The thing about resurrection is that it sounds really, really good at face value.

Just imagine.

Being able to physically exist and actually live again after being pronounced biologically dead. Getting that lucky second shot at life and appreciating so many more things the second time around. Standing up again older and wiser and learning from your mistakes so you don't screw it all up again. All that good stuff.

Bookman had not been so relenting. "It's impure," he says bluntly. "What is lost should never be returned. Keep note – even in ancient Greece religion, resurrection as deities was possible, but only for select individuals. The rest of the people were subjected to the normal death. The resurrection of Christ helped foster the idea of redemption – spiritual resurrection, so to speak – but the resurrection of the common dead is more difficult to deal with."

Lavi is itching. It's near summer now, and the mosquitoes are more enthused than ever. "Okay."

"Even one of the more popular theories follows that once death approaches, soul and body are separated as they leave this world. They aren't meant to be reunited again. Socrates."

Lavi lazily swats at another mosquito and nods. He gets that.

"But in this world, Deak," Bookman continues, "resurrection is something that happens."

Bookman's tone speaks for itself.

"Uh, what do you mean by that, gramps?"

Light glances off Bookman's eyes. "I'm going to tell you about the apostles of Noah."

Seven thousand years ago, there already had been the word. There had already been heaven, earth, and light. There already had been sky and land and sea, and stars and creatures, too. There had been mankind, and desire, and jealousy, and punishment. There had been succession and there too had been the birth of Noah.

Bookman looks up next. "Lavi, what does Genesis 6 say? Summarize it."

Lavi has this one down easy. "Ah well, basically... God saw that humans weren't as, well, good, so to speak, as he thought they were and then resolved to wipe out the whole race, right?"

"Yes," Bookman concedes. "And what happened after, after God had confided in Noah about his worries?"

"The Great Flood that destroyed everything." He thinks back a bit. "And then Noah and his family and his two sets of animals restarted the strain of life."

Bookman neatly folds his hands together. "How much faith do you put in the Bible?"

A slight pause. Lavi blinks. "Um."

"Because this is where we'll diverge from the story you know."

Noah had walked faithfully with God, and because of Noah, all life repopulated. So Noah too had apostles, says Bookman. Fourteen of them.

This time, Bookman gets straight to the point. "You understand that, logically, all life that exists now is descended from Noah? Consequently, if we look at it that way, all life now shares Noah's genes."

Lavi nods. It makes enough sense, he supposes.

"But instead of a flood, the first apostle of Noah actually fought something called Innocence."

"Innocence?"

There is a faint glimmer in Bookman's eyes. Faint, but still there. Lavi knows this look.

"A gift from God," Bookman says.

Lavi's unsure with how he's supposed to deal with this new bit of knowledge or with that knowing, expectant look in Bookman's face. "What does it do?" He finally asks. "Or what is it? This 'Innocence' thing, I mean."

Bookman calmly unfolds his hands. Folds them again. "People who are compatible with God's gift are called Exorcists. Exorcists use Innocence," Bookman pauses again, "to purify 'akuma'."

Demons.

A pause.

"You actually expect me to believe that there are demons?" He groans. "Are you starting to get touched in the head or something?"

Bookman slams a kick over Lavi's head without even skipping a beat. "Don't sound so happy about something like that," he sniffs primly before calming continuing the previous conversation. His tone turns serious again. "Suppose they're real then. Do you know how these demons are made?"

Lavi rubs at the spot sorely. "Wait, they're made?"

"It's what the first apostle of Noah does."

Lavi looks up.

Bookman picks up the copy of the Old Testament lying on the table between them. "Deak, after people die, what do their loved ones mourn for?"

It's unusual for Bookman to be this indirect, especially throughout an entire lesson. Lavi treads cautiously. He's beginning to see the pieces fall together, but he never imagined it to break apart in the same instant. "Resurrection."

"And what did I just say about resurrection?"

