Short Fiction Moments V. Section 1.

(Sequel to Moments I, II, III and IV, available in this writer account of yours truly)

Focus on: Kanda Yuu. Lavi. Allen Walker.

Summary: The Order had finally put an end to his mockery of a life…..and thus Kanda cannot comprehend what has happened when he blinks awake on one Infirmary bed.

Keyword: Mistaken

It was not a stabbing flash of light. It was not a thunder of intruding noises. It was not a sudden, rough awakening.

It was rather a slow coalescence of focus; more than an awakening, a retrieval of a misplaced sense of direction.

For Kanda, it didn't feel much like coming back to life.

It felt simply like a blink after a long and numb pause, a stretch of time filled with gray and whispers and the lukewarm wish to stay dead.

Dark eyes roamed about the high ceiling and the stone walls of the large, silent room. Those eyes brought into focus his own body, covered by bleached sheets, resting upon a narrow infirmary bed.

Kanda's dry eyes –as dispassionate as his waking expression- surveyed his surroundings with careful neutrality. Minutely, the lying teen took count of every pristine made bed and every closed window.

The sheer emptiness of the infirmary room was an overwhelming, deafening thing.

****

In other place, at later time, the Order was a blur of movement, colors and voices.

White lab-coats fluttered, black boots rushed on, doors crashed open and words were yelled across halls and thresholds.

In the middle of it, Linali Li maneuvered around bodies and furniture, her hands some times clenched into fists, other times clenched around the fabric of her blouse. There was a lack of grace, a lack of politeness in the way she moved and got through people, that spoke volumes of her distressed state.

"Niisan, you have any news from Lavi? Or Allen?"

And if someone noticed the lack of honorifics, well, no one mentioned it. More pressing matters occupied their minds at the moment.

Matters such as the whereabouts of a certain Japanese teen, previously confined to the Infirmary, but currently vanished into thin air.

"No news from their golems. Nothing from Marie either"- Komui replied without turning from his place in front of multiple screens showing numerous rooms and halls and balconies.

"Levels 3 and 4 are clear"- a lab assistant called out loud, also absorbed in the screening task.

"The rooftop? The training room?" –Linali stopped her pacing to interrogate the assistant beside her.

"Already checked, no one there" –another white coat replied.

"Did we check twice? Should I go take a look again?" –her voice was starting to acquire a touch of hysteria.

"Linali…" –Komui called in a tight voice, finally blinking away from his task.

The Chinese girl turned her eyes to the floor, scowling in frustration and growing anger at herself.

"I shouldn't have left. I should have waited for Miranda to take over, but instead I…I…right in the moment when it mattered the most…."

"I shouldn't have called you away then" –Lavi's voice interrupted her self-deprecating musings. The tall red-haired teen made his way into the control room, shaking his head in negative as questions started to flow.

"You found him?"

"Good news?"

"What did you find?"

"Any idea…?"

Lavi gave another negative shake, accompanied with an unusual tired sigh. He could feel how pressure kept building within and around everybody.

Three hours, forty seven minutes and fifty three seconds of fruitless search might have sounded as a ridiculously short amount of time when the object of prey was a high level exorcist, but in this particular case, they couldn't even be sure of the condition of their prey, finally awake after two months of a precarious comma state.

The general hysteria didn't sound so ridiculous considering they had managed to tear out such prey from the grasp of death.

"Do you have any news?" –Allen Walker stepped in, Timcanpy a defeated lump of golden roundness slumped onto his white head. A tell-tale sign of their empty-handed results.

No one wanted to answer, but then, cutting through the oppressing silence, Hevlaska spoke, her voice smoky and nearly ethereal.

"In my chambers he stands"

****

Kanda's arms were raised; hands turned heavenwards as he accepted back his sword, the solid manifestation of Mugen. The exorcist –such title was still valid, since Hevalaska had informed him that the Akuma extermination hadn't finished yet- felt strangely boundless, groundless amid fog and air and the sensory input of the Innocence breathing life in his hands again.

Hevlaska whispered around him, her presence breezing through the loose wisps of his hair and brushing over the paleness of his skin. For a split-second, the young man's senses attuned with the once before female exorcist, both of them joined in the certainty of knowing that they were no longer completely human.

The heavy staccato of urgent –worried, angry, desperate- steps erupted into the echoing chambers, and Kanda barely had time to lower his arms, a second before a blur of something black and purple came crashing into him, knocking him down onto his back.

"What the-" –the long haired teen tried and sit up, only to discover that he had an armful of one Linali Li draped over him.

The girl lifted her face towards him, eyes infused with cold fury. The room temperature might as well have dropped half a dozen degrees.

"Selfish! Egotistic! Insensitive f-fool!" –she whispered with the force of a raging storm, at the time one of her hands lifted in the motion of delivering a slap.

Kanda's expression went from shocked to his usual scowling visage, but he remained still during the unfolding of those movements.

Instead of the expected blow, though, Linali dropped her arms and once again burrowed into his chest, breaking into suspicious hiccups.

The Japanese teen's eyebrow rose. What the hell, really….

"Kanda Yuu" –Komui was making his way into the chambers, his voice crispy and infuriated in the quiet of the room, as the man looked down and upon the two dark-haired teens on the cold floor tiles.

