Chapter Text
Ranunculus eschscholtzii
Sometimes Allen wondered whether the Innocence was playing cruel tricks, to give so much and take at the same time. His Master was barely dead and they’d already been led to a new Exorcist.
“The name’s Timothy Hearst, nine years old!” the boy proclaimed proudly. “I turn Akuma into weapons with my Innocence Tsukikami!”
At nine, Allen had still been chasing after Mana, ensuring that they’d eat regularly and the man wouldn’t suddenly run off when catching sight of somebody that vaguely looked like his brother. It hadn’t always been easy, but Allen had still been allowed to be a child, not a soldier in a war.
Timothy’s childhood ended here, painfully.
Still, Allen smiled at him, kind and welcoming, breathing through the pain of his new wound and the flowers in his throat.
Children shouldn’t have to see what kind of flowers bloomed for them, especially when they’d be as yellow as the sun.
Rosa multiflora
Allen’s dreams had long since stopped making sense and recently, he struggled even more than usual to differentiate pleasant experiences from nightmares. His own blade was still stuck in his gut, flowers building up in his throat as around them, a world fell to ruin.
Allen knew he should care, but he was so fucking tired of caring.
What wouldn’t he give to take Mana’s hand and return to those days of ignorance when the only flowers he had to worry about were his father’s and not the cruel remembrance of him.
How funny that he used to think he was over Mana’s death, that he’d finished grieving for him, not spilling white roses anymore, when now his entire landscape was filled with them.
Allen was truly a foolish child.
Camellia japonica
Tyki didn’t recall anything from when Allen had stabbed him until he awoke in his room at Sheril’s estate, his body hurting all over, massive scars on his chest. Tyki was used to injuries and rough skin, got both when out with his human friends, but they never stayed for long. His regeneration ability ensured that such marks never lasted, that his skin was without hurt. It had been a bitch to learn to watch out for them once he’d settled with his group of human friends because he could never keep obvious injuries and they’d catch up if a gut wound suddenly disappeared.
“My wounds, they’re aching,” Tyki bit out between troubled breaths. This was another injury Allen Walker had left him with; he struggled for air, roots taking hold in his lungs. He coughed into his hand, bloodied red camellia resting in his hands. What were those supposed to mean?
The last time he’d spit lobelias, before that azalea and carnations and judas tree.
“Tell me, Road, what is this feeling?” Tyki asked, but his niece, Dreams, the eldest child, stayed silent as Tyki vomited up more flowers, an entire colorful bouquet for Allen Walker.
So much for poppies.
Tagetes lemmonii
Later, Allen wouldn’t know whether he’d screamed when the Third Exorcist swallowed up the souls, but as so often, by the time he was calm, he had no way of telling. His throat was raw regardless; the only sign that Crown Clown’s protection was not perfect because it couldn’t heal everything.
Or maybe it just couldn’t heal quickly enough.
The roots had festered deep within his lungs. Vines had wrapped around his heart, thorns grown into his flesh, ever permanent. Today had started out as one of the better days, waking restless but without the nausea or the headache that had become his constant companions.
He’d always known that he would die young and it seemed like he’d taxed his body too much.
Vaguely, Allen heard the voices of the Thirds as he threw up, yellow petals, blood, and his last two meals ending up on the cave’s stone floor.
Save us! Save us! Exorcist—
The vanquished souls kept begging in Allen’s mind and he couldn’t fucking concentrate.
Adonis annua
“Get it together,” Road told the pitiful boy, pressing her fickle-fake figure against Allen’s collapsed form. “You can’t lose yourself! You’ll be swallowed by Yu Kanda’s emotions.”
For a human displaying such anger, the Exorcist was a deeply fearful and grief-stricken child at heart. Road didn’t have to be told about mankind’s cruelty, recalling every sin they had ever committed as easily as breathing. She’d cried endlessly when she’d been younger, torn between the desire to rip the life out of every being to save them and condemning them to their flaws and faults.
Road’s mind had been too old a decade ago; her aching lungs were a surefire sign that even ancient gods hadn’t carried a burden as great as hers.
Grief flowers, Tyki had told her. Poppies.
Few people could be infected by the disease, and the Innocence usually knew better than to pick a warrior who’d falter so quickly.
But Noah were engineered to cry and grieve for their fallen.
