niteo_logs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Characters: Kanda Yu [

promisedlotus], Allen Walker [

tothelastbreath], Lavi [

looseleafbook], Lenalee Lee [

fallforthesky]
When: May 12th
Where: Kanda's room, 406
Rating: PG
Summary: Kanda finally tells the others about Alma.

Kanda had taken Alma upstairs to Matt's room, telling him that he could spend the entire day with the clock worker and color what he wanted. That if he needed him, then just to use the golem. He wouldn't be far, he just needed to talk to the other Exorcists.

When he had gotten back to his room, he used the radio to call for Lavi and Lenalee and sent Allen a quick message through the network. He would be lying if he said that doing this didn't make him feel uneasy. The only person he had ever told about Alma was Allen, and that knowledge had been easily used against him by the Fourteenth. Lenalee and Lavi didn't have Noah inside of them, yet-

-he didn't like this. He would have been more than happy to keep it just between himself and Allen, but with the arrival of the other Alma, he didn't have much of a choice anymore.

Kanda waited patiently and silently for his comrades to arrive, simply leaning against his desk with arms folded over his chest.

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While eager to hear what it was that had been going on at home, the things that had been kept from him after they happened to his friends, Lavi found himself dragging his feet to this meeting. Maybe there was a good reason behind it, him not knowing, and what could he do knowing here but unable to do anything to change what was happening or would happen. It made him feel damn helpless when he knew he was supposed to be doing all he could to help his friends, it was the Exorcist in him.

But the Bookman in him also wanted to know, needed to know in order to make a complete record. He and the old man hadn't been present wherever things had gone down that he knew of, the whole incident wouldn't be recorded if he didn't go to Kanda's room now and listen. It could very well clear up all the blank spots that seemed to have created themselves in such a short time away from his friends. They weren't much older than when he had last seen them so it couldn't have been more than a few months, could it? But maybe it would help clear up why Lenalee had been so shocked to see him. He had to know despite everything else making him not want to know.

Lavi sighed and kept on walking down the hall to Kanda's room, feet dragging until he finally stopped in front of it and knocked once. He knew better than to open the door without being told to, instead raising his voice. "Yu!" A pause, "You in there?" Maybe he was early... But he also thought he heard Allen's voice, could always be hearing things.

It's a little funny, but it seems like the closest resident to Kanda's room may very well be the last to arrive for the 'talk'. Things have just been so exhausting lately; it takes the extra time that everyone else uses to make their way to room 406 for Lenalee just to work herself up to leaving her own. She simply stares at the PDA in her hand for a long while after finishing her brief (very brief) exchange with Kanda, listening to the sounds of the apartment complex creaking and settling.

Finally, there are questions that are going to be answered. Not just evaded or brushed off. Answered. And she's been waiting desperately for this moment for weeks-- why is she so afraid?

(Because Kanda should be dead, and she thinks this will be when she finds out why.)

And then it's Lavi's voice coming from the hall outside, and she feels a jolt go through her like landing barefoot on concrete, and oh, damn it, don't get lost in thought now. Lenalee tosses her PDA onto the sagging mattress that is her bed and cracks her door open. By some miracle, when she comes into the hall and up behind Lavi, her face is composed, a smile that she doesn't mean firmly in place.

"I must be getting out of shape if you beat me here."

Nngh. She's terrible at making (faking) light of things.

Kanda only gives a simply nod in reply to Allen's question. He's nervous. Anxious. And really, really doesn't want to do this. But he would have to swallow his own pride and put in a little trust to his comrades. So when there's another knock on the door, Kanda walks past Allen to open it, wordlessly stepping aside to let the others in. Because, really, what was he supposed to say? He wasn't one for words.

Well. Except for today, he guessed.

Truth be told, Allen would rather have spoken to each of his friends, separately, before this meeting, but he hasn't had the chance. He does, however, find some comfort in the thought that it would have been hard (not to mention confusing and extremely awkward) for him to explain everything without mentioning Alma at all. He has never been comfortable with telling other people about Alma, not even when, or maybe because, they're other Order members (scratch that 'other', Allen). It involves too much of Kanda's personal history and makes him feel like he's giving something important away. Something that doesn't belong to him, something he's still half-convinced he was only entrusted with because Kanda had been too sick to know better at that time. This sentiment has only gotten stronger after his trip home, where they were both forced to relive Kanda's past in livid detail.

He can tell from Kanda's nervousness that this talk is primarily going to be about Alma. That's fine by Allen. He'll listen to what Kanda has to say, how much he wants to say, then take it from there.

Hearing Lavi and Lenalee outside the door makes him turn. He's already pulling a smile on when it strikes him, very suddenly, that it's been exactly half a year for him since all four of them were last in a room together. Even longer than that for Kanda. Maybe never again for Kanda.

