Title: the choice of flight
Disclaimer: The usual applies.
Rating: Rated M for dark theme(s). Trigger warning (?): This fic mentions suicide.
Summary: A muted lament for the easy way out. [LaviYu]
AN: Whew, my first LaviYu fic ever. And there I was, thinking I'd never write one.
On a more serious note, a distant acquaintance took his own life a few weeks ago. I cannot imagine what his loved ones are going through right now. If you feel that the world is too dark a place for you, and you are looking at the irreversible way out, please hang in there and seek help. Life is precious, and there is probably someone somewhere who loves you.
Alright, enough preaching. Thank you for reading.
In the month of October, when the leaves were turning red, when the chill started to creep across the land, the whispers started in the dining hall of the Headquarters.
"He died?"
"How is that possible?"
"Surely not him?"
"But he had healing abilities… even a hundred Akuma together couldn't kill him. He is so strong."
"You mean he was so strong."
"I heard – I heard he took his own life."
And so the whispers went on, spreading from finder to finder, from scientist to scientist, from exorcist to exorcist.
Strangely, Lavi was the last to know the news on that dreadful day. Away from the Headquarters on a mission of middling difficulty, he returned exhausted to pitying stares and a haunting sense of loss. He was at once taken aside by Komui and Lenalee on arrival, and led to his bedroom.
Komui, face grave and skin pale, broke the news as gently as he could.
"He's dead?" Lavi said. "No, no, no – he couldn't be. He can't be. He –"
"He is, Lavi," Lenalee said, and took Lavi into her embrace. He sobbed his heart out as the sun set, drenching them all in its red glare, wondering how the light of his world could go out so suddenly, without warning.
:::
Komui stepped down from the carriage. He walked towards a solitary Finder, waiting at the foot of a precipice, standing guard at the place where the body had been found.
Nothing remained there – nothing but a small dash of blood against the smooth stone. The body had since been removed and placed within a separate wagon while they waited for Allen to open a gate.
Komui took his beret off his head, held it close to his chest. "What a pity," he said, and he meant it.
"He was a fine young man," Bak Chang agreed, shaking his head. It had been the Asian Branch members who had found the dead man.
"I wonder why he chose this place."
"This was where he grew up," Bak Chang said.
"I know." Komui replaced his beret on his head, and stooped to leave a blooming lotus flower next to the blood stain.
Bak Chang did the same. "I hope he found peace."
"That is all any of us can ever hope for," Komui said. He sighed heavily as the two men returned to the waiting carriage.
:::
Lavi cornered Allen in the latter's room.
"Open a gate for me, Allen," he said. "Please."
"Lavi –"
"Please. You know how much it would mean to me. I want to see the place where he – where he chose to fly."
In the end, Allen gave in, and Lavi found himself walking across the stony ledge where Kanda took flight. The ledge was high up, a veritable eagles' nest, a place of incomprehensible beauty. A place of death.
Lavi looked down at the river rushing along far below, at the swaying red-crowned trees and the birds soaring below him, black and grey dashes against the scenery. He swallowed and felt his legs go weak. Even a human blessed with supernatural healing properties could not hope to survive a fall from a height like this.
Then Lavi lay flat against the rock, his face to the sky. He closed his eye, and let the dark thoughts drag him under again, as they had done countless times over the past two days.
:::
Tell me, dearest, how did it feel like to fly?
Did you think of us, when you were a mile from the ground? When you could see the soft green of the grass and the pale blue of the sea, and the scattered cows ambling across the hills? When the wind was in your hair, and buoying you up, if only momentarily, and yet you soared downwards like an old, blind bird?
Did the fear come to you then? Did that nameless, ancient fear snake its way through your burning blood, did it turn your body to ice? Did you close your eyes and clasp your fingers and mouth a final prayer? Did you twist mid-fall, did you stretch your arms and wish for wings? Did you remember our favourite story of Icarus, and the Greek lessons you took on the rare days you were back in the Order, and which I sat in on to spend more time with you?
Did you hear the shattering of your bones, did you feel the cut of Death's merciless scythe?
Did you think of us when you could almost touch the stone of the ground? Did you remember those lingering glances, those stabs of jealousy, those nights we spent watching the night sky for stars and roaming Akuma? Did you remember the scent of my hair at our last goodbye, did you remember my smile and the water lapping at the underground pier, and the way my fingers threaded themselves through your hair?
Did you truly wish to die?
Lavi rubbed a smooth pebble between his calloused fingers. Heat grew behind his eyeballs, a fire roaring on the pyre of his grief, and he watched the sleepy sun turn the sky into a battlefield of orange and red, of blood and misery made tangible.
What about me? Did you think of me? What is to become of me?
:::
Lavi's fingers caressed the coffin. He ran his fingers across the raised wood of the cross, against the rose emblem. Komui had refused to allow the opening of the coffin lid, and so Lavi had been denied the chance to see Kanda Yu's face again in this life.
Lavi imagined Kanda's face, pale, perhaps bruised and yet still a thing of beauty, with his eyes closed in the eternal sleep, and again felt a throb deep in his chest.
This was pain as he never knew it.
"Lavi," Allen said, when it was time. Allen and Krory pulled Lavi to his feet.
The coffin was brought to the incinerator.
"Say your last goodbye," Komui said, as the fire roared, a flaming blaze in the mound.
Lavi watched as the wood was consumed, as the fire cackled, as his love was ground to dust and ash.
"Don't do anything silly," Lenalee said, when it was over, and all that remained of Kanda was a handful of soot.
Lavi thought again of Kanda's silken hair, his glowering gaze, his muscled body, his anger and frustration, his strength of will, and felt his heart turn to ice.
"I won't," Lavi said. I would revive him if I could. But I can't.
Instead, Lavi walked, in the dead of the night, to the highest room of the Headquarters, and there he sat leaning against the broken window frame, watching the stars swivel in the empty dark. He thought of all that he had lost, and of how easy it would to step off the ledge of the window, to be swallowed into the hungry darkness below.
And yet – Bookman's lined face came into view. He thought too of Lenalee, of Allen, of Krory – and of all the others. That stayed his hand.
When the darkest hour of the night was over, and the urge to fly like Icarus had passed, Lavi threw a kiss towards the heavens, and returned to the library where his books and papers awaited. It would take many months to heal, and perhaps he would never feel whole again, but Lavi knew that he would live on, if only for Kanda's sake. For Kanda would continue to live on while he still had comrades to remember him as he was in life.
And so Lavi worked and waited. He thought of Kanda in the deep, haunting hours of the nights, thought of the Kanda that was, the dark-eyed, long-haired man dancing in the sunlight, folding his sword through sheathes of Akuma, and not of the Kanda that was left, the empty-eyed, glassy-stared man reeling from the aftermath of Alma's final juddering death.
-Fin.-