Lavi sat on the couch with Lenalee, watching the monitor as the lights went up and a strange, simple percussion filled the speakers. It was the new Campbell, a kid called Winston, someone Lavi had never seen before. It seemed like overkill to bring him in, considering that they had Road. He was about average height, his lean, tanned body shown off by a white pseudo-Eastern costume. He'd painted a third eye just above his nose, and tied a scarf around his head to hold his white hair clear of it, making him look ageless and ancient at the same time.
"What is that?" Lenalee asked.
Lavi listened. "Sounds Greek, maybe? He's handling it well." Winston danced the atypical rhythm as if it were a cradle song.
Lenalee wrinkled her nose. "It's a little show-offy."
"And he's not as good as Road," Lavi said. It wasn't that Winston was bad, it was that Road was better.
Lenalee laughed. "Now that I don't have to deal with her, I can say yes, he's not as good as Road, and I'm glad. I think I'd rather that she win instead of him. "
They watched as Winston moved, compelling and menacing as a cobra. The wordless vocals of the song sounded like an invocation to long-dead gods who walked the earth as if the life on it was nothing more to them than grains of sand.
"What about Allen?" Lenalee asked.
"I think he's better," Lavi said. "At least I hope so, although what's up with this dude's hair? Did he bleach it for this, or for something else?"
"At least we know Allen's is natural," Lenalee said.
"Well, mostly, anyway," Lavi said. "I wonder where this guy came from. Why wasn't he here earlier?"
"I don't know," Lenalee said. "There are a lot of Campbells. I hope Allen beats him."
"He will," Lavi said, squeezing her hand.
They watched, almost afraid to look away until the music trailed off, then relaxed into the couch, listening to the sounds of the crews getting the stage ready. "That was intense," Lavi said. The performance had crept unsettlingly into his head.
"Yeah," Lenalee said. "I hate the Campbells."
Lavi laughed. "Don't we all! I know things have gone to shit," he said softly, "but I'm glad you're not dancing right now."
"He freaks me out," she admitted. "Now I don't mind if Road wins, as long as he doesn't."
Only when they heard a few reassuring bars of acoustic guitar did they relax, watching the spot brighten on a young man, who went from tapping one heel to throwing himself into an energetic hip-hip routine. His enthusiasm was contagious, and Lavi found his head nodding in time to the music while Lenalee relaxed at his side. This was the world he was going back into, a world where the stakes at competition were somewhat less than life and death.
Of course going home didn't mean going back to dancing as he had before his parents died. Only days before, three teenagers had been abducted and killed near Hebron, and Israel was itching for revenge.
The green room door opened, and Lavi looked up to see a complete stranger come in. "Hey!" he said.
"Hi, Lavi," the stranger said.
Lavi did a double-take, and Lenalee squeaked. "Allen? Is that you?"
Allen cautiously fluffed his dark-brown hair. "Like it?"
"It's freaky," Lavi said. "You don't even look like yourself."
"You look like Tyki Mikk," Kanda said from the corner.
"I do not!" Allen said. "Are you blind, BaKanda?"
"You're missing the mole on your cheek," Lavi said.
"I could paint one on," Lenalee said, making a show of fishing through her purse.
"No!" Allen said.
"What's with the hair?" Lavi asked.
"I don't know," Allen said. "It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Is it bad?"
"It's weird," Lavi said. "What are you doing here? You're up soon."
"I want to watch Road," Allen said.
"You'll get video," Lavi said.
"That's different," Allen said. "And anyway, there are a few people dancing between us. I have time."
Lavi patted the arm of the couch. "Have a seat. You freaked me out, mate. I didn't even recognize you."
"What color was it originally?" Lenalee asked.
"Brown, but lighter than this," Allen said. "There's still a little brown left in it, but the monks let me bleach it."
"How did your hair get to be more white than brown?" Lenalee asked.
"The vitiligo flares up everywhere my skin gets too irritated. I've been in a plane crash and a home invasion," Allen said, "plus I've had my share of the usual knocks on the head. Every time that happens, I go a little whiter."
"I didn't know there were usual knocks on the head," Lenalee said softly.
"Schoolyard," Allen said with a shrug. "That kind of thing."
Lavi nodded. "A home invasion?"
