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31_days2008-02-08 09:54 pm
sophiap.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2008-02-08 09:54 pm
[Feb. 08] [D.Gray-Man] End of Days, Part 34
Title: End of Days pt. 34
Day/Theme: Feb. 08/ Accursed be he that first invented war
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R
Part 33 is here, at my personal journal - I couldn't finish the 4th's prompt in time. Anyhow, you get Cross p.o.v. for the first time, and a bit with Lavi in that section.
Note: I am going to be revising and expanding this story immensely, so I may hold off on writing the last few parts until the revised version catches up with the plot. If anyone has any concrit they would like to pass along ("You had a failure of logic here..." "Your characterization is on crack here..." "I would like to see more of this plotline...") it would be greatly appreciated.
* * *
"Oh, bloody hell." She'd thought they had it. She really did.
Another pane changed, but it was a different scene of destruction. It was hard to tell, because the pane only captured a few degrees of view and never centered on anything, but it seemed Tiedoll and some old man were standing back to back, fighting off three, possibly four Level Three Akuma. Tiedoll was concentrating on something she couldn't see, and the old man was sending wave after wave of wicked-looking needles into the fray, shielding Tiedoll so he could work. Walker's eye kept going back to the Level Four, and he kept trying to look away again, tendons in his neck straining as he forced his head to turn aside again and again and again. Jamie thought it would have been easier on him if he just looked, but every time his eye locked onto the Four, he gasped as if someone had socked him right under the ribcage
"This is bad, this is really bad--"
Jamie rounded on Allen, rolling up onto her knees so she could loom over him. "Of course it's bad! That should have worked! Why didn't it work?" Her hand flailed out towards the window with each exclamation.
"How am I supposed to know? You're the one who told me that not closing off the Ark would stop this war!" Walker sounded more frantic than defensive, or would have if he'd had the energy for panic. Now that he was sitting down, he didn't seem to want to move. His right sleeve was dark with blood; it had dripped down so that his right hand now matched his left. His eyes were starting to droop shut. He actually let them close for a few seconds, then forced them open again and started to get to his feet.
"You should probably lie down and elevate that arm of yours," she said. That didn't stop her from getting up herself. The fight was still going on; two more panes had changed to the present, but she couldn't see a glimpse of her friends.
"No. I need to get up. I need to go back out there."
"Right. Because you've lost a jeroboam's worth of blood, and you'd rather die now than sixteen years down the road? Can't say I'd call that a smart exchange, Walker. I'm unhurt. I'll go back."
Jamie didn't quite realize what she'd said until Walker gasped as if he'd locked eyes with the Four and fell right back on his ass.
"Sorry about that," she said, holding out her hand to help him back to his feet. Walker took her hand, and she was surprised at how normal the monstrous-looking red hand felt in her own. Rough, yes, and a bit warmer than she expected, but still very much human. He very carefully didn't ask her what happened, but she told him anyway.
"I wasn't there--I didn't join up until after you were dead, but the story is you were taken out by a bit of shrapnel. One minute you're talking to Bookman, the next you're flat on the ground with a hole in your head. Let's keep it to one stupid death per customer, all right then? Beside, this might yet work. Maybe it takes some time to take effect."
Jamie didn't believe a bit of it. The window kept changing, showing her time and Walker's time checkerboarding together in that window. Only one corner of the thing still showed blue sky and a slash of green pine needles.
Walker stared at the ground. He'd pulled his hand away from hers, and now his fist was clenching and unclenching, the Innocence in the back of his hand pulsing with each clench.
"No. It's not going to happen like that. It can't." He finally looked up, and that eye of his fastened on her as if she were the Akuma. "Tell me--I protected my friends, right? I kept them safe? I was at least able to do that?"
Figured he'd think of others, first. Like he was better than them all or set apart from them all or something. "Some, yeah. We lost a lot of people early in the twentieth century. From what I gather, you, Bookman, Miranda, and Tiedoll were the only exorcists who survived from this time until the Great War." A war that should not have happened, or at least should not have been so bad. What the hell had gone wrong? Something in her finally felt properly in tune when Walker made his declaration.
