Chapter Text
Winter came with a ferocity. The snow was swirling in the inky night. White snowflakes fall on his hair and his eyelashes just as the dark as the sky above. Kanda pulls the hood of his cloak over his head. He clutches the warm bag of take-out in one hand and keeps his other free just in case he needs to reach for mugen. The wind blows especially hard then, it bites his skin and sends goose pimples up and down his arms. His free hand curls into a tight fist as he pulls his cloak tighter to his chest.
He is on his way back to Allen and Johnny who were nestled in the warmth of a small rundown motel in the outskirts of Sweden. It could be their twentieth hide out, for all he knew. He’d lost count by now.
They hadn’t seen anyone from the Order in almost two months. Though they did almost have that close run-in when they were in Germany a few weeks back. After everything they had been through, there was no way he would allow them to be caught so easily. He found the most filthy, cheap, and non-suspect place he could think of to hide them. There was no way they could stay anywhere that was worth a damn of his money. Not when Beansp- Allen, he corrected himself, was dealing with a never-ending battle in his own body and the Order and Noah were around every corner looking for them.
Kanda had been tasked by the Order to find Allen Walker and Johnny Gill and immediately return them. He had found Allen and Johnny over four months ago but he had no intention of reporting it to the Order. Instead, he helped them hide away from the deadly clutches from this world that was out to get them.
Hiding in obscure places, rundown motels, bars, and brothels had not caught the attention from any exorcists in the Order or even Noah who might be tasked with the same job as he. People always joked how unintelligent Kanda was, yet he was smart enough to evade being caught for the past few months. Idiots.
Kanda never had any expectations for his own life, not much at least. His sole purpose was to find that person. After that time… that person… He let out a long breath.
Alma.
The name and the memories still pushed down on him like a heavy weight. Things had gotten better he admitted, as they say 'time heals all wounds.' However, that didn’t mean those wounds didn’t leave a large, disfigured scar behind.
When he found Alma had been thatperson all along, his sole purpose for living had been fulfilled at the very same cost of losing the same person all over again. Who would have ever thought Alma was the person he’d been looking for all along? Who would have ever thought that the same exact person he dearly loved in his past life time was in this one too? Yet, no matter what lifetime it was, the end was always the same. He’d always lose Alma.
“Star-crossed lovers.”
“What?” Kanda asked in annoyance.
“I heard brother say that to Reever once…” A much younger Lenalee sighed. “Do you think that’s true? That exorcists don’t get to love? That any chance of love will end in tragedy?” Her brows furrowed in concern and her mouth deepened into a frown. “Do you think that?“
Lenalee wasn’t like him. She had had a rough life, witnessed atrocities with those large expressive eyes of hers but she was good. She was able to move forward. She’s wasn’t like him. Those books she read in her spare time were full of beauty and happiness. No matter what she’d seen in the broken world they lived in she didn’t think it was all bad. Not like him.
Exorcists didn’t get to be happy. They weren’t people, they were tools for the Order. Yet Lenalee believed there was still more to this world.
While Kanda never expected Komui to say anything negative as that, for once, he agreed with eccentric man. Love always ended in tragedy, especially if you were an exorcist. Kanda wanted to tell Lenalee to grow up, stop believing in those stupid books she reads and face reality.
Yet the words that came out of his mouth were anything but.
“Your brother says a lot of things.” Lenalee looked at him with a confused and worried expression. “Idiot once told me ramen tasted better than soba.”
She laughed at that. The dark, sorrowful look she had previously worn was gone. It was strange how okay her smile and laughter could actually make him feel. He agreed with Komui and yet he couldn’t tell her that. She was good. She wasn’t like him and he couldn’t let her be.
“Star-crossed lovers, huh?” Kanda laughs bitterly. His stomach lurches.
He should no longer have a reason for existing; he should have no reason to continue to breathe the air of the harsh world. Yet there’s always a nagging feeling that tears at his conscience. If he ceases to exist then he would not die peacefully. He knows why that is, of course.
Allen Fucking Walker.
