A/N: I do not own anything about D. Gray-man. This story is based soley on a fictional timeline after the anime's completion.
I do, of course, own Taylor.
"Lavi?" Lenalee questioned for the umpteenth time. "Geeze, he's not paying attention."
"Not very Bookman-ish of him is it?" Krory asked tentatively.
Allen waved his hand in front of the red head's single eye, but it remained glossy, as if the mind behind it had left a vacancy for a bit. It was only when Bookman landed on his head with a flying kick that Lavi actually responded.
His surprised expression caused Lenalee to giggle as Allen lifted his palm to his face with a sigh. "Huh what? Did I miss something?"
"Food was done." Lenalee explained lamely. And as the hammer wielder looked around expectantly she finished her statement. "But Allen ate your share."
"Great..."
"Hey snooze ya lose, pal."
"Yuu," Lavi complained dragging the Swordsman into the fray, "Why didn't you stop him?"
"Tch." Kanda clicked, rolling his eyes. Pulling out his sword, Mugen, the attractive exorcist silenced the room. Aiming it at Lavi in a lunging stance he threatened, "What did I tell you about calling me that?"
"There is still some bread near the stove..." Krory pointed out, causing Lavi to charge over to the basket and grab up the two crusty end pieces to an otherwise devoured loaf. But as he did, his eyes went distant again.
Bread...bread is made of ground down wheat and...wheat...wheat is a golden plant which grows in flat plains. A sharp, quick image flashed through his memory. A golden field of wheat. Hair flying as they ran up a hill. Hair...whose hair? Golden, like the tall wheat hiding them from the clan. Spiraling hair, like loose strands of smoke.
This memory...looking towards the person beside him. Great grey eyes, calculating and observant. There was a scream and Lavi plummeted back to reality, the flash of the past slipping away as if it had never been dredged up.
His own scream. His own pain. His head felt like it was on fire as the Jr. Bookman dropped the crust he held and clutched at the forever unseeing eye behind his patch. Part of his mind, the part that ruthlessly forgot what he had briefly remembered, continued to observe everything around him. His comrades' worried expressions, Lenalee being held back by the old man as if she had tried to run to him. Gramps shaking his head at her. There was a cold glint to the man's eyes as Lavi couldn't take the pain anymore and passed out on the cold wooden floor.
She had been here before. This familiar scenery, a nostalgic landscape. A wheat field made of paper and parchment, written tales and memories plastered indecipherable and vague on each leaf. There was never a moon here, but the innumerable stars shone with such radiance that it was not a necessity in the first place.
One of those stars shot westward across the sky...her dream sky. A line from a memory flashed past her mind, following the star.
Dreaming is proof your alive.
Another star, flying this time east, shot the same path across the laden sky as if it missed a meeting with his counterpart, lonely by a fated design. The memory continued,
Bookmen don't dream.
Someone was beside her then, unusual, deviating from the pattern of this repetitive place of solitude.
Taylor wanted to look, to see who was with her...Her, who was always so alone. But somehow she knew that if she did, this reality that was not would collapse. Waking her, leaving her alone again.
And for once she felt it would be okay to stay here forever. In the silence, tears shed by the feeling of loss always so close to her eyes slipped from them, star bound and distant.
A gruff, carefully quiet voice whispered close to her ear. "Close your eyes."
Knowing it would not last much longer, the lonely girl did as she was told.
The voice, loud enough to be tainted with his masculinity, and the hands turning her face too large and firm to be those of a woman granted her the knowledge that she was dreaming of a man.
As those somehow precious hands held her face still, there was a rustle of cloth and Taylor felt soft cotton wipe her tears away.
"Look at me, just once, before we lose this." The command came from him gently, hesitantly. And unbidden she felt her eyes twitch and then open, both...even one long since closed and hidden, widening as they took in the bright green hue of the mystery man's gaze.
Both.
His red hair framed his face, the normal bandana having been used to dry her show of sorrow.
He touched her hand as the dream dissolved around them, his voice cheerful and energetic, hesitation gone as he whispered to her again. "Good morning."
Lavi would have liked to give into impulse and jolt awake, but he knew this dream, which was not a dream, could never be shared. Bookmen did not, could not dream. But the sleeping reality slowly left him bereft, the only reminders his faint, secretive smile, a few quickly drying tear drops soaked into the bandana in his hand. And soon even that was gone, leaving him to wonder why his headgear was in his hand.
"This is getting us nowhere!" Finally even Lenalee's patience was wearing thin. "This is the second place we have been, looking for the same Innocence with the same clues. Nothing!"
"Well, Komui said we are getting recalled today, as soon as our ship comes in." Allen said with a strong sense of relief. "At least the port is better than that dingy place south of here. The one we caught a whiff of Lulubell in."
"We shoulda..." Krory began.
"Not our job." Kanda stated aggressively.
"Welp..." Lavi began, hands behind his head as he walked. "Since we are leaving today, why not tour around a bit, you know have some fun."