Walker's reaction to that was worse than his reaction to his own death. She wondered if he was going to fall back down again, but his shoulders sank forward, and his hand covered his face as he counted the people she hadn't listed. Jamie hoped to hell he wasn't crying, because she woudn't know how to handle that.
"I should have been able to do more..."
Rising anger, on the other hand, was an old familiar friend.
"Well, you didn't. And you still haven't," she said, gesturing at the window again.
That startled Walker out of his funk. "I told you, I don't know what I'm supposed to do! You're the one who knows what happens next."
"Well, this plague didn't happen. And Bookman sent us through blind in the first place."
"I can't believe he's still around," Walker muttered. In the window, there was no longer any sign of the old man. There were any number of bodies, some clad in black, many more in beige, but thankfully they couldn't make out any faces. Jamie wasn't sure what she'd do if she saw Rondine among the dead.
It bothered her, though, that she hadn't yet seen him or Misha among the living. Dolores's tattered shield rose here and there in the background, so she at least was still holding on.
"Yeah... that's right, you two were supposed to be great pals, or some such," she said with a meaningful lift of her eyebrow. Walker gave her an odd look at that, but Jamie ignored it. Time changed people--Christ, Miranda looked so young. It gave Jamie a nasty, clammy chill to think that right now, she was two years older than her mentor. "Well, he and the Director both said the war would likely be over by mid-November at the latest."
Walker nodded slowly, his eye still tracking the Level Four. "Everything would be over."
"More or less."
Walker was obviously thinking of how he could stop things, now that he had Jamie to tell him all the awful things that happened. It wouldn't be that simple, though. She'd heard most of what Bookman and Wenham had explained to Rondine, and she'd actually understood part of it. The references to some Swiss scientist's theories went straight over her head, but the analogy Bookman had come up with was clear enough: simply avoiding things they knew were going to happen wouldn't cut it. That would be as effective as piling debris on some railroad tracks to try to stop an onrushing train. At most, they might delay things for a while, but the train would eventually get through. What they had to do is find the switch that would send the train onto a different track and a different destination.
Unfortunately, it appeared that what they'd wound up doing was more along the lines of dynamiting the tracks.
"I'm not giving up. There's got to be something we can do." Walker looked around for something to bind his injured arm.
"You don't ever listen to good sense, do you?" Jamie said. She unwrapped the bandages from around her throat. No point wearing them now; Walker had seen worse than the ruin of her neck.
"I can't just stay here while they're out there, fighting."
"You'd be safe, here." That didn't stop her from bandaging up his arm, pulling things nice and tight to keep the wounds closed. "I think there's something you still need to do."
Walker looked back at the piano. His golem still sat there, waiting, silent. "What is it about people not telling us what we need to know. Bookman, Cross..."
"I heard stories about him." Walker grunted in pain as she tied the last knot. The air on the bare skin of her throat felt alien and chilly. "Not much good."
"That's no surprise." He flexed his arm, or tried to. The best he could do was lift his shoulder a bit, and even that made him hiss and wince. "I'm surprised he didn't survive."
Jamie looked him up and down. He was a bit wobbly on his feet, but if he could do distance attacks with that arms, he might just make it. "No one's quite sure about that. The Order lost track of him in 1906. San Francisco."
Walker looked puzzled, and it took her a second to figure out that no, he wouldn't get the reference, would he?
She was about to explain, but Walker took a deep breath.
"Tell me the rest of it. Tell me what happened."
Right. She was supposed to tell this brave little soldier with the trembling voice and determined look how he'd failed to save all his friends. Even a decade after it happened, people still acted as if Lenalee Lee had only just died. Bookman and Wenham were the worst of the lot, and Miranda still got weepy from time to time. Maybe Walker's death had made all the old deaths feel fresh again, but Jamie got the feeling that her death had ripped the soul from the Order the way Walker's death or Klaud's hadn't. Sometimes, Jamie wondered what it would be like to be missed like that. Other times, she just found it oppressive and creepy. In any case, she wasn't about to watch him fall into despair right before they were about to wade into the thick of a nasty fight.
"Let's go. I'll tell you on the way out." She placed a hand on Walker's good shoulder and gave him a little shove to get him going. "It was the bloody Earl, of course. Who else would it be?"
