Experiences

By: VivaciousWolf245 & TheBlackButler

Disclaimer: Don't own DGM or Shrek, even though I just mentioned it.

Quick Author's Note: To be honest, I gave complete insight of my mind in this chapter. Hope you enjoy. The familial facts are true, as well as my thing of "friends are family" thing. My memory is actually pretty cool, and I do suck at math...anyway, moooving on...


The next morning, I was the first one up and I slipped out of the room quietly as not to wake Maddie up. Regardless of what I had told my blond friend, my thoughts were jumbled and couldn't cease. I sat at one of the tables, lonesome in the early, surely pre-dawn hour, with only a cup of black coffee to keep me sane. It was peaceful, with no one in the room, and it was my thinking time. Usually, I spent it in my room, but that was out seeing as how Maddie was currently occupying it and I was almost phobic of returning to the library. It was where the whole slew of crazy, probably unreliable information had spouted and I was planning on stemming the flow as quickly as I could – if not for my own sanity, then for Maddie's. My hypocritical actions were reasonable. I didn't want Maddie thinking much on anything.

My mind wandered, the tight leash I usually had on it breaking. I nearly let out a bitter laugh. Was it a tight leash or mechanical autonomy? Would I ever know? Could I ever be sure? It hurt a little to know that my parents, my best friends and the people that I entrusted with my life on a daily basis had possibly lied to me about my entire existence. Even so, I could forgive them. I cracked a small smile at the thought of my reaction to being told I was adopted. As of five days ago, I would've thrown a royal fit complete with throwing breakable and rather hard objects at my father's head.

I frowned as a thought hit me. My memory. It was nearly perfect. I didn't have a photographic memory, or even a completely eidetic one. It was like a happy medium between "normal" human memory and "extraordinary". I could remember everything taught to me from lectures and remember the gist of information read in books. I had "Herr Music", as my dad called it, and I had a rather striking flair for languages. The only thing I didn't get was math (then again, who really did get math?) and I nearly laughed at the irony. Trust a possible computer to have trouble with math.

I sighed as my hands tightened around my untouched coffee mug. No, trust me to have trouble with math. There wasn't any guarantee that I, or Maddie, for that matter, was in any way a machine.

"Dagu," I lightly cursed to myself in a murmured whisper as I finally took a sip of the rich liquid steaming in the mug. It burnt my tongue and scalded my throat as it went down, and I was sure to feel it later, but I didn't care. It distracted me, if only for a moment, as my thoughts strayed to my niece and nephew. What would they think if they knew? They'd hate me. I didn't want them to hate anyone, much less their aunt.

No, I corrected myself, smiling grimly as I took another, longer sip, bordering on a large gulp. Half-aunt and step-aunt, I chided. My niece's father was my half-brother from my mother and my nephew was only his step-son. To Hunter, my niece, I had only half the connection to her as my half-sister or my other half-brother. Sure, I didn't see myself as half of a relative, but, in times when I was feeling especially depressed or upset; the thoughts hit me and latched on like a stubborn tick. They simply refused to let go.

I could almost metaphorically feel the damned raincloud hovering over my head, too.

I let out another sigh, draining the mug and setting it down on the table before me, gazing at it absently, "What'cha lookin' at?" I didn't jump. Honest, I didn't.

I tensed and shot a heated glare at Lavi, the red head having, at some point, decided to conveniently take the spot across from me, "The coffee mug. Or, have you suddenly become so much less observant?" The sarcastic background in the statement was either lost on the junior bookman, or simply ignored as he put a hand over his heart dramatically.

"You hurt me, Rain-chan," he whined, causing me to roll my eyes in exasperation. "I thought you said I was funny!" I rolled my eyes again, slamming my palm to my forehead.

I rose my head after a moment and tapped him lightly on the forehead, "You are. When you're not trying, that is. Besides, 'What'cha lookin' at?', isn't much of an attempt at humor, if you catch my drift." Lavi pouted again, and I was expecting some childish response. I was shocked when he quickly became serious, looking around curiously.

"Anyway, how are you holding up? You seemed to take everything worse than Maddie."

"You noticed that, huh?" I laughed shortly and bitterly. I couldn't try to hide it from him. I should've realized that he was observant. Though they probably didn't call it profiling here, that was exactly something that he was probably trained in doing.

Lavi shrugged as he leaned on his folded arms on the table, "Yeah, but you hid it better than Maddie. I noticed that when you're upset or thoughtful, you draw into yourself. I also noticed that you told Maddie not to think about it, yet, here you are. Thinking about it. Isn't that slightly hypocritical?" I stared down at the coffee cup for a moment longer before looking up into the bookman-in-training's poison colored eyes.

