Time's up.
"Gramps," falter, "How can I forget?"
Bookman doesn't even wait for long. "You can't."
On the edge of desperation—"Gramps—"
There are millions of thousands of hundreds of tens of memories and records crammed in Bookman's system. Bookman understands, in his own way. "Forgetting," Bookman says with a twist of the slightest empathy, with the untouched sympathy of a man who has been through it once long ago too, "It's not possible. Trying to forget will hurt you more than you can possibly imagine."
"Then what should I do?"
There is an appropriately measured pause before Bookman speaks again. "Record," Bookman says with the voice of a person who has tried and lived and tried. "Watch and record for as long as time permits. That's how you will live. That's how you will heal."
The smile on his chapped, gray mouth is split wide. He taps at the glossy surface at the table, sips at his sugar-crusted tea. It is honey sweet, and Road curls up on the carpet, humming to herself, flicking long, neat nails at the sewn doll in her hand.
A moment passes.
Road groans. "I'm so bored."
The Millennium Earl chuckles affectionately as Road climbs into his lap. "Now, now, Road," he starts lovingly.
Road piques. "Is there anything I can do?" The Noah asks eagerly.
The Earl pats the top of her head fondly. "Not now, sorry. But wait for just a little while. There might be something interesting for you to do soon enough."
Road sulks. "But why can't I do it now?"
There is a certain glance off the Earl's spectacles.
Road knows this look. She perks up again and her cheeks are lightly touched with pink. "Please?" She draws out her plea.
The Earl chuckles again. "All in due time, Road, all in due time."
"Can you at least tell me what it is?"
The Earl considers it for a while, chronicles his carefully constructed plots with the affection of telling a favorite bedtime story. "There are some interesting things happening with Bookman's successor right now," the Earl begins.
Road is vaguely interested. "What do you mean?"
"His memory is subjective."
Road is amused now. Her mouth is curling. "Huh, how?"
The Earl pats Road's head. "It seems that some trauma in his past has surfaced and is now affecting his recall capabilities."
Road thinks about this for a bit. "That's good! Wouldn't that make it easier for us to control?" Road is looking somewhat excited. "What happened? Is it death? Akuma? Seeing too much?"
The Earl muses her hair fondly. "That's my girl," he delights. "Of course. Of course. But this means that even though Bookman is currently on the Order's side, it will be easier for us to manipulate his successor if he's so unstable right now."
Road is eager. "Can I play with him then?"
A geometry of light glances off the Earl's spectacles. "Maybe, Road, maybe. Be patient for me." The Earl picks up a deck of cards from the table, cuts them. Flips the first one up—a black joker, another player in his game. The curl of his smile becomes even more pronounced now. "We'll see, Road."
One year is how long it takes.
Bookman isn't smiling, but it comes close. It's borderline approval. Not explicit enough to be definite, but shaped enough to be reassuring, and Lavi is feeling better. Stronger. Realer, too, maybe.
"You've done well," Bookman concedes.
It's not mask crafting but it comes close, somewhat. It's probably as close as he'll ever get to it nowadays.
Kanda just stares back rather gruffly. "What?"
Lavi grins and gestures cheerfully. "Just got back from a mission, yeah? Me too. Where'd you come from?"
Kanda's answer is succinct. He's come to expect that. The trick to dealing with Kanda, he figures, is to relate everything back to their line of duty, no matter how big the stretch. If nothing else, Kanda is a person of duty, through and through. It is something he can admire.
"Italy," Kanda says vaguely, "With the new Exorcist," he adds with an undisguised touch of distaste.
Lavi blinks before whistling lowly. "Oh damn—so it's not just a rumor, huh. What's he like?"
A beat. "Fucking annoying."
Lavi bursts out laughing before vigorously clapping Kanda's shoulder. "Oh damn. Come on, he can't be that bad, Yu."
Kanda's sheathed Mugen is at Lavi's throat. "What have I told you about that name?" He grits.
Lavi's already calculated this – already accounted for this – and theatrically holds up his hands in reflective nervous surrender. "Right, right, Kanda," he hastily corrects himself. He waits for Kanda to drop his sword before continuing. "But seriously, what's this guy like? I might have to work with him sometime too, ya know," he adds.
Kanda considers it briefly. "Naïve," he says flatly.
Lavi blinks again. Naïve. He's not sure how to feel about that one. "Um. Wow."
Kanda just scoffs. "You guys would make an annoying pair."
Lavi looks appropriately amused. "Hey, hey."
"It's true."
Lavi yawns. "You must be in a pretty good mood today, huh, Yu?"
Kanda just spares Lavi another scathing glance before he brushes past the other exorcist. "You know, you don't have to play stupid all the time," Kanda says disinterestedly, off-handedly, before turning the corner.
The sky isn't exploding, and it doesn't come too close to it either. It is painted up in a devastating bright blue color, and he can only look at it for so long before he remembers. Before he remembers that things will begin to lose shape if you look at them for too long. He'd know.
