Chapter Text
The Deal
All was empty and silent. It was peaceful, in a way.
Whether he would find himself in the aftermath of exhaustion, traumatic injury, or death itself, Allen did not know. The stillness of the void was beginning to give way to distant sounds.
He finally awoke to the familiar noises and smells of a bustling cafeteria.
Someone was shaking his arm.
“Damn, Al – you’re gonna set a new food coma record!” Lavi said, his voice crashing past every other sound.
Allen reluctantly sat upright and rubbed his eyes. He blinked them open to a mountain of empty plates with a nagging sense of confusion, then turned to face Lavi’s bright grin. He forced a smile of his own and swallowed on impulse, but he couldn’t pick out any lingering flavors on his tongue from what appeared to have been a momentous meal. What had he even eaten? The memory eluded him for some reason.
“Hey, he’s earned the right to pig out,” Lenalee corrected from Allen’s other side. “That was hands down the longest and toughest mission we’ve ever survived.”
Allen stretched his mind to recall just what mission was being referenced, but nothing came to him. Clearing his throat, he asked, “What was the mission, again?”
“To retrieve General Cross, idiot,” Kanda snapped from across the table. “Should’ve guessed that one long nap was all it took to wipe your little beansprout brain.”
Lavi elbowed Allen’s side and chuckled, “Nah, let’s chalk that up to the trauma from reuniting with your master.”
Hazy memories were not enough to prevent the shudder down Allen’s spine at the mention of the man. “You mean we actually tracked him down?”
“More like brought him to justice,” Lenalee said, her expression suddenly serious. “He’s facing Inquisition for supporting the Noah all this time. It’s just so surreal, to think one of our own Generals was an insider threat. But at least it means you won’t have to worry about him tormenting you anymore.”
“Yeah, good riddance,” Kanda agreed. He stabbed his chopsticks into his soba.
Despite the fog in his mind, Allen’s stomach twisted at the inexplicable wrongness of Lenalee’s words. His master was a traitor? Sure, that checked out. General Cross was sketchy as hell on his best day. But how was Allen sitting here, somehow escaping the fallout of his master’s terrible decisions? If there was a debt to be paid, he ought to have been on the hook in one way or another as the apprentice.
Allen turned to Lenalee with skeptical eyes and felt another stab of wrongness. The pixie cut she was sporting made sense somehow, but he struggled to remember why.
“Lenalee, what happened to your hair?”
With a laugh, she tapped Allen’s nose and said, “I told you a while ago, silly. It got burned off in a battle at sea. Did you really forget the whole trip to Japan with Anita’s crew?”
“Oh… right,” Allen said, just beginning to connect more dots as pieces of their trip resurfaced. “We crossed China and sailed for Japan. But then, what was I doing at the Asia Branch?”
“Retraining your Innocence,” Lavi said offhandedly before regrouping to emphasize, “But you joined us again in Edo, so it’s all good.”
“I think I remember fighting in Edo…” Allen trailed off. But how did I get there?
He could picture the smiling face of a certain Level Three akuma, then stepping through its gate.
Right, a numbered gate…
An Ark gate!
Images of the whitewashed Ark flashed behind Allen’s eyes. Wave upon wave, overlapping memories surged into his mind so fast he thought his head might explode. Losing Kanda and Crowley, facing Tyki and Road at a banquet hall atop the city, and a piano in a white room…
The Player! I controlled the Ark, where Master found some kind of egg-shaped akuma factory.
Allen could not piece together how they had gone back to this particular point in time, sitting in the cafeteria at their old headquarters after returning from the Ark, but the more he recalled, the more his senses now warned him of imminent danger.
He shot to his feet, slammed his hands on the table and sent several dishes cascading down to shatter on the floor. “The Noah are coming for the Egg! We’re about to be attacked!”
All three of his friends just stared at him in confusion. The rest of the cafeteria fell momentarily silent at the disturbance, but after a few awkward seconds everyone went back to eating.
“I swear it’s true!” Allen tried again. “We took the Egg from the old Ark, but they’re going to use the new Ark to infiltrate the Order any moment now!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kanda finally asked. He shoved his tray aside. “No one’s ever even seen Noah’s Ark, much less boarded it. We found General Cross and destroyed the akuma factory in Edo. It was a nasty bunch of battles, and you had a pretty serious head injury toward the end, but that’s all there is to it.” To punctuate the claim, Kanda gestured at Allen’s forehead.
“What?” Allen choked. He reached up and felt the edges of a bandage wrapped around his head, but that did nothing to assuage his alarm. Kanda’s explanation clashed so strongly with his resurfacing memories that he could hardly parse the words.
Lenalee reached out to touch his arm. “Allen, Kanda’s telling the truth. Maybe you should’ve stayed longer in the medical ward to fully recover. I can walk you back there if you want.”
Shaking his head, Allen fought to sort his chaotic thoughts. The trials of the Ark were too visceral in his mind: Tyki’s dark power exploding after his botched exorcism, Lavi’s cold words and the heat of his Infinite Flame, Allen’s own hands playing the keys of the piano, the lullaby from Timcanpy written in Mana’s secret letters…
The Fourteenth. Of course, just thinking about how insane things had become, Allen had to wonder if the whole ordeal might have been too convoluted to be true.
Could it have all been some bizarre nightmare concocted from brain trauma?
Wouldn’t it be better if that’s all it was?
Allen slowly sat back down, trying to calm his breathing. His heart pounded against his ribcage at the growing awareness of everything his mind told him they had endured since the Ark. It took hardly any effort for Allen to envision a Level Four wreaking havoc on their home, Kanda and Alma Karma entrenched in battle, flashes of being imprisoned and running for his life, never knowing if he would wake up as himself ever again. He remembered the horror of Apocryphos, a jar of Timcanpy’s ashes, and Chaoji’s bloody heart in Tyki’s hand.
All impossible memories.
Or so he was told.
He turned back to Lavi, who flashed a reassuring smile as if he hadn’t nearly died three times, suffered through months of torture and lost his apprenticeship.
As if he was not the Heart-bearer.
A part of Allen wanted that to be true with all his might. If Lavi did not wield the Heart, he could be the Bookman he’d trained for years to become. He could be tangential to the Millennium Earl’s quest rather than the focus of it. Allen could hide him away, safe and secure and out of sight of this unseemly war.
Allen wanted to pretend it were so, but he could not even muster a smile.
“Al, it’s really okay,” Lavi said, oblivious to the panicked thoughts assaulting Allen.
Even as he spoke, Allen swore he could see a trail of blood trickling down Lavi’s neck, staining his collar. A blink later and it was gone.
No, it isn’t okay. We aren’t okay.
His chest clenched, and Allen knew down to the marrow that this was wrong. He wasn’t sure how or to what end, but someone was meddling with his memories. Deciding to test it just to be sure, he went with the first impulse that hit him – something completely out of place in this pseudo-alternate timeline of events.
He took Lavi’s face in his hands and kissed him.
Lavi did not flinch. Despite the apparent time and place, the kiss felt exactly as Allen remembered it to be: honest and sure, infused with the scent of Himalayan evergreens that existed thousands of miles from the Black Order.
An impossibility.
As Allen pulled away, the cafeteria and its unreality melted into a starkly different scene – one where pillars of smoke marred the blue sky above where he stood, still facing Lavi. The wide path underfoot swept upward to the Grove’s gated compound.
