Eurydice

Orpheus, the legendary musician, travelled to the Underworld, and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone, who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. He thus set off with Eurydice following, and, in his anxiety, as soon as he reached the upper world, he turned to look at her, forgetting that both needed to be in the upper world, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever.

It was strange, Allen reflected, that such rituals be allowed by Innocence.

Did they not contradict God himself? Disturbed the natural order of life and death?

And yet. And yet his arm- his Innocence (What was left of it?)- merely hummed warmth throughout his body. Warm, pleased, consenting.

It made him shiver in revulsion.

But he needed this.

It wasn't about what he wanted, more than anything in the world.

He didn't want this. He didn't want to face those faceless overseers, didn't want to make a deal with them- didn't want to sing for them- and didn't want this sort of terrible conditions to make it reality.

He hates Hell. Hell is a terrible, dark place- there are no demons but the ones in his head, the ones that claw at his conscious and weights his spirit down, and the darkness and moaning and begging and screaming tear at his sanity.

There are footsteps behind him, sometimes.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, when he has to pause to let the tormented pass, there is a rough breath on the back of his neck.

He doesn't turn to look.

When, at last, he reaches the doorway, he hesitates.

He could stay. They could stay. They'd be part of the tormented, lamenting and screaming, and begging and crying, but there would be nothing but their own demons.

He begins to turn.

They would want for nothing, they would require nothing, and no one would bother them. They would bother themselves.

And yet...

He freezes. A few feet away from the doorway, gaze latched onto the arch over the path, he's frozen.

And then he remembers a terrible tale- of the music master and his lover, of walking a terrible path, of bargaining with terrible Gods-

And he knows what awaits him- them- if he turns back now.

He closes his eyes.

He didn't want this.

But everyone else needed this.

The hitched breath behind him is released, the footsteps follow him into the light.

...

"Allen, welcome back," Komui greets him somberly, gaze hidden by his glasses.

"We're back," Allen's smile is thin, stretched taut over a particular disappointment with the Black Order itself- and all those who did not (could not?) fight back against those orders.

Dogging Allen's steps, Kanda keeps himself carefully blank of all emotion.