Lost Time is fan written, based sometime after the anime D. Gray-man. I, the author, own nothing recognizable.
Lavi, dismissed from the memory abruptly, felt reality swirl at and around him, a vortex of whens and where's.
"That's..." He heard Lenalee begin in her caring, concerned fashion.
"No way!" That was Allen, shocked and angry. So he is telling them. The act was unusual; Bookman did not frivolously spread knowledge. Things were generally on a need to know basis, even for his apprentice.
Slowly opening his good eye, the young historian instinctively sought Taylor's still unconscious form. Upon noting that she was still there, his green gaze swiftly shifted to the Exorcists before him but before he could say any of the things he wanted to, the sounds of Taylor rousing distracted him and the others.
The anger in her eye could have set fire to the buildings around them with the heat of her gaze. Slowly she stood, and directed that anger directly at Bookman, unbridled and unwavering. The gray of her eye shimmered, the emotion slowly morphing from anger to frustration, frustration to sorrow, then finally to acceptance.
"I'm not free to leave am I?" Taylor asked calmly. "This Innocence...it's leading me somewhere right?"
"The Black Order." Bookman nodded. Turning to Lavi he asked, "And you?"
Without looking at anyone in particular the red head nodded, "I'll see for a bit longer."
"Well then!" Krory exclaimed, clapping his hands together decidedly. "I propose a meal."
Much to her shock, Taylor's stomach growled sourly. "I think I could eat," was her response.
The walk to the Exorcists inn was filled with the silence of awkward expectations; everyone was convinced the end result of any conversation so no one spoke.
"Shoot, I have to get my stuff still!" Taylor exclaimed, attempting to turn tail in the thick atmosphere and run back to her little world of singing on docks.
"I'll go get it." A man in a strange, cream colored jacket offered. As he turned and jogged off Taylor caught an eye-full of a big metal box the man had strapped to his back.
"What exactly..?" She began.
"That's Osmond," Allen explained happily, "He's one of the Finders for this mission."
"Uh...huh." Taylor muttered, not really understanding.
"Finders precede us to mission locations and see what they can find out about the mission and the possibility that Innocence is involved in whatever incident we are investigating."
"Innocence...what is Innocence?" By that time the group had entered the small inn the Exorcists were staying in, voices lowering as they sat in the restaurant that made up the lower half of the establishment.
"Innocence was called the 'Crystal of God' by those who used it seven thousand years ago against our current enemy." Lavi explained levelly. "It's the only thing that can hurt Noah and their Memory and also the only thing that can save the souls trapped in Akuma, like the one we fought a bit ago."
"Souls trapped in Akuma..?"
"The Millennium Earl uses the despair of people with lost loved ones to create Akuma." Allen said darkly, a terrifying look on his face. "He shows himself to someone lost in sorrow at their loss and has them call to the spirit of their departed, promising that the person will be brought to life again. From there the spirit gets trapped in a metal framework and is ordered to kill the one who called it, together they become an Akuma."
Taylor wanted very badly to ask at the dark expression on the boy's face but Lavi delicately caught her eye and shook his head softly. 'Leave it.' He mouthed.
"The Millennium Earl," Bookman supplied before she could ask "is the mastermind behind the Noah." It was a simple answer that ended her string of questions as a barmaid came up to take their order.
"We'll take nine of everything!" Allen said before anyone could open their mouths.
"Nine?" Kanda scoffed, "why nine?"
"It's a nice round number."
"No its not..." Taylor threw in. Kanda looked triumphant and pissed at the same time somehow as Allen pouted. But the maid had walked off with her order in hand already. Looking down at the extensive menu the songstress couldn't help but ask, "Isn't it gonna be a bit much with only us here."
"Not with two parasitics here," Lenalee offered with a laugh.
"Three." Krory corrected her with a loaded look at Taylor.
"Parasitic?" Taylor could feel the second round of questions coming on before she could stop herself.
"There are three types of Innocence weapons. Equipment types are weapons that the order has made from raw Innocence. Crystal types are weapons that were Equipment types but evolved and ingested so that the Innocence fuses with the blood of the Accommodator making the Exorcist's blood the weapon. And then there are Parasitic types. With Parasitics the Innocence is already fused with the body and existing on the Accommodator. An Accommodator," Bookman explained without being asked to, "is someone compatible with an Innocence. Innocence is very particular and will only work with one person each. You, my dear, are a Parasitic. Your weapon, it seems, is your voice."
"And," Allen concluded as the food arrived, taking about a fourth of it for himself, and passing another fourth to Krory, "Parasitics require a lot of food."
"Oh, there is no way I could..." Taylor tried to refuse the fourth that he shoved at her, but for some reason it was just too appetizing, and it felt all of a sudden as if she had never eaten.
