Back again! Thank you for reading, comments or queries, etc etc. Slight warning for some bodily harm on this one. Also, I realized I forgot to delete the 'XX hours' from last chapter—just ignore that bit. Hasty editing
Kanda pushed open the door of their inn and trudged across the threshold, elbowing his way through everyone crowding the entry. Daisya bet that Kanda was at least as hungry as he was. Which was starving! Breakfast had been a while back, and stale travelling crackers were getting old.
Like he'd been reading his thoughts, Kanda looked over, and a glance passed between them like two strikers converging on goal. They split up without having to say a thing. While they were still kids, it was easier for them each to slip under a crowd rather than elbowing through two-by-two.
Daisya took his cue to go find whoever was in charge and get them their room with the eight-pointed discount, while Kanda wandered up to the bar to get some food. Even he had to admit that Daisya was a better negotiator. Half the time a vendor would give them a good deal just to make him go away!
Kanda should've tried that when they first met, Daisya thought, instead of being all mysterious. He hadn't known that the best way to hook Daisya would be to let him know that there was something to know.
Daisya found himself behind a mid-size traveller who was hogging the space by the guest book. C'mon. There wasn't much to do other than sign your name. It shouldn't take long.
Funny. It'd be…six years since they met, this next summer. Daisya remembered it pretty well. He'd been twelve, and as happy as he was now.
Now, who would be running this place? Daisya scanned the room, spotted a thin, stern-looking woman, and cut right to her past a pair of…carpenters, by the looks of their calluses. Then again, you never could tell. Might be seamsters who forgot about thimbles.
They swore at him as he ran by.
Who was he kidding. The guys lurking around their own table were out-of-work soldiers shipped up from Tanganyika or wherever after the last deployment. What kind of a place was this? The Order were supposed to be soldiers of God, sure, but they didn't kill people. They didn't kill people.
He shook his head. It was one night to stay, they'd be out of here in the morning on whatever would take them to the rail line.
"Hey, Miss—"
The old woman glared daggers, clearly unaware that he dealt with Kanda on a regular basis. "Who do you think you're talking to?"
"—Mistress, you got a room free?"
…
A brief argument later, and Daisya remembered too late that Mom was the one who taught him all his extortion skills. This Schmidt lady was almost as good as her.
He searched for Kanda, finding a smooth patch of black hair between the scruffy brown, and pulled a chair up to their table. Kanda was already hunched over some sort of food. He moved like a cat—he tried to hide everything he did, even if it was just eating. The time to ask him about why was way past. Daisya was just waiting for the day he decided to tell him.
"Here's the key. We're just up the stairs and to the left," he said.
He would tell him, he definitely would. It was just a question of how long Daisya could hold out.
"Mm," was the eloquent reply.
If he waited that long for Kanda to kiss him first, he was sure he could wait longer for a secret. Daisya held on to that thought tightly.
"What's for dinner?" Daisya asked, pulling a wooden bowl towards him. What was in it was brown, which was encouraging. Mostly.
"Food."
Daisya poked his spoon into it and examined the slightly transparent lumps.
"That's helpful."
Kanda rolled his eyes, putting down an empty bowl.
"I don't ask."
"Yeah, yeah. That's 'cos you've got an iron stomach."
Daisya tested a spoonful, screwed up his face for a moment, then downed the rest in a matter of minutes.
"Was it good?" Kanda asked dryly.
"Beats me. I haven't eaten anything since breakfast."
"We eat the same thing."
"Yeah, then you should know."
Daisya fiddled with his empty bowl, watching the shadows on the inside shift. This place wasn't too well-lit — there were a couple of sconces lashed to the rafters, and a few candles on the bar, but they weren't enough. The space was jam-packed with tables and stools. The remaining bits of free floor were full of drunks and guys that looked like they were made in brick moulds instead of birthed. If Daisya could smell anything through his reddened, dripping nose, it wouldn't be fragrant. At least that meant he couldn't taste the food.
