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Hello, I hope you enjoy this. Wrote this story long time ago, and decided to post it here.
English is not my native language so please forgive for any mistakes and I'd like you to point them out so i could learn from it. Thank you :)
Disclaimer : I don't own -man and its characters, they belong to Hoshino-sensei and I am merely borrowing them for entertainment purpose only :)
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In That Cold Winter Night
A -man Fanfiction
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In that cold winter night, Lavi died.
Cracking one eye open, he saw the blinding white of hospital ward which he'd visited too many times far more than his liking. His sight was too blurry and so, he chose to focus on his hearing instead, listening to the people in white coat murmuring to each other. The voices came out like they were talking in the water. God, the headache was killing him.
The paramedics said that he'd had four of his ribs broken, his right arm fractured, his liver and one lung crushed, and his skull cracked causing him concussion; and that fortunately, he'd managed to survive.
But, he'd like to think otherwise. He was dead, and he wanted to believe in that.
Fading in and out into conciousness, perhaps he was only imagining the cool touch to his feverish forehead, wishing it to belong to somebody he wished to see deperately. But he knew should he open his eye, he'd see that those soft hands belonged to somebody else, and so, he continued pretending to sleep.
He woke up several days after, limbs in cast and layer upon layer of bandages covering his upper body. The doctor said that he could survive with only a part of his liver intact and only one lung if he didn't strain himself, but he'd forgotten since a long time ago how to live 'normally' and so it didn't really matter anymore.
"It's good that you managed to survive." The doctor was a beautiful brunnete with her long, curly hair tied into a low ponytail, "We've lost too many unfortunate people after all."
He really did wonder if he deserved to be alive.
And when he was finally able to use his legs again after two painful weeks of not being allowed to go on his own, his first destination was the burial hill on the northside of HQ where the victims of the war were laid rest in peace.
The snow was falling again, and he regretted not wearing proper clothes to keep him warm.
There were almost thousands of anonymous graveyard scattered all over the hill. Too many innocent lives were lost, what would Allen say about this?
The lilies he brought felt cold and limp in his hold, and he only wanted to put them beside Allen, if only he could find which graveyard the white-haired youth was burried under.
Allen Walker was only one of thousands victims of the war with the Earl, after all. And perhaps Lavi was also just another one.
Small, white flakes of snow fell to his red hair, wetting his clothes thus makng him feel colder at once. He decided that he hated the snow, and in contrary to what he'd said before, that it didn't suit Allen at all.
Imagining the crimson red tainting the white, the limbs tangled in every wrong direction those of a human shouldn't have, and that he'd been too late to give his final goodbye, his last loving words to the younger boy; and perhaps he would never be able to do that anymore.
Oh, how he wished to be able to get there sooner, and Allen –beautiful, kind Allen, wouldn't have had his chest ripped open and his heart laying limp and cold in his Akuma hand, and the crimson paintings all over his body. . and Allen wasn't breathing.
He suddenly felt sick and suddenly fell to his knees emptying his stomach. It all came only as dry-heaves as he hadn't eaten well for days and his throat burned with the awful taste of bile. He laid on his back, careful to avoid the sick, and cover his eyes with one hand. He noted how it had become so bony and calloused –and very, very cold.
He didn't know how everything could crumble and nothing mattered anymore just because one person's death.
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"Lavi!" a feminine voice called him in the corridor and he didn't have to turn to see whose voice it belonged to. Didn't want to see the chinese girl sitting on a wheelchair with what remained of her legs dangling only two inches long from her knees. She used to running all the way in the HQ corridors all cheerful and happy.
He thought it was almost sad that even they had won the war with the Earl, there was so much they had lost to even celebrate.
"Lenalee," he said softly, his back still facing the girl, the sound of wheels approaching was probably the most deafening sound amidst the grave silence between them.
"I'm—"
-sorry.
"—leaving."
And he wasn't asking for a permission.
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"I'm leaving."
Komui was burried deep in his stacks of paper upon paper, and only looked up a little at his appearance.
"Fine."
