There was once a young man named Icarus, who experienced the joy of flying. Icarus was no bird, nor insect, nor angel. Icarus was man, and man was not meant to fly. Foolish Icarus, who believed he could become more than man, had gone too far. His father Daedalus warned him not to fly too close to the sun or the sea, but the naïve young man did not listen to his father's wisdom.
He was rapt in the moment, flying blissfully in the sky where he did not belong. The man in him wanted more. So he reached higher and higher, wishing to touch the sun. He knew of the consequences, but he got too close, and the object of his desire took all the joy out of him. The wax wings he wore melted quickly from his arms, and he fell into the sea far below, never to experience the joy of flight again.
Lavi felt much like the foolish Icarus.
For days and months and even years, he felt a longing for something he could never have. He would dabble here and there with women from time to time, but never could he feel what he wanted to feel. He could experience the pleasure of sex and the soft curves of a woman's body, that temporary bliss one finds themselves in that numbs all rhyme and reason in the world.
There were days spent in the Order, alone in the library, going over scrolls upon scrolls of the pain and misery of others. He wanted to believe that he could do something to change the direction of his life. But when his mind drifted to abstract emotions such as happiness, the Bookman would take over and push any thoughts out of his mind that were not of ink and parchment. When he was not alone, he would watch – like any good Bookman – the rabble of the people around him. One watchful green eye would see so much in very few things.
He saw when Allen and Lenalee were together, of course. He would observe the little things that most could not notice, like the particular attention Allen gave her when she spoke, even when there was food set out before him. How he would hesitate on the last bite when Lenalee had nothing left on her plate. How, especially, when Allen would not retire until he made sure that Lenalee had made it safe to her own bed. And how he would disappear in the night sometimes. Lavi noticed these things.
Love, he pondered, was something a Bookman could never experience. He knew what it was to love, but could not create it for himself. Such was the way of the Bookman, that they could experience all the motions attached to loving, but never love itself. Lavi was allowed, every two moons or so, a female companion with no name whom he could explore for the sake of his human side. Lavi would only ever know her body, and nothing beyond physical properties. Her name, history, and personality were all immaterial to him.
There was a time when he tried to break loose from who he was as a Bookman.
There was a time, not long ago, when he thought Allen had died. If he had grown close to anyone in his time at the Order, it had been him. A best friend, perhaps, he could call him. He would look to Lenalee, trying to find that ever-present hope in her eyes, but was met with gray shades and sorrow. Lavi knew then that he had in fact developed feelings for her. He didn't understand it himself – he would not recognise it as real. He had never in his eighteen years felt that way about anyone before.
He wanted so badly to put the light back in her eyes, to bring that beautiful smile back to her lips. But whenever he tried to get close to her, she would talk about Allen. And Lavi hated it. Allen couldn't be there for her. Lavi was there, and Lenalee would not see him. She could not possibly love him. She couldn't love anything that could not love her in return.
We're not their allies.
Lavi had learned the hard way that he should never put faith in anything. He had lost so much and gained so little that every strike became numb. Nobody knew or recognised the façade he wore. Nobody knew that he could no longer feel pain, because even pain itself was fake. If one were to see past Lavi, they would only see a colourless being with no name. The Bookman. He looked like Lavi, and sounded like Lavi, but was not the same person at all. The difference was that Lavi could feel.
The Bookman in him knew that one day Lavi would be destroyed. Like a puppet whose been far too worn to continue being used. One day, Lavi's wings would melt, and the personality will cease to exist. Alias fifty would be no different. Nor would the next one, and the one after that.
As man is not meant to fly, Bookmen are not meant to feel.