The first chapter--er, prologue, not really chapter ^_^;--of my most epic amazing story ever. Originally written for the DGM Big Bang challenge on livejournal, so there is accompanying fanart (=DDDD) which I will post in a link to my profile once the chapter each picture is in goes up. Or something. Not quite sure yet. BUT.

This story is shamelessly Yullen-y. I regret nothing. xD Slight to major angst (it grows as the story moves forward), lots of flashbacks to the manga (and also to other things not in the manga, but of my OWN making, thank you very much), heavy focus on the 14th, major spoilers of the plot through the Timothy arc, and vague mentions of plot thereafter (namely regarding Alma, and Kanda's past in general). Kanda's POV, 1st person. I would like to thank that genius of Japanese artistry, the lovely and talented Hoshino Katsura for the creation of -Man. =D

This story is already finished, so I should be able to post a chapter a week (though there will be a prologue and a first chapter this week, since I love you and I'm proud of this fic and I'm ecstatic to be kicking off my presentation of it ^_^).

Summary: I hated you. You were weak, and naive, always blundering in at just the right moment, sacrificing yourself for the most inconsequential life. You represented everything I despised... But when your glittering silver eyes fell on me, warmth uncoiled in my chest; and when they flashed gold, my breathing constricted, and I would do anything to bring you back. I hated you... so why couldn't I let you go?

Prologue – His Silver Eyes, Beautiful Disaster

I knew it back then, in that domed cavern far below ground. My blood boiled with rage.

"Don't you have anything dear to you!?"

His eyes, empty, gleamed silver in the darkness. His smile was lifeless, his limbs limp with the pain of his unhealed wounds. Even as he said the words, I knew he was far away.

"What was dear to me...I lost long ago."

~*~

The sky exploded.

"You idiot, run!" I barked, pushing off the ground and leaping a good twenty feet in the air. In my hand, Mugen glinted, sunlight reflecting off of it like the spark before the blaze. I brought the hilt to my front and grasped it firmly in both hands.

My strike was quick, but it did its job; as I touched back down, the two halves of the level one akuma exploded. Gray dust rained down around me.

I whirled to face my partner, fury searing through my veins. "What the hell was that!?" I demanded. "Can't you even defend yourself against a fucking level one!? I've told you before, I'm not here to clean up after you!"

The short boy whirled around, snowy locks of hair jumping into motion, mouth set in a hard line. Those silver eyes glowed with irritation. "Well, sorry, but I was rather busy with the fifty-or-so other ones right in front of my face!"

We glared at one another for a time, neither of us wavering. I broke eye contact when I felt as though his molten-metal gaze was penetrating a little too deep, and hid the shiver that sizzled up my spine with a soft, "Che. Baka Moyashi."

His frown deepened. "It's Allen. Remember it."

"Fat chance."

Despite his evident disgruntlement, the younger boy stood and waited for me to catch up before we continued on. I couldn't help my slightly quickened pace.

~*~

I couldn't understand why he was being so difficult.

"What did we come here for!?" I panted, vision blurring from blood loss. "Take that doll's heart now!"

Those silvery depths plainly bespoke shock, and sadness.

"I can't take it," he said simply, as if that one statement made it okay for him to throw away all our lives. "I'm sorry. I don't want to take it."

Shaking with anger, I flung his coat in his face. "That coat isn't meant to be a pillow for the wounded! Exorcists wear it!"

I could tell that my words had hit their mark; a wash of pain shimmered across his silver eyes. He stayed silent.

I shoved myself off the ground, clutching my coat to my body. Stalking past him, my gaze was hard, drilling into the floor.

"It takes a sacrifice to save others, newbie." The sound was like poison hissing from between my teeth; I assumed this to be the end of it. With my unwounded arm, I raised Mugen and pointed its tip at the doll's chest.

"Please, don't take it..." she pleaded, pathetic, gripping the old man tighter. I glared ice down at her pitiful form; she just trembled, staring up at me with those huge, watery eyes. Begging. But this wouldn't be the first person I'd killed who didn't wish for death; just another nameless victim of war. I no longer cared who lived and who died.

The voice behind me took me by surprise.

"Then I'll be it."

I watched as a wiry frame moved between my blade and the doll. Mugen's tip was now pointed directly at the rose cross on his chest.

"Are you okay with me being the 'sacrifice' in place of them?"

~*~

We stepped into a stone chamber, vast, styled after the Athenian Parthenon. Thick, nondescript columns marked the chamber's boundaries, and ruddy orange sunlight spilled in through the gaps. The ceiling was nothing more than slabs of stone lain on top of the columns, leaving a large, rectangular hole in the center through which a sunset-stained sky could be seen.

