Allen looked up at the man who had opened the door.
He was a tall man, not as all-around big as Marie had been, but Allen wasn't particularly tall (he noted with irritation) and he had to crane his neck to look up at the man's face. He had tanned skin and bright red hair, much like Lavi's. He wore glasses and upon opening the door, he had a mostly bored and slightly annoyed expression on his face.
He'd been smoking a cigarette, but as his sharp haze fell on Allen and took him in, the man's eyes and mouth popped open in shock and the cigarette fell from his lips to the ground and smoldered there. Allen watched it nervously before wrenching his gaze back up to the man's face. He couldn't say why, but he got the sudden feeling that it was important for him to speak before the man before him snapped out of his shock and Allen heeded that feeling.
"I-It's a pleasure to meet you!" Allen burst out, rather pathetic-sounding, to his own ears. "I was referred to your home by Marie, the man that owns the liquor shop in town?"
When Allen first spoke, the red-haired man jerked like he'd been jerked out of a daydream and he continued to stare at Allen widely as the boy continued, but he looked far more grounded as he did so this time. After Allen finished, a few awkward seconds of silence passed between them as this supposed master took in his appearance, feeling unbearably long to the point where Allen had to suppress the urge to fill the silence with senseless mutterings by sheer force of will.
Eventually, the man cleared his throat, which caused Allen to jerk and gasp, startled as he was. The man noticed the reaction, but if anything, it seemed to comfort him. Maybe it reassured him that Allen had no ill intentions. It didn't seem like the man got visitors often, especially supposed-to-be-dead ones. "Who are you?"
"Um...my name is Allen. Other than that...I was hoping to find out?" It came out more like a question, and an unsure one at that, than he'd intended and he found himself glancing up at the man for reassurance. Why? He couldn't say. "I was sent here because you might know? Ah! As long as you are a Mr. Cross?"
The man gave him another long look but didn't let the silence stretch for as long as last time. "Yeah, Kid, I'm Cross. Why were you sent to me? What am I supposed to know?" Seemingly more at ease now, he bent down to pick up his still smoking cigarette and took another drag from it. "Gotta admit, you do look like someone I used to know, but other than that...you don't seem to know me, either." He observed.
Allen shifted nervously from foot to foot. "Well, no...I don't, but I think I'm supposed to?" Allen debated saying something and then decided he had to. He'd already run away from home, survived a murderous encounter with a witch, slept in an alley, and then stumbled here to this man's house on a vague hope of him having any answers to who Allen used to be or at least who had used to possess the body he was now using. He'd already gone so far from his comfort zone and taken risks to come here. Why let fear make him hold his tongue now? "I think I might be that person that you used to know, the one that I look like." Allen surprised himself with how confident it had come out sounding.
The man - Cross's - eyes narrowed, but thankfully not in aggression. It seemed to Allen that he was thinking intensely about what he'd just said. "And what makes you say that?" His voice had gone lower, but Allen wasn't sure what to make of it. Whether it was a bad thing or just neutral.
At any rate, he hastened to speak. "I don't remember!" ...perhaps a bit too quickly. "I mean-that is to say-I don't have many memories of my past, I-I don't remember anything…" His voice petered out as he lost steam near the end. He thought he sounded like an idiot. Well, since he already sounded that bad, might as well go all the way. "May I please come in?" He asked, his voice like that of a mouse's.
Cross looked at him thoughtfully, eyes still narrowed as he tapped a finger on his cigarette. Just as Allen's nervousness began to rise again, the man gave a grunting sigh and shrugged mock-carelessly. "Suppose you can't stay out here all day." And with that, he moved back a few steps into the house and out of the doorway, making enough room for Allen to pass through.
Unsurprisingly, the home was warmer than outside and Allen became aware then of the slight chill that he'd begun to take while wandering around outside. He wasn't sure if it was the time of year or if their area was just generally chilly. The sun provided enough warmth, but Allen had spent a substantial amount of time outside. Honestly, with the place where he'd slept the previous night, he supposed he was lucky that it wasn't far colder.
Allen turned at the sound of the door closing and the man followed him further into the house in a manner that Allen thought was too casual for the situation, but it wasn't like he had a lot of experience with this kind of thing. Did this guy? Allen shook the ridiculous thought from his head the moment it happened.
"So?" Cross asked, slumping into a chair at a table covered in liquor bottles as soon as he was in.
"So…what?" Allen wondered aloud, shifting from foot to foot.
