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31_days2008-01-07 10:45 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-07 10:45 pm
[Jan. 7] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 7
Title: End of Days pt. 7
Day/Theme: Jan. 7/motionless at 9:10, freezing time when it happened
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs. This section is Lavi-centric.
Rating: PG-13
Part 6
Sometimes Lavi wished there was a way to put an eyepatch over his brain. It was easy enough not to see, if that's what he wanted. Not thinking wasn't quite so easily.
Lavi lay back, hands folded behind his head and traced the random patterns and water stains in the ceiling tiles. If he came back here in ten, twenty years, he would hardly have to think about it to enumerate all of the differences time had inflicted on them.
It would be coming back of course. Not staying to see the changes as they happened. He closed both eyes and allowed scene after scene flicker across his memory. Each was brought back in perfect detail. Each was as immediate as the tiles. Each brought back not only sight but sound and smell and even touch and taste. Each was perfect and complete.
The review should have been a welcome distraction, but every third memory was another scene from Anita's ship. And of those, every second one was Bookman shouting at him to use the Wood Seal.
He shuddered and rolled over, pressing his face into his pillow. Until now, they hadn't had time to stop. It was all adrenaline and worry and fear and desperation, and there hadn't been room for thinking. Now that there was, thef what-ifs hounded him. He would relive this moment over and over again and feel not the rush of I can do this! but the shame of I should have done that sooner.
More people might have survived. Anita might have survived. If only he had remembered.
It simple enough to recall the way something looked if you knew what you needed to remember. Right now, for example, he was recalling how many times he had forgotten to buy food or pack socks or pay their rent before he and Bookman departed for another town and another set of identities. And then he was seeing each moment on the ship when another sailor was felled only to have Miranda's innocence revive him. He saw those who were killed five, six times over, and he saw those who were clipped by a lucky shot just seconds before Krory destroyed the Akuma who were firing on them. If he wanted, he could even figure out which of them (he remembered all of their names) would have survived if he had acted fifteen minutes sooner. Or ten. Or fifteen.
Behind its patch, his right eye squeezed even more tightly closed. There was even more he could see, if he wanted. Even though he had not been there, he might even be able to figure out when Anita--
"Oh, for crying out loud. Enough!"
Kanda snarled that some people were trying to sleep. Lavi told him to shut up, and didn't even bother to be nice about it.
A new alias, a new assignment, and he could strip the memories down to plain sensory content and put them away for future reference. Memory would become history. Frozen.
"Hell with this..."
He opened his eyes and sat up. The nurses weren't around, Krory and Allen were still asleep, and Marie--the least injured of the group--was elsewhere finally getting checked over by the medics.
Kanda asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, but Lavi just waved over his shoulder and went out into the waiting room.
"It's okay, it's okay," he said to the nurse on duty, holding up his hands and smiling cheerfully. It was harder to fake than it should have been.
Lavi wasn't sure where he meant to be going, but if he was doing something, it would be easier to quiet his mind. He'd never had any trouble with that before, and he wondered if having his current self nearly shattered had something to do with it. In less than a second he resolved to ask Bookman about that and then decided that would be a bad idea.
There were four other people in the waiting room. Johnny was one of them. He was desperately trying to explain something to a slender, severe young man, and when Lavi came out, Johnny's for the love of God, please, please come help me! signals were so clear they might as well have been shouted. Lavi smiled and waved, and put on his best 'oblivious' face. Meanwhile, he catalogued a large amount of information about the stranger, for future reference.
The other two were preoccupied with each other. A young girl was sharing a bench with a boy Lavi guessed to be maybe fifteen, sixteen at the outside. The boy was drumming on an old clipboard, using a short, double-headed drumstick. The rhythm was elaborate, and Lavi quickly matched it up to a piece he had heard seven years ago. His mind easily superimposed the stacatto, bouncy melody of flutes over the impromptu drumbeat.
What was really impressive, though was that two syringes, a handful of tongue depressors, and a stethoscope had assembled themselves into a crude marionnette that danced to the beat. The thing really seemed to be dancing in time to the partial score, moving quite well for a thing made of cheap wood, plastic, and rubber tubing.
