Fandom: DGM
Title: Their True Colors
Author: hana-akira AKA rurichi
Character: Allen Walker
Genre: General
Warning: OOC, doesn't-really-follow-Canon
Rating: 17+
Prompt: Because in Allen's eyes, he can see everything, even the true colors of the natures of humans. Allen's cursed eye and his normal eye, sight, and what it really means to be cursed.
Summary: It's like you're all the colors of the rainbow and I'm the one who's stuck in the middle.

A/N: Flips respectively from Allen's third and first person point of view.

—

1: A child cannot find any comfort in death—not even when it is done only for them.

—

He supposes that he should have found some sort of comfort or happiness in the fact that somebody had loved him, that someone had cared enough to say that they did aloud and would have rather been killed by him than for them to be forced to kill him instead in order to save him.

He guesses that it must be his rather ungrateful and street-rat behavior and nature that he doesn't find any comfort in it at all.

(They had been two lonely people in a lonely world; two strangers who found comfort in each other, and suddenly then there was only one. He is the one left behind who couldn't take it.)

The earth is still a dark, dark brown, like black coffee, and Mana is still six feet under.

(And my hands dig into the earth, trying desperately to find what you were worth.)

—

2: The colors fade away and you fade away with it.

—

His head is lolled back, blank gray eyes staring at the empty night sky.

A man had come and had offered him the Devil's deal and he had taken it thinking that it would be worth it.

("Shall I bring back Mana Walker for you?")

He had been tricked and he was still alone. Fooled by a smiling face when underneath it was obviously a malicious look full of glee.

(The smile had been so wide, so friendly like as if the other had been smiling his whole life, but the way he smiled was empty, so lonely that it hurt to watch him. The smile had looked so much like Mana's and Allen could never say no to Mana.)

His left arm is red and wrinkled abomination, not unlike that of newborn child that no one wants—blood all over and the pain wailing after being forced into this cruel and unfamiliar world.

(The hand which took Mana away.)

He's a patchwork quilt of a mess and a red-haired devil kneels in front of him. The only color in sight is a bright and brutal red.

(And you bleed and I bleed red and Satan is the color of red and everything tastes like blood in my head.)

He looks at the devil in a human's skin and closes his eyes in silence.

(Silence implies consent and then all the colors I see—red, gold, black, and silver—they all bleed away.)

—

3: And so I accept this gift even though what actually left from your lips was in truth a curse because that's all that's left of you now that I can still grasp and hold onto that doesn't feel like a noose.

—

He accepts what Mana gives him (The red scar that's like a star upon his left eye) because it's the only thing he really has left of Mana now that he can actually touch. The clothes he had worn that are all tattered and bloodied and he doesn't have anything else left because they had all been buried away with Mana. He only has this gift, this present and he clings onto it desperately, like a lifeline.

(It's hard remembering Mana because everything is black and white, like a photograph, fading, fading, fading, and he's always afraid that he's going to forget the man altogether. It's already starting, the forgetting, the first thing to go being Mana's face, and soon, Allen thinks hysterically, that he's going to forget the rest of his foster father.)

Allen Walker hangs onto the ability of seeing souls that Mana Walker bestows upon him and accepts it with arms wide open.

(It had been snowing, the day you died, but the ground had been so red and so fresh as though it had been blood that had just spilt.)

—

4: The seasons change and with it the gift of time starts all over again.

—

Eventually time continues on and life runs its course time and time again. The seasons change, new places to go, different people to see, but, invariably, the same kind of souls everywhere he could be.

It's weird, knowing that with his left eye he could actually see the souls of both the Akuma and humans yet with his right he could only see their outer forms, but Allen doesn't question it because one never questions the kind of gift a loved one gives them.

Allen never questions and so he never wonders—

(Mana, did you really love me? Because it's disgusting to look at them, so disgusting that it makes me sick.)

Allen Walker never wonders and so he never knows.

