The entire time they'd been fighting, the beach had smelled like oil and blood.
Now all it was was oil and blood.
Allen lay face down, breathing saltwater air as he bled into the sand. He couldn't stop shaking. The sunset, he felt, should have provided some sense of sanctity or comfort; something, anything. Maybe there was some of that hard-to-stamp-out idealism left in him yet for even thinking that, but it hadn't gotten him far in the past and now was just another chance to see why. As the light blazed across the water, illuminating a path from the sea to the shore, all it did was throw what was left into sharp relief: a mess of red and black painting the beach from end to end, drying to the sand, mixing with the sea foam. Beyond that, there was nothing left—not really. The land had become a battleground, and with every passing minute, it came closer to becoming just another grave site for the mangled bodies of Akuma and Exorcists.
Lenalee's body lay twisted nearby, stretched and tattered like a lacerated ribbon. It had been so long since he'd seen her like this. Normally she seemed so untouchable. The fingers of her right hand were split and bloody and close enough to his lips that with every laboured breath he took, they spasmed. Allen could imagine the look of anguish on her face. He needed half an inch more to look her in the eye and see it. "...Allen?"
He couldn't make half an inch.
"I'm all right, Lenalee," he lied. Or at least, he made the valiant effort to lie. For once, he couldn't seem to force the usual 'we're all right; everything is all right' conviction into his voice and given that his act hinged on that, it sort of fell apart from there. The sand kept catching against his cracked lips, hanging there like the sweat drying on his face. "Can you move?"
Lenalee's mouth turned sharply upwards for a minute. Without being able to see the look in her eyes, the smirk was a ghoulish imitation of a smile. Between the blood and her gaunt cheeks, Allen could have sworn it was a gash spanning her face, not a grin. "No," she said, flexing her fingers a little to demonstrate. Then she went quiet and her entire expression vanished. "You're lying. I saw the explosion, Allen—I saw the blood."
Slowly, his smile faded, too. "I suppose that's true," he murmured. It wasn't as if he could deny it. His left hand was curled around the seeping wound in his stomach, a white glove pressed against a red tear as if that would somehow keep everything inside. A lilting voice in the back of his head compared the feeling to being impaled upon his own sword. Shut up, he thought, halfheartedly.
Her voice barely rising over the hiss of waves, Lenalee soldiered on. "Why do you always do that, Allen? You're not indestructible, so why do you try and act like you are?"
And because he was caught in the ebb and flow of his consciousness versus the Fourteenth's, Allen breathed, "The same reason you force yourself to try harder," and felt no remorse. Then he gave a weak laugh to try and cover it up, though it sounded awful and hurt even worse.
"Well, Lavi will probably get here soon," he said, forcing optimism. "And once we get back home, I'm sure everything... everyone will be all right. I'll probably be fine after some food and rest, so don't worry about me, Lenalee."
He'd said 'probably' twice. There was no way in hell she would believe him. Lenalee made a vague sound that only backed his suspicion and tilted her head, until he couldn't even see her mouth or—as he figured—the way she had to purse it to keep herself from crying. He hated how things had gotten to the point where they knew each other too well.
As the silence stretched, her golem crackled. It had given out shortly after she did, cutting contact with their last living allies, and now twitched amongst the sand dunes, occasionally sparking when the tide lapped at its circuits. Despite the hollow silence that loomed over them like a vulture, Allen felt a little relief. Listening to Lavi's easygoing reassurances hadn't been as comforting as he'd hoped when all he could really pay attention to was the anxious 'this wasn't supposed to happen' hiding underneath. Such poorly disguised concern coming from him of all people made him wonder exactly how serious their situation was; whether help was as close by as Lavi kept assuring him it was, or if Komui had actually been telling the truth when he said the Akuma attack in town had been dealt with.
"When was the last time you watched a sunset?"
The suddenness of her question made him blink. "Ah? Well, I don't remember, honestly..." It felt strange admitting it, when he'd expected to have an answer on hand: 'Last night, Lenalee. I watched the sun set last night.' Hadn't he?
Lenalee shifted slightly, painfully. "Watch it with me."
Allen licked his lips and glanced down. The sun was little more than a sliver above the glittering water, sending a narrow beam of light across the waves. Sanctity or not, all they had was the light, he thought, so he flicked his eyes back up to her mouth and returned her horrid smile. "Well, since we're here," he said dryly. There was a lot of Noah in his voice. Even still, Lenalee kept breathing.
He lifted his right hand from where it lay, palm up, on the beach and touched it gingerly to hers. It took too much effort to do, but he did it anyway, releasing a tight exhalation through clenched teeth. The tips of their fingers curled over one another and he said nothing about the choked noise she made at the touch.
"You're such an idiot sometimes."
"...I know." The words rang hollow, but they still made him feel a little better.