"It's you. You brought me here." He said quietly.

The redhead stood there for a moment, gaping and seemingly not taking in his words. He shifted, starting to feel uncomfortable, as he watched the other man. "You're up." The redheaded man said, jolting out of his shock. Bright green eyes still blinking in confusion, the man started towards him.

Something in him wanted to stiffen, to stumble back from the strange person approaching him . . . but something even deeper inside him found the man mysteriously familiar and knew the man wouldn't hurt him. Why he knew that, however, was . . .

"Who are you?" He found himself breathing out. He really wasn't sure what to make of the situation or the man, but if he recalled his dream well enough, his name should be-

"Right! Where are my manners? I go by the name Lavi, I'm a vampire. You must be very confused. My master, a demon by the name of Yu Kanda, requested your presence here. Don't worry, I'll explain everything you need to know, but I need to check you over first, so if you wouldn't mind getting back on the table . . ."

"Why? Why do I need to get back on the table? What's going to happen?" He couldn't help but feel a little afraid.

"Nothing, really." Lavi hastened to assure. "I just need to check you over to make sure you are at least moderately unharmed. You are not supposed to be up yet, after all, and that might be concerning."

Feeling the strangeness that could only be called "reassured trepidation", he proceeded back to the table he'd only just left and climbed back on with a bit of Lavi's help.

Laying down, he watched as Lavi first checked his neck, the long fingers grazing inquisitively over the skin of his neck. "I see you've taken off the wrap." The redhead commented idly.

"Was I not supposed to do that?" He asked, worriedly.

"No, it's fine. The bite seems to have healed, anyway."

"The bite?" He echoed. He wondered if that was what he'd been unconsciously looking for a while ago. Is that what he had been expecting to see?

"Yes." Lavi winced in response. "I'm not sure how much you remember, if you remember anything, but I . . . found your body and brought you back from the dead. I don't know anything about you besides what your body told me. Your past and exactly how you came to die, I don't know, but I know that you died in the aftermath of a vampire attack."

"A . . . vampire . . . attack?" He asked, knowing that he would rather grab onto that concept than the idea that he had been dead.

Lavi nodded, still watching him carefully to make sure he was alright. "There was a familiar pair of bite marks on your neck and whoever prepared you for burial had put precautions in place to keep you from reanimating later."

"I . . . see . . ." He mumbled, trying to understand all that was being told to him.

The best way to go along was to move forward, he supposed. "Do I . . . have a name, then?" He asked hesitantly, afraid of the answer a little.

The green eyes popped open wide. "Oh, yeah! That! I don't know what yours was." He raised his hands in surrender when he saw the younger boy's shoulders fall in disappointment. "Hey, it's alright. So you don't have a name right now, you can come up with one. Or I can come up with one for you. You got any ideas?"

Allen looked at him before he closed his silver eyes and thought. An idea appeared from the mist of his memories, unbidden, but unwilling to be ignored. "Allen . . ." His - - no, Allen's - - lips formed the name and something previously missing clicked inside him. Something slid home.

"Allen. I want my name to be Allen." He said, stronger.

"Oh, alright then. Allen. Any reason why?" Lavi asked. He sounded both interested and distracted as he finished his inspection of Allen's body.

"It just . . . feels right." He - - Allen - - replied, feeling like that wasn't quite enough to describe it.

"Right. Well, it seems like you're in order. Healing nicely. What do you say we move somewhere a little more comfortable to talk?" Lavi asked.

"Okay. Um . . . where?" Allen asked, not moving to leave the table, yet. Lavi looked up at him with bright eyes and a smile.

"How do you feel about the library?"

"So I don't suppose you've ever been in a library before, huh?" The redhead asked, reclining back into the plush chair.

"I don't really know. Most things feel unfamiliar, right now." Allen said, carefully sitting down in his own identical seat, next to Lavi.

"Of course. Right. It's just, the impression I got from your body was that you were a hardworking class and those types often know how to read, but they don't frequently get the opportunity to do so."