His purpose in life had shifted to the cursed silver-haired teen. The irony of that fact doesn’t go unnoticed to him. Kanda hates people like Allen. People like Allen could smile while the world burned around them just so he could convince his loved ones even if his insides were burning with the world around him.
Kanda hates people like Allen because he had only met one person like him before. Alma.
The dark-haired man trudges through the snow and thin sheets of ice crack under his boots. Coming nearer and nearer to the motel, he can see the light on in the room they were occupying. They were on the third floor. Close to the road to watch for anyone who might be looking for them.
After their near run-in in Germany, they needed to be cautious. That time was the first time in so long where Kanda had actually felt “fear,” if it could be called that. If the exorcists in Germany had reported to Headquarters that General Kanda Yu was hiding Allen Walker and Johnny Gill, he was sure Headquarters would send all of their best exorcists after them and he knew he couldn’t protect the two idiots with the whole Order after him.
Not once in Kanda’s life had he expected to live this way. He, too, was on the run, though the Order didn’t know of his crimes yet.
Kanda climbs the stairs to the third floor, passing the strange characters in the hall they share the floor with. Some prostitutes and drug addicts walk back and forth across the halls. He doesn’t need to imagine what they are doing or what goes on in their rooms. He’s heard it all before passing these same halls and from their own room. The paper thin walls make everything nearly audible. The moans and grunts are as clear as day and he always scowls and presses pillows over his ears to drown out the noise. It was awkward and yet this was the perfect place to hide from the Order. No one would ever think they’d be in a place such as this. Hell, he has been living in places like this for months now and he still can’t believe it.
Kanda opens the door to their room and closes it with a click behind him. Johnny jumps from the bed to his feet and greets him merrily. The Bean- Allen doesn’t even spare him a glance.
Kanda sets the bag of food on the small rickety table next to the wall. He then strips off his exorcist coat and hangs it over a chair.
Johnny claps his hands together animatedly and sniffs the aroma of the food traveling in the air. “Smells so good! Thank you, Kanda!”
“Yep.” He grunts.
Kanda glances over at Allen who is sitting on the lone double bed and shuffling cards in his hands. If this had been another time, he would’ve inhaled the food before Kanda even set it on the table. But this was now and Walker barely ate these days.
It was clear there was something on his mind. There always was now.
“Do you want dinner, Allen?” Johnny asks.
“I’m not really hungry,” Allen smiles with that disgustingly feigned smile that never reaches his eyes. Kanda hates that expression. It is so dishonest and so unlike his former self. He had become nothing but fake smiles.
The bespectacled man then asks him the same question, but Kanda declines his offer. Truthfully, he isn’t very hungry either. It isn’t because the food isn’t his go-to soba or that the food in this country is bad. He partly thinks his loss of appetite has something to do with the stupid silver-haired teen’s fake smiles. There was nothing more sickening than people who played pretend.
Kanda never planned to learn the damn Moyashi’s name, yet not only did he learn his name but it was burned into his memory. It was branded into his skin from their battle a year ago. There were sharp strikes from their swords and fists but nothing cut deeper than the words he’d said to Allen then. “If you weren’t born...” Nothing makes him feel more ill than knowing he’s the reason Allen is suffering in this hellhole and not laughing and smiling with Johnny and Lenalee and that stupid Lavi back at the Order.
But Kanda wanted Allen dead then, Kanda wanted to die then too. To know Alma had been alive and suffering under his own boots the entire time. Because of the damned Beansprout, Alma is finally at peace. Now in some twist of fate, Kanda’s reason for living now revolves around Allen Walker.
There was a time when he would not have cared what happened to the damned Moyashi or this damned world they lived in. He once lived in a world of black and white, where he had no friends or foes just his goal. If it weren’t for Allen he would have never achieved his goal. Because of Walker he found that person who happened to be Alma all along and he freed them both. Because of Allen, Alma was finally free.
For Kanda’s happiness, Allen threw away his own and he did it without hesitation. It was Kanda’s fault the fourteenth Noah awakened and now it was his duty to make sure the Noah would never take over Allen. Some days were hard, terrifying, and he and Johnny had to help Allen stay in his mind and keep Nea at bay. There was nothing he could do about the treason charges against the Beansprout, but he could certainly be the one to destroy the Noah when he emerged and stop him from aiding in the destruction of the world.