In the corner to the left and opposite where we entered, there stood a massive tree. It must've been two hundred feet high, the trunk at least eighty feet around. Its roots snaked across the floor—some had broken through, leaving long cracks filled with shadows—and coiled between the columns to burrow into the lush ground. Its branches were splayed in the air like thousands of flailing limbs, winding and twisting and curling around each other, hung with multitudes of glittering white leaves. The same leaves littered the ground below, still eerily pristine in their beauty.

Standing behind the younger Exorcist, I briefly took note of these details, then strode forward with a brash, "So where're we supposed to be looking for this Innocence?"

That snapped the kid back down to Earth. "Isn't it obvious?" He gestured toward the tree.

"It's a big tree, dipshit," I growled. "Where're we supposed to look?"

He grimaced at me. "I don't know. Do you think you could handle checking the branches while I look around the roots?"

"Worry about yourself," was my only answer, before I walked up along one of the roots, grabbed hold of some bark on the trunk, and began to climb.

The bark was rough, with plenty of flaws that served as adequate hand- and footholds. Little flakes snapped off and fell wherever I touched it. Its many edges dug into my hands, and left small imprints and pinpoints of blood.

I reached a low branch and hoisted myself up, standing to brush off stray debris. The branch was wide enough that I could stand comfortably without much risk of falling. Which was good, because I was now something like a hundred and twenty feet up.

I peered around me, feeling a bit claustrophobic. I could hardly see for all the blinding ivory leaves surrounding me, and it made it that much harder to watch my feet. Glancing down, I could make out a snowy dot mulling around amidst all the white on the ground. I looked up again quickly.

As I crept further along the branch, it only got thinner. Where I had started out with about an arm's length of space on either side, that space had now dwindled to barely a hand's breadth. What was visible of the end of the branch appeared as a black hair against white bedsheets. At the sight, my chest tightened; I scowled harder, keeping my gaze pointed directly ahead.

Something became visible amidst all the feathery white. It stood out in stark contrast, a dark, blue-green blur in a white wasteland. The downturned corners of my lips relaxed, only slightly, as I contemplated the object. The closer I got, the clearer it became; it looked almost like some kind of blown-glass orb, suspended from a vine-like protrusion on the branch. A shimmering gray mist swirled in its depths.

My feet carried me forward, closer to this mystery that tugged at my subconscious. It felt as though the globe was drawing me to it somehow, like an old friend. I felt like I knew it; knew what it was but couldn't put it into words. At length, I became aware of more of them hanging from the ends of nearby branches. I squinted above and behind me, and found them scattered everywhere, all filled with this inexplicable gray mist.

I stopped. The orb was before me, a mere arm's length away. The glittering clouds of smoke within roiled and tumbled about, looking almost restless. The notion both disgusted me and drew me in, until I could all but resist the urge to stretch my fingers forward and feel it for myself. When I did, the warmth of it surprised me; the dark globe swelled with light beneath my touch. Entranced, I simply stared.

Ba-dum.

I snatched my hand away. 'What the hell...?' The glass had somehow...throbbed under my fingertips, the sensation almost like that of blood rushing through a human vein. The sound of a beating heart, bass and penetrating, echoed through my head. 'Innocence wouldn't do this...' I thought, uncertain. Nodded. 'Something else, then.' What, I couldn't guess.

I headed back along the branch and climbed higher, but found nothing new; just more layers of white, with the occasional, intermittent splotch of green. After another half hour or so, I climbed down to converse with my partner.

~*~

"Are you okay with me being the 'sacrifice' in place of them?"

I just stared into those defiant silver eyes, sword still pointed at his heart.

"All they wish for is to die on their own terms," he pleaded. "I can't take the Innocence from this doll until then! As long as I destroy the akuma, there shouldn't be a problem, right?" His silver eyes bored into mine, looking pathetic and superior all at once. It would be the first time I felt him reading me like an open book; I was deeply unsettled.

His next words, I knew, he'd drawn straight from my heart. They bit like a chill wind on the face of a mountain.

"To win a war built on sacrifices...is just empty!"

Before I could think, my fist was flying; the resulting crunch as my knuckles met his cheek left my heart awash with dark satisfaction. Then the wound in my chest throbbed painfully; my head spun, and I stumbled to the floor after him.

"What a sucker," I spat. Panted, vision blurring with pain. "You'd sacrifice yourself for others because you feel sorry for them...?"

My head snapped up, blazing anger lending my voice volume.

"Don't you have anything dear to you!?"

