Kanda Yuu

((Note: I've linked several scenes from the manga here for context: clicking on them will show you the actual scenes!! Technically they're all optional, but I've marked with asterisks the ones I'd highly recommend viewing. Also just. Just ignore Allen being there. Sometimes the protagonist of your series gets dragged into a canonical memshare event and your business gets spilled everywhere. It's fine.))

*The first thing you hear is his voice.

You barely know what it is to be conscious, and already, he is overwhelming your senses--chattering excitedly, dashing off to get the researchers, tangling himself in their legs as he tries to get close to you and wish you a happy birthday, Yuu! He is noise and energy and joy and life, nothing at all like this dark, cold place: Research Lab 6, you learn, the place where you've been... not born, that's a word for humans--awakened. He, Alma, my name is Alma, Yuu! is the only other person your age: The rest are the researchers in charge, as the ones like you two continue to slumber in their cold pools.

He's delighted by you. You hate him immediately.

Of course, that's hardly surprising. You hate everything. You feel deeply furious all the time, and you see no reason to hide that. What reason is there to smile? There's nothing here that makes you happy. You hate this place of black and gray and white, reeking of the disinfectant they use to clean up your blood. (It should be--blue? Shouldn't it? When you look up? You don't know why you think that.) You hate your body, the way it feels all wrong for reasons you can't explain, the way it stitches itself back together no matter what you do to it, so different from the humans that watch you: different, but still excruciatingly painful, each and every time. You hate Alma, who smiles so brightly in such a dark, shitty place, who chats with the researchers that take you away each day--as if they're friends, or family, whatever the hell that is. As if they're not the people who hook you up and tear you to pieces each and every day, all for the sake of some holy war outside the lab walls. It's the entire reason you exist, but quite frankly, you don't care. As far as you're concerned, this is your life: darkness and torture and Alma.

Alma, who looks at you with wide eyes that shine with tears every time you rebuff him. Alma, who trails after you regardless of how cruel you are, pathetic in his desperation.

(Alma, who terrifies you, because you don't understand him, and you hate that you want to.)

-

When it's all said and done, you realize: You should've never told them about the hallucinations.

In your defense, you'd barely been conscious for a few months. How were you supposed to know? They were just flashes: flowers and blue and a faceless woman, a ghostly figure who makes your heart ache with a feeling you can't name. You had no way to know you were handing them a red flag on bended knee. It was just another thing to be angry about: the visions and dreams, and Alma, and the tests, and Alma. You're bitter and angry and you hate it all, still, always, you hate him--

*Until the day that something gives way, and then--you don't.

For the first time, you dare to feel happy.

(You should've trusted your instincts. Of course it couldn't last. There could never be happiness for the damned. But even now, you can't bring yourself to regret it. You wouldn't trade those days for the world.

The Order has taken so much from you but they can't ever take your love. You should know: They tried.)

((Note: I've linked several scenes from the manga here for context: clicking on them will show you the actual scenes!! Technically they're all optional except the very last one, but I've marked with asterisks the ones I'd highly recommend viewing.))

*The first thing you hear is his voice.

You barely know what it is to be conscious, and already, he is overwhelming your senses--chattering excitedly, dashing off to get the researchers, tangling himself in their legs as he tries to get close to you and wish you a happy birthday, Yuu! He is noise and energy and joy and life, nothing at all like this dark, cold place: Research Lab 6, you learn, the place where you've been... not born, that's a word for humans--awakened. He, Alma, my name is Alma, Yuu! is the only other person your age: The rest are the researchers in charge, as the ones like you two continue to slumber in their cold pools.

He's delighted by you. You hate him immediately.

Of course, that's hardly surprising. You hate everything. You feel deeply furious all the time, and you see no reason to hide that. What reason is there to smile? There's nothing here that makes you happy. You hate this place of black and gray and white, reeking of the disinfectant they use to clean up your blood. (It should be--blue? Shouldn't it? When you look up? You don't know why you think that.) You hate your body, the way it feels all wrong for reasons you can't explain, the way it stitches itself back together no matter what you do to it, so different from the humans that watch you: different, but still excruciatingly painful, each and every time. You hate Alma, who smiles so brightly in such a dark, shitty place, who chats with the researchers that take you away each day--as if they're friends, or family, whatever the hell that is. As if they're not the people who hook you up and tear you to pieces each and every day, all for the sake of some holy war outside the lab walls. It's the entire reason you exist, but quite frankly, you don't care. As far as you're concerned, this is your life: darkness and torture and Alma.

