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's voice sounded close, like it was right in his ear, but the red head couldn't stop reeling. A series of snaps in front of his face sounded off crisply. A rough shake finally brought him 'round. It was supposed to be only me!
What did that mean? Lavi, as a Bookman, had closely observed everything that had happened from the time he had walked onto the dock until the time the singer ran away. Everything was crystal clear in that part of his mind, but Lavi, the human, was stuck on those words, and the face that told him she didn't get what she meant either.
He heard the old man coming. The kick the man with panda-like kohl rimmed eyes, aimed at his apprentices head was something Lavi could easily avoid. The air stirred as his mentor's foot flew towards him, a soft whistle created from the shape and contours of the man's shoe. But Lavi never felt the need to dodge. And Bookman knew this too. It was a silent bond; it was Bookman showing his concern or disapproval.
Allen and Kanda were spouting at each other as usual, Lavi quietly cataloged that with his Bookman mind, though it might not be worthy of a text it still occurred, its importance decided later. With a quick nod in her direction Lenalee made her way to them before violence could be threatened.
Without looking over, the young Bookman Jr. looked to his elder and said in a near whisper. "I think it's later."
Sitting on a bench in the full sunlight only the docks could provide in such a crowded city, the two scholars began to discuss that which had been saved for 'later'.
"I cannot tell you much, Lavi." Bookman began, which was shocking. Bookmen shared things freely among the clan. There were no secrets. But this reeked of lies and hidden knowledge. It freely oozed the feeling of secrets like blood from a diseased, congealed wound.
Knowing the general train of thought his apprentice was going through, Bookman did what he could to elaborate. "As you know, some things are in the seeing, the experiencing, not just the hearing. I can really only say this to you...That girl...she is not good for you. It would be dangerous to proceed with any communication, any actions. Remember at your own risk."
Taylor was still sitting on the same bale of hay, shredding the top layer of it slowly but surely with hopeless fingers, when a dingy looking stable boy with a caked layer of manure spattered on his boots and heavily patched trousers timidly approached her.
When he couldn't get her attention with gentle 'ahems' and throat clearings, the boy poked the crown of her head with a rough finger, the nail of which was chewed and split. She looked up, more apathetic then agitated, to see a letter in his hands.
"Message for you Miss. The writer told me to relay the message 'It's been a week.'"
Taylor grabbed at the envelope like it was some holy savior, her own personal Jesus. Opening it delicately, almost reverently, she noticed the thickness and weight of it.
"I'll be taking my leave then. Will the Miss need her horse?"
Taylor absently nodded. "The shaggy haired mare."
"Back of the stables I believe. She'll be ready soon."
Turning her full attention back to the now open envelope, the wild haired singer peaked in to find a small piece of paper with instructions and another smaller fold which held enough money for the next town's fees and boarding.
Bray.
Hoof and Whiskey Inn.
There are new dresses there.
I will visit in three days.
Dock, no talking.
As her horse was lead to the front of the stables where she stood, Taylor felt lighter knowing that she would not have to show her now seen face to this town anymore. And as Taylor mounted her horse and goaded it into a light gallop, a look of clear relief gracing her face, the crudely dressed stable boy looked on with glowing cat eyes. Good girl.
The wait for their liner went by without excitement after the young girl with the destroyed eye and the beautiful voice ran away. Allen had been all for running after her, which had sparked the argument between him and the easily irritated swordsman.
It had taken Lenalee the better part of an hour to settle them. It was in this time that Bookman had given his warning. Remember at your own risk.
It was during that uneventful wait that Lavi debated. It was not the debate on whether he should know or not. He had to. He had become a Bookman because of the strong, unquenchable thirst for knowledge he held. And he had learned many things. He had observed many things. Things that would never be known to history, things his clan alone would possess the knowledge of.
But he didn't know this. And it had to with him personally. How could he, Lavi the Human, not know something so close to his heart? How could he, Lavi the Bookman, ever not want to know anything.
The old Panda won't tell me anything else, so that includes how to remember anything about the whole of it. What am I even supposed to remember? Where do I start? How do I start?
A small ache began to form at the base of his skull as the ship rolled in and stopped his thoughts as he watched cargo being lifted, and passengers flowing, off of it, making way for the new load it would carry back to England.
"Another mission?!"
