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31_days2008-01-19 11:01 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-19 11:01 pm
[Jan. 19] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 18
Title: End of Days pt. 18
Day/Theme: Jan. 19/in absentia
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Part 17
The Order hadn't changed all that much in twenty years. The building was so old, that twenty years didn't do much to make the stones steps seem any more worn or the corridors any more dingy. As a supposed stranger to the place, she could always claim she had gotten lost on her way from the infirmary to the dormitories, but Jamie knew exactly where she was as she wandered through the building.
It did seem strange to see so many people, though. Dozens of finders. More men than she could count in white lab coats. A whole gaggle of young nurses--trainees, from the look of their caps--whispering and giggling as they passed her. Jamie glared at them, which only seemed to set them to giggling even more.
In recent years, it had proven convenient to pass as a man, especially when her work took her anywhere near the front, as it so often did, given how the damned trenches were little more than Akuma hatcheries towards the end.
In a way, being fawned over by silly young chits was worse than being ogled and leered at by soldiers.
She continued on down hallway after hallway, checking open doors, and every now and then buttonholing some poor soul to ask where she could find Allen Walker. Everyone she talked to flinched at the sound of her voice--another difference. She wasn't used to that here. Other places, yes, but this was home. Except it wasn't. Yet.
Too many people, and no one who knew her. She punched a door frame on her way through, wincing and grinning at the pain. Right. And if this lot did know who she was, she'd be in a world of grief for it, now wouldn't she? Better, then, that she was a stranger.
"Jamie Rossi. Right. Stupid old Rondine, should have thought things through better."
He'd been dead for twenty years, but the thought of her father... Ah, that bastard Bookman would have kept her back in the twentieth century had there been a choice. There hadn't been, though. They had to find whatever sent them all on this merry road to hell and figure out how to make history jump tracks or whatever. Would've been nice if they'd had some idea of what it was they were looking for.
So, if they didn't know what they were looking for, then why the hell shouldn't she go looking for Allen Bloody Walker? Maybe the problem started with him. Maybe she'd be killing two birds with one stone.
The only problem was, she had to find the bastard, first.
At least she'd established he wasn't in the infirmary. She'd heard Wenham asking where the hell Allen had gone. (And wasn't it a kick in the pants to see the Director looking so young? The years hadn't done him any favors, that was for certain.)
She touched the stitches at the corner of her mouth, wiggling the two knots just enough to feel the pressure through the local anesthetic. By rights, she should have been tossed into the brig to cool off for a few days, but other than having Rondine give her yet another lecture, there'd been nothing. She was free to go.
So, in the absence of anyone wanting her company, or wanting to keep her contained, she took it upon herself to go get some answers from the one person who could provide them.
She had gone down four levels and was halfway down the stairs to the fifth when she heard the music. It was a strange tune, one that hung on the border of familiar, and she slowed her pace, head cocked, as she tried to follow the pattern of the melody. Every time she thought she knew where the tune was going, it changed directions on her, going up when she swore it was going to head down, or changing to an unexpected key that somehow worked better than the one her mind told her should be next.
There was something to it that reminded her of Bach, but the harmony was off in a way that was very un-Bach-like, and it wasn't just that the piano was criminally off-key.
Something was missing, she thought. She was no expert in music, but she liked it, and she kept waiting for some other instrument to come in, perhaps, or a voice. Or maybe whatever this was needed to be played on a concert grand, and not some tin-pot old upright that had probably last been tuned when Victoria took the throne.
She walked softly, not wanting to disturb whoever it was. The music came from the third door down the hallway. A golden glow that was not lamplight spilled under the bottom of the door, illuminating the stones of the floor with a sunset glow. Jamie was stopped cold by a stab of homesickness, and she could see the afternoon light on the towers of York Minster, and she remembered the way the warm summer breeze lifted the curtains of her sickroom. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before walking on and trying not to wonder what had ever happened to her old plush bear.
She opened the door. The golden light dimmed, and the little golden creature sitting on top of the piano radiated an air of "Who? Me?" despite having no face. The music crashed to a halt.
