Disclaimers: I own nothing but this story. D. Gray Man belongs to Hoshino Katsuragi.
Warnings: sappiness, a bit of gore, but mostly sappiness. And grammatical errors. That, too. I have no beta.
PROLOGUE: Deviation.
"Stupid Alice, get your own milk next time", mutters a young woman irritably under her breath. Although her look is that of an eye-catching traditional beauty, in reality, she is anything but that, and the thunderous scowl on her face is enough deterrent for the few people on the dark and narrow street to give her a very wide berth. Thus, the young woman named Yu continues on her warpath of destruction unobstructed, obliterating everything in her way with just the power of her glare…
(The not-insignificant pile of gray snow on her head kind of diminishes the effect somewhat, though. Not that anyone would dare say that to her face.)
…until something caught her eyes, something so pathetic that it sets her bloodlust tingling.
There, kneeling on the dirty pavement is a quivering figure of a child in black and white. With tears spilling over gray eyes to flow freely along pale cheeks, the child stares unseeingly into an otherwise ordinary empty plot of land. What the child is looking for, she doesn't know, but what she does know is that this little possible relic of her past is pissing her off.
She stalks closer.
Yep, this child is most definitely someone she used to know. The rapid flashes of hazy memories, the general sense of déjà vu, and the sudden vertigo can certainly attest to that.
Sometimes, she wishes she could remember all of that terrible past rather than just broken bits and pieces of it. Less of a headache that way. Though Alice, were she to come clean, would probably argue otherwise.
What a bean sprout.
Hands grasping for a non-existent weapon at her hip for the equally non-existent reassurance before awkwardly putting the grocery bag forward to the child in lieu of an offering of peace (food always works, right?), Yu, armed with only her favorite insult on the tip of her tongue, tries to keep her temper in check as she attempts a conversation with the child, who looks not unlike a kicked puppy.
"So, milk?"
(Conversing has never been her strong suit.)
Even with the gazillion cartons of milk's dangling in front of his face like a damned bait (or maybe it's exactly because the gazillion cartons of milk is dangling in front of his face like a damned bait), the child's eyes remain dead, at least, until he looks up, takes a look at her face, and faint.
Yu would be more offended (she is by no mean vain, but she is still, in the end, a normal human being with PRIDE) had the child not just fainted on her.
(In that split second before he lost consciousness, Yu thought she saw something in his eyes. It's not recognition. No, he's not there yet, but maybe something akin to distant familiarity. Jamais vu, perhaps?
What a pitiful thing. A small recess of her mind whispers. The fleeting thought goes away as soon as it comes.)
She can't hold back a sigh.
Damn bean sprout.
Yu prays fervently to the non-existent gods above that Alice will know what to do because Yu as hell doesn't. Alice always knows what to do.
Dragging both the child and the abnormally heavy grocery bags (damn you, Alice) back to the Lvellie house is harder than she thought. While it would be a piece of cake with Mugen by her side, Yu completely forgot that she doesn't have Mugen by her side, and that she sucks at any kind of magic other than Illusion without Mugen, thus her current dilemma.
After a painful journey that is best left untold, Yu finally made it to her destination, albeit breathless and dying. With a shaky voice that she will deny belonging to her till her dying breath, Yu shouted for the love of her life, who she would love to strangle right now.
"Alice! Help!"
It is, after all, Alice's fault.
The stench of blood has always been its most faithful companion, forever by its side, through any pain and sorrow, through any loss and despair, in its never-ending search for love and atonement. Intimately familiar as it is with the fluid of life and death, the first thing that registers in its mind is that the air reeks of its metallic tang here. Blood on the floor, blood on the walls, blood on the people, fresh blood, congealed blood, rotting blood,..., this place where darkness reigns has them all.
.
The red-haired child in front of it has stopped crying.
The plead for help wasn't answered in time.
.
It looks around.
On the floor, the surrounding circle of red corpses has been rotting for a long, long time.
.
It was too late.
"We did it! We did it! The Lord will save us all!", shout the despicable perpetrators of this hideous crime. "God is with us! God is here! God is in his heaven! All's right with the world!" They laugh in delight, cladded in white as they are, heedless of the remains of the innocents sacrificed to God, to the Devil, to it. With the scene revolting and churning before its eyes, inside its mind, cracking its stone-cold heart, it can't help but think: "Oh God. Oh God. Why? Why? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
.
I'm sorry, for being such a terrible God.
I'm sorry, for being such a terrible Devil.
I'm sorry that I'm not enough.
.
It hates it here.
It wants to destroy.
It wants to kill them all, for the promised future, for love, for revenge.
.
(I'm sorry, for being human.)
.
The joyous cheer continues on, reverberating across the room.
.
(It wants to cry.)
.
Bad people must be punished.
.
.
.
Silver eyes looking down dazedly at the writhing mass of serpents, it suddenly realises that no, this is not the world it wished to protect. These are not the people it cried for, killed for, died for.
