A/N: A little late, but to compensate, a little longer. :3 This chapter is dedicated to Otter-chan, who was looking forward to this for quite sometime. xD Enjoy.
oxo
--Dead Like Us--
Chapter Six:
Of Windows ad Light Shows
oxoxoxoxo
"Hey...hey, kiddo..."
Allen grumbled in protest as a hand on his shoulder shook him out of his sleepy stupor. It seemed to Allen that sleep had only seized him barely five minutes ago-- which held some truth in it. Didn't Lavi know that five minutes of sleep just wasn't enough? Even for the undead?
Allen shrugged the hand off. "Just...five...more hours..." he mumbled into the couch, his voice thick with sleep, and flopped over onto his side.
Lavi laughed from somewhere above him. "No way, Beansprout." Allen felt the covers snatched off of his couch-bed. "Rise and shine."
Couches, as Allen discovered that morning, were not kind to undead reapers. For as Allen refused sleepily to either rise or shine, his skull made the nicest ker-thumping noise against the accursed furniture as Lavi shoved him off.
"Ow!" Allen yelped and glared upward accusingly at the grinning perpetrator, the golden golem Timcanpy flapping happily above his head. "What was that for?!"
"You wouldn't get up when I used conventional means," shrugged Lavi as Tim settled himself on Allen's white hair.
"Doesn't mean you had to go and push me off..."grumbled the reaper as he got himself up off of the floor and onto his feet.
Lavi laughed, leaning back on the balls of his feet. "It's nine. I had to get you up sometime."
"Nine?!"
"Yeah," said Lavi, sticking his hands inside his pockets and giving a little sigh. His eye patch and headband were still present. "And don't forget that we have a job to do."
"Oh..." Allen's face fell. "Right."
Lavi gave him a look, and Allen sensed something like pity in his green gaze. But it didn't last, and Lavi mussed up Allen's white hair to fill the silence. "C'mon Beansprout," he said. "We're meeting Lenalee at the Kitchen in fifteen."
-oxoxoxoxo-
Once again, Allen stepped into the little café known humbly as the Komfy Kichen, and was upon entrance assaulted with the smell of burnt pancake batter and sizzling ham.
There, at the booth that the reapers had sat in the day before-- and, come to think of it, the day Allen had died, too-- sat Lenalee Lee, alone, pouring over a book in her lap. She looked up from her novel as the chime on the door announced her two friends' arrival.
"Do you guys reserve this seat or something?" Allen asked as he slipped into the seat across from Lenalee.
"It's pretty much an unsaid rule here in the Kitchen," Lenalee answered, smiling, only half-joking.
Lavi looked around, sliding into the red plastic-covered seat next to Allen. "Hey, where's the chief?"
"Brother had some things to do today," said the girl. "He said for us to get on without him."
"Dang. I was gonna pester 'em for a ride out there..." Lavi sighed, leaning back.
"What'd it say, Lavi?" Asked Lenalee, closing up her book and stowing it away.
"What?" He blinked.
"The post-it?" Lenalee raised an eyebrow.
"Oh. That. Right," Lavi grinned sheepishly. "Let's see here... It was 421 Brokebrook Drive. But Lenalee, that's all the way out in Campbell!"
"What time did it say?"
"Seven forty-two P.M, but really, can't I just--"
Lenalee cut off Lavi with a small sigh. "I guess we walk."
"Walk?" Lavi whined, attracting some sideways glances from other patrons. "But I don't wanna walk! It'll take all day on foot! We could-- I could, you know--"
"No, Lavi. You are not stealing anything," Lenalee said firmly, though there was some amusement in her voice.
"Whaaaaat? Lenalee, I'm surprised at you. I would never. I am offended."
Allen, who had been relatively silent during this exchange, was taken aback by the everyday attitude the two reapers had. Did they do this everyday? Figure out how to get from deathbed to deathbed?
"We have time to walk, Lavi. And besides, exorcise is good for you. You don't mind, do you, Allen?" The pig-tailed girl asked.
Allen started. "H-huh? Oh. No, not at all."
Lavi sighed and leaned back into the booth. "Off today, then, Lenalee?"
She nodded. "I changed shifts with someone."
