ext_1044 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
31_days2008-01-24 10:58 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-24 10:58 pm
[Jan. 24] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 24
Title: End of Days pt. 24
Day/Theme: Jan. 24/I'll note you in my book of memory
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Part 23
"Gramps?" Lavi opened his eye a crack. He wasn't sure what had woken him. Some shouting? Some people running past? But no, no one was there, and for a moment, he couldn't remember where he was--oh, yes, that's right. Infirmary. Although, hadn't he been down in the research labs?
Lavi raised his head and was pleased that he could actually sit up a little, although just that much left him exhausted and he still felt as if something was sitting on his chest. Yeah, he was in the infirmary, all right, he thought, wrinkling his nose. No mistaking that disinfectant odor. No surprise he was there, given he felt like something scraped off someone's shoe. Still, he had the strangest feeling that he'd just dodged the world's largest bullet.
For a moment, all he could hear was the sound of many labored breaths, punctuated with rattling coughs that provoked a few of his own in sympathetic reaction. After that, he flopped back down, thoroughly worn out. He barely had enough breath to call out, "Gramps, you there?"
No answer. His breath stopped for a moment as he thought remembered that no, Bookman was dead... no. That wasn't right. Lavi could have sworn he'd heard him--and there he was again. "Gramps?"
He felt a passing warmth and looked over just in time to see a nurse pausing on her rounds. "Ah, it's Bookman you're wanting, then? I'll be after getting him for you in a moment. Just you wait there, like a good lad--and no trying to shout." She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, just long enough for him to feel the cool dryness of it. "You haven't the strength for it yet."
"You're very pretty," he said, because she was, even though half her face was covered. Instead of a blush or a look of maidenly outrage, her eyes crinkled fleetingly in a smile, but lost none of their sadness. Then, she was gone.
Enough time passed that Lavi wondered if he'd been forgotten. It was enough time for him to wonder why the infirmary was so full.
But then he remembered that Gramps had died years ago, but again, something was not right. "Panda?"
If Bookman had been anywhere in earshot, that would have earned him a swat, so it was safe to assume he was alone. Still, Lavi pulled the sheet up over his face before he lifted his eyepatch. There was enough light that he could still see through the sheet. He looked at his hand. And looked again.
"Huh."
He heard approaching footsteps, three sets from the sound of it, and dropped his patch back in place just in time. Before he had a chance, someone else yanked the sheet away. Reever glared at him, pale with anger.
"Don't do that," Reever snapped. "You just pared seven years off my life, you blooming idiot!"
Lavi blinked up at him in confusion, but figured that Reever was tightly wound enough that even asking why? would have an unpleasant result.
But that didn't matter, because Lavi was more relieved than he'd ever want to admit that Gramps was there. Both he and Reever were wearing surgical masks, just like the nurse. So was the other man with them. One set of memories supplied a name, but another set told him he'd never seen the guy before in his life. The second set was winning, but he recalled the feeling of familiarity even as the actual memories themselves started to regress. Whoever it was (the name had disappeared) was standing still as a stump, but with his eyes flicking disbelievingly between him and Gramps.
"I'll talk to him," Gramps said, not even looking at the other two. As usual, his face was barely readable, but Lavi saw all the little tells--the set of his shoulders, the way he stood with his hands a bit too-still by his side--that he wasn't going to like whatever the old panda had to say.
Reever continued to stand there, coldly angry in a way that Lavi had never seen before, before nodding sharply and heading off, grabbing the other man by the sleeve. "Right, then. Now, you, you're going to tell me what's got you in such a twist, Rondine, or so help me..."
"You look like hell, Gramps," Lavi said. He felt a twinge of guilt at the pained expression that crossed the old man's face. There was something not being said.
"A plague of some kind has hit the Order," Gramps said, reciting the facts as they were. "They don't know yet where it came from, but you were the first one to fall ill."
"What?" He tried to sit up, but that started him coughing again. "Who else is sick? Are Lenalee--"
"Enough." It wasn't a shout, and it wasn't harsh, but it was an order, and Lavi was too ill to question it.
All he could do was be quiet, and lay there and listen to the recitation of symptoms, logging everything the old man said in his memory--a memory that still said that no, these things couldn't have happened.
He wondered if he should tell Gramps about what he saw when he uncovered his eye, but then something changed. The calm, recitatory tone never wavered, but his focus shifted ever so slightly to the side. It was as close to avoiding looking Lavi in the eye as he would ever get.
Bookman began to recite the names of the dead. Kanda Yuu. Chaoji. Jake Russell...
