A/N- Oh god, I was so terrified I wasn't going to get this one up in time. First was the fact I knew it was going to be long, and oh, I had to work all day. Then, about three paragraphs from finishing, my internet cuts out… the DNS server. I hate the DNS server. It requires a full reset of everything, network and computer, and my computer is so slow I was panicking as it was trying to wake itself up that it wouldn't respond in time. I was so ready to bail and try to upload it from my mom's computer somehow without leaving a trace. *big breath* Ok, freak out is done. I still got it up at the last minute despite all of that. Yay!

Another 1st person from Allen

A special shout out to the anonymous reviewer who signs as Sin Angel. I had to find some way to thank you for such lovely reviews.

7/2 haze.

I was in a dark world, black and cold and empty. I blinked my eyes several times and tried to see anything through the gloom. I waved my hand in front of my face but it was as if it wasn't there. Sparks started to burst in my vision as I slid one foot forward and then another. There had to be some way out, some end to the darkness, I only had to find it.

Laughter, sharp and loud, tumbled out from some unseen source. I jumped and whipped around toward the direction of the noise, my eyes scanning for a glimpse of the laugher on instinct. Another voice joined in from behind me, then another and another. Before long, the eerie, disembodied cackles surrounded me on all sides like a wall of sound.

"Who are you?" I called into the nothingness, waving my hand through the air and trying to touch that intangible wall, to disperse it somehow.

"We are your ghosts Allen Walker," a voice replied. It sounded neither male nor female and echoed in every direction until I couldn't pinpoint the origin. The echoes bounced around my body like physical blows until they faded out into the unearthly whisper of many different voices. "We are your failures, the dead, the lost souls."

I covered my ears to stop the sound from tearing through my skull. "Stop," please I shouted, falling to the ground and curling up against the barrage.

"We cannot," they called, "because of you we cannot."

A blinding flash stabbed through my skull and the world dropped into a sudden dead silence. There was a rapid flicker before my vision settled on to light, and what I realized was reality. I gulped a large breath of air and then forced myself to take the next inhale slowly. Just a dream, I thought, trying to calm my racing heart.

I did a quick scan of my surroundings, unfamiliar walls and ceiling. There was a quick flash of darkness that seemed to originate from the left. I rubbed my eyes and sat up, remembering I had fallen asleep across the bench in a train compartment. I was traveling to a mission.

I looked at my partner for the mission, sitting on the seat across from me. Kanda raised one black eyebrow before he disappeared back behind the mission file.

I sat up and stretched before picking up mine and browsing through it with as much nonchalance as I could muster. Kanda would torment me mercilessly if he thought I had been disturbed by something as unimportant as a dream. So far the mission looked like a typical search and retrieve story. Just like so many others, a tiny village had begun to tell stories of strange occurrences and a series of attacks had begun soon after. The finders had then confirmed that it was a piece of innocence being targeted by Akuma. It was almost refreshing to have such a simple, straightforward task after all the difficult missions as of late. The innocence was changing the animals here. It seemed to be in a natural spring deep in the forest that many of them used as a water source. Wild horses became unicorns, wolves stood on two legs at the full moon, and birds combusted in the brilliance of a phoenix. They normally didn't cause any harm, but they were violently protective of their pool. We had been dispatched to try to get there before the poachers of both animals and innocence arrived.

I couldn't concentrate on the mission, though. My eyes glazed as I fell into pondering the dream. What could it have possibly meant? I'm sure it meant something, something important that I needed to figure out.

"Hey, idiot Moyashi, stop drooling and get up. We're here," were the snapped words that broke my concentration. I glanced out the window to see a tiny train platform through the haze of the engine smoke and an even tinier village beyond.

We jumped down from the train and scanned the area. There weren't any people visible, but that was to be expected after Akuma attacks.

"Come on," Kanda ordered and started for the track that ran down the center of the village, "Let's get this over fast. It's boring and annoying."

"I don't know, it seems like a nice, easy break."

"Che," he said loud enough for me to hear and the mumbled something under his breath that sounded like "beginner mission."

All down the path, faces peeked out of windows and from behind curtains before vanishing again. These were scared, distrustful people, but they were more afraid of coming out into the open than they were of us. However, there was one person who wasn't nearly as frightened. A pair of small eyes watched us for a moment from around the corner of a house before a small girl, maybe four or five years old, darted out and nearly ran into us.

"You're new," she exclaimed with a wide smile, as if she was proud of having come to this conclusion herself. "You wear funny clothes."

Kanda whipped out Mugen in an instant. I pushed his sword arm down with a hand so he wouldn't terrify the child. "She's fine," I reassured him. Then I crouched in the dirt to look her in the eye. "Where are your parents?" I was surprised no worried adults had rushed out to collect her.

"Grandma said they went somewhere else. She said I'll see them again. It's boring without them, but Grandma's too slow to catch me." The girl whispered the last part as if she was letting us in on a big secret. My heart went out to the poor child in a burst of empathy. I suspected her parents were killed in the Akuma attack, but without bodies to show she was just too young to understand they were dead.