"Oh, Lenalee, where do you work?" Allen perked up a bit, curious. Someone had ordered some bacon, and the smell was wonderful, and it woke the boy up a little, like food always did.
Lenalee took a tentative sip of her tea. "The, uh, the hospital."
"Really?" Allen inquired, his eyes full of curiosity. He had never met someone so important. "Are you a doctor?"
"N-no, nothing that important," Lenalee smiled humbly back, though there was a wistfulness about it. "Just...desk work, you know?"
"But one day..." Lavi commented, and then heaved a sigh. "One sec."
He turned around in the booth and, leaning over into the next seat, hovered above the couple dining there. "Could I borrow your potatoes?" He asked, pointing towards the couple's half-eaten hash browns, and, without waiting for an answer, he snatched up the fiesta-ware plates from the table. "Thank you."
The hash browns were unceremoniously dumped into Lavi's shirt pocket as Allen stared agape at him, disgusted.
"Lavi...that was disgusting. That's an awful habit; stealing from other people's plates-- I'm sorry! He just doesn't know..." Lenalee called to the appalled customers in the next booth. The man's mouth hung open and his date had frozen as she reached for her glass of water.
"Hey, if I'm gonna walk thirty miles to Campbell-nowhere, I need my nourishment," Lavi responded stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest, fishing more hash browns out of his pocket and stuffing them into his mouth.
"That's unsanitary..." Allen said, his mouth slack and his eye twitching.
-oxoxoxoxo-
"So, how far is Campbell from here, exactly?" Allen asked, picking up his pace to catch up with his two fellow undead reapers on the busy street.
Ten minutes out of the Komfy Kitchen café and onto the street found the company a total of five blocks from where they started off. The sky was a clear-- a cloudy kind of mood, like it was often in the city. People bustled in and out of shops, to work, and to other activities. And Lavi had already gone through half of his potatoes.
"Well...it's up past North Street and the hospital," Lavi answered through another mouthful. "By foot, I'd say it'll take at least...four hours."
"Four hours?"
"It's not that bad, Allen, I promise," said Lenalee over her shoulder to the white-haired boy. "We can take our time-- Lavi, the light's red!"
Lavi paused in mid-step, one foot in the crosswalk of the car-busy street, horns honking, and shrugged an innocent "whaaat?" motion.
"Really, one day, you're going to kill yourself..." Lenalee sighed.
The morning progressed uneventfully-- or, at least, as uneventful as a trio of grim reapers can travel.
There was a car accident about an hour down the road, backing up all traffic-- Lavi chuckled as they past and elbowed Allen in the ribs, his only emerald eye glinting, and whispered, "Looks like Yu will be busy."
Allen asked, "Why?" and Lavi gave a grin.
"A reaper's gotta do his job," he told him.
Lenalee ducked into a thrift shop for about ten minutes, leaving Lavi to harass Allen, and when she came out she found Allen's hair to be unpleasantly ruffled from what Lavi declared was a rite of passage-- aka: ten minutes of noogies.
"What did you buy, Lenalee?" Allen asked, smoothing down his hair as Lavi chuckled softly beside him. She smiled and held up a used pair of slightly rusty ice skates. "What are those for?"
"Oh, just a sort of hobby, I guess," she smiled back.
At the corner of first and Lynburry, the company about half way on their journey, and his potatoes long gone, Lavi suggested that they stop for ice cream.
"What? But--" Allen protested, being dragged into the nearest ice cream parlor.
"C'mon, Beansprout! It's still a long haul there!"
Allen ended up getting vanilla, which, after another ten minutes of choosing his own flavor, Lavi announced was, "Terribly boring. Fifty-two flavors and that's what you get?" as he took a taste of his own repulsive sour orange licorice ripple, and Lenalee shook her head at the two boys over her mint chocolate chunk.
Lavi, Allen mused, was sometimes altogether too bright for him; his smiles shone with constant optimism, he was personable by nature, and Allen was naturally drawn to him as a person. It was easy to like Lavi, but Allen couldn't shake the feeling that there was something that wasn't sincere about him.
He shrugged it off and instead laughed as Lavi dropped his ice cream on the ground, and then proceeded to whine about it.
It was late when they hit the main road from the city.
Lavi looked around at the intersection, slightly confused. "This...isn't right..."