"Lavi, Lenalee--"

So if his smile turns out genuine in its understatement, if a tad raw from suppressed nostalgia, that'll be why.

"--you're right on time."

Lavi blinks at the sound of Lenalee's voice being so near, he would have thought that she would be the first one in Kanda's room. Especially with her being the one out of the three of them that could stay in the swordsman's company longest and he remain calm. Of course the teasing that Lavi always instigated was out of his way of trying to get Kanda to loosen up, with Allen he was sure the shorter teen was just fighting with him. "I was on my way down anyway to do something else when he called."

A white lie, but it wasn't important as the door opened and he turned around to face the other two. Lavi grinned despite knowing the air was a serious one, he'd be a good Bookman then, but until then he was thinking much along the same lines as Allen. It had been so long since it was the four of them, he had honestly missed eating meals together in the cafeteria. It was like home had come back for a little and they could forget the unfamiliar surroundings, just be family - for that's what the Order had begun to feel like - for a little while again. "And miss a chance to be in Yu's company willingly? Perish the thought~"

He gestures for Lenalee to go in first, "After you~" He knew the words to be spoken weren't light ones, which is why he fought to keep things so light and jovial for as long as he could.

Much like Allen, and much like Lavi, Lenalee's train of thought is following a similar 'just like home' track. Although she isn't as aware of how long it's been since they've been together in a room, she is very acutely aware of how long it's been for her-- how impossible this would be at home-- and that little memory she clung to during Jerry's feast.

Yes, they're trapped somewhere that by rights they shouldn't even know exists, and she remembers things no-one else does, and Allen even more so, but... she doesn't care.

(That's a lie; she does-- but she doesn't want to care, so for now, she'll pretend she doesn't.)

And so she brushes her hand over Lavi's wrist as he gestures her inside, murmuring a 'thank you', and turns on her own version of a carefree smile. To ensure that, as she'd grown so accustomed to, everyone but Kanda is wearing one and it's a little more like home, in spite of the knowledge that it won't stay that way for long. She needs this moment. Even if it's only a moment.

Kanda's line of thought didn't follow everyone else's, unfortunately. He stepped back when Lenalee walked into the room, returning to his desk and trusting Lavi to follow Lenalee and close the door behind him. He distracted himself for a moment by peeling o ff some chipped paint on the desk behind him. What was he supposed to say, 'Thanks for coming?' Kanda wasn't the type to do that - that was Allen's territory.

He waited until Lavi closed the door behind him to speak. "The reason... no one's ever heard of Alma is because by the time you call come into the Order, he's already dead. He never makes it to officially become an Exorcist."

Kanda paused to take a deep breath, forcing down the memories that were starting to resurface. He turned, finally, to face the others. "He's like me - human, but...different." A lot different in the fact that they've both died, before, while on a mission. Different in that they're both living on borrowed time.

Well, that really was only a moment. Trust Kanda to broach the subject with all the tactful build-up of a derailed freight train. The first part makes something in Allen tug painfully, but it's the second admission he's truly worried about, simply because it can lead to so many other things.

Different, he echoes in his mind, and can almost feel the pulsating warmth of an orb under his palm, already stammering its way towards a flatline. He wonders if the others might have some inkling of the truth. They've both known Kanda for far longer, after all. Then he remembers the way Kanda fights, remembers how he's never heard the rest telling Kanda to stop bloody using himself up even when they're chiding him for his recklessness, and just knows they probably... Don't.

Meaning the entire situation has just been potentially elevated to a whole new level of awful.

Allen isn't going to say a thing, though. Not yet, and hopefully, though he's not counting on it, he won't have to. For the moment, he'll wait for the others to ask their questions and let his silence say none of this is news to him.

Door is shut, of course, as soon as Lavi's inside though he remains leaning against it. It's like Kanda to begin without preamble and immediately the mood that he had tried to build falls down to the appropriate level. Which means that he falls into the carefully built Bookman mode of just listening, watching, recording.

And perhaps ask... Perhaps not.

So Alma was from a point before his own death, before everything had somehow happened that could have spawned something like the other. But not an Akuma as they knew it, perhaps, seeing as Kanda would have had to have been the one to die to get Alma's body. And he was older, he was different all together. Just like the kid Lavi had first met as Alma and now Kanda.

But at least they were human, not Noah or Akuma, just...different human. Perhaps similar to parasitic users, he didn't know. So Lavi just listened.

