1
"I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light."
Allen Walker is a liar.
It takes Link all of four seconds to discover this fact the first time he trudges up to Walker and his friends, pie in hand, in what he knows will be an ultimately vain attempt to defeat the awkwardness of this new "supervision" assignment. But he tries his best anyway, as he always does, and introduces himself to the suspected heretic (the suspected traitor, the suspect spy).
Allen Walker turns around in his seat, at first genuinely confused and curious. His pale eyes peer up at Link through locks of strange, silvery hair. His lips tighten into a questioning pout, the movement of his cheeks distorting the angry curse scar.
For a moment suspended, out of time, Link waits with bated breath, scrutinizing every detail of the boy who could very well be a demon in exorcist's clothing, ready to attack at the first sign his secret has been discovered. And in that frozen moment, in the split second before Allen Walker brings out the widest, brightest, fakest smile, starts drooling at the offered pie, Link sees something in those pale blue eyes.
Not something evil. Not something wicked.
But a flash of self-loathing so profound that Link cannot understand, cannot fathom in the slightest, how Allen Walker can even walk with such a weight upon his shoulders.
And yet, Allen rises from his seat, plasters on a smile so wide it must hurt, and reaches for the pie.
Link stands still for a beat, two, three, trying his best to figure out what the hell is going on.
Because the boy who stands before him, Link knows with grim finality, is not a heretic. Is not a traitor. Is not a spy. Those things cannot wield despair.
But Allen Walker is a liar.
And that may just be worse.
2
"I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain."
Allen Walker lies broken in the ruins of the Science Department. Link ascertains that much before he ever gets close enough to see the true extent of Walker's injuries.
Slumped and listless, bloody head lolling, fingers bent out of alignment, legs shaking like he's been struck by lightning—how Walker kept fighting for so long, Link will never know.
It isn't until he's six feet away, his steps echoing dully in the eerie quiet of the debris-strewn hall, that Link realizes he's caught Walker in a state he was sure he'd never see.
It's not just Walker's body that is broken. His mask is broken too.
Shattered by the strike of the Level 4—or perhaps the cries of those he saved, mourning for those he couldn't.
Walker doesn't realize Link is there for the longest time, watching his pale blue eyes as they stare at the floor. Not dull. Not lifeless. Not what Link would expect. But filled to the brim, nearly boiling, pressure growing, with a self-loathing so intense that Link feels a shiver building, building at the base of his spine.
There are no tears on Walker's face. Not now. No. Those come easy to the clown.
It's the raw self-hatred Link captures in the quickest flashes that struggles, clawing and biting and kicking, to make its way to the surface of Walker's skin. Now, with Walker in so much pain, so little energy left pulsing through his veins, he can't hold onto his clown façade. It crumbled with the floor of the Science Department.
Now, shattered and weary in body, the real Allen Walker lies before Link. Until Link steps a foot too close, his boot a tad too loud on stone, and the mask is hastily reassembled, cracked, glued haphazardly.
And Link is forced to accept the status quo once more and pick up Walker's fractured form.
And forced to listen when Walker says thank you in that breathy, soft tone.
And forced to hear the slithering hatred in its echo—
Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck everything.
3
"I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,"
Link regrets that he is there, in the aftermath, when Cross tells Allen Walker the truth. He doesn't let it show, doesn't falter underneath the heavy red cloak, doesn't even let his breath hitch. But he feels it beating through his heart, spreading like poison through his veins—fear.
A fear the likes of which he hasn't felt since snow cascaded from the sky and froze the fingers of huddled children in an alley, Link among them, in what he thought, knew, would be the night he took his last breath.
It wasn't.
And now he is here, witnessing a revelation Link knows will be felt in frigid, icy waves for years to come.
Allen Walker on the floor, head bowed, muttering the question that threatens to redefine his whole existence: "When Mana said he loved me, did he mean me, or…?"
Link's gaze flicks to the general, who looks genuinely startled, genuinely scared, the way that Link feels scared suffocating and freezing all at once beneath a Crow's veneer. It's that exact instant when Link knows that Allen Walker will not walk out of this room.
The boy who walked in here, defiant, dies beneath the clown's mask, between one second and the next, between the syllables of Cross's hastily patched-together reply to that devastating question. And no one sees him die, not the other Crows, not Cross, not even the Bookman Jr.
No one sees the barest flash of the grim smile, half-hidden by that silvery hair, as the hateful monster beneath the surface of Walker's mask finally finds its validation.
And yet, when Walker rises again, the mask is back intact, and he acts so, so…
Good Lord, Link thinks, is this the kind of liar born of tragedy? Who can summon false defiance to God and circumstance by sheer force of will?
Allen Walker dies in the general's room. And nobody notices but Link.
The beast beneath walks out, wearing Walker's clown mask as its own. And no one but Link notices that either.
