I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
It's a minute after midnight when Link loses sight of him.
Him. The 14th. Nea D. Campbell. A Noah in a boy's body, the boy nowhere to be found. Supposedly forgotten by the world. Left to fade in memory. Disappeared, says the 14th. Erased. Gone forever.
And Walker hasn't been awake in his own skin for so long that Link is starting to believe he's really dead. The smiles on Walker's lips, the laughter in his throat, hasn't belonged to him for months now. With each passing day, Link's belief in Walker chips away—perhaps the exorcist built by sorrow, with a pocket full of smiles…perhaps that boy is history. Perhaps even Allen Walker couldn't stand against the mighty wave of Fate.
So Link thinks in his most doubtful moments. In quiet corners, dark alleys, shadowed streets. So he has thought every waking hour…until now.
Until, amidst another slaughter, akuma shrieking through the streets, black oil staining brick like blood, Noah on the rooftops laughing, too many to handle—the 14th simply vanishes between one moment and the next.
At the time, Link isn't looking his way, even as the man tears through akuma with dark matter instead of Crown Clown. (Something that Allen would lament. Something that would rip him to pieces.) Link is busy with his own battle, driving the Noah Jasdevi away with his most powerful sealing spells. They won't hold forever, he knows, just like with the Earl. The Noah will break free, soon enough, and the 14th and Link will have to flee. Another mad dash to another small town, dragging death and sorrow in chains behind them.
But Link does what he can, over and over, no matter how vain, no matter how fruitless. Because that is what Lvellie ordered him to do. Because his conflict over Allen Walker's well-being was resolved for him, before he even had the chance to speak with his old charge again. So he fights beside the manic laughter, fights beside the awful smirks, fights beside a man too large in malice and in spirit to wear a young boy's body without tearing it apart.
Link wishes there was another way, any way, a way to restore Walker, a way for the Noah and the boy to coexist. But apparently, there is not. And Link must accept yet another sacrifice on the shoulders of the Holy War. (He's used to it, anyway, he thinks. And if not, that is his own fault.)
So he fights with all his might, distracts akuma with exploding tags, flings Jasdevi far, far away, still trapped in seals, until they're out of sight. Breathing hard, nearly out of power, nearly out of tags, nearly out of knives, he whips around to tell the 14th they need to start a tactical retreat…only to find nothing in the space where the Noah should be.
Link glances left, right, up, down, everywhere he can imagine the Noah might have gone. He's not on the rooftops, chasing after Tyki Mikk, who was cackling madly near a chimney only minutes ago. He's not in the nearby alley, where Lulu Bell was watching, before she transformed into a cat and stalked away. He's not in any nearby building, not close for Link to sense his ki. And, as Link's breathing softens, as his heartbeat slows, he realizes that no one else is here either…
The Noah have all gone too. The akuma have retreated. In the streets, there is silence and dust outlined with stars.
Sweat cools on Link's face, sticky in the humid night. He grips his last knife tight and checks the area again, but finds no threats. Or allies. For a moment, he wonders if the 14th finally ditched him. If he led the fight away from here when Link wasn't looking, kicked his unwanted helper to the curb and stormed off to fight the Noah his own way. Link wouldn't put it past the man. He's made his disdain obvious, even while accepting Link's every offer of aid.
And yet…for some reason, some instinct crawling up his spine, causing him to shudder like a child scared in the night—bad dreams—for some reason, he feels like the 14th Noah didn't leave of his own volition. And Link doesn't think the other Noah took him either. They would've made taunts that Link could hear. They'd never have dragged him to the Earl without a hundred cruel jabs. No, not after their behavior these past few months. Not possible.
But if he didn't leave of his own volition, and he didn't leave a prisoner, then where the hell did he go?
Link begins to move, one step at a time, deliberate and slow, eying every crevice, every nook and cranny, for any clues as to where the rogue Noah may have vanish…
And he sees it. Lying there half-hidden behind a set of stone steps in the alley. Invisible from where Link had been fighting. And that's why missed it, he supposes, the massive shift in the battle. The moment where all hell broke loose so quietly, so white hot in intensity, damnation rising from the ground beneath the 14th's feet—yes, Link knows, yes. He wouldn't have heard a single sound. The 14th wouldn't have been able to make one. He wouldn't have been able to scream.
Not before…
Link shambles into the alley, slips his last knife into its sheath, and kneels before the woman's body. She is young, perhaps eighteen, perhaps less, and whatever hit her she never saw coming. She must have come outside, having heard the ruckus in the streets—Link judges this by the nearby door, still hanging half open. She came outside to see what fools were skirmishing so late at night, expecting local drunks most likely. Not the soldiers of two Gods fighting a Holy War.
Link isn't sure how it happened. Maybe the 14th was distracted by too many akuma. Maybe Mikk took an unfair shot at him and threw him off balance. Maybe the 14th is even more malicious than Link sensed in his ki—perhaps he killed this woman indifferently. But regardless of the how or why, she is dead. At the hands of the 14th wearing Allen Walker's body. (And it must have been him, because she's the only bystander not left a pile of dust. And he was the only one not killing via the Earl's killing machines.)
