The vampire didn't know what he felt about this. It's not that he was unhappy with the way things were turning out, not at all, but he couldn't help but feel at least a little at a loss seeing it. It was all very jarring to see how things had escalated and then deescalated between Allen and Yu almost without him even noticing!
He'd be exaggerating if he said that he'd been expecting the worst when he created Allen. Sure, he had been more than aware that Yu would be murderously angry if Lavi's creation really didn't agree with him, but that was tempered by Lavi's faith in his own skills.
That and the knowledge that however much he tried to hide it, Yu wanted this to work out as much as he did. Yu didn't seem to want companionship so much, heck he barely spent time with Lavi when they were both awake, but he did seem to truly want this vague something that humans had with each other. And that thing he did seem to truly crave enough that Lavi felt comfortable in assuming that he wouldn't do anything too rash.
Allen did turn out to be a cute little guy too, so he wasn't too worried about it. With an inquisitive and accommodating personality to match his looks, Lavi let his guard down just a little bit. His guard shot right back up again though after Yu and his creation's first meeting. To say they had a rocky first meeting in Lavi's eyes would be….inaccurate. Explosive or corrosive were better terms for it. Their meeting probably could not have gone worse, in all likelihood.
It wasn't so much Yu's actions during their fight that shocked Lavi as it was Allen's. Not that little Allen was more at fault for the fight than Yu. In fact, in Lavi's eyes the fault for their argument rests solely on Yu's shoulders—not that he would tell the older monster this, of course.
He valued his head's position on his neck too much to play with it's safety like that.
But the statement still stood; Yu was older and Allen hadn't even been two days old. Besides, Yu had a penchant for cruelty sometimes that was very much in keeping with what one would expect from a demon, so Lavi wouldn't have even needed to overhear what he did to know who'd started the fight.
Not being shocked by his master's behavior did not mean he wasn't disappointed in the other monster for the way he'd acted at the time. That level of disapproval he wasn't afraid to show to the demon after Allen had fled from the room. After all, even if Yu was very clearly still angry, that didn't make Lavi feel like he needed to defend the little guy that just fled from the room any less.
The reason why he was so surprised about Allen's behavior during the infamous argument was due entirely to its unexpectedness. Sweet little Allen had been far from confrontational up until that point and while maybe some of that could be attributed to his fright and disorientation from being so recently brought back to life while possessing none of his previous memories, that clearly wasn't all of it.
A person's core personality tended to come through in their words and actions at least somewhat, even during a crisis. Allen's general personality did seem to be a little more calm, restrained, and non-confrontational compared to Lavi's more boisterous attitude and Yu's more snappish nature.
Yet from what Lavi had seen, not only was he standing up to Yu during the argument but he also appeared to be getting dangerously close to egging the demon on at some points. It was completely unexpected and he wouldn't see that side of Allen's personality come out again until he and Yu discovered Shogi together. That was certainly a nightmare and a half.
The vampire had ended up spending a good amount of time worrying about the boy's safety in the days following that first encounter.
He didn't really think Kanda was going to fly off the handle again and do something even worse than before, but it wasn't as if extreme violence wasn't already a part of their everyday lives. It could still happen. When Allen had found him later on to tell him that he and Kanda had been out in the forest together and that Allen had originally gone out into the forest alone—he'd not taken in the information . . . calmly.
First worried that his worst fears about Kanda's ire had come true and then becoming terrified by the knowledge that it had only been Yu's attention and actions that had saved Allen's life. Lavi had essentially gotten incredibly close to losing his creation without even being aware of it. Besides being impressed by Kanda's actions, the vampire also found himself feeling incredibly grateful for them.
He'd put so much time and effort into Allen, done so much thinking on how to create him the best way he could do it, that it left something of a connection between them. At least, from Lavi's end. That connection had only become more apparent as the vampire helped his creation take his first metaphorical steps into their world.
It helped that Allen was such a sweet and curious thing, too. Lavi hadn't realized it until recently, but that interest and that internal pull that wanted to know everything about the world was very reminiscent of himself. He didn't know if Allen had been like that in his previous life or if it was something new—something that came from Lavi. He wasn't entirely sure what he wanted the answer to be there, but he was startled when he found himself thinking that he might like it to have come from himself.
All-in-all it wasn't the strongest of connections, Lavi had always had problems making strong connections with others, but he found that he genuinely cared about and was protective of Allen to an extent he hadn't felt in a long time. People like him and Kanda didn't get the chance to be protective of things very often, so he wanted to keep that connection safe, which was why he decided that he would really go and help Allen if he and Yu continued to have problems.
Whether that meant talking Kanda down if his master got bent out of shape again or coaching Allen on things he could do to not piss the other man off so much, he would do it. Buuuuuttttt that didn't turn out to be necessary, because it miraculously turned out that Allen and Yu had worked things out on their own. He wasn't sure how exactly, since he hadn't been privy to their subsequent meetings and their first meeting certainly hadn't set them up for a resolution any time soon.
But they had.
It relieved him greatly, even if it confused him just as much. Seeing those two going at it playing their board game only made it more confusing for the vampire. Lavi would be the first to admit that he hadn't really been paying attention to their interactions together as of late and as such he'd basically walked right into the middle of whatever they were doing together, so it would be no wonder why he was disoriented with their behavior.
Having said that, he'd say that anyone would be disoriented when seeing people who — the last time they checked — were just coming down from being at each other's throats, going at it playing games together and actually joking around with each other. In their own special way at least. The two were practically threatening each other as they traded blows over the board and yet both sets of eyes had more life in them in those moments than the vampire thought he'd ever seen before.
