Title: what we can't forget
Pairing: slight Yullen
Summary: His memories tend to be sad. Re: Allen, after the war.
Disclaimer: the usual disclaimer applies. Also, the style here was inspired by Sunset Tower's Dream a Little Bigger.
Monday, and Allen awakes in a soft bed, the watery sunlight dancing across the walls. Snow covers the ground outside, straddling bare branches like awkwardly-placed large flowers. It's warm, it's cosy, the landscape is beautifully bare, and Allen almost wants to shout for joy, for the beauty of his maker's world – then, he remembers.
His bed is empty, and it's large, too large. Someone used to share the bed with him, once, someone tall, someone with eyes dark as the night, with hair like silk, someone easy to anger and much too proud. Someone he loved – still loves.
The memories flood him like quicksand, snaring him in their thorny embrace. Allen closes his eyes, stretches his hands across the white bed, and holds the other's pillow close to his nose. Kanda Yu used to smell like green tea, and so Allen is heartbroken when only the clean fragrance of newly laundered linen meets his nose.
:::
Tuesday, and Allen plays chess with Johnny. His rook confronts Johnny's king, and then Johnny slides his black queen diagonally across the squares.
"Checkmate," Johnny says.
"I should have seen that coming," Allen says, shaking his head. He has played chess with Johnny so often that he should have been able to see his opponent's next move.
"You've been thinking of them again?" Johnny's voice is soft.
Allen looks away, ignoring the prickling tears that are gathering in his eyes. "Nightmares."
"Don't think of them as nightmares," Johnny says. "Think of it as … I don't know how to say this. But we need to remember them all, and this is as good a way to do it as any other."
"I wish we could have saved Suman."
"Suman, yes, I wish that too. That happened so many years ago. You can't forget?"
"Can you?"
"I knew him," Johnny says. "You didn't."
"But I watched him die."
They are silent, now. The agony of the past surrounds them, and they think of the dead, the dead they still love.
"I still miss Tapp," Johnny says. "There are some things you can never forget."
That night, in his room, Allen closes his eyes, and again he sees the green forest stretching far and wide, and Lenalee in her Dark Boots, and the light that extends far across the horizon. He remembers the wreckage Suman Dark left behind, the collapsed buildings and the animal carcasses rotting in the fields, and above all, he remembers Suman breathing his last and then toppling to the ground like a marble statue.
:::
Wednesday, and Allen nods off in the library. Bookman sits a few shelves away, flipping through dusty papers and thick tomes. It's three in the afternoon, and the sunlight filters in through the high slit windows, and the biting wind comes riding in.
Allen is cold and very sleepy. He nods off for nearly two hours.
At five in the afternoon, Bookman stands up, stretches, and leaves the library for a cup of coffee. Allen sits up, stretches, and stays where he is, thinking of Lavi.
Lavi, who used to jump up the second Bookman left the library; Lavi, the optimistic one; Lavi, ever ready to pull a new prank or try out a new joke. Lavi, who Allen first saw a million years ago, after the disastrous battle with Rhode Kamelot; Lavi, the nameless, the one tossed and turned as the whims of history saw fit; Lavi, the one who might or might not have loved books. Lavi, whose head they found impaled on a pike after one of the great battles, placed there by the dark, tall Noah with the mole by his eye.
Allen often hopes Lavi went quickly, without the searing pain he remembers as Tyki Mikk's characteristic style.
:::
Thursday, and Allen looks in on Komui, who sits stone-still in his office.
"Busy?" he asks.
"No," Komui says. His voice is even, calm to an extent, but astonishingly devoid of life.
"I have coffee for you."
"Thanks," Komui says. He doesn't touch the coffee.
Allen hears the dismissal in Komui's voice; he doesn't leave – yet. Komui flips papers, his eyes downcast, but one can see his unmitigated sorrow in the stoop of his shoulders and the pallor of his cheeks.
Komui can't leave – there is still much to be done, stray Akuma to hunt down, logistical matters to settle. Komui Lee won't leave his post, though the castle reminds him of the sister he lost barely a fortnight ago – the sister he swore to protect, the sister for whom he uprooted himself and moved to a country he barely knew.
Now she is gone, and he is halfway there. He sleeps little if at all.
Allen understands. The nightmares come to him to, the memories of Lenalee flailing in the air, bullets piercing her torso, blood spurting from her as she fell from the sky. He tried to save her. He failed. Now, she haunts his dreams, clawing at him from behind every tree, from cobwebby corners; she waits under the bed, grabbing his ankles.
And so he comes to Komui's office almost every day, bringing coffee, speaking little to the chief, but together, they remember her in the words they do not utter – Lenalee, the light of their world, the light of the Order's world.
:::
Friday, and Allen tends to the potted plants in Krory's room. No one has entered the room for ages, not since Krory died destroying Jasdebi. Allen waters the plants and then pushes the door open, coughing in the musty air.
The sunlight barely filters in through the dust-caked windows, and the many drapes in the room transport Allen back to an old castle where a vampire was rumoured to live. The vampire was a count, and the vampire was a good man, a man blessed by God. A man who could wield weapons against the demons, a man who could help to save the world.
Allen touches a pillow – a soft pincushion, really. Krory brought it with him from his crumbling castle. Eliade used to sleep with it, Krory said. Eliade, whom he never forgot, Eliade, who haunted his every step, Eliade, who hid in the shadows and prowled through Krory's dreams. Eliade, who had been an Akuma, who had been saved.
Allen stands at the doorway, remembering the dank castle and the foul plants, remembering Krory losing at cards on a train to the one who was also Tyki Mikk, remembering Krory flying into the sky, his fangs ready to bring down the evil ones, remembering Krory, bleeding from the inside out, and whispering "Eliade" under his breath until he breathed no more.
:::
Saturday, and Allen walks to town. He stops at the florist, where Noise Marie is buying a wreath.
"Marie," he says.
Marie nods. "Allen," he says.
"Let me accompany you."
"Of course."
They leave the town and climb a nearby hill together.
"Will you ever stop?" Allen asks, as they reach a white tombstone, decorated with red and black swirls.
"Stop?" Marie puts the wreath down. "Stop coming here? No."
Allen looks away from the tombstone, peering over the line of white stones, towards the pale blue horizon. He thinks of Miranda, lying on the ground, her arms flung carelessly about her, her hair slightly mussed. She was dead, then, and she looked like she was merely asleep – at least, until one saw the fear in her unmoving eyes, until one felt the cold that ran through her flesh.
Allen wonders if Marie is thinking about the same thing. How could he not be? Allen almost sighs. He hopes that Miranda is in a happier place, no longer struggling with the weight of the world on her shoulders, no longer hurt by her life past, where she cried herself to sleep every night for the bleakness of her days before they found her in her little hometown.
Allen and Marie stand beside the tombstone for a long time, the one looking toward the horizon, the other bent as if in thought. It is a full hour before the silence is broken.
"Let's go," Marie says.
They go their separate ways – for now. In a week, they will meet again, and visit this silent hill again, and think of lost things.
:::
Sunday, and Allen kneels in the empty church, whispering to God, wiping tears from his eyes. Something creaks, and the wind wails in the shadowy corners, and Allen turns, always expecting to see one of them emerging from the dim light.
No one ever does.