"You should go back to her," I said gently, "Your Grandmother is probably very worried about you."

She pouted for a moment. I gave her a light nudge in the direction of the houses. Her pout grew in a way that distinctly said, "fine, ruin my fun," but she walked off. If only it had been that easy. She reappeared while Kanda and I were inspecting the edge of the forest for unusual animal prints or a sign of the Akuma to track, nearly startling me out of my skin.

"Didn't I tell you to go home?" I asked her.

"Yes," she stated. "Are you an old man mister? You have hair like an old man."

From somewhere off to my right, Kanda snickered. "I'd let her stay for that comment Moyashi," he teased.

"Is that your name? Moyashi?"

I gritted my teeth and promised to get him back later. Instead I picked her up. "My name is Allen," I said firmly. Then I looked over my shoulder at Kanda. "I'm taking her home. It's too dangerous out here. Leave a trail marker if you find anything." I doubted he would leave a sign, but it didn't hurt to suggest. I left him as the girl kicked her feet and demanded I stay and play with her.

My suspicion was confirmed when I returned from dropping the girl with her Grandmother, who promised to keep a strict eye on her. Kanda was gone without a trace, and I was stuck wandering around the forest for half an hour until I got lucky and spotted a print from his boot in the mud.

I found him four against one at the pool. It glowed green, which made the bloodstains on the water stand out. It looked like the animals had put up a good fight defending it, but they had been slaughtered in the end. I jumped in and engaged with an Akuma who was spitting a sticky, smoking slime everywhere.

I had just dispatched slimy, and Kanda his enemy, when I heard a young voice out in the forest. "Where did you go Allen?" It called. "I want to play!" My heart dropped like a rock as she emerged from between the trees

The remaining two Akuma looked at each other and said in unison, "food!"

I ran as fast as I could, yelling for her to run, to hide, but I was too late. I was close enough for the blood to splatter across my face as an Akuma with axe-like blades for hands decapitated her. I watched, eyes wide, as the body turned to dust as it fell. I attacked her killer with a maniac shout. I forced it back to the pool; it could barely hold against my fury. As I fought, my eye kept gravitating back to the dust that was all which remained.

Just as I was about to kill the Akuma, I glanced back at the crumpled pile on the ground one more time. She was so young. I should have protected her. It was all my fault she was dead. I should have saved her somehow.

I came to a sudden halt as a terrible pain pierced my head. It felt like it was being torn in half along the path of my scar. I screamed and clapped my hand to my face, trying to hold it together; surely it had to be coming apart.

Ever since my eye healed after being stabbed out by Rhode Camelot, I had experienced small problems with it here and there. It had a bad habit of activating to scan for Akuma in the middle of the night. Occasionally it would feel swollen and foreign, as if it didn't belong in my face. It had never been as bad as this. It was flickering. The black and white world I saw blinked in and out of existence so quickly it made me dizzy. I could feel a terrible headache and nausea coming on. I tried to close my eyes, to block out the rapid changing, but I didn't have any control over it; the lid wouldn't close.

I collapsed to the ground, shaking and breathing deeply so I wouldn't be sick. There were voices above me, the metallic voices of Akuma and a voice I recognized very well but I still couldn't decipher what it was saying. Out of the mess of syllables and consonants, words formed. "Heehee! Your loss exorcist," they cackled in delight. I tried to stand, to defend myself, but my knees were weak and the flickering in my vision wouldn't let me pinpoint the Akuma's exact position. I could just make out those axes swinging toward my neck and I knew I was about to die.

The blow never came. Instead, there was an impressive crash followed by a breaking sound. There were more words that I couldn't make out, and then a pair of arms hauling me to my feet. I knew it was Kanda, but I couldn't see him because reality had begun to go blurry, hazy, between the flickers. The nausea I had been fighting rose up suddenly and violently. It was all I could do to try to not be sick on Kanda. Then my legs buckled and the ground was rising up to meet me as quickly as the darkness. At least the flickering stopped, I thought just before I passed out.

When I finally woke up, I was scared to open my eyes in case the flashes came back. I pried them open to find the word was stable, but very blurry. I could feel that I was lying on a bed, but that was the only clue I had to my surroundings. Everything in my vision was a massive wash of colors with no edges or shape. It was as if someone had placed a thick film over my eyes. I blinked several times and rubbed them hard, but it didn't make any difference.

"What the hell happened out there?" asked a voice from out of the haze.

I turned in the direction of the sound and tried to find Kanda. There was some black over on one side of the room, but it was so spread out I couldn't get a good feel on his actual location.

I blinked and squinted some more, but when it didn't help, I started to panic. "I can't see, Kanda," I yelled, "Where are you? I can't see!" I reached blindly in his direction. My breathing was quickly turning to hyperventilation.

He grabbed my hand with his callused one. "Quiet, Moyashi," he said, "I'm right here. You can still feel that, can't you?"

"Yes," I choked out. I reached my other hand forward until I touched his face. To my surprise, he actually let me. Being able to touch something helped ground me. My breathing slowed until I was calm again.

Kanda moved to pull away now that I wasn't panicking. I clenched his hand harder, but let my other hand drop. He gave a long-suffering sigh, and then his arm shifted. The blotch of black shrunk in size a tiny bit so I figured he sat down. "What happened?" He asked again.

"The curse," I told him. "My eye started flickering out there. Now my vision has gone so blurry I can't see anything." Now that I was calmer, I realized, "it must want something from me, the curse. And I think this happened before, right as I woke up from a dream on the train. There was a tiny flicker then."

"What set it off?"

"I don't know," I snapped, "If I did, I would get my sight back now."

"What was the dream about?" He sounded exasperated with our game of 20 questions.

"It was just dark with voices, the voices of the people I couldn't save."

"You were looking at the girl who died when you convulsed and fell." Kanda paused for a moment, trying to add the two up. I bet that he looked thoughtful. "It wants you to let go," he concluded. "You got your head so wrapped up in that stupid 'destroyer that saves' thing that you've convinced yourself you have to save everyone. It's saying you need to stop thinking about the people you didn't."

"But I do have to save everyone!" I exclaimed, scowling out into the haze and hoping I wasn't staring completely off target. "I have this eye and this curse. I'm the only one who can see the souls, so I have to save them. I have to protect all of the innocent people too. I get a few extra seconds, moments sometimes to prevent disaster. If I don't save them it's like I selfishly threw their lives away because I could have done something."

"You can't," he stated flatly, "I told you then and I'll tell you again now, we aren't saviors, we're destroyers."

"And I've proved you wrong! I've saved as well as destroyed."

"Pretty words. You're only try to convince yourself you've proved me wrong, met those idealistic words. You don't believe it." He pulled away and I heard footstep like he was starting to pace, and the colors shifted about.

"Stop," I shouted, "of course I do." It sounded empty even to me. There was always that little bit of doubt, that voice that said if I was truly capable of saving too I would be able to save them all.

"Then why do you torment yourself with the ones who died instead of remembering the ones who live, huh? Why do a few failures outweigh the rest? If that eye was really given to you so you can save souls, then you're supposed to do only that. It wasn't given to you so you can feel all guilty and morose about the dead."

I couldn't think of a good answer, so I crossed my arms and turned my head away. I knew it was childish, but I just couldn't admit he was right. No, he wasn't right... was he?

I heard his footsteps stop their restless movement. He sounded calmer when he said, "You can't save them all. It's not because we're destroyers or any of the other shit I've said. It's because you're just one tiny human, not some kind of god. If there was a crowd of a thousand people attacked by a thousand Akuma, you couldn't physically protect them all. Don't you get it? We're not perfect, we can't save everyone. So stop fucking agonizing over something you can't control."

I looked down toward my lap because I didn't know where else to look without accidentally meeting his eye. "I'm tired," I said. "I want to sleep, so please just go away." It was a lame excuse and we both knew it, but I heard the door close anyway. I lay down and closed my eyes. The dark world behind my lids was less confusing. I don't remember when I drifted off, but I did end up sleeping.

I was back on the darkened plane of my first dream. I stood and waited. I knew the voices would come, and I would have to confront them to regain my vision. They were laughing, led in their chorus by the high, sweet laugh of a little girl.

"Why don't you ask us who we are?" they asked. Whereas before they had been blended and genderless, no one voice rising apart from the others, now the little girl's voice dominated. "We are your ghosts Allen Walker. We are your failures, the dead, the lost souls."

I stood tall and unmoving, waiting for the whispers to fade away. I could almost feel their confusion at my calm demeanor. "I'm sorry for your deaths," I said as steadily as I could, "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

"Yes, that's it. Your failure took our lives. You should be sorry."

"I am sorry, but I also must forgive myself."

"What about your guilt? What about all those feelings of resentment for not being able to protect everyone?" the voices demanded.

"I will always feel some guilt. If I didn't, I wouldn't be human. But it won't rule my life anymore."

When she replied, I could hear the smile in her voice. "Yes, that's it." The darkness blew away in wisps into daylight, and I found myself awake in a strange room. I looked around cautiously, and then with more eagerness, examining every edge, clear line and detail.

There was one detail in particular that caught my eye. He was sitting upright in an uncomfortable-looking chair, arms and legs crossed but eyes closed, apparently asleep. I reached out and shook him to wake him.

He jumped a bit, coming awake instantly. His eyes came to rest on me, and then traveled down to my hand on his arm. "Can you see again?" He asked, a hint of hesitancy in his voice covered by a blunt tone.

I didn't need to say anything. Instead, I looked him directly in the eye and smiled.

A/N- This one was less pairing oriented, but I liked the concept and I still like their interaction, so I hope nobody else minded.