This is the result of a recent thought experiment. You may even view this as some sort of pilot chapter, posted to see whether or not there is any significant amount of interest in it. If not, then this will remain as a one-shot posted for the sake of my own amusement. Cheers.
Disclaimer: I obviously don't own DGM. Also, a part of the Musician's song (semi-faithfully translated) is also featured in this chapter. Obviously, that is not mine either (a pity, truly).
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And So…
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He lay on his side on the cold hard ground. It had recently been disturbed, and the bared soil beneath it was cold against his bare cheek, cooling him down in coordination with the elements whilst his own warmth – or at least what little remained of it – seeped into them in return, straining the ground in dark crimson. The warmth of his breath greeting the cool air gave rise to small clouds of mist before the air claimed the warmth for itself just like the ground slowly – albeit greedily – sucked up precious life through smaller cracks while his body lay broken – worthless and discarded – waiting for the seemingly inevitable as blood continued to leak – more sluggishly now – from his body, riddled with wounds of greater or lesser severity. Then again, the severity mattered little to him; by all means, he should already have lost more than enough blood to perish, and if the blood loss did not get to him first, the exposure to the elements would, with temperatures dropping beneath the level of freezing.
Releasing a shuddering breath, he cracked his eyes – or was it his eye now? He was not quite certain as to which – open. His reward consisted of a blurry outline of a world he had always hated and a searing pain confirming what he had already come to terms with. The pain however was nothing like it had been initially; initially, he had been immersed in agony. Now, he no longer writhed. Numbness crept upon him, and with it, a strange sense of peace. Admittedly, he had never really had all that much to do with people – well, no more than absolutely necessary anyway – but if he recalled things correctly, he had heard from somewhere that death was cold. Then again, with him lying on his side, ultimately bleeding out, the question as to whether this recollection could be trusted was highly debatable.
His eyebrows furrowed, and with the action, he received a painful reminder of it being a generally stupid idea. Then again, however distant compared to earlier, the pain did keep him awake and reasonably lucid, which should have been a good thing, but for some reason was not.
Death was not the problem; death had never been the problem. It was the waiting part and the slowness of it that was agonising, because even with all the things that had gone down perhaps hours prior to him lying there bleeding out, he wanted it over with quickly, so that he could at once head off to wherever people headed once they were no more.
As something cold fell from above and landed on his cheek, he sucked in a breath through his nostrils, lifting his head slightly; it sounded remarkably much like a sob, but he was not crying – not anymore at any rate. Vaguely he wondered whether this could possibly have been what Mana had meant back then. He stared blearily at his arms as one – his right – lay folded against his chest, him having since long lost feeling in it and it in turn having abandoned its quest to keep the blood from flowing freely, and his other – his left – lay straightened on the ground as if either reaching for something unknown or as if expecting a gift of some sort, presenting his strange palm to the mourning skies.
A single flake of snow fell down from above and into it, melting shortly after impact.
His left arm – limp and useless – had always been warmer than the rest of him. With it being red and scaly and with a weakly glowing cross imbedded into his palm, he occasionally wondered why he even considered it a part of his body when it obviously did not listen to him. Even once it had moved – at long last – it had failed to listen; it had contradicted his will entirely, slashing through his intended future before once again becoming useless as his own body crumbled from the wounds inflicted upon it. He had stayed on the ground since, not really feeling any particular need to get up. Without Mana, he was as good as dead anyway, and he would rather have it sooner than later if he was able to choose.
As if somehow sensing his intentions, the fingertips of that supposedly unusable arm of his gave a noticeable twitch. For whichever reason, this caused a bleak – but undeniably wry – smile to cross his face as he sunk back into a haze of quietly falling snow and of himself stumbling on top of top soil hardened by the cold.
"Is he dead?"
His head was back against the ground, cold earth against the drying blood covering most of the left part of his face, but he was also somewhere else; reliving another day of softly falling snow.
"He's dead."
No. He released another shuddering breath, oddly relaxed despite it all. Not yet.
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And so, the boy fell into a deep sleep…
Amongst the grey ashes, the flames breathed…
One by one, swelling onto that lovely face…
Thousands of dreams, trickling back to earth…
Dreams…
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A single silver-grey eye cracked back open and a soft exhalation brought about another cloud of mist. Dreams?
A man in black – with long flaming hair – stood over him.
