ten things you never knew about

Yuu Kanda

Kanda didn't eat tempura soba because he liked it.

He ate it because it was the only thing he had left to remember his last life by; his childhood and home-cooked meals and family traditions; the first life only a mother could give. He ate it, because the tea and the steam and the breaking of his chopsticks were the only things he could remember of home before the akuma came and their roof collapsed in on itself. Because it was the last good thing before the blood, and screams, and charcoal dust in his throat; before the pain, and the sucking mud, and the white lotus flowers, reaching for white, blue-blank skies… Before the final slice of light, in the act of opening of his eyes (an indefinable amount of time later) to the discovery of immersion in a life only the Second Exorcist Project could've given him. He ate trying to reestablish that last, good connection, and that's something they had never been able to understand.

1. He remembered far more than they gave him credit for.

Seeing the way they interacted, most would be astounded (read: would go into cardiac arrest) to discover that Kanda was actually the one who made first contact.

When Bookman Jr. came to the Order, he was a distant little thing. Blank and coolly observing, even at that age, he only played the part of an innocent, devil-may-care child. Already, in his words and actions, he was the job. For, despite of the many jokes and irresistible charm, there was no Lavi Bookman. Only a receptacle. He was one persona out of forty eight others, all equally fake, that had been created and discarded by the same red hair and mismatched, cynical green eyes. He kept only to himself, to his duties, or to Bookman. His smiles were perfect, impeccably timed. Plastic. His humor was artificial. Through his presence and actions, he clearly defined himself as something separate and temporary, not meant to be interacted with; easily forgotten.

Kanda was the only one who refused to put up with that crap and bull. He didn't like facades, and he hated such cowardly denial of emotions and personality even more. He was the first one to speak to Lavi and force him to be the person, not the mask (not the one forty-ninth out of four more dozen), and despite what he says (despite the way he shoves the other boy off and almost comically shuns his every action), Kanda's never regretted it since.

2. He was the first one to really talk to Lavi.

The world regarded it as a wonderful flower.

Lotuses were symbols of supreme beauty and purity; something so exquisite, so perfectly made, growing deep from the mud and muck. Pure and unstained. Always reaching skywards.

It was so mocking of everything that he was. A symbol of rebirth, he learned once, on a mission to Egypt. A second life. (A second chance.) He saw them everywhere, and they reminded him too much of what he had and what he'd lost. On a mission in China, he discovered one last fact to cement his hatred. Gautama Buddha, the Enlightened One, the kind, the loving, the divine, was born with lotuses growing wherever he stepped. This hideous irony only further makes him glad that he's an atheist.

3. Kanda hated lotuses.

It wasn't simply the fact that Komui's sister-complex could terrorize the shit out of anybody. (That was already a given.)

No, the truth was even simpler, and far weaker of him than he'd ever let others uncover. Quite simply, Kanda had never been able to stomach a girl crying. (Especially if that girl was the one whose childhood he grew up protecting.)It didn't even matter if he knew it was fake half the time; he just couldn't stand to see the violent trembling, the quivering lip, or the pained sobs.

Kanda never had a little sister, but with her, he could almost understand what it felt like.

4. Lenalee Lee was the only person who knew exactly how to scare him.

He'd never believed it was possible before (somehow it never registered as a real option for him, the idiot always survived) but it happened, and for a moment, the blood was all he could register.

The Noah. Blowing a fucking hole in Allen's chest. Allen started to fall and moments later, there was a cloud of dust from the rubble where he landed. For a long time, there were only seconds stretching into eternity; cold and bleak. Then there was violent disbelief.

His legs were moving before he told them to, and by the time Kanda ran to him, Mugen was ready to tear Tyki Mikk into pieces. (Insanity, power gap and all.) And Kanda did it, nearly killed himself from his own injuries, but even with the Noah disintegrating into the wind, even with the breaks and fractures still healing in his bones, he was still not done. This ferocity, this pained, frenzied boiling in his blood (this cold, stony dread) was something he'd never experienced when it came to the Moyashi.

He was ready to bet that he'd lost at least two petals from that fight, but the exhaustion, the adrenaline high, were tossed aside as he lighted down from the crumpled structure, kicking aside rubble where white hair and crimson blood lay, spread in a macabre halo. Kanda ignored the shrieks overhead, the screams and explosions that shook the night, and for a moment, all he could see was that stark, coagulating wound, and the fact that Allen wasn't breathing. (The dread, it turns to ice.)