"I want to protect her," I mumbled after a minute. I didn't like expressing my feelings much, but I figured that keeping it all bottled up wasn't going to do anything, and telling Maddie would only hurt her in the long run, possibly. Bookman was slightly too cryptic for my taste, so that only left Lavi to vent to. "She's all I feel I really have left, as cliché and horribly clingy that sounds. She's not my friend. She's my family. And I will do anything for my family, even if it means giving my life…"

"Even your sanity," Lavi finished for me, nodding. I looked at him curiously. It seemed there was more to him than met the eye at first. I nearly laughed as the "Shrek" onion-explanation, as I called it, entered my mind.

I nodded in confirmation, "Even my sanity, yes. Or, what's left of it. My mother has – had, for all I know, mental problems. I don't know if I inherited them or not. I'm…I'm scared that I'm going to unravel. I mean, my mother never really did, but she had medication to keep her stable. Here…I wouldn't have that. With this whole Akuma thing, I don't want to leave Maddie to fend for herself just because my mind is a jumbled mess."

Lavi sat back as far as he could with back-less seats. The sun still had yet to rise, and I noticed it quickly. I had, apparently, gotten up earlier than I had realized. It didn't really matter. I wasn't tired.

The boy across from me shrugged, "Worrying about it isn't going to do you any good. If there's anything I've learned, it's that everything happens for a reason. You can't change fate. You can try, but how do you know that the outcome isn't exactly what was desired in the first place?" I let his words sink in before a small smile broke out on my face. Yet another thing I had thought of before.

"You don't," I admitted softly, glad for another intellectual mind to talk to. It wasn't that Maddie wasn't smart – far from it. It was just that she acted so much, pardon my wording, stupider than she really was. It was a naïve nature, and one that I hoped to be able to preserve her from for as long as I could.

Even if it eventually meant giving my own life.

Lavi reached across the table and ruffled the top of my head, causing me to lightly glare at him. I couldn't manage a full one. I saw him as a friend now. I saw him as family, "No one here will let either of you turn into Akuma. Just because you show some of the signs doesn't necessarily mean that it's exactly what you have. No offence, but Rain-chan and Maddie-chan aren't scary enough to be Akuma, though Rain-chan comes close!" His attempt at humor didn't faze me, only made me freeze up and stare at the table in dawning realization.

"'…a tight leash or mechanical autonomy?'" I murmured, causing Lavi to look at me curiously as my eyes widened. I grasped the junior bookman tightly by his forearm, disregarding all of my usual rules of personal space in favor of the small epiphany occurring in the gray matter within the confines of my skull…or…what I hoped was gray matter…

No, I thought quickly, shaking the thoughts out of my head, bad Rene. No more dark, dank, and depressing thoughts for you!

"That's it, Lavi! That's it!" I exclaimed, brown eyes surely gleaming with joyous hope, something I hadn't felt in what seemed to be forever. "If I'm an Akuma, inter-dimensional or no, how can I have Innocence? Dark Matter and Innocence would cancel each other out, not to be able to exist peacefully with one another! I need to see Hevlaska!" Lavi nodded and jumped up with me. In my hopeful haze, I hadn't realized that I was glomping him until it was already too late. By then, I just mentally shrugged and decided to go with it.

"Dude!" I exclaimed, clapping him good-naturedly on the shoulder once I'd come to my senses and released him. Oh, Maddie was going to kill me for that and I was going to enjoy teasing the hell out of her. "You are awesome and I can't thank you enough! Now, mush! I need to figure this out." We rushed towards the door, but when I didn't move towards the staircase like the red head was doing, he stopped and looked at me curiously.

"What're…?" I cut him off as I laid a hand on the wooden door of the bedroom Maddie and I shared, glaring irritably at the Finders.

"I can't go down there without Maddie," I explained hurriedly, glaring even harder at the Finders until they looked away uneasily, sure to conveniently "forget" any of the information spilling so uncharacteristically carelessly from my lips, "I can't go down there without her. I need to check her, too. Oh, boy, is waking her up going to be fun…" The sarcasm that dripped from my voice was enough to make Lavi crack a smile as I gently pushed on the door. I winced as it creaked. It was now or never.

I swung the doors open, knowing that within the time span of the next half-hour or so, the information I learned would either make or break the rest of my life. Was I ready?

I'd like to believe that I was…

Was Maddie ready?

I sure hoped so, because I sure as hell wasn't going to give her a chance to protest.


Final Words: Hope you liked the deep insight. It's late. I have to go to bed or I'll be yelled at.

You all know the drill. R&R! Maddie and I appreciate it!

~VivaciousWolf245