Disclaimer: I make no claim to -Man, its characters or setting and other affiliated things; this is a work of fanfiction for non-profit
Three Seeds
Feneris
It had been so unassuming at first.
At dinner that night, his sister Lenalee had mentioned she had met someone new at school. He had thought nothing of it.
Then it occurred to him that the person might be a boy, and he promptly panicked. It had taken half and hour for Lenalee to reassure him that: yes, while he was a boy, she had just met him, and had no intention of running off and getting married.
A relief to be sure, but it was his solemn duty to protect his precious sister!
Lenalee had rolled her eyes, at his antics and gone to work on her homework.
xXx
The boy had showed at the door the next morning. Stark white hair, pale complexion, light blue eyes, and a strangle scar across his face.
He had greeted the boy, with a loaded shotgun clenched in his hand.
"Allen Walker," the boy had introduced himself as. "Lenalee and I were going to walk to school together."
It was a tense moment to be sure; until Lenalee promptly defused the situation with a swift kick to the back of his head and an exasperated warning to stop trying to scare off her friends.
He had agreed readily, politely waiting until they both had turned the corner out of sigh, before calling the police and requesting a background check on Allen Walker.
xXx
Work had been the same as it had been yesterday. He puttered around his office dabbling with various dangerous and deadly things, and escaping paperwork by sleeping through the deadlines for it.
For an exorcist office that was funded by the Vatican, things could be really slow sometimes. Although, something had gotten them riled up today, damned if he knew what it was. He supposed, considering it was an exorcist office, that it meant there was a ghost running around.
He had laughed to himself at the idea, until a horrible revelation had come to him.
"What if Allen Walker was a ghost trying to spirit his sister away!"
Lenalee had not been amused when he splashed the boy with holy water and pelted him with rice.
xXx
Things had settled into a routine. The boy would show up every morning, and both him and Lenalee would walk to school together. He always made sure that both he and Mr. Shotgun were there to see them off.
Just in case the boy happened to be getting any ideas.
His friend at the police station had called him as well, asking if he had either gotten his calendars mixed up and thought it was April Fools Day, or whether Lenalee made a new friend. In either case Allen Walker did not show up on police databanks, which either meant the boy had been erased from the database, or, more likely, the boy did not have a criminal record and he was simply Overreacting.
A preposterous notion of course.
He then asked if the police could check some of the more mundane databanks before hanging up.
xXx
Work was not the same as it was yesterday. A frantic aura hung in the air as people ran about doing god knows what. His co-workers had stared at him in disbelief when he had asked them what was going on. Apparently, as Supervisor, he was supposed to know this! It was on the document he was supposed to have signed!
He eventually managed to wheedle the information out of them. Apparently there WAS a ghost hanging around. But, that was basically all that they knew. That there was a very powerful ghost walking among the living.
His attempt to drive Allen Walker away with and clove of garlic and a line of salt did not prove successful.
xXx
Things were getting worse. He was seeing more of the boy now. Lenalee would often invite him in, and they would both work on their homework together.
He was not blind, although many of his co-workers would say he had the danger-sense of a spruce grouse. He knew what was going on. Unfortunately it was still illegal for him to shoot his sister's potential boyfriend.
xXx
The pomegranate had been especially puzzling. He had merely found it sitting on the kitchen table one day. Lenalee told him that Allen had given it to her at school.
As soon as her back was turned, he had buried it under the hydrangeas in the backyard.
You never know what the boy might have done to it.
xXx
Things at work had both cooled down and heated up. Apparently they had had no luck tracking the rouge ghost, due to a distinct lack of any supernatural activity that marked a ghost's presence. Some thought that it might merely be a case of the ghost not realizing it was dead and was continuing to act as it had in life; thus it was not as great of an emergency as was first thought. The rest though the ghost was merely bidding it's time before doing something big.
He thought they were spending too much time in the office.
When he got home, he noticed the hydrangeas in the backyard had withered and died.
xXx
When Lenalee brought home another pomegranate, he quickly buried it in the backyard; under the lilacs this time.
They were dead and barren within a week.
He had tried to warn Lenalee. She simply told him he likely got the fertilizer and the weed killer mixed up again.
When he next saw Allen Walker, he had attempted to stab the boy with a crucifix.
xXx
He was at work when the police got back to him. In truth, he had forgotten all about the background check, and had simply assumed that they had found nothing, like they had the first time.
The officer had bluntly asked if he had been spending too much time cooped up in his office.
They had found something this time, several things in fact. An old police file concerning an abandonment case, an adoption record, a transfer of custody due to the death of a guardian and a death certificate.
Allen Walker had been attacked outside the local cemetery and perished in the hospital. The boy had been dead for little over a year.
He left the phone dangling off the hook as he ran for the car.
xXx
The door was unlocked when he skidded into the driveway. Lenalee's keys were hanging on the hook and her shoes were placed by the door. Her backpack was lying on the floor and her science homework was spread out on the table. Two halves of a pomegranate were sitting in a bowl. Only three seeds had been eaten.
Lenalee was gone.
It was only after he had made a frantic call to the police that he found the note. It was nothing noticeable; a message written in pen on a torn sheet of lined paper sitting amongst the scattered science notes. It was something he had expected to be written on the walls with blood.
"She's Mine Now."Was all it said.
Fins
Authors Note: I have decided to do a little change with my writing, after numerous epic fics being written and then abandoned half-way, I decided to try writing a One-shot.
The idea came about when I was thinking about the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades. Particularly the part where Persephone tries herself to the underworld by eating three seeds from a pomegranate grown in the lands of the dead.
So, how was it? Good, bad, confusing? Constructive criticism is essential!