Flight to Heaven

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? —it is the same the angels breathe.

-Mark Twain

Allen loved to watch Lenalee fight akuma. He didn't often get a chance to do so for very long as he usually had his own enemies to battle, but perhaps it was best that way. Rarity had the quality of making the beautiful even more so.

And as odd as it might sound to describe as beautiful the sight of a boot-clad leg slamming into a metal monstrosity with more force than a sledgehammer, that was exactly the way to describe it. The way that the female Exorcist gracefully danced and flipped through the evening sky with her long, green hair flowing behind her…

It was like watching a hummingbird flit from branch to branch. Granted, this particular hummingbird tended to leave a trail of destruction in her wake, so perhaps it was not the best analogy.

Allen had always wanted to fly. Who didn't? Lenalee sometimes complained about the heaviness of her Dark Boots, but he thought it was a small price to pay for the ability to soar in the moonlit sky. He liked being around people, but it would be nice to get away sometimes and not have to worry about his left eye activating. It was tiring to discover that those he had thought were human were actually tools of the Earl of Millennium. His burden was not as heavy as those of Exorcists like Lavi who couldn't even tell who was an akuma until they were practically on top of him, but it felt just as disheartening.

"Allen! Watch out!"

He cursed to himself for daydreaming in the middle of a fight. He whirled around, activating his arm cannon, but he knew that he was too late. The akuma's blood virus wouldn't kill him, but the time it would take him to heal would leave him wide open to attack. He saw the bullets heading toward him and the sound of the akuma's mad cackle filled his ears, disorienting him for only a moment…

Allen found himself twenty feet in the air just as the ground exploded beneath him. Lenalee had grabbed him by the right arm and jumped straight up just as he was about to be shot. Not wasting any time taking in his good fortune, Allen fired off a volley of his energy stakes at the akuma who had just tried to kill him.

He made a direct hit and had just enough time to see the soul rise out of the body before his perspective was forcibly shifted as Lenalee whirled his body behind her and rocketed upward so she could destroy the last akuma with a vicious roundhouse kick into and through the ball-shaped creature above her.

And then there was silence. The silence that came after the explosions had stopped and the battle had ended; it would continue to exist until the people and animals that ran away returned to fill the void with their voices.

Allen looked up at the girl who was still holding him up with one arm and marveled once again at the lack of strain on her features. He felt no fear that she would drop him. He took a deep, cleansing breath of crisp air and looked at the vast countryside below him. Even with the smoldering ruins and scars in the landscape, he still felt a childish thrill at seeing the world from a bird's-eye view.

Not wanting to disturb the peace around them with his words, Allen gave his partner a smile and a thumbs-up of appreciation. Lenalee smiled back at him then turned her gaze to the stars. He thought about the soul that had drifted into the sky and wondered if it had gone to heaven. He hoped so, but he couldn't be sure. He glanced upward. For now, this was the closest he was going to get.

His arm was starting to ache from having to support his body weight, but any complaints he might have had died at the look of wistfulness on Lenalee's face. He remembered her telling him that she had spent three lonely years at the Black Order before her brother came, and he remembered thinking that she probably would not have lasted much longer than that.

He intended no slight on her resilience in that thought. She was one of the toughest people he knew, but it was just a fact that wild birds did not last long in captivity. A cage was a cage no matter how gilded its bars. He was glad that she could now fly free.

From the first time he saw her fight, he had admired the deadly beauty of her Innocence, but he had come to realize that it was the strength and vitality of the person wearing the boots that had really caught his attention.