling across the room around them.
"Allen Walker," she says, and he shudders; her voice is not one, but many, layered one upon another upon another, whispering like music in his ears. He feels like the tone of her voice is the very definition of patience, of peace, simple and vastly elegant. She lifts her arms up, opens them out, beckoning him toward her. "Come. Let me see you."
He's hesitant, glancing furtively back at Komui for assurance. The man smiles, gently nudging him forward, and he finds himself carefully picking his way across the ground, nerves twisting in his gut as he gets closer. He stops just shy of the ring of water, now noticing the small rivulets that from from its edges out towards the walls of the room. She's even more beautiful up close, her skin almost translucent, smooth and bare of any markings, each part of her body looking like it had been carefully carved and chosen to be perfect. He hears something move behind him, sliding gently across the ground, and he glances back to watch as the hair sprawled across the ground moves, sliding like layers of silk across each other, and he stands totally in awe of it until he feels it curling around his wrists, his arms, constricting around his torso, panic rising in his throat as it tightens its hold and lifts, his feet coming clear of the ground.
"Calm, child," she tells him, and he feels tendrils of hair brush along his cheek, along his jawline as he is brought closer to her. It is now that he notices that her size is all wrong; she is much larger than he's ever seen a human being be, yet her proportions are all perfect, as though someone had picked up this woman and simply doubled her size. She places her hands gently on either side of his face once he's within reach, Allen breathing in an involuntary gasp at the feel of her skin, cool to the touch but exuding warmth, and his eyes shutter closed as she brings him closer, pressing her forehead to his. He can feel something inside him, worming its way through his body and his mind; it's disgusting, feeling something that doesn't belong slithering around in his veins, but he finds himself hard-pressed to to fight against it, calmed by the quiet whispers in his mind, wordless voices at the edges of his thoughts.
"How is he, Hevlaska?" he hears Komui ask behind him, and then the contact is broken, his lungs gasping for a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. She sets him down gently, Allen finding his limbs strangely weak and shaky once she releases her hold on him, his knees buckling and forcing him to the ground.
"Strange," she replies, almost thoughtful. "He is undoubtedly the one prophesied as the Destroyer, but there is something within him I cannot grasp. It is something... dark. There is indeed a curse within him."
Komui hums thoughtfully, tapping his knuckle against his chin. "Indeed. I suppose there's nothing for it but to wait and see what happens, hm? He's probably the most interesting Apostle we've had yet." He walks over to stand by Allen, offering a hand to help him up with a smile wider than he feels it should be allowed to be. "How are you feeling?"
He takes a few careful breaths, taking the offered hand and rising shakily to his feet. "Fine," he replies, swallowing. "Did you know she was going to do that?"
"Of course. That's what the examination is."
Allen has to close his eyes and count carefully up to five to reel in his sudden surge of anger. "Please warn me about these things beforehand," he bites out, and Komui laughs, easy and carefree.
"Sorry, sorry! I've been here so long, it often slips my mind that this sort of thing is unusual. Thank you, Hebah," he says, turning to wave to the woman on the platform. "We'll take good care of him." She bows her head just slightly, silent indication, and Komui turns back to Allen. "Come on, let's get you acquainted with a room, shall we?" he proposes, and Allen nods, following back out of the chamber. Room in his mind is currently synonymous with bed, and he feels desperately in need of a nap.
A/N: I wasn't sure what I wanted the Order to look like, so I decided to stick with the canon layout, just... a little closer to the ground, and fairly smaller, so it's just the building out in the countryside with a basement a few floors beneath and not that crazy big cliff. I feel like Hevlaska doesn't get enough love, so I tried to make her seem sort of beautiful and ethereal (especially considering her role in this AU), so I hope I came remotely close to that.