.
Bad people must be punished.
.
Bad people must be punished.
.
Bad people must be punished.
.
.
.
Help.
.
Like a bucket of ice-cold water, a dying cry in the distance wakes it up from its reverie.
.
_Ah, that's right. A destroyer that can save. That's what it is. That's what it wants to be.
It wants to save people.
It wants to save people.
And in this hellish place where there is neither justice nor love, isn't it its job to bring justice, to bring love, to bring salvation?
.
Here, there is someone who can be saved.
Ignoring the cacophony of astonishment and fear, it bypasses the men in white to head straight for the source of the quivering plead.
.
Inside the cage, there is still one person alive. Inside the cage, there is still someone who believes in its intention. Inside the cage, there is still hope.
.
.
Dirty red hair covering half a scarred face, silver eyes struggling to stay open, red, red blood flowing freely from the multitude of wounds on the tiny body, the child inside the cage is the mirror image of the first sacrificial lamb.
Even though the sole surviving innocent is barely hanging on, it is enough, for as long as there is life, there is hope.
As long as there is life, there is hope.
Making quick work of the sinners, it unlocks the cage effortlessly and takes the child into its arms…
Don't cry now. You're safe. It wants to tell the child as it rushes to the nearest hospital. You're safe.
.
...but it can't. Small white lie whispered for the sake of comforts always cuts the deepest when the truth comes out, and it doesn't wish to hurt this child anymore.
The wounds can still kill him.
They can still go after him.
The cage will never go away.
For, in the end, this child can never be free, forever trapped inside the cage.
For this child, with his dirty red hair and his crying face, may as well be a reflection of the Devil.
For this child, with his dirty red hair and his crying face, may as well be a reflection of God.
.
For even though it is a destroyer who wants to save, in the end, it is still nothing more than a destroyer.
.
.
.
Even so...
Maybe the wounds won't kill him.
Maybe They won't go after him.
Maybe someday, someone will love him.
.
(And, maybe, just maybe, he can finally be saved.)
.
.
.
(It snorts to itself at that. Yeah, right. And Red is a perfectly good name to have.)
.
.
.
As it watches the small body disappear behind the door of the emergency room, into the arms of the people who can save him, who can achieve what it never can, silver hair tainted with blood like always, it prays, with the whole of its being, for a happy ending to the tragedy in play.
.
.
.
Curtains fall.
.
.
.
To whom is it praying? It wonders. God is here. It is God, but God is a delusion. God is also the archangels, the cherubim, the doll, the human, the machine, the demons, the Devil, so there is no God, in the end. None at all.
.
.
.
Ah, what a wishful delusion it has fallen into. How laughable. The deceiver falling for its own lies, such is the third-rated comedy it's starting in.
.
For some reason, it doesn't feel like laughing much. And as a professional clown, that's kind of terrible.
(For whom is it praying?)
Maybe it's just being pessimistic.
Maybe it's just being silly.
.
Or maybe it's just a bit jealous. Just a little. But it's perfectly normal to be jealous of someone else because they can do something that it never can, not in a million years, so it's jealous of the doctors, the lifesavers, and that's that.
.
That's it. Really.
(Denial is a funny thing, blinding people from themselves, from their own feelings, from the things that should have been right there, in front of their eyes. Such a persevering perversity denial is, so persevering, so perverse, that it encompasses people's minds, that it traps them all in a self-perpetuating cycle of hope and despair, that it blinds even God itself.)
.
(These silver eyes may as well be buttons.)
Don't stop. Keep walking.
It has a Duty, a Promise it must keep no matter what. And it can't fail, not now, not ever. If it fails, Mama will be sad. He'll cry and cry and cry, getting all worked up over anything and everything, from the end of the world to something as inane as the loss of a broken doll, face all scrunched up, head buried into his knees, trying to pretend that he's not crying a river, even though only someone not right in the head would be deceived by such a terrible performance.
Mama has always been a soft-hearted fool, so in turns, it must be the stone-hearted one. Out if the two of them, someone has got to be.
It just doesn't want Mana to be sad anymore.
(In another life, another world, it might be contended with such a doll-like state of existence, with playing the part of an immortal clown, with being the mindless ghost in the machine, but in this world, this non-life, in which it was given a taste of friendship, of love, of salvation once,...
He just doesn't want to be sad anymore.)
Don't stop. Keep walking.
It wants to save people, so it will continue to fight, for as long as it needs to.
(He wants to be saved, so he will take a break, just for a little while.)
Until it can meet Mana again.
(Until time runs out.)
On a cold winter day, there is a small figure covered in snow.
Don't stop. Keep walking.
.
.
.
On a small bed by the window in a modest two-storey house, silver eyes slowly blink open.
I'm alive.
AN: Believe it or not. I started this with the expressed intention of writing a romantic comedy, so a romantic comedy, it will be.
Anyone interested in beta-ing this thing? Reviews are appreciated.