...almost a full page of this was single lines/single word lines...
...I felt kinda bad about this, but I kept imagining it in my head and decided it just had to be done since in 'Found', Allen's beating himself up over "all the horrible things he'd done in Central" so... TT-TT I'm sorry, Allen...
So... the quote at the end isn't actually one I made up for once, it's from "Savin' Me" by Nickleback... which I was lisening to while finishing this up... it seemed completely out of place, but I love that song far too much, so this is what you got for a quote this time, sorry.
I probably screwed up the last scene SO bad, but that's a hard thing to write well! -sobsob- it sounds so crappy!! Forgive me for botching what should have been a completely horrible, dear-lord-i-pity-you scene...
Long reviews for trying, at least?
Disclaimer: Yume wa kitto kanau! (no... sorry, I lied, I don't own it...)
note: that said 'dreams surely come true' in Japanese... thank you SJ!
It was a smaller room than the rooms Allen had been in in his recent remembrance. It could hardly be called a memory, as he really couldn't make a coherent line with the fragments he had outside of the hospital ward. Maybe it was a forth the size of Espidan's room, maybe half the size of the white room where they kept his cell...
No, that was inaccurate. All the rooms were white in this wretched place.
But the room was tall. It towered higher than Espidan's room's ceiling and Allen strained to tell the top from the walls as he craned his neck upward. There were windows above him. The whole wall from te feet above his head was pure glass. He could see through it, barely with the glare in his eyes and the angle he was at, but he could see.
There were so many people, so many people he had never seen before. Some people he had. Some of the guards, some of the nurses, some he had passed in the hallways while being dragged along by the guards. He was sure they remembered him. He was sure they had scowled in disgust at him or grimaced in pity. He didn't want any of that. Goddammit, he wanted to be a human again.
He saw Link and Levirreir standing beside each other across from him. His eyes stopped scanning the crowd and locked onto them. They didn't look back down at him.
And then another door on the other side of the room creaked open. A man walked in.
He was taller than Allen, gaunt, his hair ratty and faded from what must have once been a lovely shade of brown to a dirty darker color, strands of gray standing out harshly against the filth. His cheekbones were high and apparent, eyes sunken in and lips cracked. He had a slight limp as he walked, covered by ripped clothes. He looked like he had been in the factories for too long.
His blue button down shirt was covered with grime and his brown, caped trench coat was frayed at the edges. His rubber boots clunked on the floor as he continued walking forward, into the room, standing opposite of Allen.
He looked around the room, spellbound, as Allen had done. He looked all around, at the blinding white walls, at the windows up above, the people beyond it, whom Allen was sure he had never seen any of them before. The man then looked down and at Allen. The last place he looked.
"Fuck's with your arm?" He barked. Allen winced. That was right, they had left his arm completely uncovered. They didn't bind it or bandage it or give him long sleeves. As strange as it might be, he felt exposed more so than he would have if he had been in front of a golem camera, lower half bare.
Just his arms. Just the way people looked at his arms. Like they were a sin beyond recognition. Two have arms that were so mismatched, so fucked up.
"Allen Walker," Allen's head shot up at the sound of Levirrier's voice flooding the room. His heart clenched. The other man watched him, Allen was sure of it. "You have been charged and proven guilty of heretical crimes against humanity and the Black Order. You have been held here in Central for three months and have refused to give repentance. Penalty is death.," Allen trembled where he stood. God, he never asked for any of this, why couldn't they see that?
"Na— nat gih—" His throat pained as he tried to form words. Tried one last time in a futile effort to tell them he was innocent. He barred his teeth and glared as hard as he could at Levirrier when the words wouldn't come out.
"Robert Fredrick," Levirrier continued, ignoring Allen's savage glare. "You have been charged with the murders of three young women and also found guilty. Penalty is death," Fredrick did not look the least bit surprised, but glared at not Levirrier, but everyone in sight.
"However," Levirrier continued, a large smile growing on his face. Allen shuddered and stumbled backwards at the sight of it. Nothing good could ever come of this, he knew. Nothing good ever had come from Levirrier being happy. "Central Command is willing to let one of you walk away with no death sentence, and in the case of Robert Fredrick, perhaps even walk away with no record..." Allen saw the sudden look on Fredrick's face. The look of disbelief that he might get away entirely.
"Remember though," Levirreir repeated, "Only one of you gets out."
Allen drew in breath as the sudden meaning of that hit him. You cant be fuckin' serious. Fredrick pulled something out of his trench. A curved blade, like a scythe. He held it tightly onto it as he raised it up and bent down as though about to spring. They're fuckin' serious!
Allen pushed off sideways as the man lunged. He stumbled, his legs aching from the sudden strain of jumping. This was just fucked up!
Fredrick lunged again. A serial killer, he had no qualms about murdering people, especially if it were in his personal gain or simple pleasure. Something Allen had been forced to do at one time and given up easily.
Allen fell down onto his knees and tried to trip him, but failed. He scuttled back, avoiding the scythe plunging into his leg by hardly anything more than a foot. He tried to get back up in a rush, the man already turning to try and kill him again.