Not even questioning, nothing he shouldn't be glad for, but there was a part of him longing for the Chinese man to not let him go so easily. He thought he'd been a part of this family. Shaking his head, he knew he was asking too much.
He wished that he still had that Panda-jijii beside him, who would gladly and violently remind him that he shouldn't be too attached to something, or someone, or anything. But the old man had gone, and he was trying to walk on his own then. To forget. To leave behind what had been so precious to him in these past five years.
Everything.
His job as "Lavi" was over, they had won the war although at the same time losing the battle, and he was no longer needed here. He was going to another place, another name, another life. Another lie.
He was leaving.
He wondered idly, iAllen was still alive, would Allen ever let him go?
"Lavi," Komui rarely used that gloomy kind of tone, he was a merry person, after all. "I wish. . things have been different, but. ." a hesitant sigh, ". . I. ."
"It's fine." He cut in suddenly, knowing exactly where this was going. He could only bear shouldering so much regret and guilt and he didn't feel like sharing eith the older man, after all. "Farewell to you too, Komui."
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He knew that it was good to believe his instinct that Kanda would, as always, react violently over every single thing he did. He barely managed to dodge the deadly swing the Japanese man gave out upon seeing him.
The tip of mugen was only half an inch from his throat in an instant, his back pressed on the hard wall, and there was something else in those dark orbs of Kanda he'd never seen before. There was something in the look Kanda was giving him, but he he couldn't really tell what it was.
"Fuck you pervert bunny." Kanda hissed the words like they were poison leaving his lips, onyx eyes burning a hole in between his patched eye and the good one, and there was that look again.
Did Kanda had grown to hate him more? Probably. He'd left Allen, a comrade of both, dying alone in the snow after all.
Funny, he thought Kanda would be more than glad to massacre 'The Destroyer of Time' by himself for the younger youth always enjoyed teasing him so much.
"Yes, I'm leaving." He said, as if answering to the unspoken question, "Sayonara, Kanda."
Kanda narrowed his eyes dangerously, and sometimes Lavi was amused at how the long-haired youth was no good at words at all. Kanda's eyes were trying to tell that there was so much he wanted to say, but no sound came out save for his strained breathing.
The blow he'd expected never came, instead he was given a blank look from the swordsman. He'd only seen Kanda wearing a blank expression like that two times. The first was when he'd sneaked into his room and found the lotus, but Kanda then gladly kicked him out then without giving any answer to the questions asked. And the second was now, when he finally used the Japanese man's name properly.
"Then go wherever the hell you want," The samurai gritted his teeth, finally speaking after minutes of deathly silence, "and don't you ever dare coming back again."
A smile, and a vague nod. " I won't, Yuu-chan. . "
Sliding gracefully, he left the stoic man widening his eyes in anger and frustation and his 'what the fuck is wrong with you?', managing to graze the tip of mugen shallowly on his skin, a threadbare of blood leaving a red trail on his neck.
The blood reminded him of Allen, stomach ripped and not-beating heart on his innocence-induced hand. He felt like throwing up again.
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No matter how he tried not to look back, he always did.
Standing in the middle of the iron gates to the HQ, he realized just how much it meant to him. Too many memories to be left behind.
They used to play on the ground on the back of the HQ, the snow always piled up nicely there and they were too merry to build up some snowmans there, making it a competition of whose was the the best.
Back then he'd said that Allen was beautiful like the snow, white and pure.
When he looked up, he could see the windows to the library on the second floor, where Allen would throw snowballs only to annoy him, and Bookman would whack his head with a thousand years old tome for being distracted from his work. Allen would laugh cheekily, Lenalee would smile, Kanda would. .just be Kanda, and he would scowl for being played prank at.
They were so happy back then.
His belongings felt heavy in his shoulders, and he only wanted to go back to those times, and be happy with the others once again. But. He was leaving, the war was over and Allen was dead and that was all there to it.
A small part of his heart died a little, and in the cold winter night, "Lavi" was there no more.
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Thank you for reading, and if you have some time to spare, please tell me what you think! It'll mean a lot to me :D
