1. Chapter 1 (1/2)

this will be a one shot for another series. honestly, they were two separate series, but what the heck, i am never going to write this one extensively. i hope you enjoy it because this is my dedication to laven, a pair that i enjoy (though it is not my otp). it will have a sequel that will probably have no real plot, but i just felt like doing anyways. anyways, enjoy!

oh, and before i forget. i had never heard a portuguese accent before, and now i have a professor who is portuguese. i love her accent!

revised and edited.

the heart within you hand

fort black order

september, 1685

allen walker's journal

i had no intention of ever starting a journal, but my life has become complicated and i feel that every moment i have should be recorded. these are big words for an eight-year-old to write, but i have been to hell and back for the past six months under the tutelage of general marian cross. it is a blessing that my apprenticeship to him has finally come to an end, although it seems impossible that i am now on my own in the world. i may be smart, i may be resourceful, and i may have a powerful will. however, none of that can comfort me at night when the awful dreams come to visit in the guise of twisted memories.

of course these memories are of my father, mana walker. he was my world, raising me for as long as i can remember. in england, we were poor and it was a difficult place to survive. he would always talk about going to the americas one day, the land of opportunity. but one day he changed. it came without warning, and at first it perplexed me. he had thrown himself away from me and did not return home for nearly a day. then his behavior became strange. he talked to himself constantly. people began to accuse him of speaking blasphemy, of casting curses. i did not believe them at first, but the omens grew. a cat died, the neighbor's daughter fell sick, and a crop decayed from disease. one day the signs grew too coincidental. i asked mana about it. with tears in his eyes he held me close and told me not to worry. general cross came to investigate these odd occurrences. he put my father to a stake and burned him alive. i tried to save him using my arm—the one he told me never to use—but cross stopped me. after my mourning and hatred passed he took it upon himself to train me. he was an unrelenting master, and now he has dumped me in london. he calls this place the black order. the way he looked at me as he said goodbye is something i still cannot understand to this day. his eyes so dark, so serious. they watched me as i was drawn into that ominous home of the witch hunters.

it is a strange place filled with people who hold so much knowledge about witches and warlocks. just recently a man named johnny gill has taught me about the different classes of witches and warlocks. there are two divisions: the noah and the akuma. the akuma are the ones we are likely to capture. level ones are the weakest. level fours are the strongest of this class. from these akuma, level fours are also the only ones who can completely blend in with the humans of the world. mana was a level four akuma. the only thing that could hurt him is the curse running through my arm. and the others…

there are others like me, who possess the holy substance of innocence. but they are so few in number, and none of them want to test their strength against mine. i cannot help but wondering if i am strong enough to be one of them. these exorcists are older by several years, some by decades. they have many years of experience under their belts. so many years in which they have grown used to killing witches. i have conflictions they do not have, no doubt due to my lack of experience in this cruel world. i do not want to kill witches. in my eyes they are the same as people, to an extent. however if they are left free normal people can be harmed by them. for this reason, i want to be as strong as possible. i do not want to watch people suffer when they are guiltless, so i know that i cannot hesitate when it comes to taking the life of a witch or a warlock.

however, there is one thing that i can never do, regardless of whether one is an exorcist, akuma, human, noah; and that is the promise that i will never, ever kill someone who is innocent. and if i must fight against a hundred exorcists stronger than me to protect that soul, then so be it. mana was not evil. he had a soul, he loved and felt pain. i do not condone the curses he put on people around us, but i knew his heart. he would not have done this without a good reason. and the curse he had given me…this scar upon my eye given mere moments before his pyre was lit…is also for my protection. things like this can be misunderstood quite easily. when someone we love harms us, we automatically think that it is a betrayal. but this world is too complex and too unpredictable for us to define something so simply. therefore, if someone is not evil, and does not act in the name of evil, i cannot kill them. some think an exorcist's job is to eliminate witches and other blasphemous creatures. in truth, it is to eliminate those beings who seek to destroy simply because it is within their power.

you may think i am young, and physically i am. but there are things in life that age the mind, the soul, and the heart. i cannot help but try to predict what my life will be in the next few years. i know deep down that my life span is short—even my innocence will shorten the number of years i have—but i also know that when i die my soul and heart will not be that of a child. no, instead those things will belong to an elder.

