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Johnny blinked slowly, blearily, his heavy eyes on hands laying limp in his lap. His head slumped forwards a little, and a weighted throb of pain resounded through his skull, tugging a slurred groan from his lips.
He brought one of those hands up to his face, felt his bruised cheek and aching head and wondered how he’d ended up outside.
In a moment, he’d scrambled to his feet and was leaning against the wall, his vision grey and ears ringing while he tried to keep his footing. Unable to stand, he crouched down, tucked his head between his knees with his eyes scrunched shut until the disconcerting hollowness of in his ears had abated.
A steadying hand on the rough concrete of - a roof? Was he on a roof? How had he gotten up there? - Johnny tentatively glanced up, around, tried to take in what was happening beyond his field of vision.
There was panicked yelling, fervent and pleading, and Johnny’s heart clenched like a fist in his chest. Terror overtaking his dizziness - and not helping it one bit - he pushed himself as close to standing as he could and stumbled towards the voices.
Clutching at the wrought iron fence to hold himself up, nausea churned in his stomach when Johnny caught sight of him.
“All...en?” he hesitated, eyes wide when the white-haired boy he’d been searching for so long - to help, to save - turned. Tilted his head over his shoulder to pin Johnny with baleful yellow eyes, Innocence rippling and torn, peeled back from his arm in a ghastly mockery of the graceful elegance of Allen’s activation.
That’s not Allen.
Johnny’s heart seized, and then fluttered too quickly in his chest, fingers cold and numb where they clenched around the iron of the fence. The Noah wearing Allen’s skin watched him, cold and hateful, and Johnny’s words shriveled and died on his tongue, unforgivable terror making him dumb.
That’s not Allen.
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. That thing’s gold eyes were on him and Johnny was pinned with terror, his bones cold in the face of something that could kill him, if it wanted. That had killed him - would have, were it not for Kanda. Johnny’s head throbbed, remembering the gentle touch of Allen’s fingers brushing past his cheek, into his hair. Shoving him violently, carelessly aside, cracking his skull against the wall like he was nothing more than a ragdoll annoyance.
I thought you were Allen.
“You really messed up, didn’t you, boy.”
The dry comment shattered the deadly silence that had crept over the confrontation Johnny had stumbled onto, and the Fourteenth whipped Allen’s head to pin that disconcerting sneer on the Noah standing on air not too far away. Unconcerned, but for the grit of his teeth, the unforgiving focus of his attention.
“Thought I made you a promise,” he said, a sour smile twisting his lips into something almost hostile when he lifted a cigarette to his lips, burned half to ash. “Not going to leave me hanging because a cheater like you lost out to a traitor like him, are you?”
He spoke in swirls of smoke, and the look on his face might have been menacing if it weren’t so disappointed.
“Had my money on you,” he said, a flicker of pained sincerity darkening his brow, and the resounding silence amongst the rooftops let his almost-private words reach Johnny, anxiety fluttering his chest, breaths coming short and shallow with his hand curled painfully tight around the iron of the fence. Weak body wired tense.
He had to get to Allen. He had to get to Allen. Before this Noah killed him, before. Before…
That’s not Allen.
Johnny swallowed, fear locking him in place. What was he even supposed to do?
He wasn’t an exorcist. Hell, he wasn’t even a finder! He wasn’t strong, he wasn’t talented, he wasn’t chosen. He was human and he was scared, and he wanted nothing more than to throw himself at the Fourteenth and hope and pray and wish that it was Allen who he embraced.
Even if it killed him.
But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t bring himself to move. He couldn’t… do it.
He couldn’t save Allen.
He couldn’t do a damn thing.
The well-dressed Noah ducked his head and scoffed a bitter laugh, dropped his cigarette twenty feet to the pavement below and glanced up from below his brows like a challenge, warm gold eyes pinned on Allen, mouth curling with something like amusement. “Either way,” he said, taking a step closer, the air rippling beneath his heels, “I lose.” His grin turned wry and he forced out another short laugh. “Should have known you’d be the kind of stubborn to play like this. What’s the bet this asshole can’t even hold a decent hand?”