"Some idiots got it into their heads that Mana had something worth stealing," Allen said. "I don't know if they meant to come in when we were home or not, but they killed him and left me with this." Allen pointed to his eye.
"I'm so sorry," Lenalee said.
"Me, too," Lavi said.
"It's why I dance," Allen said. "Mana was poor. The only thing he had of any value was his dancing, and he sacrificed a lot of give it to me."
"That's it?" Lavi asked, thinking of his impending flight, then of that conversation in Jerry's restaurant that seemed so long ago.
"What do you mean?" Allen asked.
"That's really the only reason you dance? There's nothing else?"
"No," Allen said, although the question seemed to trouble him.
"Oh," Lavi said, although the next question was why he was at the Order. He could have danced anywhere.
"Believe me," Allen said, "nothing less than that would have inspired me to put up with Cross for three years! There were several points where running away looked like a viable option. Oy, there she is!"
On the monitor was Road, slim and dark, in dance paws and an iridescent slip dress that couldn't make up its mind if it was white or a very pale gray. Much of the stage was cut off by what Lavi thought at first was a rigid curtain, and he wondered what it was hiding. She was made up to look like an old black-and-white photograph, and as the music swelled, silhouettes appeared behind her. Not a curtain then. A screen.
The figures on the screen didn't move, but Road did, casting a shadow of her own that brought the scenes to life. They were simple, domestic moments, and as Road danced, her shadow took part in them, playing with other children, reaching for the hand of an adult, moving closer to the floor spot so that she became the adult, wrapping her arms around a man's neck, bending to reassure a child. They must be using rear projection for the silhouettes, Lavi though, because the spotlight faded them rather than erasing them completely, as if they were slipping away even as she reached for them.
The performance was so seamless and intricate that Lavi wasn't sure what part of it he should be looking at. In order to watch Road, he had to tear himself away from the images on the screen, but then he got so caught up in the dance that he forgot what was on the screen. She looked like a memory, the sort of memory one shared around the dinner table so that everyone could relive it and be happy, but at the same time, the effect of the spot and the slight distortion of her shadow as she moved gave the scenes a sense of eerie unreality.
"So what is she saying?" Allen asked softly, as if to himself.
"What do you mean?" Lavi asked, grateful for a reason to stop watching.
"Road's pieces are stories," Allen said as he gazed at the monitor, "or maybe messages. What's this one about?"
"How do you know?" Lenalee asked.
"Her videos, mostly," Allen said. "I've spent a lot of time watching her."
"I thought she was messing with you in China," Lavi said.
"I don't think so," Allen said.
"What else could it be?" Lavi asked.
"I think she's trying to say something," Allen said.
"Um…well," Lenalee said, hesitating. "Her song in Barcelona was about a guy, well…" She blushed slightly. "Propositioning a girl. Right?"
"Yeah," Lavi said, grinning. "Pretty straightforward about it, too, if I remember right. Oh, hang on! If there's a story here, then China wasn't about you at all." He jostled Allen's leg with his elbow. "The girl was saying yes."
"I told you," Allen said, grinding his knuckles into the top of Lavi's head.
"Ow!" Lavi said, shoving Allen away. "So what's next?"
"I'm not sure what this is." Lenalee frowned at the monitor.
"Not this," Allen said, his eyes lighting up. "Her charity recital."
"What charity recital?" Lenalee asked.
"She had a charity performance," Allen said, "and she asked me to watch the webcast. What was that song?" He frowned, as if a word had escaped him.
"The referee's song, or something," Lavi said.
"Not referee," Allen said, snapping his fingers. "The arbiter. It was from an 80s musical called Chess."
"What was it about?" Lenalee asked.
"A control freak," Lavi said.
"The arbiter at a chess tournament," Allen said. "There's a line about 'power passes to me,' how he controls everything that happens in the room."
"You've been watching it!" Lavi teased.
"Of course I have," Allen said. "I want to beat her."
"Oh my God!" Lenalee said, her hand going to her mouth. "She's been dancing Romeo and Juliet!"
"What?" Lavi and Allen asked.
"No, listen," Lenalee said. "A guy likes a girl, and she likes him back, but there's an authority figure, maybe a father, right? Someone who thinks he should be in charge of everything, and he disapproves. So what happens next?"