Taylor was still feeling embarrassed by the sheer amount of food she had consumed for dinner that night as she followed the young Miss Lenalee Lee up to the second floor of the hotel the exorcists were staying in, apologizing all the way for her somehow bottomless stomach.
"Enough," Lenalee finally stated with a little laugh. "It's really nothing to worry about. And you forget how commonplace it is for me to see with those two constantly around for missions."
"Are you guys always together then..? The group of you I mean."
"Mhmm, one for all and all for one, as i'twere. They truly are a wonderful group too, you'll see."
"You mean I'll be staying with you?" The golden haired girl wasn't sure if that had a charming or unpleasant appeal at the moment. People to care for her, people to care about.
"I don't see why not, you'll definitely be seeing a lot of us for a while anyway. And Lavi..." Lenalee turned to wink at her only to see the singer crouched in on herself, a tragic look in her single gray eye.
"I don't think," Taylor began before the female Exorcist could even ask, "that I should be near him. He has his histories to record, I shouldn't get involved. And it's my fault he has only one eye. If it weren't for me he wouldn't have suffered like that."
"I don't think he..." Lenalee began, moving to put an arm around the dejected girls shoulder and help her up.
"I don't think you understand Taylor." Came the serious tone of the man in question. "It's my fault you only have one eye. Like I said in that memory. 'Eye for an eye.'"
"Don't say you don't regret it..."
"Regret it? 'Course I do. But think about it, we would have had to part soon after we met either way, but we share things now no one else can. Memories link us in a way that no one else is linked. Get some sleep now though, we are headed to the docks and boarding a ship at noon." Lavi shooed the girls into Lenalee's room and headed down the hall to where he was roomed with Bookman.
"Do you really regret it?" Came the muffled voice of his mentor from behind several stacks of books. "Meeting her?"
"Of course not, but I do regret bringing her into the world of the Bookman Clan. It's my fault she lost an eye and went through all this hardship."
"Did it ever occur to you that considering the state she was in when you found her, she had already experienced hardship? That it was not something new to her?"
"Doesn't mean this should have been added to her life."
"You two are bound..."
"Bookmen don't believe in fate though, do we?"
"There is fate and then there is Fate. Mankind has a habit of using fate to blame occurrences and happenings. 'I did something wrong because I met a temptress by fate.' That is what Bookmen don't believe in, the actions we do are not governed by fate like that. But sometimes, rare times, 'I met someone by Fate', 'someone came to me through Fate.'" The sound of a heavy book being shifted on a wooden surface in the direction of Bookman's voice was recorded by 'bookman Lavi' while the boy tried to digest the difference of Fate and fate.
"Very few things," Bookman continued, "are ever directed by Fate, but that girl, her coming...and her coming back; to you...those are governed by Fate."
Lavi smiled to himself as Bookman reached from behind the stacks of books and turned off the small lamp lighting the room. "Night gramps."
Taylor woke from sleep with a start and a silent scream, her mouth wide with no sound, a lesson learned living with the syndicate. It had been a vivid dream of blood flowing from the corpses of her new companions as snow fell, silent jury to heaven's judgment.
The sun was out, a bare sliver on the horizon, and the girl knew no one would wake for a few hours more, but she feared sleep. "Nothing to it." She mumbled quietly before rising from her twisted sheets and donning the last dress her master had left her, a black and white paneled affair with wooden toggles for buttons going down the length of it.
It was cold when Taylor stepped out of the inn, with a wave to the innkeeper so that he would see her leave, but the air promised future warmth so she was not worried too much.
Out of habit she had brought the tin collection pail that was her constant companion and set it up at her feet with a nostalgic shrug. The morning rush crowded the docks but Taylor suddenly picked up her pail and began to walk away.
Always the dock...But no one controls me now. It's the square today, finally.
There were little shops along all four sides of the city square of Bray and a decently sized well right in the middle. Taylor looked at all the people milling about, going into and out of the shops or gossiping at the well, and smiled to herself as she set her pail up out of the way.
As Taylor sang the sun rose and people gathered to listen. This is happiness. She thought to herself. This is all I need.
"Gah where is she?!" Allen moaned.
"Don't look at me! She was gone when I woke up this morning." Lenalee protested.
"Did you check the docks?" Krory asked a bit timidly.
"That was the first place we looked." Allen whined.
"Where's that stupid rabbit?" Kanda asked all of a sudden.
"Lavi..?" Lenalee looked to where the apprentice had been moments before and pointed to a note pinned to the wall.
Town Square ~.^
~Lavi
"Must he do that?" The swordsman snarled as the Exorcists barreled out of the room, an unhastey Bookman bringing up the rear.