The sinking feeling is closing in now. "That it's impure, but... it's something that happens in this world."

Bookman is grim. "Deak," he says, "I'm going to tell you something you're not going to want to hear."

Blinks slow.

"The first apostle of Noah. We'll refer to him as the 'Millennium Earl'. When the Earl sees people mourning over the deaths of loved ones, he comes down and solicits them with an offer they can't refuse."

Lavi has a pretty good idea of where this is going now. He presses a hand at his temples. It's drowning in slow motion now, and there's no going back.

Bookman is calm, and precise, too. He continues on, "He shows them a framework of a special skeleton, tells them that all that's needed for revival is the dead soul, and coaxes them to cry out their beloved's name to draw out the soul."

"And wait, lemme guess," Lavi finishes, his eyes fixed dry on the Bible in Bookman's hand, "and when they call out the names of the ones they want to resurrect, an 'akuma' is born instead. A demon. Right?"

Bookman pauses only shortly. "Yes."

"You don't have to say anymore."

Elaine pauses. "What do you mean by 'man-made demons'?"

He goes on another tangent, kind of. All his thoughts are muddled and he can't really think straight right now, and that was really just too fucked-up to hear. Maybe it had been a bad idea to just leave in the middle of a conversation like that, but it's already too late to be thinking stuff like that. A lot of stuff still doesn't match up, actually. He'll need to find Bookman again later, he supposes bitterly. "So apparently, you can even make stuff like that nowadays. Damn."

She considers him for a while. "You're not making sense at all."

He scratches at the back of his head. "Don't I know it."

Concern. "No, seriously. Are you okay? You're... you're shaking."

"What makes people believe so much?"

She ignores him. "Hey, what do you mean by 'man-made demons'? What's bothering you? Or well, what happened?"

"You said it was 'cause God's listening, right? But what if He's not? What if He's not listening, not ever? What if there are a lot of prayers He never gets to and suffering goes around anyway?"

A long pause. "What do you mean?"

He presses a hand to his cheek. "Ah, shit," Lavi says, "that was pretty out of line. Sorry."

"It's fine. But what happened?"

"I wouldn't worry about it." He looks up and his mouth tips up in a half-assed attempt at a smile. "Wanna hear a story?"

She eyes him for a little longer. "Okay, sure," she says a little uncertainly. "If you want to tell it that badly."

He gestures. "Okay so, once," he starts, "There was this couple. They met, talked, fell in love, the whole shebang, you know? They've known each other for a while and after a while, they decided to get married."

Elaine looks at him a little skeptically. "That's not a very good story."

"Hey, don't be so impatient." He closes his eyes. "The story actually starts here, you know."

She waits.

"So they're engaged now and it's all rainbows and butterflies. They're on, like, a love high. Point is, they're happy. The thing was, though, they both know how long this won't last."

"Why?"

"Hold on, I'm getting to it." He shades his eyes from the warning sun. "See, the thing is, the guy's dying already. Dying slow. He's been sick as hell for as long as he's lived, and, day by day, he can feel himself slipping closer and closer to the edge."

"And the girl?"

"Well, she knows it too, right? I guess you could say that her love for him runs so deep that all she wanted to do was hold his hand and stay by his side till the very end."

The sun slants orange.

"Well, his end comes."

He pauses and thinks for a bit.

"It hadn't been easy, of course. Hell, the few days after were probably the shittiest days of her life, 'cause it isn't an easy thing to do. It isn't easy to lose the person you'd fell in love with."

Cuts red.

"His funeral comes. There's scores and scores of all his closest friends and relatives there. Everyone's wearing black, mourning, praying, and even days after the reception's over and everything's done and buried, she's still there at his grave every day after. And she's crying."

She's silent now. He pauses for a bit again.

"And she's thinking, why did this happen? Why to him? Was there a way to save him? Was there something she coulda done to help him?"

The next part is difficult.