Lavi listened. He closed his eyes tightly and felt tears sting as it sunk in what hearing Yuu's name in that list actually meant, but other than that, he kept his reactions in check.
He would remember. Names and facts, just as he was taught, just as had happened in so many other assignments, when companions were lost to this conflict or that disaster.
Later, once Bookman had left, he recited the names to himself again and again, remembering as much as he could about each of them, things that went beyond the detail. It wasn't what he was supposed to do, and maybe it meant he was a failure as a Bookman, but it was what he had to do.
* * *
The sentient gates at the front of the headquarters was considered sufficient security in the quarantine. It would take nothing short of a full-on attack by a fleet of Level Three akuma to break through that way, but the Order was far more concerned with other kinds of danger now. Komui had ordered the gate not to allow itself to open for anyone, for any reason other than him personally telling the gate that the quarantine was over, and it could unlock itself. The next day, when word reached him that the death toll had reached ten, Komui returned to inform the gate regarding who, in succession, would be able to give the order to end the quarantine.
Keeping the river entrance secured was slightly more involved. Guards were stationed at two points along the entrance, with their usual instructions to watch for people coming in reversed. Once the death toll reached thirteen, including one General and three exorcists, Komui found that Leverrier was suddenly willing to wait before sending in an envoy to begin his investigation.
Then, there was the issue of the rats they could never quite eradicate from the lower levels. A few pointed remarks from Bookman regarding certain events in the fourteenth century, and Komui ordered poison to be put down in quantity. Traps lined the walkways parallelling the river, and the guards knew to shoot at any rat they saw leaving.
Unfortunately, none of them would remember seeing a rat going in, ignoring all of the baited traps and poisoned grain.
* * *
Reever had to be told three times that no, there would be no autopsy results and nothing from the blood analysis until tomorrow before he figured he might as well get some rest.
"You've been the one telling us to stay rested and fed so this thing can't get us so easy," Tapp pointed out after the third time he said that no, unless Reever could speed up time, no way, no how he'd be getting his results in anything less than eight hours. "Now wouldn't you come off looking like a total dumbass if you wore yourself into the ground?"
Reever jammed a fist against his mouth to stifle a yawn, then told Tapp to shut up. He left shortly after that, hoping that he wasn't too exhausted to sleep.
He noted that the light was on in Komui's office, but that didn't mean anything. His propensity for absent-mindedly leaving things on and unattended was so great that Reever had threatened to clock him when he said he thought he should keep a hot plate on his desk to keep his coffee warm.
This time, though, the light under the door was a flickering gray-blue punctuated with bursts of a harsh golden light. The viewscreen, maybe? Reever knocked on the door as he opened it and saw Cross's golem hovering in the middle of the room, its mouth wide open.
"Good lord. What they said about the trip to Japan sounded bad, but seeing it..." Reever walked over to stand behind Komui's desk and get a view of the image unreversed. Komui was slumped low in his chair, head leaning on one fist.
In the image, a group of rough-looking men tackled Miranda, covering her as blasts rained down from a host of Akuma.
"Christ!" Reever jumped back, even though it was only an image of something that had happened days ago. The men should have had star-shaped sores erupting all over their bodies, and then dissolved into toxic dust.
The sores flickered and then disappeared, and the men helped Miranda to her feet and then laughed off something that should have killed them.
"They'll die--I mean, they died--when Miranda ceased her invocation." Komui's voice was soft, and almost without any affect.
"Still, it's amazing. Y'know, it's kind of funny," Reever said, stifling another yawn, "but from what Rondine said about how she sent them back, she could well be the most powerful equipment-type we have."
Komui didn't answer. He was too intent on watching Timcanpy's replay.
"Trying to find out where they may have caught this bug? It's a good thing Timcanpy can recall everything it sees. Too bad it wasn't on the Ark."
"Mmm."
They watched as the boat came close to sinking, watched the sailors continue to protect Miranda. The light flickered twilight-blue and fire gold. "Feels odd, watching this, knowing most of those men were already doomed when all this was happening." He only spoke because he felt a need to fill the silence.
"Reever?"
The boat was nearly tipped straight up. Krory was exhausted, clinging to some rigging, while Lavi was perched on a spar, looking around for something to aim at.
"What?"
"I'm not feeling very well."
Reever felt weightless with shock for just a moment. All he could say to Komui's announcement was, "Oh."
He kept watching as Lavi was knocked off the spar and Krory half-dove, half-fell in after him.
"I think I may need some help getting to the infirmary."
Reever nodded, swallowed hard. "No worries. I'll get you there."
