A Song for the Lost
By Ryo Hoshi

Un enfant frappe à ma porte
Il laisse entrer la lumière
Il a mes yeux et mon coeur
Et derrière lui c'est l'enfer
Un Ange Frappe À Ma Porte, Natasha St-Pierre

As it unfolded, Allen realized that some things were…not as he had believed them.

That was the gentlemanly way of putting it, at least. He knew that he had not been intentionally lied to about what would happen as the 14th awakened. His master could not have known any better what it would be like, and if he had asked the Noah only perhaps Road would have memories undamaged enough to tell him much better in any conclusive way.

It was not, really, that his body would be taken over; that implied that what made him Allen would be lost. He would always remember being Allen, even when he moved on and was someone else—it was, more precisely, that he had been, and would always have been, Neah first.

The realization had come when he'd run into Tyki—the Earl had been proving the occasional scrap of help, usually on how to avoid the search by the Black Order, in hopes of winning Allen's trust to the point of returning—and, instead of his usual thought of 'will he be in the mood for cards?' he'd thought 'wasn't he a woman?'

It'd not helped that he'd thought it aloud, though the expression on the Noah of Pleasure's face was priceless…

…and Road looked intrigued, and mentioned to him as an aside as they left that the Noah of Pleasure was female, last time.

It'd been unsettling to realize that Neah's memories were becoming his own, despite his own intentions. That slow leak—remembering things that had happened before he was born, remembering how Mana had been when a teenager, remembering how the Earl had once been…different—put him on his guard.

He didn't want to lose his body, nor did he want to cause the deaths of those close to him. They were important to him.

He didn't notice the slow, expanding creep of that list until later on, when he had an accidental meeting with the Earl (how was he to know that graveyard, despite the clear lack of maintenance, wasn't abandoned?) and realized…the Earl important to him, too.

The Earl had noticed him, after all the mourners had left—and some onions quietly disposed of—and commented on his eyes before leaving.

The color had changed, without his even noticing—the circus he was traveling with at the moment was not one where clowns could expect to have a mirror regularly, that was for richer, more popular groups. (Thankfully, most of the time his talent was appreciated—even if he was better than the regulars, he helped bring in money so they could keep going, and it was assumed by the troupe that he was on the run from something. Some part of him had recently pointed out how useful this combination was for him, it so reliably ensured that they'd protect his identity should people come asking questions.)

This he could not, like the darkening skin tone, attribute to sun.

He managed to return the borrowed mirror—thankfully polished metal and not more expensive and fragile silvered glass!—without showing any sign of how it bothered him, especially since he knew that his eyes had to have been that shade, or close to, from the moment he had joined the group.

He might help ensure that they all ate, but he looked weird enough that the addition of color-changing eyes might have them deciding it was better (safer) to sell him out.

It did not register then that he had been, once, unlikely to have considered that sort of problem before it was too late.

He switched troupes soon after, anyway, picking up a cheap mirror of polished metal to tuck into his makeup kit.

That he did not and would not miss anybody from this troupe was not something he thought remarkable. He'd been with better groups of people…but they'd have questioned too much, and not been so inclined to protect him if they thought he'd really done something wrong…

That consideration, too, was not something he normally would have had, but it felt natural.

This time he picked a troupe heading toward India. By the time a week had passed, the couple nice people—mostly children, and all in (bought for, something told him, but how would he know that?) the freak show—had managed to slip away, because of old locks and the thought that perhaps there was a better place for them elsewhere.

It was not the sort of troupe nice people joined, and certainly not one they stayed with, if they had any chance elsewhere, and those in it were all aware of this. Allen took advantage of this—knowingly, when earlier it would be something he'd have innocently done, in complete ignorance of anything aside from it being much like the circuses he had been in with Mana.

—

It was somewhere on the border of India that the head of the troupe had found a little girl—bought, that voice he thought of as Neah said, from uncaring parents or perhaps an orphanage. She was sweet and friendly, a delight to perform tricks for and innocent. He'd liked her, and if it was not for the danger surrounding him might even have simply adopted the girl, never mind that he was in no way old enough to be her father and certainly didn't look it.

There was nobody to hand her off to, either, so she might escape; he certainly was not about to dump her on the Order's doorstep, even if he felt relatively sure that Komui, at least, would care about her well-being. Relatively was not certain, and caution had been growing, the habits of time longer on the run (though from equally-ruthless pursuit) than he had really been.

