Title: at the edge of the world

Disclaimer: Nopes, I don't own DGM.

Characters and pairings: Kanda/fem!Allen, Lavi.

Summary: A story of love in general, and a narrative of how marriages fall apart in particular.

[at the edge of the world]

we're all faking smiles

"Sit closer," Lavi says. "We want a good shot here."

Allen nods and inches closer to Kanda. The high collar of her dress sits archly against her neck, stifling her like fingers lying thick and strong against her throat. It's hard to breathe. Being this close to Kanda doesn't make it any easier either; the scent of his shampoo floats lightly about him, and the tail of his hair tickles her arm.

"Ready?" Lavi asks, peering into the camera. "You guys look good!"

"Mmm," Allen says, and hangs her smile on. This is the smile she uses for photographs – that wide-eyed look with a half-moon smile on her lips.

She can feel Kanda's breath warm on her ear, a slight tingle that sends her heart into overdrive. They haven't been this close in ages. She fidgets slightly, watching as Lavi turns dials and knobs with expert fingers, and feels Kanda sit straight and tall beside her. If she stretched her hand out… she could possibly touch his fingers and intertwine them with her own. It's an intriguing prospect.

Lavi is still playing with the camera, so Allen sneaks a sidelong look; she does this skilfully, a flick of her hair, a sideway-upward-then-downward glance. Kanda's face looks toward the camera; there is no smile or any hint of cheerfulness hidden in the shadows of his haughty face, but for once, he isn't frowning.

Now Allen pulls her hand closer to herself, as far as possible from Kanda's thigh. She remembers where they are and all that has passed between them, and it would be stupid, stupidgirlstupidgirlstupidgirl, to even touch the man sitting beside her.

"Ready?" Lavi asks, and then he grins and flashes of light blind them momentarily.

"Idiot!" Kanda growls, and Allen shivers inside at hearing his baritone voice so close to her.

"Done!" Lavi exclaims.

Kanda stands up and heads to the changing room. He doesn't look at Allen once.

:::

the cracks in relationships

It was at the five-year mark when things first started to sour.

Kanda was thirty, a rising young executive. Allen was twenty-seven, young and idealistic, her eyes bright with dreams. She was no rising young executive, being merely a humble social worker who visited slums and doled hand-outs to the needy.

Then Allen announced that she was pregnant.

It came as a shock to Kanda – because hadn't they been so very careful about protection?

"Damn," he said, wondering how his wife had managed to get herself pregnant.

Allen merely smiled and prattled on about how a couple was never complete until they were bound by children and how she hoped the child would have Kanda's eyes and nose (and the list went on).

"Abort it," Kanda said, his voice cutting harsh across Allen's soft exultations.

"Pardon?"

"You heard me."

"We can't! Kanda? Aren't you happy?"

He snorted.

Allen pleaded. Kanda ignored her. Allen pleaded again. Tiedoll added his voice to the argument. He took Allen's side, but Kanda already knew he would.

Then nature and circumstances settled things once and for all.

A fortnight after she first found out about the pregnancy, Allen took a bus down town. Someone shoved her on the bus – and she fell.

Kanda visited her in the hospital that night. He brought her tonics from Lenalee and a card from Lavi.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked.

Allen nodded mutely, her eyes focused on the white bedspread. There was something distant about her, an air of loss that was heavily unsettling. Kanda was relieved, though. His life had gotten right back on track. He never did want a child anyway.

Stupid things, children. He didn't want any.

"I'm sorry," Allen said.

All Kanda could see of her head was her white hair, messy and long.

"It's okay," Kanda said, and that was the worst thing he could have said to the grieving woman – because it was not okay. Not at all.

That was the first crack, and he remembered it the best.

:::

diseases without cure

The bitterness between them grows one step at a time, canker crawling up the ivy-clad walls, until at last the distance between them stretches far and cold, like a dark shadow in the wintry evening.

Little things do the trick – after the miscarriage, nothing is the same.

Allen dislikes how Kanda reaches home late. She is not too pleased when he doesn't say a word to her but heads straight into the bathroom and then comes out and gets under the cover without so much as glancing at her.

She isn't invisible. She has feelings too.

Kanda is not amused by the change in Allen. She's still sweet, still caring, but a look in her eyes tells him that she still blames him for that comment he made so long ago when she lost their child. He has pride, and he doesn't want to apologize. And he is a busy man, for chrissake; she cannot expect him to reach home at seven in the evening every single day and sit at the table with her and whisper sweet nothings in her ear.

He isn't that kind of man, and Allen knew it when she married him.

Day by day, the wall grows taller. Night after night they drift further apart.

:::

the dreams of the past

Theirs was a whirlwind courtship.

They met through mutual friends – Lavi and Lenalee, to be exact, though their first meeting was anything but a choreographed date. It actually was a spontaneous event.

To add on, they didn't fall in love at first sight and all that jazz. It was quite the opposite, in fact.

