Created: Old-fic from 2012.
snow falling from the night sky
He reached out with his hands, trying to get closer to the dark blue sky above him, the creamy silver disk of the full moon shining its pale light over the bare skeletons of the treetops. The snowflakes were falling down slowly and softly, looking like small fluffy stars. One by one they landed on him, melting on his face until they were flowing down like minuscule teardrops. He just wanted to keep staring at the dark sky and watch the everlasting dance of the snow. This moment felt like it could continue forever. He was in peace, one with the whole world, his mind floating and fluttering freely like the snowflakes around him, free from all the things normally weighing him down. At a slow pace he walked forward, hands held in the air, palms open as if to embrace all the stars above. He didn't want this feeling go away, it was so rare for him nowadays. He felt like a little child again, amazed of the world around him.
Which was so very beautiful, magnificent creation…
He closed his eyes, just feeling the snow, the cold snap of frost, the warm puffs of his breath, his living body under the clothes, his heart beating rhythmically inside his chest… The peaceful silence surrounding him. This was like a dream, a wonderland that could only be experienced in winter. All alone, he danced in the snow, with the snow. Swirling through the snowflakes like a small monochrome dervish, barely distinguishable from his surroundings, with no visible dance partner to match his nimble steps. A heartfelt waltz with the gently blowing north wind and its tiny, sparkling passengers under the tender, silver gaze of the ever-watchful moon.
He smiled – a smile which was so innocent and so full of brittle delight of simple things that it could have hurt the ones getting a glimpse of it if there had been someone to see it. He was happy because he didn't have to think anything, didn't have to worry about anyone, didn't have to carry his burden on his shoulders in this little piece of time which was frozen seemingly for him only. Full of delicate shades of all the colours imaginable if one knew where to look at in the fickle moonlight that was flickering through the branches, and glittering on the snow making the individual particles resemble tiny diamonds.
But in the same time, it made him melancholy. Soon this would be all over; he would have to return inside, in the reality, take back his responsibility for everything, again. He knew he had to do it – it was his destiny and he was not, had never been, one to shy away for selfish reasons. Still, deep inside, he would have wanted this moment to last forever – be free from worries and sadness, from the sorrow and anguish which was following him everywhere he went, dogging his steps relentlessly. He knew, though, that escaping was impossible. But even God wasn't so cruel that he'd steal his dreams of freedom, thus granting him these small pockets of reprieve.
He inhaled the cold air, felt its freezing burn in his throat, and then exhaled the warmed up air creating small white clouds in front of him, playing silly little games inside of his head that had neither heads nor tails in them. He didn't know or care how long he had been outside. It didn't matter. He continued his graceful dance, still trying to reach the sky with his mismatched hands, snow covering him like a white, fluffy blanket that continuously got brushed off of him as he moved through the snowfall. Sometimes the wind made small whirlwinds around him, making the snow from beneath his feet swirl up, like it would have wanted to be his invisible dancing partner and tried to form something suitable for him to dance with.
He laughed, innocently and joyously like a child, from the bottom of his heart. It held no reason or rhyme, he just felt like it. It felt good. His memories were fading to the snow falling around him, tugged from his troubled mind to ride the small crystals covering everything under them in a cloak of whiteness. Making him feel free. He didn't want this to come to an end, even it was an impossible wish. But humans, even cursed ones, can't stop hoping.
He was one with the dark blue sky, snow, world… No thoughts left, only the feeling of the cold night wrapped around him in a surprising comfort. Quietly, first only in a whisper, he started to sing. A lullaby, created a long time ago in a world which was now lost. A fragment of a world where he'd had happy memories, when he was living in what now seemed to have been a dream. When he'd had a "family" – his father, Mana Walker, who'd bestowed his name and beliefs onto him. But the flow of time can't be wound back, he could not, would not, live in the past. He had promised to walk, walk, walk forward until the day he couldn't anymore, until the day he would die. With silvery tears flowing from his eyes, he sang for the dark sky of his dear memory, held tightly to his chest, wrapped around his heart.
Then the boy went to sleep,
and one or two embers
alive in the ashes
flared up in the shape of
your beloved face.
Thousands of dreams
spread over the land.
Stars like silver eyes
twinkling in the night…
You shining ones
fell to Earth.
Even though the eons
turn many prayers to dust
I will keep praying…
Please love this child
and kiss the hand you're holding.
The song, which could barely be heard over the tinkling, whispering background chorus of the snow-laden wind, faded into the night. Snow kept falling, continuing to cover everything in whiteness. Alone in the silent night, he could see and feel the colours that he was missing when he was with others. No matter if they were humans or Akuma. Only when he was alone he could truly experience the world around him in all of its glory. Hands held high, like delivering a prayer to the skies, he stood still in the soft white darkness, letting a dusting of snow cover him at last. Slowly, quietly. The contrasts of the surrounding nightscape were repeated between his night black coat and moon white hair which blended in the snow, consequently making his almost equally pale face nearly invisible. Blood red scar marring his face and silvery, ice blue eyes were the only true splashes of colour present.
A fragile figure inside the thick whiteness, snow slowly drawing out his small silhouette in the dark – a lone boy in the silent night.
After a millennium and a second, he heard the faint creak of footsteps coming closer through the snow, heard the two voices calling his name to the silence, saw the warmly flickering spots of light approaching, glimmering in the night with their searching gazes. Snow's hypnosis started to slowly wear off with this invasion of reality; dreams were fading away again, taken away with the silence that was now hastily escaping, slipping away through the gaps between the trees. World was turning back to black and white, into grayscale, monochrome. The surrounding air was filling up with responsibilities, sadness, millions kinds of burdens, everything shoved unwittingly back on his shoulders again by the people he had sworn to protect. To save.
These moments, these peaceful pockets of serenity very becoming rarer and rarer as the war escalated around them. Every time they were in danger, every time he was forced to activate his cursed eye that was both a never-ending twist of knife in a wound, and a sweet reminder of the man who took him in and gave him a home – every time the colourless world took longer and longer to fade before the real vividness of the world around him bled back, and lately it was as if the monochrome was starting to creep up without the Akumas' help – slowly flooding in like a great approaching wave, advancing on the periphery of his vision until one day he would be truly colour blind. Always and forever stuck in the limbo-like sight his left eye viewed the world as.
"Allen, there you are! Please, come back in already", Lenalee called in a relieved tone when she spotted the slim figure that blended into the night nearly perfectly. "You have been outside for hours! At this rate, you'll catch a cold."
"Yeah, come inside before ya freeze, beansprout!" Lavi shouted cheerfully, swinging his lamp around a bit too enthusiastically, almost putting out the flame inside.
He let his hands drop down from their silent prayer, gazed for the one last time at the night blue sky stretching above him, and then turned his back to his once upon a time wonderland, putting a cheery smile on his face, feeling the mask slip securely back on its place. Behind him, snow kept slowly falling, covering up the last of the soft hues of colours he was leaving behind him …