AN: So I decided I wanted to do a one shot on this idea from Lavi's perspective. If the look he gave Bookman when Sheril talked about the other apprentice is any indication he had no idea that there had been one before him. So anyway, this is just a short chapter on how Lavi may see FormerBookmanJr!Allen.

Lavi liked Allen.

But that wasn't that big of a deal since "Lavi" liked everyone, no the big deal was that Bookman Jr. liked Allen and no matter how close Lavi got to being his mask he would always have a side to him that was pure Bookman. And that side liked Allen.

Ink on paper, that's what everyone was. That was what Allen was supposed to be but for some reason not even the most ruthless or indifferent parts of him could see the white haired exorcist that way. Because Bookman Jr. liked Allen Walker. And he didn't know why. He hated not knowing, he always knew, the only one who knew more than him was Bookman himself. So he searched for an answer. He studied Allen's behaviour and habits, his interactions with other people and his way of thinking. And when he finally came to a realization it left him feeling oddly scared.

Allen was kind. Allen was ruthless. Allen was polite. Allen was rude. Allen was honorable. Allen was not above using underhanded methods to get what he wanted. Allen was naïve. Allen was jaded. Allen was contradictory. Allen was just like him. Well, not exactly like him but close enough. Nothing about Allen made any sense. Not unless you saw it from the perspective of someone trying to be someone else, someone who desperately wanted to be that someone else, so much so that they might even be able to fool themselves into believing they could be, that they were.

Allen was miserable. Allen was always smiling. His smile was always at least somewhat forced. His smile was almost always genuine.

Allen regularly used his charm to con his way into people's hearts, whether that was to trick them into playing some card game with him or to trick them (and himself) into believing he belonged there with them. Truth was Allen didn't really belong anywhere and him being both and exorcist and a Noah and thus an enemy of both sides of the war only enhanced that. He'd never truly, fully belonged in the order from the beginning, even when no one knew about the Fourteenth, he sympathised too much with the akuma. He disagreed too much with the methods of the order. Of course, most of the excorsists disagreed with the order on different levels, but none were so vocal about it.

Allen was strange to say the least. Allen was someone on his way to becoming his mask. Just like Bookman Jr. was on his way to becoming Lavi. They would also both always have a part of themselves that were unable to become the mask. It was something akin to kinship.

Really, they were scarily alike sometimes.

Please review :)