The little girl laughed, then seemed startled to hear herself laugh, which only made the boy grin and send the doll into a spinning leap. The boy started humming along to the beat, but badly out of tune.
Something nagged at him: the feeling that he had met these people before. He cast though his memory for anything that might be similar--the thin face and sharp eyes and feminine hands of the one talking to Johnny, the high cheekbones and indolent, graceful sprawl of the boy, the luxurious black hair and the shadowed, haunted face of the little girl.
Nothing. Nothing came to mind.
Maybe he was just tired. Still, it left him even more unsettled than the visions of the ship had.
He was knocking on and opening the door to the women's ward before he even realized he'd decided to go in there
Lavi didn't even have a chance to ask how Lenalee was doing before she smiled at him and anything he thought he might say died in his throat.
"You just missed Brother, and Miranda's still asleep," Lenalee said, and the smile was replaced by a worry-furrow between her brows. "The doctors can only wake her for a few seconds at a time."
"She was up for five days straight," Lavi said. The blanketed lump on the other bed was still except for the slow rise and fall of breath. He pulled a chair over to Lenalee's bedside and sat down heavily. He saw the way she looked when he first came to the Black Order, and he catalogued the differences before he could stop himself. "Your hair's actually kind of cute like this," he said, reaching out and ruffling it up into pixyish spikes.
Lenalee tried to laugh, but she couldn't. She patted lightly at her hair, barely touching it and not restoring a lick of order to Lavi's chaotic styling.
He sat down, far more tired than he had any right to be. He almost sank lower in the chair, but instead he flopped forward, head pillowed on crossed arms on Lenalee's bed.
"Can I stay here? I want to stay here," he asked. "I'm tired." Lenalee said that of course he could stay, at least until the nurses came and kicked him out--she was glad of the company.
"Wasn't what I meant," he mumbled, but she didn't hear. A few seconds later, he felt a tentative touch to his head, and then Lenalee was softly, hesitantly, stroking his hair. He fell asleep within seconds.
Part 8
Day/Theme: Jan. 7/motionless at 9:10, freezing time when it happened
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs. This section is Lavi-centric.
Rating: PG-13
Part 6
Sometimes Lavi wished there was a way to put an eyepatch over his brain. It was easy enough not to see, if that's what he wanted. Not thinking wasn't quite so easily.
Lavi lay back, hands folded behind his head and traced the random patterns and water stains in the ceiling tiles. If he came back here in ten, twenty years, he would hardly have to think about it to enumerate all of the differences time had inflicted on them.
It would be coming back of course. Not staying to see the changes as they happened. He closed both eyes and allowed scene after scene flicker across his memory. Each was brought back in perfect detail. Each was as immediate as the tiles. Each brought back not only sight but sound and smell and even touch and taste. Each was perfect and complete.
The review should have been a welcome distraction, but every third memory was another scene from Anita's ship. And of those, every second one was Bookman shouting at him to use the Wood Seal.
He shuddered and rolled over, pressing his face into his pillow. Until now, they hadn't had time to stop. It was all adrenaline and worry and fear and desperation, and there hadn't been room for thinking. Now that there was, thef what-ifs hounded him. He would relive this moment over and over again and feel not the rush of I can do this! but the shame of I should have done that sooner.
More people might have survived. Anita might have survived. If only he had remembered.
It simple enough to recall the way something looked if you knew what you needed to remember. Right now, for example, he was recalling how many times he had forgotten to buy food or pack socks or pay their rent before he and Bookman departed for another town and another set of identities. And then he was seeing each moment on the ship when another sailor was felled only to have Miranda's innocence revive him. He saw those who were killed five, six times over, and he saw those who were clipped by a lucky shot just seconds before Krory destroyed the Akuma who were firing on them. If he wanted, he could even figure out which of them (he remembered all of their names) would have survived if he had acted fifteen minutes sooner. Or ten. Or fifteen.