A peaceful moment passed between them in the sweat-damp room with a roaring din. It was a bit weird, to have it happen in a place like this, but Daisya liked the variety.
But before it could last, his calm concentration on nothing in particular was broken by a flurry of movement beside him. A heavy hand fell on Kanda's shoulder, and a voice slurred out some unintelligible words.
Actually, they were semi-intelligible, and something vile knotted itself in Daisya's stomach. It was one of those guys. They liked to pick fights. He was going to have to pry Kanda off of this one with a crowbar. If he didn't give into temptation and have a go himself, all because some dumbass wanted to show off in front of people who had no other reason to stand him. What, just because they were kids meant they had to do what they were told?
And so Daisya had enough sense to duck beneath the table before it happened.
Everything turned quiet. He didn't need to see to know what was happening.
Light would glint off of Kanda's sword, tickling the throat of this week's walking beer stein. They turned up from time to time.
But Daisya also noticed the twenty-some pairs of feet turned to watch, and the half-dozen of them with huge, clenched fists. Some of them looked like they could crush a melon or something in one hand. Never mind the stupid comparison, they were huge. And nasty-looking. Kanda would have his work cut out for him going up against all of them.
"Hey, Yuu."
He called the words casually, trying to sound like some stranger trying to calm a guy down. His voice was deep enough now to sound grown-up, and hopefully no one could tell where the voice was coming from.
Even if Kanda didn't listen to reason, he reacted to his name. Which, handily, sounded exactly like "you."
"It's late enough," he said. If anyone started a fight, they'd win. He was just too tired to bother tonight. Besides, if things went south he didn't like the idea of sleeping in the street in this weather.
And there it was. If looks could kill, he'd be dead after the one Kanda shot him there under the table. But then he had sheathed Mugen and stormed off, so Daisya was willing to risk a glare or two. He'd make it up to him.
Slinking away between the other customers, Daisya took a moment to finish his drink before following Kanda. The crowd was dispersing. It was dark. Anyone with a home to go to should be heading home now before the whole town fell silent. The wind was kicking up, too.
Daisya would have to steal Kanda's jacket if it got any colder.
He never quite knew what made it that warm. Maybe it was the fabric, but it was heavy, too. Anyway, it was a good coat. He liked it.
…
Kanda had to admit he wasn't thinking. He shouldn't have to think. That wasn't what he was made to do.
Picking a fight with some idiot that didn't know his place could only end one way. He and Daisya would have to run out of the town in an hour if someone threw a punch. Exorcists needed to lie down and let things happen. They had bigger problems than the other humans in the world.
Cooling down, he looked back at the narrow boarding house behind him. The main room was still packed with people. Daisya would understand if he didn't come back for a while.
He was pissed off from too long on the road, too much time with that new grinning rabbit bastard who showed up, too many new people at the Order, bad food. Men like that were more than enough to snap him again. It was his problem.
Kanda adjusted his pack. This body's sense of cold wasn't right. He could know when it was cold, but stepping out from the pub into the streets didn't make him wince the way everyone else did. It was the same feeling as when you'd been in the ocean for more than a minute. It would feel as warm as your own skin. Then someone else would take the plunge and gasp.
To Kanda, stepping into it was like he was going back to the pools where he woke up. His skin melded with the melting snowflakes.
He could spend half an hour circling this place, then he'd go back. Daisya wouldn't be sleeping yet. He'd be talking to himself until midnight whether Kanda was there or not.
Taking a turn into one of the emptier sidestreets, Kanda felt his shoulders relax.
Leaning on Daisya felt…good.
His legs settled into a simple rhythm. It wasn't like he ever put on an act for Lenalee, definitely not for the old man, but it wasn't that simple. Kanda had never been what people wanted. Fine by him. He didn't intend to do what anyone asked.
It was harder when there was something they needed that he was never going to give.
That was how he'd been created. Couldn't be the person who remembered the fields. Couldn't become anything else, or he'd lose what he did know.
