Title: Hop
Author: Pup-Asbless
Disclaimer: I do not own D gray man.
Summary: Lenalee does not know the person that is her Brother.
Phew, thought I lost this story due to a mix up. But now it's back up so enjoy.
Lenalee does not know the person that is Komui.
Her earliest memories are not Komui's smiles for her but instead are the ones from the man known as Leverrier. Her earliest memories of being bandaged from a pain are not from Komui, but the Matron. Her earliest memory of belonging to someone else is not from Komui, but from a group of Black Order members whose names she never cared to know.
When she first came to the Order she had remembered she had a Brother; knew by instinct his face, voice, touch, and smell. But she hadn't known his name. Who was Brother? What kind of person was he? Would he miss her like she did him? Was she really sure he was even real? Thoughts such as those were daily ritual chants she had hummed to herself when alone, more out of a vague need to fill her growing hollow ness then an actual desire to know.
Rather pointless to ask for something with any expectation at all of it when it was denied to her.
Over the years she could barely remember why she ever had wanted to go home so badly other than she had always asked for it before and it couldn't have been a worse place then where she had been shackled by the ankles to already.
Her skull was cracked and her body was kissed by pain more times she could care to recall by those who regarded her as too "precious" to let go of. Her mind had numbed as she had tried hard to grasp the quick emotion of another lifetime when being called "precious" had held a different meaning to her. But it had left and with it even the thought of why it was so important to recall.
She had felt her blood flow along with her mind and spirit growing ever dull without care for the repercussions.
No home, no love, no hope…
When she feels it come to an end with the last bit of strength leave her and her Innocence beginning to burn her leg muscles in agony. Lenalee in her fading away feels a pat on her head and a quiet apology that sets her delirium into alarm.
A touch, a voice, a smell, and finally a vision of a smile that seems foreign and yet just right; it was you, she thinks.
She weakly reaches up to clutch at the man's sleeve with as much force as she can when she feels her shock leave her when overwhelming anguish overcomes her.
She does not feel euphoria yet. For she has realized this is not a dream and that she has committed the worse act she ever would in her life.
She had forgotten him.
The man who had said to wait for him as would find her again and she had not waited… She had not known.
I don't know you… I don't know you… I don't know you… Who are you…?
So when people ask who Komui is, she can only slightly laugh and say he is who he is and then move on to talk about her Brother.
Her Brother who can be silly and creative with his brilliance; her Brother whom went to hell and back to her in ways she will probably never know how, though she has seen the horrors one must commit to make it so far, and who will never stop protecting her in any way he can because he has proven to her how important that is.
The detached Supervisor who she takes orders from, though she can sometimes feel betrayal for when the orders cost too much in her opinion, she will always do her best and come back to take orders from again and again no matter what condition she is in (as long as it does not jeopardize her Brother anyway) to grant the very words life even though it may very well one day cost her own.
Lenalee does not know who Komui really is. He can be harsh, distant, and she has never seen him truly cry with pure humanity even once in her lifetime. There are times when she does not like him at all. He has done things and knows things she is not allowed to learn of. Like wise there are many things she has also done and learned he must never, even long after the possible chance of her time ending before his, know about. His world is one she does not completely understand.
It is something she thinks he also understands, for his smiles from the day long after their "first" meeting never do lose the tension and fatigue his being never can shake off. Much like her own she had mused.
Sometimes she thinks the Komui she could have once known before the Order is now just a ghost of a memory now lingering on far away in the man known only as Brother to her. She can feel the connection like of something that is dead and never coming back. But it is also like the permanent stain of blood on the wooden floor. It is not nor is it supporting its living host anymore, but its mark will not go away no matter how much scrubbing of cloth tries to end its evidence upon the world. No one can understand the stories it could tell, how it got there, or why it will linger on even after it has no purpose for reasons other then the ghosts of its haunting can understand.
The blood that she can see etched into her tells a secret only she knows she can fully understand perhaps one day.
Till then, "Brother" is the only thing she will call him. She only knows and loves him as Brother and is anxious if she calls him anything else the string between them will be dyed a completely different color from before. And she must never, even though that color between them seems to be changing everyday in ways she still does not fully know or trust yet, forget to call him Brother; for she had forgotten once and she will never forget again the sibling who had not hated her for forsaking him.
They are both ghosts. Former shells of their old selves that both have held so desperately to for life that she at least is not so sure will ever be granted to them again.
You only have a chance to live once.
Lenalee ponders upon Komui loving the scent of coffee so much and she has done her best to make it for him whenever she thinks he wants it in times whether he asks for it or not. Though she can not help but think the scent of tea should be more to his appeal as a distant instinct tells her that is growing ever more still as the days pass.