It's not that he was heavy, because he wasn't. But his very presence was heavy, sitting like a frail little doll on Lavi's mattress. Lavi had wrapped him in as many blankets as he could find, and had rigged up an IV from a few things he had run into the grocery to get. His eyes were closed, and if it weren't for the gentle rise and fall of the blankets, Lavi would have thought him dead for the second time.
"It's a wonder you aren't." Lavi muttered, glancing at the pale face and even paler hair sticking out the top of the blankets. Allen's hair was so white that it even stood out from the white of the apartment walls, yellowed and stained by age and previous tenants. It was the white that made him different. If it weren't for the color of his hair, which hadn't been changed by dyes or bleach, he would have looked like any other sleeping young adult. For having slept away what seemed to be half of his life, Allen wasn't a bag of bones, which was ridiculous. Lavi knew it wasn't possible to keep someone alive on IVs and transfusions alone, which was seemingly all Walker had consisted on. He could only shake his head as he went through the sparse notes he had snatched on his way out, a handful of barely filled out medical papers that weren't even enough to make a basic diagnosis out of.
"What the hell were these people thinking? Why didn't they do more?" It took all Lavi had to restrain his anger, frustrated with how little time anyone had given Walker, from the lack of an actual diagnosis, to the fact that no one had even dug into his past, tried to place the patient that had been mysteriously dropped on their doorstep, to see if he existed anywhere, in any system. Though from what Lavi had turned up using his minimal access to the medical database and well, Google, he couldn't place this kid either. No one was looking for Allen Walker. No one even seemed to know that he had been born, gone missing, and wound up in some psychiatric hospital off in the boonies. He truly was "no one", according to the system. Sighing, Lavi set down his laptop and looked at the bundle in front of him. Walker hadn't even opened his eyes, not since they'd first taken him out of the body bag. Lavi had been so busy trying to figure out what was happening he hadn't even paid attention to the kid's eyes, but he was curious. Was the boy blind? Had they over stimulated him after his so-called death that he dared not open them?
"Hey. Hey, kid," prodding did nothing, Walker didn't even flinch now, "Allen. Allen. Open your eyes for me." Nothing. He didn't even make a motion that acknowledged he had heard Lavi.
"Oh for christ's sake, open your fucking eyes, you useless beansprout." Flinching at the harshness in his own voice, Lavi turned away. He knew he shouldn't have expected a response, but he had hoped. God, he had hoped. Hoped this wasn't all in vain, that his stupid heroics wouldn't end with just a corpse on his hands, another death on his conscious. He wasn't some white knight, riding to the rescue; he was just as broken as the people he tended to. It was seeing them having come apart at the seams that kept him sane. It was seeing that there was only one direction to go, further down the rabbit hole, should he ever chose to stop holding on. Maybe Allen Walker had chosen this life, to sleep, and never wake up, and it was his fault that the poor kid was stuck here, breathing, living, even if he hadn't wanted to.
Damnit Lavi, you can't save them all, if you can't save yourself.
"Maybe… you don't have to." It was faint, but he had heard it. He whipped around, only to catch the end of it.
"What did you fucking say?" He was across the mattress, his face in Walker's, he didn't care, he had to make sure it wasn't his fucking mind playing tricks on him, not again, not with this. But Allen remained silent, as if he had never moved at all. It was almost as if the words Lavi had heard were carried on the wind, an answer to his thoughts from some ethereal god.
"I'm going crazy. This is it. I've kidnapped some white haired brat, and now I'm hearing voices. This is it. This is the part where they cart me off to the police enforced mental institute." He knew he was rambling, but it was all he could do to keep himself from truly losing it. He got up and paced the length of the bed, close to punching a wall, smashing his head, anything to clear the crushing fear that was clouding his brain.
Just gotta keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it together. Keepittogetherkeepittogetherkeepittog—
"But there's nothing broken." This time, the voice was accompanied by an action. His eyes. They were open. And for the first time in a long time, someone stared into the eyes of Allen Walker, and he stared back.