Lyrics: Keane, Is it any wonder

'Lavi?'
The voice was a little higher than normal, stained with a hint of worry about the young man who was sitting at a scarcely lit, old wooden table in an otherwise dusty dark corner of the head quarter's library with three staples of variously labelled books casting shadows against the wall in the flickering light of the candles. He looked up at the by now so well known voice of Lenalee Lee, the black-haired Exorcist he'd been teamed up with many times since he and Bookman had come to the Black Order. And by now, he could also easily differentiate the small changes in her voice, could tell that she was a little unsure, yet unwilling to let anything other than worry show.

'Yeah?', he asked back and smiled at her.
Very Lavi-ish. Very typical for the person he was being here.
'Somethin' happened? Don't tell me the others finally finished their midnight picknick, they were so enthusiastic about it, and I could hear Yuu snarl about Allen being such a noisy glutton up to here.'

The thin girl shook her head slightly, stepped nearer and sat down on a chair next to him. Beside the short flicker of amusement on her features, her eyes were serious and somewhat – determined.
'I'm sorry if I disturb you in your studies', she continued. 'I know it's important for you to keep up the tasks Bookman gives you. But... there's something important I have to talk to you about.'
Her gaze fell down onto her lab as she seemed to search for the right words to carry on.
The red-haired youngster, still a quill in one of his ink-stained hands and the other on the page of an opened book, stared at her with the single green eye that wasn't covered by a black eye-patch. Inwardly, his impatience grew but he wasn't going to let a sign of that leak out.
Lavi had always time for one of his comrades.
As Lenalee lifted her gaze again, her dark eyes pierced into his own one, and as she spoke, she did so in her mother tongue, Chinese. Yet, the person opposite her understood every word.

'You know, back then, a few weeks after you came to the Order and I got teamed up with you, I was so sure that you belonged to those people who can loves to make anyone smile with their easy-going nature. I truly believed that you also wanted to help those who cannot fight in this war, that you would - … Well, I guess I've been pretty naive until now, haven't I.'
She had intertwined her delicate fingers now, seemingly unaware to how tightly she did so.
'Lavi... I'm sorry I didn't realise it earlier, but – but you've never really thought about the fights as I did, did you? That they were for a good reason, to let people live in peace, to protect those important to oneself. Or something like that I always imagined, at least.'
Lenalee broke off, laughing lowly and in doing so looked terribly lost. Because to her, these were the things that kept her going, that kept her alive and fighting. If not for that, what sense would it make to endure all the pain?

[I, I always thought that I knew
I'd always have the right to
Be living in the kingdom of the good and true
And so on
But now I think I was wrong
And you were laughing along
And now I look a fool for thinking you were on my side]

'Lenalee – what are you saying?', Lavi retorted and laughed like he always did if the atmosphere got too moody for his liking.
'Who told ya such stories – see, it's no good to take everything to heard what people say all day. People talk 'n' talk, most of the time without any reason.'
He laid his quill aside and – after brushing them lazily at his trousers – his hands on the girl's slim shoulders, holding her at armslength so she would face him.
'I'm still here, am I not?'

Since he didn't wear his bandana right now, long, dark-red strands of hair partly fell over his face as he took his hands back and lazily leaned into his own chair, the voice still a little taunting, still a little calming, and yet with a new hint of something else.
Something that wasn't very Lavi-ish.
'And in the end, it doesn't matter what's the reason for killing Akuma. As long as the humans survive, they have no reason to be complain either.'
Unconciously, the tall apprentice of Bookman had placed his chin on the palm of his hand, elbow on the dark mahagonian wood that had seen so many, countless, recorders, that one more or less wouldn't make any difference, and exhaled sighing.

It had been a bad idea, joining the ranks of the Exorcists in order to get the best chances of recording History from the front lines as well as from within one of the war parties. Now he and Jiji were stuck in this mess – a mess of orders, missions, fights; a mess of dealing with people, keeping the facade at all times, never letting your guard down, and the human relationships... all the relations...
He'd always watched such relationships among humans from the distant, had kept the distance necessary to stay unbiased, had watched how humans walked by, like flies caught in a huge net whose strings connected people, and most of the time so unaware to it. A net whose strings could throw people into desperation.
And now, for the first time in his life he felt as if those strings had caught him, too. Had, without warning, quietly and unsuspiciously, wrapped themselves around him, binding him to people from the Black Order, to the Exorcists, to the Innocence and therefore to some kind of religion which he hated in any form. He felt trapped. And the strings cut into his flesh deeper every day.