"Turns out, there was. See, there was somebody listening to her cry this time. It's this guy she's never seen before. He comes up to her, and makes this offer. This really, really fantastic offer. He says, 'You've lost someone dear to you, haven't you? See, I'm a sorcerer. I can help. If you call out the name of the one you've lost, I can find his soul and revive him.' Honest, it probably felt like something like cutting a deal with God, or something."

"And then?"

"And so she takes him up on it. She thinks of him so hard that her heart constricts and it's like her lungs don't function right anymore. She musters enough strength to call out her late husband's name, 'cause it's not like she had anything to lose, yeah?"

He breaks off. He really can't say the rest. He really doesn't have it in him anymore. Not now.

Elaine hazards a guess after a while. "I'm guessing this doesn't end with a happily ever after, huh?"

That hadn't been the response he'd been expecting. "What makes you say that?"

"I dunno," she shrugs. "Your tone?"

"Well," he grins real casual-like, "it actually does, so you're wrong. So let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, the guy was revived. The two see each other again."

He leaves the rest up for the sky to tell.

"Oh. That's it then?" Elaine considers it for a while. "That's not such a bad story then, I guess. Actually, that's a pretty nice ending."

"Hey," he does his best to sound suitably insulted. "Were you expecting my story to be really depressing or something?"

"Well—kind of."

"Well," he pretends not to hear that too, "I guess that's what you'd call getting a second shot at life, huh? What a dream."

"I guess."

They settle in a comfortable silence.

Elaine breaks it again, hesitantly. "Hey—"

And stops short.

He looks up lazily. "What's up?"

"What was the thing with the 'man-made demons' then? I mean from before."

What he had originally meant to ask.

Would you believe me if I said they existed? That people create them? That people become them?

He doesn't have the heart to do it anymore.

He waves it off breezily. "Oh, it's just another story I heard earlier today before I came here. A little creepy, actually. I wouldn't worry about it, though. Honest."

She takes his hint. "Oh."

Another silence passes before the bells toll, signaling the next hour.

Elaine gets up. "Well, this is me for today. I probably should go now, so..."

He yawns. "Yeah, sure, go ahead."

"But for the record," Elaine says and gestures as she moves, "your question from earlier about why people believe and all? Well, there's always going to be suffering. No one ever promised a fair or easy life. Things'll look up again if you just keep your end of the deal."

"And what's that?" He calls out.

She waves her pinky finger in the air and looks back, mouth curved soft.

He recognizes the gesture.

And that promise, too.

Live.

Bookman glances back only once before it's time. "Are you ready, Lavi?"

Lavi grins in a way that probably shows off a bit too much teeth. "As much as I'll ever be, gramps."

Bookman arches an eyebrow. "I'm not sure if that was supposed to be reassuring or not."

Lavi scratches his head. "Ah, that's kind of uncalled for." He lazily swings the Order's uniform briefcase over his shoulder. "Well, let's get going then, yeah? We gotta carry out what generations of Bookmen have been working at, right?"

One week.

It's already been one week since Bookman had reminded him about the Noah again. About the people with stigmata cut across their foreheads, about the people who readily associate themselves with inhuman things like akuma. He isn't even sure if he should call them people. They are only half-human, if anything.

Just thinking about them is kind of sickening.

The man at the table looks normal enough, he supposes. Combed hair, neat collar, polished square toe shoes—like every other working man walking around the street. All in all, he looks like someone easily forgettable. Replaceable.

Bookman takes a seat from across, and his words are bone warm. "Thanks for meeting with us."

"Of course," the man says. "It's my pleasure to help out the Order in whatever way I can." He picks up his cup of tea and his mouth tips into an off smile. "So how can I help?"

Bookman doesn't beat around the bush, as expected. "The Noah clan," he says, "anything you know about them would be helpful to us."

The man laughs heartily. "Well, see, the thing is—"

Mechanics click.

"—you're not nearly worthy enough to know about the Noah family."

