Disclaimer: I do not own DGM, despite the fact that if I did, Hoshino Katsura would actually update.
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"Mana!"
The child's scream pierced the night, and all of his senses suddenly exploded. The flames roared in his ears, the scent of charred flesh and ash enveloped his nostrils, and Allen could feel his own skin beginning to blister and peel. Red and orange and yellow flickered everywhere, but all he could do was stare fixedly in front of him, unbelieving.
The only man who had ever loved him, the only person who would care for a scrawny, starving "demon-child," the only thing Allen had ever cared about besides himself was gone. Nothing more than a smoldering pile of flesh and bone, a body charred almost beyond recognition.
Something broke inside him, then, and the five years Mana had spent teaching him morals and the value of kindness vanished. Allen's early survival instincts took over and he finally took action. Leaping blindly over the blackening remains of what was once his father figure, Allen tore out of the bedroom door and into the second floor hallway. The flames were hotter here, and the smoke barreled through the corridor like it was a chimney. Coughing, Allen crouched down and scrambled toward the stairs, trying to get there before the flames ate away the support. He bolted down the steps three at a time, and was only feet away from solid ground when the staircase finally gave way, unable to stand the weight of even a small child on its weakened timbers. Reaching desperately forward, Allen fell screaming amongst a pile of burning wood into the dark foundations of the house.
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The first thing that he was aware of when he awoke was pain. Every fire that had ever burned in the world had concentrated into his left arm, and Allen almost passed out again from the sheer agony. Close on the heels of the pain, though, was a paralyzing fear: the fear of "I don't know where I am," and "What happened to me?" and "I'm not okay."
Tears squeezed out of his tightly clenched eyes, and ran in sooty streaks down the sides of his face. Nothing was okay anymore, he wasn't okay, this wasn't supposed to happen! Allen was suddenly filled with an unquenchable rage, a desire to fight and hurt and kill whoever made this happen, whoever didn't prevent it, whoever didn't save Mana. Strengthening his resolve and screwing his eyes even tighter shut, Allen pulled himself into a sitting position.
He couldn't suppress the agonized moan that ripped its way out of his throat. He was seriously injured, at least in his left arm, probably more. Before he could embark on any heated revenge, Allen needed to stay alive. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes for the first time.
Blackness was all he saw at first, and for a moment he thought he was blind and panicked. A sharp pain shot through his arm when he tried to move, and it cleared his mind, at least a little. Allen realized that the blackness he saw was just soot, and the moonless night kept everything shrouded in darkness. Something was wrong with that and it took him a few minutes to puzzle out what it was.
Allen had fallen inside the house. He shouldn't be able to tell what kind of moon was out that night. With a slow, growing horror, Allen tilted his head back and looked at the stars, twinkling madly above him.
The house was utterly gone. Burned literally to the ground, and no one was there to pull him out of the ashes. The tears began again as he stared up at the sky. Mana had told him once that stars twinkle the brightest in the cities, because cities gave off heat, and the heat rose through the air and made the light waver. The warped light then reached their eyes, but because there was so little light that could reach them from the stars, it just shifted a little bit, and gave the stars the illusion of twinkling.
"It's ironic," Mana had said, "that the very places that destroy our beautiful nature can also create something so naturally beautiful."
"Mana…" Allen's young voice cracked. He remembered all of it now, remembered seeing the smoke from the market six streets away, remembered standing in front of the house, seeing flames bursting through the upper-story windows, remembered dropping the groceries and pushing through the crowd, remembered the screams of people trying to stop him from running into the burning building. He remembered finding the remnants of his caregiver, remembered the pain, remembered falling through the staircase.
The boiling rage bled out of him, leaving him an empty shell. He had nothing left but his name, Allen. The name a lonely, retired circus performer had bestowed on the starving, forsaken orphan on his doorstep. His only purpose now was to keep living, to make sure that this body of his carried on that name until it stopped functioning. He was alive now, or mostly alive, and he was determined to stay that way.
The first thing to do, then, was discover how close to death he really was. Immediately Allen could tell he was dangerously dehydrated. His throat was parched, and he was light-headed just from sitting up. Looking over himself carefully, he registered a number of mild burns on his legs and torso, the scrapes from his fall, and then there was his arm. His left side was a ghastly red, with the skin already blistering over his heart and up to his shoulder. It all got much worse as Allen slowly looked down his arm, and it took real mental fortitude not to faint. The upper part of his arm was raw, bleeding and weeping, the flesh torn ragged and raging a furious red. The charring began right above his elbow, and continuing down over his entire arm, even to the very tips of his fingers. It almost didn't register, how bad the injury was, until he was staring down at his black and red fingers, and thinking stupidly, I don't have any fingernails.
That's when he started screaming.
Allen screamed for the physical pain, yes, but also for the mental and emotional agony, for Mana, his dead birth parents, his life on the streets, his lost life with Mana, his bleak future, the fact that no one had cared enough to notice he wasn't dead yet, and for the fact that right there, right then, he was utterly alone in the world.
Allen screamed and sobbed and screamed more, furious tears cleaning his face, until he lost his voice, and even then he just kept screaming silently. As the tears finally dried up, Allen closed his mouth and stared heartlessly at the pre-dawn sky. Time to move, it said, time to get up and get out of this godforsaken place. There was nothing left for him here. Nowhere to come back to, no one to return to. It was time to go.
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A/N: Well, that wasn't so bad, eh? Much better than the other crap I have posted, at least. Just out of my own sick facination, if there was actually a burned/burning body somewhere, would it be a pile of charred bones and singed flesh, or would the fat on the body melt and make everything a bit... gooier? Not meaning to be insensitive, but has anyone seen a cremation?
No matter. Leave a thought if you feel like it. If you don't, leave a thought anyway telling me why not. :)