He'd never expected it, honestly. Kanda never got along with anyone and Allen seemed so quiet and cautious on the outset of this. Even before he'd started his task in creating Allen, he had sort of assumed that the most Yu would ever feel towards anything, even a person created to be his lover, would be reluctant tolerance. To see the demon actually appearing for all the world like he was suddenly enjoying the boy's company and seeing it returned was really something.
Actually, the way those two acted when in the middle of a heated battle scared the heck out of him. Lavi had never been the most confrontational of people even when he let his darker side go free, but those two really went at each other.
The two weren't just having a moment, they were having several intense moments and it was all Lavi could do to force himself to intervene after several hours so that they would take a break and Allen could actually eat something. Even when they were not playing their game, Lavi found that the moments when the two experienced emotional closeness only grew in frequency rather than dissolving once the game was over.
The vampire watched from the sidelines while he performed his duties and all-around chilled out as his master and his creation grew ever-closer. It was awe inspiring and perplexing but it was them and Lavi was happy for them. Even while being confused by how this all turned out for the better without him having to mediate, he should have taken the opportunity to fully relax as the storm passed.
But he couldn't.
There was something on his mind, something . . .
It was what he said to his creation a few days back, when Allen had come to him with questions about existence; who he had been before and who he should be in the future.
How was Lavi supposed to answer that? How was he supposed to know who Allen was in his previous life or what it meant for this one? It shouldn't mean anything, he knew that. The past didn't cease to matter here, but it ceased to be of relevance. Survival was what mattered here and although it was far easier to do in this bubble Kanda had created for them, they would still only be bogged down by unwanted and unhelpful memories of a painful past. Allen had to realize that but he didn't have to realize it as harshly as Lavi did.
He had shut the boy down the moment the inquiry was made and he felt bad for it, but it needed to be done. Even if he hadn't completely thought the action through before doing it, he only stood by the decision he made even more as he took the time in the days following to think about it more . . . there were simply no routes from that that would lead to anything good.
Even if his creation had originally come from one of the neighboring towns, that had absolutely nothing to do with where they were now and what Allen's existence was going to look like from here on out. The vampire knew this personally, the only relevance your sordid past has on your current life is the unwelcome remembrances your mind sometimes throws back at you in your weaker moments. Every creature with a brain - regardless of strength - had to put up with this unhappy fact of life.
He dealt with it, Yu did too, and so must Allen. At first, he had thought that Allen's amnesia, while an unexpected annoyance in some areas, would save his creation from the same burden of having to come to terms with the shadows of what so recently was and what would never be again - but that was unfortunately not to be. Allen's mind would torture him with "what ifs" and the like, just as theirs did.
It seemed he did not need to remember what had been to agonize over what had been lost. A cruel trick of fate, it seemed.
Anyhow, all that could not be avoided but his creation could be saved from killing parts of himself slowly as he wasted time trying to fill a void that could not be filled. What good did it do to dredge up the past that way? His own past wasn't of substance to anyone else besides himself and perhaps - maybe - the people he had known before he died.
The thing of course was that even if he did try to reconnect with the people he knew before, who - unless they were affected by the same attack that killed him - were surely still alive, he would not recognize them. Whatever connection he'd had with them was lost. Maybe they still remembered him, but would they recognize him? His creation was not necessarily the same person he'd been before he died, albeit he probably wasn't completely different, either and that was completely ignoring his appearance.
While Allen's brain (and presumably, his soul) came from the same boy as his body . . . the eyes, the legs, the hands were from someone else. To top that off, his hair color had changed sometime during the operation to bring him back to life. Lavi would uncomfortably admit to not knowing everything about how the magic and necromancy worked as well as what all of its effects were, so he couldn't explain why the hair color changed the way it did.
He just knew that at a point immediately following the reintroduction of the soul to the body, the boy's chestnut brown hair paled into a bright, silvery gray and stayed that way. He still had the same face and overall body, but would that be enough for him to be recognized as the same person they tried to bury? The humans would likely realize he was different than when he left, even if Allen seemed not to want to face that.
Ultimately, although he was a bit harsher than he might usually be, he'd done it to protect Allen. Lavi was not used to caring about anyone besides Yu, but he'd take those feelings seriously now that he knew he felt them for Allen. The boy was too young, memories or no. Although . . .
. . . He was man enough to admit that part of it was out of fear for something besides Allen. What he was afraid of though, he couldn't say.
A loud bang from upstairs caught the vampire's attention and his head jerked up to stare at the ceiling in concern, which was awkward to do considering he was already resting on the ceiling. What was that?
He dropped to the floor, slipped out of the kitchen, and up the stairs. He heard the sound of yelling - strangely enough, not sounding angry - and followed it to Yu's floor. He stopped short just as he was turning the corner to the door to Kanda's room. Outside of the demon's bedroom door, which was firmly closed, was Allen. The boy looked distressed, banging on the door and calling out to the demon within, who completely ignored him.
What happened? Lavi thought wildly. And he'd just been thinking about how well things were going too . . .
Lavi stepped forward towards the silver haired boy who had so far failed to notice the vampire sharing the hallway. The redhead wasn't at all sure what he was going to do, but Allen was his responsibility and he was very much used to Kanda's outbursts and temper—he'd figure out something. It was just as he opened his mouth to call out to Allen that the boy opened his mouth and called out something that froze the undead redhead in his tracks.
The green eyed man's breath caught in his throat, the true meaning — the feeling — behind what he'd just said overwhelming him. He suddenly felt uncomfortable, like he was intruding on another moment he wasn't supposed to be a part of and drew back around the corner, further into the shadows of the corridor.
But he didn't leave. Not yet. Intruding or not, he couldn't help but want to see how this played out; to see what came of this.
Like Allen, he didn't want to be locked out, either.
