You have no heart, bookman junior.

My purpose was to record them, watch each and every one of them die in their "holy war", and then leave their corpses behind me.

I wasn't supposed to get emotionally invested in these people that, in the very end, would become nothing but faded ink on decaying records.

I was not supposed to get involved, or make friends. I was not supposed to care about them at all.

And I didn't realize I did until it was too late.

Or, at least, you are not meant to.

We are the Bookmen, and our purpose is to record history, giving an unbiased account of the world and it's wars. We stand, silently observing in the background as the human Race tears itself apart, over the span of years

You are a failure

And decades,

And a disgrace to your clan.

Writing down events and taking down names of soldiers, granting them a cruel immortality in the form of everlasting ink...

A bookman with a heart

Such worthless ink...

Is no bookman at all.

God's apostles they're called. Possessors of the innocence, using these weapons to destroy the Earl's forces. The blessed soldiers. And I was one of them. Me, an impartial observer, was to take a side in a war, and fight alongside them. But I didn't realize that I'd be fighting with myself as well. I saw it only as an opportunity to learn more about the ever mysterious "Black Order". I had no idea what those people would do to me.

They were not supposed to attach themselves so fiercely to me, a temporary soldier, only on their side at the moment to observe. But attach themselves they did, and that attachment wormed it's way under my skin like maggots, and burrowed too deeply and too quick through my body, like the disgusting, filthy creatures they are, those despicable humans, get them out

But it's a bit too late for that, isn't it?

Ripping holes into my resolve, and settling in the deepest recesses of my heart, attaching themselves to the walls that I myself I had carefully crafted and eating away at them, leaving me with a vulnerable and raw place that they filled with emotions, making me feel things that I shouldn't, making me care

You care for them more than you care to admit, don't you?

And slowly their presences in my life felt less like an infestation and more- more-

More than you meant it to, right?

No! More than it should've been! Before, they were nothing, no more to me than the dust on the worn pages that I was charged to fill, until, whether by my own weakness or their strength, they became something, they became a part of MY world, a part of a me that shouldn't have existed, a part of me that would have to be put to rest when all was over and they were dead, until they became too important for my own good,

Until "they" and "them" became we, and us, and I became...I dunno what I became…

You became something of a traitor, didn't you?

Shut up, there is no treachery if I don't act on these emotions!

But you already have, haven't you?

No! No, no- I, am a Bookman. I am following my dream. This- this is the life I've always wanted. It's all I've ever wanted, it's- it's all I have.

You're right, it IS all you have. From a boy with nothing to lose and everything to gain, to a man, with all of the world in his head and all of his love trapped in his heart. You have absolutely nothing, not a trinket in your pocket or a penny to your name, and you cannot feel, cannot express honest opinion, thought, or emotion, because a Bookman has need only for a brain, and not a heart. So you lock it up tight inside you, the real you, lost in a sea of aliases that you've taken on over your years, getting lost and more muddled among them, until you're not even sure who the "real" you is anymore-

Or is that it?

You never knew who the real you was to begin with.

You were an empty husk filled with nothing but an ever expanding hate and a lie, a lie that you kept building on, creating a different "you" for different people, designing and destroying life after life until "you" became a lie. And if "you" are a lie, then who ARE you, exactly?

I am the 49th;

Meant to be forgotten.

"I" cannot exist.

…

But you already do.

Author's note: Well, that was certainly a slump that I don't wish to return to. I think I'm back, as far as writing goes, and I'll be updating stuff and posting new stuff and all that good stuff soon. For now, enjoy this little Lavi one-shot. I hope you like it, I made it twice as ambiguous as the last chapter.