Author's Note: Second installment! Yay! This one focuses on Allen's past.
Disclaimer: I do not own D. Gray-man or any of these poems, the former is owned by Hoshino, and the later by William Blake.
"Songs of Innocence"
Chapter 2: The Little Boy Lost
A quite sullen looking boy roamed the streets, stealing what he could. His brownish bangs hung in front of his face, hiding his darkened eyes. Tripping, he dirtied his face, and ripped a part of his pant at the knee, but this was not new to him; his face was already grimy from days without washing and the hole in his pants only added to his spreading collection of them throughout his attire.
He depressingly smoothed out his frizzed hair, and tugged at his long-sleeved shirt with his left hand, further concealing it from hateful eyes. He scuffed his worn shoes on the cold cobblestone ground, amusing himself with the different sounds he could make by just tapping it a different way, or adjusting the angle at which he struck the ground. Smirking, he pulled out a small piece of bread and nibbled on it, settling on a rock to enjoy what little food he was able to catch.
Finishing the bread too quickly for his liking, he jerked at the neck of his shirt, trying to force it further up his neck to shield it from the nipping frost of a cold winter morning. Then, the brunette wrenched it back down, seeing as it exposed party of his belly to the cold air. He settled for huddling himself into a tight ball, bringing his legs up to hug his knees to his chest.
He forlornly watched a family walk by his sad scene, the children happily playing together while joyfully awaiting the arrival of their destination, and their parents chatting and smiling peacefully a few paces behind them. The youngest of the children looked at the poor boy hunched on a rock and stared confusedly at him. She was about to wave when her parents grabbed her hand and pulled her along. She gave one last look to satisfy whatever curiosity she had before skipping along back to her older brothers to rejoin them in their current game.
A clock struck loudly and the boy stood, trudging along the same cold path he had taken earlier, passing recognizable faces, and dejectedly thought of how they could never seem to remember him. Rounding the corner, he was met with shouts and ran up to the large circus tent, past a few gargantuan and over-the-top clowns, until he found his familiar painted face.
"Ah, boy! Have a good break?" The clown laughed cheerily and adjusted its nose.
"Don't laugh so much…it's a little creepy…"
"Come now, Allen, my boy! Don't be so melancholy. You work for a circus! It's all laughs and fantasies here!" He laughed even louder to emphasize his point as he repeatedly smoothed, then puffed out the collar on his costume, adjusting it so that it didn't scratch at the skin of his chin and neck so much. It was then that Allen remembered about the small handkerchief in his pocket, and tied it around his own neck.
They made their way around the back of the circus tent, to the entrance door for performing clowns. As they passed a small grave, the boy paused to adjust the cross, made of two tied sticks. For good measure, he knotted the tie once more and stooped down on both knees to offer a small prayer to the dog buried underneath it. A small, unnoticed, but genuine smile came from the clown behind him.
He moved from his spot to offer the clown room to pray if he wanted, and plopped himself at the base of a dead tree next to the grave. The clown made a funny face at the boy as they continued to stare at each other, each waiting for the other to initiate some for of conversation. The clown smashed his cheeks together and crossed his eyes, trying to break the tension.
The small boy smirked, remembering this scenario and responded just like he did when they first buried the dog and the man made that face, "'Sorry, but I don't like clowns and stuff.'"
The clown crossed his arms and puffed his chest out animatedly and retorted exactly as he did when he made that face for the first time to the boy, "'Well, I hate crowds and children who don't laugh."
They laughed at each other, remembering how they formally "met" for the first time. The clown walked over to the boy and offered his hand for the brunette to take to help him rise from the tree. He was hauled up easily.
The man turned to him with a bright smile, "Allen?"
Surprised by the use of his name, the small boy Allen rose his head up to give the man his full attention, "Yeah, Mana?"
"Happy Christmas," Mana, the clown, said simply, and patted Allen lovingly on the head, ruffling his unmanageable hair.
Allen let out a small laugh, swatting Mana's hands away, "Happy Christmas." He was about to run off to do one of the menial jobs entrusted to him when Mana pulled him back to face the tall clown once again, "Mana?"
