A/N: This is my submission to the most recent round of the -man bigbang challenge on LiveJournal. I would suggest going to read it there, as it has accompanying art which FFNet can't display. The fantabulous JoJo-kun, one of my artists, was kind enough to check it over for consistency. Any and all awfulness (and there is some) is my fault alone.

This story diverges from canon around 199 and plays silly buggers with the dozen or so chapters preceding that. Be warned: contains blasphemous alternate reality partially inspired by Kaori Yuki.

Disclaimer: I don't own -man and make no profit from my fanworks.

Enjoy!

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01. Innocence

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The Ark expanded to catch Kanda and the disintegrating ghost in his arms with its strange gravity, welcoming them into its white city.

The silence bore down on them immediately, making their ears ache as if they were ten stories underwater. Every sound they made was suddenly magnified - every harsh breath Kanda's lungs tore from the air, the scrape of his knees against the flagstones, the delicate splintering of Alma's ruined body. Even worse were the gaps where sounds were absent, suddenly noticeable - wide empty crevices where their heartbeats should have thundered, the cavern which should have echoed with Alma's breath.

"Come on," Kanda said, just in case Alma could still hear him. "We have to find the door. We have to go, otherwise he'll get there before us and think we died on the way."

Alma didn't answer. He made no sound when Kanda lifted his obsidian body, hardly recognizable as himself anymore, and doggedly began to stagger through the tranquil streets. Not a single sound.

Time seemed to stretch out forever. They passed a dozen doorways, two dozen, a hundred. The air was still as attics, or tombs. Beneath their feet the flagstones blurred through dizzy marching patterns. Kanda began to feel as if they had been there for years, the two of them, wandering the empty Ark in the light of the eternal false twilight.

The right door was not labeled, but Kanda knew it when he saw it, recognized its tall, blocky arch and the shudder of echoing loneliness he felt when he looked at it.

"Almost there," he said.

Alma made no answer. A shard of his forearm broke loose and shattered on the ground, the sound monstrously loud in the artificial hush of the white city.

The door opened to Kanda's shoulder. They stumbled through into darkness. The sound of Kanda's footsteps rose into the air and drifted lazily against ceiling high above, their echoes little more than dull shadows. He could see nothing, but he didn't have to. He knew where he was.

From one ghost city to another.

His crumbling legs folded under him at last, but he carefully angled his fall so that Alma's glass body would land on him rather than the hard marble floor. His leg broke off again at the knee. It hardly hurt at all. He could already feel the awful crawling pull that meant his body was reaching out to heal itself.

Alma lay like a dark statue in the protective circle of his body, cold and motionless and silent. Perhaps he was already gone. Perhaps his soul had lost itself to the devouring rage of the Dark Matter and could not longer be salvaged. Perhaps he was beyond Kanda's reach, beyond anyone's reach, beyond even God's. Perhaps it was just too late.

He considered, then, just curling himself around the shell of the person he had devoted both of his lives to, the person he had loved enough to remember even through death, that beautiful person he had loved despite himself, and waiting for dust and dreamless sleep to claim them both. For one moment, he closed his eyes and faced the idea that the thing in his arms might not be Alma anymore.

Then Alma spoke. Only a few words, and then he fell silent again, but they were enough. Kanda watched his soul - their soul - their souls - walk away into the light, and wondered why his heart was beating wild and terrified in his chest. Grief he could have understood. Why fear? Why couldn't he shake the feeling that something, something was terribly wrong? Why didn't it feel over?

He carefully propped Alma's body against the wall in a corner, in the deepest shadows. "I have to go back," he said. "You'll be safe here. Just wait. Wait for me. I'll come back for you, I promise." Only the second promise he had ever made. He could only hope this one would be easier to keep.

Alma was invisible in the gloom of the corner, black within black, and silent as stone.

The Ark took him back. This trip was easier - he knew the path now, and knew what he wanted. He would return to the battlefield, tear out the throat of every Noah he could reach, and make the Earl tell him how to save Alma. There had to be a way. It was the Earl. He was the kind of person who always left themselves back alleys, trapdoors, escape routes just in case things went sideways. He had to have a way to recall souls. Kanda would learn it and bring Alma back and then nothing would ever hurt him again.

The sky over the city was dim with the threat of rain.

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The room seemed to hold its breath.

Shadows and light battled their way across Allen Walker's skin, the war gone underground and quiet. He was aware of his audience, dimly; a ring of desperate half-broken marionettes, their puppeteer and his family, a grinning clown, four unholy angels and a dying demon.

The Fourteenth Noah had his hands around the throat of Allen's soul and was tightening his fingers slowly, patiently, a calm and cheerful smile steady on his face. "You are not dying," he said. "I will have need of your soul in the days to come. But I cannot have you blundering around trying to protect all the wrong things. Therefore, I am putting you to sleep, much as I have slept within you all these years."