4
"But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky"
Allen Walker adopts a different sort of mask in the aftermath of Alma Karma. He's been a dead man walking for the longest time now, Link knows, haunted by the whispers in the hallways, the hushed rumors skirting along the chilly tiles.
But it isn't until the last vestige of Walker's hope turns to dust—his faith in the Order—in the ruins of the American Branch, when he witnesses the mass destruction, the pain, sorrow, agony wrought by one of the Order's skeletons, dragged out from the closet…
It isn't until then that Walker, finally, horrifically, drops the clown mask altogether and dons the silent stoic in its place.
Link can sense what he's thinking, about himself, the 14th Noah now awake and writhing under his flesh. The self-loathing has never been stronger. The beast beneath has never been this high in his mind, right at the surface, nearly breathing air—not even when it took control right underneath his skin.
Link can sense what Walker is thinking. About the Order's experiments. About the Noah's games. About the Holy War, a tug of war, between two sides that now appear so equally black at heart, oozing tar, the sins of the past melded deeply into raw, bloody muscle.
Link can sense what Walker is thinking. That the world could burn, and perhaps, for once in his life, since he started walking…perhaps he could not care less. And maybe that would make things easier, for once, instead of harder. Maybe he could stare into the eyes of a Level 4 and not weep at the grotesque, twisted thing inside that used to be soul.
Bound and chained in a cell, the liar thinks that now is the time, the day, the hour that he'll finally become the monster he's always feared was lurking in the corner of his mind. And he thinks he does not care if he becomes this monster. And he thinks that is the point—you become the monster when you no longer care.
Link can sense these things, and they prod at what's left of his own heart. And, restrained in a way he hasn't been in months, not since he was assigned to Walker…Link does what little he can to force the liar to rethink. In any way. Because Link does not think he can watch the beast beneath surface at last, and wield its hatred to transform Walker into one of the very demons he's been stubbornly walking from his entire life.
So Link gets Allen food. Because that is all he can do.
But, in a twist of irony not even Link could sense coming, the monster that tries to swallow Walker whole doesn't come from within at all.
It comes right through the door.
And wields heaven's feathers like the bullets of an akuma.
And Link, in his panic, does all he can to protect what shreds of Allen Walker are left beneath his pale, pale skin, fading in his eyes, even as the demon who calls heaven its home tries to burn what scraps are left of Link.
Howard Link does all he can to save the liar. He doesn't expect the truth in return.
5
"Proclaimed the time neither was wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night."
It is Link's mistake, in the end, that finally unleashes the beast beneath. And on the ground, bloodied, bleeding out, hand on his abdomen, staunching nothing, knowing his end is near, even nearer than it was when Apocryphos…Link wonders if he was always doomed to be the trigger of the end.
Ever since the day he forced himself into Walker's life, a grim harbinger bearing a pie, of all things—was this his true role in the Holy War, even then?
Link stares at the overcast sky spitting frigid rain, and curses himself. Curses Lvellie. Curses Central. Curses the Black Order and the Noah and the Holy War. Two Hearts screaming at one another, trying to deafen the whole damned world…
If it wasn't for the world, maybe Allen Walker would have been the clown.
But the clown is long dead when the Noah and Order clash on the streets in the town where Walker was hiding. The clown died months before, in the general's room. And the tattered husk of the clown, held together by the hateful beast beneath, ripped and torn by Alma Karma, nearly severed by Apocryphos, has been running, running, running since then. Running from the shadow in the mirror.
Running from the shadow Link has been ordered to stand within. A shadow he mistakenly believed had already become the only light. He sensed the ki and he thought…thought the liar was gone. Thought the beast had faded away, swallowed whole by yet another deceiver. The 14th. Wearing Allen's face the same way Allen wore the clown's.
God, what a fool Link had been. Before the battle in the streets. And after. Standing there, asking the 14th Noah what his next move would be. Only to turn around and find the liar in his place. Allen Walker staring at his hands, slicked with red and not the oil of akuma, standing amidst broken corpses and not a field of dust.
The beast beneath looked up at him, the 14th's shadow crying out, and Link didn't remember what exactly happened after that...a blur of movement, too fast for even a Crow's eyes. Pain. His own. Screaming. Not his own. Sorrow. His own. Fury. Not his own.
And then silence. And then blood.
A shadow falls across Link's face, and he moves his gaze ever so slightly to the right. The beast beneath stares down at him, wearing no mask at all. And somewhere, in the distance, the 14th is choking, his ki strangled, by some power of the beast that could be sheer force of will.
You were wrong, Links thinks. To the Order. To the Heart. To Apocryphos. To the 14th. To the Earl. God, you were all so wrong…
To think that a liar would ever survive being a puppet or a pawn—without emerging on the other side as something far, far worse.
"Get up, Link," says the beast beneath, a pleasant tone through red-stained lips. "I've got some place to be. And you're coming with me."
No.
No. That's not right.
"Get up," says Allen Walker. "And this time, you can lie for me."
A/N: Poem Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost