A/N: Work, no time, sleep deprived, ultra-drabble-y, another missed deadline. That is all I can say.

7/8 silver.

I always hated the insignia on the shoulder of my uniform. It was silver and intricate. The embroidery probably took days by hand. What an elegant way to say a person was marked to die, advertised in cold metal. It was the mark of an organization that didn't care whether we lived or died, nor how many others lost their lives in the war. I didn't want that mark, but there was nothing else.

Perhaps for that reason I thought that of all metals, silver had to be the coldest. Gold at least appeared to be holding some warmth even when it would be freezing cold to the touch. In the lethal game that was life in the Order, the survivors bore gold. And even that still wasn't a guarantee.

Perhaps that opinion helped form my prejudices when I saw the silver boy. Here was a boy with silver hair, silver eyes and pale skin; he was marked to die before he even put on the uniform coat for the first time. The way I viewed it, that cold color wasn't just an adornment, a mark placed upon him by others, but Allen Walker himself. The first time I met him, I refused to shake his hand; I was afraid that if I touched his palm I would freeze.

The more I saw of the boy in those first few days, the more I began to think my theory was correct. He had a mask of ice that froze his features in place and allowed him to regard anyone and any situation with a cool, but fake politeness. When he got angry, mainly at me, it rolled off of him in chilling waves as opposed to mine which boiled and burned.

The first time I was forced to fight side by side with the silver boy, I was expecting him to die. He was so contaminated by its stain that there was no way he could possibly live. He defied my prediction and lived to sit on a set of stairs for three days and nights while he waited for a doll, not even something with a real life, to stop her singing. That was the first time I saw him under the moon. It glowed bright and big on the horizon behind him, almost swallowing him into her light, as if she was trying to reclaim the color that was hers.

As I watched his face under the cover of night, I began to think he wasn't truly cold after all, only distant and unreachable, so much like the orb that dwarfed his shadowed frame then. There was warmth in him, undeniably so after the lengths he would go for others. I still thought most of those lengths were stupid and risky for no reason, but he wouldn't let anything deter him. If he was indeed as cold as I thought, he would have gone brittle and cracked instead. The only kind of person who could make it past all the obstacles in his path, most of them self-imposed, was someone with enough heat to melt them away.

His soft heat was contagious. Before long, silver didn't seem like such a cold color anymore; after all, metals can be easily warmed. I must have been some sort of metal too, because I drank in that warmth, at first in tiny bits where it wouldn't be missed but I wanted more, wanted it to myself. I was sure if I could reach him for real, I would be blinded by its intensity. Even though he still annoyed me often and could work me up to my boiling point with ease, I couldn't resist the curiosity to find out.

When the distance finally disappeared, it was just as dazzling as I expected.

Late at night, the moon would watch us through the open window, cast its light across his bare body and make him glow in precious metal. Without a doubt, Allen Walker was a child of silver, a child of the moon.

But the moon travels in cycles. It refuses to halt and stay the same for even a day. For every waxing it must wane. So it was the day the silver boy was called on to fulfill his duty as the 'destroyer of time.'

Exorcists were cremated in black coffins. I fought for him to have white; he couldn't have silver, but it would be close. I lost the battle; the black coffin was an honor, a mark of rank. I knew he didn't care about rank. He had valued every human life the same. Civilians; finders; exorcists; even those of us with half-lives, fake lives, had all become equal under that shining gaze. I didn't look right. He should be shrouded in the mark of death. He had been marked all along, just as I had predicted from the very start. The ones who put him on the front lines should have acknowledged it, let themselves feel shame that he was nothing more than a tool to be used until it broke and then tossed away. And their shame would be his pride because although he met with the fate they placed on his shoulders, he had accomplished everything he ever wanted on this world.

The day of the funeral, the room, even the building was packed with people come to see what remained of the 'destroyer of time.' The throngs came to mourn the boy who sacrificed himself to save us all. It was a perfect irony that in that last moment he was a destroyer who saved.

As I looked at his almost-sleeping face, I knew it was all wrong. His silver hair looked to stark against the black pillow, and his silver eyes weren't even visible at all. I knelt for only a moment at his side, all the time I was allowed. I refused to shed tears; for once it wouldn't be the display of emotion before people that made me hesitate. No, I couldn't do it because tears were silver, and that was his color, not mine. I would never have a claim on it again.

I watched the whole proceedings from the side of the room, feeling mildly disgusted at the men and women who walked past, heads bent. They didn't even know what they were truly mourning. Eventually the line ended and he was carried off to be cremated. Even though the war was over, it was still the rules of the Order. Not even the 'destroyer of time' would have a grave. He would vanish forever instead.

There was supposed to be another ceremony for the scattering of his ashes at dawn the next morning, with even more uncaring mourners. That wouldn't be right either. He was silver, not gold. I snuck in and stole the urn, the only thing left of my silver boy burned to dust. I carried it to the top of the building, closest to the moon, and freed him to the wind. Instead of falling to the ground, he was lifted up in a gust of wind that carried him to the sky in a cloud of glittering dust that looked like stars.

As I turned and walked away, I thought silver was a cold color after all. I knew it all along, because I always knew that the silver moon would one day call her child home.

A/N- Well, made myself cry at least.