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31_days2008-01-23 10:47 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-23 10:47 pm
[Jan. 23] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 23
Title: End of Days pt. 23
Day/Theme: Jan. 23/if music is the food of love, play on
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R (very dark--very bad things happen)
Note: Part 22 --(I had some material I couldn't get into yesterday's installment, so there is an extra chapter at my personal journal. In order to play fair, I used the prompt I skipped on Jan. 13.)
* * *
Allen could only see his shadow companion in a reflection, but he could never forget it was there. As he walked down the hallway, he kept turning to look over his shoulder. Or, he would rub at his left eye, knocking the gauze mask askew each time he did so.
It wasn't quite like the way the eye reacted to the Akuma, that sudden rising and bursting of pressure that was both painful and a sweet relief. What he felt now was more of an anticipation, the feeling that his eye was about to activate. It felt as if there was an Akuma lurking somewhere just on the borders of his perception, just as it felt as if there was a song constantly playing just on the edge of hearing.
He tried not to think too much about his eye, and the one time he had gotten a good look in the mirror. The first, cursory glimpses he got suggested to him that the strange new oculus that surrounded his eye might have been filled with smoked glass that grayed out everything behind it, but this was not the case. It was the skin that was gray, not the glass, and Allen recognized the color. Even without all of Cross's dark hints about 'The Fourteenth,' Allen would have recognized that particular shade of gray: Noah.
He was shaking so badly that several people he passed shied off to the side as he walked down towards the mess hall. Allen averted his eyes even though he wanted desperately to ask them what they saw, or what they heard. The music kept rising up to where he couldn't imagine other people didn't hear it. One man he passed even cocked his head, the way a dog might if it heard a distant whistle. It wasn't until one of them told him to get the hell to the sick wards that he even thought they were reacting to anything other than the strangeness he now knew he carried within him.
Why hadn't Mana told him about this? Why hadn't Cross? How much did either of them know about who he was or what was happening to him?
Cross, he could believe knowing and but not saying anything until he absolutely had to. Allen knew he was only useful to Cross, and that there was nothing more to their master-pupil relationship to that. Cross would use him and use him until he'd used him up. He didn't want to think that Mana had thought that way. He wanted to think that if it hadn't been for that stupid, meaningless, pointless accident, Mana would have told him everything. But Mana had died, and then Mana had cursed him.
Maybe the only difference between Mana and Cross was that Mana knew how to be kind. It was a horrible, hollow thought, one that called up the ghost of woodwinds in the music he couldn't quite hear.
He turned and headed in the opposite direction. "Ah forget it, Tim. I'm not hungry."
The golem's wings went stiff with shock and it fell two feet before it recovered itself and fluttered anxiously after Allen, lashing its tail as if to ask hey, where are you going?
When it sensed that Allen was headed towards the Ark, the lashing became frantic.
"Don't worry Tim, I'm not planning on going anywhere. It'll be okay."
* * *
"No! You have to let me go!"
Komui stood in the doorway, watching the two medics hold Lavi down. The boy thrashed, but was too weak to do more than jostle their arms a little. As an exorcist, Komui knew that Lavi would be fighting fit--only Generals could get away with anything else. How could this have happened so fast?
Lavi's hair was dark and lank with sweat, and his skin was ghastly pale except for a few small spots here and there that Komui recognized as petechiae.
"I thought you said he was getting better," he said to the doctor--a different one than he'd spoken to earlier that day. Half the medical staff was now bedridden. He'd meant to go straight in to see Lenalee, but he'd heard the shouts of the medics and went running, fearing the worst.
"He is. He's weak, his lungs are in poor shape, and he has a fever-- mild, not the sort of thing that should be causing this," he said, tipping his clipboard towards the flailing, fighting boy. Lavi's voice was thin and flinty as he kept calling out that he needed to go, that it was going to be too late.
"I'm hoping his fever earlier wasn't so high that it caused permanent neurological damage." The doctor's calm, clinical description of something that Komui was hard pressed to define as 'getting better' was exactly as it should be. Order members who worked with the ill and the dying on a day-to-day basis could not afford to be anything other than detached. They'd just shut down a British hospital where nurse after nurse had been too-easily goaded into making a deal with the Earl. For the same kind of incursion to happen here? In theory, they could handle a Level One Akuma, but they could not afford the risk.
"While you're here sir, we need to talk about taking over some other space. We've already had to repurpose--"
"Something else is going on," came a weak but steady voice from behind them. Bookman stood behind and between Komui and the doctor, his dark-circled eyes focused on his student. "This isn't fever."
"Sir! What are you doing up! You--over here," the doctor said, hailing one of the nurses, "help him back to his bed."
Bookman waved them off, coughing slightly, closed-mouth. "I've had worse," he said. "I had to get out of that room before I did violence to Tiedoll or Cross."
