A/N: Consider this an AU from over a year ago. I began to write this during the chapter where Allen was in jail, but circumstances kept me from finishing. I did a conference presentation and was totally out of commission for any real work, so I looked through my fic collection and I found this incomplete one. So I finished it for the holidays. When I look back on it though, it really isn't a holiday special besides the banter. Realize my interpretations of the fourteenth and Lenalee are consistent with theories of over two years ago. I have grown disgruntled with the canon stupidity of the fourteenth and Lenalee.
Also - there should be a law barring annoying relatives from being twits on Christmas.
Music to listen to is Nightwish's Scaretale. It's weird, but fits this strange fic.
Creak...
The flame atop her candle lamp grew faint as the wind passed through the door she had opened behind her. Even the shawl she was wearing over her night gown wasn't keeping the chill away. Cold crawled down her exposed arms. The candle lamp was the sole thing warming her – just like that childhood night when she crawled out of bed to see Hevlaska and instead... she shook her head brusquely to break the thought pattern.
Creak...
The stairs creaked and the rafters above her whistled with the winter wind, her steps making the new construction groan. The staircase was only four months old, yet already broken and falling apart. The sounds fed her growing fear, as she grabbed her shoulder with her free hand. So cold... and yet he was down here, alone in the cold. What if he wasn't even alive? What if she'd come down to find his body, cold and rigid as ice? Could she stand to see his dead body?
Calm down, she told herself. Her brother... he may be a coward sometimes, but he would never lie to her. Allen. Allen was alive. Tell yourself that. She took a deep breath and took the next step in the circular staircase. And the next. And the next.
Until she stood at the last shaft of steps, from which she could hear... things from the room. Crackling. Whistling of wind and winter from a window. But above all else...
Chink...
Chink...
Chink...
The sound of a chain being dragged along the floor. No, it was the sound of a chain being pulled and released, completely rhythmically. Every two seconds, without fail. Almost mechanical. The winter landscape and architecture wailed like banshees, the automaton sounds harpy talons clipping against the stone floor. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to run out of there, back to the safety of her bunk. Away from the monsters under her bed.
"Allen" was all she could repeat to herself to banish the fears. Despite the haunting, she drew out a concealed key from her sleeve, unlocking the heavy duty wooden door with another "chink"joining the other metallic clanking – beating against it - as she pushed the door to enter the bowels of the Order's dungeon.
Windows, if you could call them that, in the stone in between the wall and ceiling had ivy and bushes tumbling into the hallway of cells, partially blocking the alien foggy skies reflecting local light.
All light seemed to concentrate on the first cell, falling on a gray form that might as well have been considered a dead body. His arms folded like a broken doll, hair falling over his face and blocking his eyes, legs spread across the floor of the cold cell. It was only the pulse of his hand dragging the chain back and forth.
Chink.
Chink.
One whom she had called 'comrade', one whom now was called 'traitor'. One who was bound in place, in seal after seal.
She walked tentatively to stand outside of the bars, candlelight shading his head and arms as her nightgown waved in the wind to block outside lights. Funny, that there were even bars necessary. It seemed almost a violation. All he could touch or get close to was the stainless steel. He who was her comrade.
"Allen-kun." Her voice sounded almost a croak among the whistling wind and creaking. The pulse relentlessly continued.
"Can you no longer hear me?" Again, like a poltergeist murmur to her own ears, out of place and as rude as the bars. The pulse remained ignorant of her voice.
Chink.
Chink.
She turned around and let herself slide down the bars, her head falling on the bars and nightgown lying around her haphazardly. Resting flesh on a bed of steel, holding herself to keep the snowy chill away... she didn't belong here. She wanted to run. She just wanted to be in her bed. She deposited the candlelight onto the ground.
The rhythmic pull of the chain stopped.
"Lenalee..."
Her right hand clashing against the steel, her face revolved to the cell, grabbing the bars. "Allen!"
His hair was parted, revealing gold eyes.
