I do not own D. Gray Man. If I did, I'd put Allen vs. Kanda fights everywhere!
Chapter two- Fitting in
The Earl watched everything unfolding in front of him like a really good tv show.
He really thought that he would be able to acquire another akuma, but instead a young and uneducated exorcist stood before him. For the first time in his life, the Earl didn't know what to do next. Well, unless you count that time when…
Allen dropped on his knees, looking at the dark sky with a blank expression. As the Earl watched tears dripping from the boy's right eye and blood dripping from the left and wounded eye, he noted that it was a creepy scenario.
The Earl thinking something is creepy? Now, that's something that rarely happened.
Allen looked at the Earl with his good eye, the other one closed shut and bleeding. The Earl found his stare disturbing, and just stood there with his maniacal grin that never left his face. But when the boy finally fell to the ground after staring at the Earl for five minutes, the earl found himself completely stumped.
Should he kill the future exorcist? Leave him here to die? Or…
…or bring him home.
The Earl tapped his chin as he contemplated on the pleasant thought of killing a young child. Then again, the boy's powers would be wasted. Every opportunity to the Earl was precious, and he was thinking up more and more reasons every second to keep this child. And finally when he couldn't stand it any longer, he jumped off the tombstone and walked to where Allen was. He picked up the unconscious boy and slung him over his broad shoulders. His size really was so big that he could've slung two Allens per shoulder. He found the boy's weight surprisingly light for his age, but then the boy didn't look like he was eating much these past few days.
The Earl turned away from the clown's grave, and started the long journey home.
"I've brought something interesting!" The Earl announced once he arrived in the Noah's humble abode.
"Is it a toy for me, Millenie?" Road, the blue haired noah, said as she tried to look at the thing on the Earl's shoulder.
"No, Road," The older noah said as he lowered the boy into a chair. "It's a human I found on the way to make more akumas."
Road poked the huddling little boy on the cheek.
"Did something happen? Why'd you bring him home?"
In all honesty, even the Earl wasn't exactly sure why he brought the boy with him. He found countless little kids being orphaned after their parents turned into akuma, but something about this one just was strange. The Earl didn't like it particularly when something made him wonder.
"We can use him for some occasions, Road. He'll be another puppet."
"Oooh. That sounds nice. What'll he do for us?"
"A lot of things, Road. A lot of things."
Road went back to looking at the little boy, watching him sleep peacefully. She gently traced the open wound on his left eye, and promised to dress it after her audience with the Earl was over. She would ask him to leave this little guy in her care, and she would have lots of fun with him.
"Well, what's his name?"
Road finished dressing all of Allen's wounds as he laid on a bed in a room just beside her own. The kid still hadn't woken up, and Road was getting more and more impatient. The thing about her was that she could never be kept waiting. And if Allen was asleep, she could do nothing with him.
Allen stirred in his sleep, and Road's eyes darted to his face.
She found his face extremely radiant. And even with all the bandages in his face, he looked rather angelic. She found herself staring at his face, unable to move, until Tyki Mikk entered the room.
Road fell off the bed, and turned to her uncle with a smug expression.
"Tyki! Please knock before you enter! You're causing injuries here!"
Tyki chuckled and ran a hand through his dark hair.
"I DID knock, Road, but it seems that you were too occupied with staring at the boy's face."
Even under her gray skin, the said girl's blush was evident. She was caught dead by Tyki. She was about to say more, but he spoke before she could.
"Now, leave the room for awhile. The dirty boy needs a change of clothes and a thorough bath." Tyki said as he removed his gloves.
"What!" Road stood and protested. "The Earl said I was supposed to take care of him! And that means nobody but me has the authority to bathe him and change his clothes."
"Found yourself another plaything, haven't you?" Tyki smirked. "Well, the Earl gave me the orders to clean him up. He even knew that I'd have to reason with you. Have you forgotten that you're a girl, and he's a boy? Are you sure you want to do that?"
At this, Road blushed an even deeper shade of red. She was too impulsive, and had not been thinking about what she said.
"Fine," She pouted and walked to the door. "Just be careful with him. He looks fragile."
Tyki sighed, and approached the boy the moment the door shut. He regarded the boy's white hair before picking the boy up and bringing him to the bathroom, where he undressed the boy and put him in a tub with warm water. Tyki had to remove all of Road's bandages, though.