"Oh, please don't tell me that we're lost..." Allen groaned. A reaper without lunch and little else besides an ice cream cone was not a happy one. Even one without Allen's enormous appetite.
"No," said Lenalee. "Look, over there. That's Campbell, isn't it?"
The space she pointed to was a mass of houses, block upon block upon block. Lavi whistled. "Yep, that's Campbell. Pure suburbia."
The area consisted of houses, and not much else-- each house was only almost-identical to its neighbor. Trees or scrub or a lawn separated the houses from one another.
Once inside the development, it took another hour or two to locate Brokebrook Drive, mainly because Lavi couldn't walk in a straight line, and kept taking detours and "shortcuts". (Which actually turned out to be more like long cuts.)
Finally the trio found themselves at the doorstep of 421 Brokebrook Drive, out of breath only because Lavi decided to find another street with only twenty minutes left and they had to run around to find the correct street.
"What time is it?" Lenalee asked, looking to the darkening sky.
Allen checked his watch, hunched over and out of breath, his hands on his knees for support. "Seven...forty-six, it says."
"Bingo! Right on time," laughed Lavi, catching his breath. He stood upright, tugging his clothes back into a presentable form. "Ready for lesson number two, Beansprout?"
Allen just stood at a loss until Lavi pushed the doorbell.
"Lavi, what are you--" Allen hissed in a slight panic.
"Just watch," he responded.
The doorbell echoed throughout the house, and from inside came the call of "Just a minute!" and clunking steps. More clunking was heard before the door opened to reveal a very flustered middle-age man.
For a second he looked confused, looking around at the trio of grim reapers. He was shorter than all of them. "Can I help you?"
"Ah, yes," Lavi spoke, assuming a rather business-like manner. "An anonymous source has been complaining about a strange smell emanating from your household. You wouldn't mind us investigating a little, would you?"
"Oh, n-no, of course not!" The little man sputtered, opening his door wider to accept them inside. "I have nothing to hide--nothing at all."
"Thank you," Lavi said politely, and entered the man's home, and throwing a furtive one-eyed wink back at Allen as he followed.
The man started to babble as he accepted them into his house. "Well, I was just cleaning out the attic-- silly, I know-- but my wife pestered me and pestered me to do it, and now on my only day off in four months, she tells me, 'Wilbur, you clean out that attic today, or else so help me...' and when she gets angry, I don't want to find out what so help me is. So I start to clean the attic-- boxes, and boxes..."
Allen looked around the house, the man leading them from the front door, Lavi nodding every so often to show he was listening, even though he was clearly not.
The house wasn't grand, by any means, but it was decorated lavishly with portraits every few meters, a grandfather clock, and ornate plates and other glass collections adorned the walls. Every inch of the house was a white-washed hue, or a pale tan.
"...and I found something up there, though I won't mention it to you, Sir, but it certainly smelled-- do you suppose that's what it was?"
"Yes, I'm sure that's what it was, Mr. Branshed," Lavi said. Allen vaguely wondered where he had heard his name, then remembered the post-its and the names written on them. "There seems to be nothing out of order here."
"Ah, yes, thank you Sir, thank you..." the man rubbed his hands together nervously. "Would you enjoy some tea, then, company?"
Lavi looked to the other two. "I think we can do that, Mr. Branshed," And he placed a hand on Wilbur's shoulder.
That sealed the deal. Allen could see the faint imprint of Lavi's hand as he moved it away. Mr. Wilbur Branshed was marked.
"Very well, very well, I'll go put on some water...Oh! Excuse me, I left a box on the stair-- please, sit down, sit down..." His stubby little legs carried him up the tan staircase, and he disappeared.
Lavi checked the grandfather clock sitting in the corner of the room. "Seven fifty-one," he announced. "One minute."
They heard the grunt of Wilbur Branshed hefting the box into the air. "Coming, Sirs and Ma'am, coming..." he said, his voice tried, and they heard him thump every step. "If you could, put on the tea, then-- Oof!"
Mr. Wilbur Branshed slipped on the stairs, tumbling down, down, his box thumping down with him. He hit the turn in the stair, slamming up against a cabinet sitting there-- no doubt placed there by his loving wife-- and the box fell on top of him, too.