Lavi held his shoulders in a vice grip, heartfelt desperation on his face. “Please don’t—”
The smoke thickened and spread until it blocked the world from view. Lavi was swallowed up along with everything else, leaving Allen to stumble through the suffocating haze. His lungs burned with every breath, his throat constricting further until his body pitched forward.
Nothingness enveloped him once again.
The void was comforting. Allen soaked in its silence for as long as possible before awareness began to creep up his limbs. Even then, he kept his eyes shut and tried to piece together his current circumstance. Where on earth had he landed, anyway? Was he dead or alive?
He traced his memories up to the present, but it always ended the same.
With smoke and dust, the air choked out of his lungs and Apocryphos’ bloody eyes burning into his own.
Allen shuddered and rolled onto his side, yanking up the blankets.
The blankets?
So he was in a bed. A familiar one, by the calming smell of it.
The whistle of a kettle reached his ears, beckoning him to face this new reality.
Allen cracked an eye open. Soft morning light seeped in through a wall of windows nearby, the dense plant growth outside tingeing the room in muted green and gold. The interior space appeared to be large but cluttered, with a massive desk against one wall and bookshelves nearly everywhere else. He spotted a steam trail and traced it back to a teakettle atop a squat stove in the corner.
“Hey beautiful.” Allen bolted upright, startled at Lavi’s sudden voice from across the room. Chill air slapped his exposed skin, and he gathered the covers against his chest upon the alarming realization that the covers were all he had available.
Lavi just shot him a knowing grin and pushed off the doorframe he’d been leaning against. He finished toweling off his hair, apparently having come out of the washroom, and strolled over to take the screaming kettle off the stove. He sported only a pair of loose pants, the intricate tattoo on his stomach in plain view as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. The waistband dipped low enough to expose even more of the tattooed root system than Allen recalled.
Allen’s face flared up until the burn spread down his neck. A dozen explanations for the circumstance converged on his mind at once, none of which aligned with his recent memories. The covers were suddenly too much, sealing him in sweaty, miserable heat.
What in god’s name have I gotten myself into?
He could do nothing but stare, bewildered and transfixed, as Lavi prepared two mugs of tea. Lavi dropped a sugar cube into one of the mugs and asked, “Did ya want more?”
“Y-yeah, sure,” Allen squeaked. He swallowed over his parched throat.
The situation worsened once Lavi brought a tray to the bedside and sidled in next to Allen, who seized up like a statue. Lavi leaned in to place a kiss on his cheek and a mug in his hands.
“Good morning to you, too,” Lavi murmured in his ear. Allen shivered in response but could not seem to get a word out, at which Lavi just chuckled and shook his head.
Rather than press further, Lavi took up his own mug and lounged back against the pillows. “Care to tell me what’s got you all wound up?” he asked, sipping his tea in thought for a moment. He cut his gaze over to Allen as he added, “Weird dreams, maybe?”
“Um,” Allen cleared his throat, his mind grasping for words that floated far out of reach. “I…”
He trailed off, unsure of what to say. He knew he was staring, a fact that was further exacerbated as he gathered more and more details: the missing eyepatch, the way Lavi’s damp hair hung longer than he remembered, sending rivulets of water over his shoulders and down, down...
Allen forced his eyes onto his own tea. He breathed in the steam and took a sip. It was Darjeeling. “How… how did I get here?” Allen managed.
“You mean here in bed?” Lavi asked, cracking a little smirk. “I didn’t throw you into it, if that’s what you’re wondering. I make no promises for the future, though.”
“Lavi!” Allen snapped, bristling through his paralysis at the blatant teasing. He finally got around to the point. “I’m serious. And where on earth are my clothes?”
Lavi snorted and gestured vaguely at the room. “Somewhere. Since when do you care?”
“Since forever!” Allen exclaimed, smacking his free hand onto the covers. “I’ve got no memory of how I got here!”
“Wait, really?” Lavi’s smile dropped away, and he set his tea aside. He narrowed his eyes at Allen, his brow creasing with worry. “Al, this is our place. We’ve lived here for a couple of years now – well, whenever I’m not travelling, anyway.”
“Our—” Allen’s mouth worked, but he could not give form to his thoughts. He shook his head in disbelief. “Where is here?”
“Where do you think? The Bookman only calls one place on the planet home, and that’s the Grove,” Lavi explained, looking more concerned with every word.
Allen struggled to wrap his mind around the information. “You mean Bookman and the Elders made you stay with the Clan?” he hazarded, trying to incorporate Lavi’s claim that they had lived together for two whole years. “Did he find a new apprentice already?”
“No, Allen.” Lavi reached out slowly, clearly trying not to spook him any further, and brushed the hair back from Allen’s face. He stroked his thumb across Allen’s cheek, meeting his wide eyes with both steady green ones. “I live here because I am the Bookman.”
Allen’s breath froze in his chest. He could think of only one possible way that Lavi could be the Bookman now, despite his prior forced dismissal as the Heart-bearer, and that was if Bookman never got the chance to train another apprentice.
“Then, is Bookman—?” he asked quietly.
Lavi nodded once, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Yeah, he’s gone.”
All of his confusion and unease fell away in the moment. Allen set his tea on the nightstand and leaned in to wrap his arms around Lavi.
“I’m so sorry, Lavi,” he whispered, overwhelmed with a sense of loss. “What happened?”
Nevermind the probable multitude of tragedies from whatever earth-shattering battles Allen couldn’t seem to recall. For the moment, one tragedy was more than enough to process.
Lavi kissed the top of his head. “It was a long time ago, Al. I’d rather not explain everything again, right now.”
“Again?” Allen groaned against his neck. How many times had he forgotten this much, or more? “Look, forget I even asked,” Allen added. “I just feel like absolute shit for not remembering.”
“Hey, I remember more than enough for the both of us,” Lavi tried to tease, but his voice sounded thick. “This isn’t exactly your first bout of amnesia after… y’know, everything, it’s just been a while. Don’t worry about it.”
“Like hell,” Allen said, tracing his fingers in little circles on Lavi’s back. “It hurts when the people you love are just oblivious. I want to make this right.”
Allen was far too acquainted with that specific brand of pain. He’d survived the days when Mana didn’t know him. Days he didn’t even know his own name.
Losing Nea broke him.
That thought drove home the implication of Lavi’s words: it was entirely possible Nea had damaged his own memory function. Maybe even taken over straight through to the end of the war. After all, if this reality was just some convoluted mind trick, what sort of fabrication would include the death of any of his friends? What fantasy would leave Lavi to live with this loss?
None of his own, surely. And Lavi felt too real, here and now, his slow heartbeat thudding against Allen while his warm arms returned the embrace. Lavi pulled back just enough to press their foreheads together, the heat of their bodies radiating between them.
“Wanna help me forget?” he breathed, brushing a kiss against Allen’s lips. “Please.”
Allen felt a twinge of hesitation somewhere under every other impulse, but it stood no chance. Even the lingering anxiety and concern over his faulty memory were not enough to shut down the need that consumed him on every level – for comfort, for escape, for things he hadn’t dared to hope might be.
He barely uttered a yes before returning the kiss, the musky-sweet taste and smell of Lavi all he wanted to remember. And if Lavi wanted to forget, Allen was determined to make it so. He slipped his hands down to Lavi’s hips, dragging his fingertips over the soft hairs at the base of his spine and pressing into the little dimples on either side. Lavi pressed deeper into the kiss in turn, and for a few moments there was no oxygen to be had.