A thick silence fell. My harsh words rang in my ears, as I was sure they did his. He wouldn't look me in the eye, and shadows shrouded his features; even so, all of his inner turmoil, his unshed tears—usually so carefully concealed behind that polite mask—lay plainly across his face. They churned in the deep silver pools of his eyes.

"What was dear to me...I lost long ago."

He raised his head a bit, and I got a better look at the sad smile on his face. So fake, it made me sick. Why did he always try so hard to smile?

"It's not that I feel sorry for them," he continued, bringing my narrowed eyes up from his lips, "and it isn't for any noble reasons, either. I just don't want to see that side of things. That's all it is."

For someone who claimed such childish motives, he looked remarkably old, and tired. A withered soul.

~*~

He looked up at me as I stepped down from a root, making my way toward him. My skin prickled a little under that silver gaze.

"Nothing to find up there," I grunted. "There were these weird glass things, but they were everywhere. I don't think they were Innocence."

"'Glass things?'" I glared; he sighed. "I didn't find the Innocence, either," he continued, staring off in thought. "I wonder where it could be? It's kind of hard to miss..." The silence lasted a few moments. Then he looked back up at me. "I did find this, though," he said, fumbling around in his pocket before producing a small silver key.

Everything about it was ordinary.

"Some kid probably just dropped it here," I murmured.

"That's what I thought at first, too," he affirmed, "but then I saw this."

He held out the little metal object, and I let him drop it into my hand. Upon closer inspection, the thing was still completely unexceptional. There were probably thousands more of these all over Italy, used to open little girls' diaries or something. I was about to tell the bean sprout this when I stopped short, noticing something carved into the top of the key.

It was a tree, its roots and branches curling in intricate designs across the surface of the metal. Miniscule pinpricks were visible where the carver had tried to make leaves, and I even saw some tiny circles here and there among the branches.

Looking back up at the snowy-haired boy before me, I saw my question reflected in his silver eyes: what was it for?

"We should take this back to Komui," I reasoned. The kid nodded.

I started to head back toward the entrance.

"Hey, wait—the key—"

Sighing irritably, I tossed the thing over my shoulder. I didn't care to look behind me, but heard a bit of scuffling, followed by an exasperated bean sprout.

"Be careful!" he exclaimed. "I nearly lost it between the roots!"

"Maybe you should learn to catch better, then." I smirked.

"Maybe you should—Hey, hold on! What's your hurry?"

"We need to get back to the Order," I said simply, not slowing down.

"Wa-wait for me! Kanda!"

~*~

"Wake up! You're supposed to be guarding them."

He started at the sound of my voice, but didn't raise his head from where it rested on his knees.

"Huh...?" he mumbled. He sounded exhausted. "What's a guy who's supposed to be bedridden for five months doing here?"

I plunked down on the steps a little ways below him. "I'm healed."

"You've got to be joking..." Miraculous how, even though he'd barely slept in three days, he still managed to sound mocking.

"Shut up," I growled.

It was silent for a bit, the only sound that of a soft lullaby drifting on the air. "I have a message from Komui," I pressed on. "I'm heading straight to my next mission." The kid's silence was starting to get to me; where was all that determination I'd seen? "You deliver the Innocence to headquarters."

"Got it," he replied shortly.

I looked up at him. He sat in the same position, looking utterly forlorn. The doll's haunting melody still echoed in the distance, making my muscles tense. I hummed in annoyance and turned away.

"If it's too hard on you, go stop the doll. That thing isn't 'Lala' anymore, right?"

"It's their promise to each other," came his kneejerk reply, some of the defiance from three days ago returning to his voice. "The person who destroys Lala should be Guzol."

I paused at that. Then, "You're too soft, you know. We're 'destroyers,' not 'saviors.'"

His answering silence was pensive.

Finally, he responded. "I know... But I..."

The wind picked up, leaves bouncing and weaving on the whirling currents of air. When it died down, there was silence. Lala's lullaby had stopped.

A few minutes later found us back in the maze underneath the city of Mater, at the entrance to the cavern. I stood in the doorway with Toma, watching as the bean sprout approached the two still figures in the center of the room. He got down on his knees and just looked at the silent and unmoving doll.

"Thank you..." she suddenly murmured, "...for letting me sing until I broke. I was able to keep my promise."

His eyes were wide as the bloodstained doll collapsed into his lap, her eyes finally empty of consciousness. He sat, stunned, for a few seconds. Then he was hunched over the doll, shaking a little.

"Oi," I called, "what's wrong?"

His arm came up to cover his eyes, and I heard him sniffle. His voice was tear-filled and wavering as he answered me. The determination behind it was firm.

"Kanda... Even so, I still want to be a destroyer who can save others."

I knew it back then, in that domed cavern far below ground. I was sure love was never meant to feel so strange.