His hands are moving, tearing apart strips of his jacket before he can even register how he's able to move in light of this monstrosity, one hand keeping pressure on the wound, feeling broken ribs creaking under his palm. And then...

A heartbeat.

Faint and failing, but before he could start doing compressions to get it going again, silver eyes flew open, fluttered twice, and then Allen was coughing, gasping, conscious and staring up at him. 'Kanda' he mouthed, blood spotting his face, and that first gasp of life, that breath surging back into his lungs, was almost enough to thaw out Kanda's blood and chase the black eternity away.

5. But Allen Walker was the first one to ever make him know fear.

It had to do with the number of times he'd made Lenalee cry, whenever she heard his footsteps and came running straight to Kanda. It had to do with the number of gray hairs he'd counted under Komui's beret; weary eyes, clenched teeth, and stress marks that hadn't been there before he visited. It had to do with the way Miranda cringed when she heard his name, the way Marie's lips tightened; the way Lavi's fists clenched tight, right before determinedly taking a different route from the inspector and going to find Lenalee.

It was the million and one things he did to hurt Allen, the thousands of ways he'd betrayed Kanda, and Alma, and the Exorcists; it was the Akuma Egg he abused, it was the cold arrogance to his features. It was the blackness of his eyes matching the blackness of his mercy. (Sadism, more like.)

It was the fear and pain he caused around the Order, even when he was supposedly doing it to help them.

6. Kanda hated Levierrer, the same way everybody else did. Maybe even more.

If you ever asked him why, he would tell you to kindly fuck off.

It's a good thing nobody ever thought to ask.

Kanda didn't have a lot of spare time as an exorcist, and what little he did have, he put to ludicrously practical use. Therefore, the mystery of what he did for entertainment was, well, a mystery. They all assumed that he simply meditated, or trained with Mugen, or spent his time... breathing, or blinking, or something. Seriously, it wasn't like he did anything fun.

Allen was the only one who had even an inkling otherwise.

"Kanda, what's that?" he asked, when he stumbled upon the other (quite by accident) one day on the roof.

"None of your business," was the offhand reply. This lack of hostility made Allen curious, but slightly less wary, so he decided it safe to edge closer.

His eyebrows drew together.

"Were those our mission specs?" he remarked lightly to the organized, elaborately confusing mess of folds and creases Kanda was deftly reducing their orders to.

"Che."

Kanda pressed the folds of paper together, unfolded it, and made a few more sharp creases. Slowly it started to look like something. Allen was starting to wonder why Kanda wasn't snapping at him to go away yet, when he noticed that the focused, intense look Kanda normally had on his face was muted, and directed at the paper in his hands instead.

Kanda gave it one final fold, pulled it, and set it down. Allen stared, marveling at the sudden dimension to the previously flat jumble.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" he asked, reaching an almost unconscious finger to the white crane sitting on the concrete beside Kanda's knees; neat, black print flowing like minute tattoos over its wings and head.

"Tiedoll," Kanda grunted long-sufferingly, now staring at the hazy orange clouds settling over the horizon. Sadly, there was no conceivable way you could get away with not knowing art when you lived with that man. Tiedoll lived and breathed it; he exuded it. As a result, Marie was a musician, Daisya was crazy when it came to colors, and Kanda?

"…He learned this from a woman he met in Kyoto," Kanda divulged suddenly and absentmindedly. Allen's eyes snapped to attention. "He figured I would've liked it, since painting was too 'out-there' for me," he elaborated, rolling his eyes.

This was true. Tiedoll had tried (numerous times) to install the love of paints and colors in his youngest 'son'—but painting required creativity and original, visual expression. Kanda's color palette was limited to black and white, and he hated breaking from the well-established. That was why he enjoyed this. There were strict rules behind this; an ancient, proven technique in this artistry based on tradition. There was a specific, precise order that you had to follow without deviating from the sequence, and the result was always the same; breathtaking creation. Expression from nothing, repeated and perfect, every time. And the possibilities Tiedoll had mastered and bestowed onto him were endless too. Dogs, flowers, boxes, turtles, beetles, elephants...

"Jealous?" he smirked, watching Allen, awed, examining it from every angle.

The playfulness to this question, lacking it's normal scathing edge, made Allen catch his eye and smile.

"Just a little."

7. Kanda was an accomplished master when it came to origami.

It was a stray.

It was cute, and scruffy, and playfully nipped at their heels as their boots disturbed little eddies of snow on the Slovakian streets. The cuff of Kanda's boot was caught by it, and it gave a cheerful nibble and throaty 'woof' as it bared its teeth in a wolfish grin. Everyone on the team, the finder included, expected Kanda to kick the dog and step over its unmoving body to continue on his way. Lenalee even made a hasty move to run intervention.