They first met outside Lenalee's home. Allen was paying a social call, and Komui's friend Reever opened the door and saw her scar and he dropped the mug he was holding. Then Kanda came charging out and he barrelled into Allen and Komui ran toward them too.

The whole scene was one of utter chaos. Then Lenalee and Lavi came out, hand-in-hand, and Komui groaned from the grass.

"It's not my fault," Kanda said angrily from Allen's side. There were mud on his arm and Allen could see angry red splotches on the cheeks of the Asian man.

"It is your fault," Komui said, pulling a long face. "If you had taken better care of Lenalee she would never have met this young man here and everything would be fine!"

"She likes him. How the shit is that my fault?" Kanda insisted.

"Stop fighting," Reever said. 'Komui you should be ashamed of yourself."

Komui grimaced.

"And who's this young lady here?" Reever asked, looking down at Allen. He offered her a hand.

"Allen!" Lenalee said. 'You came!"

"Yes – uh, I was going to visit you, but…" Allen's voice trailed off, and she scratched at her hair.

Then she was rudely shoved by the Asian man. 'Move away, Beansprout."

He shuffled off, leaving Allen shocked and rooted to the ground.

"Come back, you jerk!" she shouted after him.

"Allen, calm down!" Lenalee took Allen's hand. "Kanda's like that sometimes. Don't mind him."

That was how they first got to know each other.

It started with a bad first impression, developed into a mutual friendship, then escalated and blossomed into something sweeter by far.

(But the wise do say that those who climb too high too fast are doomed to fall.)

:::

sometimes it's too late

Kanda picks the photo up from the mantelpiece. The photo was taken about a decade ago, he thinks. They were still young then. Allen is smiling in the photo, one of those clearly-for-photos smiles. She looks apprehensive in the shot, almost as if she was waiting for life to deal her a hard blow at that exact moment.

They took that photo after a decade of marriage, at a time when he was about to run for election. Tiedoll had convinced him of the need to present a good face to the public – a caring, stoic man with a wife he loved dearly, which was what Lavi had tried to portray in the photograph.

Too bad it didn't turn out that well. Sometimes the camera exposes more than it hides, especially when the photographer in question is both a friend and an expert in his field.

The cracks in their marriage was painfully obvious; there he is, sitting tall and stiff, and there Allen is, her head inclined slightly in his direction, sorrow hiding in her eyes. There is something unnatural about the way their bodies are positioned; the spaces between them are filled with the clear echoes of hurt and of separated souls.

:::

the river of life flows swiftly

Kanda got the tragic news the day he was preparing to step down from office.

He was sitting in his leather chair, looking out over the bustling landscape from his office, his possessions neatly packed into the box on his desk. He'd been in office for slightly more than a decade; it was time to leave.

Then his door burst open – a scene he was to relive in his dreams and nightmares many times afterward.

"Mr Kanda!" his secretary said, huffing slightly.

"I'm leaving," he said. "Tell the director I'll vacate the room soon so stop bothering me. And I don't want any tea or coffee. Just leave me alone."

"No, it's not that!" the girl wheezed, the round curve of her belly visible against her tight, black and unforgiving pencil skirt. Girl should go on a diet, he thought. When you can't breathe properly you sure as hell need to start looking at the size of your meals a second time.

"Che."

"It's your wife!" the girl finally said.

His wife.

Kanda glared at the secretary. "What about her?"

It was strange because Allen wasn't the type to call his office – especially not when she had his mobile number and anyway they didn't talk much these days. It was probably some emergency.

He sighed. "Transfer the call."

"No, sir, she didn't call." The girl took a deep breath. "It's the hospital, Mr Kanda."

"The hospital!"

"Yes, the hospital called. Your wife's in the emergency room!"

When Kanda reached, he saw Allen lying still, smothered between the white sheets. Her eyes were closed and her wrinkles evident, stretching across her face like weathered branches. She seemed so frail, so tiny, like a babe awaiting birth in the vast expanse of its mother's womb.

"Moyashi," he said, inching toward the bed.

She didn't respond. He was strongly reminded of a visit he made to the very same hospital some years back, when Allen had suffered a miscarriage.

"I'm sorry, Mr Kanda, but she cannot hear you."

Kanda waved the doctor away.

Standing beside the prone form of his wife, Kanda spoke again. "Wake up, woman."

There was no response.

With some hesitation, Kanda reached out and touched Allen's right hand, meaning to push it back under the blanket. To his surprise and fear, he found it cold, colder than he had ever known her hands to be.

That was when the monitor started to beep – and everything was lost in a flurry of chaos as doctors rushed in and nurses wrung their hands and someone pulled Kanda out.

She left him without so much as a goodbye.

A/N: Finals are over whoots (:

I quite like the idea of this story – it seems to me quite a quintessential narrative of love in the modern context.

Right. So thanks for reading and any comments/criticisms/suggestions would be appreciated!

On a side note – if there are any readers of Crisis Management here, I just want to tell you guys that I'm sorry taking so long to update the fic!