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31_days2008-01-21 08:28 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-21 08:28 pm
[Jan. 21] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 20
Title: End of Days pt. 20
Day/Theme: Jan. 21/this is the very ecstasy of love
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R (Upping overall rating for language. Also, the story looks like it's going in some darker directions than I originally planned.)
Note: I finally put a breadcrumb trail through all parts so you can go to the previous post or the next one without having to use the back button. If you want to start from the beginning, Part 1 is here.
Part 19
Allen sat on the piano for a moment or two, bemused by the entire scene that had just played out. Really, he had no idea why he had started ranting like that, and he had even less idea who that person was and why he'd run off like that.
"Come on, Tim, we'd better go see what's going on." Allen pushed himself away from the piano accompanied by a rather squashed-sounding pair of chords.
Something about the stranger seemed familiar, but Allen couldn't put a finger on the exact memory, or even a context for the memory. "I wish someone had told us there was a new exorcist. Not that it's a bad thing that there is one, but still..."
Timcanpy flicked its tail (holding the tip a bit crooked, as it still held a grudge) and preceded Allen out the doorway, lofting along at a leisurely pace.
A framed picture hung next to the door, and as he passed, Allen saw the looming, featureless shadow standing right behind his shoulder. He hurried past, not looking any closer, and he shut the door quickly behind him, as if that might trap his new friend in the music room.
"I wish you could talk, Timcanpy," Allen said as they walked along. Timcanpy seemed to have some idea of where it was going, so Allen followed along. If they saw anyone, he'd ask if they'd seen that new exorcist passing by.
"If you could talk, I'd want to know what that sheet music is you showed me, and where you got it." Over the past few years, Allen had picked up the habit of talking to the golem even though it couldn't answer him directly. In many cases, the creature's gestures were a lot more helpful and truthful than any kind of spoken answers he might pry out of Cross.
In this case, the wings hunched in an approximation of a shrug and the two stubby arms spread out as if to say, don't ask me--hell if I know.
Of course, Allen was beginning to think he knew who could give him all the answers he wanted. He walked along, listening to his own footsteps and the swish of Timcanpy's wings echoing in the hallway, and thought he could hear a familiar, heavy tread just behind him.
It used to be that if he looked around him, he would always find Mana in sight, maybe not close by, but always reachable in a few hurried strides or within earshot of a panicked cry of wait for me, Mana, wait for me!
He never left Allen to fend for himself for days with no indication of where he might have gone or when he might return. Lessons, to Mana, were not diabolical sink-or-swim affairs that promised pain or humiliation. Lessons were games, with brightly colored shop signs and greengrocers' slates providing the material for his first essays into letters and numbers. Juggling was taught slowly, with a game of catch with an apple gradually evolving into a game of catch with two eggs, and then a game that consisted of Mana slowly counting each round of catches as Allen juggled three balls, and the promise that twenty-four perfect rounds would earn him a bag of licorice allsorts at their next stop. Each failure was greeted with a gentle "try again," and somewhere after the first two failures, success became more than just about a bag of sweets.
Funny--they rarely had enough to eat, but Allen had no memories of being hungry. Even on days when his stomach cramped from lack of food, he felt as if he had everything he ever wanted.
When he told Mana this, Mana had just laughed and tapped him under the chin, telling him that it was only because he'd had it so rough before, and one day, he'd have more than he could ever imagine and all of this would look like a joke. Allen giggled and told Mana he was being silly.
Now though, it didn't seem so funny, did it? Some of those games had been about letters and numbers that didn't show up on any shop signs or slates. "Someone had to invent those letters, didn't they?" Mana had said. "Maybe we can invent some of our own--ones that just the two of us can use."
Allen had been so young, and so intrigued by the idea of something that was just them and no one else that it never dawned on him that Mana had drawn those letters without hesitation, as if pulling from rote memory, not from imagination. Now, for the first time he wondered why those letters had been so much easier for him to memorize than the letters that everyone else used.
Timcanpy circled around behind him and bumped him between the shoulder blades until he started walking again.
Maybe, he thought grimly, maybe he should ask Cross about this. It seemed as if Cross knew what was going on, or at least part of it.
He could, he thought, but then he reached the underground docks and saw the huddled figure by the edge of the river.
"Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! What the fuck do you know, anyway?"
Allen stopped again and swiped at his eyes. He didn't want to talk to Cross. He wanted Mana. He wanted Mana to be the one to tell him what was going on, and to tell him that things would have been the same, even if there had never been any such thing as Innocence, or strange letters, or the Ark. But he knew he could never think of those old lullabies again and not wonder if the love he thought Mana felt for him was real or something else.
