Title: Chances to Take
Author: Rinail
Summary: Life is a set of roads. Some roads are well lit and easy with a visible destination, while some are deep and dark, threading into the unknown. Allen's choices brought him to the latter, forcing him to create sacrifices he didn't want to make. The consequences were too grave, too dire. And now, he must go back for all the chances he never took to forge a new road into the dawn.
Prologue:
At twenty-two years of age, Allen Walker looks at the remnants of the ravaged town around him and wonders how much must be sacrificed before the world determines it's enough. His legs are an uneven rhythm as they drag him across the smashed slabs of concrete, his arms limp and a heavy pull at his joints.
There's nothing but ruin surrounding him. All the houses have been torn down into strips of wood, the skeleton of burned buildings swaying like a house of cards in the wind about to collapse. The fires that have sprouted crackle loudly within the silence; the only other sound he can make out is the mournful wind whistling in his ears. Despair begins to make an appearance in the prickling of his eyes, the lump in his throat.
Allen doesn't stop walking by his own will. Not really. He wants to keep walking through the town and see with his own eyes the destruction that he has caused, but his legs give out on him first. The right leg stumbles on a piece of concrete that he doesn't see, soon followed by the left, and—and Allen is much too tired to catch himself. In the next instant, he's crashing into a pile of splintered wood and a red-painted sign that reads Crossroads.
At least, that's what he thinks it's supposed to say, but half of the letters have been scratched off in a jagged mess.
With a quiet breath, Allen lets his head fall back to the frozen ground, gaze drifting to the gray sky. There's nothing but clouds in sight. It isn't anything that he does not expect, with the smoke and the ash from the war fogging up the sky, but he had still hoped somehow.
His vision flickers once, twice—
Hope is a stupid thing, Allen thinks.
His fingers scrabble for the slivers of emerald embedded in his left hand. The skin there is raw and stinging from careless scratches in the past, but Allen can't find it in himself to mind. Pain's more familiar to him than anything else at this point.
(Lenalee Lee, Kanda Yuu, Lavi, Aleister Krory, Miranda Lotto, Cross Marian, Johnny Gill…)
He swallows past the lump in his throat, clenching the gold buttons gripped tightly in his hands.
Memories.
That's all he has left now, so isn't it enough?
Allen's not sure who he's asking; there's nobody to answer, and there hasn't been for a while now. He resigns himself to the silence bearing down on his ears, but miraculously, he hears a melody. Something that almost feels like melancholy and pity washes over him, and then, and then—
Yes, murmurs the voice in his mind. You're done, Allen. The war is finished—there's nothing else to do.
Allen knows it should bring a soul-wrenching sort of relief to him, to hear confirmation that the war is over and done for good—and he does feel it, really, but it's submerged under a different feeling of exhaustion.
Resignation. He doesn't know what it is exactly.
It's just that Allen has always had a clear goal in front of him for as long as he could remember. Survive in the circus, stay with Mana, defeat the akuma, protect his friends, fight the war. Finding something to do has always been easy for him, because everything was such a whirlwind in his life that he didn't have the time to think about anything else. He didn't have the time to hesitate—he just had to keep walking.
But if Allen doesn't even have the goddamn war to fight for—no akuma to defeat, no friends to protect—then where is he supposed to go from here? Why does he have to keep walking?
What's the point?
Allen doesn't want to allow himself to grieve, doesn't want to allow himself to think. There's too much to mourn for. Too many possibilities, too many that have been killed. But even if he doesn't want to—and he doesn't, he does not, he does not—Allen still remembers them, remembers his reasons for living with a violent start.
He hears the gentle clink of red anklets echoing in his ears, the wind brushing against his cheeks like a gentle caress. "Allen," whispers the ghost of his friend, his sister, but Allen does not chase after her because he knows he cannot. He sees the sharp-edged swords gleaming in the light—stupid Moyashi—and the shabby green headbands hiding a brilliant pair of emerald eyes, softening like quiet laughter. He feels his ghosts hovering over his shoulders, beckoning and calling and clinging, but he doesn't chase after what cannot be.
He does not chase after his regrets.
"Allen."