"Timcanpy! Why'd you--oh." The little old man at the piano bench had a strangely young voice, Jamie thought at first, but when he looked over his shoulder to see who'd interrupted him, she realized it was because he was young, despite the white hair.
"Sorry to interrupt," she began, and wasn't even bothered when he flinched at the sound of her voice. It could shatter bone when she wanted, and even when she kept it in check, most people found it uncomfortable. "I'm trying to find--"
The boy (he couldn't be any older than Misha, really) turned completely around to face her, letting out a soft whoa and sticking his hands out for balance as the rickety old stool wobbled as it turned. His left hand, she saw now, was a deep, bloody red. A scar, only slightly less red crossed his left eye and formed a star-shaped mark on his forehead.
That meant... but it couldn't be... but then again, it could. Right? It was twenty years ago, after all.
"Didn't think you'd be so young," she rasped. The mighty General Walker, the man who'd been rumored to fight the bloody Earl to a standstill, the Exorcist who'd killed more Akuma than anyone else, was sitting on a wobbly stool, feet hooked awkwardly under the footrest as he laughed with embarrassment and raked a hand through that white hair.
"Um, I'm sorry?" he laughed. His voice was lighter than she'd expected, and his silvery gray eyes were kind, not cold as their color might suggest. "You were trying to find--Timcanpy! Stop that!"
The golden creature had leapt from the piano and lazily yet surprisingly quickly flew over to Jamie. It repeatedly bumped up under her chin, like a cat demanding attention. That was startling, but not offensive. Then the little golem started plucking at the bandages around her throat.
"Timcanpy!" Walker knocked over the stool as he got up and ran over and grabbed the golem by its tail. He hauled it away, even as its wings flapped furiously, pulling its tail painfully taut. A slit across its middle opened and Jamie though she saw a glimpse of teeth as the thing hissed.
Poor Walker looked as if he was holding a very angry golden balloon.
"I'm really sorry about this," he said kindly, although the look he gave the golem suggested he was tempted to whirl it around before flinging it across the room like a bolo. "I don't know what's gotten into him."
The golem gave another hiss, and Walker let it go. The golem hovered in front of him, and berated him with a chittering that sounded strange even to Jamie's ears. Walker backed up against the piano, playing one hell of an impressive discord with his ass as he fell back on the keyboard.
Then it flew off in a huff to go sulk in a corner of the room with its tail pointedly turned towards them.
"I think it was interested in this," she said, tapping at the bandages around her neck. Then, not knowing why she did so, she pulled the bandages aside just enough to show the innocence that had embedded itself in her throat and wrapped itself around her vocal cords. She then pulled them back into place before Walker could get more than a glance.
"You're an exorcist?" Walker's face lit up in a way that reminded her so much of Misha, even though he was pale where Misha was dark.
She nodded. Now that she was here, everything she had planned on saying simply dried up and slipped through her fingers. She'd been expecting to butt heads with some terrifying legend, not... this.
"Same as you. Wish I knew why some of us get stuck with the parasitic kind."
He nodded, and that better not have been pity she saw on his face.
"What the hell you doing down here anyhow?" she demanded, glaring at the piano. It was another thing that had not slotted into her expectations. Playing that not-Bach made him a person, not just some idea that she'd been bracing herself to grapple with.
Walker's gaze dropped to the side, and he seemed shadowed by something. It angered Jamie, angered her that she had done this.
"I was just thinking about my, well, he wasn't my father, but he might as well have been. The man who taught me how to read this kind of music, I mean." Here, the blood-red hand gestured at the piano, but there was no sheet music that Jamie could see, not on the piano, not on the floor, not anywhere.
Jamie said nothing. She simply watched this strange boy, the one who had died not two weeks before she had joined the order. The brilliant General, the one everyone said might have saved them all if he hadn't died a completely pointless and completely fucking stupid death at Antwerp. Damn war was less than half a year old, and the Order's first casualty was the one they could least afford to lose.
