Title: Resurrection

Pairing: Yullen.

Disclaimer: I don't own DGM.

Summary: In this lifetime, it was Kanda whom Allen recalled from the dead. But the dead can only come alive as monsters. A re-imagining and retelling of the scene where Allen turned Mana into an Akuma.

AN: The structure of this fic is a structure I have gone back to time and again (and still haven't tired of). I first saw such a structure years ago when I read Good Mothers Create the Earth by Lizzy Rebel (an ATLA fic) and fell in love with it. By the way - that bit about the man going to hell to retrieve his dead wife is a loose retelling of the Orpheus-Eurydice story.

Thanks for reading, I hope you'll enjoy this piece.

Once upon a time, in a broken world long dimmed by despair, there was a man with white hair and a dead lover.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a house with its blinds half-drawn and black drapes in its silent parlour and despair rolling across its roof.

Once upon a time, in a grey, cold parlour, a minister garbed in black read the Funeral Service from a tattered, yellowing prayer book. The man with white hair looked on; his lips were pressed together, his brows deeply furrowed, and his hands clasped so tightly the veins could be seen as green rivers against his pale skin.

"The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone," the minister read.

The mourner with white hair shifted in his seat.

"So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom," said the minister. "Glory be to the Father; and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

The mourners came together as one and prayed for the dead, and his friends wept and shed tears into their handkerchiefs.

Only the man with white hair sat still, lost in the currents of time and shackled by a heavy, blinding grief. He cried not, neither did he weep; rather, he dug his nails into the pale undersides of his arms and they bit into his skin like sharp little half-moon teeth, leaving behind little rivulets of pink-red bruising. Kanda, Kanda, he mouthed, why did you leave when you promised you wouldn't? Why?

When the dead had been laid to rest, and the earth had been shovelled over the gilded coffin, and the priest had mumbled that final, short prayer, the mourners turned to leave, all whispering encouraging nothings to him, all tearing and rubbing at red-rimmed eyes as their black scarves flew in the damp wind.

He watched them leave, a line of black streaming away towards their carriages, returning to warm hearths and loving families, to soft beds and the familiar bustle of daily life.

His heart ached then; for he knew that he would be returning home to a dark house, lamps all unlit, black drapes hiding the rooms from the outside world, and a grey parlour where Kanda had once sat and lived and talked.

He would walk through all the rooms and feel Kanda somewhere in the shadows, watching, though he wasn't really there. He would lie in bed, surrounded by too many pillows and covered by a too-wide quilt, and miss the warmth that Kanda used to emit.

Where would he find a man like Kanda, who would love him gently, roughly, and everything in between? Where now would he find a man who could accept all his flaws, all his deformities? There was no one else in the bleak world who could compare to Kanda.

He would pick up the pieces of his life, and find a hole in every puzzle piece, and thus remain half a person, for now that Kanda was gone, Allen knew he would never be whole again, not while he breathed and lived on the earthly kingdom.

Kanda, Allen mouthed again, and pressed a hand against the unsettled soil.

So the story is told, and here it begins.

:::

I AM the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord:

he that believeth in me,

though he were dead, yet shall he live;

and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.

(The Burial of the Dead, the Book of Common Prayer)

:::

There was a graveyard, grey and dank, weeds growing up the gateposts and old leaves strewn all around among the pathways.

There came a sorcerer, an ancient magician of unknown antecedent and sketchy renown, floating in on a gust of torpid air. He held a beige umbrella in one hand, a leering pumpkin-head bobbing at the top of the umbrella.

There knelt a man, his white hair glinting in the tender moonlight, tears rolling down his haggard cheeks and grief roaring in his breast. It was the figure of a man deep in the throes of grief. It was the posture of a man with his feet miles deep in the uninhabitable dredge of loneliness, sinking slowly but surely. It was the face of a man with nothing to live for in the cruel world.

"I could revive him," the sorcerer said, planting his feet on the ground. "For a fee."

"Revive him?" said Allen. He rose and backed away, nearly falling over the wild tree roots snaking over the wet ground. "Who are you?"