This, shockingly, was not needed.

Kanda lowered himself to its eye level, took a hold of its scruff, and gently shook its head so that the teeth loosened on his boot.

"No." he said, calmly but firmly. "Let go."

Lavi's single visible eyebrow arched high into his bandanna. Lenalee looked caught between utter shock, amusement, and the intense desire to go 'aww.' Link just looked like Link. The stray whined, but let go, plopping down to sit on the packed snow. Kanda let go of its scruff, gave its ears a ruffle, and walked away. He took maybe five steps before he impatiently turned around.

"Are you people coming or not," he said flatly. Allen, who was still looking between him and the dog with a dumbfounded expression, shook himself awake.

"Right," he said, discretely jarring Lenalee from her now violent attempts not to squeal. The dog just laid its head on its paws and lazily woofed; tongue hanging out, white clouds of breath rising into the air.

8. He was a dog person. Sue him.

Kanda was a uniquely stubborn person.

He didn't care how many times he heard it, that didn't change anything. He wasn't going to cut it. His hair when he let it down was longer than most women let theirs grow—still, he'd be damned before he took Jerry's offer and let anyone take scissors to it. If they said it made him look feminine, hey, it was their limbs (he'd decided most people didn't need all four anyways). Lenalee argued however, that since he used just plain old hand soap to wash it, he couldn't care that much about it. He usually ignored her and picked up a bar on his way to the baths. The story behind his reluctance however, really made sense when you thought about it.

Most people never experienced it, so they never realized; hair was remarkably flammable (he thought Lenalee of all people would've understood that). When subjected to numerous electrical shocks that resulted from trying to synchronize, over and over, to unresponsive Innocence, it burned. Flesh and muscle grew back; bones healed quickly for him. Hair, however, came back slowly, being an excess of energy that accompanied vital health. Kanda spent many months of his twisted childhood just running a hand through his short locks to watch some break off, burnt and brittle. He was going to be damned if he had to regrow a full head of hair all over again.

9. His time from the Second Exorcist project left his hair short, sparse and dead.
He refused to let it ever get that again.

It was a kind of sick joke when their Finder got separated from them in the middle of the forest, on an island of all places. Allen, being thoroughly hopeless when it just came to finding his way around Headquarters, and Lavi, who was unfamiliar with the Philippines and had a good knowledge of direction, but a horrible sense of finding it in the jungle, were totally useless. Even the golems, useful for communication, but somehow seriously lacking when it came to global bearing, couldn't help (Kanda just knew that cheapskate general was all for show with the gold plating and its monster teeth).

So that just left it up to… him. Great.

"Where'd he say we left the ship at?" he sighed irritably, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Uhm… Banked it somewhere north-east, Yuu-chan. Although, shit, the sun's gone down, I can't tell which way east even is."

"Find me a clearing," Kanda growled, and shortly enough, they came to a spot where the canopy was patchier and stars could be seen scattered out in every direction.

Within half an hour, they were out of the densely tree-populated area, and into a mangrove, which eventually cleared out into a shore, where there was a ship and a harried Finder walking a rut into the sand.

"Shit, Yuu, when'd you learn that?" Lavi asked, impressed, now going over to calm the poor, slightly hysterical man down.

"There's nothing to do at night," Kanda said impassively.

"So you learned to navigate?" Allen asked, clearly stunned. "Where the bloody hell were you when we got stranded in Mongolia? I didn't even know you knew what Polaris was!"

Kanda just shrugged and shoved the spluttering English boy over to Lavi, whose knees were being attacked by the sobbing, relieved Finder.

10. He stargazed. A lot.

A/N:

Whew! I liked this! Crap, I had a lot of other projects
in the works, but this one just came out and obnoxiously
took all their places :) Ah well. The others will get their time eventually.

Turned out a bit longer than I thought it would be, but I can't picture
it any shorter. I'm happy with it. Hopefully the rest
of the chapters will be a bit more concise.

Will be updated at my leisure. Considering how many characters there are,
this might take... forever. So there'll be random updates at infrequent measures,
because YES, Jerry and Fou and even the Noah might get their chances too.
Maybe I'll even devote one to the Akuma, or Timcampy. This will be on backburner,
written for fun, but I'm still pulling it along for the ride, so giddy-yap!

PS. Reviews and suggestions are very much welcomed.
Love to hear what you think! :D