Cursed
"I'm jealous, Allen. I wish I had your eye."
The words had been spoken aloud to him a few times. Everyone else just gave him the look that spoke it all for them. He never had the right reply for either.
Allen hated his eye as much as he depended on it. He wanted to tell everyone not to be jealous, not to want it. Because Allen wouldn't wish his eye on anyone. Yes, it was helpful. Yes, he never had to guess about whether he was facing an akuma or a human. Yes, it meant he didn't have to distrust everyone he met or even glanced at. That was what everyone knew. What they didn't know, was why it was a curse.
What everyone didn't know, was the pain.
Exorcists were no strangers to pain, and Allen was no exception, but this was different. The pain from his curse was the kind that sometimes left him thanking God for wounds that lasted days after a battle because that pain distracted him from what he normally felt. When wounds were so bad they brought tears to his eyes and screams to his throat he would give a silent sigh of relief at the same time, because at least that pain was better than the curse. At least that pain was only physical. At least it would fade in time.
The curse was completely opposite. It was emotional. It was constant. It was the only pain that had driven him to putting a fist through the wall, to staying up all night just so he wouldn't dream, to crying until he was completely drained, to not thinking twice about sacrificing his own life if it meant he could destroy one more akuma – free one more soul.
The curse ate at him. It drained him. It shredded little pieces off of his heart each day and Allen wondered when he would run out of heart to lose.
He wondered if it wouldn't be a relief to lose it. Because he didn't know how much longer he could last in this fight with his curse. He didn't know how much longer he could deal with the images and the screams and the sobs and the sights and the nightmares and not go crazy. He didn't know how much longer he could smile and laugh and try his best to be normal while the curse swirled around him, reminding him that he was far from it.
The curse showed him a world of black and white that no one else could see. The world as it really was. Everywhere he went, he saw the souls of the dead chained to akumas. He could see them writhing in pain and whispering for help in rasping voices that had run out of screams. He could see the lowered heads that spoke of torment and loss of hope, could see the shriveled skin sticking to the bones that showed how much energy the akuma had already drained from its victim. And the curse whispered to him that there was no end of agony for this soul, because no matter how much energy the akuma drained, the soul would be forced to just keep giving.
Then there were nights.
The images that haunted him in the day continued in the night, but the curse added more. At night, he could see masses of the chained souls and their screams now reached him. Those raw, desperate, agonizing screams that tore into his heart and mind like millions of knives until he was doubled over and screaming right back at them to stop, please, stop!
But they never did. Every night the screams continued and were joined by more. And every night, just when he thought he was going to be ripped apart by all the agony, the curse dealt him a small, back-handed favor and the spirits would disappear.
However, the nightmare didn't end there. The crowd of spirits was always replaced by a graveyard scene, and this was where Allen would cry. This was where he would cry because he had to watch people agree to the Millennium Earl's deal over and over. It was always a new person the Earl victimized, a new person who was torn by grief and just wanted the pain to end, just wanted to have their loved one back.
Allen would beg them to stop, scream at them that they didn't understand what they were doing, but they never heard him. He was forced to watch as they called back the soul of their loved one, forced to watch as their joy shattered when the soul screamed in agony as the Earl commanded it like the puppet it now was, forced to watch the new akuma rise as the soul killed its loved one and forced itself into their body while the Earl laughed, and all Allen could do was cry.
The end of the nightmare was the climax though, worse even than the rest. The end was where he saw the akuma in hordes and watched them kill innocent humans over and over and over. He watched the life and blood drain out of his fellow humans and he could hear their screams and see their pain and the souls feeding the akumas were screaming too and trying to stop what was happening but there was nothing they could do and there was nothing Allen could do and the smell of blood was everywhere and Allen didn't know if the screams in his ears were even the humans and souls anymore or if they were his own.
That was Allen's curse. That was what the fifteen year-old boy dealt with every day, and he knew the only way to make it stop was to stop the akumas. So every day when he woke from his nightmares, shivering, tormented, and crying, even though all he wanted to do was curl up there and just stop feeling, he reached out for his Exorcist uniform like a lifeline instead. Then, he threw himself into his work. Every time he released a soul by killing an akuma he could almost cry in joy, because he understood what they were escaping. He saw it. Felt it. Heard it. For every single one of them. That was the curse.
"I'm jealous, Allen. I wish I had your eye."
Authoress's Note: I started D. Gray-Man recently and this idea nagged at me until I wrote it down. Seriously, I wouldn't want Allen's eye, poor guy. Please review and tell me what you think.