Something seeks him. Closer and closer it seeks him, but has yet to come upon his scent. Something that will not allow him to remain unscathed.
...
Lavi woke from a nightmare he could not remember. There was darkness, there was suffocating need, there was... something... crawling upon his skin. He shivered. He didn't mind darkness. He didn't mind lust.
But he could not stand to see green eyes stare back at him, mocking him. Deak was one shard of the mirror, there were so many others he could almost lose count. Forty-nine shards, seven times seven names, so many meanings thrust upon a number he could truly lose count of them.
It was just a number. Allen's lullaby chilled him; Because he must smile and say goodnight to a mirror to receive goodnight from all forty-nine of him. Those who weren't Bookmen usually did not grasp this detail- how peculiarthat Allen seemed to grasp it with a metaphor, intentional or not.
He took the whole night, with extra care not to wake Bookman, to forge everything he would need, despite there not being a need for a number of things.
But he noted mentally every detail he might need. He wrote a letter from his mother, and tucked it into a small, hidden pocket. He procured a locket and asked the Order's smith to engrave a say on it, dropping it about his neck once done. He sought, sought and sought. As far as Bookman was concerned, those things would only be more of his apprentice's eccentricities that he allowed with wariness. Lavi smiled grimly, and thought he might be getting ahead of himself- planning for the Panda's early death as if he was planning on doing it himself.
How terrible of Lavi, Bookman Jr thought to himself.
...
Lavi didn't dwell on it, but he had an inkling of what Allen might be planning. It was cruel of the exorcist to bet on Lavi, especially because Lavi knew he wouldn't come unscathed from the plans Allen was keen on forming and putting in action.
He would most probably end up broken, or in a terrible situation.
He cursed Allen. And wished desperately he hadn't had a choice, so he could back-pedal easily if everything went to hell.
But he couldn't. He had chosen this, hadn't he. He couldn't simply turn away from his own choice. More than cowardly, that would be against everything he was- an insult even to Bookman Jr. He had stuck to his path of Bookman through a long year of hardships, and he wouldn't easily turn his back on it.
Unfortunately, if he died, he wouldn't be able to be even a Bookman. So his first priority would be survival. Second, his choice of being a Bookman- and this he knows is already deeply ingrained. So, third came Allen's schemes. The albino curse his soul, but those were the order of his priorities, and such they would stay.
He would, however, do his best. If it didn't compromise his survival, if it didn't compromise his Bookman duties, so help him, he would do his best.
Then, after everything was ready, he started the side-story the Bookman Jr. promised to thus record- a tale of a pair of brothers.