Chapter Two

*Snrk!*

Allen snorted in his sleep as he tossed and turned, having bizarre dreams that had been plaguing his sleep for almost a week, now. He had not yet uncovered the source of these dreams, nor could he make out any distinct figures, but he knew that it couldn't be good. Tonight would be different, though.

"*giggle!* Hi, Allen!" Came a girlish voice from behind Allen, who turned around, starting to activate his Crowned Clown, but realizing that he just had a normal arm, now.

"Relax, sweetie…" Road said sweetly, kissing Allen on the lips without waiting for permission, or even to blackmail him first. "I'm not here to hurt you. It's like last time we met. I come in peace."

"And you're gonna leave in pieces if you don't tell me what you want, right now!"

"Ooh… So scary. But can't we just enjoy each others' company without having an ulterior motive? We're friends, after all, right?"

"I don't make friends with Noah!" Allen sneered angrily, furious that he couldn't activate his anti-akuma weapon. He would have to keep his temper in check for now. The problem was that he remembered full well what happened last time. He had sex with Road, a definite taboo for an exorcist… Well, having sex was no problem, only if it was with a Noah. Of course, he had killed her afterward, so perhaps he had made up for his bad deed. Nonetheless, Road's words still swam in his head. He had felt the same way she did before he joined the Order. He had been losing hope for humans. There was so much evil and hatred in the world, and that hatred caused Akuma to be born. He had begun to despair that the war with the Earl was already lost. But then he found people that he truly loved, and wanted to protect. But what if he hadn't? Would he have become like Road? Evil, hateful and nihilistic? He may never have been as powerful as Road, but his personality could have been the same.

"That's too bad. And after we made love and everything. You told me you loved me. You weren't lying, were you? You sounded so sincere."

"I-I didn't ever expect to see you again, Road." Allen said quietly, blushing upon remembering this. "I hoped that saying that would help your death be a little bit easier. Was I wrong?"

"No. I didn't mind dying at all, having heard you say that, even just once… Even if you didn't mean it. I knew you were lying. But part of me wanted so desperately to believe it, that maybe I convinced myself afterwards that it was true." Road said softly, a tear spilling over her eye and sliding gently down her doll-like cheek. Allen felt guilty, now, that he had told such a lie.

"I'm sorry, Road. I-I didn't mean to hurt you. B-but where are we, anyhow?"

"You didn't hurt me. It's my fault for thinking I could ever be good enough for someone like you."

"Road!" Allen said, shocked at how downbeat she was being. "Please don't say that!"

"So what?" Road said, her eyes suddenly ice cold. "You'll promise to love me and take care of me? To make me feel like maybe I'm not such a worthless person after all? Like maybe my life did have some purpose other than causing people pain? Don't make promises you can't keep…" she said icily, glaring at Allen. But before she could finish her rant, she burst into tears, falling to her knees, sobbing hysterically. Allen ran over to her, kneeling down and embracing her tightly.

"Allen!" She sobbed. "I-I-I just wanted you to love me! Is that so wrong! Is it wrong to want to be able to live a normal life, be a normal person, fall in love, get married, have children, grow old and die, just like anyone else! Because of my ancestry, I'll never be able to die! You gave me the chance to at least feel death's embrace, but even now, I'm not dead… Not really. I'm alive inside you. I'm completely at your mercy, right now, and I know that if you start to get tired of me, you could just kill my memories and be rid of me forever! At least with the Earl, and the Noah, I had the benefit of knowing that I had people who cared about me! Even if they didn't know me as they should, I had forever to be with them! Now what do I have! A tenuous place in the back of your mind that I could lose at any time!"

"Road!" Allen said, shaking her once to calm her down. "It's never wrong to want to be loved. It's part of being human. Listen. You really did the Order a big favor, and I owe you for that. Tell me what you want, and I'll try to help you achieve it."

Road hesitated for a moment, then spoke. "You're probably wondering why it took so long for me to truly appear in your dreams and be able to talk to you. I wasn't just tormenting you. In order for my power to work, now, the person has to be thinking almost constantly about it. That's hard to do, especially when the person is asleep. So, I appeared hazily in your dreams every night, using the latent thoughts of me in your mind, I'm flattered, by the way, in order to manifest my presence. Now that you're thinking about me so often, though, I can appear in this more solid form. Next, you probably wondered why the portal didn't disappear with me. That should be obvious. Think about where we are right now. It's just like the Fourteenth's powers, except not nearly so parasitey."

