[Dream] Week 8, Day 5 | Well, cling to that card

[whitenighting]

 
The first thing he felt as the raging, ear-splitting noise of battle came to an abrupt silence was relief. Not happy relief. Tired relief. Finally…

“Are you a fool…?!” the creature - hermaphroditic, grotesquely babyish, monster - gagged, crushed against his chest. “ You’ve stabbed… yourself as well... you realize.”

Ah… heh. Not quite. Breathing was a bit heavier than it should be, but he supposed the circumstances explained that. And not the ones that involved his own broadsword impaling the akuma and him to the wall.

“This is an exorcising blade… it only affects that which is evil,” he explained, a bit of a rasp from the battle, but smiling in some victory, some pity for the creature. “It won’t harm anything but Noah and akuma.”

Done it. He had done it. This was over. Over again-

Nng.

There was a ripping like part of his torso suddenly got pushed aside. He couldn’t breath properly. What-.

Something filled his lungs and came up his throat. His lips felt funny and his chin wet from it. Impossible.

“Crown…”

Oh, he knew that coppery flavor, an idle and suddenly disconnected part of his brain realized.

“Clown…”

It didn’t feel like being cut. It felt like being changed, something reacted and suddenly he could feel something - the blade? - occupying a large part of the right side of his chest.

“Only that which is evil?” came the broken gloat, even as it was half dead. “What are you talking about…?” His eyes snapped wide and dull even as the creature spoke. “Why then are you in such pain…?”

Then it felt like cutting and he was shaking like static.

He clutched his head with his only remaining hand and screamed like he could never stop because he was ripped in two. Scream and scream because it’s piercing not just your body but your soul.

A face stared back at him.

Faces stared back at him. They were white, faceless for faces, yet grinned and grinned and would not stop grinning.

And one was almost sympathetic.

He barely noticed because god, he was nearly clove stem to stern to soul by his own sword and it hurt.

Why did it hurt.

He felt betrayed before everything went black, only vaguely aware of the monster leaning towards his face and ready to deliver the final blow.

A beat.

Music. The faintest of lullabies in rising crescendo.

Ah, now he was calm…

----

His consciousness shifted and suddenly he was on a frozen lake, the ice white beneath him yet not cold.  Familiar... it was so very familiar.

Sitting up slowly, he stared out over the ethereal surface and how it glowed faintly under the crescent moon. It seemed so quiet.

Suddenly, reflexively, he touched a hand to his chest and was a bit surprised to find no wound, no blood there. No uniform, just the formal black suit he knew he used to wear so frequently so long ago... so very, very long ago, longer than he could even remember.

Wait. What did he remember?

He fingered the edge of the string tie for a moment and wondered-oh, no, he wasn’t wondering anymore. This was him.

“Look up,” a voice (voices?) that sounded like two commanded, and without thinking he did so. There in the nighttime sky were the stars, brilliant above the lake even as the moon hung in the background, but there directly above him was something he didn’t often see from a distance - a massive, white and jagged cube glowing with some unearthly lightly. Ah, a feeling of strong familiarity anyway.

“The Ark,” he said like it was nothing because somehow that made sense.

"Snow" fell in glimmering white and green hexagons around him, wide and lazy, sharp in edge.

“Stop dreaming,” the voices said again, and he looked up from sitting on the surface of the water. Brilliant as the moon, brilliant as the white cube of the Ark above them, was a white, masked figure resembling perhaps a clown with its jester’s crown. A smooth, clawed black left arm stood out in sharp contrast to the otherwise bright glow. It felt normal, natural to see this. Ah, this was Him and Not Him. It had no discernible face and yet seemed human.

“Crown Clown,” he responded and automatically stood. “Why did you…”

Well, it didn’t need asking.

It spread its arms almost in welcome and it was like Maestro and Pierrot in twain, smiling in the most dazzling and horrifying of ways, but the silver and gold masquerade mask hid its eyes. Elegance and buffoonery. Polished gentleman and crazed loon. Weaver of history and trickster of truth. White devil and white clown. Destroyer and Savior.

“It can’t be helped.”

He moved to protest, but his black coattails flared behind him as a sudden wind kicked up and the hexagonal snow was whipped up around him. He shut his eyes against the sting, braced himself.

"Look," the weapon said, pointing at his feet and there was a hole in the ice.

It was just black for a moment, and... there was such a strong feeling of missing. Someone or something was missing. Who...?

He knelt, meant to reach for the surface. Hints of a face. He knew this. He remembered. Had to-

He wasn't going to touch the water.

"What are you trying to show me?" he asked the figure, remembering that wary, he had to be wary. He had to remember.

"What you refuse to see," it said smoothly, the voice pleasant against the silent, white melody of falling snow as the world faded to black.

----

"My my..."