Feeling a bit lightheaded, Allen broke the connection with a breathless laugh. He rested his face against Lavi’s shoulder.
“You really do taste amazing,” he sighed, planting a sloppy kiss on Lavi’s neck.
Lavi combed his fingers through Allen’s hair, fingertips moving on to tease their way down his spine. “I’ve gotta wonder if you’re comparing me to actual food when you say stuff like that.”
“Oh, there’s no comparison,” Allen muttered into Lavi’s neck. He kissed the spot and struck out on a meandering path up the underside of Lavi’s jaw, until he captured one of Lavi’s hoop earrings in his mouth. Nose buried in Lavi’s hair, Allen let himself drown in the smokey scent of sandalwood and the metallic taste on his tongue as he toyed with the earring. He heard the catch in Lavi’s breath, the way his fingers faltered momentarily before threading back into his hair. He loved the press of skin against his, the lips ghosting along his shoulder and the fingertips inscribing secrets across his scar-littered back more than he could have imagined.
If this was what Lavi wanted…
Well, he could see the appeal of occasional amnesia.
They finally separated long enough to lock gazes, Lavi’s eyes so brilliant it was truly surreal. He ran the backs of his knuckles along Allen’s jawline. “Get a little carried away?”
“Mm,” Allen managed, but the sound came out as more of a whine. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. Once he’d settled for a few seconds, he peered up at Lavi with a curious look. “Surely you’ve—we’ve done this plenty of times.”
“So?” Lavi laughed. He raised and kissed the inside of Allen’s wrist. “I’m down for an encore.”
Looking down, Allen felt a stab of confusion at the sight of his own hand in Lavi’s – the sight of his whole arm in fact. His left arm.
Confusion bloomed into realization, and he gasped at the shock of it.
His hand and arm were perfectly normal.
“What—? Lavi, my arm!” Allen blurted, reclaiming his left hand and holding it between them. A pale, cross-shaped scar on the back of his hand was the only remnant of his arm’s previous state. He stared at the mark in awe, at first, before his thoughts caught up enough to spiral into panic.
“What happened to Crown Clown?”
Lavi dropped his gaze. “I’m really sorry, Allen, but… I did what I had to do. Nea was killing you, and I could only figure one way to stop him.”
Allen pictured Nea smirking behind Crown Clown’s opera mask – all his claims about his connection to the Innocence coming full circle. Apocryphos’ words echoed in his head, one of the last memories Allen could clearly recall before his mind went dark:
“I am killing a Noah, and a pitiful human whose Innocence has been irreparably corrupted.”
The creature spoke of returning his Innocence to its source.
The Heart was that source.
“So you took it back,” Allen said under his breath, hands falling to his lap in disbelief. His vision blurred as the tears collected. “I’m not… an Exorcist anymore?”
Lavi shook his head, dabbing the corner of the blanket over Allen’s eyes. “It’s okay, Al. You don’t have to fight ever again.”
His chest went hollow. What was his purpose in this future, then? Had he even fulfilled his role as the Destroyer of Time?
Scrubbing at his eyes, Allen began, “But the war—”
“The war is over,” Lavi said simply. He retrieved his mug, shrugging as he took another sip of tea. “We don’t have to worry about the Noah or the Earl anymore.”
Allen had a sudden, chilling vision of the Heart’s power and the full force of Exorcists annihilating the Noah, their akuma forces, and most significantly, the Earl himself.
His master’s warning reverberated in his skull, “…you will have to kill someone you love.”
His blood ran cold. “What happened to Mana?”
“Oh, he went home,” Lavi said, the words casual enough to edge on careless. “Said he needed to take care of his mother at the estate. You remember Katerina, yeah?”
“So he’s alive?” Allen asked, relieved but equally stunned by this new development. He clenched his hands in the covers to ground himself. “How is he not the Earl anymore?”
“The Heart works in mysterious ways,” Lavi explained, quirking an eyebrow as if this was a perfectly logical and widely accepted answer.
Allen wanted badly to leave it at that. But he had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach – one that warned him against this tidy resolution. The million-dollar question remained: why on earth had Nea thought he could use the Heart to defeat the Earl and still become the Earl himself? There was at least one reason, possibly multiple, why Nea did not believe there was a simple way for the Heart-bearer to just defeat the Earl, and that the Earl’s defeat did not guarantee his actual demise. He spoke of killing Mana and taking his place.
Nea had staked his broken soul on it. He had also come to terms with the very real likelihood that it could mean Mana’s death.
But if Nea himself had been eradicated along with Crown Clown, and Mana was alive, who could be the Earl now besides Mana? This entire scenario just didn’t add up. Unless…
“Lavi,” Allen asked, reaching out to hold his cheek, “Are you lying to me?”
“What?” Lavi replied. His brow wrinkled with worry. “Why would I do that?”
“To spare my feelings,” Allen said. “Or to keep me calm, maybe. You’re hiding something.”
Lavi shook his head, his eyes softening with sympathy. He set his empty mug aside and took Allen’s face in his hands. “Al, why can’t you just accept this? I thought you were happy here with me.”
“I should be,” Allen sighed, frustrated with his own discontent but unable to dismiss his concerns. “I just—I can’t believe that Mana’s somehow magically okay. Can I at least see him for myself?”
Lavi dropped his head to Allen’s shoulder with a groan. “That is a really long trip, Al. We can’t just up and leave on a whim, so we’ll have to work it into my next travel plans. What’s the hurry?” He nuzzled his face into Allen’s neck, his warm lips and tongue trailing fiery kisses from jaw to collarbone while his nails lightly scraped down the scar on Allen’s chest and stomach.
“Don’t you want me?” Lavi asked, the breathless need in his voice coiling Allen’s insides. He captured Allen’s mouth and laid him back against the sheets, never once breaking the kiss as he followed Allen down. The pressure between them forced a moan up Allen’s throat, but he could not tear himself away to speak. Lavi swallowed the sound, nipping and sucking at Allen’s lips whenever their tongues were not entangled.
Allen just drank in Lavi, intoxicated by the taste of Darjeeling and honey and god knew what else that was uniquely him.
This was more than want. The ache in Allen’s body burned white hot and settled low in his belly like lava. The rush threatened to lay waste to his thoughts.
By the time Lavi broke away, Allen’s head was spinning. His face felt terribly hot. He sucked in a shaky breath but found no reprieve – the slightest shift of Lavi’s hips had him choking back a whimper.
“Damn, Al,” Lavi chuckled, still a bit out of breath. He propped his face in one hand, eyes shining down at Allen with amusement. He traced a fingertip back and forth over Allen’s swollen lower lip. “You’re in pretty bad shape. And here I thought I’d been taking good care of you.”
“I-I don’t remember,” Allen stammered, his voice a wreck. He belatedly loosened his bruising grip on Lavi’s back. “Sorry, Lavi.”
“Hey, no need to apologize. I’m not the one holding on by a thread,” Lavi said, grinding his hips down once to punctuate the point. Allen gasped at the sudden jolt of pleasure before the ache doubled down again.
“Just tell me how you want it.”
Something about the statement splashed over Allen like ice water. He wriggled back, just out of contact range, and propped himself on his elbows. He gaped at Lavi in disbelief.
“Why are you pressuring me?”
“I’m not,” Lavi said, looking equally baffled as he sat up to his knees. “I was just trying to help.”
“You’ve helped enough!” Allen fired back. “Can you even imagine waking up naked in someone’s bed with no memory of actually having sex before?”
