Disclaimer: I don't own any of these wonderful characters and I make no money from this story.
Lavi tried not to think about the things he recorded. He watched them and wrote them down and tried not to think on them again. Sure he needed to know the dates and places and sometimes names, but he tried to forget the parts that really mattered: the color and a little girl's hair, a stuffed teddy bear, the exact smell of a fire.
Sometimes Lavi worried. He didn't let it show of course, somebody had to be the cheerful one in the group. But still, he worried. Worried about whether recording a massacre was really more noble than stopping one, worried whether he was too involved, worried whether he was involved enough. More than anything though he worried about who he was, if he even counted as a person. At some point he hoped he would become the mask. That he could live with. He could live with genuinely being as happy and open and light as he tried to pretend he was. His real fear was that the mask would crack and that he wouldn't like what was behind it.
Sometimes he had dreams. Dreams with far more violence in them than he would have liked. Dreams where he enjoyed the violence far more than he would have liked.
Lavi felt someone shake him awake. He was drenched in sweat. An odd pain pulsed behind his eye patch and he whimpered slightly, blinking hard to see the figure next to him in the dark.
"I won't share a bed with you if you're going to kick me all night and scream in your sleep," Kanda said.
"Sorry, Yuu," Lavi mumbled.
"Be more considerate," Kanda scolded, but he wrapped his arm around Lavi and pulled him tightly against him. "Idiot."
Lavi smiled, grateful that Kanda was willing to pretend that Lavi really was his mask and that his dreams were just empty dreams of spilled ice cream or rain on holidays. Lavi felt nothing but gratitude for the man who was willing to ignore the obvious and see him as we wished he could be.
"Thank you, Kanda," Lavi murmured, drifting back to sleep with strong arms protecting him.