*_*_*.o.0.o.*_*_*

london

january, 1686

i have encountered someone who should never have been encountered. i am a general now, the slayer of hundreds of witches and warlocks in europe. i thought there was nothing for me to fear. how foolish i was. my dear friend johnny has warned me a thousand times that every time i take another life of his followers, i become more of a threat. months ago, i asked him who he was. johnny replied, the earl. he is the father of all witches and warlocks. he is the first, the origin of all. and he is the leader of the noahs. i dismissed his words, because no one would ever believe that a nine-year-old would be a threat. when i walk the streets of london, of paris, of amsterdam, no one believes that i carry the rank bestowed upon my uniform. the look down at me and laugh. sometimes they toss a coin and sometimes they give me derisive looks. but not a single one thinks of me as a threat. even the older exorcists treat me like a child.

but the earl is different. he came to me without a disguise, without flowery words or pretenses. he faced me as if i were a man and with that terrifying grin he spoke to me.

good evening allen walker. do you know who i am? he asked me. i can still recall how he seemed to loom over me, how he exuded power and danger. the way he held himself implied that he meant no harm, or rather that he had no intentions of leaping and attacking. however, the gaze in his eyes seemed to imply that he would jump into action without a second's warning.

earl, i replied, readying my innocence. i knew that i could take a few attacks from him, but here the physical limitations of a nine-year-old would hinder me more than be of use. his size defied logic for all of the grace and agility he portrayed in simple movements. i knew with absolute certainty that i would never be a match for him. if he willed it, he could kill me with little more than a single gesture.

you are correct. do you know why i am here?

i remember sliding my right hand to my arm, trying to pass it off as a gesture of uneasiness. in truth, i merely wanted to guard, no, hide my innocence from him.

you want to kill me.

you are such a smart boy, the earl praised. then he laughed. i do not even know how to describe his laughter. the sound was both awful and hypnotizingly pleasant. yes, that was my intention. however the information about you does no justice. i find myself at a loss as what to do with you.

because i am a child? i demanded, angered suddenly by this unfair treatment. we are enemies and we should never show mercy to one another. if he harmed someone i would attack him. i am a threat to his plan, he should attack me. age should never be a factor in such a thing as war. despite my fear of him and of being killed by him, i still felt that we should both abide by the laws of war.

oh, i would kill you if i thought it was necessary. no, i have discovered something far more interesting, he told me. i did not like the glint in his eye.

what have you discovered? i asked.

allen walker, you are the son of a warlock, are you not?

the earl left me then. i did not know why at the time why his words made my blood run cold. but now i do. i researched witches and warlocks. how they come to be, what makes them what they are. an akuma is an animal that the earl gives a conscience. as it grows stronger it becomes more and more human until at last it can even fool itself into thinking it is a human. and a noah is seemingly born at random, reincarnating into unsuspecting bodies. however, in rare cases where a witch or a warlock has a child, the being of a noah is drawn into the child. the child grows, slowly coming into that dormant heritage. mana was my father, in all of the ways that mattered. as a level four, simply being exposed to his power for long periods of time would be enough for my body to change into that of a magical being's. i would not be able to tell. and if a noah came into me, i would no doubt never even notice until the day it begins to awaken.

when i read that passage, i tried to convince myself that it was not possible. i could not be host to innocence as well as to a noah. and yet…as i tested innocence against my own body, i realized that i indeed could be host to both. innocence hurts me when it should not. when it hurts me, i became angrier than i usually would be. a longing arises in me, the need to destroy the crystal infesting my body. the harsh reality of the matter is something i have come to accept:

i, allen walker, will one day become a noah. it comes in the years of puberty. if i do not die from using my innocence, then i will become one of them. i…do not know how to feel about this.

for now, i will live as i have been and keep this secret to myself. i will go to the americas where the black order has another settlement in massachusetts to protect against the spread of witchcraft. when the time comes, i will decide what to do.