Lavi scrubbed a hand down his face. “Shit, Allen. I thought… I guess I thought your body still had muscle memory or something, even if you couldn’t remember the context.”
Chewing his lip, Allen just muttered, “Hell if I know. My body’s just as forgetful, I guess.”
No, that was wrong. That was not how bodies worked, no matter what the mind decided it was getting up to. Lavi had just stated as much. Muscle and sensory memory could persist well beyond the loss of actual memory. And right now, both his body and his mind were supremely confused.
“Well, then. I’m gonna go get cleaned up,” Allen declared, slinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He wrapped the top blanket around himself like an oversized toga and marched to the washroom.
“Allen, hold up—” Lavi called, his soft steps in pursuit.
Allen shut the door between them and locked it. Giving his head a vigorous shake, he dropped the blanket to the floor and headed straight to the shower. He ran the cold tap and stood shivering in the freezing spray in the hopes that he might just snap himself out of everything, or at least clear his head.
Something was definitely off. Either Lavi was outright manipulating him – and Allen refused to dwell on the possibility of landing in an unhealthy long-term relationship with his best friend – or he faced the more likely explanation: that this reality was some sort of twisted, sickeningly elaborate dream.
Worst of all, he had nearly been convinced. Very painfully convinced.
Well, I suppose it could’ve been more painful.
The world unfortunately did not shift, so Allen switched gears to analysis. After replaying the exchange in the bedroom a few times, he did come to an important conclusion: it was not like Lavi to hand-wave his serious concerns. The real Lavi would have gone in-depth and backed his statements with proof if necessary to put Allen at ease, but this Lavi’s goal was clearly distraction. What had ultimately led the pseudo-Lavi to double down on the pressure was his insistent questioning about Mana’s fate. He had asked to see Mana as proof.
No matter which enemy was tormenting him, Allen knew the Earl would be a touchy subject.
Once Allen felt his wits were about him and the ache had mostly subsided, he switched the water to hot and breathed in the calming steam for a few more minutes. Satisfied, he shut off the water and snagged a towel. He raked back the wet hair from his face and turned to the clouded mirror over the sink, unsurprised at the sight of a faded scar on his forehead where his cursed mark should have been.
Allen swiped the towel over the glass to get a better look at himself. His hands clenched around the edge of the porcelain sink, a scream trapped in his throat.
His eyes were gold.
He remained frozen in place until Lavi knocked on the door.
“Allen, c’mon – I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything, okay? It’s kind of a lot to take.”
Stumbling backward, Allen tripped over the discarded blanket and crashed to the tile floor.
The world went black again.
The feel of wooden slats against Allen’s back was familiar, even down to the prodding of splinters he tried to ignore. Despite the emptiness of his thoughts, his heavy head threatened to loll forward, so he shifted onto his side. His left arm felt incredibly stiff, but somehow that seemed right.
“Better get up, little pierrot. Break time’s over.”
Allen blinked his eyes open, noting the crate he rested against and the gloved hand waving in his face. Mana beamed back at him, his smile painted even wider by his makeup.
“I’ve got to get back to my act,” Mana said, hauling Allen to his feet. He dusted off Allen’s checkered outfit and placed a stack of fliers in his right hand, gently ruffling his hair.
“Now, let’s give these people a big smile!”
He ushered Allen out into the sunlight of a bustling market square, jogging off with a wave. Several familiar circus performers were busy with their acts – here a fire-breather, there a pair of acrobats, and many others besides Mana on his gigantic ball – while the smells of countless food stalls drowned out the filth of city streets.
Other circus brats besides Allen were handing out fliers all around, and one of the kids shot him a warning glare when their eyes met.
Better get a move on, huh.
Allen painted on his brightest grin out of sheer habit, waved his first flier and pressed into the crowd. The motions were automatic. There was no time to think, and what was there to really think about, anyway? Words came out of his mouth like a pre-set recording.
“Come see the amazing Circus!” he announced. “Shows at seven and nine o’clock all week long!”
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been weaving through the bodies in the marketplace, his hefty stack of fliers whittled down by half, but the sun was well along its journey toward the west by the time Allen paused at the edge of the square for a quick breather.
Resting in the shade of a food stall, Allen swiped the sweat from his brow with his good arm, his eyes tracking the surroundings out of habit. A splash of color caught his attention – a gleam of scarlet hair reflecting in the sun, nowhere near any of the circus acts. The fiery hair belonged to a boy perched on a nearby crate. He slouched forward in his seat, looking out at the performances like he was watching a funeral procession.
Lavi, Allen’s mind echoed out of nowhere, but that couldn’t be right. How could he know the name of someone he’d never met?
His feet moved without permission, and before he knew it, he was grinning up at the boy on the crate.
“Oi, ain’t ya having fun?” he asked.
The boy looked up from his moping, his expression carefully blank. “Am I s’posed to be?”
Their conversation continued as if Allen were watching himself perform in a play, every line scripted and anticipated in turn. The boy with the beautiful red hair had no name, he said. Allen questioned this but made no comment on his eyepatch – after all, it was rare to speak with anyone other than Mana who didn’t give him dubious looks or make cruel remarks about his arm. In the end, he managed to cajole the boy into giving their show a try, and he even earned some applause for his juggling trick.
Allen went through the motions of handing out more fliers after the nameless boy departed, but the time blurred by with incredible speed and little detail. Eventually, Allen found himself running through the dwindling crowd in the square to find Mana. The performers were packing up, ready to leave the marketplace and set up for the main event.
Mana turned from packing his bag of props, only for Allen to launch into the puffy belly of his clown suit with a tackling hug and a broad smile.
“Got a friend comin’ to the show tonight, Mana!”
Mana spun him around and laughed. “Good for you, my little pierrot!” He placed Allen back on his feet, taking his shoulders in his hands. “Now, who’s your friend?”
For some wild reason he could not explain, Allen reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, worn paper. He held it up to show Mana, but he was just as shocked himself to see that it was a photograph of the boy he had just met, standing next to an older man whom Allen also recognized.
Lavi and Bookman, his mind supplied. But how? How could he be here, now, and have this?
A memory surfaced from the depths, where an older boy with the same eyepatch and fiery hair led him through a cave-like study. The boy showed Allen a photograph of himself and the old man, then sealed it in an envelope and gave it to Allen, insisting that he keep it. His gaze was resolute but tinged with pain.
“When I was going through some very dark low points, I needed something to center myself on – to help me come back to myself before I got too lost.”
Am I… lost?
The warm summer air suddenly swirled around Allen with an icy bite, and he shivered violently. He looked away from the photograph to Mana in confusion.
Mana’s golden eyes filled with tears. As he placed a finger just off-center on Allen’s forehead, Allen’s heart sank, sadness and dread creeping in. Mana’s tears spilled over and tracked down his face, smearing away his white makeup and leaving behind charcoal lines.
The sky overhead darkened to steel, frigid wind whipping all around them. The smell of smoke and death burned Allen’s nostrils as he watched Mana’s bright costume melt away like watercolor. Instead, the Earl suit surrounded him, threatening to engulf him at any moment. He latched onto the front of Allen’s shirt, and Allen grabbed his arm on instinct.
“Don’t go, Mana—!”
“Even if I can only curse you,” Mana cried, his fingertip searing over Allen’s left eye and down the side of his face, “I love you.”
