Disclaimer: No DGrayman is not mine. Yes I would like to have it. But no, I wouldn't know what to do with it.
"It's raining," Kanda bites out.
It takes Lavi a few seconds to realize that Kanda is speaking to him, but give him some credit, if it was one of the Finders they would have turned to stone. Lavi responds with a smile.
"It's pouring," he corrects, "if it was only drizzling you would be out there training right now," because he can read the I hate rain and hate that Lenalee doesn't let me out. Give Lavi some more credit; not even Allen can decipher Kandanese.
A Kanda not in his natural habitat, a training field or a battle, is antsy. He sips his tea an approximate 5 times per minute, checks for Mugen every time he sets his cup down, and when he is not avoiding Lavi's eye he is staring defiantly at him. Lavi doesn't mind. He's nothing but too comfortable. Poor thing. Sometimes Allen gives him this knowing look, them both circus trainer well versed in their trade.
Panda enters the room silently. Kanda visibly tenses. He has heard the Crows' shuffling from behind Panda. Tonight they escort Bookmen to monitor the conversation between General Cross and Allen Walker.
Lavi heaves a sigh and pulls up his hood, "See ya later, Yu."
Nothing can combat the betrayed crease to Kanda's eyes for Lavi. He stores it in the place he has reserved for Lenalee, too, when they will walk past her in the Hall because of course she will follow Allen anywhere. To Kanda, there's himself and there's us and then there's them. Lavi, wearing the same uniform and bearing the same gift and Crows, true soldiers of the organization that chains him.
Lenalee, she doesn't get it, not until they disappear behind the door, and as he sneaks a glance, she is anxious and bewildered but not for him, not of him. Ah, he thinks, and stores that look and how much it hurt and how much he didn't expect it to hurt, too. To her, there's her friends and there's the rest of the world and there's Bookmen trapped in the in between. She is too close to her brother and too caught up in the middle to harbor any illusion about Bookmen.
He feels lighter, suddenly.
Later, cooped up in his room, writing the report, he curses Panda's obliquity. It's like the old man doesn't trust him.
Under strict supervision of the Crows, General Cross tells Allen Walker he has stored inside him the memories of the 14th's. One possible explanation for Walker's ability to control the Ark. Voice recording reference GTU2395.
Kanda raps on his door.
"Hi," Lavi says breathlessly, slamming the door like caught in indecency. It's ridiculous.
"It's stopped raining," Kanda states.
Lavi just looks.
"Let's go," Kanda says impatiently as though Lavi is slow. As though Lavi should be faster than this.
"Oh," his back is already flattened against the door; he attempts to press himself into it anyway, "Oh, no way Yu."
He has several pounds and an inch on Kanda Yu, but quells under his stare nonetheless, "God," he moans, "would you just let me fetch the first aid okay?"
Lavi scurries back as Kanda growls low in his throat. He files away what he's finished, leaves a coded note to the old Panda, grabs the kit, and locks all five levels of security to their room. Allen is the one who makes infamous the joke about Bookmen and girls and the time they take to prepare.
When they've just stepped into the clearing, squishy squash, Lavi blindsides Kanda. Well, tries to, Kanda likes that.
He has the advantage of time, so he swings back for a right hook. Kanda dodges, his ponytail whipping Lavin on the face –pfft. Lavi tackles Kanda to the ground. If it's a scuffle, he still has a chance to come out with half of his dignity intact. Komui says he has no dignity to begin with, but still.
Only Kanda grabs his jacket by the right shoulder and flips him. His face crashes into the ground, very wet and very very muddy.
"Hi," he greets the mud, labored.
"Get your hammer so I can use Mugen" he can hear the smirk in Kanda's voice.
He whimpers, because that's expected, because Lenalee and Beansprout and some part of Lavi have changed, and Kanda needs this to have not. In his business, he finds expectations unwieldy.
"You just want to reassert your masculinity, and I already have a groove on one side of my head where the old panda likes to kick me," he grumbles.
Kanda pulls him up. They circle, assessing the slippery field, slipping out their weapons.
Kanda Yu trains diligently, he records, he enjoys sparring with friends.
"Not going to ask me about Allen?" he calls out.
