A/N: I don't own anything. D.Gray-Man and Linali belong to Katsura Hoshino
I honestly wrote this in 30 minutes flat, so I apologize about the quality!
Lethe
The war was over, and all Linali wanted to do was forget.
She paced the floor of her room now, like a wild thing caged, holding her head in her hands as if she could stop the memories that had permeated every pore of her mind. There was a stabbing pain in her legs, they crumpled under her onto her bed, hands fingering the worn eyelet cloth. She was told that she shouldn't be walking on them. It didn't matter, anyways. Nothing did.
Rabi was still breathing, alive, and she was thankful for that. He was deeply injured, but she was told that he would pull through. She wanted to see him smile again. Kanda, of course, was unscathed. He seemed no different, yet she knew better. The cold, almost melancholy glint in his dark eyes told her everything. The words that he was too prideful to say. The hurt that proved he was human, a living, feeling being. She knew he was worried about Rabi, no matter how hard he tried to dismiss her coldly.
Yet...it was Allen whom they had lost. Linali had known that she would lose him, one day. It wasn't because of the prophecy, she didn't believe in those. Rather, she knew him too well for her own good. She knew he would gladly give himself up if it meant saving others. Over the years, she had tried to instill in him a sense of pragmatism, yet his stubborn, relentless idealism never ceased. He would die for a better world, and she couldn't stop him from that.
Her thoughts flashed back to the last time she'd seen him. Just before he'd walked towards the Earl, before he'd died. She was crying, clinging to him. She didn't want him to go. He touched her face, tilting her chin to look at him. His gray eyes were gentle, but there was a hardness in them as well. He was determined in what he was about to do. "Don't worry, Linali." he whispered, the fleeting touch of his hand on her cheek dissapearing as he turned away, walking with purposeful, determined steps. He didn't falter, didn't doubt himself. Allen Walker knew what he had to do. He was the 'Destroyer of Time', after all.
She hated that title. She hated the prophecy. She wanted to hate Hevlaska too, for making the prophecy, for making Allen feel like he was responsible. She couldn't, because she knew that it wasn't fair. Allen would go anyways. That's just the way he was.
Fate had a twisted sense of humor.
It wasn't fair. He was the best friend that she had. The only one who truly knew her, connected with her. The times shared around campfires on missions, staying up talking while everyone else was asleep. The silent, unspoken bond they had when their fingers were intertwined. He was possibly the only reason that she was alive right now. They had all fought with the last of their strength, but it was Allen that had truly saved them.
A flash of light caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to look. A pale, thin and shaking hand reached up to her shelf, her body wobbling unsteadily and protesting at the sudden exertion. She'd come back with her legs ravaged, bleeding and torn. Ravi had commented weakly before he fainted, that they appeared as if wild dogs had attacked them. His last-ditch effort at a joke. Rabi was always smiling.
Her dark eyes glimmered as she looked down at the object. It was a thin glass frame, encasing a bright, colourful photograph. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards slightly. It almost hurt to smile, but remembering was the only way to heal her scars. The photograph had been taken a year ago, at a time when they were all together. Unravaged, untainted by war. How naive they'd all been back then. The Earl and his akuma had seemed far from their minds.
It had been a sunny day when the photograph had been taken, hardly a cloud in the sky. She was hoisted onto Allen's back, a playful and almost mischevous look in his grey eyes. She was laughing, eyes crinkled up into a wide smile. Rabi was there as well, making fun of them as usual, his green eye shining with mirth. Even Kanda had been dragged into the picture, perhaps looking slightly amused? This was how she liked to remember them.
Why did it hurt so much to remember?
A slight cry was wrenched from her lips as she dropped the frame in shock. It tumbled to the ground, the glass shattering with a crack, littering around the photograph. The fragments shone dully, not quite as much as they had when they were whole. Black, limitless eyes stared down at the fragments, starting to sting and well with tears. Those fragments were her world, in a sense. Broken apart with the deaths that had racked them, the horror that they had witnessed. She'd once told Allen that her friends were her world.
It had just crumbled around her.
Too-thin shoulders shook with silent sobs, flashes of the horrors she'd seen rushing back to her. She'd tried for so long to repress the memories. Allen's body, his grey eyes wide and unseeing. Rabi's unconscious form. Miranda sobbing with grief over the bloody mass that used to be Arystar Krory. The memories had breached the thin barrier that she'd managed to build up. The only thing that was keeping her whole.
She was breaking. No, that wasn't right. She was disintegrating, no longer Linali Li anymore. No longer the bright-eyed, happy girl, who used to giggle and laugh at Rabi's antics. Who would wake up at 5AM every morning to prepare coffee for the science group. She no longer existed. In her place was a war-scarred, glazed-eyed girl.
She wanted to go back to the beginning, rewind time. Make it all better.
Her hands reached for the only other thing on her shelf. Through her tear-blurred vision she read the label on the tiny bottle. She'd stolen these sleeping pills from her brother's lab. What wouldn't she give for a few hours sleep, without the nightmares that haunted her, the scarred images and memories from their war? She wanted to forget, to fall into oblivion that would undoubtedly be sweet.
Hastily, she screwed open the cap, shaking the bottle so that a small pill sat on the palm of her hand. Her mouth was a grim slash as she shook the glass again, fingers enclosing around the three white pills in her palm. She swallowed them, not bothering with water. Her throat felt raw enough anyways, nothing she could do would hurt anymore.
Screwing the lid back onto the bottle, she plunged it into her pillow, hiding it so her brother wouldn't find it. He was concerned, and rightfully so, about her emotional state right now. She didn't give him any reason to, yet he knew her better than she thought. Outwardly, Linali Li was still the same. More than a year after the end of the war, the Order was finally trying to return to its normal routine. She plastered fake smiles and false optimism onto her cleverly crafted persona, but those were all lies. She acted that way to not worry the others in the Order. It wouldn't be fair for them to have to remember. She would do that for them.
Her lashes fluttered closed, the pills beginning to take effect on her body. Somewhere in her memory, she remembered a myth that her brother had once told her. Greek, perhaps? About a river in the Underworld, one of many. The dead souls who drank from the river forgot their troubles and their past lives. What was it called, again? Her mind searched, almost frantically.
Lethe. That was what it had been called.
Today, even for a few hours, Linali would forget. Yet it would never last. Come morning, the cycle would start again. She was certain that the memories would never completely wash away. The dead would always be with her, and their burdens would be added to hers.
Her heart was heavy with them. She would never forget.