Allen’s tears and blood blurred Mana’s face in his vision. The pain seemed to be everywhere at once, radiating from his eye and cheek to consume his body whole, but he refused to let go of Mana’s arm. His heart lurched at the thought of what was to come, bracing for the Earl to consume Mana again at any moment.
No! I have to save you!
Instead, Allen’s vision cleared to the sight of Mana’s desperate golden eyes staring down at him from the face of a stranger. The young man was sobbing hysterically, his long dark hair falling all around his face. He clenched the front of Allen’s shirt and shook him frantically. Ash-like particles swirled and scattered in the air around them.
“No, Nea! No!” the man wailed. “You can’t— You have to come back to me!”
Mana? Is this—
“Look for… Allen,” Allen heard himself whisper in Nea’s broken voice. “Don’t stop… Keep walking.”
—Nea’s memory?
Mana gasped, the faintest glimmer of hope in his eyes before the Earl surged forth and enveloped him. His inhuman eyes were crazed with hate. His ghastly grin spread wide and high as he raised his sword.
The blow never landed.
Allen’s body hurtled backward from the scene and into the darkness.
Allen heaved a breath into starved lungs, his eyes flying wide. It felt like waking from the dead this time. Phantom pain still whispered over the cursed mark on his face. He lay flat on his back, his body like lead and his limbs stiff and tingling, as the world above him spun in a halo of golden wheat around a blue sky. The peaceful atmosphere bombarded his senses in a way he could scarcely remember. Blades of dry grass came into sharp focus, their warm sunbaked scent tickling his nose. The images and sensations from his recent dreamlike experiences paled in comparison, their details already beginning to fade in favor of actual recollection.
Unlike those experiences, his last true memories of the futile struggle against Apocryphos at the East Gate stood out starkly in his mind. Link had been blown into the rubble, and Allen’s attempts to restrain the monster with the clown belt just got him caught by the throat. He had spotted Lavi on the edges of his failing awareness, his mind hazy from lack of oxygen while his body dangled in the air. He vaguely remembered Lavi trying to talk Apocryphos down after every other effort had failed.
Most of all, he remembered his own fear – the fear that Lavi and everyone else would be slaughtered, while he remained helpless to stop it.
Allen couldn’t begin to guess how the fight had ended, but this field was undeniably real. Being in this place meant he must have lost control of his body at some point.
Just how long had Nea had been at the helm—
Agonized screaming hit his ears from somewhere in the vicinity, crashing into his thoughts.
Holding a hand to his throbbing head, Allen struggled to sit up. He turned toward the noise, only to see Nea stomping a warpath through the wheat as he hurled obscenities at the sky.
Nea suddenly whipped around and stormed toward Allen instead, tears streaming down his face. He hauled Allen roughly to his feet with little resistance. Still a bit woozy, Allen swayed where he stood. Nea’s grip on his shirt was the only thing keeping him upright.
“Nea, what the hell—?” he began.
“Don’t even try to play innocent, you meddling motherfucker!” Nea snapped, shaking him roughly. “My personal memories are none of your fucking business!”
So it had been Nea’s memory there at the end. Allen’s brain went on rapid rewind, tracing back through the mind-bending trip he had just endured.
What had happened, exactly? How had he even arrived at the scene of Nea’s death?
It started with Mana. He had been dreaming about Mana up to that point, reliving a fond memory from their time in the circus until the sight of Lavi’s photograph shattered the illusion. He was dragged back through his final memory of Mana so forcefully that he must’ve somehow crossed over to Nea’s memory.
And before that… Allen shuddered at the image of golden eyes in his reflection. Shame and embarrassment flared across his face over his interactions with Lavi in a fabricated future.
“Hey, what the hell is wrong with you?” Nea continued to rail, shaking Allen once more, but Allen’s mind was still fighting to catch up. “You’d better fucking explain yourself!”
As Allen thought further back, his stomach churned at the way his friends had dismissed his concerns about the Order’s coming attack and treated him like a mental case.
Those scenes – those dreams, apparently – did have one thing in common: they had all twisted and used his desires against him.
Now, it appeared that this experiment had blown up in the face of its originator. They were back in the neutral ground of Nea’s wheat field, and the offender himself was royally pissed that Allen had managed to turn the tables on him.
Allen was done being toyed with.
He fisted his hands at his sides as righteous fury washed over him. He hauled off and punched Nea in the mouth, freeing himself in the process. From somewhere behind him, Allen heard a shrill squeak, but his anger only had eyes for the Noah in front of him.
“You shameless hypocrite!” Allen spat, following up his punch with a hard shove backward. “Someone just had a field day in my head, and I’m betting it was you!”
Nea stumbled back and spat blood on the ground. He swiped a thumb at his busted lip, glaring coldly at Allen as he cracked a half smile. “Yeah, well, you sure did seem to enjoy it.”
Allen charged at Nea again, intent on beating him absolutely senseless, but was waylaid by someone else launching into him from the left. His arms were pinned at his sides in a vice grip.
“Allen, stop it!” Road screeched.
“Get off me!” Allen said. He wriggled his arms free and pried the smaller girl away, planting her to the side. He ran a hand down his face and groaned at the implication of her presence. “Damn it, you too? Just how many Noah decided to usurp my mind this time?”
“Oh, it was mostly me,” Road admitted, tilting her head with a wink.
“This is a new low, even for you,” Allen snapped. “I should’ve guessed you’d use inside knowledge of Lavi against me.”
“Well, I did have a lot of fun inside that head of his,” Road crowed. “So much to unpack – it was like a treasure hunt!”
“Ugh, I’m the real victim here,” Nea grumbled, tongue flicking at the blood on his lip as he crossed his arms. He glared daggers at Allen. “Five fucking days I had to be turned on for no goddamn reason, thanks to you and your stupid teenage hormones.”
Allen’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait – five whole days? That lasted half an hour at most.”
“If only,” Nea whined. “Dream time doesn’t flow like normal time, genius. I’ve never been so disgusted in my life.”
“Yeah, well that makes two of us,” Allen said, shifting his glare between them both. “Did you demon spawn have a point to this scheme of yours, or was it all for the pure sadistic pleasure of tormenting me?”
Road just procured a lollipop from somewhere in her dress, popped it in her mouth and shrugged. She inclined her head toward Nea.
Nea’s malicious grin spread wide. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Oh, the sadistic pleasure was just a bonus,” he said. “You were supposed to give up and drown in your fake realities for a long, long while. At least until I could make use of you again.” He pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time. “Sadly, I only bought myself a couple of weeks or so.”
“I’ve been gone for weeks?” Allen exclaimed, clenching his hands in his hair. His stomach tied itself in a dozen knots. So much could have transpired in that amount of time, he couldn’t begin to guess at the state of his friends or the world.
If his last true memories were reliable, things had not gone well at the Grove.
“How did this happen?” Allen asked.
Surprisingly, Nea dropped the smile. “You failed. That’s the long and short of it. Once again, I had to drag your ass from the jaws of death,” he said coldly, his sharp eyes boring into Allen’s. “We’re lucky your boyfriend is less of a failure, but he’s not exactly in top condition.”
Fury bloomed anew in his gut. Allen snagged Nea by his shirt collar, jerking him forward as he demanded, “What did you do to Lavi?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Nea said, yanking himself free and straightening the front of his shirt. “Not that you’ve got a chance in hell of finding out from this place.” His smirk returned in force. “You’d do best to just lie back down now. Make yourself comfy.”