Cross rolled his eyes. "So you're saying you don't remember anything, but you think you're the person that I used to know. My apprentice." The man declared, more a statement than a question.
"Yes, I think so?" Allen's words, on the other hand, were definitely questioning.
The man sighed dramatically like this was something he was used to. "Well, you definitely look like him. Act like him, too. Problem is, he died. So are you trying to say that you were subjected to a demonic ritual?"
Allen automatically cocked his head to the side in confusion. "Demonic ritual?" What the heck?
Cross gave a much more restrained sigh and put out his cigarette. "A demonic ritual. Allen, was it? Listen, Allen. There's only one way to bring someone back from the dead that doesn't result in a zombie and that's with a demonic ritual. Now, we don't know much about these rituals, since they're a closely guarded secret of demons and other demonic subspecies, but anyone who knows their stuff is familiar with their outcome. Demonic rituals have actually gone down in infamy for their ability to bring people back to life just the way they'd left it. The only part of the ritual we non-demons know about is that the body has to be intact, so not decomposed. The ritual won't restore it to how it was before, in that case." He spoke calmly as if the tribulations between life and death were normal to him.
"Is that so?" Allen asked, his voice sounding weak as a fawn to his ears. This conversation was making him feel vaguely sick, reminding him of what he had learned about his own creation. "You said I act like your apprentice?" He redirected.
Cross seemed to know what he was doing but nodded anyway. "You have just as little of a backbone as he did." Allen's eye ticked in irritation at that. Cross took him in again. "You really do act like him." He said, thoughtfully. "It makes me give credence to the idea that you are him. Demonic rituals are a rarity, but so is seeing someone so much like someone you know is dead."
He seemed to be talking to himself, but then he quickly turned his full attention back to Allen. "I assume you don't have a place to stay tonight?"
Allen thought about a particular mansion in a wood. "No." He whispered.
Cross rolled his shoulders and nodded. "Fine. You can stay here. It'll give me plenty of time today to decide if you're telling the truth or not."
Allen cringed. He suddenly got the feeling that he was in for a long interrogation.
Lavi smiled as he walked down the street, he would be staying at Lenalee's house that night.
She was his best friend in a lot of ways and soon would be his wife, and he her husband. Their love for each other was perhaps not as all-encompassing as many others' was, but it was a romantic relationship, just the same. She and he had a great affection for each other and their love would continue to grow as they aged.
They had a bright future to look forward to together.
His hopes were especially high for the baby Komui was having with his wife soon. Although he was technically going to be the baby's uncle, Lenalee pointed out that he could be more of a brother.
WIth her own brother working so hard and his wife going back to doing the same after the birth, a lot of the care for the new baby would fall to the two of them. At least for a while.
They would take on the roles of responsible older siblings. Lavi found that he liked the sound of that. He'd always wanted to be an older sibling. It would be good practice for him and Lenalee if they ended up having children, themselves. He wasn't going to plan on it yet, they were both young and they hadn't talked about it enough between them, but he couldn't help the swell of happiness he felt at the idea. He looked forward to having a kid even more than she did.
Lavi was running late that day, but the sun was only just going down. It was too early for the usual monster attacks, so he hadn't been worried…he should have been.
Lavi didn't realize he was being followed, stalked until he was bowled over from behind and his face was crushed into the dirt. The attack was quick but vicious. Someone pinned him down on the ground with the force of a building and ignoring Lavi's curses and threats, lent down and bit him. It was only then, as Lavi screamed from the feeling of nearly having his throat ripped out, that he realized what this was.
A vampire.
He blacked out after that and woke up, he supposed, as others had done before. Inside his own coffin.
With his new strength, it didn't take long for him to rip the cover of his coffin apart. It took rather a time longer for him to dig his way out of the dirt and if breathing had been necessary, he likely would have suffocated before he made it out. It was nighttime when he emerged.
He'd done his screaming and panicking and even as he made it above ground, he was deeply frightened. He went to the only place he thought of as home, back to Lenalee and her brother.
When he got to their home, he was about to knock on the door, but his hand stopped just before he did, his attention arrested by the sight of Komui and Lenalee through a window. Lenalee was sobbing into her hands and Komui was sitting next to her, comforting her with his arms around his sister. And it was at exactly that moment that Lavi viscerally realized the truth that he'd known but hadn't confronted until then.
He was dead.