The doctor primmed his mouth and made a note as Bookman explained that Tiedoll kept getting up to try to help the nurses look after the sick. Cross was, from all accounts, simply being Cross, and Komui suspected that the Generals' next meal would likely be laced with a sedative.
"I'll see what I can do, but really you should--" The doctor snapped to attention as one of the nurses called out from another bed. There was no more room to keep Lavi isolated. All of the most desperately ill had been moved to this part of the infirmary. The room was now almost full to bursting, with cots and beds lined end to end in rows of two so the nurses could walk up and down the rows and attend to their patients more efficiently. Twenty-three beds were now filled, according to the report he had received an hour ago, but Komui now counted twenty-six.
"Excuse me," the doctor said as he pushed past Komui and Bookman. His voice was level and calm, but he walked so fast he was fairly running by the time he reached the nurse.
* * *
"Allen! Allen!" Johnny came pelting down the hallway, waving one hand over his head. His shouts were only slightly muffled by the surgical mask he wore. "Komui sent me to look for you--oh, good! You have Timcanpy with you."
Johnny stopped, and bent over, hands on his knees as he fought to catch his breath. Allen waited, holding his own breath and hoping this was just Johnny being Johnny and not Johnny coming down with something.
"Sorry, sorry... I've been all over the place, looking for you," he panted. "What are you doing down here, anyway?"
It was a friendly question, a completely Johnny question, but Allen flinched, and wondered very much the same thing. He had come here to visit the Ark, that much he knew. The same instinct that had drawn him to the shrine wall at the Asia branch had pulled him down here. But what he'd do when he got there, that was unknown.
"I was wondering about the Ark," he said, seeing no reason to lie. As he said it, though, he realized what it was he meant to do.
"Oh, we've shut down research for now, at least until we've got this plague under control."
There was no reason for him to feel such panic at that news, no reason for a hammering sense of urgency that nearly made him rush past Johnny to see if he could get to the Ark, or if he had been cut off.
He needed to get to that secret room in the Ark. He needed Timcanpy to bring up that strange round of music so he could play and turn the ghost-noise in his mind into real, present music.
And if he did so, he knew, he could bring the ghost that haunted his reflection into the real world.
"Komui needs you to bring him Timcanpy. He needs to use its replay function or something--I think he thinks it'll help him figure out where this plague came from."
Allen almost said but I need Timcanpy, but caught himself just in time. Other than Komui, Reever, and some of the top researchers, no one was allowed to visit the infirmary. Allen had effectively cast himself out of there when he decided to go wandering that night, and save for that one initial check to see if he was ill, was not being allowed back. He'd only heard reports that his comrades were ill, and that even Cross was ill. He pressed his left hand to his eyes and waited for his breath to slow and wondered what the hell was wrong with him, that he was so focused on what Mana may or may not have thought, and not worried about his friends.
"Are... are you okay? You're not getting sick, are you?" Johnny's voice was high and close to panic, and Allen forced himself to laugh and wave off his brief spell.
"No, no. I'm fine. I'm just worried, is all."
Timcanpy flew over to perch on Johnny's head. Johnny yelped in surprise, then quieted himself as the golem dug in just enough to make a point. Although it had no eyes, it seemed to give Allen a querying look.
"Go on, Tim. See if you can help." He watched as Johnny and Timcanpy hurried off. Then, he simply stood there, eyes closed, wondering if what he heard at the edge of memory was the song he had played in the Ark, or a lullaby that Mana used to sing to him.
Maybe, he thought, they were one and the same.
* * *
Lavi gave a harsh cry, jolting Komui's and Bookman's attention back to him. His back arched, and he pulled one of his arms free of the medic's grip.
It should have been the start of a whole new round of drama, but after that one outburst, Lavi relaxed, sinking back onto the bed and into a deep, peaceful rest.
"Something's changed." Bookman was intent on watching Lavi. "What, I don't know, and he doesn't know enough to know, yet."
Komui had no idea what he meant by that, but before he could ask, two things happened.
First, he heard Reever's blessed, familiar voice, sweeter than any music at the moment. The other voice, not as familiar, was still instantly recognizeable: Rondine.
Second, a motion elsewhere in the room caught his attention. The doctor stood up slowly, his head and shoulders slumped for just a moment before he deliberately, coldly straightened and squared himself to once again be clinical, professional. He turned, and headed straight down the row of beds, making a too-brief note on his clipboard. He looked up long enough to meet Komui's gaze as he headed towards them.
"Glad you're here, Chief. Rondine said he--" Reever's voice cut off abruptly as his eyes went to the same thing Komui's had. "Oh, no. Oh, fuck."
"This was not supposed to happen. That's what you said--he had more time than this!" Komui hissed, rounding on the Finder, but Rondine had no answer. He, like Reever, could only stare in shock as the nurse pulled the sheet up over Kanda's face.