“Fuck you, and no,” Allen retorted. “I’ll just see myself out.” He spun on his heel and stalked off in the general direction of the mansion.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Nea mocked, laughing at his back. “This is my dream dimension. Road can conjure up whatever I ask!”
Allen shut out the taunts and soldiered on, flipping Nea off as he went. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do, only that there had to be some way to get back to reality from here. He had fallen into this wheat field under many different circumstances and managed to escape before. It was still connected to his own mind and body, too, no matter what tricks Nea played.
If he declared it forcefully enough, Allen could almost believe in his chances.
Allen had walked about halfway to the mansion, encouraged as Nea made no move to stop him, when he smacked face-first into a wall of electricity. The force of the shock blasted him back onto the grass, where Crown Clown spontaneously activated around him.
Once he’d shaken out his tingling limbs, Allen sat up and stared at the empty air in puzzlement. The mansion remained in the distance, but something was clearly preventing his passage there. If Nea had anything to do with it, Allen guessed it might be because the location could trigger a means of escape. He squinted more closely at the space just ahead of him, his eyes finally catching the shimmer of a barrier. No matter which direction he looked, he saw hints of the barrier extending beyond his line of sight. It appeared to be insurmountable.
For an unknown stretch of time, Allen marched left and right along the barrier as far as he dared, hoping to find its end in the wheat field somewhere. He could feel Nea’s eyes following him, silently laughing at his helplessness, but it spurred Allen’s feet even faster.
After the third trip back to his starting point, Allen plopped down onto the grass and glared at the mansion just a stone’s throw away. A ridiculous part of him wondered if he could break through with pure, unfiltered willpower if he focused long enough.
Instead, his eye caught on a slight crackle of electricity hanging in midair just to his right. Struggling to his feet, Allen leaned in to inspect what appeared to be a foot-long vertical fissure in the barrier.
Hope sprang anew when he realized it was about the width of his sword. He summoned the Sword of Exorcism, his spirits further bolstered when Nea didn’t seem to be interfering with his control of Crown Clown this time, and lined the sword up with the fissure. The blade slotted neatly into the barrier like a key to a lock, and Allen pushed it halfway in with little resistance.
The rest of the barrier gave no response to the intrusion. Allen tried to force the sword to turn in place, straining to twist it by the hilt, but it would not work like a key. As it was, a fissure that small would get him nowhere.
Deciding to give brute force a try, Allen adjusted and tightened his grip. With all the strength he could muster, he shoved the blade down until it rent the barrier from chin level to the ground. He closed his eyes, raised the sword in front of him like a shield and charged through, heedless of the electricity scraping his limbs if it meant finding some way to an exit. Nothing could be worse than staying stuck in the wheat field at the mercy of Nea’s whims.
Once inside the barrier, Allen froze in his tracks. He gaped at the sight of a dense forest all around, blooming like springtime.
This could not be real. It had to mean only one thing.
Nea had trapped him again.
“Ugh, that asshole,” Allen growled, stomping forward into the mysterious woods to face whatever nonsense the two Noah might cook up this time. He was at least grateful to have his wits about him, even if that meant his senses were bombarded by the surreal environment. The air was too fragrant, the colors too vibrant, and even the birds sang too sweetly.
Allen had only traveled a few minutes before the trees gave way to a clearing.
In its center was a very familiar silver tree. Lavi sat at its base, apparently in meditation. Just like the rest of this place, he was too much to be real. Dappled sunlight and the brilliance of the tree struck his features from multiple angles, giving his skin, clothing and hair an otherworldly opalescence. It hurt to look at him directly for long.
Road had seriously outdone herself this time.
Allen raised Crown Clown’s hood and lowered the mask, a small buffer to the strain on his eyes, and strode right up to the shining tree.
This Lavi, whoever he really was, startled at the intrusion. He scrambled back to the trunk of the tree, wide jade eyes on the sword aimed at his chest.
“All right, Nea,” Allen threatened, “I’m not buying it this time. I won’t play any more of your twisted mind games, so you’d best let me out of here before I start tearing your memories apart.”
Lavi – or Nea or Road – just continued to stare. His eyes filled with tears. When he finally opened his mouth, all he said was a small and broken, “Allen?”
The word struck deep into Allen’s chest – deep enough to bleed out the slightest trickle of hope. His grip trembled but held true. Even if it was hard to imagine Road or Nea conjuring such raw emotion, he had to be sure.
“Listen, I’ve fought through enough nasty tricks by now,” Allen said. “If you’re the real Lavi, you’re gonna have to prove it—”
Lavi pushed the blade aside and launched up from the ground, wrapping Allen in a crushing embrace. He shook with sobs, his voice half-choked as he said, “I thought—I thought I’d lost you. Nea said he’d never let you out, not after Apocryphos…”
In spite of his inhibitions, Allen let the hood and mask fall away, pulling back to look Lavi in the eyes. The pain etched in his expression was hard to face, the tear tracks on his cheeks shimmering like crystal under the glow of the tree. His words made sense in light of Allen’s last memories at the mercy of Apocryphos.
Still, Road had access to all of those memories, too. She knew just how to tug his heartstrings and was talented enough to pull this off. Allen couldn’t rule it out, short of more direct proof.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Allen asked. He wanted very badly for this to be real, and he hoped Lavi’s account might just cinch that belief.
“Yeah, of course,” Lavi said. He reached up to hold Allen’s face in his hands. “Just… please don’t go anywhere.”
Crown Clown’s sudden and undeniable reaction stole Allen’s breath. The sensation burned through his bones as his Innocence glowed brighter and stronger. Its cape expanded to envelop Lavi and drew him closer of its own accord.
“Wha—?” Allen asked, his heart racing in panic. Was this another of Nea’s stunts, somehow? He had not directed Crown Clown to act, but he could not stop it. His Innocence pulled them together until there was no space between, their foreheads and bodies pressed close.
“Sorry, sorry,” Lavi whispered. He took several measured breaths until Crown Clown stopped reacting and shrank away to normal, releasing them both. It left Allen lightheaded and tingly, the trees around swaying slightly in his vision. Once he had stabilized, Lavi let him go and took a step back. He stuck his hands in his pockets, cracking an apologetic smile.
“The Heart kinda takes my will and runs away with it these days,” he explained. “I guess that’s what I get for absorbing Apocryphos, though. Still worth it.”
For Allen, that settled it. This was Lavi. The reaction of his Innocence to the Heart was too instinctual to be faked. Allen heaved a sigh of relief, his muscles unclenching from the constant fear that had kept them at the ready. He had not dared to imagine he might actually meet Lavi again through his dreams.
He balked at Lavi’s claim, nevertheless. “You absorbed Apocryphos? The whole thing?”
“What, ya think I’d leave a limb hanging around somewhere?” Lavi said, chuckling over his nerves. Allen glared at the dark joke but did not interrupt, and Lavi continued, “That thing’s ability to absorb Innocence was just a well-honed version of the Heart’s ability, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Allen repeated, eyes narrowing further. “You just sucked in the entirety of this diabolical Innocence monster and that was all?”
Lavi raised his hands in defense. “Hey, I did what I had to do. It was trying to kill you, Al. And to be honest, I kind of just… acted. It wasn’t a plan. It was the only thing I could think of to save your life. I’m not saying it’s really that simple, but I can’t explain the rest. I was pretty out of it afterward.”