But that doesn't mean that Allen is deaf to their calls. His heart tells what he keeps to himself; it's a traitorous beat, each pound straining against his ribs like it still longs for another heartbeat. His heart chases after the wisps of slaughtered dreams and strangled possibilities. Allen has faced down armies of monsters and despair, but he's never been more helpless than when his ghosts come back to haunt him.
Allen remembers all things that used to keep him tethered and steady and sane even as he continued walking forward, and—
Allen remembers too much of what he does not want to remember. Like the fact that it only took one week to turn "they" into "he". Like how the gentle clinks had twisted into screams. How the swords had dulled with the blood of the wielder. How the tattered headband fluttered on the mournful croon of a dying breeze. He remembers what it was like not to be lonely for once—to be given a family—and he remembers the crushing heartache that made his lungs feel like stone when it was taken away from him again.
He takes a shuddering breath, his heart a pitiful thing that beats weakly against his chest. And despite himself, Allen wonders. He wonders, wonders—can't do anything else but fucking wonder—about the possibilities that could've been. About the funerals that never were.
About all the things that never will be.
His arms shake when he attempts to sit back upright, his head feeling even worse as he forces away the spots dancing around his vision. For a second he allows himself to wonder how much force it would require to rip into his open wound, how much force it would require for him to just finish it for once—
But it won't. Allen already knows it won't.
'Allen.'
Allen shrugs, but the exhaustion has sunk so deep into his bones that his shoulders end up jerking at the attempt. He releases a quiet sigh. 'I won't die, Neah. You don't have to worry.'
'You won't die, or you can't die?'
Allen dislikes how shrewd Neah can be sometimes. But Allen's too tired to lie, to try anymore, and he closes his eyes. 'Does it matter?'
'It does if you're acting like this.' A pause, then a soft: 'You want to die, Allen.'
There's no use denying it. 'Yeah,' he says.'I guess I do.'
'Why?'
Allen opens his eyes. Why, indeed.
He tries to remember back to a time when he didn't feel this constant grief or the loss of hope, but he can only muster up fuzzy memories of better times when they didn't know anything; and unbidden, his mind brings him to what feels like a lifetime ago.
Why, why, why—
Allen remembers his fifteen-year-old self with a vicious flinch. He remembers a vanished arm, the cold air raking against his heart, the feeling of not being good enough, you'll never be good enough, and he remembers:
I promised to myself that I'd defeat the akuma. I promised to my friends that I'd fight alongside them, promised to the world that I'd save it.
I promised I would keep walking until the day that I died.
The words feel hollow and empty in his mind now because they're not his words, not anymore. They're the words of the stranger he used to be, before the war changed it all, before it forced him to grow up and become this person that he hates today. He doesn't have anything in common with the person he used to be seven years ago.
He shouldn't.
He shouldn't, but when he tells Neah, 'For me to be alive, this is the only path I can take'—
They're the only words Allen wishes were a lie.
Neah doesn't say anything for a while; Allen doesn't expect him to.
He watches the fires die out one by one, the wind ceasing its whistle as the air stills.
Everything stills for a moment, and he can't help but stare in frozen horror. Blood splatters his cheek. A hand plunges through his chest, tortured screams echoing in his ears—
"Why didn't you save me," Lavi whispers, and he's back in the battlefield again, watching his friends die one by one and, no, not again, he won't do this again—
'I'm fine, Neah,' Allen says abruptly, breaking the silence. 'I'm fine. I won't be able to die here. Not now. I still have a couple years left before this heart'—he taps once at his left hand—'will give up on me.'
'That sucks,' Neah deadpans.
Allen lets out a rasp of a laugh, and it scrapes his throat like broken glass.
'But,' Neah continues, 'at least you're alive.'
Alive?
Allen stutters to a stop. His hand comes to rest on the buttons, and he sweeps his eyes across the ravaged town, at all the fallen buildings and the ashy sky.
He thinks, This is what must be sacrificed, and his fingers wrap around the cold metal of the buttons.
'At least I live,' Allen agrees sadly.
He closes his eyes, hoping that it will be for the last time.
He knows it won't be.