"I'm...alright..." Came the groan of Mr. Branshed. "No need to-- ah--"
The cabinet-- filled with priceless china plates-- teetered, and as Mr. Wilbur Branshed exhaled his surprised last breath, the cabinet crashed down upon him.
Wilbur Branshed did not stir again.
"Well...that was quite dramatic," said Lavi, tearing his eyes away from the grandfather clock, which now read seven fifty-two.
Allen stood slack-jawed for a moment, and then raced to the staircase, sliding a little on the rug. Remnants of dishes lay everywhere, things from the box he carried down lay scattered, and there lay Wilbur in the middle; crushed underneath the weight of the china cabinet.
"Oh dear...Oh dear, oh dear," Mr. Branshed's voice came from next to Allen, wispy and thin. The white-haired reaper jumped at his voice, looking startled at the appearance of the ghost of the deceased Wilbur. The ghost dabbed at his forehead with a see-through cloth. "The missus will be ever-so-angry..."
"I think I'll go put on that tea now, if you don't mind," said Lenalee, and made her way to the linoleum-plastered kitchen.
-oxoxoxoxo-
"Where did you get this, Mr. Branshed?" Lenalee asked, taking a sip of the hot liquid in her off-white coffee mug. "It's really quite delicious."
"Oh..." said the ghost of timid Wilbur, sitting in a chair at the old wooden table, his nebulous form jittering nervously. "My...my wife, you know...catalogues she loves so."
Lenalee smiled kindly. "She must be...a very nice person."
"Y-yes..." Wilbur stuttered, and the girl took another sip.
Allen sat next to the small ghost at the table, feeling out of place, his tea steaming and untouched before him in a pale purple cup. The crunching of porcelain and glass from around the corner announced Lavi's attempts to scavenge the valuable china from the wreckage on the staircase, picking around splintered wood and the body of a middle-aged man.
"Look! I found one whole-- I can make a pretty penny off this...Wilbur-- buddy-- mind if I take this off your hands?" Lavi asked, poking his head into the kitchen, holding up a relatively unmarred china plate.
"N-no...not at all..." answered the ghost distractedly.
"Great," Lavi grinned, slipping back.
"P-please sirs, ma'am-- aren't I supposed to be ascending? M-moving on?" the ghost asked, leaning anxiously forward.
Lenalee took a satisfying sip of her tea, and in that moment, Allen was reminded strongly of her brother and his coffee. "Yes, ah..." She said, setting her cup down. "We have to let your soul...settle a little first."
"What do you mean?" Asked Allen, beating Wilbur to the punch. He cupped his mug in his hands, letting the heat emanate into them, but still didn't take a sip.
"Well...Death needs a little time to sort itself out. And we, in the meantime, give the soul time to accept and to...move on. Settle," she answered.
The other reaper dropped his gaze. "Oh."
Allen was in a moral crossroads, and Allen, being a boy driven by and held firmly to his morals and beliefs, found that the guilt associated with this job-- as Lavi so tactfully put it-- caused him much turmoil.
It was beginning to feel a lot like he was an accomplice to murder; breaking and entering, lying, and then doing nothing as a man died-- It seemed like grim reapers had more in common with hit men than the Grim Reaper himself.
Allen sighed.
The company remained in silence a little longer, Lavi's occasional noises of victory and sorrow the only sounds in the house as he continued to sort through china and remnants of attic boxes.
Until the nebulous ghost spoke again. "How long does this...moving on take?"
"If you've no regrets...then it should be soon," Lenalee told him, giving the dead man a small smile.
The grandfather clock boomed eight in the corner, and the house suddenly darkened.
A silvery light floated into existence, growing in intensity, dancing for a moment in front of Wilbur Branshed, and then exploding into shards of light. Allen jerked his head upwards and leapt out of his chair, startled by the sudden darkness, but even more so at the sudden light.
The ghost's beady eyes widened in surprise, but his feet made no sound as he leapt out of his chair, and he stared into the vast brightness that was growing, shaping itself into something else.
"Could it be...?" Wilbur breathed a non-existent breath.
"Wha-what is that!?" Allen hissed, almost a yell, staring into the lightshow.
"His lights," answered Lenalee, calm, smiling at Wilbur. She hadn't so much as batted an eyelash.