"You're a fool."
She jumped back against the hallway, knocking down the candle and spilling the tallow on the dirt. Even if she had seen him like this before - too many times - the eyes fixed on her were still unlike any other Noah's eyes. Like a predator, it paralyzed her, strangled her. Instinctively she jumped, and found herself looking away, anywhere to avoid that... fucking gaze.
"'Allen-kun', ''Allen-kun'. You're such a weak-minded girl." He snickered at the end of the sentence. "This vessel is mine. All he ever was was a shadow and a memory. Ironic? That the day of his birth be the day of his death?" The air seemed to still in the room, as if to punctuate his words.
"The 14th.."
"That's right, Lenalee," he lisped it, sounding cheerful, and suddenly exactly like Allen. If it weren't for the ruthless aura transfixing her, her hearing might've have betrayed her into thinking it was Allen. "Isn't it a fine Christmas Eve? No snow though... shame, cause that's the best part..."
Allen hated snow.
"Ah? Lenalee? What's wrong? Why aren't you responding?" the voice was Allen, the concern, the boyish innocence.
"Don't ever do that." Her voice came out far more bitter than anything. "Give him back."
"Ah, it's Christmas Eve!" he continued in the faint lisp, appearing deaf to her demand. "My first Christmas Eve on Earth for... who knows how long. I'm savoring it. Oh sure, it's a prison, but I can envision the decor differently. Please, don't get me wrong, I couldn't give a rat's ass about your God or savior. But isn't it fascinating, all the questions about it all? Like why your God would even bother to have a son on Earth?"
"I don't care." God was a bastard to her.
"Right... you are a woman who scorns God, yet is bound to that," the word was hissed. "Just consider the evergreen," he pointed at the bush above her. "Did you know it's from yule time celebrations? Celebrations for a hopeful harvest. Supposedly. Result is a night full of drinking, sinning and general mayhem, with months of 'repentance' following. I have to say there's some magic to it, that humans are capable of such obsession at one point in a year. I have to admire obsession."
"..."The stone chilled her body, and it was all she could do to keep from breaking down on the spot. The leaves and ivy encroached on her with the winds.
"Hm. You were always stubborn." He dropped the accent, an actor with many voices. The wind seemed to still and the creaking paused. "Very well. I'll cut to the chase." He leaned over, his face no longer in shadow. " You told me that night all that mattered to you were your friends and your Order. Release me. With me gone, the Earl won't slaughter your beloved world. You hate him, don't you? I can kill him for you-"
Squeezing her eyes narrow, her hands tightened in fists, face an unwomanly scowl.
"Lenalee... I know this is hard for you, but if you want to save Allen..." Lavi's voice echoed in her head. "Don't let loose that thing in his body. We will save him, I swear it! But... just remember what he wants."
"Stop!" she yelled and the Noah jumped in shock. The gusts began howling as her short hair whipped around her face, her shawl falling off her shoulders. She walked slowly back to the bars, anger replacing fear. "Going on and on with that... You're the one thing in this world that I will never forgive! You stole Allen's life, you threaten my friends and you dare to ask me to let you go? You're no better than the Earl. In fact, you're worse. He knows how to terrify his victims with the unknown, but all you know is how to make stupid offers like a lousy salesman! You call yourself the one who will be the next Earl? Ha!" She stopped a foot from the cell to let her laugh echo on the stone, up the staircase she walked down.
"Silence, woman." The chains and cords wrapping the entity's legs tightened. "Remember I can also leave you a writhing heap on the ground begging for mercy at my leisure. How would you think you would handle finding Komui hanging from a noose?"
She returned the glare with a defiant stare of her own. "I have survived far worse than your taunts. Last year I almost died. They found my body burned, shattered and drowned- you know this! I survived, and live to protect my world."