Unzipped skin peeled raw. Gunmetal finish. Molecular rearrangement. Expansion. Distortion.

It's the ugliest thing he's ever seen, and he doesn't even need to look twice to know that this thing is an akuma.

He doesn't even need to look twice to find himself on the other side of the barrel of a gun.

Fixation.

He's been here once before.

Bookman's voice is sharp and frantic, and panicked, too. "Lavi!"

And can't hear a thing of it, except for the cries of a whole crammed collection of souls screaming it out all at once. He's been on this side of living before, and it'd killed him. And now, it's.

It's living like this.

The akuma is properly disfigured now. It moves towards the two of them. Lavi instinctively takes a step back from the once human.

"You guys are Exorcists, aren't you? There's no way in hell I'll betray my idols for pitiful bastards like you." The thing sneers, "I'm gonna blow the both of you up!"

It's 'cause you live like this you know, 'cause you live like there's no such thing as time, that you don't know how to start or stop anymore.

Comes closer.

Another step back.

You gotta do this properly.

"Do you really think," the akuma jeers at him again, dark matter convulsing purple, "that it's your stupid life that matters?"

Stops.

Another click.

The needles of Bookman's Heaven Compass glint brightly under the sun. The light sears white, there's a high-pitched shriek of something that doesn't belong to a human, and all he can do is transverse through time, subconsciously recording everything he's seeing.

The akuma is seething. "You fucking bastard—"

Bookman again, and this time the plea in his voice is scratched hoarse. "Lavi!"

There's desperation hollowed thick on all sides now.

Don't die like this.

Lavi blinks.

And then the fire from the Innocence of his hammer explodes.

Later, he goes back to their spot again, if you could call it that. It isn't a definite place per se, but more like a comfortable, steadfast unspoken agreement. It's a little like acknowledging and agreeing how wholly transient everything is nowadays. And besides, it's hard to get lost in a town like this. So the first few times, it had been a particular table outside a café. There had been random street run-ins too, and he'd moved to another table outside a different café.

And now, he supposes, a bench shaded under the trees at the local park.

There's no knowing who will come first or whether either of them will ever meet, but he takes his chances. There are certain apologies to be made and certain mistakes to properly clean up too, and it's not like he's naïve enough to have expectations.

The sun is already dipping vermilion.

Sinks violent.

He double-checks.

She's crying.

This isn't his thing.

This really, really isn't his thing. But he'd never imagined it to be hers, either, and he's too close, and it's too late to turn back now. "Hey—what's wrong?"

She presses a hand at her temples. Hiccups.

He scratches at the back of his head uncomfortably. "Um, should I go?" And then realizes how crass that sounds. He cringes. "I mean, if you want me to, or—"

She shakes her head. "No, no—you can stay. Actually, please. Stay. Just, I mean."

He hesitates before sitting down in the space next to her, and it's all in silence.

It takes her a while. But when everything's dried, she hoarsely talks about time, of all things. And he sits and listens, because he's feeling particularly pathetic and this is the best he can do today.

"You know what sucks?" Elaine says, wipes at her face, "Watching something and knowing that it's going to end."

He gets that. "Yeah," he agrees. And commiserates a bit when the words actually sink in. "That does."

She's mumbling to herself, kind of. "The doctor said that it should've been okay for another year..."

He's not sure if he should respond, if it's his place to, but, "The doctor?"

"Yeah... well, I guess it doesn't really matter." She looks up, kind of. "My mom's sick."

Now he really doesn't know what to say. "Oh."

"Or more like, she's been sick for a while. Getting worse by the day, actually. The doc told us to... well, prepare, I guess."

This time, he doesn't even say anything.

This sort of thing isn't new to him. People die all the time, really. Hell, they're in the midst of another war right now, and there's no escaping that, ever. The subtext to all the rinse, repeat newspaper headlines lately even indicate that this town itself is on the verge of splintering all by itself.