Krory came back out of the water, dragging Lavi along with him. They squabbled for a bit, then Bookman came in and got them back into the fray. Timcanpy's attention then turned to a distant battle.
"Do me a favor? Don't tell Lenalee."
Golden light exploded across the horizon, and the boat levelled out.
Reever grabbed the back of Komui's chair and spun it so he was facing him. Komui was ashy-pale and his breath drew shallowly in and out of his mouth, but that didn't stop Reever from shouting at him. "Oi - don't you put that on me! That's not fair. To me or to her."
"Please. She took the news about Kanda very hard. I don't want--"
"Shut up." Reever took hold of Komui's arm far more gently than the scowl and the snappishness would have suggested. "We've had people recover from this. Lavi's doing better. So's Cross--talk about an argument against all the benefits clean living's supposed to bring you."
Komui tried to stand on his own accord, wincing and unbending slowly as if beset by arthritis as Reever pulled him upright. He also tried to laugh, and that just started him coughing again. Reever stood stock still, wondering why the hell he wasn't wearing his mask.
"Lavi's doing better," Komui echoed, his voice almost strong again.
"Well, yeah, you were there. You saw--"
"No, not that. Timcanpy, replay the last three minutes. Reever, just hold on a moment. Take a look at this and tell me if I'm crazy."
"You are crazy. You need to get to the infirmary." Reever pulled on Komui's arm, trying to get him to come along towards the door.
"Shh. Watch. It'll only take a second."
"Which for you, means thirty minutes," Reever grumbled, but Komui's sudden intensity compelled him to watch.
It took three replays before he finally figured out what Komui was getting at, and he nearly let Komui collapse as he let go and got as close as he could to Timcanpy's projection.
"Holy hell... Tim, can you pull in focus a bit? On Lavi?"
The angle was wrong for him to see exactly what had knocked Lavi off the spar, but Reever could see faint shadows starting to spread across Lavi's exposed skin. They were star-shaped.
"He should be dead. Why isn't he dead?"
"I don't know," Komui said. What he did not say was and now it's your job to find out.
* * *
Note: I meant to do the scene where Komui tells Lenalee about Kanda, but time ran out as did anything resembling sufficient wakefulness. I may post that bit later in my own journal. Thanks again to those who are following along with this experiment in making myself plow through something long and plotty.
Part 25
Day/Theme: Jan. 24/I'll note you in my book of memory
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Part 23
"Gramps?" Lavi opened his eye a crack. He wasn't sure what had woken him. Some shouting? Some people running past? But no, no one was there, and for a moment, he couldn't remember where he was--oh, yes, that's right. Infirmary. Although, hadn't he been down in the research labs?
Lavi raised his head and was pleased that he could actually sit up a little, although just that much left him exhausted and he still felt as if something was sitting on his chest. Yeah, he was in the infirmary, all right, he thought, wrinkling his nose. No mistaking that disinfectant odor. No surprise he was there, given he felt like something scraped off someone's shoe. Still, he had the strangest feeling that he'd just dodged the world's largest bullet.
For a moment, all he could hear was the sound of many labored breaths, punctuated with rattling coughs that provoked a few of his own in sympathetic reaction. After that, he flopped back down, thoroughly worn out. He barely had enough breath to call out, "Gramps, you there?"
No answer. His breath stopped for a moment as he thought remembered that no, Bookman was dead... no. That wasn't right. Lavi could have sworn he'd heard him--and there he was again. "Gramps?"
He felt a passing warmth and looked over just in time to see a nurse pausing on her rounds. "Ah, it's Bookman you're wanting, then? I'll be after getting him for you in a moment. Just you wait there, like a good lad--and no trying to shout." She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, just long enough for him to feel the cool dryness of it. "You haven't the strength for it yet."
"You're very pretty," he said, because she was, even though half her face was covered. Instead of a blush or a look of maidenly outrage, her eyes crinkled fleetingly in a smile, but lost none of their sadness. Then, she was gone.
Enough time passed that Lavi wondered if he'd been forgotten. It was enough time for him to wonder why the infirmary was so full.
But then he remembered that Gramps had died years ago, but again, something was not right. "Panda?"
If Bookman had been anywhere in earshot, that would have earned him a swat, so it was safe to assume he was alone. Still, Lavi pulled the sheet up over his face before he lifted his eyepatch. There was enough light that he could still see through the sheet. He looked at his hand. And looked again.
"Huh."
He heard approaching footsteps, three sets from the sound of it, and dropped his patch back in place just in time. Before he had a chance, someone else yanked the sheet away. Reever glared at him, pale with anger.