Mr. Wilbur Branshed turned to the undead company, his pale eyes swimming with ghostly tears. "It's the most...beautiful thing...I've ever seen."
The shining silvery light had reshaped itself into a gorge, a mighty drop, a sheer cliff-- right there in the kitchen. Waves beat down rocks at the bottom of the light-cliff, crashing and roaring hungrily.
Allen gaped, and Lenalee smiled widely. "We aim to please."
"Do I...just go, then?" Asked the man, his eyes alight with an eagerness and life he hadn't known for years.
Lenalee nodded, and Lavi poked around the corner again, leaning against the door frame. "Good luck on the other side, Wilbur. You wouldn't mind me...borrowing some things in the Land of the Living, would you? Material possessions and all that jazz..."
"Oh no...take whatever you like!" The ghost said back, his silvery pale form and the silver glowing of the cliffs fading together.
Lenalee waved, and Lavi gave a thankful nod, and Wilbur Branshed jumped into the silvery lights without a second thought, right off the ethereal cliffs, and he vanished into a silver mist.
Almost as quickly as it had come, the lights came together again, ghost and cliffs gone now, and popped out of existence.
"Wha...what just happened?" Whispered Allen, almost afraid to speak, finding himself braced against the wall.
"I told you; those were his lights," Lenalee said, standing up and putting her now-empty mug in the sink, running water into it. "To take him to where he's going."
"Where...where's that, exactly?" Asked Allen. Curious, he even dared, "Heaven?"
"Maybe."
"Shangri-La. Nirvana. Heaven. The Great Beyond-- whatever you what to call it," said Lavi from the doorway, still leaning against it. "It's the same thing. You're dead."
Allen gave a little nervous laugh. "Is everyone's lights like that?"
"Oh no..." answered Lenalee with a laugh. "Some are much brighter. More festive. Everyone's is different-- Death comes to you in the form of something familiar."
"Come along now, little lost lamb," Lavi chuckled at Allen's puzzled face. "It's time to collect our salary."
-oxoxoxoxo-
Night had fallen as the reapers found themselves in the small dusty attic, the oldest rummaging through various cardboard storage boxes and the youngest standing awkwardly near the attic's window, feeling rather out of place. Street lights illuminated the urban streets outside, and the rush of cars and traffic could be heard somewhere off in the distance. People in their own cars rumbled by leisurely, finding their way back home.
"How much would you think I could make off of this, Beansprout?" Asked Lavi, pulling up a particularly dusty picture from the large box. He wiped off the grimy glass with an equally grimy sleeve and held it up for the other boy to assess. It depicted a rather pudgy old lady in a dress, perched on a regal-looking chair.
"I don't know, Lavi..." snapped Allen somewhat wearily, preoccupied with the window.
The redhead grumbled and slid the picture back into the box, obviously hoping for priceless pieces of art or something of the like. Shuffling ensued as he sifted through the box's contents.
Lenalee shuffled around the attic, her footsteps muffled by the thin layer of dust. She stopped. "Do you guys...hear something?"
"Nope," Lavi answered, preoccupied, moving onto another box.
The girl drifted towards the window and Allen, listening intently. "Well...listen," she persisted.
Allen complied, straining his ears to hear this unknown noise, trying to get off the subject of Lavi's obvious lack morals.
"You're right," the boy said after a moment. Carried by the breeze came a howling whining sound, growing louder every passing second. "What do you suppose it is--?"
But by this time, the noise had grown very loud now, and very close, and there came the screeching halt of tires, and the slamming of car doors, and before Allen could say it out loud, a speakerphone boomed from somewhere in the front of the house.
Lavi froze, crouched on the ground.
"This is the police. Come out with your hands up-- we have you surrounded."
The photo held loosely in Lavi's hands slipped, much like Allen's heart into his stomach, and it crashed onto the dusty floor. The redhead cursed and stood up quickly, the sirens of the police cars in full howl now.
"Someone must've seen us go in...Heard the crash..." Lenalee whispered, not daring to speak any louder.
Allen's heart was beating about a mile a minute. He had never had an encounter with the police before-- and now, after he died, this was going to be it? Would they shoot? Would they arrest him? "Wha--what do we do? Oh, God...I can't go to jail...I can't! I'll die!" Allen panicked, not bothering to keep his voice down. (He also conveniently forgot that he was already dead.)