Allen crossed his arms, still suspicious about the information Lavi was shielding him from. “I’ll get the rest eventually,” he said. “Right now, I need to find a way back to the real world. I don’t suppose there’s a means from here?”
“I don’t think so,” Lavi sighed, raking the hair back from his face. “You’ve gotten here once before, when we were both asleep. I’m pretty sure you were able to reach me because of your Innocence’s connection with mine,” he said, jerking a thumb at the tree behind him. “The Heart manifests as this silver tree in my mindscape, or dream dimension, or whatever. Our Innocence connection must extend to our subconscious realms and dreams.”
He tilted his head and looked past Allen to the woods behind. “Where’d you come in from, this time?”
Allen hefted his sword back onto his shoulder and turned. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”
They trouped back through the woods, leaving behind much of the pressing atmosphere around the tree, to Allen’s relief. In no time they stood before the fissure in the barrier, sparks of electricity still sizzling all around it.
Allen pointed his sword at it. “I slashed through this barrier, here. It already had a small tear, about as wide as my sword, so I made it bigger.”
Lavi snorted and shook his head. “That figures. Watch this,” he said, placing his hands on the barrier next to the tear. The surface went transparent, no longer reflecting a continuation of the woods. Instead, the edge of the woods stopped abruptly at the barrier, revealing the golden wheat field beyond. Allen looked out over the field as if nothing stood between them. In the distance, he could see Cornelia’s twisted trunk with two figures resting against it.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Lavi said, pulling his hands away from the barrier. The golden wheat field vanished into lush forest once again. “But your only way back is probably through there. This forest isn’t directly connected to your consciousness at all – only mine.”
“Well, it seems to be directly connected to the field that is connected to me,” Allen pressed, his thoughts spinning out the more details he pieced together. “The last time I stumbled into your dream, you and the tree weren’t even inside a forest – just an extension of the wheat field. Which is Nea’s dream dimension, not mine. Why is that?”
Lavi released a weary sigh, his gaze distant as his tone shifted to that of a would-be Bookman. “First of all, Nea’s dream dimension is known as the field of time. I can’t cover everything right now, but its connection to my dream dimension has something to do with the origin of the Heart of Innocence and Dark Matter. We already know they’re related, and this seems to be part of it,” he explained. “I just can’t parse how much of the connection is because of the battle between the original Heart-bearer and the Earl, and how much is because Crown Clown has an unusually strong attachment to the Heart. It’s sort of a chicken and egg conundrum, so don’t ask me which connection led to which.”
He locked his eyes on Allen’s, smiling a little sadly. “You are connected to the field of time because of Crown Clown. That Innocence might be even more critical than we guessed.”
“Nice to know I’m still just the expendable host of a weapon,” Allen muttered, his gaze tracking away. “But go on.”
Rolling his eyes, Lavi wrapped his hands around Allen’s where it clenched the sword’s handle. “Don’t start that shit again. I’m just trying to help you make sense of it all. Remember when I told you to work things out with Nea?”
“And I said you were insane?” Allen deadpanned.
“No, you didn’t,” Lavi laughed. “You did talk to him for a while, when you were asleep – you told me about it. But you guys never came to an agreement about this whole random takeover thing. Well, now’s the time. You’ve still got leverage. He still can’t use your Innocence himself, and I can’t shake the feeling that he needs it. The training I’m going through now only makes sense if he’s planning to use Crown Clown in some way. If he told you anything different, he was lying. Just like he lied to me.”
“I thought he only needed the Heart, and it sounds like you’re stuck with him – wherever that is,” Allen said. “If he needed me, why would he try so hard to keep me trapped here?”
“Leverage,” Lavi said. He leaned in and kissed Allen’s forehead. “He wanted me to think you were lost so deeply in here, I couldn’t see you again unless he did me a favor for cooperating.”
“Are you cooperating?” Allen asked. He searched Lavi’s face for any tells on his condition, but it was hard to catch anything past the sheer intensity of his eyes in the dream dimension. He blinked down and continued, “Nea made it sound like you were in bad shape, because I failed.”
“You didn’t fail, Allen—”
“Yes, I did!” Allen blurted. “I lied and convinced you that I could handle it on my own, but I just—” He dropped his head to Lavi’s shoulder. “I couldn’t protect you. I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Lavi said, lifting Allen’s face once more. “I’m the only one who could’ve stopped Apocryphos. Even I didn’t know that until it was about to destroy you. And yeah, I’m cooperating… to an extent, anyway. Nea’s kinda messed up, but from what I’ve gathered so far, he’s not wrong about what’s required to stop the Earl.”
“Then why won’t he tell me anything?” Allen groaned. “I’ve asked about his plan, and he just spouts little bits of cryptic nonsense!”
“Maybe he knows he can’t bullshit a world class liar?” Lavi suggested, offering a smirk when Allen shot him a glare. “Yeah, yeah, takes one to know one, I know. But it’s hard enough lying to someone when you’re face to face. You guys are literally sharing a body.”
“That doesn’t stop him from running all sorts of schemes. He’s trying to manipulate me into doing whatever he wants,” Allen said, grimacing, but something about Lavi’s phrasing sparked a flicker of a thought. He frowned, twisting his brain around to his own motivations for several seconds.
The revelation hit him like a brick, and he snapped to attention. “Or else he’s trying to protect something.”
Lavi’s eyebrows raised. “What would he be protecting?”
“Definitely not the other Noah,” Allen began. “It could be… his memories of Mana, maybe. He’s very defensive about that. There might be something to do with Mana in his plan that he’s afraid for me to know.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a good place to start,” Lavi concluded. He gently turned Allen by the shoulders to face the torn barrier. “You ready to iron things out?”
“Not much of a choice, is there?” Allen said. He looked over to Lavi with as sure a smile as he could muster, regardless of how his stomach sank. He ensconced himself in the hood and mask again. “Wish me luck.”
“You’re always lucky,” Lavi said, leaning in to share a soft kiss. He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but he stopped himself. Instead, Lavi took a breath and managed an encouraging smile. “See you on the other side.”
After Allen ducked through, the barrier behind him sealed shut. The forest had vanished, leaving the unreachable mansion in place as before. But that was no longer his destination.
Allen waded across the field toward Nea instead, refusing to deactivate Crown Clown as he went. Maybe it was a power play, or maybe it felt like the connection to Lavi through the Heart was buoying him, but it helped regardless. If Road was still around, she was nowhere in sight.
Nea spotted him and got to his feet, but he didn’t leave the tree. He lounged back against its bark, arms crossed and eyes sharp as Allen approached.
Allen stabbed the sword into the ground between them. “All right, Nea. Let’s call a truce.”
“And here I was thinking we already had,” Nea said slyly. “You know – the one where I didn’t completely destroy you yet so you could train with your Innocence.”
“That wasn’t a truce,” Allen retorted. “I took back control on my own and you let me keep it out of convenience.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m being serious, you insufferable prick!” Allen exclaimed. His hand automatically made a choking gesture in Nea's direction, and it took great effort to relax and raise his palm in deference instead. With a deep breath, he continued, “Look, I may not know your whole plan, because you insist on keeping me in the dark, but this back-and-forth nonsense can’t be helping anything. How do you still not understand that I want to save Mana just as much as you do?”
“You don’t even know who you’re saving,” Nea sneered. “Mana Walker – the sad fool who apparently raised you – was not the real Mana.”
“He was real enough to me,” Allen said, clenching the handle of the sword to restrain himself. “You’re just ashamed of what the Earl turned him into.”