* * *
Staying awake was more trouble than it was worth, but sleep was frightening. What if he forgot to breathe? What if he didn't wake up?
"Hold on--just hold still. Section Chief Wenham asked us to move you to another room, all right? We'll shift you on the count of three, so just relax."
Lavi said 'okay,' even though he wasn't entirely sure of what was going on until the count of one, two, three and he was lifted onto a stretcher. He tried to tense and resist the sudden movement, but his muscles might just as well have been made of rags.
He tried to warn them as his eyepatch slipped, but he started coughing. They had his arms, so he couldn't even cover his mouth or pull his patch back straight.
But then, someone set it straight, and a gnarled, familiar hand pressed itself to his forehead as someone else dabbed at his mouth and chin with a damp cloth.
"Please step aside, Bookman, sir. He's started coughing up blood--and oh no, that looks like a nosebleed, too. Please, step back."
How was he supposed to step back, if they were carrying him, Lavi thought. Wasn't he...
The cloth was held against his nose and someone tipped his head back, and he heard someone telling them to be careful of the patch and telling them the tired old lie about an old wound and the danger of infection.
"Maybe we should take a look at it, Bookman. Just in case--"
"No." Gramps was there? But how...?
No, not yet. That's right. He was still Lavi, but bits of other personae kept mixing themselves in with that. Other names, other occupations. The core, always the same, always constant, or at least it had been.
It didn't matter any more, though, because he'd been Bookman for a long time now, but no, that's right, Gramps was still there, was still Bookman. He was asking for details about something, calm and collected as always.
Good. That was good. Gramps was still around. He could go on being Lavi a little while longer.
Something there wasn't right.
"Where's Lenalee? Is she okay? Is she dead?" he asked. Something had happened to Lenalee, right? Something had happened and he couldn't remember.
"She's in the women's ward. She's fine." Gramps's voice was clipped and hard and Lavi knew he'd done something wrong again, only he didn't know what. He'd forgotten something, except he never forgot anything, and he remembered that Lenalee was dead.
"Don't wanna be Lavi any more," he said.
The nurse shushed him and Gramps told him to be quiet.
"His fever's back up even higher than it was earlier. If it doesn't break, we may have to try an ice bath to see if we can bring it down--I fear for his mind if it keeps on like this," the doctor said. "I've never seen anything come on so fast before."
There was a long pause, and then Gramps said, "Neither have I."
But Gramps had died years ago, and Gramps was the Bookman and knew everything about everything, so why was he saying he hadn't seen anything like this?
Lavi tried to breathe and tried not to let on how scared he was. "I don't know what's happening, there's two things happening at once, and I can't see..."
He was shouting and coughing and trying to sit up, but the doctor barely had to push down on his shoulder to keep him on the bed and when he went to pull at his eyepatch, Gramps took hold of his wrist and would not let go.
"Enough," Gramps said. Then, there was a faint prick under his ear and Lavi went limp.
"Acupuncture?"
"Hnh. Yes. With a little something else on the needle besides. Just to keep him quiet until he sleeps, and it shouldn't interfere with anything you've given him."
"How can you know..."
Lavi tried to follow along as Gramps and the doctor argued back and forth over him, but his mind fell back and back and back, and he was in the boat with Gramps, and they were sailing past the dead bodies of everyone he knew.
Was one of them Lenalee, he wondered, as he peered frantically into the darkness, resisting the temptation to use both eyes to search. One memory said she was alive and he had just carried her out of the Ark less than a day ago. He could still feel the sudden ache of absence in his arms as he'd passed her off to Reever. Another said she was dead, had died years ago. He remembered carrying her out of a tunnel as she was bleeding to death in his arms and he was shouting at her to hold on just a little bit longer.
Tears slipped down his cheek and soaked into his patch. He wasn't supposed to fall in love with anyone. Bookmen weren't supposed to love anyone. He'd thought that as long as he never said anything, it would be okay if he loved Lenalee. It would never be written down, it would never exist in any history, so it wouldn't be real.
From the moment he first saw her, injured and crying by that casket, he knew that she would be more real to him than any history, than any hidden truth. He could hold onto that, and bask in it, and cherish it, and he could still be Bookman. Right?
He heard a door close, and then he felt that familiar hand pressing a cool cloth to his head. He thought he heard Gramps saying he was sorry, and telling him that he was going to be just fine, but Lavi didn't know who he was supposed to be anymore. Bookmen didn't love anyone. They didn't feel anything. No one was supposed to matter to them.
A shaking hand tipped a bit of cool water into his mouth, then a soft cloth wiped away the few drops that had run down the side of his face.