Johnny watched, his heart in his throat, as the Noah took another measured pace towards Allen.
The Fourteenth shifted, turned. The toe of his boot hung over the edge of the building, and he held Allen’s Innocence towards the Noah like a warning. A staying hand backed by the threat of narrowed, suspicious eyes.
“He can’t hear you,” the Fourteenth said, voice cold, and the Noah laughed quietly like it was a joke, took another step.
Johnny swallowed, throat dry and tight, watched Link - Howard Link? He was alive? - edge closer from behind the Fourteenth, taking the gift of the Noah’s distraction to move. The cards of Binding Feathers twisted silently around him, coiled in preparation, and the Noah didn’t even cast him a cursory glance.
His eyes on Allen, daring him to come back as though they were children with a game left unfinished. Wanting him to come back - and for what? Johnny’s lips trembled, pressed tight together, thinking what this Noah might want with Allen. This was their plan, wasn’t it? To- to capture Allen, to. Awaken… the Fourteenth. To take him to the Noah’s side and. And destroy Allen, let the Noah Memory consume his mind and- what was this man trying to do?
The quiet confidence of his smile, the unhesitant way he approached the Fourteenth, the- the fondness in his voice, addressing Allen.
“He hasn’t disappointed me yet,” was all he said, his certainty quiet and understated, “and it’d be a hell of a time to start now.”
The Innocence flared for a moment, Allen’s human hand twisting and clenching into a fist. A word fell past his lips, breathed as though from the edge of consciousness. “Tyki.”
The Noah smiled, eyes narrow, vicious smugness like victory in his stance when he straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin. “Another round, boy?”
“You-” he breathed, choked, his weak voice catching on his throat even as the grotesque glow of his arm dimmed, the Innocence smoothing back to something more natural.
And there, reaching for that Noah - reaching for Tyki - Allen’s knees buckled, his foot slipped from the edge of the building, and Johnny didn’t know how he found the strength to vault himself over the wrought iron fence but he was lunging after Allen as he fell, a mindless scream torn from his throat in the shape of his name.
Link was there with him, reached the edge at the same moment, and Johnny might have thrown himself over, reaching desperately for Allen in his mindless panic, if Link hadn’t caught the collar of his jacket and wrenched him back, kicked his legs out from beneath him so he couldn’t do anything stupid.
And so Johnny just watched in numb horror, his jaw grazed and bloody against harsh cement, as Allen fell. The Noah with him, plunging towards the ground, and Johnny caught only a look of desperate protectiveness as he reached out to catch Allen before they were enveloped in the blinding light of Innocence erupting like wings of an angel from Allen’s back.
Tendrils like quill darts shot to embed in brick and mortar, the Innocence cocooning them to drop feather-light to the torn-up cobblestones of the alleyway where Allen had faced the Earl.
The light dissipated, the Innocence shrunk and returned to Allen, and it might have been too far for Johnny to hear what Allen said when he opened his eyes, but there was no mistaking the care with which the Noah cradled him, the way Allen’s face, the way his body crumpled into something vulnerable and scared and very near broken.
There was no mistaking the way Tyki held Allen’s head to his shoulder, or the way Allen clung to him as he shook, shuddered sobs and a moment of tragic weakness that Johnny had never dreamed Allen would allow himself to feel, let alone to have someone witness.
And he realised, then, that though his place by Allen’s side was not meaningless - though he was someone Allen needed - there was a difference. As much as Johnny empathised, he could never understand.
As much as he hurt for Allen, he couldn’t imagine Allen’s hurt.
That man down there - that man who had chosen Allen over the Fourteenth. Who held him, and let that undefinable pain be something understood without words, and without explanation. He was what Allen needed, right then. A moment of weakness, to be held by someone who knows - allegiance be damned.
Johnny closed his eyes, turned away. This moment was not one that was afforded to him.