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31_days2008-01-31 10:25 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-01-31 10:25 pm
[Jan. 31] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 31
Title: End of Days pt. 31
Day/Theme: Jan. 31/vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Part 30
Author's Note: I'm going to need a couple of more chapters to finish this properly, I think.
* * *
Jamie had no idea what the hell she was supposed to do. There was just this vague sense that she owed Allen Walker a great debt.
"Damn it, Walker! Slow down a moment, you stupid ass!"
The little bastard was faster than she'd have given him credit for, especially given that his arm was bleeding like a stuck pig. Her Innocence had made her stronger and faster than most women--most men, for that matter--and it galled her that she couldn't close the gap between her and Walker.
Walker never did slow down, but he turned his head for her to get a glimpse of that scar, and she could tell that he wanted her to follow, but that it was on her to keep up.
She almost lost him once, as he went down what looked like a blind alley. A service door opened up from a sunlit city to a medieval courtyard covered with fog.
That gave way to a ghastly Rococo parlor, and that to a long, smoky room with a thatched roof and earthen floors. An Italian plaza. A series of corridors with paper walls that slid on runners. A dusty street lined with weatherbeaten clapboard storefronts. There was purpose in each destination, but no reason that Jamie could discern.
She was there, in each of those places, always several strides behind Walker. She was also trapped back in Headquarters, looking through a gap in a ruined wall and watching dark spots fill up the twilight sky as the Earl's Akuma massed for their final attack.
For one horrible moment, as Walker opened a small door--small enough that he had to duck to get through--Jamie was back at headquarters, right there with the smell of smoke and vomit. She snapped back onto the Ark and into a dead sprint that burned her lungs and set her heart to racing.
It was the first time she'd felt that in years, and it scared her to death.
* * *
Dolores's shield kept the Noah from jumping through the Ark's gate, but the attempt left the Innocence-enhanced shawl in tatters. General Tiedoll arrived barely in time, and barely able to stand. His Embracing Garden sent out a tangle of vines that barely covered the gate.
The tangle wavered and almost vanished as a piece of rubble struck Tiedoll in the small of the back, knocking him off his feet; an Akuma had fired at Cross, missing the General but hitting the catwalk, bringing the entire thing crashing to the ground, Cross along with it.
* * *
The two minutes Reever sat by Miranda's bedside stretched and twisted until he no longer knew if he'd been sitting there for two seconds or two hours.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin resting on the backs of his hands as he held the syringe lightly, swinging it back and forth, waiting, and wondering if he should really do this.
Somewhere in the back of the mind, a weary voice told him that it didn't matter what he did. Nothing worked. Nothing they tried had worked. They'd exhausted all options. All they could do at this point was make things worse.
Reever didn't consider himself the kind of person who'd give up easily, and it disturbed him deeply to hear those words in his own voice. He'd fight to the death, damn it, odds or no odds.
"Right. Tell that to the boys in the lab," he muttered. How the hell had he let Lavi talk him away from that? At what point had he gone from wanting to give his last to deciding that it was no use?
It was as if someone else's thoughts were becoming tangled up with his own the longer he sat here. Two minutes. Two hours. Two seconds.
He closed his eyes when he saw Lenalee in the other bed, turning to talk to Miranda. He heard the ghost of mischievous laughter as a different Miranda said something teasing.
How did they know that trying to shut the time portal wasn't going to make things worse? It could simply trap them in this new sequence of events, which was going oh so well.
Reever told this sarcastic, pessimistic voice to shut the hell up. He hadn't yet found a problem that he couldn't solve or work around in some way, but to hear himself think, you'd think he'd been handed crushing defeat after crushing defeat. This was the kind of thing he might expect from Miranda...
His eyes shot open wide as he realized what was happening. Lavi wasn't the only one being affected by the portal. There was another version of him out there, on the other end of that string that connected then and now.
There was no way in hell he was going to become that person who was starting to leak in at the seams of his self.
They had to separate the timelines, or this one would just get folded into the other, if Lavi was right (and a little voice reminded him that Bookman had been very, very wrong before--remember what happened to Lenalee?) about things.
Yeah, it might mean that some of them would get another one, two, five years (and you'll get twenty, mate--phrased like that, sounds like a nice little prison sentence, doesn't it?) but then they'd lose.