"I am someone you should be glad to meet," the sorcerer said, leaning over the marble tombstone with the name Kanda Yu etched on in an elegant script. "You may call me the Earl of Millennium, him whose domain and powers transcend time itself."

"What do you want?"

"I want nothing, my boy," said the Earl. Gloved fingers creeped over the dark stone and came to rest over the tips of the letters. "It's you who wants something. Let's just say that I'm propositioning you. I can do you a great favour and bring him back."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I can. Because I hate to see grief."

Allen hesitated. He glanced at the gates and then back at the Earl. "You can bring back the dead."

"For a fee," the Earl said, twirling a golden coin in his thick fingers. "Will you pay my fee?"

"You're a necromancer."

"You will not regret it."

"What is this fee you speak of?"

"A trifling sum," the Earl said. "Nothing onerous. You will see your beloved again, once you say the word. I'm sure you miss him very much."

Allen hesitated, his head bowed. Then he looked up, and his eyes, once stitched together with the gossamer thread of grief, were now open pools of desperation. "Please, revive him. I will pay your fee."

The sorcerer cackled, the buttons on his thick coat nearly coming undone as his large belly heaved with laughter. Then the earth split open, and a dark cloud hid the moon from view.

All went silent.

:::

Once upon a time, in a faraway land that now lies under the cruel, unfaithful waves, there lived a man who loved his wife so much he could never bear to be too long apart from her.

When she died from a snake bite, he bitterly rued the day he allowed her to walk alone unheeded in the blooming gardens they loved. At last, half-mad with longing and sadness, it behoved him to begin the long track to the underworld, that dread domain of the undead, unsleeping king where the grey shades gather after crossing the marble-smooth river of no return.

So at last the man came before the gilded, diamond-encrusted gates of the shadowy world, and he shouted for his wife. He played tender melodies upon his lute, and at last, the king of the dead relented and sent forth the dead woman to her shrieking spouse.

Let her follow after, the king declared, and look not upon her until the very moment you feel the sunlight upon your skin again.

The man was glad, and he went, bidding the woman follow behind.

As they climbed the steep slope upwards, the man yearned to hear again the dulcet tones of his beloved. And so he called to her, asking her to speak to him to ease the relentless upward climb. But she did not speak. He called again, and yet she still remained deathly silent.

At last he turned, forgetting the command of the dark-robed king in his haste to see his wife again, whom he had thought dead forevermore. He turned, and beheld his wife. He turned, and she turned away from him, hiding her face behind a curtain of wavy hair.

You should not have called me back, she said. You should have let me be.

But I loved you, he said.

Then you should have let me rest, she said. Now you have lost me again, beloved. I must go. I cannot stay. And I cannot forgive you for rousing me from my peaceful repose.

Wait! he called, reaching out for her, but she passed through his hands like a shadow and was seen no more in all the lands of the living.

Then he grieved for the light of his world was forevermore dimmed until life's end. And he deemed that a very long time to wait.

:::

When the darkness parted and the shadows retreated behind the ancient trees, Allen saw before him a skeleton hanging from a hangman's noose draped around a tall branch of a gnarled hawthorn tree.

A gruesome sight it was, a monster reimagined from the grave, for the skeleton leered at Allen and bore no resemblance at all to the Kanda-who-was, he of the flowing winter's night hair and dark eyes the colour of a moonless midnight, whose movements exuded a grace belonging on the well-lit stage of operatic ballet.

"Who's that?" Allen said, looking around for the Earl, bile rising in his throat. His stomach was a ship tossed around on stormy seas. "You said you would bring Kanda back! Come out, you liar!"

"I've carried out my end of the deal."

A stream of mist curled around Allen's feet. Chilly air tickled the back of Allen's neck. The shadows seemed to quiver around the nearby trees.

"Come out, you liar! You coward. Coward!"

"I'm not a coward," the Earl said. He came forward into the light. "You, my boy, are the coward. You did not dare to live life all alone, and so you called him back. There he is."