"Don't do that," Reever snapped. "You just pared seven years off my life, you blooming idiot!"
Lavi blinked up at him in confusion, but figured that Reever was tightly wound enough that even asking why? would have an unpleasant result.
But that didn't matter, because Lavi was more relieved than he'd ever want to admit that Gramps was there. Both he and Reever were wearing surgical masks, just like the nurse. So was the other man with them. One set of memories supplied a name, but another set told him he'd never seen the guy before in his life. The second set was winning, but he recalled the feeling of familiarity even as the actual memories themselves started to regress. Whoever it was (the name had disappeared) was standing still as a stump, but with his eyes flicking disbelievingly between him and Gramps.
"I'll talk to him," Gramps said, not even looking at the other two. As usual, his face was barely readable, but Lavi saw all the little tells--the set of his shoulders, the way he stood with his hands a bit too-still by his side--that he wasn't going to like whatever the old panda had to say.
Reever continued to stand there, coldly angry in a way that Lavi had never seen before, before nodding sharply and heading off, grabbing the other man by the sleeve. "Right, then. Now, you, you're going to tell me what's got you in such a twist, Rondine, or so help me..."
"You look like hell, Gramps," Lavi said. He felt a twinge of guilt at the pained expression that crossed the old man's face. There was something not being said.
"A plague of some kind has hit the Order," Gramps said, reciting the facts as they were. "They don't know yet where it came from, but you were the first one to fall ill."
"What?" He tried to sit up, but that started him coughing again. "Who else is sick? Are Lenalee--"
"Enough." It wasn't a shout, and it wasn't harsh, but it was an order, and Lavi was too ill to question it.
All he could do was be quiet, and lay there and listen to the recitation of symptoms, logging everything the old man said in his memory--a memory that still said that no, these things couldn't have happened.
He wondered if he should tell Gramps about what he saw when he uncovered his eye, but then something changed. The calm, recitatory tone never wavered, but his focus shifted ever so slightly to the side. It was as close to avoiding looking Lavi in the eye as he would ever get.
Bookman began to recite the names of the dead. Kanda Yuu. Chaoji. Jake Russell...
Lavi listened. He closed his eyes tightly and felt tears sting as it sunk in what hearing Yuu's name in that list actually meant, but other than that, he kept his reactions in check.
He would remember. Names and facts, just as he was taught, just as had happened in so many other assignments, when companions were lost to this conflict or that disaster.
Later, once Bookman had left, he recited the names to himself again and again, remembering as much as he could about each of them, things that went beyond the detail. It wasn't what he was supposed to do, and maybe it meant he was a failure as a Bookman, but it was what he had to do.
* * *
The sentient gates at the front of the headquarters was considered sufficient security in the quarantine. It would take nothing short of a full-on attack by a fleet of Level Three akuma to break through that way, but the Order was far more concerned with other kinds of danger now. Komui had ordered the gate not to allow itself to open for anyone, for any reason other than him personally telling the gate that the quarantine was over, and it could unlock itself. The next day, when word reached him that the death toll had reached ten, Komui returned to inform the gate regarding who, in succession, would be able to give the order to end the quarantine.
Keeping the river entrance secured was slightly more involved. Guards were stationed at two points along the entrance, with their usual instructions to watch for people coming in reversed. Once the death toll reached thirteen, including one General and three exorcists, Komui found that Leverrier was suddenly willing to wait before sending in an envoy to begin his investigation.
Then, there was the issue of the rats they could never quite eradicate from the lower levels. A few pointed remarks from Bookman regarding certain events in the fourteenth century, and Komui ordered poison to be put down in quantity. Traps lined the walkways parallelling the river, and the guards knew to shoot at any rat they saw leaving.
Unfortunately, none of them would remember seeing a rat going in, ignoring all of the baited traps and poisoned grain.
* * *
Reever had to be told three times that no, there would be no autopsy results and nothing from the blood analysis until tomorrow before he figured he might as well get some rest.
"You've been the one telling us to stay rested and fed so this thing can't get us so easy," Tapp pointed out after the third time he said that no, unless Reever could speed up time, no way, no how he'd be getting his results in anything less than eight hours. "Now wouldn't you come off looking like a total dumbass if you wore yourself into the ground?"
Reever jammed a fist against his mouth to stifle a yawn, then told Tapp to shut up. He left shortly after that, hoping that he wasn't too exhausted to sleep.