Hundreds of Order members dead now, or all but seven dead twenty years down the pike, with hundreds he'd never met joining up in the meantime only to be chewed up and discarded like chaff.
They had to stop this, and then the could worry about who they could save.
* * *
They were losing.
Twenty-four Finders were dead. Many more than that were injured, or so weak they could not move.
Lau Jimin had lost an arm. Cross Marian had survived his fall, either because of a miracle or simply because that's who he was, but one leg was shattered. Still, he fought, firing bullet after bullet from Judgment's endless reserve.
Tiedoll was able to hold the tangle of vines together, despite having the wind knocked out of him, but it did no good in the end. The Noah's serpentine form reared up and struck at the vines, but instead of being caught up on the thorns, she flowed through the interstices like water through a sieve.
* * *
Komui dreamed of Lenalee. Or maybe it was a memory.
It wasn't a bad one, as dreams or memories go. In fact, he'd have been happy to linger there for a long time. There was no significance to it, unless he chose to read some ironic foreshadowing into it. It was long before the Order had taken her, and a few weeks before she could walk on her own.
Komui stood over and behind her, bent over so she could grasp tightly to his index fingers. She hung on with all her might as he shuffled along behind her and helped her keep her balance for five, six, seven wobbly and triumphant steps.
Lenalee's sweet crow of delight turned into something much less pleasant as someone shook him awake. He stuttered awake, not sure of what was going on other than everything ached horribly and it felt like someone had piled up reams of paperwork on his chest.
"Director Komui, wake up. You need to wake up."
One of the nurses (Letty? Lottie?) was trying to rouse him. He wanted her to go away. He wanted her to leave him alone, because there was no way her news wasn't about Lenalee, and there was no way it wasn't bad."
"I'm sorry to wake you, but you're needed. It's Section Chief Wenham."
Reever? But Reever had been fine the last time Komui had seen him. How long had it been?
"Reever?" He'd been bracing himself for bad news about Lenalee for so long, that the thought of something happening to his oldest friend was a different kind of shock, one he didn't know how to handle. "What happened? Where is he?"
The nurse looked away, giving a little tch! of disgust. "What happened? Haven't any idea, but he's gone quite mad, and you need to stop him."
Part 32
Day/Theme: Jan. 31/vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Part 30
Author's Note: I'm going to need a couple of more chapters to finish this properly, I think.
* * *
Jamie had no idea what the hell she was supposed to do. There was just this vague sense that she owed Allen Walker a great debt.
"Damn it, Walker! Slow down a moment, you stupid ass!"
The little bastard was faster than she'd have given him credit for, especially given that his arm was bleeding like a stuck pig. Her Innocence had made her stronger and faster than most women--most men, for that matter--and it galled her that she couldn't close the gap between her and Walker.
Walker never did slow down, but he turned his head for her to get a glimpse of that scar, and she could tell that he wanted her to follow, but that it was on her to keep up.
She almost lost him once, as he went down what looked like a blind alley. A service door opened up from a sunlit city to a medieval courtyard covered with fog.
That gave way to a ghastly Rococo parlor, and that to a long, smoky room with a thatched roof and earthen floors. An Italian plaza. A series of corridors with paper walls that slid on runners. A dusty street lined with weatherbeaten clapboard storefronts. There was purpose in each destination, but no reason that Jamie could discern.
She was there, in each of those places, always several strides behind Walker. She was also trapped back in Headquarters, looking through a gap in a ruined wall and watching dark spots fill up the twilight sky as the Earl's Akuma massed for their final attack.
For one horrible moment, as Walker opened a small door--small enough that he had to duck to get through--Jamie was back at headquarters, right there with the smell of smoke and vomit. She snapped back onto the Ark and into a dead sprint that burned her lungs and set her heart to racing.
It was the first time she'd felt that in years, and it scared her to death.
* * *
Dolores's shield kept the Noah from jumping through the Ark's gate, but the attempt left the Innocence-enhanced shawl in tatters. General Tiedoll arrived barely in time, and barely able to stand. His Embracing Garden sent out a tangle of vines that barely covered the gate.
The tangle wavered and almost vanished as a piece of rubble struck Tiedoll in the small of the back, knocking him off his feet; an Akuma had fired at Cross, missing the General but hitting the catwalk, bringing the entire thing crashing to the ground, Cross along with it.