"Parasitey? Is that even a word?"

"Shut up! It is because I say it is! Anyway, my powers are now yours. You can get rid of them if you want as soon as you free my soul. You can also keep them if you desire. They could be useful. It's convenient that a tiny bit of my blood got in your mouth after you slew me. That transferred my soul into your body, and now, my soul cannot pass on until you allow it to. However, neither can the next Dreams of Noah be awakened. It's also convenient for me, though, because the Earl cannot turn my soul into an Akuma… And by the way, never has a Noah been turned into an Akuma, but from the Earl's research, he has speculated that it would immediately become a Level 5 Akuma, and if you think that Level 4 monstrosity you fought was bad, that would be turned to slurry by a Level 5 in less than a second."

"I see." Allen said, only somewhat truthfully. All this talk of souls and powers was confusing. But he got that he could now do what Road once did, and that he had to help Road pass on.

"So, you want your soul to pass on?" Allen asked, looking at Road in a somewhat different way now. He had never really thought of her as someone who believed in "passing on".

"It's strange, isn't it? I never believed in God until I met you. The Exorcists I fought before you were so weak, unable even to stand up to us for a minute. I always laughed at their blind devotion to God. I thought that if God allowed his disciples to be slaughtered so easily, he must not really love them much… Then, I came to the conclusion that God had given up on humanity, and had abandoned them to our whim, and so, it was our duty to wipe them out and pave the way for a new chapter of history. But then, you were there, and although I didn't think much of you at first, I came to respect you because I saw how hard you were trying to save the souls of the Akuma, and then, your Innocence evolved, and the very idea blew us away. Even the Earl wasn't expecting it. That led me to wonder just how much the Earl really did know, and I started to question my purpose in life. I knew that if I could talk to you once more, I could either decide to kill you once and for all, or end my mission where I stood, and pass the baton to you."

"You don't like Lenalee, do you?"

"Lenalee? The Exorcist girl with the pigtails? I don't dislike her. I was just jealous of your feelings for her." Road said bluntly, and with a completely straight face. "You could have her, you know? I see the way she looks at you. I may look young, but I'm not completely ignorant."

"Why are you telling me this? What does it matter to you?" Allen asked suspiciously.

"I just want to see you happy. And I can tell that what will make you happy is being with her. I would never want to ruin that. That's why I didn't tell her what I was planning. If you want to tell her when the time is right, it's for you to decide. If not, our… time together didn't mean anything to you anyhow. Anyway, I don't have anything else to say. I just have one last favor to ask of you. Then, you can do what you want. I won't bother you again."

"Sure. Anything."

"I want to see you one last time before my soul departs. I don't know when you plan to finish it all, but I'd like to meet you in your dreams one last time."

"Of course. I'll need to see you anyway to thank you again. I have a little more faith in our chances for victory, now. So, until then…"

"Goodbye, love…"

Suddenly, Allen's eyes shot open, only for him to be pushed down heavyhandedly by several other people, who were gathered around his bed, one of whom was Lenalee.

"Allen-kun!" Came a voice from Allen's right, which made him calm down immediately as he felt a gentle hand on his bare shoulder, which made him realize that he was only wearing his boxers at the moment, causing him to blush heavily and pull his sheets up to cover himself. Miranda, who had been there for only a few moments, turned away in respect, but Lavi just laughed hysterically, causing Lenalee to glare at him, at which point, he stopped abruptly.

"Sorry. It's just really funny. It's not like you're naked or anything."

"LAVI!" Allen shouted, turning bright red. Then, "You didn't draw on my face again, did you?"

"Again?" Lenalee asked, raising an eyebrow at Lavi, who shrugged and smiled placatingly.

"Aren't you a little old for pranks like that?" Lenalee asked.

"Why are you all in here, anyway? This is my room."

"Yeah, but you've been muttering like mad for the last half hour. Something about roads and no hope for humanity. It must have been some dark dream you were having." Lavi said. "Lenalee heard you shout from your room and found you asleep. She was freakin' worried about you."

"Shut up, Lavi! I-I wasn't that worried!" Lenalee protested, blushing pink at this. "But, are you alright, Allen-kun?" She asked, leaning in and taking his right hand in her hands. Allen smiled apologetically at her and nodded.

