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Prologue
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"Sacrificial lambs don't think when they're being led right up to the alter. They just walk along.
They don't bleat, or make a complaint, not even when the priest sets fire to the twigs before slitting their throats.
Sacrificial lambs don't reconsider when they're up there, giving themselves up for the better good. They don't look back and consider what they could be missing, what they're giving up for this."
She stared at him, with eyes as resolute and condemning as a lunar eclipse. Blue-black irises, so much like Kanda's that it hurt, bore two holes into his own silver ones. Black as an eclipse face-on, it blocked all the feeling and thought behind a black, circular shield that he couldn't read—that only by looking at the slivers of light tracing the edges could he see the blinding emotion sealed behind it.
The anger; the distrust.
The fierce resolution.
The blame.
Allen couldn't return that gaze, no matter how hard he tried; no matter his efforts to make eye contact and to actually hold it. Because unlike everyone else's faces which he could so easily read, unlike everyone else's lies which he could so easily blow off, he knew that this time around, someone else was right.
No matter how much it hurt, or tore at his heart or made him bleed, he knew that what she was saying made sense.
She turned her gaze away and stared at the whitewashed walls, as she delivered the final parting words that would come before condemning him.
"This is why I hate people like you, Allen Walker," the Japanese woman whispered, so softly that it was either a warning of tears, or of violence.
Allen's injuries were giving him hell right now; his Innocence arm burned, and his back felt like it'd been snapped in four different places. Looking at the red staining the crisp, white bandages, he considered, briefly, buzzing in a nurse so they could change the strips and give him fresh ones. Even so, could they really reach inside his chest to bandage up the biggest wound he possessed of all? Could three rolls of tape really be enough to bind up a broken heart?
Her eyes turned to him.
"Kanda's mistake has never been choosing a man. I really couldn't care less. But I just don't see, why out of all the others out there, he had to choose you."
Allen's shoulders slumped, and he felt the rip in his shoulder reopen. But even as the matrons came in, even as the woman left without a backwards glance, Allen noticed that they left the door open to face another room.
The ICU.
Where Kanda was.
Allen took his head in his hands and slumped down against the railing; just let the pieces of his heart clatter on the tiles as they re-bandaged him, and fussed over his heart monitor, and kindly reassured him it was not his fault.
They were lying.
Why did it have to be you?