It hadn't been her fault--how could it have been?--but she remembered everyone looking at her as if to say this is supposed to make up for losing Walker?
And then word got 'round about who her father had been, and if it hadn't been for Rondine and Wenham, the Order might well have found itself short another exorcist right promptly.
Of course, Walker had been tied up in all that as well, and so her first year in the order had been entirely defined by his absence.
"He's dead, then?" she asked, not knowing or caring how callous she sounded.
Walker went still, and seemed to grow small. Dead, then, and from the way he was reacting, maybe his fault. Or he thought it was his fault. She wanted to feel a twinge of satisfaction at that, and found her face growing cold with anger when she couldn't.
"I miss him, and I'm also starting to wonder how much I really knew him. Some of the games and songs he taught me..." He stopped and looked up at her in surprise, as if he'd forgotten there was someone there listening to his monologue. Again, he flushed with embarrassment, and laughed softly as he apologized for his lapse.
"Never mind that," she snapped, letting a little more of her Innocence trickle into her voice. "I came here looking for you, Walker."
"Me?" he stammered, stepping back and playing a slightly higher discord.
Jamie stood as straight as she could, almost at attention except for her fists clenching and unclenching at her hips. When she spoke, it was tight, and clipped, and slow as she picked every word with care. "I heard you were the one who stopped Suman Dark when he fell. Why? What happened?"
Allen drew in a sharp, pained breath and he swallowed, hard. His head bowed, and she saw his jaw clench. Then, to her shock, he scrubbed at his eyes with his right fist.
When he spoke, he refused to meet her eyes. "I'm not sorry I tried. I don't care what anyone else says, I had to try," he said, voice growing stronger and shriller with defiance. "It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair!"
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This wasn't how it had played out in her mind.
"I know he betrayed the others to Tyki Mikk--"
"No!" The protest was automatic (he was her daddy, he couldn't have, he couldn't have...)
"He said he was so scared, he just wanted to live. It was wrong, he never should have done it, but he was so desperate. I saw it in his memories."
He had confessed? To Walker? No, it wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible.
She wanted to go over there and grab Walker by his skinny little neck until he told her that none of it was true, but she stood her ground, waiting and dreading to hear what the bastard said next.
"He just wanted to go home. That's all. He thought he was going to die, and he wanted to go home and be with his family." Walker was looking up at her now, looking at her as if she were the one slandering an innocent man. "He did something stupid, and he would have given anything to undo it, and nobody wants to hear that! He just wanted to be with the people he loved best."
He laughed again, but it was so strained it made her own voice sound like birdsong. "That's what happens. That's what they do--the Earl and the Noah. They tell you they'll give you back what you miss most, and then they just make it so much worse. All he wanted to do was see his family again, and his Innocence devoured him for it, and I tried to save him, I thought I could save him."
Jamie's hand went to her throat. She thought of all those tendrils snaking through her neck, and she couldn't breathe.
"I tried to save him, just like I tried to save Mana.
"Shut up." Her voice shook so much that a ceiling tile cracked and startled the golem out of its sulk. "Just shut the fuck up! What the fuck do you know, anyway?"
Jamie ran from the room and kept on running. Down corridors, up stairs, down stairs, until she was so turned around she had no idea where she was. From the sound of the water, she might have been by the underground river, but that didn't matter.
She fell to her knees, the shock of bone smacking against hard tile startling a sob out of her. All those years, all she had wanted was for her daddy to come home again. She had wanted it, wished for it, prayed for it, and this is how it ended? Honor gone. Mind gone. Life gone.
It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, she said over and over in her head, not caring that she was echoing what that asshole had said. Slowly, under that litany, another one began to emerge in counterpoint:
It's my fault, it's my fault.
Jamie hunched over until her forehead touched the cold floor, shaking and trying not to cry out loud.
It was too much, though, and she couldn't keep in the sobs. In a small mercy that she never noticed, her Innocence relaxed its grip on her and for the first time in years, Jamie Dark was able to cry in her own voice as she cursed herself and she cursed her absent father.