"Well," Komui began... "There is a shortage of Exorcists right now..."
"This will be the third in a row though Nii-san!"
"I think," Krory added, "What Miss Lenalee is trying to say is...uh, well..."
"We're all exhausted. I mean can't you give a couple of us leave? You know switch it up a bit?" Allen tried to put in. It seemed that they were ganging up on the Director anyway.
"Sorry Allen. Not with the Noah so active still. It's dangerous."
"If its how it is, it's how it is." Bookman agreed softly.
Kanda had dismissed the argument when it arose. Breaks were not something that he really needed anyway.
It was Lavi's silence which concerned the ever observing Bookman. He is going to remember.
A few hours later found the group of bone-tired and mostly disgruntled Exorcists on a ship, bound for Ireland again. This would be the third separate town the Order had sent them to in the country. All a few days walking distance from each other.
"Well, looking at the description, we are searching for the same Innocence as the previous few missions." Allen sighed a bit at the repetitive nature of their assignment.
"What's the matter Beansprout?" Lavi teased.
"It's ALLEN!" The response was typical but everyone always laughed anyway. "I'm going for a walk."
"Don't get lost..." Krory advised weakly.
Making sure no one was following him; Allen crept to the bottom level of the passenger's liner, pulling out a deck of cards with a hand-made ace. As he walked he shuffled, glancing about to see who noticed. Entering a small, box filled room near the brig; the Exorcist saw that there was already a small gathering of gamblers lounging against the cargo.
"What's your game fellas?"
The random group of ragtags all looked at him surprised. The card players had a 'milk-him-for-all-he's-worth' look in their eyes as he sat amongst them. "That'd be straight, seven card stud poker, duce wild. Set the minimum of the game with the bring-in, newbie."
Allen smiled in his mind while keeping hold of his poker face. Affecting a little nervousness he placed a $50 on the table. Another mental grin flashed at the wide greedy eyes of the man next to him...They're gonna drop like flies.
Kanda came walking back, stiff with agitation, "I found him."
Lavi waved them to stay put, but Lenalee followed him to the depths of the ship, to the cargo area. Looking through the window in the room's door he chuckled.
"What?" Lenalee made to walk through the door while Lavi cautioned her, "You might not want to go in there..." But it was too late to stop her. As she backed away from the door she had opened, red faced with embarrassment and shock, the apprentice Bookman laughed again.
"Told ya."
There amongst a group of men clad only in underwear, sat Allen, still fully dressed, cutting a deck of cards with a hand-made ace with one hand and fanning his face with a huge stack of paper, which, upon closer inspection turned out to be money.
"Allen, what did you DO?" Lenalee asked horrified.
"Extra spending money," he answered flippantly. "Ooo and Lavi, this jacket should fit you...what do you think?"
"I like the style." Lavi admitted, hand stroking his chin. He caught it as the white haired boy threw it at him.
"You guys can have the rest back."
"What were you doing, you idiot, we're almost there!"
"Who asked you, BaKanda?" The gambler shot back.
The long haired swordsman made to unsheathe his weapon, but hearing a passenger gasp fearfully; he paused and then lowered his hand. "You're lucky as a cricket Beansprout."
"My name is Allen...You're so slow, almost as slow as that sword arm."
Bristling in rage Kanda reached for his sword, Mugen, again until Lenalee intervened chanting the mantra, 'we're on a boat, we're on a ship, there are people here.'
A scant half hour later, their transportation slowly pulled to port in the city of Bray. "Well its approaching sundown," Lenalee stated, taking charge as they walked off the liner. "We should probably find somewhere to spend the night."
As they started away from the dock though, a soft song, voice filled with emotion lifted above the crowd. "Hey, gramps..." Lavi mumbled, knowing Bookman would hear. With a slight inclination of the old man's head, Bookman Jr. was acknowledged. "That girl...She"
"..." The silence settled with Lavi like a plague
"You're being..."
"Hey, that girl, Lavi...She's the one from Wicklow right?" Allen's voice rose above the general hubbub and millings of the filled streets.
"Looks that way." Lavi tried his best to sound less cheerful then he was at the thought.
The others looked in the direction of Allen's point. Lenalee nodded, smiling, while Kanda clicked his tongue as if to point out how little he cared.
"Do you know her? Like, know who she is? Yet, I mean..." Krory questioned hesitantly.