The 14th killed a human being using Allen Walker's hands.
And Links know. Right then. Right there.
He rises to his feet, checking his every pocket and pouch, searching for his blank paper tags. He finds one, and tears a pen free from his belt, using the wall in front of him to hastily scratch a tracking spell. When done, he grabs the last item, a lock of Walker's hair he nabbed while the 14th was sleeping, and blows it softly against the drying ink, a few strands sticking.
He mutters words repeated a thousand times in a thousand training sessions, and the tag begins to glow. He releases it, and it stays aloft on its own, floating in the air. Seconds tick by, and Link worries that the spell cannot find Walker because the boy has run too far away, out of range, and that by the time Link finally tracks him down, Allen Walker will be nothing but a—
But then it begins to move, zipping through the air, and Link, whispering words of apology to the poor dead woman, turns on his toes and rushes off behind the tag. It winds through the narrow streets and alleys, over fences, under bridges, and Link runs and runs and runs, for miles, until his sides are in stitches, his breaths coming in shallow pants, his ankle burning from a bad kick during his fight with the Noah. He worries, as the chase grows longer, that he won't make it. That'll he pass out. And when he wakes, in the morning, sun shining down, all that will be left for him to find is more dust on dirty stone.
And then the tag stops. In front of what appears to be…an abandoned jail? The tag hovers toward the ramshackle building, a caved-in roof, broken windows, weeds grown up through the cracks in the old red brick. As the tag reaches the threshold of the door, the wooden panel hanging at an angle on rusty hinges, it stops for good, the spell's power fizzling out. It catches fire and burns away, a puff of smoke wafting upward.
Link, bent over at the waist, catches his breath as best he can, and then steels himself before goes inside. He fears what he will find. He knows what will find, and that is why he fears it. Link has never feared the unknown. He doesn't see the point. The only things you have to fear are the results of your own failures, and the sorrow created by the failures of others.
Link pushes the old door open. It breaks away from the frame and clatters loudly to the floor. There is no sound in the jail except the echo. Carefully, Link steps inside, guided through the darkness by moonlight peeking through the rafters. He rounds a bare support beam, now resting half against a wall. He passes through the lobby, tiles cracked with time, bugs skittering across them. He reaches the place where the door for the holding cell block should be, but there is nothing but a gaping hole, blackness beyond.
Blackness, and a single beam of moonlight. Shining through a brand new hole in the ceiling over one particular cell. Link stands in the doorway to darkness for the longest time, a lead weight settling on his shoulders, hanging from his lungs, tied to his gut. Nausea creeps up his throat, bile churning in his stomach. Because he knows. That he's too late.
He's always too late these days.
And he was always going to be too late—for this.
Closing his eyes, Link maneuvers through the hall of the holding block, using his hand against the bars as a guide, his feet shuffling along through dense debris on the floor. When he opens his eyes again, dares to reacquaint himself with the world around him, he's one step away from being able to see into the moonlit cell.
Link stares up at the half moon, bright against a clear night sky, and wonders if the last thing Allen saw was this, beautiful stars glistening above him. God, he hopes so. If nothing else, nothing else at all, the boy deserved that peace in his final moments. (But Link isn't foolish. He's well aware that Walker deserved the whole damn world, merely for every smile he masterfully created using nothing but the pain in his own heart.)
At last, Link takes the final step, and turns to face the cell.
Allen Walker's body rests inside. He's on the floor, back against the wall, head tilted upward, blank pale eyes peering upward at the moon. His right arm is chained to the wall—the wrist is torn and bloody, like someone tried to free it. (But not Allen, no. Not Allen.)
His left arm is gone. And in its place is the Sword of Exorcism. Impaling Allen's body right through the chest. (Link marvels at it, how Crown Clown can remain in this form, while its master no longer breathes, while his heart no longer beats. But then, Crown Clown was always special.)
The single worst thing about it, Walker's body, the earthly remains of the boy who smiled even when the world tried so hard to burn him down—the worst thing is the row of stigmata, fresh and bloody on his head, half-hidden by his hair.
Or perhaps, Link thinks…perhaps the marks are the best thing of all. They brand Walker like a martyr, and that is what he'll be. To God, if no one else. To his friends, if they learn the truth. To the world, in whispers underneath a cloak of ignorance.
Allen Walker, who saved the souls of akuma with his left hand, and saved human beings with his right. And when those hands were used to harm those very things in turn—he used them to save himself, in the only way he could.
Link always knew that death would be Walker's salvation.
And yet still…
He drops to his knees before the fallen boy. He whispers apologies into the night. He makes promises he cannot keep that he intends to keep regardless. He vows that he will walk forward in Walker's place, even if the end of his own path is the same.
(That is what Howard Link deserves, if nothing else.)
He says goodbye to Allen Walker, and weeps.
A/N: Poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley