31_days | April 4 (D.Grayman) Interlude

Title: Interlude
Day/Theme: April 4 // Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved
Series: D.Grayman
Character/Pairing: Lenalee, Allen
A/N: This isn't done, but this is all I have time for right now.
Summary: The situation hasn't changed, only the faces and the numbers adjust.
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They start where they ended, they end where they start. There is something confusing about this but it's completely understandable.

Lenalee sets the tray on a mess of papers (Experiments 1-12, If there was--, Reports from), trying carefully not to have the pile topple over. It's a mountain, almost, with the tray set pecariously on the edge, but it's the only spot available now. With a steady hand, she picks up the silver teapot--goodness knows where they found the money for that--and pours it into the assortment of cups. Polka-dotted, rainbow-stripped, swirls and prints, she fills them all up. One for Reever--the orange and yellow stiped one today, two lumps of sugar, a drop of milk. One for Spinner--green bubbles on a blue background, no sugar, no milk.

On and on, she measures out their lives in teaspoons and sugar cubes.

A few of the cups are remain empty, their owners dead, and she reminds herself that they have to be thrown. Someone's head surfaces from the inky mess and absentmindedly, she hands him his cup (purple hearts, one lump, half a cup). Then another head, and yet another head pops up, and she is a flurry of hands, too busy to think anymore.

After she's done, she's not surprised to see the tea rings on the papers, already fading away.

-x-

A new group of excorists appear one day, tired, worn-out, but with that bright look in their eyes. It's almost too much, Allen thinks, to see those hopes and expectations. They are imagining heroes and victories, not surivival and death.

One of them, a girl about thirteen, is already trying to activate her innocence again. "Hey, I'm stronger than all of you put together," she proclaims, trying to get her gloves to transform, "I can do magic an' beat people up an'--" Nothing happens and she stares at the useless scraps angrily. "Well, when they work, I can do that."

"I beat I could beat you," a fifteen year-old boy replies, his shaved head shining in the sunlight. Immediately, there's a fight and Allen quickly runs in to break it up.

"We don't fight each other," Allen says, restraining the kids, one hand on each forehead. "We fight the Akuma."

"Oh."

"Right."

The two sulk, looking in opposite directions as they awkwardly apologize. Then:

"I bet I could kill more than you."

"Nuhuh!"

Sighing, Allen returns to the ball of limbs, listening to the laughter around him with a smile. He's going to miss this, he thinks, when half of them don't return and the other half forget how to smile.

It's the laughter that always goes first.
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