“Remember who you are,” Road told the child. Perhaps it was cruel, but for his sake, the life of Mana’s beloved child, Allen Walker should remain himself for as long as possible. “Remember, Allen! You’re Allen!”
If only so that the Earl would not blame himself for another murder.
Primula vulgaris
Allen’s body was heavy, the pressure on his chest immense, and still, Nea could not think of anything more beautiful than choking on his breath, half-blind from the pain, but alive. He coughed and coughed, pushed his host to the limit just so he could talk to Mana again for the first time in years.
“I knew you’d come for me, brother!” Nea laughed, blood smeared across his lips. “This time, I will kill you. I will kill you and become the Millennium Earl!”
And finally, this senseless war and all the pain would end. One last strike with his sword, and Adam would be no more, for they could not live without the other, ever-connected in their heartbreaking youth.
Mana’s soul was screaming at him, and Nea wanted to do nothing more than reach out to him, but instead, he was pulled back into that world of black and white.
Zinnia acerosa
The 14th name weighed heavily on Allen’s tongue, tasted bitter and foul, like regret and forgotten memories—
Nea, dear darling destruction, Allen hated him.
He wanted to scream, accuse him of causing the poppies stealing away his father’s sanity and health, but just like Mana, all Allen could do was tear at the chains as his body convulsed and zinnias fell into his lap.
Nelumbo lutea
Kanda had never cared much about Allen Walker’s disease. The boy was doomed to die by his curse already, the Innocence eating up his lifespan; what did it matter that he was coughing up flowers? Kanda had looked the other way when Allen was as pale as a corpse, his breath rattling like a chain, and his movement just a second too sluggish to smooth enough.
Yu had died so many times, he knew what it looked like to stand with one leg in the grave.
He didn’t see a point in crafting flower crowns out of the unbloodied petals, making bouquets out of thorned roses and candles from lavender. Allen Walker’s fate was one of grief, and there was no changing his flowers into something kinder. No matter how often he smiled, fake and hollow, he couldn’t cover up what laid within.
And yet, holding onto Alma, lotus flowers blooming between them, Kanda found himself grateful that despite everything, Allen had lived this long.
For this one last ugly gift, the flowers they’d always wanted to see together, serving as Alma’s funeral wreath.
“I love you, Yuu—”
I love you too.
Gypsophila paniculate
Almost entranced, Allen stared at the floor of baby’s breath between him and Tyki. The Noah wiped blood off his mouth with the resignation of someone who hadn’t thrown up flowers for the first time.
When Tyki caught him staring, he only raised a brow at Allen. “Don’t be so surprised, menino. These flowers are your fault.”
Allen opened his mouth to protest because that was not how you caught ructare florem, but the words died on his tongue when Crown Clown bloomed feathers and another wave of nausea overwhelmed him. Like this, the ground looked the same it had that cold December night, blood and snow, a monument to Allen’s failures.
“Your left arm is telling him where we are,” Tyki said in-between well-practiced breaths. Allen recalled the boy with the fear flowers and imagined the child helping up the adult who had taught him how to breathe.
“I’ll slice it off for you.”
Allen couldn’t even bring himself to protest. He merely jumped out of the way, his shoulders shaking from adrenaline and panic.
He didn’t want the Noah’s help.
Verbena officinalis
Allen made only one stop at Mana’s grave after leaving Mother’s home. Despite the season, Allen hardly recognized the place. The trees were already losing their leaves, becoming bare, but winter’s frost had not yet claimed the graveyard grounds. When he’d cried in front of the stone, it had seemed larger than life, shadowing him entirely.
Now it was so small, insignificant.
A poor man’s grave.
Allen moved on.
On the good days, that meant marigolds and verbena, but more often than not, Nea was too close to the surface and Apocryphos too close in presence and Allen choked on zinnias and poppies and baby’s breath and homesickness—
Even so, he carried on.
Prunus domestica
Nea used to steal Allen’s glasses.
His friend had always thrown a fit about it, complaining about his worsening eyesight, and Mana had tried to mediate between the two as if Nea and Allen hadn’t clearly seen through each other’s plays and embraced the pause to breathe.
Now the most defining feature in Allen’s face was his massive scar and where his voice used to be so smooth and sweet, the intonation of a good narrator or singer, now it was rough. As if permanently stuck with a cold, a hoarse throat, Allen was nothing like the friend he remembered.