Turning left at every cross-street, Kanda passed out of the central town. No more flat facades, quieter people. Nobody gave him a second glance as he made his way toward the outer wall.
The dreams wouldn't leave him alone, petals dropping one by one down the damn hourglass. The future that he had left wasn't long. There was nothing he could do except look for her. Before dying, that was his only chance.
His own feelings didn't give him room for doubt.
Regret was a different problem.
Feet moving on their own, he hit the end of the street. An even line of houses ran off in either direction, left and right, circling the settlement. Some carts plodded along the wider road here. More people were taking the long way around to get through town or get to the other side without dealing with the warren inside. He watched them.
Families. Grandparents and children.
The feelings from his old self cut through him like ink in water. Kanda never would notice somebody's kid crying. At least, he wouldn't care. But he did. His feet refused to move while the kid's mom pulled it past. He didn't have a choice.
That was how it worked. Kanda was just keeping this soul alive until he could find her, and then they could live, and when they were out of time, they'd die, and he could stop having to wonder who was stuck here, living like this.
The kid's mother was in a hurry. Good. Kanda stayed rooted until he could see them disappear.
He'd lived for six years now. She had to be older than him. Thirty? Forty? Kanda didn't know the accounting of how much was left in this body, but it was less than it used to be. She wouldn't like it if he showed up on his deathbed. He needed her. Soon.
He picked up his legs and stomped off in the opposite direction.
It didn't mean that Kanda didn't want.
The main flow of people was going right past him. Kanda moved from space to space between them like ash climbing up a smoke plume.
He had no right to steal this life for himself. Not when he knew how much she needed him. How much he needed her. The soul that Kanda had was the one that needed her.
Sooner or later he'd leave the old man behind. It wasn't right to make someone depend on a person that didn't even exist. Once he found her, "Kanda" wasn't going to be him. The name the old man made for him would be gone.
Kanda barely even existed now.
Now was the only space where Daisya could fit.
He couldn't tell him not to get close. What was the point? He already did. It backfired. Daisya did what he wanted. He never listened, he never got scared, he'd chase whatever high he was looking for until he stopped feeling like it. Then he'd leave it. Forever.
As he got closer to the gate where they'd come in, Kanda dove back between the houses. It was fully dark now. He couldn't tell the difference between day and night, except for he stopped being able to see colours. The eyes the Asian Branch had given him were designed for finding akuma in the pitch black.
For a long time, Kanda didn't know why Daisya wanted everything that was forced on him. It pissed him off, watching the kid get rid of any kind of future he had, cutting off every escape, and saying it was for him. Kanda, who never was him in the first place.
Every bone Daisya broke tied him tighter to the Order and their doctors. Worse, to Kanda and his blood.
He had to watch Daisya while he got older and grew taller, getting further away from ever going back to a free life of his own, and every time he had to listen to him say that there was no way he'd go home, and he had to know just what was waiting for them both.
The idiot was sleepwalking into hell.
How could Kanda do that to someone he—?
Kanda hated it.
When Daisya asked to go back home that time, he wondered if he was going to leave the Order.
It was a pain. He'd felt pain. It hurt as bad as running barefoot with Marie carried on his shoulders.
That was the line he crossed.
Kanda decided then that it didn't matter. If Daisya wanted to leave everyone who loved him and die fast, fine. Kanda didn't care what happened. He'd get as close as he wanted to Daisya, and whatever that did to him, whatever pain Kanda caused him, he'd just keep doing it. Daisya could bail just as fast as Kanda could leave him. There wasn't a single thing that tied them together except for just wanting to be.
Daisya wanted him? Then he had him. He couldn't do anything to stop him.
Kanda wandered by the storefronts with his collar open. The air was doing its job. His hands had stopped shaking with anger. His eyes were clear.
Nothing he did could change anything.
There was no time he remembered after leaving the Asia Branch where he wasn't angry. What he had to do was keep it from screwing him up. You couldn't get anything done if you acted like a dumbass.