He was not cautious enough, though. They'd set up camp with no center of human habitation closer than a day's travel (by their wagons, of course) and he'd been looking forward to giving her another lesson in juggling. She was proving a quick study, and promised to be adept enough and skilled enough that he could easily enough add her to his act soon, and maybe if it proved successful enough he might take her along when he switched troupes again—it ought to be fine if he spent a little time traveling with a nice one that he'd not feel nervous about leaving her with…

The lesson had been interrupted when one of the others in the troupe came by their fire and said that the leader wanted to talk to the girl. She'd protested, but…he had not thought it was anything more than simply the leader having decided it was time to set her tasks so she'd be more than a hanger-on, and he could always continue her lesson later.

It was only when the scream—high-pitched, definitely young and female—started that he realized that he was wrong.

He'd rushed to find out what was wrong, why she was screaming, only to see…

Allen had once believed, despite everything, that humanity was essentially good, that evil was something that came from outside—and that humans, of their own accord, did not do particularly horrible things to each other. The worst was acts of petty cruelty, the sorts that had caused him to meet and talk to Mana for the first time in (t)his life.

Even after learning of the Second Exorcist program, of what had been done by the Black Order to Kanda and Alma, he had believed this; the scientists had meant well, even if they'd done something horrible. They'd believed, honestly, that they had no choice if they were to win, even if Allen felt that the price was terrible.

This, though, he could not pretend was due to anything more than greed, purely human in origin, without any particular malice toward the girl. She had been sweet and trusting—not even bratty, like he'd been when Mana had adopted him—and the troupe's leader had just…

He tended to her wounds as best he could as he travelled onto the nearest town, thoughts about anything else such as the mess behind him or the growing headache ignored as distractions from the desire to save her. He'd only briefly considered using the Ark, before regretfully discarding the idea—he knew of no place which he could open a door to that he could quite trust to help her sooner than he could get her to help on foot.

Maybe he ought to have kept one of the horses, instead of…but it was too late for that.

When she was conscious, he talked to her, trying to reassure her, and sang to her, trying to comfort her. He needed both of them to be optimistic; just because the wounds were turning a strange color and maggots had already…she was still alive, that meant she could be saved, right?

He didn't think of much else, until he finally reached town—and the doctor looked at her and told him what he'd already known.

She wasn't dead. Yet.

He found a place willing to let him stay for a while, after he made some perfectly true (if inclined to give rather the wrong impression) statements about what had happened and how she'd gotten hurt, gave her some of the medicine the doctor had offered for her pain, and visited the local priest.

Eastern Orthodox, not Catholic.

It was easy enough to arrange what was needed to be done for the girl—if he left the troupe to the locals, well, he could be forgiven that, right? they were already dead—and only when it came to what name went on the grave did he realize that…he had no idea what her name was, if she had come with one.

He had, though, said on the way here that he'd adopt her as his own; after that, he knew he'd feel guilty if he just abandoned her. Those wounds were certain to scar…

Even if it was only in death, he ought to keep that promise.

He gave her his mother's name, and after the funeral continued on his way. He'd promised Neah that he would, after all, and now that his headache was gone…

Lots of things implicit, especially compared to the explicit.

There are stories of people manufacturing freaks going back into the Middle Ages—nothing verifiable, but historians do admit that, if people at the time had the procedures necessary to create freaks, it'd have been profitable enough that they would manufacture them. It's also a rather good explanation for why Allen might have ended up with the circus troupe in the first place, though I can't find anything clear on what sorts of things a Victorian-era circus might or might not have had.

I'm actually a bit surprised at this, especially since I have not found any leads on a history of circuses in England, and the references I usually use for Victorian England leave me nowhere.

…excuse me while I recover from having been able to say, honestly, a thing like that paragraph.

Anyway. All we have for a date for the series is that it is taking place at the end of the (fictional) 19th century. Since it seems that, never mind how useful it might be, the Order is selfish and not sharing its nifty magitek medical techniques with outsiders at all, it is being presumed that regular folk will get to enjoy the same level of medicine there that everybody did in the non-fictional version.

The wonder is that there's so few Akuma. Life was pretty lousy.