Part 19
Day/Theme: Jan. 19/in absentia
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Part 17
The Order hadn't changed all that much in twenty years. The building was so old, that twenty years didn't do much to make the stones steps seem any more worn or the corridors any more dingy. As a supposed stranger to the place, she could always claim she had gotten lost on her way from the infirmary to the dormitories, but Jamie knew exactly where she was as she wandered through the building.
It did seem strange to see so many people, though. Dozens of finders. More men than she could count in white lab coats. A whole gaggle of young nurses--trainees, from the look of their caps--whispering and giggling as they passed her. Jamie glared at them, which only seemed to set them to giggling even more.
In recent years, it had proven convenient to pass as a man, especially when her work took her anywhere near the front, as it so often did, given how the damned trenches were little more than Akuma hatcheries towards the end.
In a way, being fawned over by silly young chits was worse than being ogled and leered at by soldiers.
She continued on down hallway after hallway, checking open doors, and every now and then buttonholing some poor soul to ask where she could find Allen Walker. Everyone she talked to flinched at the sound of her voice--another difference. She wasn't used to that here. Other places, yes, but this was home. Except it wasn't. Yet.
Too many people, and no one who knew her. She punched a door frame on her way through, wincing and grinning at the pain. Right. And if this lot did know who she was, she'd be in a world of grief for it, now wouldn't she? Better, then, that she was a stranger.
"Jamie Rossi. Right. Stupid old Rondine, should have thought things through better."
He'd been dead for twenty years, but the thought of her father... Ah, that bastard Bookman would have kept her back in the twentieth century had there been a choice. There hadn't been, though. They had to find whatever sent them all on this merry road to hell and figure out how to make history jump tracks or whatever. Would've been nice if they'd had some idea of what it was they were looking for.
So, if they didn't know what they were looking for, then why the hell shouldn't she go looking for Allen Bloody Walker? Maybe the problem started with him. Maybe she'd be killing two birds with one stone.
The only problem was, she had to find the bastard, first.
At least she'd established he wasn't in the infirmary. She'd heard Wenham asking where the hell Allen had gone. (And wasn't it a kick in the pants to see the Director looking so young? The years hadn't done him any favors, that was for certain.)
She touched the stitches at the corner of her mouth, wiggling the two knots just enough to feel the pressure through the local anesthetic. By rights, she should have been tossed into the brig to cool off for a few days, but other than having Rondine give her yet another lecture, there'd been nothing. She was free to go.
So, in the absence of anyone wanting her company, or wanting to keep her contained, she took it upon herself to go get some answers from the one person who could provide them.
She had gone down four levels and was halfway down the stairs to the fifth when she heard the music. It was a strange tune, one that hung on the border of familiar, and she slowed her pace, head cocked, as she tried to follow the pattern of the melody. Every time she thought she knew where the tune was going, it changed directions on her, going up when she swore it was going to head down, or changing to an unexpected key that somehow worked better than the one her mind told her should be next.
There was something to it that reminded her of Bach, but the harmony was off in a way that was very un-Bach-like, and it wasn't just that the piano was criminally off-key.
Something was missing, she thought. She was no expert in music, but she liked it, and she kept waiting for some other instrument to come in, perhaps, or a voice. Or maybe whatever this was needed to be played on a concert grand, and not some tin-pot old upright that had probably last been tuned when Victoria took the throne.
She walked softly, not wanting to disturb whoever it was. The music came from the third door down the hallway. A golden glow that was not lamplight spilled under the bottom of the door, illuminating the stones of the floor with a sunset glow. Jamie was stopped cold by a stab of homesickness, and she could see the afternoon light on the towers of York Minster, and she remembered the way the warm summer breeze lifted the curtains of her sickroom. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before walking on and trying not to wonder what had ever happened to her old plush bear.
She opened the door. The golden light dimmed, and the little golden creature sitting on top of the piano radiated an air of "Who? Me?" despite having no face. The music crashed to a halt.
