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Guard my vessel, the Fourteenth had told him. He'd agreed then, not thinking it'd be a problem - that was his first mistake.
Kill Akumas? He'd killed plenty, and experimented on more at the side. Keep the fuck away from the Millenium Earl, the Black Order and anything that didn't have alcohol? He'd been doing that for years, no problem. Save the world? Sure thing, he was getting pretty bored anyway. Take care of an adorable and fucked up child who was barely five?
Hold on a second. What the fuck.
And then he'd gone on and picked up the kid anyway, like an idiot.
That had been his second mistake.
Back then he hadn’t realised it, but looking back, that - that was the moment he’d doomed himself.
In his defence, what was he supposed to do? Just leave the kid crying over the grave of whatever was left (not that there’d been much left of him in the first place, to be honest) of Mana?
So he'd gotten himself stuck taking care of a kid without the faintest idea of how he was supposed to take care of one, especially considering he generally made it a rule not to deal with people under the age of ten or sometimes just people in general unless he was downing at least his fifth bottle.
So far, though, he liked to think he was doing pretty well in general - at least, for someone who had no clue what the hell he was doing.
He'd bought him to and dropped him off at Mother's, the kid trailing him like a blank-faced duckling the whole time, and gone off to save the world gloriously and get the fuck away from the responsibility of having a kid.
Or at least, that was his original (wonderful, and now sadly impossible) plan.
Instead, Mother had taken one look at the child and his (hastily) retreating back, and then grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and dragged him back into the house. According to her, I don't care who you knocked up to get such a cute kid, Cross Marian, but you better damn well stay and look after him yourself or so help me I will kick your ass all the way from here to Japan.
And so he stayed.
And he was doing well too! He'd given the kid new clothes, bought him food - for a midget he sure had a black hole of a stomach once he stopped staring into blank space long enough to eat - woke him up during nightmares and even gone so far as to wash all his piss-stained sheets.
He hadn't even had a drink or accidentally given the brat food poisoning for days.
The fact that the kid was still breathing obviously meant that he was a genius and clearly deserved an award for surviving this whole fiasco.
What more was he supposed to do?
"Once upon a what the fuck ever, there was an idiotic, stupid little boy who lived with his most wonderful, charming, handsome, amazingly unbeatable master and his golem."
Cross had thought (wrongly, he had been so, so wrong) that his life would get infinitely easier if the brat stopped trying to imitate the likeness and all the liveliness of a porcelain doll and give Cross a sign, maybe once in a while at least, that he was actually alive other than eating and shitting the bed every night.
"One night, the little boy wouldn't go to sleep and kept pestering his master to tell him a stupid bedtime story. So the master became annoyed and the boy was never seen again. The. End."
He had been so wrong.
"Moral of story? Get the fuck off me or you'll become the boy in the story, understand?"
Huge innocent grey eyes stared owlishly back at Cross who felt his irritation waver in the face of pure undiluted cuteness that was his life's bane in the form of one kid Allen Walker.
Those eyes blinked slowly. Once. Twice. Then Allen cheered happily, letting go of his deadlock on Cross's sleeve to smack his chubby little palms together cheerfully.
Cross took that as an answer of No, he didn't understand.
At all.
Because once the brat snapped out of his traumatised I-killed-Mana-then-bought-him-back-and-killed-him-again-anyways state, he apparently decided that it was now clearly high time to relieve all his missed childhood opportunities and revert to the mentality of a kid (and Cross didn't have the heart to tell him to stop - the child had been through enough shit after all).
"Yay!" he chanted, "More, more!"
Of course, that didn't mean that he had to like it.
Cross scowled. The brat was not deterred.
"More!" He insisted, tugging lightly at his master's sleeve.
Cross scowled harder.
"Get off me you little brat!" He growled, yanking his sleeve away from the child and giving his best fuck-off-before-I-feed-you-to-Roseanne glare in (futile) hopes it would discourage him.
Of course, the brat, being the brat, apparently took that as an invitation to launch himself off his bed and pounce on the unsuspecting Cross's head, nearly squashing Timcanpy who managed to dart away just in time as the golem's spot on his master's head was forcefully claimed by the energetic white-haired child.
"Yippee!" He shouted joyfully.
"Arrrgh!" Cross yelped (which he would deny for the rest of his life - or at least for the next few hours before Barba took over playing with the kid, Mother dragged him out to drink and he inevitable got drunk and ranted about his life's many, many woes into a bottle while she laughed at him with no pity whatsoever).
Timcanpy hovered midair watching the scene in interest while recording it for further blackmail purposes and was absolutely no help.
Meanwhile, Cross staggered around wildly, knocking over various objects in an attempt to balance himself while Allen grabbed fistfuls of his hair and giggled happily as he sat upon his master's head like he was riding an unruly horse in one of those Wild West rodeo movies Cross liked to watch sometimes.
"Master is so clumsy!" He declared upon his perch.
Said perch snarled, pushing Allen's foot away from his eye, "The hell? And who's fucking fault is it?" and promptly crashed into a wall.
Ouch.
Cross landed on his back with a heavy thud and had a moment of internal panic of shit where the hell is that kid? if he falls he might break something before his object of panic crash-landed into his stomach with heavy "Whumph!".
He had been sitting up when Allen had come crashing down on him with all the force of a, albeit tiny, garbage truck and the impact knocked him flat on his back again, hitting his head on the floor with a hard whack. The pain in his head combined with his stomach made his head cloud with pain and he felt a surge of sudden fury.
"Enough!" he snapped, pushing the child off his middle and onto the floor roughly, "Get the fuck off me you little good-for-nothing brat!"
Allen sat up and stared at him pitifully with wide grey eyes. Then his lower lip started to quiver, tiny frame shaking as he tried desperately to hold back tears. Cross stared at the near-crying child across of him. Well, shit.
"Allen..." he started, trying to make his tone sound comforting and reassuring. Which, apparently wasn't very comforting or reassuring because that one word was all it took to make the young child burst into tears.
Sighing in defeat, Cross gave up and opened his arms. "All right, you little brat, come on then."
Allen instantly brightened up like the star on a Christmas tree, wiping away the tears still staining his cheeks as he clambered clumsily into his guardian's lap.
"Story!" He demanded, lips curled in a pout as he settled himself comfortably, tugging at a lock of red hair. "Tell me story!"
Cross sighed deeply (he'd been doing that a lot lately, fuck you Mana, your kid is taking years off my life) wondering since when, he, one of the most powerful Exorcists and a well-known general had become a softie who told bedtime stories to annoying brats.
"Alright," he sighed again, resting one hand on Allen's head of white locks, ruffling it affectionately, "Once upon a time, there was a young boy named Allen..."
And if maybe he liked it, just a bit, nobody had to know.