"Why would I," Kanda shouts back.
"Oh Yu," he sighs feigned sympathy. Which is all that's needed to prompt Kanda to charge at him, an unearthly glint in his eyes. They don't actually use their Innocence's ability. Training is to make it harder for the Akuma, not easier.
Lavi nurses his elbow. He is just discovering how many angles it can point wrong.
"He has that way that gets under your skin, you know. One of the most beloved, that's why the Finders feel betrayed."
Kanda, making a show of dusting himself off, not a scratch that hasn't healed on his person, narrows his eyes, "That's you."
Lavi sniffs, "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
That should have gotten Kanda to whack him on the head and maybe kick him viciously on the injured elbow, but he just continues to stare at him strangely. The hairs on the back of Lavi's neck stand up. It's night and darkness caresses Kanda's face like velvet, sharp contrast, marble perfect. Lavi's mind spins helplessly.
The sky cracks. The forest washes white, bright like new morning, only Kanda from up close looks even more wild-eyed crazed. An ear-splitting thunder startles both of them.
Lavi sits up like the lightning had hit him. That is to say, very suddenly and bumping Kanda's nose. Kanda growls again and before he can finally make good on his many, many, profanity-laced threats on Lavi's life, neck, legs, groins, and an assortment of other body parts, Lavi runs for his life.
He takes back everything he'd ever said about people calling him a stupid rabbit now. Not very many, he knows Kanda keeps hoping it'll catch on eventually.
It's only when he is slumped on the cafeteria bleacher, listening to Josephine coo about his uniform and fuss over his wounds he realizes that Kanda has never been so close to him before without a ruse of violence between them.
He digs up the notes, the Finders, he adds, have become restless. They question the legitimacy of the Exorcists, something that has never happened before even among scientists who carried out the Second Exorcist project.
Kanda Yu is undergoing unexpected changes.
Lavi tries to gauge just how much of that statement is hunch, personal or professional observation until he confuses the lines. He goes to sleep half lucid in case the Panda returns, and wakes up with a weight on his chest in the middle of the night.
"Sober up boy," says Panda from above him, "we have a situation."
"Respiratory related?" he quips.
"General Cross has disappeared."
They dress very quickly to get to the scene because Bookmen live for rushes like this.
"What do you think," he mutters to Panda, squatting over the shattered window.
"We may never see the general again," Panda rasps.
"Why?"
"His role in history has ended," Panda picks up a large shard, as if regretful.
He reminds Lavi to mark this event in yellow – it will not prove pivotal.
They are not assigned with Allen on the next mission. For four major Exorcists to round up a thief, it is soft-ball if there ever was one.
"I guess the Black Order has to protect their assets," Lavi mourns, "we are just not strong enough to do that."
If it's Allen, the universe will manage to spit out some tragedy and historic revelations his way. Let it be known that Bookmen loathe, loathe, loathe secondhand witness accounts.
Panda is less benevolent, "If something happens and we aren't there, they will pay."
"Whoa," Lavi says, "I thought you said we don't have time for pranks anymore.
"But I won't object to a peek in the women's," he amends.
"Lavi," Panda intones over his words, "remember what we are doing here." His jaws clench, very involuntarily. "We may have made a mistake aligning ourselves with the Order, who continues to distrust us."
"Oh," he replies airily, "I knew that.
"Hey," he adds when he spots Allen, Kanda, and Marie hovering near the Ark, "say goodbye to our allies, hey, come on, wave."
He doesn't like the look Panda gives him very much. It's both stern and full of pity.
Boarding in the Paris branch is laughably tiny but hey, they never sleep anyway. Instead, they spend endless nights with Old Panda on speaker golem with Headquarter, and Lavi jotting down records to his dictation. It doesn't matter that the windows are shut tight and the room so dark they might as well close their eyes because they grew up learning to write blindfolded. Lenalee snores softly on the bed.
The Third Exorcist project echoes the Black Order's earlier experimentations. It seems as though Malcolm Rivier has given up on finding the Heart.
Old Panda clicks off the golem, "Lavi," he pats around his eyes which are developing genuine black circles, "you have to go back there. I am old and tired."