Elaine blinks, like she's remembering herself and where she is. "Oh, you don't have to feel sorry for me. Uh, you don't have to say anything." She scratches her head sheepishly. "Sorry for loading my problems on you like that." Sheepish. "I probably shouldn't have said anything."

He blinks too, before grinning and putting a hand on her head, and patting it. "It's fine." Yawns. "It's probably not a good idea to bottle it up, 'cause that might have a worse outcome, yeah?"

She lets him. "I guess."

Another silence.

He glances at the sky. The sun's already surrendered to the night. "Shouldn't you be going home soon, though? It's probably not a good idea for a girl to walk around at night, you know."

"To be honest, the point was to get away from home for a while."

"Oh, right."

They just sit for a while again.

After a while, Elaine speaks up again. Trembling. "You know what's strange though? My mom. When I was younger, and when she was healthier, my mom used to read me all these stories, you know. Stories that don't actually end with happily-ever-after. She could've told me the nice fairytale stuff that all the other kids heard, but instead, all I ever got to see was... well, reality. And, and even my dad—"

Breaks off.

"Yeah?"

Buries her face. "Never mind, actually."

Another pause.

This time, he takes a shot at optimism, kind of. He tries to keep his tone on the upbeat side of things, even though the subject matter is bleak by nature. "That's not that bad a thing though, right? I mean, then that means you won't be broken by some illusion later on."

"Illusion?"

"Yeah. Means you got to start off strong and learn more about yourself early on, yeah? And you said it yourself, didn't you? 'Things'll look up again', right? 'Sides," he winks, "I'm right here, so things can't be that bad."

She breathes out a short, shaky laugh and brushes his comments away. "Well, thanks for trying, I guess."

He grins offhandedly, "Well, at least I tried."

"Yeah." She backtracks a bit, attempts to keep the conversation more buoyant too. Her voice is still shaky, but it's stronger, somewhat. "You remember what I said from before? You have a pretty good memory."

He thumbs at his head wrap and goes along with it. People cope in different ways. "Yeah, I get that a lot actually."

Another pause, another tangent.

"You'll pull through," he says suddenly and pats her head again.

It's unexpected and both of them know it. "Thanks," she says.

The stars.

They're burning.

She looks up at them. "I guess we really only ever get to live on the short side of forever."

Lavi blinks. It's a weirdly suitable phrase. "The short side of forever?"

They're both looking up at the stretch of night sky now. It's practically just waiting to be disrupted, and they can both see it if they so choose to. "It's something my mom used to say. The more I think about it though, the more sense it makes." Short and bitter. "I mean, is there anything that'll ever beat time? Anything?"

He closes his eyes briefly. This hadn't been something he'd ever imagined her to say. He couldn't have foreseen it coming, but, sometimes, that's just what living does to people. And there's nothing that can be done about that.

So they sit and watch, and watch. The stars are falling one at a time. It's something like a domino effect. They both watch in silence for a while until the last one limps and burns spectacularly.

He can feel her shaking, starting to cry again.

After a while, he hesitates, puts an arm around her head.

The rest is despair.

"There's a time limit, Deak," she says, eyes burning with liquid salt, and closes them wide shut. "A time limit. Do you think there's anything we can do about it other than stupidly watch it pass by?"

A few moments pass before either of them speaks up. Before either of them are calm enough and in control again.

Bookman watches Lavi. "Do you understand what happened just now?"

Lavi opens his eye wearily. "Yeah." Short, uncertain, and honest. Human. The words are still hissing straight down his spine. "I—I think so."

Bookman pauses.

Lavi looks up. "What's up, gramps?"

"No, never mind."

Lavi closes his eyes briefly.

Bookman is the perfect bystander, already hard carved by the years, as expected. "We'll just observe from here," Bookman says noncommittally and ambiguously. There's that faint glimmer in his eyes again—that glimmer that comes from seeing something new for the first time. "Don't lose sight, Lavi."