"How would you like to be adopted by me, Allen?"
The boy looked down at particularly nothing, smiling and holding back a few tears that pricked at the corners of his eyes. "Are you serious?"
"Doesn't this face look serious?" Mana replied, and Allen chanced a glace up to see Mana contorting his face into a similar fashion as when they were joking before. He scoffed and looked down again.
"Mana…"
"I'm still waiting for an answer, Allen." Allen looked up at the man and he stood there tall, blocking out the wind. His eyes stood out against the white make-up and he could see the truth behind them. The boy smiled and nodded his head, first a little hesitant, but the more he looked at the man's face, the more he realized how much he truly loved the man, and he vigorously shook his head up and down, hands clinging tightly to the end of his shirt, in an effort to not lose his total center of gravity.
"Yes, Mana, I do…" Allen's words got stronger as the dizziness faded from his vision, "I really, really do."
Mana smirked happily, "Then, do you know what the first order of business is?"
"What?" Allen replied excitedly.
Mana pointed chidingly at the boy's head, "To fix that hair of yours."
"Father, father, where are you going?
Oh do not walk so fast!
Speak, father, speak to your little boy,
Or else I shall be lost."
From that day, Allen followed Mana everywhere. He didn't care where they were going and it didn't matter how long it took them to get there. It didn't matter if it rained or snowed or was unbearably sunny, he was able to love it all as long as Mana was by his side. His nights were no longer lonely, and even though most of his living conditions were the same, he was able to see through it, as long as Mana could teach him how.
He had acquired a new set of clothes—a heavier, more colorful jacket for the winter that successfully covered his deformed arm, and a fuzzy hood that could keep his neck warm. As an extra precaution, a glove also covered his left hand, and Allen smiled, noticing he was not looked at as funny now that Mana had groomed him up a bit and hid things that Allen preferred people not to see. His wild hair was cut to a reasonably length and looked good down, and Mana was finally able to appreciate the boy's eyes now that the annoying bangs were shortened.
But that happiness was cut short when Mana died. He had run too far ahead of Allen, and gone somewhere where the boy just couldn't reach. He wept for days alongside of Mana's lonely grave. He felt lost without Mana there to guide him, to walk with him. Each day Allen fell more and more into the street boy he once was and hated himself and any more powerful existence than him.
And when given the chance to see his father again, Allen took it, and was cursed. His cursed, scarred eye seared with pain at the presence of akuma, a monster that he had turned Mana into. His arm activated and twisted into a weapon, and each time he exorcises an akuma, he remembers the pain in Mana's voice as he fell as the first victim to Allen's Innocence arm.
The night was dark, no father was there,
The child was wet with dew;
The mire was deep, and the child did weep,
And away the vapour flew.
Allen knew now that there was no way that he could ever be with Mana again. He was cursed to be without his beloved father throughout the rest of his dark life. Allen's hair tuned white and his eyes gray like clouds caught in a violent storm. His face grew paler than ever before, and the scar along his left eye was therefore more prominent against his alabaster skin. And he wept for his father that was no more and he wept for himself and his future. Allen looked up at the twisted face of the Millennium Earl as he flew away, wept as he realized that his body did not have the strength to avenge his father and cursed himself for being caught in a trap like that.
Allen looked tiredly at his still activated arm and twitched the fingers, checking if it was indeed his arm, and frowned even more when the fingers responded to his command. He let his eyes drift forwards to see a man in a black uniform with striking red hair, cigarette dangling from his large hand, approaching him. And he looked back again at the sky where the Earl had retreated and knew what he had to do. He had to keep walking forward for Mana. And that day, Allen realized the first similarity between himself and the Earl…
They were both monsters.
Author's Note: I just wanted to be as detailed as I could in this chapter. All in all, I hope it's a good one!
This time the poem isn't so much the main focus of the story's plot, and I incorporated a lot of the actual storyline of D. Gray-man in this work.
Explanations of the Poem:
1) Mire is a wet, swampy ground
2) Vapor, in this context, is referring to mist or fog
When it comes down to it, many aspects can be connected to this poem, making this my favorite chapter so far!