Lavi is about to say something defamatory when Ericka bursts in, "Sirs, madam" she screeches in a thick accent that wasn't there when the Order transferred her, "you have to come see. The Akuma are attacking the docks!"
That's that then.
They had lost ten innocents and a Finder by the time they arrived. They lost a boy with brown curls and sweet eyes when Lavi blasted away a corner shop to fry the second level. That's not significant enough to go into the books – he remembers anyway. He remembers to the last freckle the faces of the people he has had to kill to keep his life.
"Lavi," Lenalee calls him urgently when she rounds the block, "what did you do, Lavi,"
"You were occupied, you and Bookman," he holds her hand and runs his down her arm, soothing, "only I could have done it." What he doesn't say is that someday, eventually, she will have to face that choice, but not if he can help it. She has already decided between the good of the world and her friends long ago, but she hasn't stared at it in the eyes yet, hasn't really understood it or crossed that line yet.
She snatches her hand away angrily, "Is that all you think I was asking," she demands.
Lavi laughs weakly, "Is that a trick question,"
Tiny, slender, sweet Lenalee punches him. She aims for his cheek but misses and gets the jaw instead. It stings. He doesn't chase after her when she throws him a dirty glare and stalks off, partly because his jaw is slightly dislocated so he won't make much sense anyway.
They incinerate the wine cellar where the Akuma have nested and set off for London. On the train, Lavi is charred around the edges but unfailingly perky, Lenalee alternates between mooning for Allen at the window and attempting to say something to him only to balk at his sunniest smiles, and the old Panda shoots them quizzical looks for all of fifteen intense seconds before nodding off to the groans of the locomotive.
Counting that Dinner at the Apostles and the greeting with General Cross Marian, it's still the weirdest mood yet.
Lavi's already past the denial phase. Before Kyoto, he didn't care. Before Allen disappeared, he cared but vowed to never act out. He found that never having had feelings for actual fellow humans reflected badly on his ability to bottle them up. He remembers insisting he could all the way until his friends die and he screams their names.
Bookmen are always deep in the midst of things. Everyone knows them and none remembers them.
Lavi is addicted to this but sometimes it hurts, too.
He likes the Sino-Russian War best; it didn't have a side he could root for.
It takes parasites boring holes through his organs and eating away his arteries to finally silence the nagging at the back of his head. "You're an asshole," it says, "and you can't make anyone happy. Not the Exorcists, not the Order, not the Bookmen, not even yourself." He begs to differ, Exorcists and Bookmen don't need happiness.
Except for when they do.
So he revels in its absence. While this mindlessness lasts, he would like to strain his eyes and perk his ears, to use every sense except the sixth to feel around his surroundings. He vaguely registers a room and a bed, a warm light and no old panda next to him. He suspects that for all the castles and the moats Noahs did not have dungeons.
Road even attempts to be nice.
"What was your 14th alias?"
"I've always been Lavi", says his treacherous voice.
She sighs, long suffering, "You're like my Allen. Your heart will never truly belong to anyone."
"No," he protests, "I'm like Allen because we love too many people too much. Only they love him back," he gesticulates weakly, "I'm like, the Mediator. They won't need me to complete the team dynamic anymore, it's our thing. So that we won't be terribly missed when we leave," and because the pity in Road's eyes irks him suddenly, "Yet, Apostle, do you love Allen Walker or the 14th?"
She considers him. As she stands up to leave, placing the candle rack delicately on the bedside table so that the whole room sways, she accuses, "You already know, Bookman Junior."
So ends his first and only intelligible conversation in days.
He dreams.
He wakes up in a village perching on the slope of Alps. It's a surreally pristine morning.
"Read this," Nana throws a tome at him, 16th century Indochina.
"Already did," he preens cheekily, and calls "Nana!" when she huffs in frustration, stomping off.
"You and him," she mumbles, "give us a break."
After breakfast, he runs straight to the storage to root for records himself. Nana never gives him the warring periods, just the pedestrian ones that secondary Bookmen wrote. He doesn't sneeze, and counts another milestone for having gotten used to the dust.
The Apprentice stumbles into the room. He jumps several feet in the air.