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Leafless trees, with branches like fingers seeking to grasp the skies…
A madman – a clown – digging a hole in the ground before gently laying an ageing dog to rest there…
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Red averted his eyes from the spectacle; he had already seen enough. "He's covered in bruises," he said, and when the clown did not appear to have any notion of shutting him up, he went on, his voice frank as he spoke. "Cosimo probably did it, because the audience likes you more than him. He hates that, when people outdo him. He's got no talent, except when it comes to things like this…"
The clown said nothing, filling the makeshift grave with soil, covering the carcass entirely and giving the pile an almost affectionate pat before placing a small star-patterned ball on top of it. "He was an old dog," the clown finally said, brushing lingering soil from his palms. "He wouldn't have lived for much longer anyway, so it's alright."
He huffed, because it obviously wasn't. "You're not getting revenge?"
It was a meaningless question, because in the end, revenge was meaningless – at least if the person one tried to get even with could get hold of and beat one senseless all over again.
"If I did that, I'd get thrown out of here and wouldn't get paid," the clown quipped light-heartedly. "I'm a newcomer after all… After tomorrow, I'll head somewhere new…"
"I see." He didn't care; it had nothing to do with him.
"So, who are you anyway?"
Yet another meaningless question.
"I do odd jobs around here. I brought you food the other day." He was no one; a dirty brat of little or no value, with dirty reddish hair and a slightly deformed reddish arm, scaly and all.
"I have a bad memory for faces," the clown readily admitted, and Red let out a somewhat irritated huff, turning on his heel. However, before he was able to make himself brief, the clown seemed to pay renewed attention to his state of being. "Oh my! You're covered in bruises too, aren't you?"
When hands reached for him, he naturally startled, but at the noticeable softening of the clown's facial expression, he found himself staying his ground even though his instincts were telling him runrunrunrun. Moments later, he found himself protesting against a finger smearing old-man spit onto his bruised cheek, insisting it was gross whilst the clown insisted it was disinfectant. At the time, the meaning of this word had not been quite apparent to him, but with him scooting away from the supposedly deranged spit-smearing maniac, he hardly felt the need to ask.
"Did Cosimo beat you up?" the clown asked, and Red told him to shut up, still fervently trying to get rid of the spit smeared onto his cheek. "Don't you have any friends?"
He bristled slightly, but refrained from hitting the man, because highly irritating qualities aside, the clown hardly deserved bearing the brunt of his frustrated anger at his own situation. "When I grow up… I'm getting out of here as soon as I'm strong enough, so I don't need friends," he said, averting his eyes once more only to level the other with an irritated glare as the other started making faces at him, seemingly seeking to entice him to laugh. "And I hate clowns."
The clown ceased his clowning and remained in a crouched position, eyeing him a bit thoughtfully. "Well, I hate crowds and children who don't laugh."
Red snorted inwardly. Then, he directed his eyes towards the covered grave of the man's once faithful companion. "Aren't you gonna cry?" he asked, not really realising why he felt this sudden need to know. "He lived with you for a long time, didn't he? Aren't you sad?"
"I'm so sad that I could die, but I can't cry," the clown explained, expression wistful and a bit sad. "Maybe my tears have all dried up. They just won't come."
"What's up with that?" Red found himself asking, wary giving way to childish and childlike curiosity. "What was his name? He licked my hand yesterday. His tongue was warm…"
The clown levelled him with a look, and he flushed involuntarily. Admittedly, he was a child – seven perhaps, give or take a few months or years – but there was still something in the look that he was given that made him want to avert his eyes; that made him want to disappear right then and there, and he turned on his heel and did just that, stopping only once he was at a reasonable distance and out of sight and stopping only because he felt something on his face. The realisation that he was actually crying only served to frustrate him even further, and he hid himself away in a space where he knew he was unlikely to be bothered, curling up and breathing calmly, willing the tears away.
It could have been minutes or hours, but in either case, the mad clown was nowhere to be found once Red left his temporary shelter, no doubt having taken the opportunity to move on now that there was nothing keeping him there anymore. Red envied this, and a part of him briefly entertained the thought of leaving and maybe catching up, but he steeled himself, because such dreams were dangerous and led nowhere except further down the drain.
He stood before the grave of Allen the Dog, eyes levelling on the ball laid out on top of the makeshift grave. Then – unable to escape a sudden notion of having been left behind – he kicked it, sending it flying.
He tried to persevere; he tried to forget. All in all, he lasted another three months, and once he ran, he did so with a concussion, a fractured rib and without looking back, ending up as a street kid in London, as it had been the closest city to him at the time. In hindsight, it had probably been a stupid thing to do. Then again, in hindsight, it had probably been just about the only thing he could have done lest he wanted to get himself killed, seeing that Cosimo had made that part pretty clear to him.