Part 24
Day/Theme: Jan. 23/if music is the food of love, play on
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R (very dark--very bad things happen)
Note: Part 22 --(I had some material I couldn't get into yesterday's installment, so there is an extra chapter at my personal journal. In order to play fair, I used the prompt I skipped on Jan. 13.)
* * *
Allen could only see his shadow companion in a reflection, but he could never forget it was there. As he walked down the hallway, he kept turning to look over his shoulder. Or, he would rub at his left eye, knocking the gauze mask askew each time he did so.
It wasn't quite like the way the eye reacted to the Akuma, that sudden rising and bursting of pressure that was both painful and a sweet relief. What he felt now was more of an anticipation, the feeling that his eye was about to activate. It felt as if there was an Akuma lurking somewhere just on the borders of his perception, just as it felt as if there was a song constantly playing just on the edge of hearing.
He tried not to think too much about his eye, and the one time he had gotten a good look in the mirror. The first, cursory glimpses he got suggested to him that the strange new oculus that surrounded his eye might have been filled with smoked glass that grayed out everything behind it, but this was not the case. It was the skin that was gray, not the glass, and Allen recognized the color. Even without all of Cross's dark hints about 'The Fourteenth,' Allen would have recognized that particular shade of gray: Noah.
He was shaking so badly that several people he passed shied off to the side as he walked down towards the mess hall. Allen averted his eyes even though he wanted desperately to ask them what they saw, or what they heard. The music kept rising up to where he couldn't imagine other people didn't hear it. One man he passed even cocked his head, the way a dog might if it heard a distant whistle. It wasn't until one of them told him to get the hell to the sick wards that he even thought they were reacting to anything other than the strangeness he now knew he carried within him.
Why hadn't Mana told him about this? Why hadn't Cross? How much did either of them know about who he was or what was happening to him?
Cross, he could believe knowing and but not saying anything until he absolutely had to. Allen knew he was only useful to Cross, and that there was nothing more to their master-pupil relationship to that. Cross would use him and use him until he'd used him up. He didn't want to think that Mana had thought that way. He wanted to think that if it hadn't been for that stupid, meaningless, pointless accident, Mana would have told him everything. But Mana had died, and then Mana had cursed him.
Maybe the only difference between Mana and Cross was that Mana knew how to be kind. It was a horrible, hollow thought, one that called up the ghost of woodwinds in the music he couldn't quite hear.
He turned and headed in the opposite direction. "Ah forget it, Tim. I'm not hungry."
The golem's wings went stiff with shock and it fell two feet before it recovered itself and fluttered anxiously after Allen, lashing its tail as if to ask hey, where are you going?
When it sensed that Allen was headed towards the Ark, the lashing became frantic.
"Don't worry Tim, I'm not planning on going anywhere. It'll be okay."
* * *
"No! You have to let me go!"
Komui stood in the doorway, watching the two medics hold Lavi down. The boy thrashed, but was too weak to do more than jostle their arms a little. As an exorcist, Komui knew that Lavi would be fighting fit--only Generals could get away with anything else. How could this have happened so fast?
Lavi's hair was dark and lank with sweat, and his skin was ghastly pale except for a few small spots here and there that Komui recognized as petechiae.
"I thought you said he was getting better," he said to the doctor--a different one than he'd spoken to earlier that day. Half the medical staff was now bedridden. He'd meant to go straight in to see Lenalee, but he'd heard the shouts of the medics and went running, fearing the worst.
"He is. He's weak, his lungs are in poor shape, and he has a fever-- mild, not the sort of thing that should be causing this," he said, tipping his clipboard towards the flailing, fighting boy. Lavi's voice was thin and flinty as he kept calling out that he needed to go, that it was going to be too late.
"I'm hoping his fever earlier wasn't so high that it caused permanent neurological damage." The doctor's calm, clinical description of something that Komui was hard pressed to define as 'getting better' was exactly as it should be. Order members who worked with the ill and the dying on a day-to-day basis could not afford to be anything other than detached. They'd just shut down a British hospital where nurse after nurse had been too-easily goaded into making a deal with the Earl. For the same kind of incursion to happen here? In theory, they could handle a Level One Akuma, but they could not afford the risk.
"While you're here sir, we need to talk about taking over some other space. We've already had to repurpose--"
"Something else is going on," came a weak but steady voice from behind them. Bookman stood behind and between Komui and the doctor, his dark-circled eyes focused on his student. "This isn't fever."
"Sir! What are you doing up! You--over here," the doctor said, hailing one of the nurses, "help him back to his bed."
Bookman waved them off, coughing slightly, closed-mouth. "I've had worse," he said. "I had to get out of that room before I did violence to Tiedoll or Cross."