In his dream, the boat sailed on, and he called out for Lenalee over and over again until he forgot who it was he was looking for.
Part 21
Day/Theme: Jan. 21/this is the very ecstasy of love
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R (Upping overall rating for language. Also, the story looks like it's going in some darker directions than I originally planned.)
Note: I finally put a breadcrumb trail through all parts so you can go to the previous post or the next one without having to use the back button. If you want to start from the beginning, Part 1 is here.
Part 19
Allen sat on the piano for a moment or two, bemused by the entire scene that had just played out. Really, he had no idea why he had started ranting like that, and he had even less idea who that person was and why he'd run off like that.
"Come on, Tim, we'd better go see what's going on." Allen pushed himself away from the piano accompanied by a rather squashed-sounding pair of chords.
Something about the stranger seemed familiar, but Allen couldn't put a finger on the exact memory, or even a context for the memory. "I wish someone had told us there was a new exorcist. Not that it's a bad thing that there is one, but still..."
Timcanpy flicked its tail (holding the tip a bit crooked, as it still held a grudge) and preceded Allen out the doorway, lofting along at a leisurely pace.
A framed picture hung next to the door, and as he passed, Allen saw the looming, featureless shadow standing right behind his shoulder. He hurried past, not looking any closer, and he shut the door quickly behind him, as if that might trap his new friend in the music room.
"I wish you could talk, Timcanpy," Allen said as they walked along. Timcanpy seemed to have some idea of where it was going, so Allen followed along. If they saw anyone, he'd ask if they'd seen that new exorcist passing by.
"If you could talk, I'd want to know what that sheet music is you showed me, and where you got it." Over the past few years, Allen had picked up the habit of talking to the golem even though it couldn't answer him directly. In many cases, the creature's gestures were a lot more helpful and truthful than any kind of spoken answers he might pry out of Cross.
In this case, the wings hunched in an approximation of a shrug and the two stubby arms spread out as if to say, don't ask me--hell if I know.
Of course, Allen was beginning to think he knew who could give him all the answers he wanted. He walked along, listening to his own footsteps and the swish of Timcanpy's wings echoing in the hallway, and thought he could hear a familiar, heavy tread just behind him.
It used to be that if he looked around him, he would always find Mana in sight, maybe not close by, but always reachable in a few hurried strides or within earshot of a panicked cry of wait for me, Mana, wait for me!
He never left Allen to fend for himself for days with no indication of where he might have gone or when he might return. Lessons, to Mana, were not diabolical sink-or-swim affairs that promised pain or humiliation. Lessons were games, with brightly colored shop signs and greengrocers' slates providing the material for his first essays into letters and numbers. Juggling was taught slowly, with a game of catch with an apple gradually evolving into a game of catch with two eggs, and then a game that consisted of Mana slowly counting each round of catches as Allen juggled three balls, and the promise that twenty-four perfect rounds would earn him a bag of licorice allsorts at their next stop. Each failure was greeted with a gentle "try again," and somewhere after the first two failures, success became more than just about a bag of sweets.
Funny--they rarely had enough to eat, but Allen had no memories of being hungry. Even on days when his stomach cramped from lack of food, he felt as if he had everything he ever wanted.
When he told Mana this, Mana had just laughed and tapped him under the chin, telling him that it was only because he'd had it so rough before, and one day, he'd have more than he could ever imagine and all of this would look like a joke. Allen giggled and told Mana he was being silly.
Now though, it didn't seem so funny, did it? Some of those games had been about letters and numbers that didn't show up on any shop signs or slates. "Someone had to invent those letters, didn't they?" Mana had said. "Maybe we can invent some of our own--ones that just the two of us can use."
Allen had been so young, and so intrigued by the idea of something that was just them and no one else that it never dawned on him that Mana had drawn those letters without hesitation, as if pulling from rote memory, not from imagination. Now, for the first time he wondered why those letters had been so much easier for him to memorize than the letters that everyone else used.
Timcanpy circled around behind him and bumped him between the shoulder blades until he started walking again.
Maybe, he thought grimly, maybe he should ask Cross about this. It seemed as if Cross knew what was going on, or at least part of it.
He could, he thought, but then he reached the underground docks and saw the huddled figure by the edge of the river.
"Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! What the fuck do you know, anyway?"
Allen stopped again and swiped at his eyes. He didn't want to talk to Cross. He wanted Mana. He wanted Mana to be the one to tell him what was going on, and to tell him that things would have been the same, even if there had never been any such thing as Innocence, or strange letters, or the Ark. But he knew he could never think of those old lullabies again and not wonder if the love he thought Mana felt for him was real or something else.
* * *
Staying awake was more trouble than it was worth, but sleep was frightening. What if he forgot to breathe? What if he didn't wake up?