"Not really, no. But I do know she means something."
"Oh?" Allen asked, looking for the reasoning behind the romantic, whimsical statement that was so unlike a Bookman to say.
"Yes Lavi, how do you figure?" Bookman prodded a guarded look on his face.
"Uhhh, umm, it's - uh, I don't know."
"Tch"
"Oh come on Yuu, ever heard of a gut instinct? It's kinda nostalgic, I just know. Don't be so difficult!"
The others looked pacified but Bookman held back while they walked away. "Lavi?" The young man stopped, flinching a bit at the emotionless tone of his elder. "A Bookman does not have a 'gut instinct'. He doesn't 'just know'. Everything is based on the facts we record. Remember that before you blurt things out."
Lavi grumbled something under his breath, but it was let to slide. He should just tell me already.
The room was full of phones. Phones were constantly ringing, bringing news to a busy man. But for the moment he ignored them. "Well then, pet, what have you been doing ehhhh~~?" Grinning madly the whole while he beckoned to the woman until she left the shadows of the phone filled room and stepped into a bright spotlight.
"I'm having some fun toying with a mouse." There was a slight seductive purr in her voice as the woman crossed her arms at her chest.
"Ehhhehhehh" The large man in his bulky overcoat and top hat laughed in approval. "Make sure you clean up your mess when you've finished~~."
"Of course my Lord Earl."
Komui conceded to himself that he knew nothing of the ways of the two Exorcists from the Bookman Clan. He knew his own observations though. The boy had held himself subtly aloof when he joined the Black Order, as if being true comrades with the Order's Exorcists hadn't crossed his mind. As if he was a man apart.
Looking back, the bespectacled Chinese man in his clean cut lab coat now realized he probably is. Or was rather.
Lavi had gone through many changes. He had opened up, and made what seemed to be true friendships with the others. His smiles seemed much more real as well.
Bookman seemed to have perfected living apart from his fellow man. It was true he was sociable and was well received. But if it were necessary for him to record history from another prospective the man would flip sides without hesitation. And Lavi would leave with him. It would be devastating to them all. Including the young man.
The tricky thing was that, probably because it was his job to train Lavi in the capacity of Bookman Jr., Bookman alluded to disapproval with the young man's ties and feelings.
Having heard, on one occasion, the elder Exorcists extoll to his apprentice, "The job of a Bookman is to record history impartially, we do not feel. We cannot grow attachments..." Komui felt bad for the kid.
Lavi never seemed phased by leading this double edged life, one where his friends held a great deal of importance, the other were he could not have friends. It was for this reason that Komui was concerned for that particular innocence bearer. The deadpan look on his face as assignments were given, no smile, no word in the ensuing plea and argument for time off. He just sat there, arms crossed, a vague look on his face as he stared off into space a bit.
If my Lenalee ever had such a face, I would... But he knew that it wasn't comparable. There were things about the Bookman Clan that would forever lie in the realm of mystery. And though it shamed him, Komui admitted that he understood the need for all this iimpartiality in the historians.
Someone so young though. But would it be crueler to raise a child to have emotion and friendship only to strip it of him at a later time?
"Ours not to wonder." He murmured, exasperated as the head of the science division, Reever, ran in with a stack of paper work. And the director went back to his work.
Something was nagging at her, dulling the back of her mind and clogging any thought possible. It was like an itch precisely between her shoulder blades. Impossible to reach. Taylor never liked this feeling, rare though it usually was. But since Wicklow this persistent feeling clung to her. And its cloying presence was unwelcome.
Having made it to Bray in good time, the girl had took her time in the new room's wash bin. Soaking first her arms, then her feet, squeezing a relatively clean wash cloth over her shoulder, and rubbing in a soothing lather of suds into her slightly rough skin.
The warm water also soothed her still healing back, the whip marks still visible. Rough skin from her old job, her old life...whip marks from her new. Such a pitiable existence.
Taylor shook her head violently as she dismissed that negativity. I am alive. I can sing. That is all I need.
But a little voice born of her nagging feeling seemed to almost force itself into reality. There was once so much more.
Again she shook her head and donned another beautiful dress. She walked down the stairs from her room at the Hoof and Whiskey to the front door, blinking into the sunlight. Armed with an old, dented and worn tin pail, she walked to the docks, trying to keep her head high.