He closed his eyes, breathing out to slow his pulse even more.
It was time to go back. The road that was jam-packed minutes ago was almost empty.
Kanda picked his way through the patches between the lamps. He could cut back to the high street if he just found somewhere to turn. It was hard to tell which of the openings were through ways and which ones were blind alleys. The buildings were mostly warehouses for trade goods in this quarter, it looked like.
A few people passed by him. Drunks. He could smell it from metres off. Even his eyes couldn't make out the back of the alley. It wasn't too dark. The opposite. The streetlamp at the entrance burned off part of his vision. The trading companies must pay extra for bright lighting, or something. The high wood-braced brick walls didn't even have the reflections of a window somewhere on them.
It was either this, or go all the way around to the main gate. Kanda stepped in. Looked like some kind of dumping ground past the lamp. There were wooden boxes and plain garbage mounded up and frozen. It still smelled.
As his eyes adjusted, Kanda started to make out another wall rising on the other side. Blind alley. Whatever. He had nothing weighing on him. Daisya knew he couldn't always sleep. He'd make it back before morning.
The smell.
It was alcohol and sweat, not just garbage.
Kanda turned. Some of the men he'd dismissed as just stragglers were lined up in the alley's entrance. He recognized one face. Fine. He wasn't in a rage now, just angry. He could deal with them if they wanted him to.
No murders.
With one hand he unhooked Mugen from his belt, scabbard and all. The drunks took that as their cue. Idiots.
Staying behind the pooled lamplight, Kanda let them all rush him in the dark.
A few easily-dodged punches later, Kanda had laid the men out with a strike to the knees or a foot in the groin. They weren't worth wasting a real fight on.
The last one was still standing by accident. He'd been at the back of the pack. Kanda got him with a high kick now that the others were out of the way, right to the solar plexus, and that was that. Kanda leapt past him before he could even groan.
If any of them tried to fight again, they were risking their lives. Kanda wasn't going to hold back from a head blow. It was better just to get out of here.
Kanda walked into the street as a pair of waiting hands swung.
The fire iron cracked Kanda's skull with a sharp noise. Things blacked out after that. That didn't mean he didn't know what happened. His body stayed awake. Only his vision went dark.
Landing mid-stride, Kanda stumbled and stayed standing. Knees bent.
When the next blow came whistling at him, he caught it with all the concentration he had. Whoever it was that was hanging back, they didn't know him. They didn't know he wouldn't die.
Kanda wrenched the iron out of the last man's grasp and hit back with it at arms' length. It connected. He'd bought himself some more time. Only, it was going to be hard to run blind with a swimming head. The blindfold training he had just taught him to stay balanced. Without either vision or equilibrium, with bone shards floating under his skin, he had to be careful. A fall on the ice pooled in the cracks between flagstones would make it worse.
Damn it.
In the time he took to think that, something lumbered towards him for another shot. The meatheads just didn't know when to give up.
Run, or fight.
Kanda drove the iron into the gut of his attacker without thinking, and in the second of unbalance he had after the strike, someone kicked his feet out from under him. A roll was out of the question with his head like this.
He was ready when his arm hit the ice and jarred. The others must have gotten up. Before he could figure out a way to recover, another kick hit him in the ribs. And one after that.
It took minutes for him to go unconscious.
Kansa's inner monologue is always hard to write because he's so young and so old at the same time! A teenager who is seven years old and also like thirty. His feelings for Daisya aren't quite uncomplicated by the fact that Daisya looks like Alma and the fact that Kanda chose to abandon Alma in order to find Her (joke's on him). Don't think I quite managed it, but I wanted to capture the feel of their relationship as it is in the anime! Kanda is kinder to Daisya and quieter and almost subordinate in a way that he isn't with anyone else except Marie. With Allen/Lavi/Tiedoll he's prickly, with Lenalee he's supportive, with Daisya he just accepts him.