Bookman dragged him by the ear a bit away from the group, much to the others' surprise. "Did you say that as a Bookman, or as an Exorcist?"
"Gee Gramps, I said it as an observant person who knows morale needs boosting. Give them their day."
Bookman just looked at Lavi with a long level gaze. But in the end he nodded.
Lavi walked back to the main group, and linking arms with Allen and Kanda, marched towards the city. Looking over his shoulder her shouted, "Lenalee, you coming?"
The bewildered look on the girls face disappeared as she ran towards the boys. "We'll be going on ahead...Bookman, Krory."
"Finally some peace...shall we find somewhere with a game of chess?"
"Checkers if you please." Krory agreed.
Kanda, Allen, and Lavi indulged Lenalee with an hour of shopping as she bought candles, incense and teas from local merchants. With each step they got closer to the docks...the closer they got to the docks, the more restless Lavi became.
A hand on his shoulder stopped the observer with a start. "Lavi..." It was Lenalee; she was using her concerned voice. "How has your head been feeling?"
"My head?" Not knowing what the girl was talking about he brushed it off. "Oh that, I feel much better now." Thinking on all the places they had been in a split second, Lavi came up with a quick scheme. He had to see. "I do think I will get some pain medicine though, just in case. There is a pharmacy on the water side of this block."
"We'll go with you." Allen offered.
"No that's fine, you guys keep shopping...I'll find ya."
As he broke off in a light sprint, his companions shared a look of intrigued conspiracy. Without needing to speak their mutual understanding...Allen, Lenalee, and a begrudging Kanda followed their friend at a much slower pace.
It was the last day of her week in Wicklow, but while the prospect of travel had enthralled Taylor, she found herself loathe to leave. I didn't get to see him again. Even if I am not allowed to talk to him...I want to see him. Once more.
Today's dress was as brilliant as the other six had been, a smooth textured pink cloth with thick black swirls stitched up the stream lined skirt. A thicker, napped fabric fixed to a boned corset frame was the opposite. Pitch black, but with thick pink designs picked through carefully.
After straightening her bangs, as she always did, and checking the curls of her wild, windy locks, Taylor grabbed her collections pail and made her way to her now well-known spot on the docks. Many people gathered around her from previous days. It made Taylor feel a bit famed.
Her songs were never planned. She never knew which she would sing or if there would be a hidden melody that came to her as people looked on. So it didn't seem weird to her when a completed melody popped into her mind...the blur of a man standing at the edge of the crowd. She always sang with feeling, so it didn't seem weird that her song would be so strong.
The only thing Taylor found weird was that this nostalgic feeling...the feeling that the song was old as time to her...came upon her as she opened her mouth and sang.
Sometimes life seems too quiet
Into paralyzing silence
Like the moonless dark
Meant to make me strong
A dark, moonless night like the dreamed reality, the images there lending strength to her weary soul.
Familiar breath of my old lies
Changed the color in my eyes
Soon he will perforate the fabric of the peaceful by and by
Something important, lies...things she forgot, something to do with her eyes. He'll bring it all back.
Sorrow lasts through this night
I'll take this piece of you
And hope for all eternity
For just one second I felt whole
As you flew right through me
Taylor took a deep breath, but before she could continue a man in dark clothing and a cheese cloth mask barreled through the crowd and snagged the collection pail, knocking Taylor to the ground savagely. With the deep breath she still had in her lungs, Taylor screamed "Stop him!"
The response was instantaneous.
Four exorcists ran to Taylor, the female holding her protectively while the three men ran to catch up to the thief. There was a loud thud, and then a yelp. Kanda had Mugen at the man's throat while Lavi and Allen held him down. All four looked confused and slightly frightened. Lenalee picked up the pail and the coins that had fallen out of it during the brief struggle.
Bending down, the blur came in clearer. It reached out a slightly distorted hand, a smile on his fuzzed out face. And then, as if a loose cog got on its right track, she could see him. And hear him. She knew him. Flashes of a dream that had not been, red hair, green eyes. Eyes...both...wrong. There is a patch. "What did they do to you?" She could hear her voice as if it were still a dream. "It was supposed to be only me!"
As she struggled backwards her hair blew with the wind. As her hair blew her face became clear. A face missing an eye. A right eye. A right eye that didn't have a patch. Puckered red as if it had been burned. Like his.
People around her screamed. Their shocked looks of horror branding their ways into her mind, her memory. run. The instinct was stronger than it normally was. Run. She got to her feet. RUN!
And she did, she ran as fast as she could. She packed her clothes and necessities. But after she had donned her riding clothes and stepped into the stables, Taylor stopped..."Stay there for a week, and I will send you a message on your next location."
"I have nowhere to go now." Slumping down on a barrel of hay, the singer pulled her hair over her right eye more firmly. "Shit...SHIT!" Punching her hand down into the hay underneath her, Taylor began to cry with her good eye, and wished she could remember a time when she had cried with both.
Song used:
Sorrow by Flyleaf.