"Timcanpy! Why'd you--oh." The little old man at the piano bench had a strangely young voice, Jamie thought at first, but when he looked over his shoulder to see who'd interrupted him, she realized it was because he was young, despite the white hair.
"Sorry to interrupt," she began, and wasn't even bothered when he flinched at the sound of her voice. It could shatter bone when she wanted, and even when she kept it in check, most people found it uncomfortable. "I'm trying to find--"
The boy (he couldn't be any older than Misha, really) turned completely around to face her, letting out a soft whoa and sticking his hands out for balance as the rickety old stool wobbled as it turned. His left hand, she saw now, was a deep, bloody red. A scar, only slightly less red crossed his left eye and formed a star-shaped mark on his forehead.
That meant... but it couldn't be... but then again, it could. Right? It was twenty years ago, after all.
"Didn't think you'd be so young," she rasped. The mighty General Walker, the man who'd been rumored to fight the bloody Earl to a standstill, the Exorcist who'd killed more Akuma than anyone else, was sitting on a wobbly stool, feet hooked awkwardly under the footrest as he laughed with embarrassment and raked a hand through that white hair.
"Um, I'm sorry?" he laughed. His voice was lighter than she'd expected, and his silvery gray eyes were kind, not cold as their color might suggest. "You were trying to find--Timcanpy! Stop that!"
The golden creature had leapt from the piano and lazily yet surprisingly quickly flew over to Jamie. It repeatedly bumped up under her chin, like a cat demanding attention. That was startling, but not offensive. Then the little golem started plucking at the bandages around her throat.
"Timcanpy!" Walker knocked over the stool as he got up and ran over and grabbed the golem by its tail. He hauled it away, even as its wings flapped furiously, pulling its tail painfully taut. A slit across its middle opened and Jamie though she saw a glimpse of teeth as the thing hissed.
Poor Walker looked as if he was holding a very angry golden balloon.
"I'm really sorry about this," he said kindly, although the look he gave the golem suggested he was tempted to whirl it around before flinging it across the room like a bolo. "I don't know what's gotten into him."
The golem gave another hiss, and Walker let it go. The golem hovered in front of him, and berated him with a chittering that sounded strange even to Jamie's ears. Walker backed up against the piano, playing one hell of an impressive discord with his ass as he fell back on the keyboard.
Then it flew off in a huff to go sulk in a corner of the room with its tail pointedly turned towards them.
"I think it was interested in this," she said, tapping at the bandages around her neck. Then, not knowing why she did so, she pulled the bandages aside just enough to show the innocence that had embedded itself in her throat and wrapped itself around her vocal cords. She then pulled them back into place before Walker could get more than a glance.
"You're an exorcist?" Walker's face lit up in a way that reminded her so much of Misha, even though he was pale where Misha was dark.
She nodded. Now that she was here, everything she had planned on saying simply dried up and slipped through her fingers. She'd been expecting to butt heads with some terrifying legend, not... this.
"Same as you. Wish I knew why some of us get stuck with the parasitic kind."
He nodded, and that better not have been pity she saw on his face.
"What the hell you doing down here anyhow?" she demanded, glaring at the piano. It was another thing that had not slotted into her expectations. Playing that not-Bach made him a person, not just some idea that she'd been bracing herself to grapple with.
Walker's gaze dropped to the side, and he seemed shadowed by something. It angered Jamie, angered her that she had done this.
"I was just thinking about my, well, he wasn't my father, but he might as well have been. The man who taught me how to read this kind of music, I mean." Here, the blood-red hand gestured at the piano, but there was no sheet music that Jamie could see, not on the piano, not on the floor, not anywhere.
Jamie said nothing. She simply watched this strange boy, the one who had died not two weeks before she had joined the order. The brilliant General, the one everyone said might have saved them all if he hadn't died a completely pointless and completely fucking stupid death at Antwerp. Damn war was less than half a year old, and the Order's first casualty was the one they could least afford to lose.