He noted that the light was on in Komui's office, but that didn't mean anything. His propensity for absent-mindedly leaving things on and unattended was so great that Reever had threatened to clock him when he said he thought he should keep a hot plate on his desk to keep his coffee warm.
This time, though, the light under the door was a flickering gray-blue punctuated with bursts of a harsh golden light. The viewscreen, maybe? Reever knocked on the door as he opened it and saw Cross's golem hovering in the middle of the room, its mouth wide open.
"Good lord. What they said about the trip to Japan sounded bad, but seeing it..." Reever walked over to stand behind Komui's desk and get a view of the image unreversed. Komui was slumped low in his chair, head leaning on one fist.
In the image, a group of rough-looking men tackled Miranda, covering her as blasts rained down from a host of Akuma.
"Christ!" Reever jumped back, even though it was only an image of something that had happened days ago. The men should have had star-shaped sores erupting all over their bodies, and then dissolved into toxic dust.
The sores flickered and then disappeared, and the men helped Miranda to her feet and then laughed off something that should have killed them.
"They'll die--I mean, they died--when Miranda ceased her invocation." Komui's voice was soft, and almost without any affect.
"Still, it's amazing. Y'know, it's kind of funny," Reever said, stifling another yawn, "but from what Rondine said about how she sent them back, she could well be the most powerful equipment-type we have."
Komui didn't answer. He was too intent on watching Timcanpy's replay.
"Trying to find out where they may have caught this bug? It's a good thing Timcanpy can recall everything it sees. Too bad it wasn't on the Ark."
"Mmm."
They watched as the boat came close to sinking, watched the sailors continue to protect Miranda. The light flickered twilight-blue and fire gold. "Feels odd, watching this, knowing most of those men were already doomed when all this was happening." He only spoke because he felt a need to fill the silence.
"Reever?"
The boat was nearly tipped straight up. Krory was exhausted, clinging to some rigging, while Lavi was perched on a spar, looking around for something to aim at.
"What?"
"I'm not feeling very well."
Reever felt weightless with shock for just a moment. All he could say to Komui's announcement was, "Oh."
He kept watching as Lavi was knocked off the spar and Krory half-dove, half-fell in after him.
"I think I may need some help getting to the infirmary."
Reever nodded, swallowed hard. "No worries. I'll get you there."
Krory came back out of the water, dragging Lavi along with him. They squabbled for a bit, then Bookman came in and got them back into the fray. Timcanpy's attention then turned to a distant battle.
"Do me a favor? Don't tell Lenalee."
Golden light exploded across the horizon, and the boat levelled out.
Reever grabbed the back of Komui's chair and spun it so he was facing him. Komui was ashy-pale and his breath drew shallowly in and out of his mouth, but that didn't stop Reever from shouting at him. "Oi - don't you put that on me! That's not fair. To me or to her."
"Please. She took the news about Kanda very hard. I don't want--"
"Shut up." Reever took hold of Komui's arm far more gently than the scowl and the snappishness would have suggested. "We've had people recover from this. Lavi's doing better. So's Cross--talk about an argument against all the benefits clean living's supposed to bring you."
Komui tried to stand on his own accord, wincing and unbending slowly as if beset by arthritis as Reever pulled him upright. He also tried to laugh, and that just started him coughing again. Reever stood stock still, wondering why the hell he wasn't wearing his mask.
"Lavi's doing better," Komui echoed, his voice almost strong again.
"Well, yeah, you were there. You saw--"
"No, not that. Timcanpy, replay the last three minutes. Reever, just hold on a moment. Take a look at this and tell me if I'm crazy."
"You are crazy. You need to get to the infirmary." Reever pulled on Komui's arm, trying to get him to come along towards the door.
"Shh. Watch. It'll only take a second."
"Which for you, means thirty minutes," Reever grumbled, but Komui's sudden intensity compelled him to watch.
It took three replays before he finally figured out what Komui was getting at, and he nearly let Komui collapse as he let go and got as close as he could to Timcanpy's projection.
"Holy hell... Tim, can you pull in focus a bit? On Lavi?"
The angle was wrong for him to see exactly what had knocked Lavi off the spar, but Reever could see faint shadows starting to spread across Lavi's exposed skin. They were star-shaped.
"He should be dead. Why isn't he dead?"
"I don't know," Komui said. What he did not say was and now it's your job to find out.
* * *
Note: I meant to do the scene where Komui tells Lenalee about Kanda, but time ran out as did anything resembling sufficient wakefulness. I may post that bit later in my own journal. Thanks again to those who are following along with this experiment in making myself plow through something long and plotty.
Part 25