Alma, who looks at you with wide eyes that shine with tears every time you rebuff him. Alma, who trails after you regardless of how cruel you are, pathetic in his desperation.

(Alma, who terrifies you, because you don't understand him, and you hate that you want to.)

-

When it's all said and done, you realize: You should've never told them about the hallucinations.

In your defense, you'd barely been conscious for a few months. How were you supposed to know? They were just flashes: flowers and blue and a faceless woman, a ghostly figure who makes your heart ache with a feeling you can't name. You had no way to know you were handing them a red flag on bended knee. It was just another thing to be angry about: the visions and dreams, and Alma, and the tests, and Alma. You're bitter and angry and you hate it all, still, always, you hate him--

*Until the day that something gives way, and then--you don't.

For the first time, you dare to feel happy.

(You should've trusted your instincts. Of course it couldn't last. There could never be happiness for the damned. But even now, you can't bring yourself to regret it. You wouldn't trade those days for the world.

The Order has taken so much from you but they can't ever take your love. You should know: They tried.)

-

You don't realize what's happening until you're in his arms.

As you stir, bits and pieces come back to you. The hallucinations have gotten worse, and you've been struggling to stay conscious. You heard the researchers talking about you in hushed, grim tones, but you couldn't stay awake long enough to hear what they were saying. Something is wrong with you: something your regenerative powers can't fix.

You realize, as he jostles you with his frantic running, that he's saving you. Stupid, stubborn, loving Alma, your fellow monster--the only one who understands you, the one who taught you happiness, the only bright spot in this wretched, shitty place, is risking his safety for yours. Even as the guard's spell needles slam into your bodies, sending you sprawling across the floor, he tries, desperately, to save you. He smiles at you, that stupid, hateful, brilliant smile, and kicks you off a cliff with a prayer for luck.

As if you've ever been lucky.

You survive, because that's all this wretched, nigh-immortal body is good for. You hit the water, and it fucking hurts with the spell needle jammed into your shoulder, but you claw your way up the wall anyway, fueled by murderous, spiteful rage. You're dizzy with pain and confusion, and you scare the shit out of the two men on the other side of the wall, but you don't have the strength to explain. They pull the needle out on your gritted orders, and as you lose consciousness again, you recognize the scent of blood.

-

*When you wake again, it all makes sense.

You laugh, hysterical, because you must. You're too furious to do anything else. Of course the Order did this to you. You gave them one lifetime of service already: Why wouldn't they demand a second? The moment the Innocence resonated with you, you ceased to be anything but a weapon. They melted you down, reforged you, trying to milk your strength beyond the very last of what you had to offer--and you've failed them by remembering you were once human.

You're broken. So they discard you.

-

At least, they try. But it turns out they built you a little too well.

Most people, you think, would assume you lived through spite alone. You wouldn't bother to correct them. Spite, anger, and hatred fuel a lot of your decisions, and that was even more back then. When you regain consciousness yet again, you are incandescent with fury. But the truth is, you lived for love.

She is still nameless, faceless. Her words echo in your head and bury themselves in your chest, but you couldn't describe her voice even if you tried. And yet--she is the only proof you have that you were once human. The love you feel for her is the only thing the Order can't touch (and it is love, undeniably, you don't need Alma's stupid fucking books to know that).

They've taken so fucking much from you. You won't let them have this too. You won't let them have you.

-

You don't exactly have a plan, though.

Your Innocence finally, finally recognizes you--the exact flavor of your hatred, maybe, or the intensity of your longing for that woman. It makes you stronger than ever, not that inhuman strength's ever been an issue for you and Alma. You drag your battered, still bleeding body past the remnants of the door you break open, and you wander, listless and miserable. Now what? All you want is freedom, but despite it all, you don't want to slaughter your way out. You'll never forgive the researchers, the Order, but grief and misery have overtaken your rage for the moment. Your thoughts are still full of her: of who she might've been, and what they might've done to her, and whether or not she's fast asleep in the very same sort of pool you and Alma crawled out of. Can you find her? Would she recognize you? Would you recognize her?

Does it matter, now that you have him...?

As you walk, you stumble across another victim. Some poor soul, blind and half-dead, hooked up to a table. You bleed on him, on accident--and it turns out your blood is more potent than you thought, because it saves him, and. Well. What else can you do, but drag him out of there with you? If you're going to jailbreak, you might as well do what you can.

So you carry the man on your tiny back, and you listen to him admit that he's only calm because of your presence, and you realize--no, you admit, finally, if only to yourself, that Alma kept you sane. That you love him in ways you don't fully understand, even after the seven long months you've been alive.