Lavi was equally hysterical. "I can't go to jail-- I've done my time! I promise! If I get caught, they'll pin all of those little borrowings on me-- I'll spend my life in there! Forever! I can't! I won't! I refuse! Oh, bugger--" Lavi looked around the small little attic, his judgment skewed by panic and hysteria. "Oh, bloody hell..." Someone was beating at the front door.
Allen, lost in his own scenario, let his mind race. The police would arrest him, take him in, separate him from the others, for sure, they'll question one Allen Walker and find that he had died three days before, and then they'd take him in and maybe experiment on him, find out why he was still flesh-and-blood-and-warm, and even he didn't know the answer to that...Or maybe they'd just throw him in some jail cell until he rotted for real...And maybe there'd be a trial and...
A crash startled the white-haired grim reaper, his heart jumping back into his chest, adrenaline fueling his body on impulses. He whipped around.
Lavi was gone. The window was shattered.
"Lavi?!" Allen yelled.
Lenalee rushed over to look below, leaning carefully out the broken window.
"Oh God, Lavi...not the window..." Lenalee hissed exasperatedly, and Allen ran over to the window, too, skidding a little on the glass debris.
His legs shook. Out the window, two stories down, lay the body of Lavi in the neighbor's garden, unmoving. "Oh my God..."
"C'mon-- we have to hurry," Lenalee said, tugging on the reaper as he stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed, completely in shock. "There's a backdoor."
Lavi had jumped out the window to his death, and Lenalee didn't even blink. Allen sputtered incoherently, and the girl pulled him down the stairs, his feet having trouble finding the steps as he stumbled down them. In spite of the shock, Allen acknowledged that Lenalee was perhaps the fastest runner he had ever encountered.
They found their way outside, somehow, racing through the backdoor, slamming it shut behind them, the police still shouting at the front. They'd open the door sooner or later, and find the dead body, and...
Allen breathed heavily, and Lenalee hopped a low fence, into the neighbor's yard, where Lavi's body lay, Allen huffing after her.
His breath soon caught in his throat.
Lavi was skewered. On the picket fence. Suspended three feet off the ground.
Allen felt ill.
"Oh...God..." he stumbled over to his friend, his legs like jelly. "L-Lavi..."
The redhead groaned, and his eyes flittered open. "Go on...without me, Beansprout..." He went limp.
"L-Lavi..." Allen felt tears sting his eyes, and he crept closer. The other boy did not move.
"Oh-- c'mon," Lenalee scolded, rolling her eyes. "Stop messing around. We're still in trouble here, and I have you know that your thoughtless actions might've cost us our clean getaway. Get up."
For a moment, Lavi made no movement, and Allen was about to yell a teary defense for his dead friend, but then the redhead cracked open his one green eye slyly.
"...You're a serious killjoy, Lenalee," he said, and forced himself up, sliding the picket fence shish kabob out of his stomach. "Help me out, at least?"
Allen gaped, and Lenalee sighed again, giving her hand to Lavi as he helped himself off the picket fence. "But...but..." Allen stuttered, falling to his knees.
Lavi hopped down, a hole in his stomach through with a piece of white-painted wood still hanging there, his shirt stained with blood. "Bugger. You know, I rather liked this shirt..." The oldest reaper stopped, and went rigid. "One second." He bent over and coughed, his hand coming away with something shining and silvery. "Ah, man...not right..." He shook his hand, and the bent nails fell to the ground.
"You...you..." Allen's faced shone white in the moonlight. He twitched.
"It's okay, Beansprout," Lavi laughed. "The undead can't die again, you know. Lenalee..." he whined, turning to the girl, who was looking up the police's location, their sirens and lights still going, the night ablaze.
"What?" She hissed.
"It's not coming ouuuut..." He whined again, tugging on the mother-of-all-splinters that skewered him through the stomach.
Lenalee made a face, and walked over to help him. "Really, Lavi, one day you're actually going to learn something about the consequences of your actions and you'll be so stunned..."
There was a thump, and both Lenalee and Lavi looked over curiously at the source of the noise.
Allen Walker's face met mister ground as he fainted, and the last thing he saw was two vaguely reaper-shaped figures rush over to him, the red and blue sirens still howling away.
--End. Six.--