~Is it any wonder I'm tired
Is it any wonder that I feel uptied
Is it any wonder I don't know what's right~

Lenalee still had neither moved her intertwined fingers nor her gaze that lay on the hammer-wielding Exorcist.
'I'm sorry, you seem tired', she said, sympathy ringing in her voice.
'But – I thought about it before I came here and – no matter what's your reason for fighting along us, I'm glad you do. I'm glad you're with us. And... You're still someone very important to me.'
With a creek of her chair, she stood up.
'I just wanted to let you know that', she told him, still in Chinese.
Lavi adjusted himself anew and sat up. His green eye looked darker than usual in the unsufficient light – inwardly, Lenalee was suprised that he didn't need any glasses yet, with all the reading he did, all the writing, and seemingly without caring about the hours passing and the days fading into nights. All alone up in the library or his and Bookman's room.

He tried. He tried and finally managed the smile. But it wasn't as flawless as normally and he felt something crack inside himself a little more when he realised there was no way he could let his face slip. No way he could stop these disturbing feelings that his current persona felt if he didn't want to lose himself. His Bookman-self, the one who was forty-eight different personalities, the one who – through the eyes of forty-eight different aliases – had seen so many wars, so much blood, had healt from countless injuries and learned to ignore the cries for help of mothers wielding bleeding children, and the insults, and the noise of the weapons, and the screams of people burning alive, and the sight of bodies ripped apart like puppets, wounds impossible to treat, and blood – oh, all the blood, on humans he counted to fill into the records, on walls, on flowers, on the ground, on himself.


~Sometimes
It's hard to now where I stand
It's hard to know where I am
Well, maybe it's a puzzle I don't understand
Sometimes
I get the feeling that I'm
Stranded in the wrong time
Where love is just a lyric in a children's rhyme~

'Lavi?'

A soundbite

No, the apprentice of the Bookman thought and stood up, not looking at the girl in front of him. Not daring to.
No, he thought again. I'm not really Lavi. I'm just pretending to be. I could be anyone else, someone you wouldn't care for, someone you wouldn't think of as a friend or a comrade. Even someone you would hate with all your heart. And in truth, I guess I am such a hateful person. If the term person applies to someone who can shed his personality as easy and unaffected as me. As unemotional.
No. This wasn't supposed to happen. How could Jiji not think about the negative consequences of this long-term stay? It's getting hard to differentiate between my and Lavi's feelings. It's getting so hard to stay unaffected, unemotional...


~Is it any wonder I'm tired
Is it any wonder that I feel uptied
Is it any wonder I don't know what's right
Oh, these days
After all the misery made
Is it any wonder that I feel afraid
Is it any wonder that I feel betrayed~

'Tell me, Lenalee', Lavi said and his voice was void of humour or taunting. Or any other emotion. Void of Lavi. It sounded so indifferent and – cold. And now his green eye caught her gaze, and all she could read in it was a small flicker of the tiredness of too many lives, too many wars - and anger.
'Tell me, what will happen if the Order falls? If your so-called God cannot win this fight with his faithful Innocence-soldiers? I can tell you. Because I saw it already.
Nothing. Nothing will change, humans will still die in wars and it doesn't matter if they fight among themselves or with Akumas or with Noahs or with whatever! They'll never stop the carnage. Nothing will be left after this war if the Earl wins. But if humanity wins, it'll be the same. The humans don't need the Earl or his machines or his family to destroy themselves over and over again. They do quite a good job on their own.'
He laughed lowly, bitter.

'Tell me, Lenalee – how do you make it right with such a distorted, cruel reality that won't stop repeating because it's god-damned human for people to make the same flaws over and over again?'
Bookman Junior shook his head in disgust, and Lavi and Lenalee were silent.


~Nothing left beside this old cathedral
Just the sad, lonely spires
How do you make it right~

~Oh, but you try
Is it any wonder I'm tired
Is it any wonder that I feel uptied
Is it any wonder I don't know what's right
Oh, these days
After all the misery made
Is it any wonder that I feel afraid
Is it any wonder that I feel betrayed~