Behind its patch, his right eye squeezed even more tightly closed. There was even more he could see, if he wanted. Even though he had not been there, he might even be able to figure out when Anita--
"Oh, for crying out loud. Enough!"
Kanda snarled that some people were trying to sleep. Lavi told him to shut up, and didn't even bother to be nice about it.
A new alias, a new assignment, and he could strip the memories down to plain sensory content and put them away for future reference. Memory would become history. Frozen.
"Hell with this..."
He opened his eyes and sat up. The nurses weren't around, Krory and Allen were still asleep, and Marie--the least injured of the group--was elsewhere finally getting checked over by the medics.
Kanda asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, but Lavi just waved over his shoulder and went out into the waiting room.
"It's okay, it's okay," he said to the nurse on duty, holding up his hands and smiling cheerfully. It was harder to fake than it should have been.
Lavi wasn't sure where he meant to be going, but if he was doing something, it would be easier to quiet his mind. He'd never had any trouble with that before, and he wondered if having his current self nearly shattered had something to do with it. In less than a second he resolved to ask Bookman about that and then decided that would be a bad idea.
There were four other people in the waiting room. Johnny was one of them. He was desperately trying to explain something to a slender, severe young man, and when Lavi came out, Johnny's for the love of God, please, please come help me! signals were so clear they might as well have been shouted. Lavi smiled and waved, and put on his best 'oblivious' face. Meanwhile, he catalogued a large amount of information about the stranger, for future reference.
The other two were preoccupied with each other. A young girl was sharing a bench with a boy Lavi guessed to be maybe fifteen, sixteen at the outside. The boy was drumming on an old clipboard, using a short, double-headed drumstick. The rhythm was elaborate, and Lavi quickly matched it up to a piece he had heard seven years ago. His mind easily superimposed the stacatto, bouncy melody of flutes over the impromptu drumbeat.
What was really impressive, though was that two syringes, a handful of tongue depressors, and a stethoscope had assembled themselves into a crude marionnette that danced to the beat. The thing really seemed to be dancing in time to the partial score, moving quite well for a thing made of cheap wood, plastic, and rubber tubing.
The little girl laughed, then seemed startled to hear herself laugh, which only made the boy grin and send the doll into a spinning leap. The boy started humming along to the beat, but badly out of tune.
Something nagged at him: the feeling that he had met these people before. He cast though his memory for anything that might be similar--the thin face and sharp eyes and feminine hands of the one talking to Johnny, the high cheekbones and indolent, graceful sprawl of the boy, the luxurious black hair and the shadowed, haunted face of the little girl.
Nothing. Nothing came to mind.
Maybe he was just tired. Still, it left him even more unsettled than the visions of the ship had.
He was knocking on and opening the door to the women's ward before he even realized he'd decided to go in there
Lavi didn't even have a chance to ask how Lenalee was doing before she smiled at him and anything he thought he might say died in his throat.
"You just missed Brother, and Miranda's still asleep," Lenalee said, and the smile was replaced by a worry-furrow between her brows. "The doctors can only wake her for a few seconds at a time."
"She was up for five days straight," Lavi said. The blanketed lump on the other bed was still except for the slow rise and fall of breath. He pulled a chair over to Lenalee's bedside and sat down heavily. He saw the way she looked when he first came to the Black Order, and he catalogued the differences before he could stop himself. "Your hair's actually kind of cute like this," he said, reaching out and ruffling it up into pixyish spikes.
Lenalee tried to laugh, but she couldn't. She patted lightly at her hair, barely touching it and not restoring a lick of order to Lavi's chaotic styling.
He sat down, far more tired than he had any right to be. He almost sank lower in the chair, but instead he flopped forward, head pillowed on crossed arms on Lenalee's bed.
"Can I stay here? I want to stay here," he asked. "I'm tired." Lenalee said that of course he could stay, at least until the nurses came and kicked him out--she was glad of the company.
"Wasn't what I meant," he mumbled, but she didn't hear. A few seconds later, he felt a tentative touch to his head, and then Lenalee was softly, hesitantly, stroking his hair. He fell asleep within seconds.
Part 8