Admittedly, at the time, he started out as injured and only had one usable arm, but he had good instincts and quite a bit of strength once he grew desperate enough. His encounters – and eventual confrontations – with the other kids of the street were few and far in-between, with them avoiding each other and each other's territory whenever possible, even though Red hardly had much of a territory of his own, spending his time drifting. Once, he had been ambushed by a group of slightly older kids, and it was after that whole affair that some kids took to calling him 'the Dog', because apparently, he fought like one. He could practically taste the irony of it.
Two years later – as he passed a crowded plaza looking for pockets to pick – he found himself face to face with an eerily familiar mad clown who despite his allegedly bad memory for faces somehow managed to not only recognise him – face lighting up like some bloody Christmas decoration – but also managed to track him down amongst the winding back alleys and corner him to the boot – him, who knew those alleys like the back of his hand, be it right or left.
The clown – then without his usual clownish attire and in a more normal albeit somewhat worn-out – had naturally had his work cut out for him, because his canine nickname aside, Red could also fight like a feral cat. Ultimately, Mana – such was the name of the clown, Mana Walker – had resorted to bribing, and despite the insistence of his instincts, Red had accepted the bribes, reasoning that the other would probably go away again soon anyway, and he did, but he dragged Red along.
Though initially wary and a bit unwilling, the lack of a need for him to scavenge or steal to get enough food to last the day was what had him staying, seeing that the madman – that Mana Walker – merely sought company and seemed to have no problem performing to earn enough money for the both of them.
It was hardly a luxurious life, but from all the ones he had known up until that point, it was practically paradise. As such, he should have known better than to think that it would last long.
Perhaps a little more than a year later, on Christmas Eve of all eves of the year, Mana was the one dead in the ground and the newly dubbed Allen – formerly Red – was the one standing by the gravesite, feeling so unbelievably lost and hollow that he had not been quite sure as to what to make of himself.
Fortunately – or rather, unfortunately, all things considered – someone who could possibly have been the Devil himself turned up to offer up helpful advice as to what Allen should make of himself. "All you need to do is to call out. Call out to him, and I will revive Mana Walker~"
In hindsight, he had to wonder just what on earth had possessed him to even attempt such a thing.
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"How dare you?!"
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"How dare you turn me into an akuma?!"
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"I curse you!"
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"I curse you, Allen Walker!"
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It had been a stupid decision, and he carries the reminder of that engraved on his face.
At fifteen, he is still a dirty brat of little or no value – well, according to Cross Marian at any rate – but his hair is no longer reddish, having bled white in the time immediately following his foolish attempt, a time he himself remembers very little of.
After almost four years on the road with Cross – with the exorcist general renowned for his loose morals, womanising, twisted personality and ridiculous drinking and spending habits – he is still a bit on the scrawny side, but doing better than ever since he now has two functional arms at his disposal, one of which is his Innocence, which has recently turned black. Cross – who in general wants very little to do with dirty brats of little or no value – gets this wry look when he first bears eyes upon the new shape of it whilst Allen has it invocated, before finally barking at Allen to stop clowning around and to hurry up and finish up the rest of the akuma if he wants to continue sleeping with a roof over his head.
Not particularly minding sleeping beneath the stars, Allen ignores him, but when the rebound finally hits and he blacks out, he wakes up back in bed with Timcanpy fussing over him and Cross nowhere to be found. Admittedly, the latter is hardly unusual – what is unusual is rather the massive tray abundant with various foods that is stashed on a table at the room's farther end. Directing his attention back towards Timcanpy, Allen raises an eyebrow in question.
"You're even more useless than usual when you're hungry," he hears Cross say, voice relayed by the golden golem's recording.
Allen snorts openly, sliding off of the bed. Feet impacting on the cold marble floor beneath him, a shiver runs through him, but he stands up without much difficulty and makes his way over, snatching whichever dish appears the most appetising. Judging from the great degree of variation as well as on the seeming quality of the raw ingredients, Allen wagers that Cross' new sponsor has to be someone high-ranking, or at least someone wealthy enough to sustain a similar lifestyle. Admittedly, India is far cry from what he would consider ideal in terms of climate, but the cuisine on the other and along with the abundance of his portions makes it his favourite thus far.
"Next time, I'll just dump you into the river and finally be rid of you," Cross' voice promises, and Allen calmly discards it as a mostly empty threat, taking another bite out of a piece of chicken.
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"It was a stupid thing to do… the thing that you did."
He sits on the side of a bed, exhausted even though he has probably slept for a long time, staring unblinkingly at the only partially familiar room around him. "I know," he finally answers, and his voice is quiet, a testament to his weariness. "I just… thought it would have been nice if we could stay together… for some time still."