*_*_*.o.0.o.*_*_*

massachusetts

april, 1688

life in the colonies is hard. this place is both miserable and beautiful. i live with komui lee, a man from china. he is a doctor here. he lives with his sister and treasures her greatly. she knows very little about the black order. as a general i can sense the potential she holds as a possible candidate for becoming an exorcist. for now, i will allow komui to keep her ignorant of the duty i may have to force her into one day.

there are others here who know of the black order, and a curiously large number of them are potential exorcists as well. i know now that the leaders of black order placed me here in the event of witchcraft spreading to the americas. i am strong enough to fight them and experienced enough to teach others. they do not know of my role in this war but something tells me that this future is not far away when they will both learn it and be forced to become someone like me.

but enough of dark matters. i know that what i have written in your pages is often of a melancholy mood, but today there was a ray of light. in history there is a group, a clan, that records events from the midst of things. they never observe from far away, and they never put their emotions into their work. this is the bookman clan, and today the head and his grandson came here to record the war. it is his grandson that i call the light. he is a few years older than i, handsome. his eyes are

ight green, his hair as red as my former master's, and there is something mischievous in his expression that draws me to him. it is perhaps wrong—no, it is most definitely wrong for me to admit this, but i have fallen in love with him at first sight. he has no eyes for me, but i see that as the best. he never notices when i look at him, the way i watch him smile from behind my faade of a poor indentured servant. he never sees the love i give him when he looks away. i am relieved that he never notices anything of this, for it is wrong me to love a man, and surely he would hate me for it. but lavi, that is his name, is so unique. he laughs so jovially and recites scripts as old as hesiod. his spirit is free and unbound like the puritans i live with.

there is a downside, of course. i noticed it the first time we met. though he had looked at me with a guarded expression, i could read every single thought running through him. he looked at my hair and thought it similar to the gray dust one sweeps from a house. he looked at my eyes and likened the color to dull lead. he thought of me as ugly. and when his eyes came upon lenalee he saw her as beautiful as a nymph, with the grace of a muse. these thoughts i read as if they were the words of a letter and each word cut me. it made me wonder why i could read him so well after just one meeting, why i had fallen in love with him. for now i have come to accept these things. instead i watch the relationship between lavi and lenalee. i love her as a sister, and it would pain me all the more to let her marry the one i love. but she is only a year older than i and there is time before she is even old enough to join a man in matrimony. in that time, i hope that lavi comes to fall out of love with her, that she will never return his affections, or that i myself may fall out of love. as sweet as this is, these feelings of excitement, i know that to love a man in this time and this place means that things will never end well. and lavi is a bookman. he is only allowed to love the person he marries and the children he will have, and those are for the sake of continuing the bookman clan. there is no room to love someone who does not contribute to anything.

*_*_*.o.0.o.*_*_*

massachusetts

september, 1690

the years have passed me by so very slowly, and i can feel the sands slipping through my fingers. i am almost fourteen. the dreams of mana have begun to haunt my dreams again. i cannot help but wonder if these are the first signs of becoming a noah. there is nothing to guide me, and in my dreams i see the earl there, offering to take me in. to protect me and love me. every night those sweet words sound more and more tempting. even my innocence pounds eagerly at the idea of going to the earl. there is another part of me, a more logical part, that causes me to worry. i know a little about witches and warlocks, how they can affect dreams. an akuma of the highest level only has influence within a town and no farther than its outskirts. the noahs can affect entire cities, and the earl has once been recorded to extend his influence to nearby countries. but if he were in england, his power could not reach the americas. this meant that the war against witchcraft had failed. they had now invaded the new world. i do not know how long it will be before they began to work their magic in this fresh land. it could be months or even years. right now, i just want to live in this moment where no one has to fight, where i do not need to decided who lives and who dies, where i can live as a normal person instead of working as a general. my life has fallen but it is still pleasant. none of the worries i have pertain to the life i lived before.

