A/n: I got a review from Uniasus about how "brilliant" Signs was and how sad it was that I didn't have any more fics like it, so I decided to make that not such a sad fact! So, Voila! I give you another character-study-introspective-first-person-thing. I put time and effort and, most of all, thought into this, so please take the time to tell me how I did in a review!
And, an advance notice: It's not called Untitled because I couldn't think of a title. There's a reason.
Warning: vague, situational spoilers for recent chapters. Also, this is unbeta-ed and thus filled with typos and other such unsavory stuff.
Disclaimer: I don't claim to own anything. -man is something far to amazing and complex for me to have dreamed up. So, nobody sue me. I'm a poor student with nothing of value.
Note: This is the sequel to another fic of mine, Signs. You don't have to read Signs to get this, but it would be appreciated.
Untitled
—
A blank book; crisp, clean, off-white pages, an unmarked cover, not a drop of ink to mar the ubiquity. Walker spends hours every day carefully examining each and every blank page, glaring at them as though they have personally slighted him. As though they are the cause of his anguish.
Only once the Sun drifts across the sky and dips into the water is there ink on those pages, bars and blocks. Shadows telling of a violent story that cannot be heard, warnings of darkness to come.
The Sun vanishes from sight and the ink fills the page, an ocean of its own. The shadows consume the room, the book, and him.
—
Perhaps it is for the best. He would only despise a gilded cage more than this one. Sugar-coated lies are the last thing he wants right now. After all, they're what got him here in the first place.
He will not speak of Mana. Of Cross. The men who betrayed him. Of me.
The empty journal I gave him remains as such. He has not been permitted a pen. And, though I have offered to write from the hall, he does not reply. So, the pages remain as such. Empty. Blank. Unmarked. The cover a telling clue of what doesn't lie between the pages.
Lonely company does Timcanpy make. Lonelier company do I make. But the loneliest marker of all is the blank book, achingly silent.
—
The Sun rises and sets once more, dyeing the room with the ink he cannot direct.
This cold limbo as the clock counts down. Colder stone beneath my boots. Ice in his eyes. A dim fire beneath the surface, deceptively blue as the frozen sky. My hands ache being in that frigid room. A hollowness in my chest from where I cast away my heart.
I feel strangely slighted. As though I, the prideful Crow, have been demoted to mangy dog. But as he looks me right in the eye, my chest burns with an emotion I cannot name. He does not speak, but his words hang in the air nonetheless.
It is I, not Mana, not Cross, not the Order, who has put him here. Condemned him for a crime he has not yet committed. For a crime he cannot prevent. For his own approaching death.
But such is not true. He has put himself here. I know it. He made a mistake. He made many mistakes. They have accumulated to the point where ignorance is no longer an acceptable excuse. He is a mistake.
I know this. I know it well.
But the ache only permeates deeper into my skin, muscle, bone. Down to the vacant cavity in my chest that once housed a vulnerable heart.
I know it.
—
Night is eerily quiet. He does not call out, cry, whimper, or despair in his sleep any longer. He lies on stone, silent.
A strange sort of… longing thrums through me. I don't understand it. But it feels almost familiar, though, I can't remember why.
Vacant, the book rests alone on the floor. Its owner is eerily similar. Blank. Silent.
No more does he ramble on about the inane, leave open doors or candles alight as he exits with the sole goal of aggravating me. No more does he make my life harder, overcomplicate my job. No more does he argue.
I should be relieved, if not exactly happy. Yet I'm not. And I don't know why.
Every morning that he wakes, I offer again to fill the blank pages for him. Every morning he does not respond, gazes morosely at the bound stack of empty paper as though Armageddon is within them. Every morning I feel an alien sense of loss, a growing hollowness, a pervasive ache.
I do not understand this. I do not know this. And I am filled with a foreign fear, one that I cannot explain.
—
It's unbefitting of the noble Crow, but I am floundering. Treading water with no shoreline in sight. I do not know this man. This cold, blank man. I know a masked child, ever-smiling, not this glacial, stoic man. This man who is to die and knows it. The child that was ready to fight isn't here. He's already a casualty to this war betwixt life and the 14th.
And I finally understand. I miss him. That child. That familiar, stupidly endearing child. The boy who would steal all my cakes and inhale them before I could even begin to reprimand him. The boy who I was ready to throttle one too many times.
Not this man that I am ready to not only throttle but choke the life out of. Still his silently beating heart. Halt his icy breathing. This man that I don't know and am burning to kill.
He does not bear the mask I hated so much but yearn for, but instead this cold façade of the boy I miss. The boy who has been starved out.
—
I cannot stand it any longer. The Order does not care for this child. He will die, at this rate. This infuriating boy that I so miss. The others are worried but don't truly understand just how dire Walker's situation is. But, still. If I cannot get through to him, if I cannot reawaken that child, then perhaps they can.
—
And there he is. Allen. Alive. Masked. Wonderfully masked.
—
No more.
Screams of pain. His Innocence splits and rips and tears. Such violence gives birth to soft, ethereal feathers. The irony grips me in confused hysteria for a moment before I act on instinct.
Instinct is too slow. The Cardinal is something else, something I don't know. And as I am consumed by the pain that just wracked Allen, I wonder at just how little I do know. I, Inspector Link, Crow extraordinaire. I am ignorant. My theories, out the window. Flimsy notes to be destroyed by the rain. I know nothing. And now I will vanish just as Walker will, but strangely, strangely, I am preceding him. Something I had not predicted. This violent death in which I join them, my beloved family gone, maybe. Hopefully.
But I am a shadow on the wall. An unseen blot of ink, staining the floor. Untitled. And who will remember a blank book other than he who is becoming one?
Warning: the following author's note contains spoilers.
a/n: This isn't as good as I was hoping it to be (and it's a lot shorter than I thought it'd be), but I'm happy (I guess). I was pissed to high hell that Link betrayed Allen and then died. PISSED. So I wondered how he really handled Allen being locked up in that dungeon for the first few days/weeks, condemned for something over which he had absolutely no control and just sitting there in despair, refusing all but water. Link had to have been consumed with guilt and confusion over whether he'd made the right decision.
Explanations if you got confused:
-If you couldn't figure it out from my vague wording, I had Link give Allen a blank journal to fill with his last words so that he wouldn't be forever forgotten. Allen, -however, saw it only as a prophecy of what was to come: his vanishing to be replaced by the 14th. It's sad, but, I figured, accurate for his character. He's in hopeless despair at that point and seeing the bad in everything. He didn't even trust the food!
-That last scene was Link's death, if you didn't get that either. I never really outright said it so I figure some of you readers might not have understood it.
-Every time I was talking about "ink", I was talking about shadows.
-Link compared Allen to the blank journal in the beginning and realized that he was one as well in the end.
Just ask if anything still went completely over your head. I wrote this in one run so it's not quite as concise as Signs. Which is sad. It'll get better-ified eventually. Still, make sure you review. I want to know how I did on this first draft (it'll get improved later).
Also, one glorious reviewer (YellowXelia) pointed out that Central's people "found" him and that there's a chance for us Link fanatics that he may yet still be alive! So, if that does turn out to be the case, you may possibly see another sequel someday. Or, if it turns out that he really is dead dead, I'll make a sequel just to spite Hoshino. I'll just have to wait and see.
On another note, I am currently revamping Signs. I noticed a lot of mistakes and wasn't really happy with some of its aspects. It's my crowning achievement, so it should shine like the jewel it is. (Don't expect the revamped version for a while, though. I'm a very slow writer.)