"He would have killed you."
He closes his eyes; after all this time spent in darkness, light still stings in them. "I know."
"He would have worn your skin."
He keeps his eyes closed, but dips his head slightly. "I know."
A disdainful scoff is heard. "You really don't have a shred of self-preservation, do you?"
He opens his eyes again, eyes unwavering. "I'm still here, am I not?"
Whether this is a sarcastic statement on his part or a plea for reassurance eludes him.
"You're only here because your Innocence decided your life was worth saving," Cross mutters, tinkering with whichever. "The reason for it doing such a thing in the first place however is beyond me."
Allen closes his eyes again. There is a word at the very edge of his tongue – a four-letter word beginning with the letter L – but he does not utter it, delaying the inevitable confrontation.
"It's a parasite, right?" he says instead, lying down onto his side and curling up. "If so, then it would be troubled if its host died too early in the game…"
Again, Cross scoffs at him without even sparing him a look. "There are other potential hosts. In the end, no one is irreplaceable."
"Perhaps." Allen lets his head fall to rest against the mattress, staring at the man's back. "Then again, perhaps not."
The exorcist general does not pause.
Allen feels this sudden urge to throw something at him, but knows better. Instead, he decides to experiment, and the name he can recall overhearing in his reoccurring dreams slips past his lips before he can reconsider the wisdom of it. "Neah."
The man pauses, but does not turn around.
Allen rolls onto his back, staring impassively at the ceiling. "It rings a bell, doesn't it?"
"And if it does, you imbecile?"
He rolls over onto his other side so that he has his back to Cross, contemplating the matter briefly before finally coming to a decision. "No, it's nothing…" he decides. "Nothing overly important at any rate…"
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Lying on top of the bed, he opens his eyes, because he has both of them back now. One of them is connected with the curse – with the curse Mana put on him – and occasionally, whenever there are akuma nearby, he hears voices – screams too, of souls in agony. He sees them too – the souls – and he no longer averts his eyes because he needs to see them; he needs to be reminded. Cross scoffs at him for doing that, barking at him not to linger any longer than necessary; not to develop any unnecessary attachments. Allen tells Cross to mind his own business.
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Silver-grey eyes – indifferent yet so full of emotions – shift their attention, levelling on the open doorway as he catches the echoing sounds of his mentor's footsteps. Even now, he steadfastly refuses to refer to the other as his master; ultimately, he is but a stray without a master, staying with the man only because it had been a beneficial agreement for them both. At one point in time, Cross might have tested the limits of his patience – much like Allen regularly tested his – and done so by dumping a load of debts on him, expecting him to pay up.
The first time around, Allen – having been made privy to the general contents – had picked up the throwing knife he had been practicing with earlier and thrown it in Cross' general direction. The second time, he put that very same knife against his own throat and the third time around, he had merely shrugged, grabbing hold of a colourful shawl from a nearby hanger and draping it over his head and shoulders, announcing that he would be off to sell himself on the street, and for whichever reason, the third time had been the last.
Then again, after that, Allen had begun honing his poker skills – mostly his skills in cheating – to get some additional pocket money which could be put into an emergency budget whenever Cross' sponsorship came to an end, keeping them afloat until Cross found some other rich widow to seduce. Allen does it partially because there is easy money to make and partially because there is an undeniable thrill in doing so. In the past as well as in the present, some might have accused him of having a twisted personality, and in the past as well as in the present, he would naturally blame it all on Cross being a lousy role model and an even worse influence.
The footsteps come to a stop. Cross stands in the doorway, leaning lazily against it.
"Is it time?" Allen asks, his eyes once again resting on the vaulted ceiling.
He is answered by the sound of a glass bottle being slammed firmly onto a table, and his attention automatically flickers towards it. Catching sight of the two cups there, his eyebrows furrow. He sits himself up, frowning openly now. "Cross… really?"
Alcohol really isn't his thing, and he is hardly even old enough to drink it, much less hold it. However, Cross pours him a glass – insisting – and Allen snorts, accepting the small cup. Silver-grey eyes level on the bright red liquid swimming in it. Then, he shoots his mentor of four years a disdainful glare. "I know this kind of thing isn't your way of doing things… but, just to sate my curiosity… what did you put in it?"
"It's either that or a hammer blow to the head," Cross informs him, downing the contents held in his own cup. "One or the other."
Allen suppresses the urge to roll his eyes at this, levelling his eyes on the cup anew. Then, he raises it in a mockery of a toast. "To chaos," he says, and downs the thing.
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