"Of course. It was just a dream…" Allen said with what hoped was a confident smile. He wasn't so sure, himself, though, and apparently, Lenalee could see this, because, she looked at the others, asking them silently to leave them alone. Lavi stood and stretched.

"Well! I'm actually pretty hungry! And besides, I have to flirt with that new scientist girl with the braids and glasses today!"

Lenalee scowled at him, and shook her head. "I told you, Lavi. It's pointless. Lou Fa loves A… Someone else. You don't have a chance."

"Yeah, well, I suspect that she also doesn't have a chance with that 'someone else'." Lavi said with a snicker, looking over at Allen and Lenalee.

"That doesn't matter! You'll only succeed in embarrassing her." Lenalee said angrily, staring hard at Lavi, who flinched slightly under her gaze, and walked out quickly, soon followed by Miranda and Krory.

"Allen-kun, please tell me what your dream was about. I know it wasn't nothing. I heard you mention Road's, and the Earl's name. What happened in Road's Dream World that time?"

"I-I can't tell you…" Allen said nervously, turning bright red and finding himself unable to look Lenalee in the eye.

"Why!" She demanded, taking his cheek with her hand and forcing him to look at her. "Why won't you tell me what you're thinking about! Are you scared of something! Did Road do something to you? Are you afraid of what I'll think?"

"Well… It's all of those… But also none of them. I'm afraid of a lot of things…" Allen said, looking more vulnerable than Lenalee had ever seen him before. "Road didn't exactly do anything to me. But something did happen, and I sort of am afraid of what you'll think, but more than that, I can't afford for anyone else to know. First of all, you have to understand that I did what I had to do. I'm not proud of it, but I would probably do it again."

"What happened? Just tell me. I promise I won't be angry."

"Well, Road brought me into her dream and said that as we were now, the Order had no chance against the Earl, that we would all perish, and the world would be destroyed. She offered to make me a deal. She would give us information that would help us against the Earl, and then let me kill her. That's how I managed to kill her. But, in exchange, I had to… have sex with her…" Allen said, hesitating before finishing. Lenalee's eyes went wide with shock and rage, and she began to scream.

"You had smmmff! Lgoooo!" She shrieked as Allen covered her mouth with his right hand, being careful not to hurt her. Then she bit him, and he yanked his hand back in pain.

"How the hell did you think I got that information that we stole! Did you think I tortured the information out of her? Or perhaps you just didn't question it! And for that matter, how do you think that portal out of the Ark got there!"

"How could you do that, though! That's disgusting!"

"Yes. It is." Allen agreed quietly, looking away from Lenalee, seeming ashamed.

"I'm ashamed of what I had to do. But like I said, I'd do it again if it meant winning this war. When I was doing it, I told myself that it was like how the Order created human/Akuma hybrids. It wasn't exactly ethical, and it certainly wasn't something to be proud of, but they were helpful in this war that we're fighting, and in any war, sacrifices have to be made."

"I don't understand your decision. You gave up your morals for the sake of this bloody war. I always had so much faith in you because you seemed like the only person who refused to give up on what he believed in just because of the evil in this world! How could you betray my faith like that!" Lenalee said angrily, tears stinging at her eyes. Then, what she said next cut Allen to his very soul, and perhaps that was what Lenalee had intended. "I hate you, Allen…" Lenalee said, standing up and storming out of Allen's room, slamming the door. As soon as she had closed the door, though, she felt bad about the way she had treated him. Granted, she was angry, but was it really alright for her to tell him that she hated him? Feeling miserable, now, she walked off, back to her own room. Allen wanted to call out to her, plead with her not to leave. He didn't want to be left alone. He hadn't known that telling Lenalee what happened with Road would anger her so much. If he had… No. He still would have told her. He wouldn't have felt right hiding it from her. Of course, he was afraid of losing her. But he was also afraid of losing his other friends, of failing God, failing the world, of the Earl, those nightmares that he had occasionally that involved Mana and the Fourteenth, and some other characters that changed from time to time, those human/Akuma hybrids… Those ones were particularly bad, the way they seemed to envy his ability to see the tortured souls of the Akuma. He hated them, was terrified of them, and pitied them all at once. They had no choice in what they became, but that didn't mean that he had to like them. Silently, he sat there, fighting back the tears that were threatening to spill over his eyes, and finally, he broke down, crying into his pillow so that nobody would hear him. It seemed wrong to bother anyone with his problems. He had already brought his friends to him with his sleep talking, right?