This was all his own fault. Allen and the fourteenth… and as much as he hated to admit it, he doesn’t hate Allen Walker. It would have been better if he did because it would have been easier to hate and walk away from this clusterfuck of a situation.
He isn’t sure what he feels for Allen and as the time he spends with him grows, the more confused he becomes.
After Tiedoll suggested he become a General, he did. Being a General, he is no longer under Komui’s command, but under the command of the Five Great Generals. A few days after Kanda’s run-in with Tiedoll, he met with those Generals. The meeting was in the Vatican. The architecture and statues were grandiose and from a time long passed.
The Generals appointed him the mission of locating and detaining Allen Walker and Johnny Gill. Simple enough. He already had found Allen but he didn’t let the Order know that. All he had to do was show up to Headquarters once a month, turn in his report, collect his pay, and he was off again. His reports were always the same though he provided the Order with some truthful information when he filled out his reports. Most of the time, he claimed he was still searching but had a lead that Allen was with the Noah. Half-truths, half-truths.
Moving up in the command of the Order was never something he wanted, but it was the only way he could stay with the Beansprout and Johnny. It was the only way he could make sure they were eating well and sleeping and most importantly that they were safe. It also lessened the chance of him becoming a fallen one since he got check-ups monthly and did not ‘go against Gods will.’
He rolled his eyes. This world, the demons, all this death and destruction…if there was a God, this was not their will. If there was a God, they certainly wouldn’t let the Order be the one to enforce that will.
“That was delicious.” Johnny sighs contentedly, licking his lips and rubbing his belly. He’d finished eating the dinner Kanda bought and was leaning backed in his chair. “Thanks again, Kanda. I know it’s freezing out there.”
“Was nothing,” He replies curtly, kicking his boots off and grabbing the spare blanket folded on the arm of the small shitty couch in the room, leaning against the windows and the chipped of white panes. Most of the springs of the couch are broken and it is sunken in near the middle. But it’s been his sleeping place these past weeks. Meanwhile, Johnny and Allen share the only bed in the room. Their way of living is certainly cramped, but somehow he feels more alive than he has in a long time.
“Yeah, thanks.” Allen says then, half pulling the corner of his lips up. Allen would never made an attempt to fake his emotions around him. The younger man either didn’t think he’d believe him or he could care less what he thought. That bothered Kanda for some reason.
Johnny washes up and brushes his teeth in the bathroom before he’s sitting back in front of Allen on the mattress. They’re both cross-legged on the double bed, starting a new game of cards and chatting amiably among themselves.
It usually went as such. It had been nearly a half-year since Kanda and Allen first reunited. The Beansprout was still a shell of his former self but he at least didn’t try to run from them anymore. He wanted them around, well, Johnny anyway.
The silver-haired young man’s chuckle broke him out of his thoughts. It was a hollow laugh. He was mostly hollow laughs these days.
Kanda watches on as the pair continue to chat about various things. Usually Johnny would share new theories he’d come up with with Allen. Their friendship reminds him of he and Alma before everything went downhill.
Kanda’s current goal is not to make friends though. He only has one motive for tagging along with Johnny and the Beansprout and that is the Fourteenth. He wouldn’t allow him to take over and if he did, he would be the one to put an end to it all. It was his fault, after all.
Like Alma, one day Allen, too, would die before him. It was something he knew he would have to face and while he prepared for it, he couldn’t say he was ready for it.
After their game, Johnny hops off the bed and stretches his limbs. “I need a shower.” He smiles brightly. That man is like a bright ray of light, Kanda thinks. The man is a few years older than both he and the Beansprout, but he has a childlike innocence that neither of them have. Johnny hums as he gathers fresh pajamas and a towel then he leaves Kanda alone with Allen.
The air is quiet except for the running shower head and faint voices of people in the hallways and adjacent rooms. There is something unsettling about being alone with Allen. It isn’t even because there is evil lurking in his mind. Though he suspects that’s part of the reason.