Kanda's scowl relocated onto the stony face of the Superior –the infamous brother complex- who was standing right in front of him, but before he had the chance to utter a word, he was cut short.

"If you don't put your arms around my sister in this second, I am personally going to hurt you"

…

One, two, three surprised blinks….and then Kanda gave a sigh of resignation, gathering the girl into his arms and bringing them up into a sitting position.

Such displays of open disquiet and fragility were extremely unusual from the Chinese girl, Kanda reasoned, and twice as unusual was for him to offer comfort or even tolerance in these situations.

But then again….it seemed that this time –this time out of thousand other times when people mourned the loss of someone- this person was breaking down because of him. Kanda couldn't even begin to phantom why anyone would consider doing such thing, though.

It was clear to Kanda that the Order had made a great effort to –somehow- bring him back into existence, he who was the Order's favorite tool and murderer. But in regards to Kanda's own wishes and life and value….the empty Infirmary had been a blatant proof of what the Order thought of him, after all.

However….

However, Linali was here, and Kanda supposed she could almost be considered something of a little sister to him, or perhaps older sister in some occasions. Therefore, if someone was going to be upset about his 20th-something death –the one he had thought would be the last and definite one- … that someone would be her.

'Or at least until she got distracted by one of the others'– he mused- 'because it's not as if they were going to miss my damn personality for long, not if they knew what I truly am….'

Not if they knew what he truly had done, and what had been done to him, and what he was capable of doing to the ones who opened their hearts to things like himself—

'Alm—'

A low flow of murmurs rose around Kanda, breaking his train of thought and making him actually look around, past the white figure of Komui at the front.

Several people crowded the entrance to Hevlaska's chamber, and all of them had their eyes on him…their attention fixed on his movements and his face and his breathing….

Kanda's dark eyes widened slightly. He didn't understand, couldn't understand…

'What are they….'

'Why are they….'

"Ne, Kanda" –a sudden strong press of a black-nailed hand fell upon his shoulder, a voice charged with unnamed emotions swirling around the shell of his right ear- "Don't look so surprised. You thought we weren't waiting for you? It just happens that Linali is faster than everyone else here, and got to you first. But…you know? Actually…we all wanted…I mean…all this time...w-we…" –Allen's words faltered in their track, obstacles the size of happy tears peppering in between, stealing strength and confidence from the voice, reducing it to a chocked whisper- "No more throwing yourself to die for us, Kanda, no more throwing your life away. It's over, you understand it? You're much too precious, much too beaut—"

And just as sudden as it had intruded, Allen's voice and touch drew back, the white-haired teen straightening from his position and taking two steps back, turning his back to everyone in an awkward effort to flee the place. In an effort to flee from those dark confused eyes Kanda had turned on him, from those slightly parted lips.

The tall figure of Lavi –Bookman Junior- broke away from the small crowd, long strides quickly placing him just in front of the fleeing Allen, just on time to snatch the younger teen's wrist and yank him back into a loose but comforting hug.

"There, there, Sprout, no need to go and pull off a lone-wolf thing now! That's Yuu's department after all!" –and Lavi's green eye was suspiciously brilliant, and his smile was just a tad bit tremulous, and his voice lacked that phony mirth of old times as he finally (finally!) turned his face to address the still prone Japanese teen- "But that's gonna change, okay, Yuu? We may be damn happy to see you breathing and kicking right now, but before…."- and here the red-haired teen took a compulsory swallow, surprising even himself with the pause- "Well, we were really mad before. Want-to-punch-you-mad, before. And I still kinda want to punch you, but I guess the collective urge to kiss you silly may be winning over us".

A relieved peal of laughter broke from both Linali and Allen at those words, and everyone else in the room started to smile and congratulate themselves (although Kanda hadn't the slightest idea why on earth they were doing that, anyway), at the time that several voices started to murmur and raise in volume.

Komui's content expression joined the chorus.

"Welcome back, Kanda"

For his part, the Japanese teen could only rearrange his incredulous expression into a more familiar scowl, and give his trademark "Tch". A second later he was shaking his head in a disdainful gesture, as his hands started to subtly but relentlessly push Linali off him.

Outwardly he seemed his normal, gruff self. Just a tad annoyed, just a tad skeptical.

Inwardly, Kanda was cringing back in incomprehensive, terrifying fear. This swirl of emotions was maddening, the feeling of the people around him felt suffocating to him, this certainty of being alive and deprived of his armor of secrets kept stabbing at his chest, pulsating along with the deep and jagged fresh scar on his skin.

'…..Away…..'

'Walk away….'

It was Kanda the one who wanted to flee now. He couldn't take any more of those smiles and voices and tears.

It all felt too much like a lie. Too much like deceit.

Recalled to life, by those deluded into believing he deserved it.

And it hurt to see how blind and mistaken everyone was in regards of him.

****

(End of Section 1, continued on Section 2)

****

A/N: I hope to update quickly and post the second part of this. It was my original intention to post the whole thing; however the length kept increasing and the ideas started to mix up….Thus I now leave only this introduction part.

Please regard it favorably! Comments are very inspirational!