Hello everyone! Three drafts and three betas later, and we have this! It's kinda strange, but I hope you enjoy it. Normal is boring anyway XP. Lavi can be tricky sometimes...
Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own D.Grayman or any of its contents. I also don't own the poem that shows up later. Emily Dickinson owns that one.
A Lullaby for the Scribe
Lavi hated it, the scent of ink. It was so hard to ignore, a black odor that would sear his lungs like dragon's breath if he lingered around its source too long. But as Bookman Junior, one who wrote about history's shadowy underbelly, it was a smell that stalked him like his shadow. He thought he would be used to it by now.
Lavi had scarlet hair, emerald eyes, and a face that was cutely boyish for his eighteen years despite the eyepatch. Yet none of that mattered in the blackness of his room at night, where nothing could be seen. There wasn't even moonlight to come through the windows, because tonight there was no moon.
The dark fragrance of ink engulfed him, as if all the ink had evaporated from the newspapers on the floor to join the blackness. Lavi wondered vaguely if all the papers would be blank if he turned on the light, or if he would catch the shadowy liquids hurriedly sliding back to their rightful places.
If he was thinking of things like this, then the chemical stench was getting to his brain already.
He closed his eyes and pulled the covers over his head, as if that would keep out the darkness and the smell. How could he be so exhausted from his last mission and yet still unable to fall asleep?
He stuck his hand under his pillow, his fingers groping in the soft darkness until they touched something hard, round and small. Bringing it out, he pressed the switch on the back of the round object and felt it rumble to life in his palm.
Lavi smiled as he heard the gears inside his modified communication golem whirl steadily. While it looked like an ordinary Black Order golem, a tiny black orb with bat wings, it had a wireless connection to several bugs he had planted through the Headquarters. Its purpose was to collect bits of hidden history for the archives.
His master Bookman would kill him if he knew what he mostly used it for.
He pressed a small button on the back of the golem.
Bzzt!
"-And I want ten servings of teriyaki, five bowels of ramen, twenty rice balls-"
Lavi smirked. Allen and his monstrous appetite were at work in the cafeteria once again. Plates clinked and meals sizzled, and the cocktail of delicious smells tickled his nose in the black room. Jerry may have been a little strange, but he knew how to make a meal.
Lavi could tell each Exorcist and Finder apart just by their voice. It was part of his training, of course. He had to make sure that he was quoting the right person. But he would have learned the voices whether he had been trained to or not…
"-ten rolls of sushi, some tamago-yaki-"
This could take awhile, Lavi thought, and changed the listening channel.
Bzzt!
The phantoms of the cafeteria dissolved away, and the ink's scent returned.
"-What do you mean there's more paperwork?!"
It was Supervisor Komui this time, the local mad scientist. Lavi could smell the coffee already. It almost overpowered the smell of ink. Almost.
"It just came in from the Asian Branch," the voice of assistant Reever echoed through the golem's speaker.
"Can't they do their own paperwork?!" one of the other office workers snapped.
"They said that the Supervisor needs to sign it," Reever replied.
"Why meeeee?" Supervisor Komui whined. Lavi heard the paper crinkle as the superior's head thudded against his document-smothered desk. "Wait, I know! I'll just make-"
"You will not be making anything!" all the office workers yelled in chorus, their furious volume causing Lavi to flinch at the other end.
"But this will save us so much-"
"NO!"
The irritated conversation inflamed into an inferno of heated shouts over what to do and what not to do. As amusing as the whole fiasco was, it was starting to give Lavi a headache…or maybe it was the ink.
Bzzt!
"-So sorry! I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"
Now it was Miranda's voice. Lavi wondered what she had done this time…or hadn't done. Lavi guessed by the echo that they were in the training area.
"Tch."
It was a cold reply, just what Lavi expected from manlier-than-thou Kanda.
He heard calm footsteps walking away, soon followed by hurried ones.
"I really really am sorry! I really didn't mean-"
"Let go of me," Kanda's deep voice growled with annoyance. "People are staring at us."
There was a pause, followed by a loud gasp.
"Oh I am so sorry, Mr. Kanda! I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"
"Tch…"
Lavi snickered.
Bzzt!
"You've never heard of China?"
It was the voice of Toma, a Finder.
"Well, I've…never traveled much before…" the voice of Krory answered pitifully.
Poor Krory, Lavi thought. Considering that the vampiric Innocence host had been stuck in a castle for most of his life, there were probably many countries he had never heard of. At least he could be part of the world now.
"It's…how do I explain it…well, it's like…"
As Toma began to describe the exotic marvels of a place half a world away, Lavi stopped listening to the words but to the rhythm of the voice itself. He savored the vocal pattern and the pitch, with the occasional ooh or aah from Krory's softer voice, while the inky blackness cocooned him like a velvet web.
Here was the evidence, summoned by the golem, that there was a world outside this dark room.
He pushed the golem closer.
Bzzt!
"-Was delicious!" he heard Allen's young voice speak. Lavi vaguely wonder if Allen's voice would ever reach puberty. The boy was already fifteen and still sounded like he was ten. "So the girl in the picture here is the one I'm supposed to look for on my mission?"
"Yeah," a Finder, Michael, replied. "…Kinda looks like Lavi's type of girl, huh?"
Lavi was suddenly curious about the photo.
"Actually I was thinking that she kinda looks like Kanda," Allen replied, amusement tinting his voice. "You know, with the long dark hair and pretty face and cold eyes."
That did sound like everyone's favorite surly samurai, Lavi thought with a smile.
"…Hmm, I kinda see what you mean," replied Michael.
"Hey, there's something I've been wondering," Allen said.
"Oh? What's that?"
