I haven't been able to get this out of my mind since I first saw Allen's stats. The poor boy keeps losing weight and growing taller - does he eat enough now? Sleep enough? Is he okay? Knowing Hoshino, the answer to all of that is probably 'no'.
Flightless Bird
Who is Allen Walker?
Allen Walker, approximately fifteen years old, Exorcist - parasite type Innocence - and host for the Fourteenth Noah.
When Link receives this assignment those are the only words printed neatly on Walker's file. It is up to Link to fill in the rest, to provide Central with the person behind the name.
What Link finds is a charming teen with gray eyes carefully too wide for their world of lies and death. He is taller than Link by half an inch, enough to warrant some teasing from the Bookman's apprentice, and weighs several pounds less. Walker eats ravenously, hands greedily reaching for any food within reach and even daring to nab Link's when he is not careful enough. The familiarity startles him until he realizes Allen does it to everyone. The intake doesn't seem to match with the output until Link follows Allen into their first battle.
Unlike Arystar Krory and Klaud Nyne, Allen's Innocence demands much more of him. The power it takes to maintain a weapon that rivals the Millennium Earl's is enough to drain him dry and thin, skin sallow around the curve of his ribs and the jut of his hipbones. Allen eats as much as he does not from greed but from necessity - there is not enough food to keep Allen sated and useful in battle too.
Walker goes at length to hide most of his body from view, and not because of the scarred mangled arm his Innocence was at first, according to files.
When Link stares at those photos he can't believe the jagged gory mess displayed there had been Walker's actual arm. The skin is smooth and even now, aside from the vivid blood stained color it is. Unlike the rest of the scars that encircle his body - smooth, at times bumpy, darker than his skin or maybe lighter, they're all so different, there are so many of them - the color of his arm is so unholy as to inspire fear. It's wrong, unnatural and inhumane, and Link jots down the question of how did he get it?
No one knows where Walker came from, not the Bookman or his apprentice and even less Walker himself. Where were you born? I can't remember, Walker had said, smile thin and wan and eyes distant. Only the circus, he said, staring sightless at the towering stack of papers meant to be his personal history, only there's so much missing.
Mother? Father? Siblings? Extended family?
None, none, none, none.
Link pens a neat orphan under Walker's file, followed by his height, his weight, and all the scars he can find. A whole new file is dedicated to that, and Walker is no help when he can't recall half of them.
A blank stare at the dark surface of the skin on the soles of his feet, smooth tiny circles peppered on his heels. I don't remember, Walker lied, but Link recognizes a burn scar when he sees one. He has his own from the years of Crow training. They've mostly faded now into tiny licks of marks, but Walker's are burned deep.
Cigarette burns on the soles of his feet, Link writes, and pauses to let that sink in.
The file soon becomes a useless amalgamation of scars on Walker's body with no history, but the only one he refuses to discuss is the most obvious, jagged and cut over his left eye and glaring for the world to see.
A punishment, Walker had said. Lips thinned and pressed against each other, eyes dark like storm clouds. The smile was still there but in name only, and Link pursed his lips before letting the topic drop.
Who is Mana Walker?
No history, no family, no connections. Who does Allen Walker fight for, then?
Most Exorcists have a reason for selling their soul to the Holy War - a loved one often deceased or close to it. They bend over backwards and break and bleed because they rather it would be them than the one they love.
Who does Allen Walker love?
At first glance, Link thinks everyone. But he pauses, sets his pen aside and watches the ink dry, the filtered morning light a startling serenity compared to the notes it falls on. Behind him Walker shifts, mumbling the words from another nightmare before falling silent. Walker dreams almost always, but most of them are not pleasant.
When Link is forced awake by pained groans and senseless cries and words he jots them down, looking them over in the morning. Scrambled, nigh illegible, ink smeared. He hates loose leaf paper and so he takes these scattered pages and threads them together, adding another page every time Walker's nightmares keep him up. He has yet to make sense of them enough to write up a proper report, but he keeps doing it nonetheless.
Allen Walker looks like he loves everyone but only because he has no one to focus on. It's easy to treat everyone equally when no one is special.
The longer Link observes Walker the easier it is to pick up the differences. Each of the Exorcists is treated differently, but all are handled carefully. Allen's smile is often genuine, and the only times they are faked are when he fights an argument he knows is illogical but is felt most emphatically.
It takes longer than Link is willing to admit to notice when Allen Walker's smile changes for him.
Leverrier's hands are heavy on Link's shoulder, and the cross hanging from his neck is more like the anchor drowning him in the sea than any sort of comfort. Once, being Leverrier's trusted right hand man had burned pride within Link.
Now, he is conflicted.
There were too many days spent watching Allen Walker's smiles, too many mornings waking up to gray eyes sleepy with half remembered dreams, too many nights spent brushing their teeth side by side. There were one too many times Link knelt for Allen Walker and wrapped white gauze around another wound that would scar, his fingers and knuckles stained with Allen's blood.
What Link found is a charming teen with gray eyes carefully too wide for their world of lies and death, and even though the file Link had meticulously amassed is lost to Central's filing cabinets he still remembers every word, every scar, every smile and every lie.
Before, Link had taken the assignment with the honor of knowing he'd been trusted with a weighted secret. Now, Link sees where Leverrier found a man willing to die for him and had used him accordingly.
It had taken Link too long to notice the change in Allen Walker's smile because he'd been mired in denial deep enough to obscure what should've been his job to notice in the first place.
What was honor and trust compared to Allen Walker's outstretched hands and warm gray eyes?
Link is not the only one cruelly awoken from his doubt and denial. Kanda Yuu is there too, blue eyes hard as flint and quick to burn, ready to cut anyone who harms Allen Walker. Link hadn't been there to see Alma Karma's brilliant death, but he'd felt and seen the wake of it, the impact like a meteor striking the earth and forever changing it.
Like in Link, Allen had seen something worth sacrificing for in Kanda and Karma, and he had gone to lengths too great to bear to grant them peace.
But, unlike Link, Kanda is eager and ready to repay the favor. He stands at Allen's side, hand carefully on the hilt of his sword and the other fisted in Allen's jacket.
Kanda pays for Allen's room and food with the clothes off his back and stands guard while Allen dreams. He carefully looks over Allen's scars and wounds and cuts down Allen's lies and white smiles.
What Link had done Kanda now does, and Link wonders if he notices everything else too.
Where the skin is sallow around his ribs and wrists and the inches he's grown, body ready to break like thin waifs of wheat under a summer sun.
Link had watched for two weeks as Allen's body had bore the weight of the Holy War, Innocence burning him clean through and scouring every inch within him. No matter how much Allen gambles and performs there's never enough food to feed him now, not when he's invoking three times for every meal he earns. Allen's clothes swallow him and it's only because its winter that it hasn't become so noticeable.
Link has watched Allen run and run, from the Noah, the Order, the Fourteenth and his dreams, and then his own nightmares. Link has watched countless minutes spent before games of cards and clowning tricks where Allen has leaned too heavily against alley walls and promised himself a warm meal after every task.
But, Link has a new assignment now.
I order you to protect the Fourteenth from any other person.
Whatever happens, do not leave his side.
And yet, when Kanda Yuu's blue eyes glare at him down the cold length of his sword, tip leveled to severe Link clean through if he answers wrong, it's nothing but the truth that Link finally says.
"There's someone I want to save."
A/N: I love Link, really. But he needs to get his butt in gear and become his own person. Allen Walker doesn't deserve regrets.