He hasn't been here in a while. He never imagined he'd ever even get the chance to, but Komui had tasked this mission to him and he'd taken it – part on duty and part on reflex, not that he'll ever admit to that. Bookman would probably have a field day if he'd put two and two together, he supposes bemusedly. Maybe.
It's a world, a reality, of coincidences and repeated histories. He's not sure how to feel about this.
So he walks instead. The streets are the same, skidded with cobblestones and milestones, but this is a part of town he's only been to once. It's not a place to frequent.
He wonders if he should hesitate more. He's never done this before, and he still doesn't know what he's supposed to do in every interpretation of the phrase, but he lays down the white flower on the cement slab. It seems appropriate.
Madeline Sather
He sits down for a bit in silence, bites down at his lower lip. He's not sure what to do. He's never been.
So he sits and remembers a conversation, a sermon, a lesson, a paradox. All of the above.
Well, I've still got too much to live for, he'd thrown out carelessly. It's at least a half-truth. Can't stop here, you know what I mean?
Elaine is understanding, but in all the wrong contexts, naturally.
He closes his eyes, skips.
Even further backwards.
He acts in time, Bookman once tells him.
He creates it. He creates it, destroys it, curses it, rejoices it.
And opens his eyes again.
White crushed in dirt.
Lavi considers it for a little while longer.
Elaine is still there. May always be, maybe. She stretches out her legs and tilts her heads, smiles. The context is always always always wrong, and these are a few of the words she'll never say, "What're you up to today?"
He leaves as soon as he can.
Time has a lot to do with chess, Bookman explains. There are implications in each moment that passes. Implications in even the moments that repeat themselves in endless black-and-white drama.
He has never been very good at the whole faith thing and he's still not very good at it, but it's an interesting analogy to say the least. And he's trying. There are a lot of conversations etched in that bit of metaphoric stone, and so much more that will never be recorded. Some things don't happen.
One year is how long it takes him to remember who he is and where he comes from. One year is how long it's been since the brightest star in the sky explodes. Its remnants map the troposphere, dotting slow conversations like a telegraph message.
The troposphere is scattered with bits of crystals, each crusted with the promise of indigo. He reads them by the pixel. He reads them in pixels punctuated by fluctuations in time, and he hears the cheerful voice of the girl he never saves.
They'd been her words to him, but.
They brink on despair, even now. Or maybe it'd always been that way.
Why did you try to kill yourself?
Reality.
Reality control.
He closes his eyes and keeps a promise.
This, he decides, will probably take some time.
When he gets back, Bookman is already waiting, watching, waiting.
Lavi exaggerates a yawn, cups a hand over his mouth. "What's up?"
Bookman hands over a neat photograph.
Lavi peers over it, memorizes it by instinct. "And this is...?"
"His name is Allen Walker," says Bookman. "I'd like you to go and meet him."
The new Exorcist is supposedly short in stature and well-mannered for the most part. Or so the grapevine says. Kanda had after all crassly described the kid as an annoying shrimp, he recalls, and Lenalee likes him. That really hadn't been much to work with, but Lavi works around it anyway. He's gotten a lot better at being Lavi.
Bookman pronounces Allen Walker as the destroyer of time. It's a trick statement, he thinks. The sky is too bright a shade of blue for something like this.
Lavi is appropriately skeptical this time. "The destroyer of time?" he echoes.
Bookman sips at his tea. "That's right. The one who is predicted to have the best chance to defeat the Earl."
He notices Bookman's word choice and rethinks Deak. It's one of those things that just never happen, never will happen, never get to happen. "Best chance, huh?"
"He should be interesting, to say the least," Bookman concedes. There is a certain glimmer glancing off Bookman's eyes.
Lavi yawns. "That's one way of putting it, gramps." He stops and considers it an air of pseudo-professionalism. "So is that why we're going out now? To meet him, right?"
Bookman picks up his bags. "He and Lenalee are injured. I'm going to treat them."
Lavi yanks on his head wrap. Today, it is woven with turquoise – a color lost somewhere between tangerine and indigo. What is lost can never be returned and yawns terrifically. "Gotcha," he says.
Kanda's right. Naive is probably the most appropriate way to describe Allen Walker.
An explosion.
The akuma multiply and multiply again.
Allen's reactions are slow. "How—how did you know?"
Lavi arches an eyebrow. The new exorcist is a total downer, he figures. "Ya know," he calls out. He's not very good at the whole consoling thing still and there are akuma all around, "I don't know, yeah? I'm suspicious of everything." He jumps, watches. "Someone I met yesterday could be an akuma today." Stops and considers it a little. "'Cause that's the type of thing we're up against."
A clatter of feet.
Lavi grins. "You should understand that, Allen. That's the kinda thing we're up against," he repeats, maybe more for himself than for the newcomer. Maybe not.
Allen blinks.