(And the color that your soul bled was silver, pure mercury and the color of quicksilver—metallic in a way that it shined with its own inner light.)

—

5: Would you like to know exactly what I see?

—

The natures of humans are ugly, perpetually ugly that it actually hurts to look at them. Their souls show their true colors and it's revolting to even look at because it's so hideous and unsightly, like a grotesque piece of art which shouldn't have even been called art in the first place. The soul could look like a soft glow of light or a brilliantly chiseled gem, but in the end, they would all look the same in their radiant and haunting colors—tarnished and perverse, sullied and dirtied like a wedding dress collecting dust in the attic.

Souls like Lavi's are beyond ugly; they're absolutely repulsive. He can see the colors constantly changing, the shape frequently morphing, and he gets headaches from just looking at it (So he has to scrunch his eyes tight, for that brief relief from looking at the soul of a compulsive liar.) He smiles at the red-haired male, his eyes in supposedly happy arcs, his voice betraying nothing of the hidden revulsion he has for the other's soul. Bookman's is not much better, so gray yet so greedy for knowledge, and Allen's not sure if he hates the shade of the older man's soul or the colorful spectrum of his apprentice's more.

Lenalee's is a little bit easier on the eyes, sometimes better, but most of the time not. Her soul is black and white and red (Red—so red), a mix, her outer appearance all dark green like a fairytale forest at night and white like the fair skin of Snow White. But sometimes she's gray and it's hard to look at her in the eyes without his face becoming even more paler than normal so he has to smile brightly at her, too, just like what he does with Lavi, his eyes closed so tightly that he can't even see through them.

He doesn't mind looking at Kanda, surprisingly, because Kanda is either black, white, or midnight blue. Kanda's soul color is solid, firm, and concrete, and Allen doesn't mind at all to look at Kanda's soul even though Kanda's outward personality is a whole another matter entirely. Miranda is the same, hers being a very dark sapphire that was almost onyx in color, and so was Krory, his being a rose red yet just about amaranthine in its hue.

Still, it's hard to look at them, at any of them sometimes, but he does even though it hurts so much because this is his gift, to always see the truth laid out before him like a glaring neon sign, a sacrifice offered quietly at a revered altar.

(Do you see what I see, Mana?)

—

6: I spy with my little eye something—

—

The souls of the Akuma and the Noah are just as bad, if not worse (Beings who were once humans, but have changed, over time.)

It's a pure white, like bleach or newly fallen snow, and it hurts to look at it, but it's beautiful so it's okay most of the time.

But there are times when he wants to throw up or spit at them. Wants to show his disgust but instead shows his anger because it would be troublesome if questions start to be asked. Times where the souls become instantly black, like ink or oil, or a color so sharp that it bleeds everywhere and explodes like a bomb or a continuous bombardment of fireworks (It's when they evolve or some twisted grin appears on their face—something so contradictory from the inside which is actually sobbing and grieving.)

It would be so easy, so easy to just turn away, but Allen can't; no, he can't at all—not in this life or the next or how many other lives he'll have. He can't. Not with souls like the Earl's that are pearl in color yet somehow silver and black at the same time (A black pearl, really) and Leverrier's that is like a polished and hard diamond with jagged edges. Those of the Crow Unit are to be worried about, too, their souls almost dull or ethereal-like in their radiance, Link unexpectedly almost something like mist or a spring shower (Reminiscent of Mana's soul color—tin and tinsel-like—but still too shadowed to glow with it's own light.)

They still hurt his eyes, though.

(Sometimes, I think at night that my eyes bleed red, scarlet rivers that travel down my cheeks in rivulets, but in the morning, all there is are dried tear streaks and I can't help but think what it would be like to pluck out this eye that you've marked and slashed.)

—

7: So tell me what's your favorite color.

—

He covers his eyes with the back of his right hand, his sight temporarily reprieved from the constant onslaught of images he sees outwardly and inwardly, resigned to the road and path he chose to walk.

(I still haven't found a soul quite like yours, Mana.)