You'll be alright, both of you. You don't need to get revenge on the Order, even if you would feel nothing but satisfaction if the whole place burned to the ground. All you need is each other.

*Then you find him. And it all goes so terribly, terribly wrong.

General Froi Tiedoll.

That's the name of the man who finds you and Marie. Looking back, you suppose it was inevitable; it was a miracle you made it out of the lab in the first place, and you suspect that half the reason it took so long for anyone to track you down is because they had to count all the bodies Alma left behind.

There was no way you two could last long, though. Your blood brought Marie back from death's door, but he's still blind and wounded, and you're (7 months no-- 8 years old-- no 35-- no) more-or-less a child, startled by the vastness of the sky and the crispness of the air. You don't know the first thing about survival--in the lab, you never had to try.

Beyond that, you're exhausted to your very soul. You can barely manage the messy memories and hallucinations swimming through your head, let alone the hole in your chest at the thought of Alma, his blood on your hands, your name on his lips--

--Anyway, you were never going to survive alone.

But Tiedoll doesn't make you go back right away, and Marie coaxes you into putting up with him. He's kind to you, but not in the way the researchers were kind--all placating smiles and awkward indulgences before they hooked you up and pushed your body until it broke. Tiedoll is calm against your fury, and patient with your ignorance. He watches your palm heal when you carelessly cut yourself peeling an apple (they grow on trees, apparently, you'd never seen a tree before), and you don't think the anger in his eyes is directed at you.

So you wander with him, all over the world, as far from Laboratory 6 as you can get. Marie stays too, for a while. Marie is the one beside you when you wake up screaming, utterly feral in your grief--you are too volatile to touch, but his voice is soothing, and his music drowns out the echoes of Alma's laughter, of his flesh hitting the floor around you. Eventually, Tiedoll stops making himself scarce during these episodes. You grow to tolerate him, and... well. Trust is far too strong a word for how you felt about anyone back then, but it's the closest thing to what you were capable of.

"Yuu," Tiedoll says, one day. You hunch your shoulders. You've been watching an animal (a rabbit, it's called) cautiously make its way through the grass, and you don't tear your eyes away when he speaks, but he seems to know you're listening. "Would you like a new name?"

You'd expected him to make one of his usual comments. Something about nature, probably--the sound of last night's rain, or the color of the flowers in this meadow. You blink, slowly turning your head.

He smiles at you, soft, a little sad. You can't decide how you feel about how open he is with his emotions. You don't like it, exactly, but at least it's honest. (And at least he's not beaming all the time, reminding you of--)

"Most humans," he continues gently, "Have at least two names--a surname, and a given name. You'll need both to join the Order officially."

You don't have a choice about that either way--but the more time you spend out in the world like this, the more you've begun to realize that your best chance of finding what you're looking for is back in that hateful place. Maybe that's why Tiedoll's not in any rush to drag you off: He knows you'll give in eventually. (Or maybe it's that anger. Maybe he would've torn the whole place apart too, just like--)

"You can choose anything you'd like," he continues. "That's your right. But I have a suggestion. I think it'll suit you."

-

It takes a year before you're willing to set foot in that place again.

Visions of lotus flowers bloom alongside every step you take towards the entrance, visible only to you. Your gaze no longer lingers on them. You look at no one as Tiedoll leads you through the halls, but you wonder, cynically, what will happen to them when they're no longer useful.

(You wonder how many lives Alma saved with his rampant destruction. You know that wasn't his intention. This massive building would've devastated him, the same way it infuriates you.

You hate this place and all it stands for. But you have a promise to keep, and no other reason to live. So.)

They ask your name in a farce of civility. You reply tersely, Kanda Yuu.

-

Nine years later, you grit your teeth, pulling a pillow over your head to block out the cacophony around you. You still hate this place--but you haven't found what you're looking for yet, so you're stuck. You go out on solo missions as much as you can, but Tiedoll is still very much the doting type (disgusting), so you can't avoid him now. Ugh. Annoying bastard gave you a name that he doesn't even use--

(--But you trust him, and respect him. He's earned that much from you, even if you'd rather die than say so.

Wonder of wonders: You don't actually hate all the people in this room, either. Half of them are like you, after all: Stuck here with nowhere else to go, bound for reasons that have nothing to do with the war, or loyalty to God, or whatever else Central uses to justify its atrocities. That's not to say you like them, because you really, truly don't like most people, (you can't, not after--)

Anyway. You don't hate them. But you do wish they'd shut the fuck up.)