Day/Theme: Feb. 08/ Accursed be he that first invented war
Series: D.Gray-Man
Character/Pairing: Ensemble, with a few OCs.
Rating: R
Part 33 is here, at my personal journal - I couldn't finish the 4th's prompt in time. Anyhow, you get Cross p.o.v. for the first time, and a bit with Lavi in that section.
Note: I am going to be revising and expanding this story immensely, so I may hold off on writing the last few parts until the revised version catches up with the plot. If anyone has any concrit they would like to pass along ("You had a failure of logic here..." "Your characterization is on crack here..." "I would like to see more of this plotline...") it would be greatly appreciated.
* * *
"Oh, bloody hell." She'd thought they had it. She really did.
Another pane changed, but it was a different scene of destruction. It was hard to tell, because the pane only captured a few degrees of view and never centered on anything, but it seemed Tiedoll and some old man were standing back to back, fighting off three, possibly four Level Three Akuma. Tiedoll was concentrating on something she couldn't see, and the old man was sending wave after wave of wicked-looking needles into the fray, shielding Tiedoll so he could work. Walker's eye kept going back to the Level Four, and he kept trying to look away again, tendons in his neck straining as he forced his head to turn aside again and again and again. Jamie thought it would have been easier on him if he just looked, but every time his eye locked onto the Four, he gasped as if someone had socked him right under the ribcage
"This is bad, this is really bad--"
Jamie rounded on Allen, rolling up onto her knees so she could loom over him. "Of course it's bad! That should have worked! Why didn't it work?" Her hand flailed out towards the window with each exclamation.
"How am I supposed to know? You're the one who told me that not closing off the Ark would stop this war!" Walker sounded more frantic than defensive, or would have if he'd had the energy for panic. Now that he was sitting down, he didn't seem to want to move. His right sleeve was dark with blood; it had dripped down so that his right hand now matched his left. His eyes were starting to droop shut. He actually let them close for a few seconds, then forced them open again and started to get to his feet.
"You should probably lie down and elevate that arm of yours," she said. That didn't stop her from getting up herself. The fight was still going on; two more panes had changed to the present, but she couldn't see a glimpse of her friends.
"No. I need to get up. I need to go back out there."
"Right. Because you've lost a jeroboam's worth of blood, and you'd rather die now than sixteen years down the road? Can't say I'd call that a smart exchange, Walker. I'm unhurt. I'll go back."
Jamie didn't quite realize what she'd said until Walker gasped as if he'd locked eyes with the Four and fell right back on his ass.
"Sorry about that," she said, holding out her hand to help him back to his feet. Walker took her hand, and she was surprised at how normal the monstrous-looking red hand felt in her own. Rough, yes, and a bit warmer than she expected, but still very much human. He very carefully didn't ask her what happened, but she told him anyway.
"I wasn't there--I didn't join up until after you were dead, but the story is you were taken out by a bit of shrapnel. One minute you're talking to Bookman, the next you're flat on the ground with a hole in your head. Let's keep it to one stupid death per customer, all right then? Beside, this might yet work. Maybe it takes some time to take effect."
Jamie didn't believe a bit of it. The window kept changing, showing her time and Walker's time checkerboarding together in that window. Only one corner of the thing still showed blue sky and a slash of green pine needles.
Walker stared at the ground. He'd pulled his hand away from hers, and now his fist was clenching and unclenching, the Innocence in the back of his hand pulsing with each clench.
"No. It's not going to happen like that. It can't." He finally looked up, and that eye of his fastened on her as if she were the Akuma. "Tell me--I protected my friends, right? I kept them safe? I was at least able to do that?"
Figured he'd think of others, first. Like he was better than them all or set apart from them all or something. "Some, yeah. We lost a lot of people early in the twentieth century. From what I gather, you, Bookman, Miranda, and Tiedoll were the only exorcists who survived from this time until the Great War." A war that should not have happened, or at least should not have been so bad. What the hell had gone wrong? Something in her finally felt properly in tune when Walker made his declaration.