"... Don't make the mistake that just because you got me angry, that I don't know your weakness. His memories," the grinning Noah crooned as he raised a finger and touched his head, "are all in here. I know everything he knows, cause he is mine-"
"Then... he's still alive," Lenalee couldn't believe how she suddenly felt relieved... heck, was she smiling? Her hand was against her face, allowing the relief to wash over her. "His memories, his intuition... that's his spirit! He can't be dead, or you wouldn't know that!" The Noah's eyes widened and he snarled, starting to pulse the chain again. Chink, chink, chink...
"You got me, woman. He ain't dead. But realize that a Noah has never stopped being a Noah. Hell, even if you suppress me, I will always be here."
"Then there's hope. Allen is that hope! He always lived to help us, and we will... I will... help him! Lavi, Komui, even Kanda, we are all with him!" She stopped her verbal assault as the Noah's palsy became increasingly erratic, and grabbed onto a bar of the cage and smiled softly. A sense of peace was in her as a slight spring breeze, not the howling winter winds, blew around her. "And I know Allen is with you and can hear me. He will defeat you."
Chink!
The world was whirling to her, falling around from lack of balance. The arrhythmic pulses jumped in volume till she could hear nothing else. She clapped her hands over her ears, trying to stop the noise. Deafening percussion slammed into her. Strings erratic, almost sarcastic, high pitch and punctuated by short jumps as if to mock her being.
Suddenly she had no hands. They were melting away in front of her eyes, her uniform and hair burning. Her body felt cold as ice until... there was nothing between her and the sound, she was burning up everywhere.
"You are defenseless in front of me," the sound suddenly stopped and she could hear Allen's... not Allen's voice. "There is nothing between me and you, nothing between me and another murder." The last word was uttered with a lack of emphasis, as if discussing the weather. Suddenly a hand grabbed her neck from behind her, feeling her face. She couldn't slap it away, her arms had melted away. The hand wandered down to touch her gradually exposed flesh, the percussion and carnival pipes returning in her ears.
"This is my concert. My scores, my symphony. Play by my sheets, my rhythm. Improv is... allowed. Just remember dearie..." Another hand came in front of her mouth, shoving berries into her mouth as she was pulled backwards as she looked into the vacuous depths of those goddamned eyes. As she glared, he forced the berries down her throat, laughing as his voiced turned tenor.
"Abandon your "instrument", and I will slaughter every dear person to you."
His grip vanished and she coughed up what had been forced into her throat. Red berries... hemlock. The remaining parts of her burning body fell suddenly deathly cold and she shivered. She felt nothing anymore as he began laughing again, his amused cries echoing around her as his hands reached forth to cradle his prize, her solitary head and...
Ka-THUNK!
Her eyes opened as she involuntarily cradled her head she slammed against a wooden couch sleeve. She was laying on a couch in the Order library, two coats piled atop her, Johnny sleeping on another couch.
"You alright, Lenalee!" there was a thud from behind the bookshelves, as a red-head ran out from behind the stacks ladder to find her rubbing her head to stop the achy bruise. He ran over, checking her head.
"I should get a nurse, there gotta be some aroun' at this hour! Gotta make sure it isn't serious!"
"It's nothing, nothing Lavi!" He had become nothing if not obsessive since Kanda had been presumed dead. She noticed the bags under his eyes, slowly recovering from the adrenaline. "You look like you haven't slept in hours!"
He looked briefly pained and strangely apathetic for a moment before checking her head again. "There's practically nothin' in the Order's libraries, but I've found some hints. I'll check them and then hit the sack." She winced as he pressed the injured spot. "That's still a heckuva bruise on your head though. Darnit. You totally zonked out, so I thought I shoulda gotten some blankets but out coats were all we had. Johnny followed shortly after. Sheezus, you must've had a nightmare alright! Didja get some sleep anyways?"
Lenalee rubbed her eyes and stretched out, moving the coats away. She unconsciously checked that her hands and hair were still there, shaking her head as the dregs of the dream faded. Beginning her morning routine before the sun rose, she looked at Lavi.
"Yeah... it was just a bad dream. So, what did you find out?"