"Hold on--just hold still. Section Chief Wenham asked us to move you to another room, all right? We'll shift you on the count of three, so just relax."
Lavi said 'okay,' even though he wasn't entirely sure of what was going on until the count of one, two, three and he was lifted onto a stretcher. He tried to tense and resist the sudden movement, but his muscles might just as well have been made of rags.
He tried to warn them as his eyepatch slipped, but he started coughing. They had his arms, so he couldn't even cover his mouth or pull his patch back straight.
But then, someone set it straight, and a gnarled, familiar hand pressed itself to his forehead as someone else dabbed at his mouth and chin with a damp cloth.
"Please step aside, Bookman, sir. He's started coughing up blood--and oh no, that looks like a nosebleed, too. Please, step back."
How was he supposed to step back, if they were carrying him, Lavi thought. Wasn't he...
The cloth was held against his nose and someone tipped his head back, and he heard someone telling them to be careful of the patch and telling them the tired old lie about an old wound and the danger of infection.
"Maybe we should take a look at it, Bookman. Just in case--"
"No." Gramps was there? But how...?
No, not yet. That's right. He was still Lavi, but bits of other personae kept mixing themselves in with that. Other names, other occupations. The core, always the same, always constant, or at least it had been.
It didn't matter any more, though, because he'd been Bookman for a long time now, but no, that's right, Gramps was still there, was still Bookman. He was asking for details about something, calm and collected as always.
Good. That was good. Gramps was still around. He could go on being Lavi a little while longer.
Something there wasn't right.
"Where's Lenalee? Is she okay? Is she dead?" he asked. Something had happened to Lenalee, right? Something had happened and he couldn't remember.
"She's in the women's ward. She's fine." Gramps's voice was clipped and hard and Lavi knew he'd done something wrong again, only he didn't know what. He'd forgotten something, except he never forgot anything, and he remembered that Lenalee was dead.
"Don't wanna be Lavi any more," he said.
The nurse shushed him and Gramps told him to be quiet.
"His fever's back up even higher than it was earlier. If it doesn't break, we may have to try an ice bath to see if we can bring it down--I fear for his mind if it keeps on like this," the doctor said. "I've never seen anything come on so fast before."
There was a long pause, and then Gramps said, "Neither have I."
But Gramps had died years ago, and Gramps was the Bookman and knew everything about everything, so why was he saying he hadn't seen anything like this?
Lavi tried to breathe and tried not to let on how scared he was. "I don't know what's happening, there's two things happening at once, and I can't see..."
He was shouting and coughing and trying to sit up, but the doctor barely had to push down on his shoulder to keep him on the bed and when he went to pull at his eyepatch, Gramps took hold of his wrist and would not let go.
"Enough," Gramps said. Then, there was a faint prick under his ear and Lavi went limp.
"Acupuncture?"
"Hnh. Yes. With a little something else on the needle besides. Just to keep him quiet until he sleeps, and it shouldn't interfere with anything you've given him."
"How can you know..."
Lavi tried to follow along as Gramps and the doctor argued back and forth over him, but his mind fell back and back and back, and he was in the boat with Gramps, and they were sailing past the dead bodies of everyone he knew.
Was one of them Lenalee, he wondered, as he peered frantically into the darkness, resisting the temptation to use both eyes to search. One memory said she was alive and he had just carried her out of the Ark less than a day ago. He could still feel the sudden ache of absence in his arms as he'd passed her off to Reever. Another said she was dead, had died years ago. He remembered carrying her out of a tunnel as she was bleeding to death in his arms and he was shouting at her to hold on just a little bit longer.
Tears slipped down his cheek and soaked into his patch. He wasn't supposed to fall in love with anyone. Bookmen weren't supposed to love anyone. He'd thought that as long as he never said anything, it would be okay if he loved Lenalee. It would never be written down, it would never exist in any history, so it wouldn't be real.
From the moment he first saw her, injured and crying by that casket, he knew that she would be more real to him than any history, than any hidden truth. He could hold onto that, and bask in it, and cherish it, and he could still be Bookman. Right?
He heard a door close, and then he felt that familiar hand pressing a cool cloth to his head. He thought he heard Gramps saying he was sorry, and telling him that he was going to be just fine, but Lavi didn't know who he was supposed to be anymore. Bookmen didn't love anyone. They didn't feel anything. No one was supposed to matter to them.
A shaking hand tipped a bit of cool water into his mouth, then a soft cloth wiped away the few drops that had run down the side of his face.
In his dream, the boat sailed on, and he called out for Lenalee over and over again until he forgot who it was he was looking for.
Part 21