i. The best historians have no identity – this is the only way to obtain impartiality. How can a mere human perspective, singular, isolated, grasp the meaning and import of an event? How can one identity separate the facts that make history from those that are trivial, without true influence, that come and go like dew? An identity connotes partiality, and partiality is not the purvey of a true historian.
This is the kind of stuff he gets from Bookman, at least. Lavi has nursed on this kind of rhetoric like it's his mother's milk, and regurgitated it all back up word for word, so Bookman can be sure he's remembering.
The rest of what Bookman tells him: the next best thing to having no identity is having many.
ii. The identity currently calling himself Lavi has gone through many names before his current moniker. Some long, some short, some high-class, some common. Name to name, skin to skin, playing hopscotch through assumed lives. Some names have lasted weeks, a few of them months. One lasted five minutes; a few (when he's in a pinch) have lasted for much, much less. He remembers all of them, of course. Memory is part of becoming Bookman.
"Lavi" has been his most constant companion for a while now; of late it's certainly the name that has lasted him the longest, and he has the ugly feeling it's starting to suit him, which means he should be changing, and soon. If it's suiting him he's getting attached, and if he's attached he's partial, and if he's partial he isn't Bookman, which is the point of the whole ordeal, right?
It's not the most interesting name he's ever had. Two syllables, La-vi. They go with red hair and green eyes, the same as most of his other names, and also with a lazy smile and an accent and a group of twits who insist on trying to be his friends, sort of. This last part is much less common. If he'd known things were going to get weird, he might have chosen a different name for the gig. Something dramatic, maybe.
But Lavi is what he stuck himself with, and it's still working fine, so far.
iii. He went by Lewis once. Spent some time as Lewis, some months. Lewis did okay, he lasted well; he bought hot buns from the same nice girl on the street corner in every town they went through every morning he could, and he fed the crumbs to the ubiquitous pigeons. He was nice-enough and not very noticeable, a good transition name, good transition identity, Lewis. Some of the many different-but-identical girls on the many different-identical street corners where he bought buns (dripping sweet melted butter, or honey, or some such) quite liked him, and had little fantasies about settling down with him, that his apparent love for hot buns with cinnamon or sugar would transfer to love for them, the kind of girls who sold bread on street-corners, with neat (if slightly threadbare) clothes and hair tucked behind their ears.
Gentle, rather shy Lewis was oblivious to this, of course. The quick-slippery wit driving Lewis noticed, however; took in how an easy smile and glass-green eyes crinkled up with honest happiness could send a heart a-flutter, knees a-tremble, and it filed these observations away as potentially useful. That was the most important thing he got from Lewis.
It took four months, seventeen days, nine hours and a quarter for Lewis to outlive his worth. He was feeding the pigeons, oblivious to the fact that his sun was setting. It was a rather cold, rainy morning, unpleasant. Lucky for Lewis, no one was there to see him absently snatch a pigeon when it took to the air in a whir of gray wings, and begin one-handed to casually unfeather the bird.
The creature made an awful noise, whipped its head about and bit at him ineffectually with its non-lethal pigeon bill. Lewis, soon to be discarded, was through with one wing and part of its warm feathered back before he realized what he was doing. His hand was foul with shit and blood.
He looked at the stupid creature, struggling in his hand, and blinked and snapped its neck.
He was in a park with a fountain in the center. He went and rinsed his filthy hands in the water.
The event puzzled him. He couldn't think why he'd done it. Rain was slowly soaking through his coat; the boy who'd been Lewis, now nameless, went to find a café and some coffee, and a new identity.
iv. "Ajander," he said, blinking limpidly up at the rough-looking gentleman who'd come looking for Marcus.
"Samuel," he said, for the new man who'd come the other way two minutes later, in search of Ajander.
v. He spent five hours one evening as Regina: silk stockings, petticoats, lace and all. Regina wore her hair in a ruddy curl over her forehead, and a string of pearls with which she could easily be strangled. Ash (before he had been reborn as Regina) had played it safe and carefully weakened the strand until at a certain point, it barely held together. Just in case someone for some reason did take it in mind to garrote his future self with her jewelry.
Regina was an experience simultaneously educational, flattering and disturbing. He took off her many layers, her jewelry, her flounces and her make-up and her hairstyle with a sense of guilty relief.
It had been interesting. It wasn't for him.
vi. A library of names. Enough to fill a short book, or cover a modest monument; each name with a history, enough for dozens of autobiographies.
Some of them were strange to step in to. He never really hesitated, a Bookman could not hesitate, he must move from identity to identity, life to life, as easily as a honeybee buzzing from flower to flower, and when he has had so many identities he has no identity than finally he has earned his one constant title (and name):
Book.
Man.
His life a calculus of names, infinite individualities pulled out like index cards, infinite parts combining to one whole. If (Lavi)(Lewis)(Regina)(Michael)(Trent)(Ithaca)(and so on) integrated these many disparate parts he might find himself in there somewhere. But this would be unacceptable; a Bookman cannot have a self. He is a finely-ground lens through which history may be observed.
The boy who will eventually be Lavi steps into another name. It is warm, familiar already, like stepping into a silhouette where an old friend once stood.
vii. Jonathan smokes cigarettes, because he wants to try them; he lefts go of the name early because he can't stand the taste. Fallow cracks his knuckles incessantly. Alan (he'll laugh at taking this name, later) stands in the central square of a town slaughtered by Akuma, and rolls a young man about his own age over, so that the corpse can see the sky.
The boy's eyes are still open; they're hazel and lack depth or definition, but then again, he is dead.
viii. He's a bit like an Akuma himself, he thinks. All these souls, tethered to something not exactly human.
ix. These days, "Lavi" serves him well enough. A simple name, but not exactly common; and he has people trying to insist on friendship. They are the ones he's observing, and what's an aspiring Bookman to do? He'll roll with it, just remember: partiality is a vice in a historian, and loyalty is too. Lavi's allegiance (the allegiance of the intelligence currently choosing to call itself Lavi) is to the story. To clear-headed, fair and impartial recording.
Although he's not sure there's been a Bookman who's an exorcist before. He doesn't know of one, at least. The hammer holds him down, sometimes.
(The desperate way Allen wolfs his food, like it's going to run away from him. Kanda's surly glare and growl. Lenalee's exasperation, not to mention her scary streak.)
He is going to be Bookman, and Bookman cannot have loyalties. But he's Lavi too, at the moment, and Lavi is just one limited, flawed, isolated, finite human perspective.
He tries Lewis' lazy smile on again. It still fits, more or less.