Then a floating sensation. He watches as his younger self smiles winsomely at the Apprentice and he cranes desperately to hear the Apprentice's next words. They echo discordantly, lost before he makes to grab. His first name.
"Roy," he screams, overjoyed, "won't you tell me about the Second Exorcists?"
Roy once tole him this, Thank you for being ten years too late, and as he begins to understand those words he begins asking questions he shouldn't, too. Sometimes Roy grimaces and shakes his head, but sometimes he pulls him into proofing duties and tells him about Kyoto while he pretends to work.
This time, Roy darts his head quickly to the left.
The Bookman jump-kicks him in his normal fashion – out of nowhere. That's another skill set he has to learn. But he sure as hell isn't going to be treated to a story now.
"Foolish boy," the old man says disdainfully, "why don't you read about the peace time. I already have a successor."
"Peace is a lie that prospers on war," he palms the Mongolian collection by one hand and rubs his bruise ineffectually by the other, "Isn't war the true reflection of the human race?"
"It's a pity," the Bookman hunches because he was still shorter then, lifting his face and peering into his eyes, so curiously reflected "if you don't stop asking questions you will never become a Bookman."
He swallows the retorts. They taste horrible churning in his chest.
"When did the Tang dynasty begin and when did it end," Bookman snaps at him. They are thirty in the dining hall hastily fashioned for examination.
"Six-eighteen, nine-oh-seven," he answers, "old panda, what happened?"
"Stop calling him that," Nana chides, "but seriously Bookman, would you please share the new records already."
"Or did something happen to them," Trisha pipes up, which sends a ripple of murmurs and speculation through the children.
Bookman ignores them, "Pass this around," he throws a journal at him, "everyone write me a report."
There's a rustle, then they all proceed to scribble furiously.
When he finally looks up, he sees Nana pouting and leaving her paper blank.
"He'll choose you anyway," she whispers, "even though he doesn't want to."
He goes back to his report, "Why would you think so?"
She stabs her pen into the pages in a typical Nana fit but that's enough for some kids to pop their heads up while some flinch, "This is all for show. He's testing for eidetic, which you'll do best because he needs that confirmation himself, and it looks like he's giving us this fair chance and hope which is thoughtless and cruel and why you anyway, you annoy the hell out of him, and you only have the memory, you are shit on the apathy."
She stands and stares down Bookman, "Bookmen are made, not born, please, please, give us a real chance, we will prove it."
He is unimpressed, "Time's up, give me your paper."
He leaves the name Ahmes in Cairo, "I thought we'd be setting for France, or even Moscow," he treks against snow miserably, "I wanted to see Paris."
The old panda turns his head; his nose is ripe tomato red although the drips have already frozen to the walls; his eyes are weary, which adds to the defiant expression.
"You look adorable!"
"…"
"Wait wait, don't snarl, I was just kidding."
"Focus," the old panda wrinkles his nose, "I mean it, or I swear to God, Lauri, next year I will make you carry all the bags yourself."
He shrugs, and notices his own shoulder span, it's very nice and capable thank you, "Better not travel then, or the wind will blow you away."
"Lauri, go with a quiet personality this time. I don't like the effect your frivolity has had on our conversation."
"Quiet as in earnest, or as in aloof?"
"I don't remember you being able to act earnest and nervous," Bookman rolls his eyes, "but go for it."
Lauri rues that fun and frivolous would have worked in Kremlin, had they gone there instead, "I'll break out my British accent and then you'll be so sorry."
Stefan crowds into Lauri's space so that his left butt slips off the bench. Lauri, by conditioned response, yelps and twitches to cover up what he's been writing.
"Good things about me, I hope," and there's something really rather hopeful in his voice.
"You?" Lauri smiles, retracting his hand from where Stefan's has wandered, "I wouldn't know if your role'd be instrumental in history, Lieutenant. You might not even make it here."
"Stefan!" echoes over the canteen buzz.
"Jonatan is calling," Lauri nudges Stefan a little – he looks surprised, it's not like Lauri never ever touches him on purpose, people just like to shove him into others' laps without his consent.
"They're just trading porn," Stefan, scowling, waves the second private away impatiently. Cool fingers brush the fringe out of Lauri's eyes.
