Disclaimer – I do not own DGM nor any of the characters

The feeling of shock that had descended upon him after the revelation that not only was Mana dead, which he had already known but didn't want to believe, but that the man hadn't even been his father was starting to wear off the longer that Allen sat with the strange and very drunk redhead that had apparently saved him after that fight. He had felt numb before but now the feeling of pain was starting to set in in earnest and Allen just had a hollow, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach.

That was not helped by the very blunt manner in which Cross had delivered all of his painful news.

Along with that ache that he couldn't even really describe was another emotion, different and yet no less intense than the agony that he was feeling. It was a rage so pure and unbridled that it was actually scary for the boy, Allen having never felt this way before in his life.

And he didn't like it.

But there was nothing that he could do about it and he did want revenge, he wanted to make the people that had taken Mana away from him, the ones that had taken everything from him, to pay. And he wanted to be the one to make them pay, with his own hands and using his own powers. The powers that he had apparently inherited from the parents that he'd really never gotten the chance to know.

At least not when he was old enough to remember it.

That did bring about the question of why Mana had kept that from him, why the man had allowed him to believe for all of those years that he was Mana's son. Allen couldn't bring himself to resent the man that had raised him for that, Mana had given him everything and had made so many sacrifices for him, but he did still want to know what driving force had led the man to make the decision to keep a part of his life secret from him.

Was it to protect him?

Was it because he was ashamed of his brother for some reason?

Those were questions that Allen would never have the answers to now that Mana was gone but the boy knew that he couldn't dwell on this right now. There were too many other things that he needed to focus his attention on and this war, this fight that Cross had told him about, was number one on the list if only for the fact that it was against the very people that he wanted revenge against anyway.

"So tell me what I have to do to beat them," he said as he gazed at Cross, a look of determination in his eyes. Eyes that were practically blazing with the fire of hatred right now as he thought back to the ones that had attacked him, a group that Cross was blaming for every bad thing that had happened to him in his life.

Cross actually laughed at him and whether or not it was the alcohol talking was impossible to tell. "Right now you can't do a damn thing," the redhead said in a very blunt voice, his gaze focused on the child who thought he could fight.

Which he had managed to do out of desperation but the brat was lucky that he hadn't ended up dead.

"What? But you just said…" Allen shouted when the redhead told him that he couldn't do anything, the child not the least bit happy to hear those words coming out of that man's mouth. Because he had literally just been talking about a war that Allen was supposed to help fight in and was uniquely equipped to help with and all that insane sounding crap.

"I told you that you had to train first, were you even listening to me?" Cross said in a blunt tone, talking to the boy as if he were slow in the head or something.

Which was pretty much how Cross viewed children anyway.

He really wasn't the sort of person that should ever be left with the responsibility of a child or another human being for that matter and yet here he was. Once again he found himself cursing the Musician and all of his relatives. He couldn't bring himself to put the blame on Lyssa even though she had been the one that had opted to marry the stupid Noah in the first place.

"You're…" Allen started to say something but then he changed his mind, deciding that it was not a good idea to antagonize the man whose help that he currently needed.

"I'm what, brat?" he asked, his voice taking on a menacing tone as he focused his single eye on the child as if daring him to say what had been going through his mind. It was pretty clear that doing so would not be a good idea and Allen seemed to realize that.

Which meant that he wasn't completely stupid.

"Nothing," Allen said, shaking his head and deciding that he was not going to get himself into trouble with this guy. Especially not since he smelled like a brewery right now, which Allen was guessing was a bad thing even if he didn't have much experience with intoxicated people.

"Smart choice brat," Cross said with a nod of his head, seeming to have decided that this was going to be what he was going to call the child. Which in his mind was better of other things that he could have opted to call him.

Allen just sighed softly and then once again plopped down on the bed where he had been before, a far away look in his eyes. He was thinking about everything that had happened and about everything that he still had left to do.

He was going to avenge the deaths of his family.

He was going to make these Noah people pay for what they had taken away from him.

The fact that he had never had the chance to know his parents was another blow but it wasn't as bad as the blow of losing Mana, which was still a raw and open wound. It was sad that he hadn't known them but at the same time hard to grieve for people that you never knew and until now hadn't even known existed. So many things that had been taken away from him. Thinking about that Allen ended up flopping over onto the bed again and curling up into a ball, his hands raising to grip his now snow white hair.

"I don't wanna think…" he murmured as he gripped his hair and clenched his eyes closed.

All he wanted was for the numbness to come back, for that feeling of nothing to envelope him. On some level Allen knew that wasn't likely to happen but that didn't make him want it any less.

"I'm going to avenge you Mana…I promise that I will never stop walking, I will keep moving and eventually I'll make up for everything that happened…"

A gleam once again appeared in his eyes as he opened them, having made the determination that he was going to be strong. He was going to train, he was going to get strong, and he was going to make those people pay for what they had done.

That was his decision and he was going to stick to it.

He would not accept defeat.

A/N – And that's the end, Allen's determination to fight and Cross just being an asshat. There is a sequel to this story and I already have it mapped out but I probably won't post it until I have several chapters written just to make sure that I'll stick to it since this took soooooo long for such a short chapter. But anyway, hope that you enjoyed and thanks for reading!