They turned to the screen, watching Road move from one moment to another, not moments she was living, but moments long past that she was visiting as if she was some kind of spirit.
"I don't like this," Lenalee said quietly.
"Why?" Lavi asked, but in his voice was an answering uncertainty.
"Nobody's alive," she said. "It's about pictures, memories, not people. The people are all gone. She's the only one left."
Lavi glanced at Allen, who was studying the screen, frowning.
"She's not made up to look like a person," Lenalee insisted. "She's made up to look like an old photograph."
"Or maybe a ghost," Allen said quietly.
"I don't know," Lavi said, frowning. "She's a little dark for a ghost. Aren't they usually made up very pale? That fits with Romeo and Juliet, though, doesn't it? Didn't they die?"
"Yes," Lenalee said. "They died."
They watched as Road gradually retreated toward the back of the stage, the spots dimming as if she was exiting the world itself, leaving behind nothing but memories. Then the song ended abruptly and the lights went out.
"What just happened?" Lavi asked, the hair on his arms rising.
"I'm not sure," Allen said, but he spoke slowly, hesitantly, as if he was choosing his words with great care.
Lenalee leaned over Lavi and swatted Allen's knee. "Get backstage! You're almost on."
"Yeah, right!" Allen stood. "See you!"
"What was she doing?" Lenalee asked as the door clicked shut behind him.
"I'm not sure," Lavi said.
"It's like she's trying to tell someone something, but if it's Allen, he's not getting it."
"Maybe he's wrong," Lavi said. "Maybe she's just dancing." But he didn't think so. Road's ability to interpret was part of why she scored so high.
When Allen finally took the stage, Lavi was grateful that he'd had been in the green room earlier, because with his hair color concealed as well as his scar, he looked like a completely different person. Perhaps the most disconcerting part was that he looked older. The changes combined with the stage lights matured his face somehow, making him look twenty rather than sixteen.
Lavi listened to the opening piano, frowning. "You recognize this?" he asked.
"No," Lenalee said. "I've never heard it before."
"Let me see that," Lavi said, reaching for the program. "Lullaby? Composer and performer unknown? What is this?"
"I don't know," Lenalee said. "That's Japanese, isn't it?"
"I think so," Lavi said.
"Yes," Kanda said.
Lavi turned to look at him. "I didn't know you spoke Japanese."
"I don't, but I can recognize it. That's Japanese."
"How does Allen know Japanese?" Lenalee said.
"He said he worked in a restaurant once," Lavi said, uncertain, but that didn't seem to be the place to learn a piece like this.
Then a sound came over the speakers, an incoherent cry from the audience.
"What the…?" Lavi asked, listening to the ensuing murmur.
The cry was repeated, then there were other voices and sounds of movement. Allen didn't blink, but he was a professional. The only excuse he had to stop was if the ceiling fell down on him, and they'd still take points off.
"What's going on?" Lenalee asked.
"I don't know," Lavi said.
"What did he say?"
The voice had been male, deeply distressed, but the word wasn't clear. "Thea, maybe?" Lavi said. "Or kneel? Oui? I don't know."
They listened, but whatever the problem was, it had been moved into a different room, while Allen danced the part of a young father putting his child to bed for the first time.
Maybe it was Cross, maybe it was something else, but Allen had gotten better since China, a lot better. He flowed through the music like a night river through its bed, rushing where it narrowed, drifting where it broadened, sparkling where the moonlight hit, leaving Lavi breathless with astonishment.
"He could win," Lenalee whispered.
"He could," Lavi said. "This is amazing."
"I just wish I knew what lyrics meant," Lenalee said.
"He knows," Lavi said, blinking hard, but once upon a time someone had sung to him like that, and the loss had warped him nearly beyond recognition.
"Yeah," Lenalee said. "He does. It's such a pretty song. I wonder where he found it?"
"I don't know," Lavi said, wishing he wasn't leaving, because he realized that he knew nothing about Allen Walker.
Wisely dances to the first four minutes (more or less) of Kiko by Dead can Dance, the unnamed French boy dances to Sur Ma Route by Black M, Road dances to Polaroid Millenium by Superior, and Allen dances to the 14th's song from D Gray-man.