It hadn't been her fault--how could it have been?--but she remembered everyone looking at her as if to say this is supposed to make up for losing Walker?
And then word got 'round about who her father had been, and if it hadn't been for Rondine and Wenham, the Order might well have found itself short another exorcist right promptly.
Of course, Walker had been tied up in all that as well, and so her first year in the order had been entirely defined by his absence.
"He's dead, then?" she asked, not knowing or caring how callous she sounded.
Walker went still, and seemed to grow small. Dead, then, and from the way he was reacting, maybe his fault. Or he thought it was his fault. She wanted to feel a twinge of satisfaction at that, and found her face growing cold with anger when she couldn't.
"I miss him, and I'm also starting to wonder how much I really knew him. Some of the games and songs he taught me..." He stopped and looked up at her in surprise, as if he'd forgotten there was someone there listening to his monologue. Again, he flushed with embarrassment, and laughed softly as he apologized for his lapse.
"Never mind that," she snapped, letting a little more of her Innocence trickle into her voice. "I came here looking for you, Walker."
"Me?" he stammered, stepping back and playing a slightly higher discord.
Jamie stood as straight as she could, almost at attention except for her fists clenching and unclenching at her hips. When she spoke, it was tight, and clipped, and slow as she picked every word with care. "I heard you were the one who stopped Suman Dark when he fell. Why? What happened?"
Allen drew in a sharp, pained breath and he swallowed, hard. His head bowed, and she saw his jaw clench. Then, to her shock, he scrubbed at his eyes with his right fist.
When he spoke, he refused to meet her eyes. "I'm not sorry I tried. I don't care what anyone else says, I had to try," he said, voice growing stronger and shriller with defiance. "It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair!"
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This wasn't how it had played out in her mind.
"I know he betrayed the others to Tyki Mikk--"
"No!" The protest was automatic (he was her daddy, he couldn't have, he couldn't have...)
"He said he was so scared, he just wanted to live. It was wrong, he never should have done it, but he was so desperate. I saw it in his memories."
He had confessed? To Walker? No, it wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible.
She wanted to go over there and grab Walker by his skinny little neck until he told her that none of it was true, but she stood her ground, waiting and dreading to hear what the bastard said next.
"He just wanted to go home. That's all. He thought he was going to die, and he wanted to go home and be with his family." Walker was looking up at her now, looking at her as if she were the one slandering an innocent man. "He did something stupid, and he would have given anything to undo it, and nobody wants to hear that! He just wanted to be with the people he loved best."
He laughed again, but it was so strained it made her own voice sound like birdsong. "That's what happens. That's what they do--the Earl and the Noah. They tell you they'll give you back what you miss most, and then they just make it so much worse. All he wanted to do was see his family again, and his Innocence devoured him for it, and I tried to save him, I thought I could save him."
Jamie's hand went to her throat. She thought of all those tendrils snaking through her neck, and she couldn't breathe.
"I tried to save him, just like I tried to save Mana.
"Shut up." Her voice shook so much that a ceiling tile cracked and startled the golem out of its sulk. "Just shut the fuck up! What the fuck do you know, anyway?"
Jamie ran from the room and kept on running. Down corridors, up stairs, down stairs, until she was so turned around she had no idea where she was. From the sound of the water, she might have been by the underground river, but that didn't matter.
She fell to her knees, the shock of bone smacking against hard tile startling a sob out of her. All those years, all she had wanted was for her daddy to come home again. She had wanted it, wished for it, prayed for it, and this is how it ended? Honor gone. Mind gone. Life gone.
It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, she said over and over in her head, not caring that she was echoing what that asshole had said. Slowly, under that litany, another one began to emerge in counterpoint:
It's my fault, it's my fault.
Jamie hunched over until her forehead touched the cold floor, shaking and trying not to cry out loud.
It was too much, though, and she couldn't keep in the sobs. In a small mercy that she never noticed, her Innocence relaxed its grip on her and for the first time in years, Jamie Dark was able to cry in her own voice as she cursed herself and she cursed her absent father.
Part 19