Title: Fate's Game
Fandom/Pairing: D. Gray Man/KandaxAllen
Characters: Kanda Yuu, Allen Walker
Prompt: #11 Death
Word Count: 1,207
Rating: R for death, violence.
Summary: "Allen was not a stranger to death..."

Disclaimer: Don't own.
Author's Notes: Very morbid, just because I'm in that kind of mood. It has some traces of KandaAllen that are both obvious and unimportant at the same time. This fic focuses more on the theme 'death' and 'fate' then any sorta relationship. This is UNbeta' but if you would like to volunteer to fix my horrible attempts at spelling/grammar, PLEASE DO.

Allen was not a stranger to death. It was with him every minute of every hour of every day; in the weapon he carried, in the cause he supported, in the goal he fought for. It was in every breath his body took, and every word he said, in every move he made. It was forever with him.

When he was younger he could blind himself to the death around him, he could ignore the empty eyes of the beggar frozen on the street corner, or the red blood of the prostitute too injured to continue walking, or the empty stares of children who were too hungry to survive.

Back then, his own survival was all that mattered. Back then his mind ignored all others as he struggled to continue existing, without a name, without money, without food, without love.

That all changed when Mana appeared. From then on he was sheltered by the soft comforting words of his guardian, and the reassurance that he would survive one way or another because even if he gave up, Mana would not give up.

Mana didn't give up to the sickness that shadowed his struggling will to live with a veil of inevitable death. He fought until fate refused to allow him to fight any longer. And even then he refused to succumb to the darkness eating away at his mortal life. But Fate prevailed, in one way or another, all the while laughing at his attempt to hold together the body that now hurt and bled like any human when before it used to be invincible. Fate took the matter into her own hands and took his life away from him.

The accident was irony at its best.

Just as Mana breathed a sigh of weary relief at avoiding the threat of the akuma searching for him, he was struck by a speeding car. The driver of the car was in fact a drunken man who had just lost his wife but had not succumbed to the urge to 'bring' her back as an akuma, instead choosing to get drunk as hell.

Still, no matter how bloody his death was, it was inevitable because Fate made it so.

In a way Mana was the lucky one, he had died without giving up, and he would always be immortalized in that image in his adopted son's eyes. Allen on the other hand was not so lucky. He had witnessed in extreme clarity the death of his first loved one. And that death would be the first of many to taint his life.

Until finally death would be the only thing he would know. Fate swore to make it so.

Everything in his life was created, manipulated and guided in order to make him reach the final conclusion. Fate was preparing him to reach a point where the death around him finally managed to snuff his own life out.

Meeting Cross, joining the Order, making friends, protecting them fighting for them, killing for them, it was all there to make him reach his final end. Fate gave him a reason to live, a noble goal to fight for, and people to love, all in order to take them away from him.

One by one they fell.

Lavi defeated, his goals to outlive them, to record history, to be the next bookman lost with his last breath.

The elder Bookman following his discipline soon after.

Miranda succumbing to death even as she continued to hold time still for the sake of the war.

Krory's body dripping blood as he was executed by the enemy as an example.

The remaining founders broken remains after the ambush on the headquarters.

The dead eyes of Komui as he threw his life away to protect an injured and defenceless Lenalee.

The cold clammy feel of Lenalee's skin beneath his fingers as she looked into Allen's eyes and let the blood from her severed legs to carry her into death.

It felt like Allen was the only one left. He stood upon the dead remains of his nakama's dreams but he had not yet given up and for that Fate cursed him. How can the boy still stand under the burden she had heaped on him.

He stood, his eyes not yet dead; and he would continue to stand as long as he could still see the form of his...fellow exorcist, rival, friend...lover? The war had blurred all lines of distinction, and of restraint. But the sight of long dark hair and a tattooed chest were as crisp as ever. Allen could still remember perfectly each spidery black line of ink entangling the torso of his last loved one, and very night he memorized the new lines of ink, burned them into his memory to be recalled later when the death around him threatened to engulf him. The knowledge that those spidery lines would keep his loved one alive kept him going.

Fate knew that to have Allen she would have to the other man as well, the one that kept evading death as his tattoo grew. But there is only so much skin available for the black ink of the tattoo to envelope before the pale canvas inevitably runs out. And run out it did. With one final strike the spidery lines connected from front to back and swallowed Kanda whole, leaving nothing but a broken burned and bleeding husk in his wake, a mass of skin, blood and bones on which each and every single injury held back by the tattoo was evident.

This was this sight that finally broke Allen. The last constant in his life; those spidery lines, finally gone. Allen was left with nothing to hold on to. He was left abandoned and alone. He was left with only the death that surrounded him. And then, he finally gave up and let that death overtake him. Drown him. Break him. Engulf him into its endless abyss.

Years later, if anyone asked Fate, that is if anything was actually cable to asking such a divine power, why she went through all the trouble for one mortal, why she had build a manipulation so deep that it ran the course or many lifetimes in order to get to that one boy!? She would answer easily. Telling you that even now she had no regrets and that every second or every day or every year or every century was worth the wait to see Allen's soul be engulfed by death. To see him not just die, for killing a mortal was easy for her, but to see him give up his life so willingly into her greedy hands. To see him die knowing that he could not protect anyone, knowing that he could not even avenge them. To see him give up on his fight, his love and his life. It was worth every death she caused, every life she ended and every soul she devoured.

She would sit in her thrown above and beyond the mortal world and lick her lips and whisper, "Suicides were always the most beautiful..."

A/N: Please review.