Walker's reaction to that was worse than his reaction to his own death. She wondered if he was going to fall back down again, but his shoulders sank forward, and his hand covered his face as he counted the people she hadn't listed. Jamie hoped to hell he wasn't crying, because she woudn't know how to handle that.
"I should have been able to do more..."
Rising anger, on the other hand, was an old familiar friend.
"Well, you didn't. And you still haven't," she said, gesturing at the window again.
That startled Walker out of his funk. "I told you, I don't know what I'm supposed to do! You're the one who knows what happens next."
"Well, this plague didn't happen. And Bookman sent us through blind in the first place."
"I can't believe he's still around," Walker muttered. In the window, there was no longer any sign of the old man. There were any number of bodies, some clad in black, many more in beige, but thankfully they couldn't make out any faces. Jamie wasn't sure what she'd do if she saw Rondine among the dead.
It bothered her, though, that she hadn't yet seen him or Misha among the living. Dolores's tattered shield rose here and there in the background, so she at least was still holding on.
"Yeah... that's right, you two were supposed to be great pals, or some such," she said with a meaningful lift of her eyebrow. Walker gave her an odd look at that, but Jamie ignored it. Time changed people--Christ, Miranda looked so young. It gave Jamie a nasty, clammy chill to think that right now, she was two years older than her mentor. "Well, he and the Director both said the war would likely be over by mid-November at the latest."
Walker nodded slowly, his eye still tracking the Level Four. "Everything would be over."
"More or less."
Walker was obviously thinking of how he could stop things, now that he had Jamie to tell him all the awful things that happened. It wouldn't be that simple, though. She'd heard most of what Bookman and Wenham had explained to Rondine, and she'd actually understood part of it. The references to some Swiss scientist's theories went straight over her head, but the analogy Bookman had come up with was clear enough: simply avoiding things they knew were going to happen wouldn't cut it. That would be as effective as piling debris on some railroad tracks to try to stop an onrushing train. At most, they might delay things for a while, but the train would eventually get through. What they had to do is find the switch that would send the train onto a different track and a different destination.
Unfortunately, it appeared that what they'd wound up doing was more along the lines of dynamiting the tracks.
"I'm not giving up. There's got to be something we can do." Walker looked around for something to bind his injured arm.
"You don't ever listen to good sense, do you?" Jamie said. She unwrapped the bandages from around her throat. No point wearing them now; Walker had seen worse than the ruin of her neck.
"I can't just stay here while they're out there, fighting."
"You'd be safe, here." That didn't stop her from bandaging up his arm, pulling things nice and tight to keep the wounds closed. "I think there's something you still need to do."
Walker looked back at the piano. His golem still sat there, waiting, silent. "What is it about people not telling us what we need to know. Bookman, Cross..."
"I heard stories about him." Walker grunted in pain as she tied the last knot. The air on the bare skin of her throat felt alien and chilly. "Not much good."
"That's no surprise." He flexed his arm, or tried to. The best he could do was lift his shoulder a bit, and even that made him hiss and wince. "I'm surprised he didn't survive."
Jamie looked him up and down. He was a bit wobbly on his feet, but if he could do distance attacks with that arms, he might just make it. "No one's quite sure about that. The Order lost track of him in 1906. San Francisco."
Walker looked puzzled, and it took her a second to figure out that no, he wouldn't get the reference, would he?
She was about to explain, but Walker took a deep breath.
"Tell me the rest of it. Tell me what happened."
Right. She was supposed to tell this brave little soldier with the trembling voice and determined look how he'd failed to save all his friends. Even a decade after it happened, people still acted as if Lenalee Lee had only just died. Bookman and Wenham were the worst of the lot, and Miranda still got weepy from time to time. Maybe Walker's death had made all the old deaths feel fresh again, but Jamie got the feeling that her death had ripped the soul from the Order the way Walker's death or Klaud's hadn't. Sometimes, Jamie wondered what it would be like to be missed like that. Other times, she just found it oppressive and creepy. In any case, she wasn't about to watch him fall into despair right before they were about to wade into the thick of a nasty fight.
"Let's go. I'll tell you on the way out." She placed a hand on Walker's good shoulder and gave him a little shove to get him going. "It was the bloody Earl, of course. Who else would it be?"