Work Text:
Languages:
Allen stared at the document Komui had put in front of him, asking him to write down any and all languages he knew. Slightly confused, Allen looked at Komui again. “Uhm, am I really meant to put every language I speak on there?”
“Yep!” Komui replied with a smile. “Preferably separate between native languages and those acquired via Innocence.”
His Master might have taken care to make sure Allen wouldn’t die the moment he saw an Akuma, but he’d never mentioned languages.
“I’m sorry,” Allen said slowly, feeling inadequate, unprepared. “I don’t quite know what that means?”
“Ah.” Komui leaned back in his chair and for a moment, a dark expression flashed over his face. Before Allen could comment on it, a cheerful if fake smile replaced it. “Do you know the story of the Tower of Babel?”
Finding himself in familiar territory again, Allen relaxed. “Yes, it’s meant to explain why humans all speak different languages.”
“Correct! When the Order’s funds were a little larger, we poured a lot of research into it, thinking there might be a connection to Innocence that would help us find the Heart. Studies show that Accommodators pick up languages at a frightening speed once they’ve synchronized with their Innocence. It saves us a lot of language lessons and costs for translators, but we still like to know which languages were acquired without the help of Innocence.”
“Oh.”
Allen thought back on his earliest memories, being a nameless brat in the hands of the circus director.
He began to write.
X
Lenalee sang under her breath to calm down, and when her throat was too raw to do even that, she hummed. Steadily, clinging to the words she knew, trying to recall her siblings’ voices, her parents’. The song was the only one she could still remember, having asked for it over and over again when she’d still been with her family.
They didn’t speak Chinese here.
At the start, the first explanations, the first orders, had been in Chinese still, but they’d quickly changed to English and Italian after, some Latin too.
English, for the Empire, spreading further still and making it easier for the Order to travel the world, finding Accommodators, destroying Akuma.
(Or the other way round, it didn’t make much of a difference.)
Italian because the Order spoke of God’s crystal and they were all soldiers of the Cardinals, meant to save the world. Lenalee had been to many churches, seeking refuge and information, attended masses she couldn’t care less about, even more funerals that left her hollow, and she saw no purpose in knowing the languages of the Holy Seat.
None at all, except for when to listen for a chance at escape.
When her brother finally greeted her with a soft sorry, I’m late in the tongue they’d grown up speaking, it had meant the world to her, had woken her from the nightmare.
I’m home.
X
“On avata ura masarakat on gatar,” Allen muttered as he walked away from Komui’s office.
The man’s words shouldn’t have bothered him, but they still did.
As far as Allen knew, he had been born with his Innocence. He had never been without it and wondered whether a separation from it would render him unable to speak. Did he know English because he’d grown up in some dirty English household before his parents had sold him or had it been a gift from his Innocence?
He’d been aware that he picked up languages quickly. Narain had stared at him gobsmacked when, within hours of teaching Allen the first words in Bengali, he’d been ordering food at the markets and making casual conversations.
Allen had written it off as just some skill. He’d picked up writing and reading fairly quickly as well once Mana had taught him and never overthought that either. With no school, no peers, and only Cross around, how was Allen meant to know that it wasn’t normal?
“Allen?”
He stopped, dragged out of his thoughts by Lenalee’s concerned voice. The other Exorcist looked at him with worry, an expression Allen immediately wanted to rid her of. He wasn’t meant to cause more grief.
“Sorry, I was a little lost in thought,” Allen apologized, smiling sheepishly.
Lenalee gifted him one more scrutinizing look, then she returned his smile, gentle and kind as she’d been when showing him around headquarters. “I could see that. What were you muttering?”
“What do you—” Allen closed his mouth when he recalled what he had been saying, the phrase he’d memorized since he’d first heard his Master say it, voice as harsh as always, full of a strength Allen couldn’t comprehend given what gruesome power it revealed.
“On avata ura masarakat on gatar,” Allen repeated slowly as Lenalee fell into step with him, hopefully leading them to the cafeteria because Allen, for the life of him, couldn’t recall where it was. “It’s magic, an incantation my Master uses to activate his Innocence.”
“You know magic?”
“Just a bit, what I overheard my Master speak around me.” Cross certainly hadn’t been keen on Allen learning magic, but in the end, he’d explained it to him at least the basics so Allen wouldn’t end up dead getting in the way of Cross’s work. “I’m not fluent, though. I know some words.”
And for every other language, a few words had often been enough.
Sometimes they were all you needed.
Lenalee didn’t reply, but he knew that, somehow, she’d understood.
He wondered what her first language was and if he didn’t know it already, whether she’d teach him.