Lavi waved his hand at the room in a wide gesture. "Libraries like these, with more than just one or two shelves and a handful of books, are relatively rare. They only belong to people who have the money to pay for them, like Yu."

"Yu?" Allen inquired, peering at Lavi in curiosity.

"Yes, my master, Yu Kanda. I believe I mentioned him before? Anyway, you're here for him." Here, Lavi seemed hesitant. "You're here, you were created, to be his . . . lover, I suppose."

Anticipating a reaction of a type Allen didn't know, Lavi hastily continued. "You won't have to meet him now, of course. I wasn't expecting you so soon and seeing you, I think you'd do well having a night to yourself. To just . . . wrap your mind around . . . your existence." Lavi gave a light laugh that didn't match his uncomfortable expression.

"You can meet Yu tomorrow." The redhead said thoughtfully, after a moment. "Probably not for long. Yu doesn't like to spend much time with anyone. Right now, let's focus on you. Yu gave me leeway to choose a room for you and so I did. Let's go see it?"

Lavi posed the last statement as a question with a hopeful expression and his right hand extended out for the newly named Allen to take it. He did.

Allen found himself thoroughly surprised by the sheer number of flights of stairs they were forced to ascend from where the library was as they flitted through the mansion. The entire mansion and all of the floors that made it up were dark and shadowy. Maybe that was because of what the inhabitants were: Lavi being a vampire and this Yu Kanda being . . . did demons have a weakness to light?

Allen realized he didn't know and as he opened his mouth to ask, but Lavi unknowingly cut him off. "Here we are." The redhead announced with a small wave of his hand as they came to a door in the exact middle of their current hallway. Lavi gracefully stepped up to the door, opened it, and beckoned Allen to follow him in.

After following the older man inside, Allen found himself staring in awe at his room. It wasn't as big as the library, but the library had been absolutely huge, so that wouldn't have been a realistic expectation, anyway. What the room did have that the library immediately didn't was a large bed with cream colored sheets and marching embroidered pillows.

It looked funny to him, the material, and he distantly heard himself asking about it and being replied to that the material was "silk". He didn't know what that was. The bed had dark red curtains hanging from the top of it and it looked to Allen like the curtains could be closed around the bed.

The rest of the room was large and although sparsely furnished, the room had everything it needed. The remaining furniture consisted of a bedside table (mahogany, Lavi readily interjected with the information), a small two-person couch near the center of the room; although it was a few feet off center, a medium-sized mahogany (?) trunk at the foot of the bed, and a standing wardrobe.

The wardrobe appeared to be the second most eye-catching thing in the room, after the bed. It was pitch black on nearly the whole thing with some matching cream highlights on the accents on its doors.

"I suppose I'll leave you to it, then, if you have no other questions?" He seemed to wait for Allen to nod and after an awkward handful of seconds, Allen did so. "Alright, then. Get some sleep and please wait here for me to come get you later. After I wake up, I'll come get you to have breakfast and hopefully meet you." Lavi smiled winningly and although Allen tried to mirror it, he wasn't sure he succeeded.

Allen laid back on his bed once Lavi was gone. It was soft but stiff in a way that was hard to describe. He supposed, in a way, that it reminded him of the mansion as a whole and of Lavi. Soft but, in a weird way, stiff. Ingratiating, but underlyingly dangerous. Charismatic. But cold.

His blue eyes stared up at the ceiling, wondering what to think. His experiences since waking up had been so strange, completely unknown territory. Moreover, he suspected that he was not reacting to everything as he should be.

Allen thought, first and foremost, that he could be in shock. With everything that's been told to him in the only a handful of hours since he'd woken up, it was very likely. Maybe the feelings that weren't confusion or uncertainty would hit him when he woke, then.

Still, as Allen stayed staring up at the ceiling above him, not feeling the slightest trace of sleepiness tug at him, he couldn't help but think of something else. Another possibility.

Perhaps . . . perhaps the restrained emotions were just how he was now.

Maybe that's what happens when you bring someone back from the dead.