"Those girls are really quite fit, though, and their faces are rather expressive," Lauri says conversationally, eyes still glued to his work.
"In case you missed it, I'm really quite fit, wait, you mean, you read those?" There are betrayal and approval both in Stefan's exclamation.
"I know by reputation," Lauri made a distracted motion with his fork, "my choice in publication," his head flicks in the direction of newspaper currently cushioning his tray and pens, "includes New Yorker and the Times and the like, which is to say, less sensationalizing. Besides, who did you think provided them with porn?"
Stefan jumps up like shot, running over to peruse the loots, and shouts to the entire squadron, "Lauri dear, these are actually quite tasteful, yeah!"
Lauri laughs it off.
It's habit and successful social studies that when Stefan jumps him from behind, he's already braced for it with his right hand steadying against the table and his left clutching his coffee. Stefan runs through amused to annoyed in seconds flat.
"Why won't you look at me?"
Lauri turns around, hand slipping onto Stefan's slim waist, eyes boring into baby blue irises and onto a too young face.
"Have you been working out," he asks solicitously.
Stefan crawls into Lauri's bed that night. Lauri tucks his head into the crook of the other boy's neck, smelling the faint hint of sweat, his hands into the small on the other boy's back, his leg between the other boy's thighs.
"See, when you do this, you make me think you're still so young and needy," Stefan sings into his hair, sniffing, "Ah, lovely."
"I'm more mature than you, of course," Lauri says distractedly, "Now hush."
"I'm older than you by a year and two months exactly."
"I've seen more," Lavi says simply.
Initial Bookman training had students familiarizing themselves with the smell of bodily fluids laced with smoke and gunpowder, the sight of spilling innards polluting streams. Lavi presses his hand tightly against the gash - throbbing, horrible, running from Stefan's left shoulder to his abdomen.
Stefan's eyelids flutter, then they squint, "You aren't supposed to see me like this."
"You weren't supposed to be here,"Lauri says sharply, "So why?"
"I had something to prove," a mischievous glint returns to his eyes, "Lauri, you're looking at me now. When you look at people, you make us feel that we are the only one in the world that matters. Lauri, you're so beautiful like that."
Lauri's hand almost slips off the wound when he crumbles from the kneeling position. He leans down to place a peck at the top of the boy's nose, brushing ebony bangs out of the way.
"Will you cry for me," Stefan asks, and fists his hand in Lavi's uniform.
"Single tear," Lauri smiles belatedly.
"I want your eyes to never look at anyone else."
"I can't do that," Lauri says weakly, "but I promise, the eye that cries for you will never look at anyone else again."
Stefan pulls him painfully closer, still, "That's okay, I suppose, I, I knew you could never belong to any one person, but now I know what I fought for. Lauri, Lauri," He whispers the name like a private prayer, "Lauri, why do people go to war?"
Lavi sees Lauri untangle himself from Stefan, breathing back, "The fact that you asked that question matters more than the answer."
Lavi and Lauri watch Stefan die.
The Finnish War ends. Lauri becomes Deek. Deek makes sure to look people in the eyes more, but the fire behind the emerald slowly dies, still.
"You are not Road," Lavi calls to the intruder.
"Hey," he tries again, "stop riffling through my memory, I don't have the information you want."
Lavi feels a distinct shrug, "Have to make sure."
The fire flares again when Lavi meets Lenalee, Kanda, and Allen. He realizes that Lenalee will not cry for him but for Allen when they disappear, and Kanda will never chase after him but after Allen, and that Allen himself, with the weight of the whole world and several befuddling lifetimes resting on his shoulders will in all likelihood not notice if a stone etched Lavi becomes dislodged.
Allen once accosted him in the Hall, "Link said that we will never hear from you once the war ends, is that true?"
"Yep," Lavi pulled Allen in by the arm, "so start missing me already."
"Lavi!" Allen stepped on his foot, cheeky little thing, and seized his shoulders, "Don't."
"It's adorable that you much just can't live without me," somewhere Kanda Yu was choking on his soba and he didn't know why, "but you don't need me. Bookman does."
"You never call the old panda Bookman," Allen let go.
Bookmen do not leave marks on people; they leave pieces of themselves behind.