As he scrubbed the boy's skinny arms, he found himself muttering about how the Earl would pay for making him do these stuff. And after finding out that little Allen Walker would be living with them for the rest of his life, he figured that he would have to do this for a few years until the boy was old enough to be taught to take care of his skinny self. Besides, there would be no one to take care of him. He would never let Road see the kid undressed, and Lulubell was deathly afraid of becoming a mother. Skinn, meanwhile, might eat Allen especially if he was deprived of his beloved lollipops. Jasdero and Debitto just might accidentally put a bullet in the kid's body. And don't even get started about the Earl…who couldn't even fit in the bathroom.
As he was holding Allen's left arm, which appeared scaly and red, his hand slid to the boy's and found himself looking at a green crystal embedded under Allen's skin. His noah-self shook with fury, and immediately he knew that he was holding Innocence in his hands. This could be one of the reasons why the Earl had taken the boy with him. He had to resist the urge to destroy the divine substance, and he almost lost it had Allen's hand not moved. When Tyki looked up at the boy's face, he saw that Allen's head was slowly falling towards the water.
Tyki jumped up and straightened the boy's head. Allen's left arm dropped and hit the tub with a clanking sound.
The man silently cursed himself. He just realized that Allen was asleep and was unlikely to wake up, and that he should have just cleaned him up with a wet rag. But it was too late now; the boy was immersed in water. He immediately washed all the soap off and brought Allen back into the room. He was a bit surprised to see clothes in the closet that fit the newly arrived boy, but he just shrugged and proceeded to dress up the boy which he found relatively harder than undressing. He put Allen back on the bed and put the covers back on. Then he walked out of the room, closing the door as gently as he could.
But before he lost sight of the boy, he caught a glimpse and saw that the boy's eyes were actually open and were staring blankly at the wall. Tyki's eyebrows furrowed as he tried to remember whether Allen's eyes were even partially open as he was bathing him. The boy might've been awake all this time.
Tyki sighed and walked to the parlor, where he found Road playing with a doll on the floor. He sat beside her on a wooden chair by the fireplace and continued to read the book he was reading for the past five days.
"He's awake, you know." He said, to which Road brightened up.
"Really? That's good! Now I'll have to—"
Tyki grabbed Road's hand before she could walk away.
"Now's not the good time, Road. He's unresponsive. I'm sure the Earl had already told you about what just happened to the boy. He's still recuperating."
Road frowned, but she said "Fine," and plopped back down on the floor where she started pulling at the doll's hair.
She was stubborn, but she was still obedient. So it was fine for Tyki.
He sighed and closed the book on his lap, unable to continue reading. He stared at the fire instead, still wondering why the Earl had not killed Allen.
Allen stared at the ceiling this time, after getting tired of looking at the dark purple walls.
He still couldn't get out of his mind what happened that night, and it haunted him more than everything else. His mind contained nothing else but that.
He even forgot that his immobilized arm could now be moved. And now he felt like he was just going to waste away. He couldn't even bother to think about where he was now, and what these people were planning to do with him.
He heard an imaginary clock ticking away, and it sounded like the countdown to the end of his life. Well, for him it had already ended.
He was not ready to forget.
He thought this over and over, until finally he fell into a deep slumber.
In Allen's dream, he saw himself in a strange rocky building, and on his right side were about a hundred or so cloaked people, with their faces obscured by hoods. And to his left he saw the Earl, and with him was the man who had given him a bath and a few more people he didn't know who had the same gray skin the Earl had.
In the middle of them all was a gigantic cube emitting a white light, as well as…well, himself.
He saw himself older, but with the same white hair he had acquired that night, and that red scar running down his face. But instead of his deformed left arm, he had a normal arm, except that it was glowing with the same color of the cube. And he looked ready to fight, for some reason unknown to little Allen.
He was about to approach his older self, but his dream shifted and suddenly he was in a white room with nothing but a white piano in the middle. He saw his older self again, this time sitting down and playing the piano.
When Allen turned around, he found himself facing a mirror. But what he saw wasn't his own reflection.
Instead, he saw a shadow of a man with a creepy smile, and he was wearing a white coat. Allen, still being young, was scared of the black entity. But just when he was about to scream in fear, his dream collapsed and there was nothing but darkness.
Then again, please review! It would help a lot! And tell me how I can improve!