The Beansprout’s personality used to get under his skin but at least he stood up for himself. Now he was a shell of fake smiles and hallow laughs. When the hell did he become so damn pathetic?
“Can you stop staring at me? I’m not the Fourteenth.” Allen is looking at him with those eyes of his, twin pools of silver.
“Tch. I’m not staring at you.” Kanda replies.
“Except that you are.” He says in frustration. His voice is deeper now. Deeper than it had been when they first met.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Beansprout. As if I’d be staring at you.”
“And yet, you have been.” Allen pulls the blanket over his stretched out legs. His gaze drifts to the ceiling as if he’s deep in thought. “You’ve barely said a word to me since you and Johnny came here months ago, yet you’re always watching me.”
It was true, the Beansprout and he barely spoke in the almost half-year they had been traveling together. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. No. It’s just that he couldn’t. Kanda was never big on conversation, let alone thanking someone. But the thing about Allen wasn’t that he just owed him a 'thank you,’ he owed him his life.
Allen had thrown away his entire life just so he and Alma could have their final moments of peace and yet he asked for nothing in return. He was the only person who would have gone that far for Kanda’s sake and they weren’t even close.
Kanda opens his mouth to say those two words he’d been itching to say for months. Thank You. He knows he must have looked conflicted because Allen’s frown transforms into a confused expression.
The words are on the tip of his tongue and yet he can’t say them. Kanda lets his usual mask settle back into place.
“Shut up, Moyashi.”
Walker swears under his breath and turns away from him.
Kanda lays out on the couch and stares at the ceiling. His long legs hang over the arm of couch. Several thoughts are swirling in his mind. He curses himself for not being able to speak his thoughts. For not being able to say those two damn words.
The truth is he really enjoys being around the Beansprout and Johnny. It feels similar to the way it was when he was with Alma. Just like with Alma, Kanda wants to… protect Allen and Johnny even if it means going against a so-called God and risk becoming a fallen one.
The sound of the rustling sheets and a creaking mattress pull him away from his thoughts. Allen is sitting up and staring at him with an expression he hasn’t seen in a long time. His eyes are full of determination.
Allen clears his throat, “Thank you, Kanda.”
The words catch him off guard and he is sure he must have been wearing a stupid expression. Why? How…?
How is it that Allen can so easily express what is on his mind despite the demon that had been messing around in his brain? Yet, it has been over a year since Allen saved him and he can’t fucking say those two simple words.
“For what?”
Kanda’s expression hardens once again. It was always so easy for him to wear a mask of indifference, of annoyance, of anger. It kept people away but for the first time in his life again, he doesn’t want to keep certain people away. Yet he can’t stop wearing this damned mask.
“For being here. I almost gave in but…” Allen trails off, looking like the child he was when they first met.
“You should be saying this to Johnny.”
“I have. But I know you don’t have to be here either.”
He remains silent. He can’t say what he desperately wants to say. He stares at Allen intently but the younger doesn’t back down. He looks determined as he used to, like when they first met. It makes Kanda feel strange. A warmth spreads across his chest. One he vaguely remembers feeling only once before in this life.
“I know it must not be easy for you to be stuck with me. So thank you for staying around…you being here really helped me.”
Allen’s words echo in his mind. They are the same words, he had thought of saying to Allen many times before. For some reason he feels defenseless against those words. Vulnerable, even. It is almost as if Allen had read his mind and picked out those exact words to stir him. Which they do. Kanda feels like he is struck hard and the wind is knocked out of his chest. He clenches his jaw tightly. He hopes the movement goes unnoticed by Allen, but he doesn’t think so.
“Tch.” Kanda spits but Allen is still wearing a small smile on his face. It is the first genuine smile he has worn in a long time but what is more surprising is it is directed at him. “Idiot.” Kanda says then he turns over on the compact couch away from Allen.
It is easy to push him away and never say what he’s been meaning to say. In this moment he hates himself. He hates he can never just say what is on his mind. He closes his eyes and lets out a long drawn out breath. Allen’s words replay in his mind in a loop and Kanda feels a small stupid smile spread on his face.
I’m the one who should be thanking you.