* * *
The two minutes Reever sat by Miranda's bedside stretched and twisted until he no longer knew if he'd been sitting there for two seconds or two hours.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin resting on the backs of his hands as he held the syringe lightly, swinging it back and forth, waiting, and wondering if he should really do this.
Somewhere in the back of the mind, a weary voice told him that it didn't matter what he did. Nothing worked. Nothing they tried had worked. They'd exhausted all options. All they could do at this point was make things worse.
Reever didn't consider himself the kind of person who'd give up easily, and it disturbed him deeply to hear those words in his own voice. He'd fight to the death, damn it, odds or no odds.
"Right. Tell that to the boys in the lab," he muttered. How the hell had he let Lavi talk him away from that? At what point had he gone from wanting to give his last to deciding that it was no use?
It was as if someone else's thoughts were becoming tangled up with his own the longer he sat here. Two minutes. Two hours. Two seconds.
He closed his eyes when he saw Lenalee in the other bed, turning to talk to Miranda. He heard the ghost of mischievous laughter as a different Miranda said something teasing.
How did they know that trying to shut the time portal wasn't going to make things worse? It could simply trap them in this new sequence of events, which was going oh so well.
Reever told this sarcastic, pessimistic voice to shut the hell up. He hadn't yet found a problem that he couldn't solve or work around in some way, but to hear himself think, you'd think he'd been handed crushing defeat after crushing defeat. This was the kind of thing he might expect from Miranda...
His eyes shot open wide as he realized what was happening. Lavi wasn't the only one being affected by the portal. There was another version of him out there, on the other end of that string that connected then and now.
There was no way in hell he was going to become that person who was starting to leak in at the seams of his self.
They had to separate the timelines, or this one would just get folded into the other, if Lavi was right (and a little voice reminded him that Bookman had been very, very wrong before--remember what happened to Lenalee?) about things.
Yeah, it might mean that some of them would get another one, two, five years (and you'll get twenty, mate--phrased like that, sounds like a nice little prison sentence, doesn't it?) but then they'd lose.
Hundreds of Order members dead now, or all but seven dead twenty years down the pike, with hundreds he'd never met joining up in the meantime only to be chewed up and discarded like chaff.
They had to stop this, and then the could worry about who they could save.
* * *
They were losing.
Twenty-four Finders were dead. Many more than that were injured, or so weak they could not move.
Lau Jimin had lost an arm. Cross Marian had survived his fall, either because of a miracle or simply because that's who he was, but one leg was shattered. Still, he fought, firing bullet after bullet from Judgment's endless reserve.
Tiedoll was able to hold the tangle of vines together, despite having the wind knocked out of him, but it did no good in the end. The Noah's serpentine form reared up and struck at the vines, but instead of being caught up on the thorns, she flowed through the interstices like water through a sieve.
* * *
Komui dreamed of Lenalee. Or maybe it was a memory.
It wasn't a bad one, as dreams or memories go. In fact, he'd have been happy to linger there for a long time. There was no significance to it, unless he chose to read some ironic foreshadowing into it. It was long before the Order had taken her, and a few weeks before she could walk on her own.
Komui stood over and behind her, bent over so she could grasp tightly to his index fingers. She hung on with all her might as he shuffled along behind her and helped her keep her balance for five, six, seven wobbly and triumphant steps.
Lenalee's sweet crow of delight turned into something much less pleasant as someone shook him awake. He stuttered awake, not sure of what was going on other than everything ached horribly and it felt like someone had piled up reams of paperwork on his chest.
"Director Komui, wake up. You need to wake up."
One of the nurses (Letty? Lottie?) was trying to rouse him. He wanted her to go away. He wanted her to leave him alone, because there was no way her news wasn't about Lenalee, and there was no way it wasn't bad."
"I'm sorry to wake you, but you're needed. It's Section Chief Wenham."
Reever? But Reever had been fine the last time Komui had seen him. How long had it been?
"Reever?" He'd been bracing himself for bad news about Lenalee for so long, that the thought of something happening to his oldest friend was a different kind of shock, one he didn't know how to handle. "What happened? Where is he?"
The nurse looked away, giving a little tch! of disgust. "What happened? Haven't any idea, but he's gone quite mad, and you need to stop him."
Part 32