He couldn't see the people in the windows anymore, his eyes were too fixed on the man in front of him, the small scythe he held. He knew they were watching him though. Some far back part of his mind told him that they were observing every move he made, that they were seeing if he would be able to run, assess how he found when severely handicapped, placing bets on whether he would kill or be killed.
"I don't want to die yet."
That thought, that fact, that feeling had been bred into him since infancy. Everyday, you live or you die. If you were near dead, you were still alive, if you were dead, you were gone.
If only that were always so simple.
You didn't have to take a life to keep your own.
Was it so wrong to want to live without killing everyone who wished to do you harm? Was it so wrong to want to forget the time when you had?
Everything seemed to slow down very suddenly.
Allen saw everything in the wrong colors. Grays and blues, whites and blacks. Gravelly colors.
His movements suddenly seemed much faster, his mind speeding up as adrenaline flooded him.
Numb.
I saw it like a spectator behind the windows would.
I twisted around, sideways, my hands pushing the rest of my body up off the floor in a sideways flip. I fell out of the handstand with my legs falling into the man's neck. I jumped back, putting in distance before charging forward back at the man again and kneeing his gut.
The reaper gorged into my shoulder as I twisted around to free myself from the man's immediate area, trying to get back out of striking range. Crying out in pain, I jerked and almost took my entire shoulder off. The blade ripped part of my shirt and exposed my arm even more. The weapon dripped with the reddish black blood of my Innocence like some macabre horror scene.
The man lunged at me, clutching his stomach. I held onto my left shoulder with my right hand and tried to staunch the blood flow as I jumped away again. It was cat and mouse all around the room because he was larger, stronger and better nourished than I was. He also had a weapon. I kept dodging, running, trying to find a way out. A way to escape everything.
A hand gripped around my arm and twisted, throwing me over, knocking me onto the ground on my back. He jumped on me, kneeing my stomach. He held the scythe up, positioning it to rip into my chest at any given moment. My instincts hit again and I kicked up into him, making him fall forward. The scythe's blade shaved off part of my cheek and came dangerously close to my eye as he tried to catch himself.
I rolled and thrashed under him, trying to throw him off. We switched positions, me on top of him. I pulled a hand back to punch him, and he flipped me again. His weapon forgotten, he tried to do as I had tried. I cried out as his knuckles scraped into the shave of my cheek and came back slightly bloodied from the result of the friction. He pulled back again, cracking something in my jaw. I spat out blood as I lost one more of my teeth.
As he pulled back again to repeat the ritual, I thrashed my fist hard up into his stomach. He gagged and fell off me, stumbling, holding onto the wall for support. I wobbled backwards, face and shoulder agonizing.
Allen fell backwards.
It was his fault.
That was all Allen could think, 'I didn't want to'.
I tripped on my heel. The man lunged at me again, stamana much more than I could have ever held in my state fueling him. He jumped up, going for a dive as I was defenseless on the ground. I was defenseless...
So I screamed as the blood flew across the hall, watching the macabre scene from a front row. Worst seat in the house.
Allen trembled as he looked up, gazing into the lifeless eyes of the serial killer, sullen and void. Clouded. Forsaken of life. The blood trickled down his arm, soaking into the whiteness of his shirt and cloak, staining his black arm that held the limp form above him, skewered like some freakish statue.
His right arm trembled as he lifted it up to shove the limp form off of him, the blood beginning to dribble out of it's mouth. It was heavy, but much lighter than it had been only a few moments before. It fell to the floor with a sick squelching sound as the blood splattered against the floor and smeared for the weight on top of it.
Allen took in a deep breath, swallowing in the platinum stench of death, the iron and copper lingering in his mouth. Even through the very air, it had infected him again. He breathed again. The room tilted and began to be dyed bright red. It covered his vision, covered his hands. His left hand. The long, taloned hand. The long, black hand that killed anything in its way. The skinny white hand. The one tinted with bright red, drying on his skin to dark pink. The one that touched it after and pushed the evidence of what he'd done away.
It was all he knew. It was all he knew.
The ragged breaths of his, the pounding of the organ that he had skewered in his head, in his chest. Beating hard, two times, one for each of them. Murderer and murdered. The blood before him. The blood on him. His cloak was slowly turning pink. Slowly swallowing the man's life essence.
He shook harder, barring his teeth and trying to back away from the scene again, his arms shrinking in terror and the cloak vanishing in horror. He ignored the throngs of people rushing past him, the ones grabbing onto him and the ones rushing to the limp body. The corpse.
Two strong hands suddenly gripped him tightly, stopping him from moving farther back, holding him close to where he had murdered. The bloody trail that smeared across the floor from the corpse connecting to him because of his ruined clothes. He heard people talking to him, trying to get him to look away from the man on the floor, but none of them did. His eyes were wide and staring only ahead as his body continued to tremble. Blood streaming off him.
God, he had killed another.
God, he had killed anothe
God, he had killed anoth
God, he had killed anot
God, he had killed ano
God, he had killed an
God he had killed a
God he had killed
God, he had kille
God, he had kill
God, he had kil
God, he had ki
God, he had k
God, he had
God, he ha
God, he h
God, he
God, h
God,
Go
G
—
"Please," He whispered, his voice high and cracking with the strain of uttering words, "Wake me up..."
Come, please, I'm calling
Hurry, I'm falling,
I'm falling—