Disclaimer: D. Gray Man is the property of Hoshino Katsura-sama.
He was no stranger to human sorrows.
He knew what it was like to be cold. He knew what it was like to be hungry. Where most children his age would know naught but tenderness, he had seen humanity at its ugliest simply because he had been born with this withered corpse of an arm.
He learned early that human kindness is a fickle thing – how often had he been the recipient of whimful sympathies only to watch kindly hands retract in repulsion upon seeing the mark of the devil upon his body?
Yet somehow, he bore all abuse with patience: those scornful eyes, contemptuous words, and indulgent cruelties – surviving, as if that had been the only thing he was born to do. The days blend into weeks and the months become years – melding into the muddled sea of his consciousness. He learned early humans were judgmental creatures, and so, he learned early to hide that shameful part of his body.
Perhaps that was why, to protect himself, he developed a persona of strength. He learned to speak as roughly as the ones that tormented him on a daily basis. He learned to pretend a casual indifference to the world around him. As time passes, he almost comes to believe his own fabrications.
That is why, when the only person to show him a tiny measure of gentleness would be a surely mad clown, he knows why he was drawn so to the idea of a guardian.
He was no stranger to human sorrows, but, he was a stranger to human attachments.
The man that took him in had two sides to him: Mana the Dreamer and Mana the Clown. Mana the Clown was grounded in his work and this world but Mana the Dreamer was not. Mana the Clown moved from place to place for his occupation but Mana the Dreamer moved from place to place as if to avoid something frightening in pursuit. Nevertheless, he had happily accepted his new role with this man: he became Mana the Dreamer's bedrock in the real world and he became Mana the Clown's performing companion.
He noticed how, as time passed, the man that took him in slowly gained a third side. This third side of Mana wasn't the distant recluse of the Dreamer Mana or possessed the quaint humor of the other Mana. This Mana was something else entirely: stern when he needed to be, gentle when he needed to be, to the tiny child at his side. He decided quickly he liked this Mana best and perhaps that was why whatever this Mana asked of him, he would try his very best to fulfill. This side of Mana, Mana the Father, was rare in appearance yet each time this Mana bade him "welcome home", the warmth in his small chest did not lie.
Of course, the world was ugly and cruel and deemed that he was not to have Mana for long.
Yet, when that odd man who called himself the Millennium Earl approached him and proposed to bring Mana back, he does not understand why the refusal left his lips before his mind even had the time to properly comprehend his answer.
"Mana promised to be by my side forever."
However...
"It seems … it just wasn't meant to be."
Silence falls upon the graveyard.
"Little one, if you have nowhere to go ... then come with me."
The Earl's tone had become strange.