Lavi tries to elaborate a little more even though they are kind of in the midst of a battlefield of some sort. "We're different from you, ya know?" In so many ways. "Not having that convenient eye. Akuma mixed in with humans. The other exorcists and I..." his mouth tips up wryly. "We end up looking at all humans as the Earl's minions."
Gray meets green. Lavi grins cheerfully back.
It doesn't last, not that he'd expected that much. Things aren't meant to last, so another explosion detonates.
"Lavi—!"
"I'm fine," Lavi returns breezily, scratches at the back at his head. "They're all Level 1s anyway." He re-grips his hammer and looks at the boy Bookman calls the destroyer of time. What a joke. "So... come and help me out here, yeah?"
Fire explodes.
White light overwhelms before exploding too.
Lavi blinks.
Allen kneels over wounded elderly woman. "Are you okay?"
Mechanics click; a thin layer of white skin wrinkles, contorts.
The look in the other exorcist's unwounded human eye is empty and heavy all at once. "Too late." His unbandaged eye looks tired. It is a look that has seen more than enough. "Too late."
And the white light bursts again.
Lavi watches silently.
Allen Walker is still kneeling on the ground. "I think," pause, "I think I get it. I remember. I remember what I want to do."
There is a slight silence. Lavi blinks before grinning and lightly clapping the new exorcist's shoulder. It is a reassuring thing to hear. "That's good," he says breezily, pushes away a thought, a reminder, from the past that is and isn't really his. "That's good."
It is good. It's good for Allen, at least.
It is not easy to create and adhere to steadfast resolutions like his or to avoid these kinds of long, long nights where time dictates everything. Maybe he's never meant to have a chance. Some people just aren't. Bookman's right. Of course Bookman is right. Trying to forget is far more difficult than he'd ever imagined it to be.
In the end, it is still all about time. Time and time and time. One, two, three, four breeze by easily. They're stage-setting. It's five when things start to get tricky.
He closes his eyes.
It's five. It's five when the first inflection point occurs. Five is for the dreamers; and six is for holding your breath. Seven and eight are for god and how did it turn out like this. Nine is about going by the book; equations and theorems and principles that parameter and scale outcomes; it's the wait. The wait and the watch and the wait again.
Eleven is for eternity and for the color of the most luscious shade of indigo. It's knowing, it's fuck ten, it's living on the short side of forever, it's knowing you live on the edge of the discrete. It's the indefinite integral of breathing amplified.
Eleven is for the stars, burning and spinning and burning and spinning. It's for the unwritten history and for all the things that never ever happen. It's for Seral – for Seral and for Deak and for Elaine and for Lavi.
He tugs at his head wrap. The rest is up for reality control.
He already knows.
Those stars.
They're not exploding, but they come close.
He holds his breath for all of them. His eyes are glassy and the world outside is burning with the promise of indigo.
Elaine leans against his shoulder. "Nights like these are the best, huh? When you can see the sky clearly, I mean. You don't really get to see the sky like this in the city, you know?"
There is salt dusted on top of those stars. He closes his eyes. The trick with time limits is that you only really ever know how long something won't last.
The trick is letting yourself slip in and out of reality – to deceive yourself with the ease of a hard-to-break secondhand habit, to hold onto those remnants of the past so that that the memories made don't crust. The trick is reality control. It's subconsciously knowing that you're living like this, subject to the derivative and inflection points of time, and doing nothing about it.
She starts to hum. "We should come up here more often."
He waits. He meets, re-meets, a girl who doesn't; lives and relives. It's not something that you forget or something that'll go away.
"It's a promise, okay? Deak?"
And opens his eyes.
And breathe out, Lavi.
And wake up, Lavi.
Somewhere, the Earl is watching – plotting, gauging, speculating, and chuckling all the while. Somewhere, Kanda is training under that same canvas of spinning stars, too – Allen Walker is finding himself, losing himself, and finding himself again. Somewhere, there is this conscious notion of finite time, and a countdown from nine, and there is war and war again somewhere too.
Somewhere, Elaine raises her pinky finger in the air. It's a salute to a promise. Don't die, alright and the corners of her mouth lifts. He can feel the corners of his own mouth tipping up as he stretches his arms and yawns. He gets up, scratches at the back of his head. He glances at that infinite stretch of sky briefly and guesses the time. It's eleven. It's eleven and Bookman is waiting.
Fin.
Endnotes:
Reality control, a phrase that I used a few times throughout this story, refers to George Orwell's 1984 concept of doublethink. Doublethink is basically rejecting objective reality and instead choosing to live in the realities we create. So in short, this story was more or less a concept sketch on how Lavi deals (or doesn't) with reality via revisited and/or altered memories and skewed sense of time.
That said, this honestly wasn't supposed to be much more than an extended character study (which is why I set it almost entirely pre-DGM). Take it how you want to, and thanks for everything!
–shoxxic, 11/25/2011