"When Lavi first met Kanda," the boyish voice began roguishly. "Did he mistake Kanda for a girl and try to hit on him?"
Lavi found himself snorting back a laugh, even though he wasn't sure whether he should be amused or insulted.
Lavi heard a blade being drawn swiftly, a blade that was probably pointed at the back of Allen's neck. His theory was confirmed when he heard a sharp gasp.
"K-Kanda…" Allen spoke nervously, probably wearing a nervous smile too. "I, uh, didn't know you were back there…"
"Obviously not," came the deep, cold reply.
Lavi lost it, breaking out into raging laughter and getting no closer to sleeping. In his hilarious fit he knocked the golem off the bed, causing it to fall onto the unseen floor and change the channel to a silent room.
His laughter abruptly stopped, and he rolled over to recover the lost golem. As his hand groped the area below, his fingers came across a sticky spot on the floor. It was the place where he had spilled a bottle of ink a couple of hours ago. Or, more accurately, the place where he became so disgusted with some dirty secrets of an otherwise respectable man that he took a bottle of ink and poured it all over the Bookman article he had half-written. The stench consumed his nose and lungs.
Of course Bookman senior had come in right as the last drops of ink splattered onto the obliterated historic record. The old man quietly stepped in the paper-swathed room, calmly closed the door, slowly turned around, and began screaming at Lavi. He screeched at him about how immature he was, how soft he was, what an idiot he was for getting upset about such a tiny piece of history. He was a Bookman. Bookmen were supposed to view the world with a detached point of view. Bookmen didn't care about what happened to people. Bookmen just recorded the results. Bookmen didn't need other people, because other people were just figures to write onto paper, black on white.
…Lavi hated the smell of ink.
Where was that golem?
His hand finally found it, his fingers brushing across its smooth surface. It slipped from his grasp the first time, since his fingers were still slick with ink, but he succeeded in his second attempt to recover it. Plopping it back on the bed, he pressed the button rapidly, hoping to hear how Allen would get out of his current situation…if he did.
Bzzt!
"Which way was the training hall again?"
Bzzt!
"Where's my coffee?!"
Bzzt!
" last time I ever challenge Allen to a card game-"
Bzzt!
"Oh, he's so cute!"
Bzzt!
Maybe he should go join them, instead of stayed holed up in this black room with black fumes. It would be more a lot more fun than listening to a golem all night.
Bzzt!
All he had to do was get out of bed and fumble his way toward the door. Maybe he could find his usual aqua-colored bandana and orange scarf along the way.
Bzzt!
Of course he would probably trip on the piled-up paper, bump into some half-buried chairs, maybe walk into the mouth of a dinosaur instead of through the door.
Bzzt!
Which sounded ridiculous, of course, but it felt like anything could happened in this darkness tainted by the scent of ink, especially with a mind full of inky mist.
Bzzt!
"-how can-"
Bzzt!
"-Innocence yet to be-"
Bzzt!
"-look at what-"
Bzzt!
"-alone with only-"
Bzzt!
"I'm back, brother!"
Lavi's finger froze halfway to the button..
It was her.
Lavi had always been one to fall for a pretty face. He would be the first to admit it. Yet it wasn't her looks that made him notice her, though she was very pretty, but her melodious voice.
"Lenalee!" cried out Supervisor Komui, Lavi hearing his eager footsteps. "I'm so glad to see you! But the Asian Branch has just dumped all their work on us, so we can't spend any time together! It's not fair!"
"Brother…" Lenalee's voice sighed. Lavi guessed that she was probably holding her forehead. "I'm sure they wouldn't do it if they didn't have to…"
"What, so they can sleep while we don't?!" the other office workers protested in the background.
Lavi started to sigh, inadvertently breathed in too much ink vapor, and ended up coughing instead.
"Calm down everyone," the angelic voice spoke, redirecting Lavi's attention to the outside world. "You guys just need a break. I know! I got a poetry book on the way back from the last mission. Do you guys want to hear some poems?"
"Why, it's a splendid idea!" cheered Supervisor Komui, and Lavi heard him plopping back into his desk chair.
The others hummed in agreement.
"Alright then," Lenalee's voice replied cheerfully, leaflets ruffling as she started to flip through the book. "Now let's see…"
Disaster averted, Lavi thought. That's our Lenalee.
He smiled.
"Ah, here's a good one!" Lenalee's voice echoed through the golem, the crinkles of page-turning stopping. "Hope is the Thing With Feathers, by Emily Dickinson."
Lavi laid the golem on the pillow.
"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all…"
She knew how to treat each line, and how to bring grace to each word. Komui and the others were quiet, a rare occurrence. It was a peace only her voice could summon. It soothed even him, the scribe isolated in the darkness.
"…And sweetest in the gale is heard…"
It was like she was here, not out there, sitting at the head of the bed. He could feel her fingers stroking his hair, gently, as she crooned to him beautiful words he could not see.
"…And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm…"
But that was stupid, of course, as his eyelids drooped. She was in another room, another world, and was reading poetry to calm overworked employees of the Black Order, not him. Not a forlorn teenager who was eavesdropping with a shabby golem to pass the night.
"…I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea…"
Yet he could smell crispness of the frozen terrain, and taste the salt of the warped waters. As long as he knew these sensations weren't real, that the ink lay underneath, he could still pretend to feel these things. He still had the right to wish, didn't he?
"…Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me."
Lenalee's voice glided over to another poem, something bout an oak tree, but by then her words had blurred into a formless melody. The black scent fading, for now, Lavi let his senses melt away into the timeless colors of dreams.
IIIIII
This story took forever to get the wording right, since I was trying to rely on details other than sight, but I think it turned out well in the end. At least it was fun.
Cya!