where is lenalee? lavi asked me. that was the first time he spoke to me.

are you well? lavi asked me one morning he came to visit, a basketful of herbs grown by his grandfather in his hand. he had looked upon my sallow face, noticing the shadows caused by my nightmares. he was not concerned for my well-being as a friend, it was more of a general acquaintanceship. i still appreciated his question. that was the first time he spoke to me of his own free will.

i can talk to her whenever i want to! lavi shouted at me. that was the first argument we shared, and it was the beginning of our animosity. of course, i never truly hated him as i pretend to.

i hope you find yourself a shallow grave to be buried in, he told me coldly on the day where i asked him to leave lenalee alone and instead stay with me. he understood it as me fulfilling the role of a chaperone, but i truly just wanted him to stay with me. i see the way lenalee looks at lavi now. there is affection growing in her eyes, curiosity in the smile of her mouth, and blushes igniting her cheeks beautifully. lavi is not blind to it, but he is also not as attentive as i am or as komui is. komui does not approve, but he loves his sister dearly and when she comes of age i know that he will allow her to pick the path she wants.

there is another who watches. he does not seem love anyone, and in fact he is as much of an enigma as a nuisance to me. his name is kanda, and he is lavi's dearest and closest friend. i do not hate kanda, despite our clashing personalities. neither does he hate me. some days, when our paths cross and no one is around, we sit and talk to each other. some weeks we do not say a single word. he is a quiet companion whose company i enjoy when we are not arguing. he has come to know me well, and knows that i too have many secrets that i hide from the world. and of all the secrets he has unraveled, the largest one is my love for lavi.

you love that idiot, do you not? he asked me one day. we sat back to back in the forest. only us in the forest.

lavi? i asked with lightness in my tone as response to the gravity of the question.

i can see it in your eyes when you look at him. you love him with your entire being. i turned to look at him.

does it not bother you? i was curious.

the only thing that bothers me is that you have fallen for someone who is too blinded by beauty to see that which is amazing about you, he replied. i blinked at him, not expecting a compliment from him. kanda did not meet my gaze. i am not one to shy from homosexuality, and neither is lavi. but he is not

ight, allen. you may as well give him up to lenalee.

i gave him a sad smile. the heart does not like to be restrained, kanda. nothing can control this emotion.

he said nothing more than that. i wished that i had fallen in love with him instead.

*_*_*.o.0.o.*_*_*

massachusetts

december, 1691

it has come to pass, my fear. the earl has landed in the americas. there have been no disturbances as of yet, but the black order knows that he is here. they sent me a letter dating several months ago, and the time has come. i must reveal myself to the others, give them the innocence, and train them. i must decide who to kill and who to save. and…i will either die from using my innocence, or i will become a noah and die by my own students' hands. because i know that the earl will never come to save me. the only reason he let me live before was so he could watch me suffer for what i have done. what better way than becoming the very thing i fought against?

i still cannot help but wonder if death would give me reprieve from what i am now certain is the earl's dream-casting. he visits me nightly, my savior in the dreams where i am drowning amongst the waves of the great flood. he showers me with gentleness and understanding, like a sweet poison that eats away at me slowly. i think if i do not die, i may instead go mad.

i walked to the meeting hall where komui had gathered all the people i named together to explain the situation. they knew of the order and of witches and warlocks. and of so very little else. it made me sad to take away their ignorance.

how will we defend the colonies against the earl and his ilk? chaoji demanded. he held komui by the lapels. lavi and kanda were both trying to restrain him.

you fight them, i answered, drawing everyone's eyes towards me. they took in my uniform, which i had put on now that my orders had been given, mouths parting in disbelief. i will give you the only substance that can harm witches and warlocks, and i will teach you all how to wield it.

who are you? chaoji asked. he seemed unimpressed by my rank. considering my age, he probably thought of me as insignificant, nothing close to being a threat.