Images of Nea’s exposed memory flashed behind his eyes: the crazed desperation on Mana’s face as he pleaded for Nea to come back.
“No, wait. That’s not right. It’s what you turned him into,” Allen said. He backed away from the sword, suddenly keen to distance himself from it, and deactivated Crown Clown. He fisted both hands at his sides. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? The Earl made him unstable, but he completely lost his mind after you died, didn’t he?”
Nea narrowed his eyes, his mouth drawn in a thin line. “You don’t get to tell me anything about Mana. Whatever the fuck you saw, you were not there when the Earl killed me.”
“I was there when Mana had to live with that!” Allen cried. He felt the tears welling up but pressed on. “He was kind and loving to a fault – he never wanted to hurt a soul. I can’t even imagine what he’s gone through being the Earl’s host, and it’s tearing me up to know he’s trapped in there. I don’t care who he used to be or who he is now, he’s still Mana. Don’t you think I want to save him, too? Just tell me how!”
For several seconds, Nea did not move or speak. He watched Allen with an unreadable expression, one that morphed into a strange kind of recognition. It was the look of someone finally placing a familiar face after a very long time.
“You know, I didn’t believe Cross when he told me,” Nea said. He shook his head and dropped his arms, hands finding his pockets again. “It’s fucking uncanny. The eyes, the martyr complex – didn’t even know that was heritable, but hey, the truth speaks for itself.”
Allen frowned back at the abrupt turn of conversation. “What are you talking about now?”
Nea shrugged. “Just coming to terms with the fact that you are very much your father’s son.”
“Look, Master already tried to throw the ‘mask of Mana’ bit in my face—”
“Not Mana,” Nea cut in, raising a hand. “Your biological father. The one who gave you those eyes, that arm, and the suicide mission of being my host.”
Stunned, Allen stood speechless as the information washed over him in waves. His father? The origin of his Innocence, and Nea’s intended host… It was all tied together?
“Who—?” Allen choked out.
Nea just laughed. “Coincidentally, his name was also Allen Walker. Mana’s naming inspiration.”
Allen’s mind catapulted back to a strange dream. It had been one of so many bizarre instances connected with Nea, but this dream had featured a man with round glasses and a long red glove on his arm. Someone he hadn’t recognized, yet who seemed undeniably familiar…
His master had called that man ‘Allen.’ Nea had warned the man not to wreck his ‘weapon.’
“He was like family,” Nea continued, undeterred by Allen’s personal crisis, “so of course he wanted to do everything he could to help us. He even volunteered to be my host – not that he lived to see it all the way through. That’s where you came in. Still, there was one thing that Allen Walker realized which you can’t seem to accept.”
Thoughts reeling, Allen took a deep breath and asked, “What was that?”
“You can’t save Mana and survive,” Nea stated, his voice cold and final. Pushing away from Cornelia, he strolled up to Allen and stabbed a finger at his chest. “You wanna know my end game? Then I’ll tell you. Considering how Cross fucked me over and bound my memories to Crown Clown instead of the actual Heart Innocence, I’ve had to improvise my plan. I intend to channel as much of the Heart’s power into the Sword of Exorcism as possible, and maybe with a little luck, it can drive the Earl out of Mana and onto me instead. There’s no guarantee Mana will survive the attack, but that’s a chance I’ve gotta take.”
Allen balked at the claim. “Then you really don’t think it’s possible to destroy the Earl, even with the Heart?”
Nea shrugged and took a step back, flapping a hand as he said, “Cross put it best: if the original Heart-bearer, a full-blown angelic being, couldn’t even destroy the Earl, what chance have we got? I’m a pessimist by nature, so I tend to agree.”
“Master told you about that?” Allen asked.
“Well yeah, considering we came up with this plan together,” Nea deadpanned. “We’ve at least got to stop the Earl from destroying the entire world in a second apocalypse. The Noah don’t actually want that, by the way – it would mean annihilating the human population they spawned themselves, along with all the akuma that the Earl spent ages creating. Not that I give a fuck about any of that. My intent is to set Mana free, period. The first Allen Walker knew all of this perfectly well. He knew what he was signing up for.
Nea leaned in, peering at Allen in sharp scrutiny. “Do you see what I’m trying to accomplish, now?”
Swallowing over the desert in his throat, Allen nodded. “Makes sense to me.”
“Then you also understand why I highly doubt you’ll want to cooperate,” Nea enunciated, an exasperated look on his face as if he were explaining this to a child. “You say you want to save Mana, but you’re too stubborn to disappear. You’ve already proven that you want to survive. And guess what? That’s not an option once I become the Earl.”
The prospect was harrowing, he had to admit. Allen remembered the way a mere hint of that future had made him feel – the horror at seeing those golden eyes staring back at him in the mirror. Then again, he supposed he wouldn’t actually be around anymore to see it for himself. He wouldn’t be seeing anyone anymore. Not Lavi, not his friends, not even Mana.
He would be embracing oblivion. But his friends, his family—
Lenalee, Kanda, Crowley, Link, Johnny and countless others.
Lavi.
Mana.
They might all survive. No one else could do what he could to ensure their future. The very thought of taking control over the spiraling disaster that was his existence, for once – of fulfilling a purpose infinitely bigger than himself – was so powerful that it gave him a rush to the head. He had rarely been so sure of anything in his life.
If that’s really what it takes…
“I’ll take those odds,” Allen replied, reveling in the confounded look that upset Nea’s composure for a brief moment.
The Noah snapped right back to his usual state of aggravation, shooting a nasty glare at Allen. “Now you remind me of Cross.”
Encouraged, Allen cracked a sardonic grin. Occasionally his master was good for something. “Then you won’t be surprised that I’ve got some terms of my own. Still game?”
“This is my fucking plan,” Nea huffed. He pinched the bridge of his nose, blowing out a breath of pure exasperation. “But sadly, I can’t go shop for another host at the marketplace. Just name your terms, moron.”
Allen placed a hand on his chest, still grinning as he said, “In exchange for this body, in the event you become the Earl, I’d like to maximize my remaining time. That means no more takeovers and creepy mind games, understand?”
“And how am I supposed to oversee my plan if I’m stuck in here?” Nea countered.
“What if I let you observe?” Allen suggested with a shrug. “I think it’s possible for us to each remain conscious when we’re not fighting to suppress each other all the time. Then you could just let me know what needs to be happening, how I need to train, etcetera.”
For several seconds, Nea stood silent, his eyes burning into Allen’s as he considered the proposition. Frowning, he said at length, “I’ll agree to the terms, but on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“No romantic shit,” Nea insisted. “I am not dealing with that again.”
“You did that to yourself!” Allen exclaimed, flushing with aggravation as he corrected, “I mean, you did that to me! Ugh, nevermind. I’ll keep it low key, all right? I doubt Lavi wants an audience any more than I do.”
“Fine,” Nea sighed. He stuck out his hand. “If you double-cross me, it’ll be exponentially worse the next time you’re exiled here.”
“Sounds like we’ve got a deal, then,” Allen replied, shaking the proffered hand.
Nea smirked. He tightened his grip. “Just try not to puke when you wake up.”
“What? Wait—” Allen started to ask, before Nea spun him around and shoved him backward, hard enough to send him careening toward Cornelia.
He braced for impact with the tree but phased right into it, falling fast into a dark void. The golden wheat field shrank down to a single bright spot that was swallowed whole.
Allen closed his eyes.