As soon as Kanda starts speaking, it becomes so very clear that there will be a problem. A problem for and with her. Lenalee can see Lavi retreating into the stoic sort of behaviour that he always fell back on during times of duress, and Allen's silence (his complete and utter lack of any surprise) says he's more privy to this situation than anyone else in the room apart from Kanda himself.

Which leaves her, without any sort of detachment mechanism to resort to or knowledge to boast, standing just inside the door and staring hard at Kanda as if a look alone will make what he's just said make any more sense to her.

The sad truth is, after her discussion with Rhode during Allen's absence, she'd started thinking about all those children who'd died in the Exorcist experiments. So she isn't that surprised (not fine with it, just unsurprised) to hear that Alma-- the child, she assumes he's talking about, not the frightening Akuma lookalike-- hadn't made it. So many hadn't. It's what Kanda says after that has her casting a shadowed look between him and Allen, who seems so aware of where this will go already.

But she doesn't say anything, either.

What else was he supposed to say now? Kanda avoided eye contact with the others. Allen could probably tell how comfortable he was, and hell, the others probably could too. He was hesitant to tell them anything. It really was a fluke that he had even told Allen anything. And because he did, and because the Fourteenth used it against him, Kanda was even more hesitant now.

"The older Alma that's here is... not an ordinary Akuma, I suppose you could say." Kanda folded his arms over his chest, gripping at his arms tightly as he spoke. He still hated the thought of being one of the main causes that turned Alma. "He has his Innocence still. I don't know what the Noah planned to do with me and him, but the Order used him after I failed to kill him."

'The Order is at fault for turning him,' is what he wants to say, but he keeps his mouth shut. It was bad enough both he and Alma were brought back to life and suffered. Leverrier just made it worse by continuing to experiment on Alma after he was "killed," in Kanda's eyes.

That's when Allen, who has spent the entire time flicking worried looks between all three of them, takes a step forward and interjects, quietly enough that he's not so much interrupting as supplementing, "The older Alma here isn't the one from home, though."

Doesn't mean he's not fundamentally still Alma, but even so, Allen knows some differences need to be pointed out if they're all going to be living together from here on out. It's dangerous to talk about both Almas as though they're the same version. Akuma Alma has made it very clear that he killed Kanda, which Allen knows isn't true for their world (not strictly, anyway). Things can get messy if they forget that ― not that this isn't enough of a mess already.

"Our best guess is he's from an alternate timeline."

He grit his teeth, angry at the Order for having done any of this, he had thought that they wanted to save human life. Not fuck it up again and again, mess with it until they had to put other humans down for their safety and for the safety of others. Lavi rubbed at his forehead, "What could have happened that made the other Alma like he is?"

Lavi glances at Allen, taking in his words, "From a time where things took a different path? A worse one, you think?"

While Lavi's questioning and Allen calmly expanding upon Kanda's words, this is Lenalee, slowly paling; feeling her stomach churn as something cold drops into it. It's amazing, really, how quickly a few brief sentences can knock a person down so many pegs, so hard, so fast. She takes back her desire to be quiet. Now there are things she has to ask.

"How..." Too quiet. Try again. "How do you mean, 'after you failed to kill him'? --And the Order? The Noah? You're saying that the Akuma out there can still wield Innocence-- what does... what does the Order even have to do with something like that? That's something that the Noah should be involved in-- and speaking of, why are you saying that they were planning to do something with you both? If you're both from a-- an a-alternate timeline, then it shouldn't apply to you! Kanda, this doesn't make any sense."

Long before she gets to the end, she finds her voice breaking.

It was taking everything for Kanda to even go through with this. His bravado couldn't help him just tough this out, since this was about him, and not Allen, not Lavi, not Lenalee. Him. He could tough it out if it were about anyone else, because that's just who he was.

"... After Alma gained his Innocence, and—" How could he do this without saying what they really were? That they had already died in an Akuma attack, and were only brought back to life out of sheer desperation on Leverrier's part to win the war? In the back of his mind, he could hear her voice, faintly. "—...something inside him snapped. He killed everyone in the lab, except two people.

He tried to take me with him, so we could be together, but it didn't happen. I thought I killed him with Mugen." A pause, and Kanda simply grips his elbows a little tighter, making it a point to not even look at Lenalee.

"He didn't really die, though. The Order kept him alive. Human experimentation stopped when Komui took over. I don't think he's aware of it, but- The Order were the ones that turned Alma into an Akuma." Kanda wasn't sure how, since there were so many holes that he couldn't fill in himself, but. It didn't take a genius to figure out that part of the Akuma plant must have somehow been delivered to Leverrier during the Noah Invasion back home.

"The other Alma said he had killed me, too." He didn't want to answer the question on the Noah's involvement. He was sure Allen didn't want him too, either, although he had already told Lavi his theory on that.

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