The doctor primmed his mouth and made a note as Bookman explained that Tiedoll kept getting up to try to help the nurses look after the sick. Cross was, from all accounts, simply being Cross, and Komui suspected that the Generals' next meal would likely be laced with a sedative.
"I'll see what I can do, but really you should--" The doctor snapped to attention as one of the nurses called out from another bed. There was no more room to keep Lavi isolated. All of the most desperately ill had been moved to this part of the infirmary. The room was now almost full to bursting, with cots and beds lined end to end in rows of two so the nurses could walk up and down the rows and attend to their patients more efficiently. Twenty-three beds were now filled, according to the report he had received an hour ago, but Komui now counted twenty-six.
"Excuse me," the doctor said as he pushed past Komui and Bookman. His voice was level and calm, but he walked so fast he was fairly running by the time he reached the nurse.
* * *
"Allen! Allen!" Johnny came pelting down the hallway, waving one hand over his head. His shouts were only slightly muffled by the surgical mask he wore. "Komui sent me to look for you--oh, good! You have Timcanpy with you."
Johnny stopped, and bent over, hands on his knees as he fought to catch his breath. Allen waited, holding his own breath and hoping this was just Johnny being Johnny and not Johnny coming down with something.
"Sorry, sorry... I've been all over the place, looking for you," he panted. "What are you doing down here, anyway?"
It was a friendly question, a completely Johnny question, but Allen flinched, and wondered very much the same thing. He had come here to visit the Ark, that much he knew. The same instinct that had drawn him to the shrine wall at the Asia branch had pulled him down here. But what he'd do when he got there, that was unknown.
"I was wondering about the Ark," he said, seeing no reason to lie. As he said it, though, he realized what it was he meant to do.
"Oh, we've shut down research for now, at least until we've got this plague under control."
There was no reason for him to feel such panic at that news, no reason for a hammering sense of urgency that nearly made him rush past Johnny to see if he could get to the Ark, or if he had been cut off.
He needed to get to that secret room in the Ark. He needed Timcanpy to bring up that strange round of music so he could play and turn the ghost-noise in his mind into real, present music.
And if he did so, he knew, he could bring the ghost that haunted his reflection into the real world.
"Komui needs you to bring him Timcanpy. He needs to use its replay function or something--I think he thinks it'll help him figure out where this plague came from."
Allen almost said but I need Timcanpy, but caught himself just in time. Other than Komui, Reever, and some of the top researchers, no one was allowed to visit the infirmary. Allen had effectively cast himself out of there when he decided to go wandering that night, and save for that one initial check to see if he was ill, was not being allowed back. He'd only heard reports that his comrades were ill, and that even Cross was ill. He pressed his left hand to his eyes and waited for his breath to slow and wondered what the hell was wrong with him, that he was so focused on what Mana may or may not have thought, and not worried about his friends.
"Are... are you okay? You're not getting sick, are you?" Johnny's voice was high and close to panic, and Allen forced himself to laugh and wave off his brief spell.
"No, no. I'm fine. I'm just worried, is all."
Timcanpy flew over to perch on Johnny's head. Johnny yelped in surprise, then quieted himself as the golem dug in just enough to make a point. Although it had no eyes, it seemed to give Allen a querying look.
"Go on, Tim. See if you can help." He watched as Johnny and Timcanpy hurried off. Then, he simply stood there, eyes closed, wondering if what he heard at the edge of memory was the song he had played in the Ark, or a lullaby that Mana used to sing to him.
Maybe, he thought, they were one and the same.
* * *
Lavi gave a harsh cry, jolting Komui's and Bookman's attention back to him. His back arched, and he pulled one of his arms free of the medic's grip.
It should have been the start of a whole new round of drama, but after that one outburst, Lavi relaxed, sinking back onto the bed and into a deep, peaceful rest.
"Something's changed." Bookman was intent on watching Lavi. "What, I don't know, and he doesn't know enough to know, yet."
Komui had no idea what he meant by that, but before he could ask, two things happened.
First, he heard Reever's blessed, familiar voice, sweeter than any music at the moment. The other voice, not as familiar, was still instantly recognizeable: Rondine.
Second, a motion elsewhere in the room caught his attention. The doctor stood up slowly, his head and shoulders slumped for just a moment before he deliberately, coldly straightened and squared himself to once again be clinical, professional. He turned, and headed straight down the row of beds, making a too-brief note on his clipboard. He looked up long enough to meet Komui's gaze as he headed towards them.
"Glad you're here, Chief. Rondine said he--" Reever's voice cut off abruptly as his eyes went to the same thing Komui's had. "Oh, no. Oh, fuck."
"This was not supposed to happen. That's what you said--he had more time than this!" Komui hissed, rounding on the Finder, but Rondine had no answer. He, like Reever, could only stare in shock as the nurse pulled the sheet up over Kanda's face.
Part 24