"That's not him!"

"It is him," the Earl said, grinning. "You didn't expect him to come with flesh, did you? He's all bone because I had to recall his soul and attach it to a skeleton. Now he needs a body."

"Pardon?"

"He needs your body, to be more accurate. That's the price you have to pay."

"You said it was a trifling payment!"

"It is trifling. You won't even feel anything," the Earl said. He turned to the skeleton. "Go on, then."

The skeleton untied the noose around its neck; it dropped to the ground and rose swiftly. The dirty grey limbs moved quickly, and it came to a shuddering stop before Allen.

"Kanda," Allen said, sinking to his knees. Mud splattered the kneecaps of his pants and he noticed it not at all.

"What have you done, idiot?" came Kanda's voice. And yet the monster before Allen was not Kanda. "What have you done?"

"I love you. I love you, so I had to –"

"You've betrayed me," not-Kanda said. It averted its eyes for a moment. "Now you shall pay!"

Not-Kanda raised a sharp limb, ready to tear into Allen. Allen lay on the ground, shaking with fear, paralysed and breathing harshly as his chest rose and fall, his muscles cramping up in fear of death. Its face contorted in righteous anger, the skeleton slashed Allen across the face, leaving a trail of bright blood around Allen's left eye.

"I curse you," the skeleton said. "I curse the day you were born. I curse the day we met. You accursed soul deserves to rot in the lowest ring of hell. May even purgatory never be granted you!"

"Kanda –" Allen said, his left eye a riot of red. There was a burning pain where not-Kanda had slashed at him.

"Wear his skin," the Earl commanded, standing idly some distance away. Allen could not make out his face, nor did he want to.

Allen's attention was focused solely on the skeleton before him. His uninjured eye stared up at the skeleton, and he waited.

"Die!" the skeleton said.

Allen trembled violently. He awaited death, awaited darkness, awaited the end of suffering.

But darkness did not envelop him. Instead, a gush of cold air whipped around him, and his strange left arm moved by itself. To Allen's everlasting shock, that blood-red limb morphed into a gigantic white claw, the fingers of which dragged themselves around the skeleton and smashed it into smithereens, never to be seen again.

The Earl, equally shocked, opened his umbrella and floated off into the night, cackling all the while.

A wild bird cried somewhere.

Allen lay on his side, tired and bloodied, as a redheaded man stepped out from behind the gates and came to him.

"Come with me, I will help you," the man said, helping Allen to his feet. "I will teach you how to use that weapon of yours. I will teach you to fight against that necromancer."

Allen nodded, too exhausted to speak.

"Come, let's get you patched up," the man said. His gold buttons twinkled in the moonlight. "My name is Cross Marian."

Allen followed the man, limping slightly.

He paused at the gates, looking back at the grey tombstone of Kanda Yu, and felt his heart break all over again. Something ran down his face, and he tasted salt in his mouth. I deserve it, he thought, and went off, not looking back again.

I betrayed him, and I will not look back again.

:::

So the story is told, and here it ends, not with a happy-ever-after but in misery beyond the measure of any living man.

:::

Post scriptum, year unmarked:

And yet the annals of the loremasters have it that Allen Walker did not spend the rest of his life in grief, but that he went to the hidden castle which housed the gallant soldiers of the Black Order, whose deeds though unsung and unknown to the common folk are nevertheless noble and worthy of song and saga.

There he made good his days, fighting the evil in memory of the lover he had both recalled and slain, and in his memory Allen Walker fought on.

Through blood and suffering that war against the necromancer Earl came to an end, but it is not recorded how Allen Walker met his end – whether he died in the attack that brought the Earl down, or whether he lived to a great age after his glorious victory and yet continued to rue the day he recklessly raised the dead from it eternal sleep.

One thing the loremasters do know – if Allen Walker had denied the desires of his heart from the very start, if he had not turned, if he had not grieved as mortal men have done, if he had not sought long for hope well-hidden in the recesses of a living hell, he would also not have found peace and victory at the very end.

-Fin.-