He barely noticed the elegant room he was in, checkered floors and walls of family portraits long forgotten, all of them in black and white. But all he knew was his blood ran cold at that new voice and he stared up at a tall, well-dressed Victorian gentleman that smiled too much at him.

"Hello, lad."

He couldn't quite remember why but he instinctively grit his teeth. "Tyki Mikk."

"Always so serious." Lazily, the man twirled a checker-backed playing card on his index finger like one might a ball. "I think I liked you better as a cheating devil." He stopped the card suddenly with a snap of his finger and smiled broadly, like it was the most pleasant thing in the world. "Oho, perhaps you still are."

Tyki held the card forward: joker.

"Shall we go, lad?"

Vision faded in a storm of butterflies with cards for wings and the world was again black and white.

----

When he opened his eyes to see a red torii gate looming in front of him, something ached inexplicably.

"Don't go, Allen-san."
He hesitated, realizing he had a hand on a side of the gate and had been about to step through. "I'm not," he answered automatically. But he knew he had also been about to step through. Why-

Looking over his shoulder, the ache was worse although his eyes widened in recognition. Two boys with black hair, one short with curls and the other tall and haunting. The shorter one smiled, but he seemed sad.

"Don't go, Mr. Allen."

His heart sank as he looked down at the small boy with dreadlocks, but he put on a smile; realized he had been struggling to smile this whole time. "I'm not..."

...Right?

Behind them a man with shaggy white hair stood with his back to all of them, arms crossed and posture radiating grudging. Quiet and regal in her own way, a woman stood beside the man but looked towards the boy at the gate with a curious, if disappointed expression.

No, no Allen wasn't going to go...

Except... he had to.

Right?

"Allen," a voice said softly. "It's all right."

And like that it was. "I know," he said with an easier, albeit sad smile as he laced the fingers of his right hand with hers without needing to look. He never needed to look; he knew.

But even so he knew it was wrong all wrong, this wasn't what it was supposed to be like. He... both belonged and didn't belong in any of these places. Something was still missing...

"You're doing it wrong," a voice drawled from in front of him and he turned a bit sharply with a frown. A tall shadow of a figure with a ragged red mane leaned against the gate.

"Idiot apprentice," the man continued. A scoff and the man's half-masked face was illuminated for a moment by the cigarette he lit. "Always doing it wrong."

He meant to snap a retort, defend himself, but caught himself in surprise at seeing the sympathy on the older Exorcist's face. Desperation bubbled for a moment and he straightened sharply, defiantly. "I'm not," he said because it couldn't be anything else. "It's just-"

Who, no, what was missing...

He felt empty and turned suddenly to grab for her hand, but she wasn't there, no one was. Just his right hand grabbing at thin air and his left-

... he had no left arm.

Wide-eyed, he fell back through the gate, but when he looked where he had been the Asian world was gone and replaced by interior of a cathedral; tired, smiling faces of scientists in white coats milling about their work, except... frozen. Frozen in time and paying him no heed.

But a Japanese man in a black and red western uniform stared directly at him, contempt plain as day. The others didn't look at him, but that guy did.

'You fucking idiot' reverberated in his head from the other Exorcist, and even that world faded as he fell back into the world of black and white. The red-haired man in the phantom half-mask looked on a bit sadly, frowning, but made no move.

And still something was missing.

----

On his knees and feeling too much himself, he grit his teeth and dug his white gloved fingers into the snow-covered ice in frustration until he thought his bones should break. They should.

... fingers...

He sat up for a moment and opened his left hand to see the joker card staring back at him.

Allen remembered.

A delicate, deadly claw touched the card in his hand suddenly.

“Remember, we’re Whiteface. Not Auguste," said God's clown.

Though it lacked a mouth, Crown Clown still somehow smiled at him, and suddenly the ice was cracking beneath him. “Wait!” Allen cried.

It spoke in double again and raised its left arm with the long and delicate claws to touch one almost lovingly to the pentagram scar above Allen's own left eye. “Stop dreaming.”

It hurt. It hurt like a million symphonic cacophonies and he clutched at his head in agony.

But the brilliantly white figure flickered like static, went gray, shimmered, and suddenly it was him in inverse, white-suited composer of time, but for the same ghost-white hair. It - he - no longer wore the mask, but a golden ball with wings curled in its place and tail looped around his - the creature's - neck.

Allen felt sick but fought that. "Timcanpy doesn't belong to you!"

Allen doesn't belong to you.

Him yet Not Him smiled at him, sympathetic and not, but something was wrong, the hair was wrong, and the eyes... they were golden.

Allen's were silver…

Silver.

His eyes were silver. Not gold.

Not… gold…

He crashed back against the breaking ice, falling through into gel-like water and gasping for air with a shout before falling through into the shadows.

And still something was missing, always missing.

[Allen was less than relieved even upon waking to see gold gleam of Timcanpy curled and sleeping in an oblivious lump beside him.

And he was very, very confused.]