He'd known it when he was attacked and he couldn't get free. He'd known it when he woke up in a coffin and panicked. He'd known it when he realized he wasn't breathing…he'd known, but as he saw his loved ones presumably in mourning for him, he realized what that meant. He was a vampire, it was the only thing he could be. A monster. The very thing that most humans live in fear of and all other humans actively hunt.
He could knock on the door, but what then? Maybe Lenalee and Komui would accept him back, accept what he had become, but he would have to live in hiding of the village that knew he was dead. He couldn't move to another town, they would easily become suspicious of the fact that he couldn't be out in the sunlight. He would be putting Lenalee and Komui in danger too if that happened.
And…he didn't think he could have children. Vampires had been noted to act like humans, but from his research, they had never been known to procreate even once. As well, vampires lived for centuries and humans didn't. He couldn't have a life with Lenalee anymore, that had been taken from him, but she could still have a life if he left now. So he did. He took one step back from the door, then another, and before long he picked up speed and broke into a run that far surpassed anything he had been capable of before.
Bizarrely, he found himself going back to his gravesite as if he expected to find some kind of welcome there. He didn't find welcome, but he did find something else that he greeted with mixed feelings. In the wreckage of the smashed lid of his coffin, Lavi saw a twisted rose stalk. Lavi recognized them as the rare white roses that Lenalee had planted in her garden. Komui had gotten it for her from far away when he traveled for work.
…there was a legend in their village. It was employed by a deceased person's loved ones at rare times when it was feared that the person might become a vampire. Most of the townspeople believed - it seems falsely - that a rose stalk laid on a vampire's grave would trap it inside. According to them, the thorny stem would bind the vampire and the rose petals would put them to sleep.
Lavi held the crumbled rose in his hand, brushing his thumb against the smashed petals. Pure superstition, he reminded himself. It didn't matter how much he'd wished it had worked, how fervently he hadn't wanted to come back. Eventually though, after hours had passed, the rose dropped from his fingers to the ground, and he took up in the direction away from town, deathly silent. He left his town that night…
He never went back. He never said goodbye. But he so wanted to.
And he never stopped wanting a child.
How Allen got through that outright interrogation was a small mystery to him, but finally, he was able to sit down in the living room and relax with the man. The man who might have been his master was an absolute monster and he'd basically wanted to know everything and - especially annoying - there were several things he'd asked about multiple times. The man wouldn't leave anything alone until he was satisfied with what Allen had told him, even when Allen had no information to give.
It felt like it took hours and when Cross had moved to the living room to relax, it became very clear that they had nothing to talk about. His master seemed comfortable with it or at least was good at hiding any discomfort he felt, Allen couldn't tell which one it was. More than that, he seemed comfortable with the conclusion that Allen wasn't a threat and that he may or may not be his former pupil. The red-haired man leaned back with a bottle of alcohol and a book and just looked like a picture of half-drunken relaxation.
Allen was sure that he looked profoundly uncomfortable sitting where he was, stone still and his back far too straight. His possible master might have been comfortable, but Allen was more than aware that he was in a strange place with a complete stranger and only marginally closer to understanding where he came from than before. He clearly looked so pathetic that the man was forced to take pity on him only a few minutes in.
"Here," Cross said, gruffly. He quickly reached up to the bookshelf next to him and grabbed another book off of it and tossed it at Allen. Startling, both of his hands shot up and clumsily caught the book between them. "It's one of my journals. Check it out and see if it jogs any memories." Cross informed him before carelessly going back to his own reading. Allen watched him quietly for a few seconds before looking down at what he held in his hands.
It certainly looked like the journal he said it was, with a cover made out of a flimsy leather and tied closed by what looked like a leather cord. It had nothing on the front. Allen unwound the thing carefully and then slid the cover open. The paper was rougher, grainier than anything Allen had seen back…back home.
Even though he hadn't managed to read even a fraction of the books in that library, all of the ones he had read had been made to a much higher quality, with pages that were smooth to the touch and often a creamy white color instead of the slightly brown tinge these pages had. The edges of the pages had also been smooth, unlike this journal whose pages looked more like their edges had been ripped from each other. Obviously, the ones that hadn't been personal journals of what appeared to be researchers (Allen shuddered at the thought of how Lavi might have gotten those) had all been printed instead of handwritten. Another sign of the luxury items that Kanda and Lavi had amassed, Allen decided.
He flipped the journal open and began to read the very first page. It spoke…of a boy called Red.
A/N: So there was a little bit of Lavi's past in there. We'll get on to more Lavi in the next chapter. I'm hoping to also get onto what Kanda (and Lavi) have been doing.