Even though Allen knew they were not real fingers, and it was not his real throat, the feeling of suffocation was real enough to be unbearable. He reached out with shaky fingers for the dark figure his blurring eyes could only barely see, but his arms were constrained by the heavy chains he wore, and when he pressed the issue the Fourteenth simply let go with one hand and used it to pin both of Allen's hands to his chest.

"Perhaps if you hadn't just been stabbed you might have had a chance," the Fourteenth said, "but as it is, you are dying. Your only chance is to let me take over. I can heal you. I can save you. Or would you rather die?"

Allen glared up at him, answering with his eyes as clearly as he could: yes, he would. He had said so in so many words not too long ago: "I am Allen Walker, an Exorcist, and I'll die before becoming anything else." And there was something about this, the setup, something wrong. What was it? It was hard to tell the difference between reality and dream, and in dreams things which are strange often feel normal, or at least not worthy of remark. There were many strange things here, but only one of them was important. What was it? What was it? Ah, there - it was taking too long. If this were real he would have been unconscious or dead minutes ago. What had the Noah said? Let him take over? But that would imply that he couldn't take over solely by force of will. He needed to Allen to surrender, even just a little.

Which was something he would never, ever do.

Though the feeling of suffocation did not ease in the slightest, Allen suddenly realized that it was not having any effect beyond being unpleasant. He was still alert, his heart was pounding but not struggling, there were no dark spots or flashes of light in his eyes. His lungs could not breathe, but they were not real, and neither was his pounding heart or rest of his panicking body. This was a battle of wills. Allen was good at those. There was a still a chance that he could win this battle and die with his mind still his own.

He smiled.

The bright star in the sky above them wavered and dimmed.

The Noah watched in helpless horror as Allen calmly stood up, breaking the chains and pulling the hands away from his throat. "I would rather die," he said honestly, "but if you'll be more polite I'll at least listen to what you have to say."

"Fool," Neah hissed. "There is no time."

"Wrong," said Allen. His voice rang with absolute faith. "We have time. Look."

The floor rippled and was suddenly clear as glass. Below them gaped a vast red cavern. The walls to their left and right had gaping holes smashed in them, rubble tumbling away into the depths. White strands of something much like spidersilk were stretched across the holes, and as they watched a hundred more spanned the gaps, weaving pale and faintly luminescent nets over them and stopping the slow crumble of its edges.

"What - oh, I see. It seems you are still blessed by Azazel's favour. The Innocence he has assigned to you will keep you alive as long as you are useful to him."

Allen frowned. "Who?"

Neah regarded him with an expression of deep contempt. It looked strange on his delicate, gentle face. With every passing moment, his resemblance to Tyki faded. He had none of Tyki's genial humour, none of the great sadness which ran deep and strong under Tyki's skin. When Allen looked at him, he saw someone who was half-mad with rage and hunger, someone whose black eyes could see nothing but his goals and eventual imagined victory. He was small and cruel and hotly passionate and really, nothing like Tyki at all.

"I forget sometimes how little you know," he said. "You still believe him to be your God, the true God, the Creator. Admittedly, he has done nothing to enlighten you, but anyone who has ever heard the true voice of God would know Azazel for the impostor he is. You have followed and obeyed and loved nothing more than an ambitious underling all this time, and you've had no idea. You are all blind."

"I... haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," Allen admitted. "How about you explain later, and tell me what it is you want now? Answer carefully."

The dark little madman glared at him. "I do not take orders from mortal vessels," he snapped.

Allen shrugged and raised a hand. "I guess you'll just have to go find someone else, then," he said, and began to apply pressure.

A vast circular glass door appeared in the midst of the thicket, bottom edge partially sunken into the ground, and irised open silently onto a world of chaotic whiteness. A roar of wind and crumbling stone and voices came blowing through it. The Noah's heels slid back a few inches through the dirt.

His eyes widened in panic. "No! No, you fool! You are the only one strong enough - you mustn't! I have waited years to save her!"

"Her...?" Allen paused. There were perhaps a dozen feet between Neah's back and the howling white gate.

Beneath the whirling storm of rage that seemed to make up the Noah, Allen caught a glimpse of the white skeleton of desperation holding him together. There was love there, he saw. Here at last was something Allen could recognize and feel empathy with. He knew what it was like to drive himself past the limits of mortal endurance for the desperate hope of saving his friends. He knew what the need to protect someone felt like, how it burned and twisted inside a person until any pain in one's body became insignificant beside it.

"Tell me," he said.

Hope flashed anew in Neah's eyes. He steadied himself on his feet and began to tell his story.

Allen listened, and learned, and at the end wished very hard that he had exorcised the Noah when he had the chance so he would not have to know this, make this choice.

He tried to convince himself that no matter what he chose, he would find a way to save his friends. It almost worked. Almost.

Time would not go back. He knew what he knew, and the choice had to be made.

Allen took a deep breath and made it.

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