Not even the burdens had remained the same.
A little lost, Nea stared at the flowers in his hands. He remembered coughing up grief flowers, fighting through the urge to crawl up in a corner and cry as he one by one decimated the other Noah. He’d murdered them with poppies on his lips.
“Goodbye, my friend,” Nea whispered into the plum blossoms and slowly let them fall to the ground. “From now on, we are enemies.”
Linnaea borealis
This new body, Allen’s disease, was so utterly traitorous, it was a miracle that he managed to cheat and lie as well as he did. Every single emotion, every grievance, was given away by beautiful flowers containing a gruesome death.
Nea had to act quickly as this body wouldn’t last much longer. Most victims of ructare florem died within two years, but so far the Innocence had ensured that its marionette kept on dancing. From here on, that would change. Crown Clown was vicious and protective of Allen. It would destroy Nea to regain its Accommodator and Nea could not allow that.
Now now, when he was so close.
“Mother gave her children the names Mana D. Campbell and Nea D. Campbell,” Nea said slowly. If Mana could not retain their memories, Nea would keep them until their end, until they drew their last breath, and Adam was no more. “Mana for the bread, and Nea for the flowers growing in the fields. Do you remember? Like peas in a pot, Mana and Nea were raised as brothers, but we weren’t brother’s. Not when you were sick and I picked you flowers, not when I was moody, and you sat me down for a meal. And our mother wasn’t our real mother.”
The truth hadn’t hurt because Katerina had loved them more than the world, but still, it had cracked something because Katerina hadn’t chosen them, they had picked her.
Mana’s eyes widened and Nea hoped he saw something like recognition flash in them.
He picked the violet flowers from his mouth, ripped them from this throat with roots still attached, and pressed them close to Mana’s heart, a poor imitation of what it had been like to be devoured by the Earl.
“We were the Millenium Earl,” Nea told his brother, his dear twin, continuing his tale.
In the end, Mana didn’t listen, didn’t recall.
But that was alright.
His brother was still alive and thus Nea could destroy him.
Twin flowers never bloomed on their own after all.
Viburnum tinus
“The contents of that jar, though rendered unrecognizable in an instant… That’s Timcanpy.”
Kanda wasn’t one for lying, for cruel jokes like that, and so Allen had no reason to distrust him, and yet it just couldn’t be true. Tim had always been at his side, something that helped him move from Mana’s fairy tales to Master Cross’s rough orders. Someone warm and comfortable to hold onto at night, encouragement in the morning and when he was out late working – Tim was always there. To think he had been destroyed just like that—
Allen couldn’t stay here. He was putting everyone in danger, and just because he’d been so terrified of being alone, he’d clung to Timcanpy and causes his death.
Had he been just a little braver, a bit smarter, then none of this would have happened. He had done well enough in the end and would have managed on his own; he hadn’t needed Timcanpy!
“I’m sorry,” Allen apologized with a smile, laurestine filling up his lungs, crying all the tears that Allen could not because sadness always summoned the Earl. “I will deal with that Innocence in human form on my own.”
Asclepias syriaca
Allen was starting to understand why Kanda had always been so annoyed with him, being so loud, getting himself involved in everyone’s business. Privacy was something to be respected, that was a lesson learned early on, with rough hands tossing him into the cold snow. Allen had forgotten it in the Order. Everyone had secrets, but it had been easier to focus on their issues than think about Allen’s own, to wonder what he was doing here still, his father’s curse hanging over him, his floor covered by the flowers of his nightmare
“We’re in Eddingston, England,” Allen said blankly. “This is… It’s the town where I met Mana. It’s the town where I met Master and Tim.”
He’d never lingered on that before, or had simply assumed that Cross had been there for him, sensing his Innocence or something, but that wasn’t the truth at all, was it?
Cross had been here for Mana, for the brother of the 14th, and Allen had just been a brat he met by chance, the kid who had messed everything up.
“This is the place where ‘Allen’ began,” he finished.
Perhaps he had pushed those painful memories away for too long and it was time to recall what he had repressed, what he had thrown away.
Just this once, Allen would tell his story and not hold his breath until the asclepias disappeared.
Rewind, to the winter I was born, and the man, who pressed bloody poppies into every sign he drew.
